INFORMATION SERVICES
November 2001
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to Information Services
Announcements from the Bulletin, Today, Notification-L
11/29/2001, Mail Server Problems
There have been some problems with the mail server this morning that
have been resolved. They were caused by the server running out of
space on the drive where Inboxes are stored. This happened rather
quickly because of someone getting infected with an e-mail virus
that caused their Inbox to fill up the entire drive.
We do ask that everyone keep their Inbox cleaned out. There is much
more space available to store messages when they are filed in other
folders, and not left in the Inbox. Mulberry will also perform much
faster with a small Inbox than when there are hundreds or thousands
of messages saved there. If you don't know how to move messages to
other folders, you can read the documentation online at
http://www.macalester.edu/cit/docs/xplatform/mulberry/mulberrymailboxes.pdf.
[Notification-L]
11/28/2001, "The Deserted Library"? Not at Macalester
Some of you may have seen the front page article in the Nov. 19th
issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled "The Deserted
Library." The article usefully raises the question of the role of
the physical library in the Internet age. Unfortunately, the author
draws no distinction between residential liberal arts colleges and
universities with commuter populations. Like many residential
liberal arts college libraries, we have seen increased use of both
our physical collections and our burgeoning online services. It does
not seem to be the case that use of online resources replaces use of
our library, as a walk through the building on almost any afternoon
will tell you. A few of our statistics demonstrate our activity
levels:
11/28/2001, Keeping Informed with Events on Campus by E-mail
If you have a MyInfo
account, you can customize the MyCalendar settings to use the e-mail
option for notification of campus events. You can select from many
campus events (Campus Events, Alumni, Lectures, etc.) and receive a
daily e-mail notification according to your interests.
[Bulletin]
11/28/2001, How to Get Labels
We ask that you produce mailing labels yourself using a word-processing
merge file rather than asking a programmer to do it. If you need labels,
please contact Human Resources (for staff or faculty labels) or Academic
Records (for student labels). They will provide you a data file that you
will then merge into a label document in Word. Documentation is available
from the CIT web page, or you can go directly to http://www.macalester.edu/cit/docs/xplatform/word/index.html
to find guidance on how to merge in Word. [Bulletin]
11/28/2001, Bandwidth
Qwest finally installed the fiber wire necessary to upgrade our Internet service.
Now they have to program our service to the contracted bandwidth and they
predict that will be done by mid-December. At that time, our available
bandwidth to the Internet will triple. Given the volume of demand, however,
you should expect improved performance, not radical change. We had hoped to
get this done by September so we appreciate your patience during a
frustrating and prolonged delay. [Bulletin]
11/28/2001, New Computers
The deadline for application to the second round of 2001-02 microcomputer upgrades
is Friday, December 14. An application form is found at
http://www.macalester.edu/cit/general/funding.html. The deadline date is
firm! [Bulletin]
11/26/2001, CARS Downtime 12/01/01
The CARS administrative system will be down on Saturday, December 1--possibly all
morning long. We must take the system down in order to install several upgrades.
If you have questions about this downtime and maintenance, please contact
Ramón Rentas at x.6633. [Notification-L]
11/21/2001, CARS Downtime 11/23/01
The CARS system will be taken down on Friday, November 23, so that the
information in the training database can be refreshed. No CARS services,
including Web registration, will be available during this downtime, which is
expected to last most of the day. Access to CARS will be closed beginning at
10:00 PM on Thursday, November 22, and will be re-enabled on Friday the 23rd as
soon as CARS is brought back on line. If you have questions or concerns about
this downtime, please contact Ramón Rentas at x.6633.
[Notification-L]
11/20/2001, Corporate Time Server Reboot
To all Corporate Time users:
The Corporate Time server will be restarted tomorrow morning, Wednesday, Nov. 21,
between 7:30 AM and 8:00 AM. We've just updated some antivirus software on the
machine, which requires a reboot. Please log out of Corporate Time between 7:30 AM
and 8:00 AM tomorrow. [Notification-L]
11/16/2001, E-mail Outages
CIT has experienced several difficulties with Macalester's e-mail server over the
past week [November 12-16]. Problems experienced on Tuesday and Wednesday temporarily brought down
all mail services due to file corruption on the server. These issues required
contacting support from our vendor, but have been resolved.
An unrelated problem caused limited e-mail access on Thursday and Friday morning.
Though this has been fixed, the cause is being looked into by the network staff.
If you would like a further explanation of "limited access", there is more
information below.
Often, if you get an error message on login, you can still receive and send your
mail. When attempting to login to your account, you are actually logging into
several different services. First, Mulberry attempts to login to your remote
preferences (this service is called IMSP). After it has received your preferences
from the server, Mulberry tries to contact the service that actually receives and
stores your mail (IMAP). When there are e-mail server problems, they are
frequently problems with IMSP, meaning that you are given an error message before
Mulberry gets a chance to attempt retrieving your mail.
To login to IMAP after IMSP has failed, cancel out of all login windows until you
are left with your main Mulberry IMAP window. If you then double-click on your
inbox, you will be prompted to login directly to the IMAP server. If this works,
your mailbox will be opened and your account will be fully functional except for
your address book, which is stored with your preferences. While this won't always
be possible depending on which services are unavailable, it will work in the
frequent cases where IMSP is the culprit. [Notification-L]
11/15/01, Information Services Announcements
Check this page (http://www.macalester.edu/infoservices) to
see the latest and past announcements from CIT, the Library and Media
Services. It's a great way to keep up. We try to get the word out and appreciate
hearing suggestions of what else you need to know. [Bulletin]
11/15/01, Loaner Laptops
CIT maintains a pool of laptops for use by faculty and staff members. You are welcome
to call Jesse Harman at x.6850 to inquire about borrowing one of the
five Windows or five Macintosh notebooks for up to one
week. Sorry, we must restrict these for the use of faculty and staff. [Bulletin]
11/15/01, Purchase a Library-Approved Mug
If you don't already own a certified Library-approved mug, a spill-proof
container suitable for carrying beverages within the Library, stop by the Circulation
Desk during November and purchase one for $1.50. [Bulletin]
11/15/01, Library Hours Over Thanksgiving Break
11/14/2001, Web Registration Interruption 11/14/01
Because of the CARS downtime this evening--Thursday, November 14, from 6:00 to 7:00 PM--
Web registration will not be available during that period. We
expect to fix the CARS memory problem and restore CARS service, including
Web registration, by 7:00 PM. If you have questions, please contact
Ramón Rentas at x.6633.
