The Library/Resource Centre houses the largest single database in the school, and certainly the most costly to replace or repair.
Special care needs to be taken with archiving backups to cater for crises such as “global misadventures”, where an incorrect global change could go unnoticed for an entire backup cycle, destroying all unaltered instances of the database.
For this reason, we do not wish to supply the software to institutions where the library staff does not have access to USB Memory sticks or a CD/DVD Burner to make weekly archives for long term storage. If you lose data because of poor backup procedures… our software looks bad.
There are 3 backup options built in to LibCode: (In Utilities > Backup-Restore…)
- Backup.
- Alternate Backup.
- External Backup.
We highly recommend you do all three every day you change your database.
Notes:
- The library should not rely on normal server tape backup alone for its security. If an incorrect global change goes unnoticed for a week or corruption caused by a spike, then the correct data may not be able to be retrieved.
- Even if the server is the only backup in an emergency, the Backup and alternative backup should be conducted on a daily basis, as this performs re-indexing and other housekeeping tasks.
- If Re-writable CDs, Flash Drive or Zip disks are to be used, use them each day you make changes.
- Use a CD-R for long term archiving once a term. Carefully date and store each.