NEW PROJECTS

YEAR OF HUMANITIES AND ARTS (YoHA) WEB SITE - project number 10732

The Year of Humanities and Arts (YoHA) is intended to be an ambitious, inclusive program involving the many schools, institutes, and programs that make up the University of Michigan. YoHA, which will take place throughout the 1997-98 academic year, is being sponsored by the Office of the Vice Presi dent for Research (OVPR). Support for YoHA is coming in from many units and offices. Centrally, the Office of the President and Office of the Vice President for University Relations have already made major financial commitments to support YoHA.

http://www.yoha.umich.edu/

The transcript of Hillary Clinton's speech in April has kept access to the YoHA site higher than average in May. The transcript page alone had 1,187 requests, and the site as a whole, 8,335.

Additional work was done to renovate the YoHA scrapbook, though results are not yet visible to the public.

June will be the final month that ITD will provide technical leadership for the YoHA site. Ongoing tasks and pertinent knowledge will be transferred to Lee Katterman of OVPR.

Current month server stats for YoHA are available at... http://www.engin.umich.edu/cache/stats/org-YoHA.html

May statistics for YoHA are summarized as follows:

Program started at Fri-May-29-1998 05:21 local time. Analyzed requests from Fri-May-01-1998 03:47 to Thu-May-28-1998 23:52 (27 .8 days).

Total successful requests	8,335
Average successful requests per day	299
Total successful requests for pages	3,195
Total failed requests	391
Total redirected requests	3
Number of distinct files requested	263
Number of distinct hosts served	1,511
Corrupt logfile lines	7
Total data transferred	170,906 kbytes
Average data transferred per day	6,139 kbytes

(JW)

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN INSTRUCTIONAL ENVIRONMENT (UMIE) - project number 10594

(KY)

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN ON-LINE (UMOL) - project number 8064

Subscriber count, as of May 31:

Subscription type	# subscribers	increase from April
Maize or Blue package	1571	(-11)
Custom or campus subscribers	790	+27
Total	2361	+16

(New accounts created: 58, overall gain 16) 300 applications from recent grads are scheduled to be processed in July.

Communication and Content: In May, UM Online staff members presented a paper at the CUMREC conference held in Atlanta, Ga. The hour-long presentation covered the history of the project, lessons learned and future plans. The paper and the presentation will soon be available on the UM Online web site.

The UM Online application brochure is being updated. In order to lengthen the shelf life, the brochure will be printed with out price information. The cover will be produced with a pocket to hold the price sheet as well as other information sheets that may be developed as the need arises.

As part of the comprehensive notification process initiated in March, a targeted email message regarding termination of computing services was sent to all potential spring graduates. The final list of spring graduates will be available from the Office of the Registrar during the second or third week of June. The list will be used to generate a second targeted email reminder message that will be sent in early July. Following a suitable grace period, those who have not chosen to subscribe to UM Online will have computing services suspended.

Development of the Alumni Online Directory that will include email redirection service is underway. The phased development will, over time, enable the Alumni Directory to evolve into a comprehensive resource similar to the Business School's M Track application. The project, jointly sponsored by the Office of Development and the Alumni Association, is being jointly managed by ITD staffers Edna Brenner, Customer Relationship Manager for Development and Peggy Wilczewski, Process Analyst. UM Online staff are being kept abreast of developments. We intend to partner with the Alumni Association in the marketing of the Online Alumni Directory..

We continue to make new contacts with schools and colleges. In early May UM online staff met with Dean Lehman. While discussing future directions for UM Online and efforts to keep alumni feeling connected to the institution, the issue of uniqname for life and email redirection arose. Dean Lehman indicated his support for a University-wide program of uniqname for life. In order to develop wider support, the concept must be presented in an appropriate manner to potential sponsors, plans are under development.

During May, there were 94 general information email contacts with UM Online subscribers and potential subscribers.

Infrastructure and Technical: The UM Online web site migration to the Web Services environment has been completed, and the minor glitches with authentication and the online application form have been resolved. The decommissioned server is now available for development and testing purposes. Work continues on the Internet Access kit. The Mac kit is complete, and the Windows95 kit is in the final stages of development.

