University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions
USMAI Guidelines for How We Work
ITD
April 22, 2005
The plan orders things by Fiscal Year, not Calendar Year.
Investigations into non–existent EL modules are not a productive use of time. EL has a history of announcing products before they are being programmed and changing fundamental designs and project scopes frequently (e.g., Booking, E–reserves, ILL, etc.).
The plan is an evolving document to be reviewed by CLD at least once per year.
ITD needs to balance upgrade work, development effort, and responding to web reports, and requests.
Functionality that begins with a small number of campuses must be completed prior to beginning work with other campuses for the same functionality.
Shibboleth activities are campus level and system level projects. The libraries' primary connection to these activities is through ITD, currently Tom. ITD must be involved as the USMAI systems and services will require integration.
Nearly all consortial activity will involve some portion of ITD. Delegating projects out to task groups, particular campuses, and/or outsourced contracts neither obviates the need for ITD involvement, nor eliminates time investments of ITD staff.
The plan and more detailed related project documents will track progress on each item.
Level of customization: It is important that we have a shared understanding that the more we customize a service, the longer it takes to bring it to fruition. Thus, the need for a highly customized solution must be weighed against the time it will take to provide any service to our users. Functionality is key; perfection is not the goal. It is also increasingly important that we make services available to users for their review and comment earlier in the design process so that we can accommodate what works for them.
Identity management, authentication, and authorization: These issues are of increasing importance for the services we offer and the way we do business. Most of the USM campuses already have, or soon will have, some form of network–based institutional identity management. In the long–term the participating libraries will need to tap into this effort and reduce the amount of duplicative identity management effort we perform (i.e., through the maintenance of a patron database). We will most likely need to maintain the transaction databases we use (e.g., circulating items, "my account" features, ILL records, etc.), but we must integrate with our parent institutions. In the meantime, we will continue to pursue activities such as patron loaders in order to maintain current services.
Administrative systems interface development (e.g., PeopleSoft): ITD will continue to work with campus Information Technology staffs to affect the necessary information exchanges for the libraries to do business regardless of the system used. These activities are a partnership among the library, the campus IT people, and ITD. All partners must commit to the process in order to achieve the desired outcome.