Ravening_Wolf Posted August 10, 2007 Posted August 10, 2007 Our biggest problem was that the initial data conversion was not completed corectly; a fact which only came to light after the system had gone live and we had begun issuing books. This is the problem we are still working through - hopefully all will be sorted by next term, but who knows?! There was also a major problem right at the beginning of the project with getting our barcode scanner/magnetic wand to work correctly with Oliver. The instructions supplied to the Softlink engineer, the Plescon engineer and myself all missed the first and most important step of creating a bat file to open a com port and set some security. Fortunately this is now resolved. For half-decent support, try and get hold of Peter Barr or Simon Rathbone as they seem to be the best at answering technical queries. We have actually been in contact with our LEA legal department regarding the current situation. Oliver seems to be a great solution and we are impressed by its features, but if the initial installation doesn't work out, I suspect your relationship with Softlink won't either...
ZeroHour Posted August 10, 2007 Posted August 10, 2007 We use fingerprinting for the library at our school. It is very successful. I don't really know how it infringes on a child's rights. It's not as if you can use it for anything other than books/food. Its more the sense of if its stored then the police ALWAYS have the right to get the data in a investigation. Parents dont like the idea of a repository of there pupils fingerprints being stored and the police using them in the future (as if its stored, by law the police always have rights). That just shows how many parents/pupils are crims
Ric_ Posted August 10, 2007 Posted August 10, 2007 We use fingerprinting for the library at our school. It is very successful. I don't really know how it infringes on a child's rights. It's not as if you can use it for anything other than books/food. Its more the sense of if its stored then the police ALWAYS have the right to get the data in a investigation. Parents dont like the idea of a repository of there pupils fingerprints being stored and the police using them in the future (as if its stored, by law the police always have rights). That just shows how many parents/pupils are crims I believe that the system uses some pitiful recognition though (3-points comes to mind) which means that the data held about the fingerprint is equally lacking. The fact that it is only one finger is also enough to stop it being useful information in a criminal investigation.
ZeroHour Posted August 13, 2007 Posted August 13, 2007 Ravening_Wolf we have a problem (one of many) right now where Oliver cant update the book images from Library.ox.ac.uk We tell softlink "how do we setup the proxy details?" and then they claim everytime it does not need proxy settings. How did you get yours to work? We have ISA 2004 btw.
User3204 Posted August 13, 2007 Posted August 13, 2007 @ZeroHour Yeah, that's right, it doesn't need the proxy details... or more precisely it won't use them. It needs a route to the server that doesn't use any proxy, we found we had to put it into a special VLAN on the outside of our firewall for it to work properly. I did eventually sort out our PIX/Router to send the packets correctly. Your gateway device needs to have a rule that allows access from the library machine (I set mine a static in the DHCP), to the remote public IPs, without any sort of authentication involved. It uses an unusual port too, can't remember what it was. We stopped using these features when we got a new Librarian... so it is no longer an issue... This Librarian is also quite keen on changing the Library software, for something else... We still have issues with our system, I wanted to integrate the users with the Windows AD, and the instructions I got (for Apache), were related to Moodle.. which has a different file structure.
ZeroHour Posted August 14, 2007 Posted August 14, 2007 Thanks for the info User3204, when did you set this up? It sounds like you have about as much success with their support as we do. They just keep telling us "it just works" lol
Ravening_Wolf Posted August 14, 2007 Posted August 14, 2007 It does just work. In the unlikely event you don't have any system security...
beeswax Posted November 2, 2007 Posted November 2, 2007 Kearton - whatever you do, think very carefully before you do that! Softlink's support is poor beyond belief. We had the system installed on August 22nd 2006 and nearly a year later, the initial problems with the system are still not resolved. We had the system (Oliver) installed during July of this year thinking that we'd have something in place for when school reopened in September, and it still isn't working. It was all supposed to fit in with the kitchen fingerprint recognition and SIMS. I reckon our network manager has spent a full week trying to get the system configured. It's not his job to do this, we paid for a working system which fails to work, but he realizes, just as Softlink do, that if he isn't proactive in this then we'll just end up with an expensive pile of useless junk. The poor librarian is reduced to doing everything by hand. We still have the old machine with Alice, which was only used locally, and are seriously considering re-instating it. We get one excuse after another from Softlink support. (This message was brought to you by the school of Primal Scream Therapy)
kearton Posted November 2, 2007 Posted November 2, 2007 We still haven't installed ours yet. The server we're putting it on hasn't been released from it's old job yet... Will update as and when...
dave.81 Posted November 2, 2007 Posted November 2, 2007 We've been using eclipse for just over a year now it was started from scratch as we were using paper based library before this. Took the librarian about a month to get all the books on there. And apart from a few issues with the discovery online and the server HDD dying it's been fine. The librarian loves it and the searchstar is being used by staff and pupils in all sorts of classrooms around the college.
russdev Posted November 2, 2007 Posted November 2, 2007 Well eclipise2 went so well we just other day brought upgrade to .net (and the web parts). Russell
TechMonkey Posted November 2, 2007 Posted November 2, 2007 Well eclipise2 went so well we just other day brought upgrade to .net (and the web parts). Russell Ohhhh. :? We have downgraded to Eclipse2 after buying .Net and are holding off until at least the summer now. It look like it will be a great product but just doesn't seem to be finished just yet.
