LibAgent Announcements

• EOL notice: We lost our server very unexpectedly at the beginning of the month. Only now were we able to put up a replacement site. However, it is not fully operational, and we decided not to make it so. This means no renewal of books. Read more about the LibAgent end-of-life. June 24, 2009.
• ETZ transition to ALEPH-500: The Yeshivat Har Etzion library moved to an ALEPH-500 server. We continue to provide service to this library; users do not need to do anything, and their books will be renewed as before. July 15, 2007.
• Hebrew scraping: There is a bug in ALEPH-500 that will randomly make the English version of the renewal pages disappear. This particularly hit the Bar-Ilan servers recently. We are now able to also work against the Hebrew version in such cases. This will improve service reliability for the affected libraries. April 20, 2007.
• CTE changes: we have a new script to handle the renewals through the web interface, instead of the old TELNET interface (used in ALEPH-300 installations). This should avoid the ALEPH bugs where a renewal is refused from one interface but is allowed on another (which the user happens to prefer to access). Renewals of CTE are now handled through this script. Expect some problems with Hebrew book name transliterations - we'll get on top of these soon. April 2, 2007.
• New library: Added support for the Judea and Samaria college library. April 2, 2007.
• CTE Problems: CTE (Holon) problems are resolved. We are back to normal service. January 7, 2007.
• CTE Problems: We can't contact the CTE (Center for the Technological Education Holon) library, and weren't able to do so in the last few days. Announcements were sent to affected users. We will resume renewals for these libraries as soon as they are again connected to the inter-library loan system. We know that they have changed their domain from HAIT.ac.il to HIT.ac.il recently. We don't yet know if this problem is related to the change. January 6, 2007.
• Move to a new server: We moved to a new hosting provider. Most of the functionality has already been migrated successfully. November 28, 2006.
• New library: Added support for the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance library. November 15, 2006.
• HUJI renewal suspended indefinitely: At the request of the Hebrew university library staff, we are stopping service to this library. Read more. October 18, 2006.
• BRO transition to ALEPH-500: The Brookdate College library moved to an ALEPH-500 server. We continue to provide service to this library; users do not need to do anything, and their books will be renewed as before. September 12, 2006.
• MTA transition to ALEPH-500: The Academic College of Tel-Aviv - Jaffo library moved to an ALEPH-500 server. We continue to provide service to this library; users do not need to do anything, and their books will be renewed as before. September 5, 2006.
• IDC transition to ALEPH-500: The Interdisciplinary center Hertzliya library moved to an ALEPH-500 server. We continue to provide service to this library; users do not need to do anything, and their books will be renewed as before. April 25, 2006.
• College of Management termination of service: The CoM librarians had just informed us that they do not wish for us to renew books on behalf of their readers. More information can be found at the CoM questions-and-answers page. We are stopping service to CoM. April 24, 2006.
• MNG transition to ALEPH-500: The Sapir College library moved to an ALEPH-500 server. We continue to provide service to this library; users do not need to do anything, and their books will be renewed as before. April 4, 2006.
• New libraries: Added support for the following libraries: Sakhnin College, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Hebrew Union College, Zefat Academic College, Achva College. March 23, 2006.
• KCL transition to ALEPH-500: The Kaye College library moved to an ALEPH-500 server. We continue to provide service to this library; users do not need to do anything, and their books will be renewed as before. March 23, 2006.
• Multiple transitions to ALEPH-500: The Oranim and Seminar HaKibbutzim libraries moved to an ALEPH-500 server. We continue to provide service to these libraries; users do not need to do anything, and their books will be renewed as before. March 16, 2006.
• Multiple transitions to ALEPH-500: The Beit Berl and Emek Yizrael libraries moved to an ALEPH-500 server. We continue to provide service to these libraries; users do not need to do anything, and their books will be renewed as before. March 5, 2006.
• Service issues resolved: we upgraded the hosting service level, and this seems to have solved the renewal problems we had last week. February 14, 2006.
• Hebrew translation of the explanations: has been posted. It should be shown automatically if the user's browser is set to accept Hebrew pages. February 11, 2006.
• Service issues: In the last few days, we had systematic failures which prevented us from renewing books for everyone. Users who asked to be notified of such problems got a notice by mail if their record was not renewed. We estimate 60-80% of users did get renewed in each day. We expect to fix the capacity problem in the coming days. February 9, 2006.
• SCE transition to ALEPH-500: The Sami Shamoon College of Engineering library moved to an ALEPH-500 server. We continue to provide service to this library; users do not need to do anything, and their books will be renewed as before. January 15, 2006.