Personnel: During May the team bit farewell Becky Spaly. Becky has elected a mid- career time-out in order spend more time with her three young sons. Becky's contributions to the project and team as well as her pleasant positive attitude will be missed. It's a small community, watch for Becky around town especially ball fields, swimming holes, all the haunts favored by children.

Monthly statistics, including RealAudio, are available at http://www.umonline.umich.edu/stats/.

UM Online core team: Linda Green, Becky Spaly, Brian Vaughan, Ellen Vaughan (project leader)
Web support: Scott George
Technical writing: Susan Topol
Customer triage: Karon Bernhard, Chris Meono
(EV)

CIC BIG 10 JOINT PROJECT - project number 10439

The BTJP group met in Chicago on May 20 and 21. Upon request from the CIOs, a new name for the group was decided upon. The group is now known as the CIC Research Projects Group (CIC-RPG).

At the meeting,

• The TRICAAP effort was discussed. This is officially a separate effort from the CIC-RPG but since it is closely related to ICAAP and there is general interest, we will carry it as a discussion item at the RPG meetings.
• A new project proposal was discussed. The proposed scope of the project is to investigate use of X.509 certificates within the existing authentication/authorization systems at each university.
• There was a joint meeting with the RPG and Security Working Group (SWG). The SWG was brought up to date on the TRICAAP project, and they shared information on the documents they are creating concerning project establishment, data classification, and protection standards.

The next RPG meeting is being hosted at U-M in the Client Server Exchange room at CITI on June 29 and 30. Representatives from the Instructional Management Systems (http://www.imsproject.org) have been invited to discuss their security requirements. Doug Engert from Argonne National Labs has been invited to discuss the security architecture of the Globus Project (http://www.globus.org). Both are tentatively scheduled to attend.

BTJP - Big Ten Joint Project
CIC - Committee on Institutional Cooperation
CIC-RPG - CIC Research Projects Group
ICAAP - InterCollegiate Authentication & Authorization Project

(KC)

CAMPUS WIDE DIGITAL LIBRARY PROGRAM

THE FEDERATION: DIGITAL LIBRARY PRODUCTION SERVICES - project number 10450

The Federation projects are funded by ITD, University Library and the Media Union. A list of staff is online at http://www.umdl.umich.edu/dlps/who.html.

Overview | New and Developing Projects | Infrastructure | General and Special Projects | SGML Systems | Image Services | Humanities Text Initiative | Middle English Compendium | Miscellaneous(visitors, cooperative efforts)

Overview

Perhaps the most significant set of activities this month involved the NEH-funded Middle English Compendium. Several staff took part in a workshop and presentation at the International Medieval Congress, the long-planned merger of stencils from the ME D and the HyperBibliography began, and a major revision to interface and functionality took place. Image Services "went public" in May, releasing collections to the campus, including a few thousand images (and 75,000 records for the History of Art Department. PEAK's bibliographic database, based on the SGML and a separate se arch system, has been built and tested, and will be released in June (providing improved performance, along with greater precision in retrieval). Considerable work was done in prepa ration for creating the sample of STC texts in conjunction with UMI; along with this, staff had several meetings with UMI about the future of the partnership and possible models for access. Data on usage and collection sizes will be available by June 5th at http://www.umdl.umich.edu/dlps/stats/9805.html.

New and developing Projects

• Distributed Finding Aid Server Program: Contacts at the participating institutions have been identified and a mail group set up. The participants have been asked to think about scheduling priorities for the project.
• The exploratory work of HTI with UMI on STC work continues. Guidelines for encoding were prepared for conversion bureaus. Twelve texts were sent to those firms. A meeting on issues in the technical architecture was held with UMI staff and their cont ractors. A proposal for ongoing cooperation was submitted to UMI and seems to be well-received.

Infrastructure

System Performance

• dlpdb.umdl (Oracle database server): No down time
• dlps1.umdl (primary www for DLPS, and PEAK/MOA server): No down time
• dlpind1.umdl (Image Services): No down time
• dlps2.umdl (Reference): No down time
• htiwww.umdl (HTI): 15 minutes/May 5

General Architecture

• DLPS staff met to plan security strategies for Kerberos on Web.

Staffing

• Matt Stoeffler was offered and has accepted the Special Projects Librarian position
• An ITD role posting has been submitted for a replacement for Detlefs.

