Calendars and Email

Yesterday Cindy and I attended a UITS (campus computing) presentation on the future of email and calendars at UA and the Google Enterprise Applications for Education. Last week we attended a similar session on Microsoft Outlook/Exchange.

Here is the “bottom line” for AHSL first, followed by the details for those who are interested. We started a move toward the Outlook calendar before the campus began looking at Google Calendar/Gmail and before our change in reporting. At the time, a move toward Outlook made sense since the College of Medicine (COM) was using it and it provided more features than Meeting Maker – a system that the campus was moving away from. Since we are well down that road, we will continue. ITS (COM computing) will soon be connecting all of our Outlook calendars to the server to allow us to view each other’s calendars. If the university decides to move away from Outlook we will have to re-evaluate what makes sense for us. We can do what the rest of the university is doing or continue to use the COM system.

Now the details. The campus is going to move away from its existing email system and from Meeting Maker. There are two choices: Microsoft Outlook and Google Enterprise Applications for Education. The Microsoft choice will cost about $1,500,000; Google is free (although UA will purchase some additional archiving space for about $150,000). The current plan is to explore if there are any compelling reasons not to go with Google. All of the basic features of email and calendars are pretty much the same with both systems. Microsoft offers some nice bells and whistles, but they don’t seem to be anything that would get much use. Google email offers 7.6 gigabytes of storage to each user compared with Microsoft’s 500 MB.

The campus arrangement with Google would create a UA “space” on Google that would provide security and would not include the advertising that often accompanies Google’s open Gmail and calendar.

On July 10, all UA students will move to Gmail and will have access to Google calendar, Google documents and a variety of other Google applications. The students will be in the UA “space” at Google. Their email addresses will remain “X@email.arizona.edu”.

The campus is pilot testing Google with 200 faculty and staff and they are looking for 200 more. If you would like to test the Google products you can write to: googlepilot@listserv.arizona.edu You will keep your existing email account. If the campus goes with Google your pilot account will be rolled over into the new system. If the campus doesn’t, your calendar will disappear and you can continue to use your UA mail. More information about the pilot and the whole Google offer is available at: googlepilot.arizona.edu

Paper Presented at Annual Meeting

Congratulations to Pat and Annabelle who presented their paper, “Coalition for Change” at the Medical Library Association annual meeting in Honolulu on May 20. The paper was presented in a session on new partnerships for libraries and described their work with the Pima County Community Health Task Force.

Furloughs, All Staff Meeting

Furloughs
We have still not received any more information about furloughs other than what is available on the Human Resources web page: http://www.hr.arizona.edu/furlough_faq

If you are starting to plan your time off for the coming year, consider waiting to schedule furlough until we get more definite policies from the university. The budget for the coming year could affect how furloughs are implemented.

All Staff Meeting
This is a reminder about our All Staff Meeting on Thursday, June 11 from 2-3 in the large classroom. Let me know if you have any issues or questions that you would like discussed. I will give an update on the security cameras, the new hours, any budget news and report on a meeting with Dr. Crist’s Chief Financial Officer.

AHSL on Facebook

The Web Committee (Jennifer Martin, Brooke Billman, Lindsey Greene and Joan Schlimgen) decided it was high time for AHSL-Tucson to join AHSL-Phx on Facebook after Jennifer shared results from a survey that the College of Pharmacy did with their undergraduate students in November 2008 about their use of social media. Here are some highlights showing what these students use:

• Facebook 75%
• MySpace 30%
• Read blogs 14%
• Write blogs 6%
• Almost no use of Twitter
• No use of RSS feeds, Delicious, Digg
• When limited to the younger students, results showed even greater use of social networking sites.

It's clear that an increasing number of our students are using Facebook as their primary communications tool and that having a presence there will enable the library to more effectively serve them. When we post announcements on the AHSL website, we will also put them on our Facebook page. We are also hoping to create an application that will enable users to search the library catalog from within their Facebook account. There are lots of options. So become a fan of the Arizona Health Sciences Library and encourage faculty and students to do the same!

Arrest

On Wednesday a man suspected in the theft of books from the AHSL as well as both campus bookstores was arrested here in the library. Thanks to help from security staff from the main campus bookstore, the man, who had been seen several times on our security camera system, and an accomplice were taken into custody. The man was booked into the Pima County jail and had several outstanding warrants for his arrest. Our camera system alerted us to the fact that this man had repeatedly exited through the 1st floor fire doors. We can’t say that this will end our book theft problem, but we’re relieved that this particular threat has passed.

Pandemic preparations

Last week I attended two meetings regarding campus planning for a possible pandemic. On Friday afternoon the Administrative Team met to talk about reasonable plans. Given the current situation we drafted a plan for “significant absenteeism” among library staff. We don’t feel that a total closure of the library is likely, but we want to be ready in case large numbers of staff members (or members of their families) are ill and unable to come to work. We have also talked about a total closure and have identified a strategy to handle this situation.
We will be creating signs for the offices of library liaisons in the Colleges listing who to call if the liaison is out. We will also create signs for the library entrance in the event that we are closed.
We will encourage everyone who has a need to use VPN in order to work from home, to test out the software. We will work with you if you have problems.
We will be talking to the College of Medicine Information Technology Services (ITS) to 1) get an emergency phone number, 2) stress the importance to the library (and campus and UMC) of keeping library servers and network service up and running and 3) stress the importance to hospitals and clinics around the state of keeping the AZHIN server up and running.
We are revising our phone tree and creating quick lists of staff phone numbers for ATeam members.
We have created a new reporting procedure for ATeam members to track the number of absentees in each department so staff can substitute in other departments if needed.
Obviously we hope that none of these procedures is necessary!

Continuing Education Opportunities

A reminder that the University offers a variety of opportunities for professional development: the Professional Success Institute, the University Leadership Institute, the Successful Supervisor Series, Career Success Strategies Workshops and other general HR courses are all available to UA employees. You can get more information at:
http://www.hr.arizona.edu/08_o/development3/