April 17, 2009

CARLI is planning to upgrade Voyager, the software that supports I-Share’s local and universal catalogs, beginning on Monday, June 15, 2009. Please share this information with colleagues that use or support any aspect of your library’s Voyager system. This note is rather long, but is divided into two major sections, a brief summary for those who just want the key facts, and a more detailed section for those who want more background.  We will send additional updates like this from time to time.

Brief Summary
CARLI staff will be performing a Voyager software upgrade beginning on Monday, June 15, 2009. CARLI staff are allowing up to three days (June 15, 16 and 17) for completion of the upgrade. Please prepare to have very limited access to Voyager during this time. Specifically, please plan for the public catalog being available in “read-only” mode, i.e., available for searching only and with no request functionality, until the upgrade is completed. Staff-use Voyager functionality, with the exception of offline circulation, will be unavailable while the upgrade is in process. CARLI staff are still testing and planning for the upgrade, including looking at ways to complete the upgrade and return Voyager to full service as quickly as possible. CARLI has created an upgrade webpage at http://www.carli.illinois.edu/mem-prod/I-Share/secure/upgrade.html. As more details become available, that information will be shared with I-Share libraries via email and the upgrade page on the CARLI website.

For Those Who Want More Background
CARLI is currently running Voyager version 6.5.3. The June upgrade will bring us to the next Voyager “major release” level, Voyager version 7. Version 7 is currently in production use at some Voyager libraries and the most recent release is version number 7.0.4. Voyager 7.0.4 has just been tested by CARLI staff and is now available for I-Share libraries to review on the I-Share "alternate" training servers (see details below). This week, Ex Libris provided a pre-release version 7.1.0 to CARLI and a limited number of other Voyager customers for “field testing” from now through May 7. If these 7.1.0 field tests go well, Ex Libris may release version 7.1 for production use before our upgrade dates and, if so, we will implement 7.1in June. Should the 7.1 field tests be problematic for Ex Libris or for CARLI’s Voyager implementation, CARLI will implement version 7.0.4 in the June upgrade. The field test is scheduled to run until May 7, so this version question should be answered in the next 3 weeks.

The new Voyager upgrade page on the CARLI website is your primary source for information on the upgrade. Here you will find CARLI-specific information as well as links to downloading the version 7 staff clients, Ex Libris’ documentation and release notes. As these data are proprietary to Ex Libris, this is a secure website, open to I-Share libraries only. Please contact CARLI at support@carli.illinois.edu if you have any trouble gaining authorized access to this information.

Library staff that want to take a look at version 7.0.4 now, can do so, as CARLI has just completed upgrading a set of the Voyager training databases to 7.0.4 on the alternate training server. (Note that training access to version 6.5.3 remains available to you as well, as data on the primary training server have not been moved or upgraded.) Access is available to the new version 7 training databases both via WebVoyáge and via Voyager 7.0.4 staff clients. Information about connecting to and using these training databases is available from the upgrade webpage or via this direct link. Please note the special caveats about any computers on which you run any of the “Gary Strawn” utilities.

WebVoyáge 7
Probably the most obvious differences between Voyager versions 6 and 7 are found in WebVoyáge, the public access interface. It differs greatly in its “out of the box” appearance, and it differs somewhat in its software structure and in the way and degree to which its appearance can be customized. Those of you interested in a detailed discussion of these changes will benefit from reading the Voyager 7.0.1 Release Handbook, and the Voyager 7.0 WebVoyáge Basic User Guide (both available from the CARLI Voyager upgrade webpage), and for even more detail, the Ex Libris Support staff’s guide, “WebVoyáge in Voyager 7.0, A Primer by Support”.

Three other important matters to note about WebVoyáge version 7:  First, the WebVoyáge version currently available on the training databases is WebVoyáge 7.0.3 and not yet, 7.0.4 like the training databases’ staff clients and server software.  Second, CARLI staff have done virtually no customization of this interface (yet, please read on). Third, you will likely note that response time is even slower than what we see in version 6.5.3 in production. With the rewrite of WebVoyáge, the product has become even more demanding of system-resources. The CARLI staff’s efforts up to this point on WebVoyáge 7 have been focused on getting the product simply to run in our large, multi-database environment. Frankly, we are not yet satisfied with its performance and, until we are more satisfied, we will continue to make performance issues a higher priority than customization. We will communicate more to you about this issue over the coming weeks. However, for now you may find some comfort in knowing that it is possible to run WebVoyáge version 6.5.3 against Voyager 7 databases. CARLI will consider this an option of last resort if performance in Version 7 cannot be improved to our satisfaction by the upgrade. The CARLI staff realize that the version of the interface that is presented to our library users is of great importance to your library’s public service operations and we appreciate that you need advance notice when it will change.

Keeping Informed
CARLI will be hosting a series of webinars about the upgrade in May and June. Watch for email and information on the upgrade webpage about dates, and registration. In the meantime, your best sources of information will be found on the CARLI Voyager upgrade webpage and also in your own observations from experimenting with the Voyager 7 training databases.

We will continue to update you as we learn more and get closer to the upgrade dates. Thank you for your patience and support through this process.

View Calendar    Email Lists

Search

Featured Links

CARLI Digital Collections
CARLI Systems Status
CARLI Blog
CARLI Wiki
CARLI twitter
Information for ILLINET Libraries
Newsletter Archives