CD-ROM Duplication Service and General Data Loading

• For PEAK: 16 CDs Received, 16 Loaded, 16 Split, 16 Indexed
• Duplicated 47 CDs for the ITD media duplication.
• Mastered 24 CDs for Image Services.
• Loaded 14 CDs for Image Services.

OCR, General

• Ran 20 CDs for American Verse OCR.
• 8 CDs of OCR for MOA

General and Special Projects

Making of America

• A report on evaluating the accuracy of the OCR in MoA is now available on the MoA web site.

PEAK/Elsevier

• Almost all PEAK activity this month involved continuing development of the SGML based bibliographic search and display. The search mechanisms are complete and have survived internal testing with no significant problems. The filters to transform data from Elsevier's various DTDs to our standard DTD processed the current 650,000+ articles with fewer than 5% failures. The remainder should be accounted for in time for a production roll out in June.
• On May 28 we reconfigured dlps1.umdl to allow PEAK and MOA to use the same http server
• Talked with Dow Chemical, Minnesota, and the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine about required information for our database of valid users, and other related questions about implementation of PEAK at their institutions.
• Began working with a student in DLPS and the Media Union to pull together a complete list of all of the missing issues in PEAK.
• Brought on-line the new page of support resources for PEAK, including a new handout covering the topics of VPIN's, searching, and printing. http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/peak/support/
• Session on PEAK for faculty as part of the "Enriching Scholarship" series.
• User questions this month were primarily regarding the topics of VPIN's, searching, and printing.

Dissertations Project

• No activity this month.

Registry & Gateway

• A meeting was held to discuss strategies for streamlining capture of information about electronic resources. The group decided that the Library will pursue using the NOTIS system to create records for both e-materials the Library "owns" or leases, and e-materials identified by Selectors. These records will be extracted regularly to an MDAS database. The Registry will no longer play a role for Library materials; however, the Gateway will continue to be supported for www.umich.edu. This distinction has been important -- the Gateway continues to be vital and heavily used, and the model for storage and access has not been questioned.

Finding Aids/Encoded Archive Description (EAD)

• DLPS Staff met with Bentley Historical Library Staff to discuss plans and strategies for dealing with and referring to items in archives of original digital objects (that is, objects that have only existed as electronic files) from the finding aids. This meeting was in part to help clarify for Bentley what kinds of digital objects are within the mission of DLPS to manage and serve, and what kinds of digital objects are not. To help support Bentley with a need to point to both, a mapping scheme of finding aid reference to actual item managed by BHL will be deployed to allow the retrieval of the latter from references in the former. We will work with Deromedi (Bentley) in June to develop a test with several types of resources.

Human Relations Area Files

• 5 subscribers were added in May, bringing the total to 56.

Bibliography of Asian Studies

• The BAS went through its first month of free trial period in May, which the BAS AAS committee elected to extend for a further month in June.
• Sent contract to John Ketelhut in the Office of General Counsel for the University.

SGML Server Program

• Information about subscribers and subscriptions updated and made more tractable.
• Renewals were received from Harvard and Rice.

SGML Systems

• A third perl5 module of the core functionality of SGML Systems' middleware code was formed, joining the two earlier modules. This provides an additional layer of abstraction and uniformity to the codebase, as subsequent collections do not need to implement the various and diverse parts of functionality themselves, but can rely on the authoritative module. In MEC-related work this has been found to bring a savings of time and effort.

Image Services

• The History of Art, Visual Resources Collections, data was opened to the campus for testing. This is the first Image Services Collection to be opened.
• Museum of Art data is searchable (12,000+ records) and 5912 of 14,000 master TIF images have been loaded. 2892 SID and thumbnail images have been generated.
• Pictures of Record, a commercial slide vending company has sent a sample of 101 images on PhotoCD and as many descriptive records. The images have been loaded and processed, and the data is searchable. Pictures of Record is interested in licensing acc ess to other institutions through us, and this is a test.
• All of the MESL images and raw text data have been migrated to the Image Services server. Processing of the text has begun. The data needs to be accessible by the public by the end of June.
• Digitization of 1000 "Bentley Best" (most requested images from the Bentley Historical Library) 4x5 negatives has begun. Digitizing methods have been tested and refined, and production work is underway.
• Derivatives for 261 master papyrus images have been generated and will soon be placed online. Several hundred more will be processed in the next few weeks.
• Digitized 2 boxes, and 3 large pieces (each 3 feet long) of Papyrus. Rescanned a portion of the 8 foot Papyrus from April.
• Digitized approximately 125 coins from the Kelsey Archaeological Museum.
• Implemented collection level access based on IP addresses.
• Interface revisions were made to the Kelsey amulets collection.
• Met with Roger Espinosa and Tricia Jones of the Office of Instructional Technology to discuss the possibility of moving Animal Diversity Web images to Image Services. A test implementation is planned, with potential production deployment in time for W inter term 1999.

