August 2007 Archives

Some of the questions on Wednesday, August 29, 2007

* Printing PDFs;
* Printing Powerpoints/PDFs;
* Connecting personal laptops to wireless;
* Printing from STAA accounts;
* Printing from personal laptops (Last two questions stem from a conversation with Ann Behler.)

Tuesday Afternoon
1:00 - 3:00
Jeff Shawver, Mairéad Martin

Jeff found a CLC update on the PDF Printing Problems see http://clc.its.psu.edu/Alerts/Current/. Steve has added that information as an error notification on the start up page which will automatically appear when the user logs on. Ignacio has also posted this as an issue to reference desk blog in Angel (I think that's the name of the blog).

We'll work with CLC to make sure we're in that communication loop in the future.

Posted for Tim Arnold, DLT:

First shift: Tuesday, August 28: 11 am - 1 pm
Tim Arnold, Peggy Myers

* Mostly printing questions: paper jam.
* Printing issue from JSTOR --had to download first, then print.
* Issue with Rhapsody player on reserve loaner laptop.
* Question on whether the Gateway lab was a classroom or not.
* Patron forgot access password--sent to CLC lab (Signature Station).
* Elyssa and Loanne both commented that it was nice having somebody there.

Stats for Gateway Common Use, Monday, August 27: Big advantage of using the public image, we've got usage statistics from the logins. Steve Bayliss checked this morning and reported that yesterday the Gateway Commons lab had 1,119 logins. Sunday, the number was around 225.

4:50 pm: Winding down. Majority of problems today have been with printing. Quite a few students have had the following error message: "Error adding user to database. Job canceled err = 9." For Angel documents, "print as image" in Adobe reader was a solution. Otherwise, canceling and trying again worked!

Last shift of the day: Steve Bayliss talks to Loanne Snavely

Sitting all day in the Gateway Commons has convinced me how AWESOME it would be to have an ITS Help Desk presence on the main floor of Pattee/Paterno.

Another issue - problem with printers reported by James from the Reserves desk. Scarcity of printing support rovers at the beginning of the semester; dedicated rovers for the Libraries and other still in training. Problem of scheduling, naturally; student rovers not available to train until today, so not available to work yet. However, Kip Lewis from Classroom and Lab Computing is helping out as best he can.

Another issue; student can't log on to access account, and Paul is helping out with that.

Paul Baughman and I are on the 2 - 4 pm shift. We're noticing that the students certainly don't seem to have any problems with the new public image. It'd be interesting to get their feedback on the new image and the new printing set up as part of the Libraries Open House survey.

Paul Baughman at the Semester Jump-start station!

Will Hutton, Emily Rimland, Anne Behler, John Palmer

Monday 11 am: First shift of the Semester Jump-Start Support initiative in the Gateway Commons in Pattee/Paterno Library. John Palmer and I are on this one. Lab is packed. Our first question from the staff at the Gateway Commons desk was about eLion access and we were able to IM with Peggy Myers at the DLT Help Desk and find out that eLion was down ..... Do Libraries' support desks watch the ITS Help Desk alert pages at http://its.psu.edu/alerts/? You can check alerts by services and quickly see if there are service outages.

Meanwhile, typical first day of classes. Hot water pipes leaking through the ceiling in the DLT offices, so we're walking around trash cans and buckets, ladders and physical plant guys.

Will Hutton is here to take our photo and admire my MacBook Pro. We've talked about platforms, support, Knowledge Commons, ITS Help Desk, how we can improve support in the Libraries ......

So got two people on my network, guess who? They'll delete me, soon as they get back to the office. Now, we're going to try the left hand bar widget .....

Change of plan: given the goal of the DLT blog - to provide updates on DLT's goals, strategic planning, projects, etc. - we decided that the Movable Type taglines would also be useful for navigation through the blog. Del.icio.us is not as "focused," so to be speak. Well, we decided we needed to think some more about this, look at how people use the blog, talk about this, ..... blog some more, be right back.

Meeting with Emily Rimland and Anne Behler to find out how to use Del.icio.us correctly.
First thing, Mairead can't remember if she has already set up an account or not ...... No, we're not; we're discussing whether it's useful to use Moveable Type tags as well as Del.icio.us tags and discoverability. Good question for Brad K. We've decided to go with Del.icio.us and we've just moved over to Firefox for spell checking.

So we've created an account and installed Del.icio.us buttons in Firefox and can easily, according to Anne, extend those to Safari too. Now Emily says she *thinks* so. We can't tag this session till it's published so now we're going to tag my blog URL.

Done!! And Anne and Emily are still making a good pretense of patience. Emily says it's because of all their experience with Freshmen. Sorry, first year students.

Now we're doing the network part. Be right back.