Tisch Library experienced what appeared to be their first significant system failure in approximately six years last Thursday night, resulting in disorganized records and frustrated students and faculty.
As a result of the technological glitch, librarians and desk attendants could not help members of the Tufts community check out books for two days after the initial system failure. Tisch staff members were also unable to keep accurate records of book circulation.
Jeff Gardner, Director of the Ginn Library in the Fletcher School said the incident was a great surprise to librarians. "[The system crash] happened very suddenly and very briefly," Gardner said.
According to Gardner, the crash was "simply a hardware failure." While the Tisch administration is sensitive to students' complaints from the failure, he said, it also acknowledges the potential pitfalls of online record-keeping. "We rely on technology very heavily, when something crashes, there is a cost," Gardner said.
Charlotte Keys, Director of University Library Systems, said that Tisch is still trying to figure out the cause of the crash. "To be perfectly honest, we're still not exactly sure why this started," Keys said.
An enormous backload of records had to be entered almost overnight, Keys said. "It's a huge database with millions of records" Keys said. "Back-up took literally all day Friday, but we were back online by Saturday."
The system continued to experience additional problems on Sunday. "Librarians found problems with the patron file [used for book check out], unfortunately that meant files had to be restored again," Keys said.
According to Jo-Ann Michalak, Director of Tisch Library, the library administration was doing everything in their power to recover from this setback. "We didn't know the magnitude of the problem when it started. It's not within our local capacity to fix the system," she said.
Michalak said that a systems vendor external to the library has been in the process of reconstructing the library's system. "Each day has been learning what is happening and what the vendor is actually doing," she said.
Currently, Michalak said the Tisch staff is responding to the crisis as well as possible. Library staff workers attending the circulation desk checked out material manually on paper after the system failure Thursday night, and then later entered the records into the library database. "We're doing the best we can to accommodate our users," Michalak said.
Some students, however, said they are still unimpressed with the library's efforts to rectify the problem. Senior Carly Baruh said she could not check out a book she needed for a presentation the next day. "I'm of the opinion that they should have some sort of emergency back-up system," she said.
Other students said that the recent system failure is not the only example of problems in circulation, and complained about errors in overdue charges and replacement fees. "I've been charged replacement fees in addition to the late fees I already paid," freshman Chrysten Fahey said. "It was a mess when these charges were sent to my parents on my Bursar bill."
Michalak said she was unsure of whether Tisch would make significant changes to their system on account of the failure. "It's too early to say," she said. "It's important that we hear from the vendor about quite a few other installations."