Humanities Text Initiative

• Early English Prose Fiction implemented, awaiting final comments before public release.
• Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare and Riverside Shakespeare revisited for "bookbag" enhancements (as a result of EEPF work) and "text munging" process, to allow searching across tags.
• Work begun on an automated user survey for HTI.
• Created a first-cut DTD for ELI's Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE) transcription project.
• Worked with Cataloging staff to implement new processes for the creation of TEI headers of American Verse Project texts.
• Provided basic SGML training and an Author/Editor hands-on session to six members of the UM Press staff. Discussed issues relating to the difference between post-publication conversion of printed texts and integrating SGML into a process which has th e electronic text moving through many hands (author, copy editors, press production staff, printers, etc.), not all of whom can be required to work with SGML files.
• The HTI has offered to support NINCH's proposed International Database of Humanities Digital Projects using the Registry model. NINCH is interested in the Registry because it uses the Dublin Core, supports a dataset similar to that they propose creating, and provides search and browse functions. The offer will be discussed by the team at the ACH meeting in June, as the Registry does not offer all the functions they had initially discussed and would require funding for the cataloging of project descriptions.
• Staff met with Maurita Holland to discuss ongoing opportunities and relations with the School of Information.

Middle English Compendium

• Summary:
  • A list of desired enhancements to the Middle English Compendium was made, with a projected timeline for completion of each item. The most-wanted items were selected from this list to create a series of tasks that would fit in the assigned work-period ; remaining tasks may be revisited in the future as time allows. (see attached).
  • Routine production of new HyperBibliography material continues. Basic processing of these materials into working HyperBibliography entries continues to become quicker.
  • The troublesome e-MED "S" files (and to a lesser extent, other legacy files, e.g. "R") continue to have their irregularities smoothed, as time allows.
  • Newly keyboarded material from Apex has arrived on schedule, and has been sampled and checked as it arrives: the "M" data (half-checked so far) appears to be of superb quality, much more accurate than specified.
  • We have been able in May to meet the e-MED production schedule created in January and February, though progress on the HyperBibliography went only at half the planned rate, due largely to the month's very important distractions: interface desig n and development, bibliographic merger work, and a conference presentation.
  • MEC staff prepared and performed a MEC demonstration at the International Medieval Studies Conference at Western Michigan University, coincident with public announcement of the project and the solicitiatoin of paid subscriptions.
• Preparatory work on the MEC this month has included:
  • Design of an entirely new user interface for both the e-MED and the HyperBibliography; discussion and prioritizing of desirable features; creation and assessment of prototypes.
  • Major revision of the Hyperbibliography middleware (both code and functionality) brought to the point of needing only minor cosmetic changes in mid-month.
  • Development of automatic methods to make certain features of the MED (features originally designed with a human reader in view), amenable to electronic searching, including:
    • Suppression of cross-references from spelling variants
    • Expansion of condensed lists of spelling variants, so that (for example):
      "rag(e)man, ragge-, raga-, rag(e)main, -mon"
      expands to:
      "ragman, rageman, raggeman, ragaman, ragmain, ragemain, ragmon, ragemon"
      An extensive and exhaustive procedure for expanding these abbreviated and shortened orthographic forms in the eMED was designed and implemented; this process will be a permanent step in the preparation of the dictionary for on-line access.
    • 'Flattening' of diacritics to allow simple searches by spelling (as opposed to searches by phonology: searches for "taken" as opposed to "tāken").
  • Creation of scripts to change some literal text relics in the e-MED to appropriate attribute values instead; alteration of the dictionary DTD to accommodate the change.
  • Continuing experimentation with methods to identify unique stencils automatically, as well as testing of manual methods of associating stencils, in order to facilitate the merger of e-MED and HyperBibliography; creation of a DTD to encode the data fil es by which the merger will be carried out, as well as of routines to apply the merge data to the source files. A test run of the assignment of unique identifiers to Hyperbibliography entries, and references to those identifiers in the eMED, was successfully made. This will be a continuing production step in all pieces of Hyperbibliography and eMED text from this point forward, in pursuit of persistent anchors and references in the collections.
  • Discussion and planning of more rigorous version control.
• MEC Production this month has included:
  • Completion of primary (pre-review) processing on HyperBibliography batch S3 (stage 8).
  • Completion of review and correction of HyperBibliography batches L2, L3, and S2 (stages 10-11)
  • Beginning of processing of HyperBibliography batch S4
  • Continuing bibliographic regularization of e-MED bundles S1-S18.
  • Receipt of all and 5% sample-testing of about half of the keyboarded data for the e-MED "M" volume.
  • Completion of all processing including bibliographic regularization and error-correction, on e-MED bundles N1-N3 and O1-O4 (i.e. the entire "N" and "O" volumes).
  • Application of new "tidying" scripts (developed in response to some errors discovered in the course of interface-development work) to some of the older MED data, especially in "R"; application of new relic-removal scripts to e-MED volume s P-T.
• Note on "stages": the "stages" referred to in the MEC progress reports are those defined by the e-MED processing-steps guide, the HyperBibliography prcoecessing guide, and the e-MED and HyperBibliography progress charts, all accessible at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pfs/med/mec.html

