Meeting Minutes for the User Interface Task Group
September 2, 2008: 10-12
HSHSL in Baltimore, MD, Family Room

Present: Cindy Todd (UMCP), Susan Wheeler (UB), Heidi Hanson (ITD), Janet Evander (ITD), Laura Wrubel (ITD), Tierney Lyons (HSHSL), Linda Seguin (UMBC), Lenore England (UMUC), Sean Henry (FSU) note taker)

1) Topic: ERM Task Group Question re Licensing Fields.
Laura presented the draft list of licensing fields that the ERM Task Group is working on to provide access to license permissions for user and staff views respectively, via the SFX menu. The ERM TG requested UITG's comments on the draft list.

• Laura explained that the licensing fields would be populated manually through the SFX form interface; Nathan Robertson is working on a database for that.
• There was much group discussion of the public licensing field "Sharing with a colleague at another institution." How would users interpret this?
• Linda recommended that the staff-only licensing field "remote access" be a public field. This opened up discussion about the difference between the "remote access" and "distance education" licensing fields. Laura explained that the public "distance education" field would only appear on the condition that the item already meets the "remote access" licensing permission.
• Cindy commented that the wording for the "authorized users" field would have to be chosen carefully, considering the different definitions of authorized user populations across the consortium (e.g., some libraries include emeriti, etc., as authorized users).
• Laura described how the terms and conditions would display in SFX test: Clicking on "Show terms and conditions for full text" would explode vendor menu to display link to terms and conditions. The staff view would have additional links to vendor license PDFs, which would be passworded at this point.
• The group agreed on the following menu order of licensing fields for public view:
  1. Authorized users
  2. Concurrent users
  3. Remote access
  4. Printing note
  5. Downloads and digital copies note
  6. Sharing with a colleague at another institution

Outcome: Laura will take the UITG comments about the draft list of licensing fields back to the ERM Task Group, who will share them again with the UITG after they are further developed.

2) Topic: RSS feeds in ALEPH 18
Linda had forwarded an email to the UITG on August 19 from TU expressing interest in RSS feeds from ALEPH 18. Heidi reported on initial steps that would be necessary to implement this feature in the OPAC:

• RSS with SDI
  • The SDI mechanism would have to be switched on for the OPAC
  • Additional tables or table fields may be necessary, as well as a BLOB object with XML
  • The My Account screen would need to be changed in order to allowing users to set up SDI profiles
  • SDI notifications can be configured as emails or RSS feeds
• RSS and OpenSearch
  • A9.com has OpenSearch protocol compatible with ALEPH
  • Users could potentially generate customized OPAC XML RSS feeds with customized search queries through A9
  • Using A9 OpenSearch with the OPAC may require considerable configuration

Heidi will look more into the feasibility of these options to see how hard (or easy) RSS feeds with XML would be to achieve in the system. She showed how the Curtin University of Technology Library in Australia uses SDI RSS feeds for new titles from their ALEPH catalog: http://library.curtin.edu.au/services/services_for_groups/catalogue_rss_feeds.html

Outcome: The group decided that RSS feeds would be of interest to library users, but that it is not a high priority issue at this time. Nevertheless, there will be a "placeholder" for RSS feeds on the UITG workplan if there is enough interest to pursue it further.

3) Topic: Auto-complete function in the A-Z journal lists
Susan shared information about the auto-complete function for the A-Z journal lists on the UB library home page by the Systems Librarian, who thinks it may be easy to set up in SFX. Do we want ITD to investigate?

Laura responded that SFX already has an auto-complete option for the A-Z journal list and showed how the Library at Kansas State uses it: http://getit.lib.ksu.edu/sfxlcl3/az/default. Laura expressed caution with this feature since she was not sure if it limited the auto-complete titles to just the campus library's collection or would display titles for the whole consortium. She said that adding auto-complete back into SFX might not be very difficult.

Outcome: After Laura gets a sense of what is involved, she will set up auto-complete option for the A-Z journal list in a test environment.

4) Topic: Staggered terms of office for UITG members
Cindy, following her email correspondence with Celia Rabinowitz of CLD, brought up the need for us to set up "terms" of office for UITG members (ITD staff in UITG remain permanent UITG members).

Outcome: Members present at the meeting agreed to step down at the following times:

Cindy and Susan will start process to draft text to CLD requesting two new members.

5) Topic: Remaining error messages on wiki
Susan revisited remaining error messages on the UITG wiki for a status report and next steps. These are at: http://www.itd.umd.edu/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=UserInterface.ErrorMessages.

• Item 6- "no request permission in the ADM library" wording for patrons trying to request materials via PPH with expired barcodes: Heidi reported that this error should have been resolved. However, after the meeting, Susan checked and the "No request permission in the ADM library" error message had not changed in the live OPAC.
• Item 2- 856 fields indicating links for internet access are displayed inconsistently between brief and full record screens. The full view indicates when the 856-field internet link is a table of contents, but the brief view does not. Can they be made consistent? Heidi does not think this discrepancy between the internet link in brief and full views can be resolved, but will revisit this Rx and give an update later.
• Item 3: The wording "A maximum of 5000 records can be displayed and sorted." Heidi was not sure if this was a big priority, and has not worked on it yet. Linda agreed that it was not as big as a priority as other error messages.
• Item 4- Context-sensitive help on the advanced search screen "browse search": This would make it consistent with the basic search screen, but Janet pointed out that it would also crowd the advanced screen interface. This was not identified as a high priority.
• Item 5- Wording for unsuccessful renewal requests: Cindy suggested tabling this item until we begin work on the renew/all feature listed on the current work plan.

Pending Topics
Authorities in the Catalog and the Renew/All feature will be on the agenda for the October meeting. Linda Seguin will demonstrate how authorities add value to the user experience and asked UITG members to review decision points about authorities in the catalog linked in the wiki: http://www.itd.umd.edu/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=UserInterface.AuthoritiesInPAC

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