Kinetica news
Kinetica now operational
Issue 38 of Gateways covered the launch of the KineticaWeb service on 17 March. We have now launched the Kinetica cataloguing service, which began operation on 12 April. Since these two events, Kinetica customers have experimented extensively with the system. While some problems have been encountered, particularly with response time, improvements have been made steadily. The National Library and IBM GSA will continue to identify ways of improving Kineticas services.
The first four weeks of the service saw Kinetica Customer Support answering thousands of questions about access, response time, searching and cataloguing techniques, and a host of other issues encountered in changing to a new system whose only access method is the Internet. There were many occasions when all six of Customer Supports incoming lines were in use, and all Kinetica staff were asked to take a turn at answering the phones.
In response to these questions, Kinetica staff wrote and disseminated general information about use of the service to clarify and advise on optimal searching methods. As a result of numerous comments on its useability, changes have been made to the KineticaWeb interface, and more changes will be made in the future.
Response time, stability (particularly for the first days of the KineticaWeb service) and obscure system error messages gave rise to a number of questions, and all these have been dealt with as matters of priority. As a result, error messages have been reworded, to give users some information about their cause; we are also in the process of removing some of the causes of the messages. The system shortcomings that produced the instability in KineticaWeb have been resolved, resulting in a reliable service.
In the area of response time, the National Library and IBM GSA have worked methodically to investigate all possible causes of slow performance and several changes have been made:
In answer to our request for user feedback on response time since these changes, most libraries are reporting a significant improvement with work proceeding smoothly most of the time. The level of online cataloguing and addition of holdings continues to increase, and is now approaching the level of activity at the time of ABNs closure.
Some libraries continue to report slow response times, which may be attributable to the individual librarys Internet link or Internet service provider. It is important for libraries to take all necessary measures to ensure that their Internet connections are performing smoothly. The Kinetica Help Desk can assist libraries to trace the connection between their PCs and Kinetica and analyse the results. Libraries should also take into account the possibility that their local firewalls may be contributing to the problem. Meanwhile, both the Library and IBM GSA are continuing their efforts to improve response times overall.
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: lkirwan@nla.gov.au