Miscellaneous

Visitors, discussions and presentations

• Powell and Bonn met with representatives from Chadwyck-Healey and the humanities team to discuss uses of and trends in electronic resources.
• Staff members demonstrated digital library resources as part of the Enriching Scholarship week sponsored by the University Library.
• Bonn met with Ejner Jensen and Nancy Warren of the English faculty to demonstrate HTI collections and made tentative agreements to meet with their classes in the fall.
• Tetiana Bugasova, head of acquisitions at the University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (visited HTI)
• Peter Watson from IMC/Univ. of Buckingham.
• Paul Mostert from Elsevier.
• Presentation on Production issues and Making of America at NYU (Price-Wilkin).
• Sir Charles Chadwyck-Healey, Chadwyck-Healey
• Cliff Lynch, CNI
• Traugott Koch, OCLC and Sweden
• Kevin Guthrie, JSTOR
• Presentation to Technical Services Unit Heads on DLPS.
• Presentation on Digital Library to Marshall Symposium (Lougee/Price-Wilkin).
• Sir Roger Elliott, Oxford University

Intralibrary Cooperation

• Discussions continue on e-reserves. See also Registry, above.

Miscellaneous

• Considerable work in planning the XML/TEI meeting in Washington, including: finalizing speakers, hotel and travel arrangements for speakers, clarification of agenda, finalizing attendees, changes in venue, and responding to potential attendees. The meeting will be well-attended (approx. 30% more than planned).
• Advised Dictionary of American Regional English on encoding conversion and provided cost information for NEH application.
• Prepared detailed quote on system building for CIHM Early Canadiana Online project.
• Began finalizing agreement for OCR work with CIHM Early Canadiana Online project.
• Discussed putting the Michigan Academician online with Kathleen Duke.
• Discussed MOA architecture with Allen Porter, University of Montana (considering developing similar system).
• Responded to RLG electronic preservation survey and phone interview.
• Assisted Peter Joftis (ICPSR) on DTD reading, validation tools, conversion questions, and suggested readings for SGML.
• Participated in several library interview processes, including for programmer in Systems, and head of Science Library.
• Discussions continue on strategy to develop support for statistical/numeric data resources.
• Met with OVPR to discuss support for electronic publishing activities on campus.
• Continued planning on DLI-2
• Staff completed self-assessments for performance review process.

MUSEUM EDUCATIONAL SITE LICENSE (MESL) PROJECT - project number 10019

http://mesl.itd.umich.edu/

Migration of MESL data to Digital Library Production Services, Image Services, is underway. Image files have been transferred, and processing of text data has started.

All museum content with agreed-upon extended use will be migrated to Digital Library Production Services, Image Services, and deployed in the new system by July 1, 1998 -- http://images.umdl.umich.edu/

Otherwise, MESL is largely in production mode.

