InterLibrary Loan:

• In July Salisbury was brought up in ILLiad while Eastern Shore, Frostburg and CES were brought up in August. A total of 5 USMAI sites are now live with ILLiad.
• Progress has been made with populating user data from Aleph into ILLiad on new user registrations. This is being done within our patron authentication framework (Shibboleth).
• Worked on converting Eastern Shore's users from their old Illiad site hosted by Atlas Systems to the consortial site.
• A solution was created to block patrons from ILLiad functionality by Aleph borrower status and expiration date. Successfully tested with Frostburg.
• Updated caching options to re-authorize user when browsing back (hitting the browser back button).

Aleph Outage:

• We had our worst Aleph disaster on August 15, 16 and 17th. There was almost a perfect storm of problems that occured. Believe it or not it could have been worse. We have written a full report with many of the gory details.
• Followup work continues. We are making adjustments to our procedures and investigating ways to minimize the chance of this confluence of events re-occuring.

Authorities in Aleph:

• After testing in the test environment loaded all updated bibliographic records in live.
• Reindexed in live using parallel indexing.
• Reload of LTI sample records in special authorities test database to facilitate UITG work on PAC.
• Authorities in the PAC: Prepared a "guided discussion" to gather ideas and opinions on the presentation of authorities info in the PAC. Invited participants to review examples from other Aleph PACs and give feedback. Notes from the discussion will be added to the UITG wiki. The discussion will be continued as an agenda item for the August 8 and September 4 UITG meetings.
• Joint meeting of the Authorities task group and the USMAI Cataloging Policy Committee (CPC), August 8. Results of "Guided Discussion" presented as well as solicited additional input from the UITG members and their constituencies.
• UITG Authorities in the catalog wiki page updated with notes from discussions and a link to a test catalog environment with authorities in PAC.
• Worked on setup in live of files for Authority record load.

Research Port/Find It:

• See changes to Find It menu described above.
• Set up utility to keep My Database sets up to date when a resource changes vendors. All My Database sets were updated with July 2007 vendor changes.
• Updated Research Port and EZ Proxy with database changes for FY07 renewals for USMAI and MDL. Set up links in Research Port for new databases and continued troubleshooting with problem subscriptions.
• Activated new SFX targets available with FY07 renewals.
• Set up linking to consortial ILLiad from Find It for FS, CE, and ES.
• Made progress on making Find It menu in the Research Port version of the catalog (such as seen in Quick Search) have the same options as Find It does in the OPAC.

User Interface Improvements:

• Released revisions to Find It menu on live server on July 24th. These changes were recommended by UITG, consulting with RSTG, ERIC, and the COI's. The changes included wording and formatting improvements, changes to the logic behind display of ILL and Request in the Find It menu in the catalog, and display of 856 URLs from netlibrary and GPO documents.
• Placed new Find It button in live Research Port and Catalog and working with database vendors to update button in their interfaces.
• Notified all COIs regarding reindexing of TEST catalog, highlighting in particular the redefinition of the JOURNALS subset in the catalog; asked for review and feedback before reindexing of the live catalog.

Electronic Resource Management (Verde):

• Consulting with Ex Libris on installation of Verde version 2.0 on production server, conversion of data from 1.1 on test server, and set up of instances for BC and ML on both servers.
• Set up a wiki for the ERM Task Group
• Received web-based training from Ex Libris on new features of version 2,0, including consortial functionality and definition of user roles and workflows.

Aleph:

• Patron Load Automation: the first round of testing of automation scripts for patron loader has been completed. The file requirements have been specified to the campus for daily patron file transfer.
• The Security Subgroup met and tested reported issues regarding x-proxy user proxy; did some fix and extended campus testing for two more weeks (by August 25), no feedback or comments from any campuses; the Subgroup worked on documentation on circ and cat user permission levels; worked with Jacquie O'keefe, modified all user request forms and updated web documents; hope to implement x-proxy users in live by the end of September
• updated version of the "find it" button moved into the live PAC
• new sublibrary UMUC Dorsey Station added to live catalog along with new collection codes
• Completed the PAC work related to the revision of the scope of the JOURNALS catalog, which became effective when the reindexing process was completed in early August
• Cat Express for CE - four files were retrieved and loaded into Aleph MAI/test and live; next load will be in the fall of 2006; working with Palinet to set up automated process via FTP.
• Autographics and UMC99 project - completed data extraction for the entire autographics/UMC99 records (CP and SM); files delivered to OCLC; report produced for SM for items with MI or WI status.
• Aleph year end closeout process - processed for SU and SM.
• In preparation for Authority work the test database was refreshed with data from the live database.
• EDI invoice loader modified to take work with persistent identifier that EBSCO now provides.

Authentication:

• Implemented diagnostic page for diagnosing login problems (thanks to Justin Grimes, a Grad. Asst. on the Econtent Team in ITD).
• Upgraded attribtues in Shibboleth, so our implementation now conforms to InCommon standards.

EDI Ordering:

• EDI ordering with BBS CM - CP is live with CM EDI ordering; worked out issues with BBS regarding vendor note and library note in the EDI data transmission.
• EDI ordering with BBS CM meeting called with BC, TU, and ES, detailed process steps and setup requirements for their readiness with BBS EDI ordering; campuses need to determine their workflow, work on loader specifications and BBS profile.

Personnel:

• Laura Arnhold started working on 8/22 as a graduate assistant. Laura will work in USMAI web and administrative duties as well as assisting in technical support. Laura will also be assisting the E-content staff in usability testing.
• Search Committee (Systems Librarian's position) - selected and conducted two phone interviews and made arrangements for two on-site interviews
• E-Content Team graduate assistant Mark Gallagher has received training in e-resource troubleshooting and setting up and configuring Research Port and SFX resources. GA Rhett McCarty will be joining the E-Content Team in September.
• ILS GA Tim Clarke received training in ad hoc reports production and RxWeb and catalog support.

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