L.E.K Posted November 9, 2007 Posted November 9, 2007 Elipse software can be a right pain to install. The version we have at our school and when i got round to installing the software i had to go through all the updating to the latest version for it to get it working properly LEK
russdev Posted November 9, 2007 Posted November 9, 2007 Strange with version two no issues what so ever on install worked first time. Russell
pete Posted January 8, 2008 Posted January 8, 2008 We've just got the .net version (currently running Elipse2 on a stand-alone box). I'm eyeing up the system requirements and it looks like client-server would be our best bet. Apart from the lack of basic security (why yes, anyone following the default install instructions will be using the same sa password), are there any other issues?
pete Posted January 9, 2008 Posted January 9, 2008 ...and it appears there are known issues with Discovery Online and Squid. It has the proxy details and authentication but it's either: a) not using them correctly or b) doing something bloody stupid and squid is telling it to get stuffed The credentials and proxy worked fine for the licence and module check, work fine when used to browse the site Discovery Online should be looking at (and other sites), but shortly into the exchange of data Squid sends it a 407 Denied and it fails at 5%. Apparently a known issue and the Helpdesk is getting back to you.
Geoff Posted January 9, 2008 Posted January 9, 2008 I'd imagine you could sniff the connect with Wireshark and see if it's A or B that's the case.
russdev Posted January 9, 2008 Posted January 9, 2008 ...and it appears there are known issues with Discovery Online and Squid. It has the proxy details and authentication but it's either: a) not using them correctly or b) doing something bloody stupid and squid is telling it to get stuffed The credentials and proxy worked fine for the licence and module check, work fine when used to browse the site Discovery Online should be looking at (and other sites), but shortly into the exchange of data Squid sends it a 407 Denied and it fails at 5%. Apparently a known issue and the Helpdesk is getting back to you. Will be speaking with MD tomorrow (really great guy will bend over backwards to help you) so if need me to prompt him to get stuff sorted pm me your details and your customer id etc. Russ
techyphil Posted January 10, 2008 Posted January 10, 2008 Jesus is it really £2k? I started working as a tech and it was already in place in 1 of 2 library's. They now want the 2nd library to be able to add/scan/manage the books from their workstation and give a student version to all laptops and workstations in the school. I assume we can just move the database from the pants workstation in library 1 to the servers. Then install like a Librarian version on the 2 workstations in the library's and the Student Client on the students laptops. All querying the main server. I havent personally looked into any of this yet but have been told that will be the case by the librarians.
pete Posted January 10, 2008 Posted January 10, 2008 (edited) @Russdev Cheers for the offer, but I'll avoid the nuclear option for now and see how they get on. @Geoff I added an acl to squid allowing unfiltered access to .microlib.co.uk from that server (no login required, so doesn't matter if it's not using it) and it still fails at 5%, but now I'm getting 500 errors in the squid logs. 1199961709.851 486 SERVERIP TCP_MISS/200 68801 POST [url]http://service.microlib.co.uk/DiscoveryOnlineV2.asmx[/url] - DIRECT/87.106.28.111 text/xml 1199961710.509 654 SERVERIP TCP_MISS/200 77857 POST [url]http://service.microlib.co.uk/DiscoveryOnlineV2.asmx[/url] - DIRECT/87.106.28.111 text/xml 1199961725.567 15054 SERVERIP TCP_MISS/500 1987 POST [url]http://service.microlib.co.uk/DiscoveryOnlineV2.asmx[/url] - DIRECT/87.106.28.111 text/xml Is this the webserver giving 500, or is it the way Squid is forwarding the request? Google reveals a rather small number of results for TCP_MISS/500, with possible causes, but I'm not sure which is most relevant. The page it's trying to get to: http://service.microlib.co.uk/DiscoveryOnlineV2.asmx @techyphil The dot Net version installs on an IIS box, links to AD and uses NTLM auth in IE to access Searchstar / reserve books. There's no client to install for the kids use, just Identikit and Circulate client on the librarians machine. I'm quite surprised how well the AD synch works - it looks like it guesses based on firstname lastname. Edited January 10, 2008 by pete
Geoff Posted January 10, 2008 Posted January 10, 2008 A TCP_MISS/200 is generated when the content isn't in the cache and squid has to go get it from an upstream proxy/the origin server. A TCP_MISS/500 is generated when the origin server produces a HTTP 500 error message. Otherwise known as 'my cgi application broke'.
pete Posted January 10, 2008 Posted January 10, 2008 Cool, so it's their stuff not playing nicely rather than Squid mangling the request. Additionally, the helpdesk called me back and another school is having similar errors with their squid proxy. Developer is going to their site to investigate why - if you're that school I'd like to share notes.
CAM Posted November 13, 2008 Posted November 13, 2008 So what are people's overall views on Eclipse.net? The posts in this thread are a few years old giving the system time to settle in and a more accurate view of the software. Our library is one of the few systems unlucky enough to still be using LIMES and we are looking at upgrading the software. Alice has been getting slated too much and we are starting to look at Eclipse.net now. Does it also work with credit-card sized printing on plastic too? They look much more professional then a few bits of paper stuck on a card and laminated and a lot less work to make! We intend to put it on a standalone machine but the viewing loans and catalogue information over LAN does sound tasty to our LRC Manager.
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