Coordinating Committees
Progress Report to CUWL –May 4, 2009
Library Technology Coordinating Committee
Voyager Upgrade – the schedule for upgrades to Voyager 7 is from July 21 – August 15. Lisa is waiting for final confirmation from the LAMs and then she will schedule it with Ex Libris. UB will be unavailable to or from Stout from July 13 until the end of all the upgrades. UB will be turned off for all of the campuses from July 27 - August 16.
Voyager Licenses – the LAMs had a conference call with Lisa and Brian Wilson on February 20 to discuss the number of OPAC sessions needed. Brian looked at the maximum number of connections we have used since the last upgrade and then padded the numbers to come up with new connection sessions needed. These numbers are much lower than what we have been paying for but we won’t know the actual cost savings until we give Ex Libris the numbers. If we implement this (by Brian retuning the servers and restarting them) and then find out we need to increase the number of connections, we will have 90 days to make changes and will have to pay the current (higher) connection rate. We also will not be able to reevaluate this for at least 12 months due to the staff time involved. Lisa submitted the numbers to Ex Libris on April 22. Linda Voyles responded that they needed numbers split out on the hub and between Stevens Point and Portage County, for billing purposes. This will probably be determined based on the old ratios.
Voyager Simulsearch Types – work continues on this topic. Standardizing the names of the simulsearches and the fields that they search is do-able to some extent and will reduce most of the duplication on the Advanced Search screen. Maureen is still waiting to hear from several campuses.
Metalib X-server – At the LAMs meeting in January, there was interest in looking into using the MetaLib X-server in order to improve the MetaLib user interface and make information in MetaLib available in other places, such as on library pages, D2L, LibGuides and in the library portal. Although LTCC members are not sure they have enough time or expertise to implement X-server, they are willing to learn more and are very interested in trying out Dave Walker’s (CSU) templates. Lisa indicated it would be worth the $4625 annual license fee if the campuses put forth the effort and we find someone who can lead us through it. Library automation managers discussed this via conference call on April 27 and agreed it would be worth paying the license fee and working together to develop uses of the X-server. If we investigate and find it’s not worth fully implementing, we are not committed beyond the first year.
Assisting Other Campuses With Automation Needs –
1. Voyager/SFX/MetaLib - many of the LAMs joined a conference call on March 26 to discuss training needs. The consensus was that we need webinars because people feel they can’t travel for 1-2 full days of training because of budgets or staff time. Recorded webinars would be ideal so that staff can view them when it’s most convenient for their schedules. Voyager 7 customization training is our most pressing need because of the major changes coming and the time involved in setting this up before our upgrade this summer. SFX is the next highest priority, followed by MetaLib. They would like SFX and MetaLib training in the summer when there is a little more time. Lisa Jewell, Maureen Olle-LaJoie and Marlys Brunsting had a conference call with Ex Libris staff Connie Braun and Susan Kane on April 15. They were very willing to work with us to provide customized training at an affordable price. Recorded webinars are not yet available for Voyager and we won’t have time to wait for them, so we will have a real-time webinar. They are suggesting we take training for acquisitions and cataloging as well. They will send us a quote for all of the training options and we’ll try to get something scheduled by mid-May.
2. ILLiad – thanks to Kathy Schneider and her staff, WiLS is planning to provide ILLiad training to members. They developed a proposal with various levels of assistance including point-of-need consulting, recorded best practices webcasts and user group meetings at the WLA and WAAL conferences. This was very well received by subscribers to the cuwltech list.
3. Webinars – Sue Dentinger did a nice webinar on March 10 on how to deal with the MetaLib monthly updates. Her PowerPoint slides are linked on the CUWL wiki at http://cuwlwiki.wetpaint.com/page/Assist+campuses+with+automation+needs
General Records Schedule – Retention of Server Files - campuses have made little progress in determining their Voyager data retention schedules. The LTCC agreed that it would be helpful for the first campus to make a decision to share their schedule with the others. This might prompt others and make it easier for them to come up with their own schedules.
As for ILLiad, a major slowdown on the server prompted campuses to quickly determine their retention periods for ILLiad data. Atlas offered to assist the campuses with cleaning up the data in all of our tables because when one of the campuses attempts to do this on their own, it brings the server to a crawl and ILLiad processing effectively ceases. Atlas has been working over the last month to clean up tables during off-peak hours, based on the retention periods we all provided.
D2L and Library Integration – There are not enough resources to either implement a solution for multiple campuses or even do further research and development on this issue. A few directors commented after the last CUWL meeting that they felt this objective could be dropped. We won’t be doing any further work on this. The wiki will be updated to provide information on LibGuides (a popular alternative for many campuses) and a description of Oshkosh’s implementation of library course pages using LAMP tools.
Library Management System Exploratory Task Force – see separate report.
Submitted by Marlys Brunsting, LTCC Chair
April 27, 2009
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), Deb Nordgren (CUWL), Lisa Jewell (UWSA)