• DYL transition to ALEPH-500: The David Yellin library moved to an ALEPH-500 server. We continue to provide service to this library; users do not need to do anything, and their books will be renewed as before. January 10, 2006.
• New user option: Users can now choose to receive an email alert in the evening, if we couldn't contact their library for the whole day. This options replaces the complex rules of the old failure notification system (which was inactive in the recent months). The option was set to "off" for all users, but anyone can log in and change their selection. 29 December 2005.
• WCL blocked: The Wingate college had installed a firewall, which effectively blocks all external access. This includes our (and every non-campus user's) access to the library server. This apparently happened some three months ago, but only now the inter-library personnel succeeded in making contact with Wingate. 6 Dec 2005.
• Form validation: Added JavaScript code to validate values entered on the user and subscription forms. This gives a quick feedback to those who miss a required field, or make similar errors. Everything should still work on browsers that are older or don't support javascript - they still get validated server-side. There are some minor focus and table issues - I'll gladly take advice from HTML/JS experts on how to solve them. November 29, 2005.
• Fixed a bug regarding holds: It appears our handling of ordered books on ALEPH-500 servers was wrong. As a result, no messages about ordered books which arrived were sent. This is (hopefully) fixed now. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks to the user who reported this. November 14, 2005.
• Multiple transitions to ALEPH-500: The following libraries moved to a new ALEPH-500 server: Tel-Hai college, Gordon College, Jordan Valley College, and Ort Braude College. We continue to provide service to these libraries; most users do not need to do anything, and their books will be renewed as before. Others will receive notifications. October 19, 2005.
• Many problems resolved: The MTA, BBR, ORA, OBC, and KCL libraries are back on the inter-library system, and we have resumed service to them. September 26, 2005.
• Multiple problems: We can't contact the ORA (Oranim), and OBC (Ort Braude) libraries, and weren't able to do so in the last few days. Announcements were sent to affected users. We will resume renewals for these libraries as soon as they are connected to the inter-library loan system. September 25, 2005.
• Multiple problems: We can't contact the KCL (Kaye College), BBR (Beit-Berl), and MTA (Tel-Aviv - Jaffo college) libraries, and weren't able to do so in the last few days. Announcements were sent to affected users. We will resume renewals for these libraries as soon as they are connected to the inter-library loan system. September 18, 2005.
• WCL problems: We can't contact the WCL (Wingate) library, and weren't able to do so in the last few days. Announcements were sent to affected users. We will resume renewals for this library as soon as it is connected to the inter-library loan system. September 13th, 2005.
• HUJI transition to ALEPH-500: The Hebrew university libraries moved to a unified ALEPH-500 server. We continue to provide service to these libraries; most users do not need to do anything, and their books will be renewed as before. Others will receive notifications. August 30, 2005.
• MTA problems resolved: The MTA (Academic College of Tel-Aviv - Jaffo) library is back on the inter-library system, and we have resumed service to it. August 21, 2005.
• MTA and KCL problems: Both MTA (Academic College of Tel-Aviv - Jaffo) and KCL (Kaye College) libraries are inaccessible to us and to the inter-library loan system. Most probably, the libraries and staff are on vacation. We will resume service as soon as they are made accessible again. August 20, 2005.
• NNL snafu: Last night, we sent error messages to many NNL readers. These messages should not have been sent. Apologies for the inconvenience. August 18, 2005.
• HUJI downtime: The libraries of the Hebrew university shut down for a scheduled system upgrade. August 8, 2005.
• SMS Survey: We are running a survey regarding willingness to accept notifications via SMS. June 27, 2005.
• BIU transition to ALEPH-500 (belated notice): The Bar-Ilan central catalog and law library moved to an ALEPH-500 server. We continue to provide service to this library; users do not need to do anything, and their books will be renewed as before. February 21, 2005.
• NNL transition to ALEPH-500: The Jewish National Library moved to an ALEPH-500 server. We continue to provide service to this library; users do not need to do anything, and their books will be renewed as before. June 1, 2005.
• BGUM moves to ALEPH-500: The Ben-Gurion Soroka medical library moved to an ALEPH-500 server. We support the new server. However, readers of this library who wish to continue libagent service must log in to libagent and give us their library password. May 18, 2005.
• New Feature: Added another horizon for users of gentle renewal ("renew only if it's due soon"). It controls how much in advance the books should be renewed. It is the same function that Panic Horizon served previously. Now, the gentle renewal horizon controls when to renew books. And the Panic Horizon is still used - to control when to warn about books. This way, users can set up Gentle Renewal to renew books vary rarely (and minimize the number of renewals per books), while still getting frequent advance notices about them. May 2, 2005.