[Notification-L]
11/14/2001, CARS downtime 11/14
The CARS system will be taken down today, Wednesday November 14, from 6:00
to 7:00 PM. The system is having some memory problems and we need to fix
these problems shortly. CARS should be running again and available at 7:00 PM.
If you have questions, please contact Ramón Rentas at x.6633.
[Notification-L]
11/12/2001, E-mail Service Interruption
The mail server was not working for a couple of hours this afternoon, due to some
file corruption. Normal service has been restored. Some messages may have been
delayed due to the problems, but no messages should be lost. [Notification-L]
11/08/2001, MyInfo Winner!
Congratulations to student Sakkapol Vachatimanont. Sakkapol was our Palm Pilot
prize winner in the random drawing for faculty, students, and staff who created
or utilized their MyInfo accounts during October. The response on campus has
been very positive to MyInfo, the campus portal. However, the Web Coordinator
and Library staff want to continue to make improvements in this service. We
welcome your comments, so please use the comment box on each page of MyInfo to
send in suggestions. Thanks again to all who participated in the contest. [Bulletin]
11/08/2001, Celebrate National Indian Heritage Month.
Diane Glancy will read from her new book, The Man Who Heard the Land, on
Wednesday, November 14, at 3:30 p.m.in the Harmon Room, main level of the
library. Diane will also be discussing her research on her next publication on
Sacajawea. Please mark your calendars now and join us for Diane's reading and
discussion along with beverages and cookies.
[Bulletin]
11/08/2001, Committees and Student Groups on the Web.
Looking for membership rosters or committee minutes? Interested in finding a
student group to join? Check out the directory page
www.macalester.edu/directory.html for links to related groups.
[Bulletin]
11/08/2001, I Want to Stay Informed.
And we want to keep you informed. If you are not already subscribed to
Notification-L, point your browser to
subscribe.macalester.edu/notification-l/ and do so. Notification-L is
Information Services' quickest method for getting the word out regarding IT
issues of general interest, particularly regarding planned and unplanned system
events. All Information Services postings to Notification-L, the Bulletin and
the Today are archived on the Web at www.macalester.edu/infoservices/
for your perusal (which you are doing now).
[Bulletin]
11/08/2001, Need a Student's Telephone Number?
You have many available options. The on-line directory available from the main
Macalester Web page (www.macalester.edu)
includes all on- and off-campus students, as does the back of your Staff/Faculty
Directory. You can also be connected to on-campus students' phones by using
x6777, our automated directory of on-campus departments and people. If you have
any problems using these resources, please contact the switchboard at x6000 or
Telecommunications at x6566.[Bulletin]
11/01/2001, Did I Miss Something?
OK, so you don't always have time to read the Information Services
column in the Bulletin, and not everyone subscribes to Notification-L.
Now you can review postings to both these venues, as well as the Today,
by pointing your Web browser to http://www.macalester.edu/infoservices/.
Here you will find archived all postings by Information Services
departments to the weekly Bulletin, to the Today and to the Notification-L
subscription list, along with links to current publications and subscription information. [Bulletin]
11/01/2001, Network Bandwidth Increase
We have been successful in working out an agreement with our vendor to install
the optical fiber and equipment to upgrade our Internet connection to partial
DS3. If all continues to go well, the partial DS3 connection will "go live"
sometine during mid- to late November. This change will triple the speed of our
Internet connection, raising it from 3 Megabits per second to 9 Megabits per
second. We will continue to manage bandwidth in order to control the use of
bandwidth-hogging recreational peer-to-peer file-sharing applications, such as
Napster. [Bulletin]
11/01/2001, E-Mail Inbox Management
Quotas on e-mail storage have been suspended since the installation of our new
e-mail server (August 2001), so there are currently no limits on the amount or
size of messages you can store. However, everyone's e-mail Inboxes--whether or
not you use Mulberry--exist in the same shared location. This location is
filling up rapidly because people are leaving messages in their Inboxes. If you
have messages that you wish to keep, please move them from your Inbox to a
different folder. Keeping the number of messages in your Inbox small will also
make Mulberry (and other IMAP e-mail clients) perform much faster. If you have
questions about creating other folders in Mulberry in which to store messages,
you can read our documentation on the Web at starting at
http://www.macalester.edu/cit/docs/index.html or call our Help Desk at x.6525. [Bulletin]
11/01/2001, Replacing Old Computers
The second round of the 2001-2002 Microcomputer Fund awards process will begin in
mid-December. If you have computers in your office that are four years old or
older, or if you know of new computing needs coming up in Spring 2002, please
apply to the Fund. Full details, as well as downloadable application forms, may
be found at http://www.macalester.edu/cit/general/funding.html. The deadline
to apply to this second round is Friday, December 14: please submit your
application(s) to David Sisk, CIT, on or before that date. All requests that
were not funded in the first round will automatically be re-considered in the
second round. You are welcome to send in explanatory memos or other
corroborating information that you think might be helpful in thoughtfully
re-considering one of these 'repeat' applications. [Bulletin]
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