E-Resources in the Catalog (ERIC):

• Preparation for presentation on ERIC II/SFX in catalog at ELUNA
• Review of existing URLs for possible cleanup. The Group is proposing that we delete URLs for items in SFX, on serial records only. Access is provided for these items via the FindIt menu.

Inter Library Loan:

• We continue to work to solve the technical challenges of running ILLiad across different campuses. Our latest brainstorm is to run our own VPN server (virtual private network). We are testing this possibility.

Authentication:

• Adjustments to login page (shibboleth) post User Interface recommendations.
• Went live on new authentication framework, built on Shibboleth for ResearchPort, FindIt and EzProxy on April 20th. We had a few short-term glitches, but all seems to be working smoothly. If users log into ResearchPort they will not need to log in a second time when they choose an entry on the FindIt menu. Less information about the user is being sent back and forth also.
• Dave Kennedy was asked to speak to the ITCC concerning the Libraries' Shibboleth work. A couple of campuses are moving toward their own implementation of Shibboleth.
• We made improvements in ResearchPort authentication so that a changed barcode number in Aleph does not cause problems in accessing My ResearchPort accounts. This change should not be noticable to patrons, but the barcode will no longer be the link between ResearchPort and the Aleph patron file.

User Interface Improvements:

• Adjustments to login page based on input from User Interface.
• Laura: submitted article on usability testing SFX in catalog to SMUG-4-Newsletter.
• Continuing UITG work on addressing usability issues with catalog and Find It. This Task group is doing an excellent job of tracking changes on their wiki pages. Go to their wiki , choose the "Latest changes in the catalog" page.

Infrastructure:

• We had a cpu board go bad on the live Aleph server. The server handled this outage gracefully, but we will need to bring the server down to replace it.
• We are working on setting up a "failover" patron database to be used by Shibbolized services when Aleph is unavailable.

ResearchPort/FindIt:

• Registered 2 campuses SFX in Windows Academic Live.

Electronic Resource Management (Verde):

• Task group continued work on best practices for license interpretation.
• Betty: presentation on ERM in a consortial setting for the Council of Academic Library Directors.
• Planned to use the server bought for Data warehouse

Electronic Resource Subscriptions: Answered myriad questions from 50 MDL libraries as they prepared to submit their commitments by the end of the month.

Patron Loader/Email notices:

• We made some changes in the pre_processing to account for blank address types as well blank address lines. These changes have been moved into production.
• We are ready to move the CP faculty/staff/student loader into production on June 5th.
• CP overdue email notices have now been moved into production. Lost notices will be implemented next. We are getting positive feedback from CP faculty on the CP daily courtesy notices.
• We are working with CP Copy Center staff to move the production of these notices from the Aleph team to the Copy Center. Once we have the lost notices sent via email and we complete the setup of the folder/inserter machine for the paper notices we will be moving this work from the Aleph Team to Copy Center staff.

Aleph:

• Testing on the new bibliographic loader was completed, the new loader was installed in production.
• Added new collections for ES (ONLRE) and CPSG (JUV); deleted obsolete collection for CPMCK (REMAN).
• Suppressed tag 265 (source of address) from Full View of record (Rx #1840)
• Changed example search (contextual help) for Course reserves (Rx #463)
• Aleph Security - summarized survey results of needs for cross proxies (x-proxy) requests. Updated information on the Aleph Security website.

Authorities in Aleph:

• Review of the test records was completed.
• Worked on the extract program based on specifications prepared by the Task Group.
• Continued to analyze set up of Authorities, including Aleph parameter tables, OPAC screens, disk space, indexing/linking routines, etc. We will work on setting this up on the small set of test records, then when we get the files back from LTI we will set this up in the full test database.
• We will need to "refresh" the full MAI test database before this work.
• Began to work on internal timetable for Authorities implementation.
• Extract of entire database was completed on May 5th and sent to LTI (our vendor).
• Changes to bibliographic records are frozen, see the email sent out by the CPC for specifics.

EDI Ordering:

• BBS Collection Manager Testing - received and tested CP's test records, waiting for feedback from CP on loader report modification. Began investigation of subsequent programs that need to run after pre-order is loaded into the catalog.

College Park Project to Limit Use of SSN.

• New IDs have been issued to most students/staff/faculty on campus.
• They will not be activated until after midnight on May 27th (i.e. early hours of May 28th).
• Aleph will be down about 15 minutes that night so we can switch CP barcodes from the old to the new number.

Personnel:

• Jamie Bush was named the interim ILS applications manager. His duties will include Aleph and Illiad for the consortium. Jean Phillips will concentrate on backend technical support and development.

Meetings:

• Aleph Reports Forum was held, with representatives from most of campuses and ITD. We discussed how to better use existing reports and talked about reports that ITD does not already provide.
• Training - Yalan Qi and Heidi Hanson attended two days of Aleph tables training at Ex Libris, Chicago.

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