Interesting Story out of NY where The computer system that manages the White Plains Public Library, the fourth busiest in Westchester is back online after an 11-day blackout that threatened to wipe out four months worth of data about collections, memberships, checkouts and returns.
The library is offering amnesty to anyone whose materials became due during the outage, which was the second major service disruption at one of Westchester County’s big four libraries in a year. Borrowers who return overdue material by May 14 won’t be charged.
A faulty disk crashed the 11-year-old computer system that links all of the library’s systems on April 19, shutting down the electronic catalogue and cutting off the library from the Westchester Library System, which links the county’s 38 public libraries.
Lessons Learned?
Imagine if a company were without its computer for 11 days particularly if the computer “managers” the firm to use the rhetoric in the article! Any MBA want to estimate what this has cost the White Plains community?
Sounds as if the they had only one full back up and loads of incremental backups since January.
Oh well, according their website, the White Plains Public Library “made changes to ensure that the problems we experienced cannot be repeated”. Hmm I wonder what that means. Perhaps the crashed disk cannot crash again because it has been replaced.
One disaster in 11 years that took 11 days to fix – just luck!
It is a SIRSI system, so all things are possible.