Coordinating Committees
Library Technology Coordinating Committee (LTCC)
Final Report to CUWL – September 5, 2008
Committee Goals and Progress: July 1, 2007 – June 30, 2008
CUWL Strategic Direction #1.4.2
Assist campuses with D2L/Library Integration Taskforce recommendations (putting more library resources into D2L/Learn@UW).
In January, the library directors were surveyed to assess the current state of D2L/Library integration. Most campuses had implemented the most basic recommendation at this time--a link from the navigation bar (Navbar) to a static web page, usually the library’s home page. Six campuses were interested in implementing the Colleges model if there was support from DoIT. Three other campuses might be interested, but need more information. Two campuses (Madison and Milwaukee) were not interested. Milwaukee was pursuing a commercial product, Libguides, to fill this need. One campus was still investigating the options and did not specify which model they will pursue. Mark Robson at UW Washington County wrote the program for the Colleges model in SQL with ASP and is willing to share it, but it won’t work “out of the box” for other campuses. The most difficult piece is pulling in data from each campus’ student registration system. After Marc Boucher’s departure from UW System, Pat Fellows, Instructional Technology Coordinator for the Colleges, stepped in to follow up. She was asked to present at the Green Lake meeting in April and then in November, but due to her medical leave and staffing shortages, she has not been able to commit to the presentation and training needed to move this project forward. The LTCC will continue discussing options in the next year.
SD #1.4.3
Review distance education problems accessing library resources and work with other units to remove obstacles.
The User Services Coordinating Committee assumed responsibility for this goal since it is a component of their charge. Each of the designated DE librarians on each campus joined a new subcommittee. The LTCC asked that they setup a list of technical contacts on each campus and also focus on improving communication between administrators and librarians so that we know about new DE programs early on.
SD #1.5.1
Review options for a new OPAC; keep apprised of new products like WorldCat Local, Primo, and Evergreen.
Since Madison created a task force to look into this, we waited to see their final report, which was released in June. In the meantime, LTCC members read articles on the subject and followed the blog created by the task force. Discussion of how this affects UW libraries will be a major topic of discussion in the second year.
SD #3.1.2
Improve consistency across campuses of the MetaLib implementation; review recommendations for consistency of SFX and MetaLib variables and features.
On hold until the MetaLib assessment is completed.
SD #3.1.3
Perform an assessment of SFX/MetaLib.
The User Services Coordinating Committee was assigned responsibility for this. Three LTCC members are serving on that committee (Terri Muraski-UWSP, Sharon Knight-UWW and Maureen Olle-LaJoie-UWRF).
SD #3.1.5
Review Universal Borrowing consistency settings across campuses (changed to Review and analyze the effectiveness of Universal Borrowing and further develop resource-sharing policies with the advice of appropriate constituencies).
The Collections and Resource Sharing Coordinating Committee was assigned responsibility for this. The committee included Edie Dixon from Madison, who has a lot of experience with Voyager. She created a document listing all of the settings in Voyager SysAdmin that are relevant to UB. The LTCC setup a conference call with Library Automation Managers (LAMs) to answer questions and discuss making the settings the same for all campuses. Most of the settings were not problematic and LAMs were able to agree to match their settings to those in the committee document. Although the LAMs discussed the suggestion to remove the Advanced Search screen because it contains duplicate search types and search types that do not work, there was not any agreement because some campuses use the advanced search as their default search screen. LAMs will also be reviewing the OPAC search types on the basic search screen that are specific to UB to see if some standardization is possible.
SD #3.2.1
Review Voyager invoicing and licenses to determine if there would be significant savings by renegotiating the contract.
Most campuses are not close to reaching the maximum number of open sessions allowed in the contract. Ex Libris wants to see usage information over time to see if there might be a cost savings to us. Madison has a script to take a snapshot of the number of OPAC, acquisitions and circulation sessions open at a time. Brian plans to customize this script to work for the other libraries. A conference call between Brian Wilson, Anne Schilling, Mitch Lundquist and Dave Dempsey at Ex Libris, was held in May to discuss options. Ex Libris wants data collected over time using the highwater mark. Brian and others felt this would not be as accurate as the Madison script, but would probably work out in our favor. We have highwater data going back to July 2006 and Brian gave Ex Libris a lot of data for the hub, for La Crosse and for Milwaukee. So at this point we are waiting to hear back from Ex Libris to see if the license pricing drops. Check with Lisa--Brian may have given the data directly to her. Did she get it? Did she send it on to ExL? Does she know when ExL might respond?
SD #3.2.2
Discuss a needs assessment for an electronic resources management (ERM) system, such as Verde.
CRSCC assumed responsibility for this. A subcommittee was formed and includes Sharon Knight (UW-Whitewater) and Bill Doering (UW-La Crosse) from the LTCC. Bill created an ERM using Access this year. He presented this at the summer conference and offered to share it with anyone who is interested.
