With the successful inclusion of the ARS at SSU on time and within budget, I find I miss the excitement of working on large projects and seeing them succeed. If you are considering an AS/RS in a library setting, I may be available to help you with your project or offer my experience to you on your project.

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Consulting:

I have been employed at the SSU Library as an Operating Systems Analyst for about 6 years, and lead this project to completion. We are now looking to move into our third year of service with it as a part of our new building.

Previous to this position, I worked in an optical lab. My duties at the lab included calibrating equipment, lab manager training for other stores, and training employees on servicing of lab equipment.

My experience with networking, computer, and mechanical equipment gave me a unique opportunity to provide careful review of the project from an early state. My management style of including as many people who would be impacted in the process as resources to point out problems and offer solutions has been the corner stone to making this project a success.

Through this process, I worked with our campus architect, building project coordinator, librarians, library managers, library staff members, campus planners, consultants, campus networking and telecommunications, HK Systems, Innovative, and many many others who are listed in the people section.

Our Library Systems Department helped to ensure we could:

Provide computer systems for the public to use
Prepare for the migration from an old building to a new building
Prepare for integration of an ARS into the new building
Move from DRA as our Public Access Catalog (PAC) to III

If the above list seems difficult, you should also note we were only given about 4-6 weeks to move content from the old building into the new building and load the ARS. Most of our work involved early preparation and planning to make sure nothing fell through the cracks. Our window of opportunity offered us very little in the way of time to deal with unexpected problems.

As you may know by now, our migration to the new building with an ARS and new PAC was a success. We opened our new library for service on time. All critical services for research were ready and available.

My experience in a university library with helping to make this move and migration a success is something you may desire with your new plans. I have many excellent ideas that were employed during this move, and many more ideas to help improve the process. Our present system is very stable, reliable and remains running for hundreds of days at a time. I have no regrets with our system. I do have ideas on how we can improve our system and have implemented many of them on my own. These ideas could be made part of a new RFP and be included in another ARS.

If you would like to hire me as a consultant on integration of an ARS in a library setting, feel free to contact me at dugan@passwall.com. I receive no compensation from any library vendor for my work, and this helps you to receive unbiased information. I offer reduced rates when hired by educational institutions and libraries.

Comments and/or suggestions?: Email me at: dugan@passwall.com

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