When local system is "down"

Local systems may be down for planned software or hardware, network or electrical upgrades and other reasons. Sometimes the local system is down suddenly and unexpectedly. Occasionally a local system may still be "up" but not communicating with the internet. For any of these circumstances, communication with Summit is interrupted for a while.

If the local system is up but network communication is interrupted:

Local updates: All updates to local bibliographic, item, order, and checkin records will be held at the local site (transaction file and
loading queues) and sent when the link to Summit is re-established.

Pass-through searching will not work. The local catalog will probably display a message to the patron about being unable to connect to the [central] server.

Summit Borrowing : Since all INN-Reach communications depend on accessing the local system for item or patron information, many transactions such as requests and renewals will be held in a queue until network communication is re-established. Renewal requests will be delayed and Visiting Patron checkout will not be possible.

Local circ functions (print paging slips, checkout to remote site, checkin, checkout to patron, clear holdhself, return unwanted) will work, but some transactions will be held in the transaction queue until Summit is up again, such as receiving incoming requests and sending the transaction for Institution Checkout to remote site.

Renewal requests: Since we use the option to check Owning Site before allowing a renewal, the renewal request will stay in a pending state until Summit is up.

Visiting Patron will not work since it depends on access to Summit and communication through Summit to the patron's local system, for patron verification.

Pickup Anywhere functions that depend on access to Summit to get information from the PUA database will not work.

If the local system is down:

The local site may use Summit as an alternate catalog, especially for public service. All records contributed to Summit display with the local site's holdings including location and call number. Since Summit has only some of the data from the local site (for example, Summit doesn't need local administrative detail such as fund codes for ordering materials) it cannot be relied on as a complete substitute for the local system. For more information see Institution records.

Notify the summit or summit-circ email list?

We will notify the summit-circ, and sometimes summit-cat, email lists if the downtime will cause a significant (noticeable) interruption in Summit Borrowing (for example, impact at least one day's cycle of notices, paging slips, etc.) There are several interruptions of local service each month. Because email traffic can become burdensome and sometimes ignored when perceived as "just too much stuff", we try to minimize clutter on the list. We generally report incidents on the list when they are likely to exceed 8 hours.

updated: September 4, 2007