Total completed requests	4,372
Total failed requests	6
Average requests per day	165
Number of distinct files requested	1,964
Number of distinct hosts served	82
Total bytes transferred	42,022,142
Average bytes transferred per day	1,506,732

Downtime for ezekiel.rs.itd.umich.edu -- 0

MESL ITD Team: John Weise, Zoe Gurevich, Katarina Lukaszewicz, Sandy Colombo
(JW)

CORE JOURNALS PROJECT - project number 10013/T0002

The Core Journals project is a partnership with UMI, deploying around 1000 core journal titles in all disciplines in image format, linking them with Wilson Indexes in MIRLYN and putting in place the necessary structure for printing, accounting, and billing.

Core Journal Print statistics are available at http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/Systems/statistics/core/PRT9798.HTM.

INFORMATION SERVICES

CONFER U & COW - project number 10047

The Confer U production service

There was no Confer U downtime this month.

STATISTICS
	Jan'97		Nov'97	Dec'97	Jan'98	Feb'98	Mar'98	Apr'98	May'98
Total Conferences	304		68	75	57	44	44	36	39
Total Participants	11,310		6,660	6,733	6,837	2,300	2,300	1,316	1,350

Migration to COW (pilot project)

Some COW Statistics:

There was no COW downtime this month.

Confer U & COW Team: Dave Winkel, Doug Heavrin-Brown, Linda Green, Scott George, and Zoe Gurevich.
(ZG)

GROUP E-MAIL SERVICES

The "Group E-mail Services" include REQ, LISTstar, Targeted E-mail, and Classlists.

Project Coordinator: Kari Gluski

REQ - project number 10051

REQ addresses the idea of a "Group Mailbox". Chuck Lever will take over responsibility for this service next FY and has begun active involvement in our struggles to provide a cost-effective solution to users. Chuck has concerns about the Cyrus server given the lack of scalability and the extensive per-user configuration customization the service would need. He, Sandy and Kari have decided that just porting the old REQ tools to Solaris and running them on a shared group mail machine will make the service cost effective enough so we can charge $400 per year per group and leave it in place one more year while seeking a better long-term alternative. Rust is a possibility.

Since Neda is on leave, Chuck has been responding to current REQ user's requests for updates to their groups. Katarina Lucaszewicz is NOT the member of the UMCE Operations group with primary responsibility for the current REQ machine; this was a misunderstanding. We are seeking a solution to operational needs for the current service. Jim Sweeton may take on administration of the new service and has tentatively agreed to do so once his current Listserver evaluation is completed. He'll be meeting with Chuck to discuss this.

We had proposed testing the Cyrus server with the Housing office, who did not actually find time to use it, and the DocLib staff, who will need to be moved.

We are still investigating the ARS/Remedy software already licensed by the NOC, coordinated by Liz Sweet and Dave Morse. Liz and Dave were working together to get a service order begun so work can proceed to define her area's requirements. This includes 4-Help and the ITD Accounts Office.

Next Steps

• Chuck wants to set up the Solaris advanced e-mail server this summer (hopefully within the next month), and migrate the current REQ-based service onto it before September. As far as he can tell, the only problems we may have with it are Perl migration issues, and how group permissions work differently on Solaris.
• We will not move old mail from REQ for users but will provide a script that can copy their files into IFS for them. There the contents can be viewed, printed, etc. as files.
• The updated plan needs to be shared with service users as promised. Kari has sent the e-mail after comments from Sandy and Chuck were included.
• Operational arrangements for the old service such as backups should be completed (temporary need).
• Operational arrangements for the new service should be completed. This will be straightforward since it can then be treated like many of our other Solaris servers.
• Charging mechanisms for the $400/yr. will be by SUB.

LISTstar (Listserver product) - project number 10592

Jim Sweeton has installed a Lyris test server. He needs to meet with Chuck to address Chuck's security concerns about the web administrative interface. Jim will be available .50 FTE this year and next for testing, migration, and supporting future service growth.

Next Steps

The target is to migrate to a new server platform by July 1 or earlier. That deadline is probably no longer realistic. Still need to

• Choose product (Jim recommends Lyris)
• Order and install.
• Identify and document any user-visible changes from selected product
• Notify users of migration plans
• Charging mechanisms for the individual or departmental users (not class lists, which will be covered in infrastructure) need to be clarified.

