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“Enter the vortex” the Met Office implements Hyperion
Martin KiddsAssistant Librarian
Unicorn Systems Administrator
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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
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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.
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The Met Office Vision
“To use world-class science to predict the weather and climate for maximum benefit to the nation”
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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
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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.
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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
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Our collections include…
The original Beaufort Scale
Weather records of Scott’s Antarctic expedition from 1911
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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
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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
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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
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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)
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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
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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…
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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!)
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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
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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
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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!
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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
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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
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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
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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
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For more details, please contact us at:
National Meteorological LibraryMet OfficeFitzRoy RoadExeter EX1 3PB
Phone: 01392 884845 Fax: 01392 885681 Email: [email protected]
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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