NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 22 number 1 - Fall 2001

By Scott Ross, NC LIVE

North Carolina Libraries for Virtual Education (NC LIVE) is a statewide service funded by the North Carolina General Assembly to benefit library patrons, researchers, and educators from four communities of interest--public libraries, community colleges, public universities, and the members of the North Carolina independent colleges and universities. NC LIVE currently offers online access to complete articles from more than 7,000 journals, newspapers, magazines, and encyclopedias, as well as access to over 14,000 electronic books. Its staff, comprised of six individuals housed at NC State University and UNC-Chapel Hill, is responsible for the ongoing operation, enhancement, and user support for the service.

Ralph Kaplan and Sarah Weisman, systems librarians for NC LIVE, serve as liaisons among the 190-plus affiliated libraries, NC LIVE technical staff, and database vendors. They communicate needs, solve problems, and develop service enhancements; provide support for NC LIVE database use and technical issues; manage requests for customization of vendor resources from participating libraries; and advise the NC LIVE committees responsible for Web design, training, and publicity.

The technical staff is comprised of two systems administrators, an applications analyst/programmer, and a systems programmer/administrator. Omead Ahdieh and David Matusiak maintain the server infrastructure at NCSU and UNC-Chapel Hill, respectively. Together, they provide hands-on operation and maintenance support for the NC LIVE production and development environments, including operating systems, Web servers, database administration, research and testing of new and emerging utilities, performance tuning, and implementation of security protocols. They also play a key role in supporting NC LIVE help desk functions by acting as a technical resource for troubleshooting user and network problems. As the applications manager for NC LIVE, Pete MacLaren oversees applications software development that facilitates the delivery of NC LIVE resources to users across the state. Working closely with other server-site staff, he designs, tests, and implements solutions to meet current and emerging software requirements for the NC LIVE service. Scott Ross, systems operations and development manager, provides managerial oversight of all server-site functions and acts as a liaison to many of the guiding committees for NC LIVE.

The original NC LIVE Web site was created and deployed by existing staff in the libraries at NCSU and UNC-Chapel Hill in April 1998. The staff strives to stay on the leading edge of technology to provide the best possible service to its community and has implemented many changes and enhancements since the program's inception. Current development plans for fiscal year 2001-2002 include deployment of a single-search interface, housing and managing locally mounted resources, and aggregating and reporting vendor use statistics. For more information about NC LIVE, visit its Web site at http://www.nclive.org/.