• Statistics page updated: Fixed the user statistics page. It wasn't updated since the migration to the new site back in December. May 2, 2005.
• New library: Added the library of Gordon college (code: GCL). January 29, 2005.
• New library: Added the library of the Yeshivat Har Etzion (code: ETZ). January 17, 2005.
• Technion renewal suspended indefinitely: At the request of the Technion library staff, we are stopping service to this library. Read more. January 15, 2005.
• Technion renewal suspended at the request of the librarians: The Technion librarians would like to check if we are the cause of bad performance of their new ALEPH-500 server. On their request, we suspended renewals until further notice. Read more. December 12, 2004.
• New site and database design: we turned on the system that was in "beta" testing since November 13. It is a more modern system and a lot easier to use, especially if you have reader cards in multiple libraries. We also added rudimentary support to SMS messaging. December 4, 2004.
• BGU termination of service: The BGU librarians had just informed us that they do not wish for us to renew books on behalf of their readers. More information can be found at the BGU questions-and-answers page. We are stopping service to BGU (actually, it was suspended since August, at the request of the librarians). November 15, 2004.
• New beta site: We have a new design for our web site, including the web registration system. It is a more modern system and a lot easier to use. We are looking for testers to test-drive the new site. November 13th, 2004.
• New RSS feeds: RSS feeds for monitoring the automatic renewal were added. September 15th, 2004.
• BGU transition to ALEPH-500: The Ben-Gurion Aranne library is moving to an ALEPH-500 server. The tests we performed indicate that we can run the renewal on the new server. But we are still waiting for a final "green light" from the BGU librarians before enabling automatic renewals. August 18th, 2004.
• August 18th, 2004: The College of Management libraries moved to an ALEPH-500 server. We continue to provide service to all three libraries; users do not need to do anything, and their books will be renewed as before.
• August 6th, 2004: Service to the Haifa library is restored. We can now support libraries using the new ALEPH-500 (web-based) interface.
• July 15th, 2004: We moved to a new server! It is a hosted server, and the monthly fees are paid by the users' donations. This relieves us from the need to take care of hardware, and we hope it will result in a higher level of service. Our host is John Companies.
• June 15th, 2004: Yet another disk failure. Site was down since June 11. Things are back in working order now. An emergency backup server was set up and handled some renewals during the outage.
• March 21st, 2004: Another disk failure, site was down since March 18. We're getting closer to being able to put in a new drive. Hopefully we'll manage to do this soon and things will work better. Again we are encourage all users to help by making a donation.
• Feburary 20th, 2004: site is back up. No data was lost, but we do need to purchase a new disk. Please help!
• Feburary 18th, 2004: we suffered a disk failure overnight. We are working to diagnose and repair the problem. It looks like we will need to buy new hardware so you are encouraged to make a donation. Currently all website operations are disabled, including subscription updates and book renewals.
• Feburary 15th, 2004: The old TELNET interface for the Haifa library was shut down. We are stopping service and sending notification to the 450 affected users. The Haifa library staff announces that they will provide email-based renewal and notification. See the Haifa library web site for details.
• Feburary 5th, 2004: Added a link to paypal donations on the front page. The money will be used to maintain and enhance the service.
• Feburary 1st, 2004: The Haifa library is moving to the new ALEPH-500 system and will shut down the old ALEPH-300 interface we have been using. This is planned to take place on Feburary 15th. This means that unless things change, we will have to drop support to the Haifa library and its 500 or more readers.
• July 22th, 2003: The MTA server is being upgraded. Expect resumption of service in 2-3 days.
• July 12th, 2003: The old TELNET interface for the AAC (Sourasky) and AAL (Law) libraries was shut down. We are stopping service and sending notification to the 2500 affected users.
• July 9th, 2003: The old TELNET interface for the AAS (Exact Sciences and Engineering) library was shut down. We are stopping service and sending notification to the 2200 affected users.
• July 7th, 2003: The old TELNET interface for the AAH (Brender-Moss) and AAM (life sciences and medicine) libraries was shut down. We are stopping service and sending notification to the 2900 affected users.
• June 29th, 2003: The CTE server had changed its IP address. The inter-library loan team was notified of this only recently. They told us it will take a few days before the server appears on the inter-library network again. We will continue to attempt and connect to it, so your books will be extended as soon as this is technically possible.
• June 25th, 2003: We were informed by the Tel-Aviv librarians that they are moving to the new ALEPH-500 system and will shut down the old ALEPH-300 interface we have been using. This is planned to take place in the next few days. We have been informed of this change in advance. However we were unable to find the manpower to write the needed changes on our side (namely, make LibAgent work over an HTTP interface).

