(Aug 24/12) I realize that the library is aware of their website problems. However, I cannot understand how a library that prides itself on technological advancement at a major Canadian research university has not yet resolved this ongoing problem. Your website, catalogue, databases, and electronic journal collections are essentially dead in the water. As a stroke of irony, it took me 15 minutes to even be able to access this page. This issue needs to be resolved and quickly. The librarys inability to fix this problem has repercussions for the research effectiveness of the entire university.
Library response: I understand your frustration, but it's critical that you understand two points. One is that these issues do not impact all users equally, i.e.- the vast majority of our users do not experience these issues. This is directly related to the second point, that being that the core issue concerns how network traffic comes into campus. The short version of that is that there are basically two main trunks, one that carries most DSL-origin traffic, the other cable-origin traffic. For those sitting in an environment where they use neither (say, another institution that has T1 or T3 access), what matters is what type of provider serves that locale. At any rate, the traffic coming in over the DSL trunk has indeed experienced packet loss and other issues. This is not a library issue, but a campus network issue. We are as frustrated as you are about this persistent problem, but it's beyond our ability to control the campus network (it is a UTS issue). I highly recommend contacting them, describing the situation, and letting them know what type of Internet access you are using. (Aug 24/12)
Answered by: Dale Askey (Associate University Librarian, Library Learning Technologies)
Answered by: Dale Askey (Associate University Librarian, Library Learning Technologies)