SD #3.3.1
Assist smaller campuses with automation needs - investigate centralization of more functions; work to offer more training.
Documentation, PowerPoints, and webcasts will be posted to CUWL’s web site or the wiki to assist others. Bill Doering has shared his Voyager Access databases and his Access ERM database on the wiki. A breakout session on Bill’s ERM database and a technical roundtable session were held at the summer conference in June. These were well attended and productive. A show-and-tell format for the roundtable is encouraged for next year in order to stimulate discussion earlier in the session. SFX and MetaLib refresher training for newer staff was suggested. This is available from Ex Libris, but due to the cost (approx $2500) we opted to provide local expertise via webinars. Topics and presenters will be discussed and we plan to have several webinars in the second year. In February we facilitated a conference call with Eau Claire, Stout and several LAMs to discuss setup and options for using Voyager to checkout textbooks to students.
SD #3.3.2
Create a UW functional contacts list.
All campuses were asked to provide a list of “experts” at their library who deal with automation-specific things. All but two campuses (Milwaukee and Stout) responded. The list is posted on the CUWL web site at http://uwlib.uwsa.edu/committees/technologyinitiatives/documents/functionalcontacts.htm and is also linked to from the CUWL wiki at http://cuwlwiki.wetpaint.com/
OTHER ISSUES/ITEMS:
Voyager upgrade
The LTCC, with leadership from the LAMs chair, Bill Doering, oversaw the Voyager upgrade to version 6.5.4 in July and August. The upgrades went very smoothly. Brian Wilson used this opportunity to split the hub libraries into more zones. This facilitates maintenance work and minimizes the downtime for libraries during upgrades. There are now separate zones for: Milwaukee, La Crosse, Stout, the four original hub libraries (Green Bay, Oshkosh, Platteville and Superior) and the 5 newer hub libraries (Colleges, Parkside, River Falls, Stout and Whitewater). Due to unavailable documentation from Ex Libris, the Oracle 10 upgrade was delayed for the hub libraries until next summer, when we will also upgrade to Voyager 7. We plan to schedule future Voyager upgrades during the same time period every year.
ILLiad upgrade
Jon Mark Bolthouse from Colleges worked with Lisa Jewell to schedule and prepare for the ILLiad 7.3 upgrade. This upgrade was more difficult than usual due to a change in the email manager piece and some account security issues. Jon Mark explained the email manager setup and also drafted guidelines to assist others with restricting accounts for student workers and staff. Staff were asked to clean up their old accounts and restrict their users to allow access only to their own campus’ ILLiad data.
Ex Libris Strategic Planning Meeting
In May, the LTCC met with Ex Libris management in Madison. We viewed a demo of Primo and discussed it as well as some problems we’ve seen with MetaLib and Voyager. They also discussed the more modular approach they are heading towards with Aleph, Voyager and Primo.
Communication tools
Skype was identified initially as a free alternative to Wisline for conference calls but we learned there is a limit of 10 people on a conference call. We are using freeconference.com instead for our monthly conference calls. The only charges for this are the long distance call for each caller. It also has a web conferencing piece that allows the administrator to share their desktop with everyone on the call. The CUWL wiki, http://cuwlwiki.wetpaint.com, was setup using wetpaint. This provides an online area for committees and subcommittees to collaborate and also provides a way for anyone else to comment. Madison’s instance of Xythos, a web document sharing and collaboration tool, is also being utilized in conjunction with the wiki to house documents that need password protection. The cuwltech mailing list is the primary method of communicating with UW staff interested in technology issues. This has served well as a one-way communication tool, but has not been as effective as hoped at generating discussions. The summer conference was deemed very successful at bringing functional groups from across UW System together to discuss issues and learn more about CUWL initiatives. Keeping the LAMs more connected is a concern with this new committee structure. They would benefit from a face-to-face meeting each year.
Voyager WebAdmin
Voyager WebAdmin is a web-based way to run Voyager server jobs. Brian Wilson has found a way to set this up more securely and will do this for interested campuses.
Committee Members and Terms:
Marlys Brunsting, Chair, Green Bay – 2007-09
Jon Mark Bolthouse, Colleges – 2007-10
Bill Doering, La Crosse – 2007-10
Sharon Knight, Whitewater – 2007-09
Jim Lowrey, Milwaukee – 2007-09
Mitch Lundquist, Madison – 2007-10
Terri Muraski, Stevens Point – 2007-09
Jon Musselman, Platteville – 2007-10
Maureen Olle-LaJoie, River Falls – 2007-09
Lisa Jewell, (UW System representative) - ongoing
Leanne Hansen, Green Bay (CUWL representative) – 2007-10