This weekend PVLD experienced a major problem with our website and our web-based SOPAC online library catalog. The website was down from Friday evening through noon today (Tuesday), and the SOPAC catalog is still down.
We don't know (and may never know) the cause...a piece of code gone haywire or a hacker attack are the most likely explanations.
The bad news is that our website hosting service (the company we pay to maintain our website and SOPAC on their computer servers) had never backed up our systems despite billing us for backups with every monthly invoice. This meant the loss of several months worth of enhancements. Yikes! Needless to say we will be acting to recover our payments from them.
The good news is that our Digital Services Team of David Campbell and Erik Adams did an amazing job of keeping their cool under very trying circumstances. All employees were alerted to the problem in an email that David sent out in the wee small hours of Saturday morning, and by the time the library opened on Saturday a rudimentary web page with access to our library catalog and basic functions like the ability to place holds was up and running. By Saturday afternoon that rudimentary site also had tabs for access to our online databases/resources and calendar of events.
By Sunday the website had been transferred from the non-performing hosting company to servers owned by the company that does our web development and was available in the library (at least in its October 2009 configuration which means minus some recent enhancements), complete with access to our pre-SOPAC online catalog, and by noon today a fully functioning website and online catalog were available to remote users.
David and Erik are now working to restore the website enhancements that were lost and to get SOPAC back up and running as quickly as practical.
In my career I have had many occasions to learn that "stuff" does indeed happen, and to come to the view that the important thing is not the fact that it happened but how you react. Do I wish that this weekend's challenges had never occurred? Sure. Am I proud of how our PVLD team responded? Absolutely. I know David and Erik were thrown for a loop, and somewhat embarassed even though this was not their fault, but they just quietly went about fixing the problems in a way that kept the most important needs of our library customers in mind.
Great job, guys!
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