Coordinating Committees
Progress Report to CUWL – February 2, 2009
Library Technology Coordinating Committee
The committee met jointly with the library automation managers (LAMs) and the SFX/MetaLib/Voyager Hub administrator, Brian Wilson, on January 12 in Stevens Point.
Voyager Upgrade - Madison is looking at an upgrade in August to Voyager 7. The hub needs to get dates scheduled. Maureen Olle-LaJoie (River Falls), Hub/LAMs chair, will contact LAMs and Lisa Jewell to set this up. Eau Claire and Stout will likely be the first ones to upgrade on the hub, due to their need to be up and running in time for their textbook rental programs. Upgrades are not included in the contract. Brian Wilson “guesstimated” $1000/campus. Maureen attended 2.5 day training from Ex Libris to learn how to customize the new OPAC in version 7. She felt this was extremely helpful because with version 7 the OPAC will be totally redesigned and all customizations will have to be done in a different way. She will be on leave during the upgrade so she would like to have the preview server setup by Brian so that all the customizations will be ready to go before she leaves. She highly recommends the training to other LAMs. Although she is willing to share her binder of documentation, it would be far more effective it we could get a trainer from Ex Libris to come to Wisconsin for 1-2 days of training. Maureen will ask Lisa to investigate this possibility with Ex Libris.
Assisting Other Campuses With Automation Needs - the LAMs meeting and prior phone and email discussions strongly indicate the need for training for library staff throughout UWS. Several LAMs are new to the role and staffing changes at the campuses mean new people are functioning in roles for which they don’t have adequate training. A need for SFX training is particularly important, as is training for Voyager 7 customizations of the OPAC. LAMs also expressed interest in other training: ILLiad refresher, MetaLib, and basic server maintenance. Ex Libris offers six one-hour SFX webinars for $1500 per institution (up to 6 staff people). Can we count our consortium as one institution? Is there System money for this? They also offer 7 MetaLib webinars for $2500/institution or $500 for each session. Maureen will contact Lisa to see if Ex Libris can send a trainer to Wisconsin. It would be helpful is we could have 2-3 days of training that includes SFX, Voyager 7 and MetaLib. Perhaps we could open this up to other libraries in the area in order to save costs. In the meantime, we will continue to pursue a SFX webinar with Wisconsin librarians. If participants still feel a need for further training, we would like to pursue options with Ex Libris, if possible.
Library Management System Exploratory Task Force - Marlys and Jon Mark Bolthouse (Colleges) will co-chair this committee. They discussed a basic plan for proceeding and this will be presented for discussion on the next conference call.
D2L and Library Integration - Jon Mark Bolthouse has called the people who setup the Colleges model, but they have not returned his calls. Barbara Fahey (Oshkosh) shared a handout describing the library course pages that are under development at Oshkosh. Their programmer (Maccabee Levine) is using the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) set of tools. This application is similar to the Colleges model, but uses LAMP instead of Windows. Although Maccabee is willing to share the code, not all campuses will be able to use it because they don’t have LAMP tools. Several LAMs mentioned that they are using LibGuides, a commercial product that creates subject web pages quickly and easily (see Stout’s at http://libguides.uwstout.edu/#census). Instructors can link to these guides from within D2L, but this is not an automated way of populating D2L course pages with library resources specific to a course or discipline. LibGuides and similar products are helpful in assisting students identify appropriate resources, but they do not fully satisfy the goal of the D2L/Library Integration Task Force Final Report.
The development of a solution that will work for all campuses is stalled at this point. The environments at the campuses are not at all standardized (library staffing, programmer assistance, technical tool limitations, hooks to the campus registration system), which makes implementing one system, even for a handful of campuses, very difficult. There are not enough resources to either implement a solution for multiple campuses or even do further research and development on this issue. Further direction from CUWL is desired at this point.
General Records Schedule - Retention of Server Files - Brian said he is prepared to setup server jobs to automatically purge files per instructions from the campuses, but there is other data in Voyager that he can’t purge without voiding our warranty. This would include patron-item historical transactions. Some campuses retain this information and others don’t. One of the recent Voyager upgrades allows libraries to retain a specified number of patron-item transactions but deletes older ones. If libraries have older data in their tables that they want purged, they must contact Ex Libris (and pay a fee) to remove that data. There is there is no deadline from Brian regarding notifying him of files and retention schedules. Someone indicated the version of the general records schedule online now is not the final version, so we are waiting for that, and for approval from CUWL. We are waiting to hear from Lisa about whether or not we have the ability to purge patron-item data on the ILLiad server. Some campuses want to keep more ILL data for reporting and copyright reasons.
Simulsearch Types - the LAMs discussed the recommendation of the UB Working Group to standardize the simultaneous searching search types in Voyager. The consensus was to maintain the Basic Search simulsearch types because they match the local single-search types more closely. Standardizing the searches on the Basic Search screen was not deemed to be desirable because students do not (or rarely) use a different library catalog to perform searches--i.e., they will not even notice there is a difference between campuses. LAMs did agree, however, that the Advanced Search search types are a mess and should be cleaned up. Standardizing the names of the searches and the fields that they search is do-able to some extent and will reduce most of the duplication on that screen. LAMs will go back to their campuses and consult with staff to see first if some of the searches can be eliminated altogether and second, if others can be standardized.
Basic Search search types (Green Bay):
Advanced Search search types:
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), Deb Nordgren (CUWL), Lisa Jewell (UWSA)