  This means that unless things change, we will have to drop support to the TAU libraries and their 7000 or more readers. We also know that other libraries are moving to ALEPH-500 in the coming academic year.

• March 13th, 2003: Added the library of the Interdisciplinary center Hertzliya (code: IDC).
• March 13th, 2003: A new feature was added to LibAgent today, to help with renewal-restricted books:Gentle Renewal. Users may change their preferences to use it by using the "Update" button on our home page.
• February 14th, 2003: We can't contact the JVC (Jordan Valley College) library, and weren't able to do so in the last two weeks or so. As always, announcements are sent to affected users. We have also contacted several people regarding this. But it seems there is still a problem. If you're reading this, and can talk to the library staff, please let them know about the problem. Update: we got word that the ETA for this problem is the first week of March. We will resume renewals for this library as soon as this happens.
• January 11th, 2003: For the last few days we failed to renew books at the Jewish National and University Library (NNL). Announcements were sent to affected users over the past week. It took us a little while to fix the problem due to manpower problems. Tonight's run was successful and all renewals at this library are back to normal. We apologize for the inconvenience.
• October 23rd, 2002: Renewal trouble: some users of the HAI (Haifa university) library may get a message that their books had not been renewed. This is due to some problem on the HAI side which we can't easily work around. So if you get any more of these messages in the next, say, week, you'll just have to renew the book yourself using the web interface or by calling in. After that things should be fine. Sorry for the trouble.
• August 20th, 2002: We're experiencing some DNS-related trouble. Users may not be able to reach the web-site or send email to us. Emails sent from us on the night of the 19th through noon of the 20h may have been lost. This applies to notices of renewals as well as to passwords sent for the subscription web-interface. We already made the necessary changes and we're waiting for them to propagate through the internet. This is likely to take up to 48 hours depending on where you're connecting from.
• June 7th, 2002: In the last two nights we were able to renew all of the Tel-Aviv libraries, as well as other libraries that we connect to via TAU. This is a first time since 20/5 and as far as we can observe indicates that the TAU strike is over.

  We Thank all of our users for their cooperation and understanding during the last 4 weeks.

• June 6th, 2002: we just heard that the TAU strike is over. They say libraries will open on Sunday noon. It's possible that access to the computerized catalog will happen either sooner or later than that. In any case, we keep on trying to access it, so we'll resume service as soon as technically possible.

  Note that we expect lots of people to have their reader's cards blocked due to overdue books. We can't really solve this problem for anyone. You'll have to contact the library yourself and tell them it was the strike that prevented you from returning books. The standard error message will contain the phone numbers of the appropriate circulation desk (as well as email, where applicable).

