Fraser Valley Regional Library: Site Re-Design…PLEASE
Okay, kids, it’s rant time. Last night we decided to go to the library, so I went to have a look at the website to see how late the branch was going to be open. Entered the URL into Firefox - http://www.fvrl.bc.ca -and it reported that it couldn’t be found. Hmm….tried again. Nothing. I knew that that was the right URL, so I went to Google and entered Fraser Valley Regional Library. Google brought up its results, with the first one being, of course, http://www.fvrl.bc.ca. Clicked on it and it brought me right to the site. Uh, okay.
Library was open till 9, so we decided to head down there (it being only 7:30 and all) and while we were there,decided to get some kids books on cats. No problem, says I. I’ll just pull up the information from the catalogue. Entered ‘cats juvenile’ into their search box and it came up with a number of books, none of which appeared to be at the branch we were at. Hmm….okay, there’s got to be a way to sort based just on the branch we’re at. There is, but it’s not easy to find. Under ‘Limit/Sort Search’ there’s a number of drop down boxes, one of which is marked as ‘Where Item is Located’. Sounds about right to me, and it turned out to be what I was looking for.
I selected the branch we were at, and tried again. It seemed to return more results, except for the fact that by the time I got to about the fourth book listed, it wasn’t listed as being in the local branch, but at three different branches out in the valley. How the !@# is this relevant?
Finally I decided to request a couple of books be brought in. I logged in, and got an error message, and to please try again. Repeatedly. I gave up and used my wife’s card. She had never used the card to reserve books, so had never put a PIN number on her account. No problem, said the system. Just enter a PIN and if there’s not one already assigned, it’ll report that as being the case and ask you to confirm the choice of a PIN number.
Wrong. Six times it reported that there was an error of some kind, and to please try again. Using a *third* card, we were finally able to get books reserved. When I went to inquire about the problems we’d been having, the staff flew around their system and were able to do everything I’d been struggling with with no problems. Now, I’ve been using computers since 1982, and websites since about 1995. I’m no clueless luser. But quite clearly, the website that the FVRL uses for its catalogue system is designed for librarians, and not for customers. Which is about the very worst thing possible.
If you think that customers having problems and then coming to library staff is a good thing, then something’s very wrong with you. It’s supposed to be EASY for users to find what they’re looking for, not having to click on a bunch of drop down boxes hoping that they’ve provided the correct parameters for a search.
That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s time to rethink how you provide information to your customers, FVRL.
Backup, Backup, Backup
Yesterday I got a call from my dad asking if there was anything I could do about the fact that his six year old XP machine wasn’t booting. I got that sinking feeling, and immediately headed over to see about downloading a copy of Knoppix, as it’s generally the best utility for recovering systems that appear to have died. Someone also suggested Ubuntu, which I had multiple copies of at home, so….
I didn’t intend to go over last night, so I left the Knoppix CD at work, and then when I made the decision to go work on the machine last night, grabbed a copy of Ubuntu, and my external hard drive, on the off chance that I’d have to pave the machine.
When I arrived, I powered up the machine and the external hard drive, to see where we stood. It was dead, all right, reporting that Windows\System32\Config\System was missing or corrupt. Dead registry. Great.
I rebooted with the Ubuntu CD in with the intention of backing up and reinstalling. But when the desktop came up, it wouldn’t (or couldn’t) mount the hard drive. The internal one. This was not good. Now I had to proceed even more carefully.
But at least I had a working net connection with Ubuntu running, so I headed out and tried to find some tips on recovering this train wreck. I found the answer fairly quickly (sorry, but I didn’t keep track of the URL), but it took me a fair bit longer to get it resolved.
There were essentially two solutions - copy the registry files over from the last restore point, or copy the *original* registry over the corrupted one. From 2003. Uh, let’s try solution #1 first.
After a fair bit of checking and double checking, making sure I had all the information I needed (because I obviously wouldn’t have a working net connection while attempting this) I was ready to give it a go.
Unfortunately, copying the registry from the last restore point didn’t work. The machine still halted almost immediately after the POST. I didn’t think about trying the one prior to that because I didn’t know how far back the corruption went.
So I decided to try the 2003 copy of the registry, and amazingly, the XP splash screen came up on reboot, and the machine booted into the desktop. I wasn’t quite out of the woods yet, though. All of the drivers (and things like NAV) were no longer installed. But a quick run of the driver CD, and everything seemed to be back up and running.
The next task, of course, was to back up the My Documents folder to my external drive. Something that should have been done more frequently, and hopefully will be done so after this experience.
No matter how bulletproof (or new) your machine is, please backup everything that you can’t afford to lose. Photos, documents, music. All of it. Regularly. We dodged a bullet this time, but might not be quite as lucky next time.
-
Full Text RSS
