page 1© crown copyright 2006 “enter the vortex” the met office implements hyperion martin kidds...

© Crown copyright 2006

“Enter the vortex” the Met Office implements Hyperion

Martin KiddsAssistant Librarian

Unicorn Systems Administrator


Contents

The Met OfficeNational Meteorological Library and ArchiveLibrary automation pre-UnicornOur Unicorn implementation and projectsHyperion!Some possibilities for the future

At the end…

Some other aspects of how we manage UnicornQuestions and discussion

Areas to cover


The Met Office


The Met Office: a brief history

1854 - Founded as the Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade.

1919 - Became part of the Air Ministry,which...

1964 ...moved to the Ministry of Defence.

1990 - Became a Next Steps Executive Agency.

1996 - Started operating as a Trading Fund.

2003 - Moved to Exeter.


The Met Office today


The Met Office Vision

“To use world-class science to predict the weather and climate for maximum benefit to the nation”


Our international standing

Leading member of World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

World Area Forecast Centre for civil aviation

Regional hub of WMO Global Telecoms System

Leading role in WMO World Climate Programme

Leading role in world scientific community


Accreditation

WAFCWorld Area Forecast Centre

National Meteorological Library

and Archive


National Meteorological Library and Archive

Many people have an interest in the weather and the processes that cause itwhich is why the National Meteorological Library and Archive is open to everyone.

We safeguard the “nation’s memory of the weather” and the story of the development of the science of meteorology.


National Meteorological Library and Archive

We hold arguably the best collection of meteorological material in the world. Our services are provided for Met Office staff and the general public alike.

The collection includes unique historical records, books, journals, and images illustrating all aspects of our weather and climate


Our collections include…

The original Beaufort Scale

Weather records of Scott’s Antarctic expedition from 1911


Open to the public

The Met Office’s ‘Framework Document’ requires it to maintain an up to date Library and Archive

The Archive is an approved place of deposit for meteorological records under the Public Records Act 1958

Both are open to the public (the Archive is with Devon Record Office)

Archive Records for Scotland are held in Edinburgh and for Northern Ireland in Belfast


Library and Archive services

Enquiries (via email, phone or in person) Loan of library material Interpretation of charts and data by trained

information officers Our Library catalogue iBistro gives

details of what we hold and is available via the Met Office website

Our Monthly Accessions List (MAL) gives details of items recently added to the collection

www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/library/index.html

Automation at the Libraryand Archive


Library automation: the early years

Began as a means of speeding the production of catalogue cards!

Used the Met Office’s mainframe computer and own programmers devised an ‘in house’ database

Our first online retrieval system was called MOLARS (Met Office Library Accessions and Retrieval System)

Online access via the European Space Agency from about 1985


Dynix: our first “off the shelf” system

Introduced in 1995 Heavily customised, in particular to enable

‘linking’ between articles catalogued and their ‘parent’ journals (we had been indexing articles since the early 1900s)

Serials checkin and management automated

System still referred to as MOLARS ‘Self taught’ systems administrators from

within library staff(no qualified librarians yet)


Meanwhile, at the Archive…

Records added to a separate system “Bracarc” from 1988

Again, this was an ‘in house’ systemusing Met Office mainframe computer and programming expertise


Move to Exeter and a new system

Needed a more up to date interface for users and staff, with improved searching

Needed a web catalogue Needed to digitise the reference cards So we looked for a new system, which lead

to…

Unicorn!


Unicorn implementation: 2002

Introduced in October at version 2001.0.12.4 Streamlined data - ‘linking’ between articles

and journals simplified Serials management vastly better –

N.B. you can’t hurry serial controls!

Implementation went smoothly

Good relationship between Sirsi, Unix support team and library


Unicorn: projects

May 2003 – digitized records of reference cards added

November 2003 – move to Exeter March 2004 – Archive records added May 2004 – iBistro available via Met Office

website for the first time. This followed significant customisation

October 2004 – Upgrade to v.2003.0.11 (test server support for the first time)

February 2006 – Hyperion implementation and further improvements to iBistro


Plus…

Lots of manual editing of data – especially but not only records loaded from cards

“Unicorn Work Plan” identified issues and established priorities of system development and data editing work – if it’s not in my spreadsheet I aint doing it!

Identifying bulk changes we could pay the data conversion team to make for us

Systems Admin “refresher” training in October 2005 was enormously helpful – established Deputy Systems Admins

Hyperion Implementation


We had a longstanding requirement to make scanned images from our collection available via the website

Then, one day, I discovered ‘Imagine York’ on the web ...

