RLG President's Letter, April 2 2005

[Joan Swanekamp <joan.swanekamp@YALE.EDU>]

Dear RLG members and customers,

In mid-March I wrote to you concerning the difficulties surrounding RLG's 
implementation of our new computing environment. Since then you've borne 
with us as we worked to make our new infrastructure deliver the services 
you need and expect. I've heard from many of you and understand how 
critical RLG services are to your daily work. I wanted to let you know 
where our efforts to stabilize the system and deliver full functionality 
currently stand.

Providing a stable system, improving system responsiveness and loading the 
records you've contributed are the highest priorities. We've been working 
on all three of these goals simultaneously.

In my last message I mentioned that RLG would have IBM experts on site. 
They were with us all last week, working with our programming staff on 
tuning the system and investigating problems related to cataloging and 
searching. This work helped isolate a major problem that caused the system 
to stop working. We've taken steps to work around the problem and will be 
installing an IBM-supplied fix very soon. The source of problems that 
caused some users to be unable to log in to the system was also identified. 
A fix for that problem will be put in place this weekend. Finally we were 
able to identify some areas where software optimization ought to produce 
improvements in system responsiveness. That optimization is underway.

Throughout this time, we have been working on getting the RLG Union Catalog 
current. We've been loading the records cataloged since November 2004 when 
we did the final extraction of data to build the new database environment. 
We are now a quarter of the way through this process and will make 
continued progress through April.

I understand the seriousness of the situation and how our system 
performance affects you and your work. Many of the fixes and improvements 
are still not visible to you but will be soon. I can only ask that you 
continue to bear with us. Your comments and error reporting have been 
crucial to our work. We appreciate those as we appreciate your patience and 
understanding. RLG is committed to providing the level of service you have 
come to trust, and the system that enables you to find, catalog and share 
the special and unique materials so critical to your institution.

Sincerely,

Jim Michalko



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