• May 27th, 2002: over the weekend we failed to renew many libraries. This is probably due to a problem on our side, but wasn't caught because we were busy handling the TAU strike issue (see below). In addition, the automatic mail that gets sent to users and warns that libagent did not do their renewals, does not go out on weekends (the reason being that many times the servers are down on the weekend and get fixed first thing Sunday morning). We apologize for the inconvenience. We understand that some people lost library privileges or money over this. However this is the best we can do given our current resources. It's also acceptable by the user, according to clause (3) of the usage agreement.
• May 26th, 2002: Added the Jordan Valley College library (code: JVC).
• May 23rd, 2002: Due to ITZUMIM by the TAU worker's union, we can't establish a connection to the following libraries:
  • AAM
  • AAH
  • AAC
  • AAH
  • AAL
  • CML
  • CMB
  • CMT
  • MNG
  • EMY
  • KCL
  • BBR
  • THI
  • MTA
  We are doing our best to handle the loans there. However for the most part, the paths from "here" to "there" are blocked, and the people that need to fix them are on strike. Messages are being sent to users to notify them that we didn't manage to renew. We have reports that some users could extend their own books via the web or ALEPH interface. But we still can't get in, so our advice is to try it yourself; automatic renewals will resume as soon as the connection is restored.
• February 14th, 2002: We have added support for the Kaye College Library (Library code KCL).
• January 14th, 2002: New rules for account expiration.
• January 1st, 2002: A new mailing list for the new year! The mailing-list discussion@libagent.org has been created.

  This list is intended for general discussion of the LibAgent service. For example, behaviour of existing and proposed features, suggestions for new features, and discussion of service quality. The target audience is librarians, library IT managers, LibAgent developers, and interested users.

  Please note that this is NOT the right forum to discuss problems that apply to a single user (such as: "my books are fine! why do I get messages from LibAgent?"). Please post only messages of general interest.

  To subscribe to the list, go to the subscription page.

  Once you are subscribed, send messages to the list by addressing them to discussion@libagent.org. You can't post to the list unless you're subscribed to it.