Image collection


Project countdown

May 2004 – initial meeting September 2004 – placed the order.

Decided to use slide collection as “pilot” and scan these ourselves

December 2004 – project meeting. Agreed project plan

January 2005 – scheduled Hyperion implementation workshop


VPN!!

All was going according to plan until …

© R. Coulam


Project countdown (2)

January 2005 – security approval for VPN January 2005 – we went ahead with

workshop and agreed spec August 2005 – VPN connection in place August 2005 – installation on test server 12 Sept 2005 – second project meeting November 2005 – config on test server December 2005 - training February 2006 – installation on live server


Our aims and requirements

Make image collection more easily available – via www rather than a filing cabinet!

Improve use and image/ profile of NMLA Encourage people to submit their own images

– increase participation and ownership of a national collection

Integrate images with rest of NMLA collection – unity of cataloguing

Integrate metadata with Unicorn records – to enable literature searches across all collections

Divide image records from existing Unicorn records to allow users to search images separately – via different format and browsing through Hyperion “hierarchy”

Secure repository for images – whether received electronically or originally as slides or photos


How does it all fit together?

The catalogue key is key: Title control no. (in ctrl tab of Unicorn

record) Record no (001 field in Unicorn bib record)

and … Filename of image in HyperionAre all identical. We are the first Hyperion implementation

to make thumbnails visible via hierarchy and Unicorn catalogue records in iBistro(we liked both, so we were greedy!)


Positives

Workshop and training were very good The Sirsi project team were very flexible –

e.g. helping us get approval from Met Office web manager

Implementation and data conversion went well – as before, good liaison between relevant parties

Combination of integration with Unicorn catalogue and Hyperion hierarchy has worked really well – more than one search option for customers, sound existing classification of images and bibliographic control through Unicorn


Positives

VPN has “futureproofed” our support connection – Met Office PC Desktop worked hard to give us a good facility, much better for SirsiDynix and us

Hyperion staff client is great to use – after a slow start we are now quite proficient at adding new images!

Some great publicity Exciting potential for the future – e.g.

digitising some Archive material


Lessons learnt

We didn’t anticipate how crucial VPN support would be – “unlucky” that Met Office as a whole were not further ahead with this technology, looked as though it may derail project

Delay in getting VPN meant long delay between workshop and implementation – harder to remember what we had agreed!

We needed to allow more time to get our web managers’ approval – you cannot hurry third parties, especially not within your own organisation!

Running two major projects simultaneously was extremely demanding

Hasn’t quite had the impact in raising our profile that we hoped … yet!


Data changes project

Ran (almost) alongside Hyperion implementation

Major overhall of data to enable enhanced searching of iBistro through Power Search

Separation of records by Format, collection and material type (item categories 1 and 2) – needed the ability to limit searches to different parts of the collection, not just for images

Big data conversion project as most of our records had the wrong itemcats – data conversion team worked well with us


Improvements to web pages

To give links directly to images through the hierarchy as well as catalogue search

Setting up links to images from iBistro Help for customers on own web page,

alongside more information for customers about Library and Archive – e.g. Factsheets

Further improvements planned for Met Office forecast pages more widely – around November/December 2006


Possible future plans

Autumn 2006 – loading data from Edinburgh Archive

By January 2007 – upgrade to GL3.0 2007 – uncatalogued Exeter archive

material loaded 2007/8 – copyright holders for images on

Unicorn? 2007/8 – “Rooms”? Beyond that – move from HP-Unix to

Oracle?N.B. – staff time available to manually edit data likely to be squeezed


Summary

We have looked to continue to develop Unicorn since implementation to take full advantage of what the system offers us

Hyperion is the most obvious of our major enhancements and we are delighted with it!

Have a look and tell us what you think: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/

library/index.html


Contact details


For more details, please contact us at:

National Meteorological LibraryMet OfficeFitzRoy RoadExeter EX1 3PB

Phone: 01392 884845 Fax: 01392 885681 Email: [email protected]


For more details, please contact us at:

National Meteorological ArchiveGreat Moor HouseBittern RoadSowtonExeter EX2 7NL

Phone: 01392 360987Email: [email protected] is a shared facility with Devon Record Office

Archive records for Scotland are held at:Met Office Saughton House Broomhouse Drive Edinburgh EH11 3XQ

page 1© crown copyright 2006 “enter the vortex” the met office implements hyperion martin kidds...

Documents