We need class lists by September, so we have to have the Mailing list server running for them by then, but there's no real migration deadline for existing users of ListStar. That transition can be gradual.

TARGETED E-MAIL - project number 10044

The service has not begun charging, but as of 4/21 everything was finally in place to do so.

Next Steps

• Complete addition of uniqname error-checking
• Work on efficiency improvements (now planned with move to shared server with Listserver since may be easy to do there with small sendmail changes)

Targeted e-mail can run on either poleposition or the advanced e-mail server. Chuck is working with DocLib to build a list of requirements -- they may end up using a PC-based mass mailer instead because they are more comfortable with that than UNIX, but it would still hand off mail to a UNIX server for actual delivery.

CLASS LIST - project number 10901

No change as far as I am aware. Where will this project fit next FY?

Next Steps

Hopefully we can test the automated web tools to process faculty requests for class lists in Spring or Summer for final large-scale deployment by Fall.

Once we have picked a listserver product we need to develop a process to create and delete class e-mail lists there for privacy reasons.

MEETING MAKER - project number 11307

Needs charging implemented.
(KG)

MEDIA CONVERSION - project number 10004

(TV)

INFRASTRUCTURE

LAN/NOS SERVICES AND GROUPWARE

The Groupware and LAN/NOS services are now working together. A business plan outlining services in in preparation.

(MP)

NOVELL INFRASTRUCTURE - project number 10891

NOVELL PRODUCTION SERVICES - project number 10896

BANYAN VINES - project number 10895

WINDOWS NT - project number 10893

(ML)

PRINTING & SAMBA - project number

Monthly usage statistics:

Statistics based on day of the week for this month are skewed by data from 5/14/98 where a large amount of charging data that was being held due to an interrupted server process was released. Data for approximately 10 days was being held, so the error was contained within the month and the monthly totals are accurate.

The process failed due to a coding error that is still unresolved and may involve a complex interaction of services. Given time constraints, the current solution is to script a frequent check of the printing servers that warns marking engine team members if data is not moving in a timely fashion.

Printing Totals from January through May, 1998 -- 4,464,852 pages.

Business and Law School Proposals:

Negotiations with the Law and Business School continue and proposals for both full implementation and "accounting data collection only" have been submitted.

Student Organizations Resource Center (SORC):

An HP 4SI was installed at this location and activated as of 5/1/98. We are still trying to resolve client configuration issues as their machines differ from the campus sites environment.

Resource Realignments:

Printer moves --

• DANA was moved to the Shapiro site to support the single unit installed there.
• FRZ was moved to the AHA site to support the WINTEL platform printer pod.

Code Development:

Work continues on SAMBA implementation and various client pieces. Authman updates are in very preliminary stages and the laserwriter driver infection process has been successfully reimplemented, allowing us to use the latest Apple Laserwriter driver. Code to decouple the printing service from dependency on the ABS system is partially complete, however the low priority on this project for the summer will result in a completion date coincident with the beginning of the fall semester.

Operational Issues:

Inventory reconciliation continues as we are establishing a base line of actual physical inventories and continuing acquisition of longitudinal billing and printer data.

Meetings with Access Technologies have resulted in an agreement for them to provide training to our printer technicians and in changes in the cartridge failure reporting process so that problems be more effectively tracked against resolutions. Training will occur during this summer.

Transition of the sites technicians and the printer tech to a new manager, Dan Kugler, is progressing and procedures are being formalized.

(CB,WC)

EMAIL SERVICES (IMAP & SMTP) - project number

Upgraded all IMAP servers to Solaris 2.6, IMAP 4 rev 1. Upgrade went very smoothly, all software appears to be functioning better than expected. Hardware contains a manufacturing defect not found in lesser or greater machines. We're working with Sun to get replacment motherboards. We currently have three on hand, to be installed as problems occur.
(WC)

USENET - project number

(AI,BV)

IDENTIFICATION, AUTHENTICATION, AND AUTHORIZATION (IAA) - Project 10618

The UMCE IAA service is responsible for the UMCE uniqname service, UMICH.EDU Kerberos authentication service, and UMCE protection group (authorization) service. The Kerberos database contains ids and passwords for over 170,000 users.