• September 11th, 2001: New server in operation! We are now serving the web site, doing nightly renewals, and performing other tasks on the new machine! Again, a big thank-you to the Technion CS department for the hardware donation.
• July 24th, 2001: The MT. Scopus Library for Humanities and Social Sciences (JMS) today became the first HUJI library to cross the 1000 users mark. Congratulations!
• June 19th, 2001: Our largest library (Technion) passed the 5000 users mark today, something most of us would never have believed could happen just a couple of years ago...
• June 19th, 2001: The Harman Science Library (JSL) becomes the second HUJI library to boast more than 500 LibAgent subscribers. Congratulations!
• Apr 22th, 2001: We suffered a service outage.
• March 19th, 2001: They just keep on coming... We added the library at the Sapir Negev college (officially the Vardimon library)
• March 12th, 2001: Support added for yet another HUJI library: School of Library, Archive and Information Studies (code JLB). Welcome aboard, JLB users!
• January 16th, 2001: The Sourasky Central Library of TAU (library code AAC) today became the second library outside the Technion to have more than 1000 LibAgent users.
• December 20th, 2000: Congratulations to the Library of Life Sciences and Medicine at TAU (code AAM). As of today this library has over 500 registered LibAgent users!
• November 20th, 2000: Today LibAgent crossed the 10,000 users mark!
• October 30th, 2000: We are looking for more helping hands for the LibAgent maintenance team. Look here for details.
• October 18th, 2000: As of today, LibAgent's presence on the Internet will be under our own domain: libagent.org. Read more about it here.
• October 2nd, 2000: We are glad to welcome the Emek Yezreel College Library Catalog (code EMY) to LibAgent.
• September 28th, 2000: The David Yellin Teacher's College (library code DYL) is also supported as of today.
• August 28th, 2000: We now support the Central Library of the College of Management (code CMB).
• August 23rd, 2000: Yet another library joins LibAgent's list of supported libraries: we welcome The College of Management -- Tel-Aviv Campus (code CMT) to LibAgent.
• August 1st, 2000: LibAgent today welcomes a new maintainer. Adnan Agbaria today joined the LibAgent team.
• July 17th, 2000: As of today, the Beit Berl Library (code BBR) is also supported by LibAgent!
• July 9th, 2000: Support for two new libraries was added to LibAgent today: Rothberg International School (HUJI) (code JOS) and The College of Management -- Law Library (code CML). With these two new additions, LibAgent supports 31 libraries!
• June 13th, 2000: Congratulations to the Brender-Moss Library for Social Sciences and Management for being the third TAU library to cross the 500 users mark, here at LibAgent!
• May 4th, 2000: Regretably, the installation of Aleph at TCB (Negev Academic College of Engineering) has some problems that cause it to not be able to communicate with LibAgent. Ex-Libris (the producer of Aleph) is working to fix this problem. In the meantime, there is a strong chance of LibAgent not extending your loans in this library. You are advised to manually verify the due dates for your books.
• May 3rd, 2000: We are pleased to announce the winner of the LibAgent design contest: Alex Sirota is the submitter of the winning design. We intend to integrate this design into our main web site in the near future. We also wish to take this opportunity to thank the other submitters for their efforts.
• April 17th, 2000: The Neiman Library of Exact Sciences and Engineering today became the second library (after the Technion library) to have more than 1000 registered LibAgent users!
• March 27th, 2000: The deadline for the LibAgent design contest is postponed to April 29th, to allow more people to submit their designs.
• March 21st, 2000: The MT. Scopus Library for Humanities and Social Sciences today became the first HUJI library to have more than 500 registered LibAgent users (see our Statistics page for details). Way to go!
• March 13th, 2000: The LibAgent design contest is announced! You are all welcome in helping us improve the look of this site.
• February 21st, 2000: Since LibAgent, along with the rest of the department of Computer Science at the Technion, is scheduled to move to a new building next week, we expect downtime during Sunday, the 27th of February. As the move is supposed to be completed in a single day, we hope that only the web interface will suffer, and that the nightly extension of book loans will not be disturbed by the move.
• February 20th, 2000: Following mixed responses to the change in LibAgent's behavior regarding ordered books, LibAgent now lets subscribers choose between the two options: Receiving a single message the day an ordered book becomes available, or receiving a message daily as long as the books are waiting at the library.
• February 16th, 2000: By popular demand, LibAgent now only tells you once when a book you ordered has arrived. This is opposed to the old way of sending you messages about ordered books that arrived daily, as long as the books are waiting for you.
• January 27th, 2000: LibAgent now provides historical data about registration to specific libraries. Follow the links from the libraries' names in our statistics page to see this data.
• December 27th, 1999: The Computer Science Department of the Technion, who kindly provides our network connection has decided to shut down all equipment from Friday, 31.12.1999 at 12:30PM, until the morning of Sunday, 2.1.2000, for fear of Y2K related problems. Regrettably, this means LibAgent will be down throughout this period.
• December 21st, 1999: We received a donation of a second hard disk from the Computer Science Department, to replace the one we had that didn't work. There may be some transient interruptions in service as we upgrade our server.
• November 4th, 1999: LibAgent now allows you to specify whether you want the names of Hebrew books mailed to you in Hebrew. Please note that Hebrew on the Internet is not well standardized, so this option may not work for some. Additionally, you may now specify whether you're interested in getting announcements about system-wide issues relating to LibAgent. Both options may be set for existing users by using the "Update" button on our home page.
• November 3rd, 1999: The disk we were donated seems to be defective, or at least incompatible with our machine. We're looking for a replacement (can you help us?).
• November 2nd, 1999: LibAgent's server is undergoing both hardware and system software upgrades this week. A second disk for the server was donated by Dror Rawitz, and the operating system will soon be upgraded to FreeBSD 3.3. Short periods of downtime are expected while we upgrade.
• October 10th, 1999: A new feature was added to LibAgent today, for the benefit of the general public: Order Early Warning. This new option is enabled by default for all new and existing users, and was designed to make LibAgent more suitable for widespread use. Users may disable it (though we would not recommend this), by using the "Update" button on our home page.
• August 13th, 1999: Today a new version of our software was installed. This software uses the PostgreSQL database management system to store users' records, instead of the simple files we used before. While the internal workings of the software were much modified, we tried to keep the appearance to the user and the functionality little changed. However, we ask you to pay attention during the coming days to emails you receive, and report any problems as we shake the bugs out from the new software.

  One change you will probably notice is that LibAgent now mails you only three times when your subscription is about to expire: A week before the expiry date, a day before the expiry date, and on the day your subscription expires.

  We hope that this new software will be able to take the load now placed on LibAgent as its users' count passes the 5000 mark. We also hope that the new software will let us gradually add more features to our services.