| USMAI Consortium of Libraries |
| University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions |
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
HSHSL, Family Room 6103
10:00 am-12:00 noon
Present: Lenore England, Janet Evander, Heidi Hanson, Sean Henry (recording), Tierney Lyons, Linda Seguin, Cindy Todd, Susan Wheeler, Laura Wrubel
Debra Berlanstein (HSHSL) attended the meeting as a guest.
Minutes of the January 9, 2007 meeting were approved.
Cindy reviewed the draft proposal that she and Marlene Vikor had put together for implementing New Titles in the live catalog in a beta environment.
Points discussed:
Heidi showed current screen updates for the New Titles Catalog in the UMBC test catalog iteration which reflects recommended changes discussed in the January meeting:
Discussion ensued about features at the bottom of the results page in the New Titles catalog. The group recommended deleting the “choose campus” menu but keeping the “revise your search in command language” box.
Other discussion involved adding a “what is this?” link to a help file for New Titles from the search screen. Heidi suggested a link for user feedback, and Janet Evander suggested that the feedback take shape as a mini survey form; Cindy contributed ideas for survey questions, and a rough survey draft was sketched out. It was agreed that feedback should be directed to the UITG reflector.
The group decided to add the “what is this” and “feedback” links next to the red New Titles heading near the top of the search screen and delete the text “advanced search” on that line since advanced search is the only option in New Titles. The group explored the possibility of adding an i-button symbol as link for “what is this,” but after some debate, concluded that a text link would be less confusing for users.
Janet will create a “beta” symbol for New Titles; Linda will write text describing the WNS and WNI command codes for the Tips screen; Heidi will make screen revisions based on discussion and draft a feedback survey screen.
Sean, co-chair of the AV18 Task Group, gave an update on AV18 work, which included forming an Expert Testing Group for PDQ, the new AV18 intra-consortia borrowing function that will replace PPH. Sean mentioned that AV18 will soon issue a charge to UITG to perform expert OPAC testing for the upgrade and to support PPH testing in the customized USMAI OPAC environment.
Sean showed the group highlights from the general ALEPH V17 and V18 Web OPAC release notes posted to the AV18 wiki. Heidi clarified which new functionalities would be relevant to our customized OPAC installation, noting that we were “ahead of the curve” and had already developed several of the new functionalities.
Release notes show many enhancements for “my Account” and the “basket,” which may require new screen designs and language. Janet mentioned that the AV18 upgrade may be a good opportunity to streamline screens, since users would expect change from the upgraded product. This sparked a short discussion about what the UITG as a group wants to achieve with catalog screens, and Susan Wheeler suggested developing a plan for this. Cindy suggested that any plan should balance our priorities and not forget Research Port development.
Heidi reported that work on implementation of authorities is ongoing (e.g., the Cataloging Policy Committee is working on cataloging practices, loader specifications, etc. vis-a-vis authorities); however it is not clear what priority is being assigned to authorities in the PAC, and it is not clear whether the switch to version 18 will include authorities in the PAC. Heidi will seek clarification of priorities from Jamie Bush and Carlen Ruschoff. [Update: from conversation with Jamie and email from Carlen, authorities in PAC will be implemented in version 18, but are not likely to be there on day 1 of version 18. -hh]
Heidi reported that OPAC statistics development is off the table for now, because the GTA who was working on that issue had left.
The E-Books limiter is now live, but it was noted that there hasn’t been much feedback yet.
| USMAI | ITD | Metalib/sfx | Aleph |
| © 2007 University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions. Privacy policy |