The effort continued to eliminate vulnerable computer passwords, part of an ongoing campaign to increase security of U-M's computer networks and data. We are assisting the ITD Office of Policy Development and Education by checking passwords for the UMICH.EDU Kerberos cell. These are the passwords that most U-M faculty, students, and staff use to access their email, use for dialin access, and use to access IFS files. During May, UM Online (UMOL) user passwords were checked, and passwords that could be recognized by a dictionary check were identified. Owners of these passwords were asked to please change their password.

Currently the UMICH.EDU Kerberos server only supports Kerberos Version 4 applications. In order to support Kerberos Version 5 applications, such as Oracle, we have started a project to migrate the Kerberos server to one that will support both Kerberos Version 4 and Version 5 applications. During April, CITI migrated their AFS Kerberos Version 4 server to the MIT Kerberos Version 5 server. This was a small scale version of the migration we are planning for the UMICH.EDU realm, and it went very well. Some problems developed with the CITI migration during May, and we are working on solving these problems. We have started to add code to the uniqname server to add uniqnames to the MIT Kerberos Version 5 database when uniqnames are created. We are testing existing applications, such as the Macintosh AFS translators, in the new environment.

We had performance problems at the beginning of the winter term (slow file access, slow logins, etc.) during periods of peak usage. We made some software changes to improve performance, and we are going to upgrade several of our server machines to faster processors as soon as possible. The new hardware is being tested; the production IAA services will be migrated to the new machines when testing is completed.
(MG)

IFS - project number 10620

The Institutional File Service (IFS) provides a distributed file system based on Transarc's Andrew File System (AFS). Students, faculty, and staff store files in IFS home directories. There are currently over 86,000 IFS home directories and the IFS stores over 410 billion bytes of data.

The Transarc AFS client for NT workstations has been made availiable from ITD software licensing. The AFS client for NT is a good, vendor supported software product that makes IFS accessible to Intel machines. Transarc released a new version (patch 8) of the client during April. Information on how to obtain and install the NT client.

During May, the IFS web page was improved.

The IFS team is migrating the eighteen AFS file servers to the latest version (3.4a) of Transarc's AFS software and to the latest version (4.2) of the AIX operating system. During May, several AFS file servers were upgraded to the new version of AFS.
(MG)

ABS - project number 10619

Primary concentration (before Orientation really heats up) --

• Cleaned up various loose ends resulting from conversion to new system
• Cleaned up build process
• Begin ABS redesign effort

More prep for Spring/Summer 98 and Orientation.
(BD)

ONLINE DIRECTORY SERVICE - project number 10082

The purpose of the Online Directory Services team is to further the mission of U-M's Information Technology Division by deploying a set of high performance, large-scale, standards-based on-line directories that integrate various technologies and University business processes into services that are relevant to campus computing users.

Delivering accurate directory information to its users on a timely basis is the fundamental mission of a good directory service.

General Information:

Members of the Online Directory Team continue to work with the Office of Development to plan the implementation of an online Alumni directory service.

Our CGI-based LDAP client is nearing completion. We have reserved the domain name directory.umich.edu for accessing our directory via this web client. This domain name is enough to deliver to Jeff Cohen for the Internet Access Kits.

We announced the availability of Howard Young's SASL plug-in for directory servers to support LDAPv2 clients that want to authenticate to servers with Kerberos V4.

Usage:

New Features:

Technical Achievements:

The current directory server software

A new version of one of our administrative tools was deployed this month that contains several important bug fixes.

There is currently some focus on exactly how entry names (known as relative distinguished names) are changed. There appear to be several problems, ranging from issues with administrative procedures, to bugs in admin tools, to problems with the replication system.

Howard Young continues working on an on-line batch update tool that will allow us to update directory entries with data from DSC without taking the service down.

Netscape Directory Server 3.0

Other directory technologies

We've acquired the latest release of ISODE's Enterprise Directory Server. Building it requires the installation of several additional software packages, which is in progress.
E-mail: Directory.Services@umich.edu

(EV,CL)

WEB INFRASTRUCTURE

[ read in /afs/umich.edu/group/itd/pddirap/Work/websvcsXXXX.html here ]

(CK)

WOLVERINE ACCESS - project number 9889

The Wolverine Access Server Statistics are available at http://www.umich.edu/~waccess/stats/

(MP)

General Purpose Computing Cycles

E-mail: itd-login-admin@umich.edu
(EV)