Coordinating Committees
Progress Report to CUWL – November 10, 2008
Library Technology Coordinating Committee
The committee had a conference call on August 21 and met in Madison for a face-to-face meeting on September 29.
Voyager Upgrade - went very smoothly for all of us. Should we consider turning on UB one-by-one as schools upgrade? Although some staff did not like UB down for so long, most LTCC members felt it was easier to administer and less confusing for patrons if we kept UB off until the last school was finished with the upgrade. The timing of the upgrade also meant that the impact was minimal on patrons. We recommend that we keep the same workflow for the next upgrade.
General Records Schedule - Retention of Server Files - Lisa will contact Atlas regarding cleanup of historical request logs. Maureen emailed the LAMs regarding Voyager server files that are affected. Each LAM was asked to let Brian know how long to retain each of the files for their campus.
ELUNA/Ex Libris Strategic Plan - Their big new product with be a URM (unified resource manager). Version 1 of this will be out next year. This is their new model for next-generation library services. It will be a way to leverage global data—descriptive metadata, knowledge-base information, prediction patterns, and more—that is common across institutions. It will be modular, work with other systems and will be able to release collection data to other applications, like Primo or Moodle. All new product development will focus on the URM and URD2 (Primo). They will roll out Voyager 7.1, 8 and 9, but after that they won’t have Voyager development in the pipeline. There is not, however, any plan to end support for Voyager. The URM will have a web interface for staff work, like Circulation. It will hook into the Enterprise system for campus financials. The course reserves will hook into the campus registration system. There won’t be individual databases of bib records but it will pull them from other places, like WorldCat Local (they are going to talk to OCLC about partnering since they own most of our records). There are plans for MetaLib 4.3 (Q1 or Q2 2009) and SFX 4 (no date set).
New Goals - No new goals were suggested, but a staff member from Whitewater commented on the importance of continuing to assist campuses with automation issues.
D2L and Library Integration - The preferred Colleges model is now in limbo as a system-wide resource due to recent personnel changes and the need to coordinate the variances between campuses with some detailed technical assistance. One option may be to go outside for specific technical assistance. As of now, the source of that assistance is uncertain. The conclusion was that this project is effectively stalled at this point. While some sites are using or considering using LibGuides, this is a different approach than the original intent of the Colleges model which is link to library resources from specific courses in D2L. In the general related discussion, Mitch relayed that Madison has found that an unexpected number of students use the Madison portal, which indicates that they need to push more content to the portal. This triggered more discussion related to breaking out resources into modules that can be made available as an option to monolithic 'home pages'. Jon Mark will form a subgroup to see what we can do and how. (Note: Renee Buker at Oshkosh indicated post-meeting that their new programmer is doing some scripting to implement their own solution to putting library resources into D2L. She will keep us informed.)
Assisting Other Campuses With Automation Needs - Jon Mark has coordinated some sessions to be held via Wisline Web. These will be 35-45 minutes plus questions. Jim Lowrey will present Google Analytics during November. A Q&A for SFX/MetaLib will be coordinated with Sue Dentinger and Curran Riley. Bill Doering has offered to do a session on EDI Promptcat. Jon Mark has offered to do a session on RSS feeds. Other ideas: Library Thing, which has recently been implemented at Stout.
Review Options for a New OPAC - Sue Dentinger from UW-Madison joined the discussion to elaborate on the Task Force recommendations and to answer questions. Madison’s plans: A technical assessment of WorldCat Local is likely, as a replacement for FirstSearch (Badgercat) or the OPAC. Primo might also be evaluated, but they are waiting for a direct charge from administrators.
We have 3 years to the last version of Voyager’s OPAC interface - maybe 4 years to a new ILS? However, it could easily be longer.
The LTCC felt that supporting Worldcat Local is logical because of its size (it has most of our records, more leverage and an aggregation advantage—more reviews, more tagging make it more useful to everyone). There is a concern, however, that it is not really tuned for large academic libraries that have a need for more sophisticated searching options. There is also the concern that it is behaving more like a for-profit vendor than a member cooperative.
An ideal world could mean a decoupled, open source interface (such as VuFind or Blacklight). We need a more flexible environment where we can respond quickly to technical changes and expectations. Vendor solutions are invariably going to fall behind.
This might be a good time to investigate the possibility of a UW union catalog with a new discovery front-end. This would allow us to see all our records, not just the ones in OCLC (a limitation of the WorldCat Local solution). It might also make universal borrowing less problematic.
Several people felt that a new resource discovery tool is important, but doesn’t solve the inefficiencies on the staff side and means an increase in maintenance of multiple systems. We are all still doing the same local work, paying a lot of money in annual maintenance fees and getting little return on our investment. It might be time to start the process of looking for a new ILS. Work on resource discovery can’t happen in a vacuum—the ILS—current and future--must also be considered. The solution must be standards based in order to work with any ILS system.
Resource discovery can be researched separately from ILS. The LTCC recommends that we create two separate working groups, one for an improved resource discovery tool and one for the ILS.
We need to work with user services, focus groups, etc. to better define the discovery side. This must be driven by the user side, not the back room.
In terms of proceeding with the investigation of a new discovery tool, the consensus is that the User Services and Library Technology Coordinating Committees should investigate jointly. A small group could be effective in moving this issue forward. The suggestion is for 7 people total. Steve Frye supported this idea during a subsequent conference call of the coordinating committee chairs and CUWL reps. At that conference call the directors felt that CUWL as a whole needs to approve this plan before moving forward.
Action item: Does CUWL approve the recommendation to create a working group to investigate options for a new resource discovery tool for the campuses and a working group (the entire LTCC) to investigate options for a new ILS for the campuses?
Submitted by Marlys Brunsting, LTCC Chair
LTCC Members: Jon Mark Bolthouse (Colleges), Bill Doering (La Crosse), Sharon Knight (Whitewater), Jim Lowrey (Milwaukee), Mitch Lundquist (Madison), Terri Muraski (Stevens Point), Jon Musselman (Platteville), Maureen Olle-LaJoie, (River Falls), Leanne Hansen (CUWL), Lisa Jewell (UWSA)