University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions
Acquisitions/Serials Task Group
Friday, April 13, 2007
9:00 – 11:15 am
The group welcomed Angie Ohler, the new Head of Acquisitions at UMCP.
The ITD report was given by Yalan Qi:
Jean Phillips’ resignation was announced
The Aleph version 18 client has been released to all expert testers
“Expert” testing will take place from April 16 to 29. A report with comments on the testing is due to the AV18 Task Group on April 30
ITD priority is implementation of Version 18
AV18 charge – OK. Task Group members are responsible for testing and may ask for help to test various aspects of acquisitions and serials functionality. Comments, questions, and problems discovered during testing should be reported to a member of the task group who, in turn, will submit the appropriate Aleph version 18 Rx
Before submitting an Rx, task group members should make sure i) that an Rx has not already been submitted detailing the problem and ii) that the problem can be replicated.
A testing check-list for Acquisitions Serials was distributed and posted to the Acquisitions Serials Community web site. For information about the features of Version 18, including release notes see: http://usmai.umd.edu/seracq/av18.html.
The next meeting of the task group will be Thursday, April 26, 2007 at 2pm at Bowie. This meeting will be used, if necessary, to finalize the task group’s report on testing Aleph version 18. If the results of testing are straightforward, there may be no need for the meeting, in which case it will be cancelled.
General testing for version 18 begins May 14. The task group is planning a meeting on Monday, May 14 at UMCP from 10 until noon to introduce the version 18 client to staff in all libraries with responsibilities for acquisitions and serials. Details about that meeting will be forthcoming.
Yalan provided a detailed and very helpful overview of the version 18 client. There are a few new features but by and large there are not a great many changes from the version 16 client with which we are familiar.
Although implementation of Aleph version 18 is the top priority for staff at ITD there will, from time to time, be requests for other services. The members of the task group went on record to support Yalan in the performance of her duties and to defer to her judgment which tasks are essential and which may be postponed or temporarily delayed.