Coordinating Committees
Library Technology Coordinating Committee
Conference Call - April 14, 2009
Minutes
Present: Bolthouse, Brunsting, Knight, Lundquist, Muraski, Musselman, Nordgren, Olle-LaJoie
Absent: Doering, Lowrey, Jewell
1. Voyager Upgrade – dates, preview server – Maureen has asked Brian Wilson about setting up the preview server. Brian said he will have it up early this week. Maureen or Marlys will follow-up with Brian. Marlys will follow-up with Lisa about upgrade dates.
2. SFX/MetaLib/Voyager training via Ex Libris – Ex Libris wants another conference call to discuss our needs. This is scheduled for Wednesday morning with Lisa, Maureen and Marlys.
3. Voyager OPAC counts – Marlys will follow-up with Lisa.
4. Metalib X-server – several people have looked at various implementations. Jon Mark has setup a test account but can’t tell how easy it is to set up. Additional advantages to X-server were mentioned (in addition to an improved MetaLib interface). It integrates with LibGuides in that it facilitates linking into MetaLib in order to populate subject categories. It "could" also be used to create customized subject lists for Madison’s portal and therefore may be useful for resource discovery. It also has been used to improve the SFX menu. The ability to decouple the data from the interface is very appealing. Others have reported on the mailing lists that X-server can be used to fix searching problems reported with JSTOR and ProQuest. Madison's Shared Development Group is focused on initial phases of resource discovery such as investigation of VuFind and Blacklight indexing, data management, interfaces, etc. so may not be able to commit to X-server development in the near future. They see it as something of definite interest for later phases of resource discovery to better integrate journal and database access. Marlys will contact Lisa about the timing of a System purchase of a license. Summer would be the best time for most campuses to work on this. Oshkosh has a new staff member with a lot of programming and technical background (Maccabee Levine) who might be very helpful with this if Oshkosh has any plans to use X-server. Maureen will setup a LAMs conference call in the next several weeks and invite him to join us for a discussion of X-server and VUFind (Oshkosh is working on an implementation of VUFind).
5. ERM Task Force update – Sharon reported that the group surveyed 35 people (22 responses) about their needs for an ERM system. It was difficult to draw conclusions, however. They also did research on various products and vendors. They will obtain some price information from several of the vendors and submit a report to CUWL in May. Mitch asked about the future of Verde and Maureen said that Ex Libris will still support it, but only with bug fixes. It will eventually be replaced with ERM v 1.0, expected to be released later now, in 2012. IeGLU and ELUNA groups have expressed their concerns with the timeline and are waiting for a response from Ex Libris.
6. Voyager Simulsearch Types – Maureen received responses from about half of the campuses regarding the search definitions currently in use. After she hears from the rest of the campuses, she will compile the results and we will try to reach a consensus on how the searches are defined. If we can reach an agreement, we will be able to eliminate the duplication of search types on the Advanced search tab in Voyager.
7. Suggestions for Breakout Sessions and Roundtables for summer conference – Mitch and Steve Frye will talk to Marshall Breeding on Friday to nail down the focus of his keynote and breakout sessions. The keynote will likely be more general and relate to resource discovery. The breakout will be more technical, perhaps covering implementation and integration of hosted vs non-hosted data. Other possible breakout sessions suggested were: a) Oshkosh’s library course pages (Maccabee Levine), b) gadget sharing and how to put them to good use (e.g. flip cameras, iPods, Kindle, Twitter) – Jon Mark volunteered to moderate, c) an update from the ERM task force, depending on CUWL’s response to their report. Possible roundtable sessions: a) developers talking about their work on resource discovery tools or other projects, b) Library Management System task force – update on their process and the research done on various products.
8. Resource Discovery Task Force update - Mitch has asked the Madison developers to pull a subset of all of our data, not just Madison’s. Although we don’t have a union catalog, we might be able to have a union index. VUFind can pull data from various sources and present it in a unified interface for all of us.
9. Other business – we will try to meet via conference call next week to discuss the library management system issues in more depth.