LIBRARY COMPUTER SYSTEM  EQUIPMENT FAILURE

For transactions from December 29th, 2010

 

Early in the morning of December 30th, 2010, the Library’s online system was performing its normal automated backup when a drive failed.    The secondary drive attempted to restore the system and it also failed.    Staff discovered the problem when they came to work in the morning and the city’s Management Information Systems (MIS) staff worked with the library’s online system vendor, The Library Corporation, to restore the system by the evening of December 30th.   Unfortunately, all online transactions from December 29th were lost and cannot be recovered.  Fortunately we do have a paper backup of most financial transactions for that day, so most fine and lost book payments are in the process of being entered into the system.

 

Please contact the Library’s Circulation Department at 541-766-6448 or your local branch library if you had transactions from the 29th such as returned items, payments, checkouts, etc. We will work with you to fix the problem and record any necessary transactions such as items returned that day.  You will, of course, not be held responsible for any problems that result from this loss of data if you contact us, but library staff will need to be informed of problems so we can fix them.    If you don’t contact us about a problem, we don’t know about it and cannot fix it.  We cannot globally fix all the problems resulting from the equipment failure; they must be resolved individually.

 

Use of self check will be difficult for a while as this problem is sorted out, because any items returned on the 29th will be stopped by the self check machines because they will think the items are still checked out to someone else.   This may happen for several months depending on the popularity of the item. Patrons will need to go to a staffed checkout desk to resolve the issue.   We are adding additional staffing in checkout to help library users resolve these problems.

 

We are working with city MIS staff to add more backup to our system to prevent future disasters.

We sincerely apologize to all our users who were affected by this equipment failure.

 

What kinds of transactions were affected?

There are no records for any transaction involving the TLC system from the 29th:

• All items returned and checked in on the 29th will still show as being checked out.  If they were checked out on the 29th or 30th, they will show as being checked out to the person who returned the item on the 29th.

• No items checked out that day are  recorded.

• No library cards issued that day are in the system; if you got a library card on the 29th you will not be able to place holds from home, use self check, etc. until you speak to a staff member who will add your library card to the system.  Expired cards were not updated.

• No holds placed that day are recorded and there will be problems with the overall holds queues for a while.

• Some fines, lost books, etc paid that day are not recorded.

• No items cataloged and added to the system on the 29th are in the catalog.