SUNYConnect Advisory Council

  Minutes

January 18, 2006

 

 

Present:            Randy Gadikian, Carey Hatch, Janet Potter, Steve Roberts, Judy Sikora, Nancy VanDeusen, Rick Winant, Maureen Zajkowski, Don Boyce, Connie Perrin (Staff)

 

Excused:           John Homburger, Walter Lukhaup, Dave Ritchie

 

Approval of Minutes

The minutes of the meeting of December 14, 2005 were approved as distributed.

 

Aleph 500 LMS Update

Maureen provided the following LMS update:

 

Implementations

  • SUNYIT (INS), Mohawk Valley Community College (MVC), Brockport (BRO) and Niagara (NIA) are now in production with Aleph.
  • INS and MVC will move to Ex Libris support with the next few days.
  • The switch to production for Empire (ESC) and North Country (NOR) are still scheduled for February.
  • ESC and NOR have received test data loads for review.
  • University at Buffalo (BUF) - the production server has been installed.  A full data extract has been taken from NOTIS.  This will be the 2nd test load.  It is expected to begin this week.  This complete load and index may take 3-6 weeks.

 

Version 16 Upgrade

  • The schedule has been distributed to SUNYLMS and the SCLD lists.
  • There have been bi-weekly meetings among Maggie, Karen and Natalie to discuss v16 SUNY standards to ensure a level of consistency between Group9 and the v14-v16 upgrades.  These discussions will continue at a meeting on January 17 at OLIS with Natalie, Maggie, Karen and Laura.

 

Union Catalog

·        Stony Brook (STB) migrated to v17 at the end of December 2005.  There have been problems with the v17 batch updates loads in the Union Catalog.  Investigation and testing is underway.

·        Ex Libris has been working on the capability to automatically update the Union Catalog when an update occurs in the local catalog.  A test version is in place on a test campus on the Hudson server and with the DEV region of the Union Catalog.  The part which is not currently in place is the deletion of a Union Catalog record when the record is deleted on the local server.  This feature will need more testing before determining a broader implementation.

·        A new book list from the Union Catalog has been created.  The report will be updated on a bi-weekly basis.  It can be found at http://union.sunyconnect.suny.edu:8080/suny_new_book.html

·        Collection analysis - preliminary work on creating reports from the Union Catalog data to determine the amount of overlap and uniqueness within the SUNY collections.

·        Conversations have been held with Bowker regarding SUNY-wide pricing of Snydetic Solutions.  Other products such as Baker and Taylor's "Content Cafe" also exist.  However, Ex Libris has said that Aleph works only with Syndetic Solutions.

 

Proof of Concept - Under Review

·        searching Union Catalog from within a local campus WebOPAC

·        ability to create a local campus ILL request populated with bibliographic data from the Union Catalog

·        ability to generate ISO ILL requests from the Union Catalog (or other systems) to OCLC;  part of the process would use X services to check requests against the Union Catalog and campus systems to see if campuses own the requested item and then check on item availability, item status and status of the patron

·        links from Union Catalog to SUNYConnect electronic databases with links back to the Union Catalog

·        Review of federated searching tools such as:

o       AquaBrowser (TLC) - http://www.tlcarl.com/tlc/aquabrowser.asp

o       PRIMO (Ex Libris)- to be demonstrated at the January 24 and 25 LASSSI meeting

o       reSearcher (open source) - http://researcher.sfu.ca/index.php/plain

 

LAND Delivery

Carey said he is in the process of gathering as many LAND Delivery statistics as possible with respect to campus use and performance.  Nylink has set up a Zoomerang site to acquire information pertaining to campus experiences.  Carey discussed some of the more serious problems with pick-ups and deliveries.  He stated that UPS might cost about the same as LAND.  The LAND contract concludes at the end of 2006.

 

ILL Meeting Scheduled for February 8 and 9 in Syracuse

 

SAC agreed that the goal of this meeting is to draft a set of performance levels across the SUNY campuses that could be phased in over a period of time.  Since performance standards already exist for some groups such as Empire Express and the IDS Project, this meeting would define goals for the service expectations among groups within SUNY.  At the last SAC meeting, it was discussed that representatives from all the university centers and the four year colleges would attend along with some representatives from the community colleges.  During a SAC conference call on 1/10, however, participants discussed the advantages of having a smaller group meet initially.  The recommendations of this smaller group would then be submitted to SAC, SCLD and SUNYLA for review.   SAC decided the following number of representatives should be invited:             

  • Four year colleges:  4 reps
  • University Centers:  4 reps
  • Medical colleges:  1 rep
  • Technical colleges:  1 rep
  • Community colleges:  2 attendees

 

In general the overall goal of the meeting is to identify performance goals that would enable campuses to move forward with keeping in mind that service to patrons is the key component. 

Discussion points:

  • develop 3 or 4 levels of performance
  • process to follow among campuses
  • performance standards - number of days among levels
  • need to be realistic for performance standards

 

It was recommended that this group also give input on how they might like to see data collected for collection development and performance.  Currently, OCLC provides ILL transaction data for each campus and the IDS project tracks their ILLIAD transactions.  Questions and comments:

  • all University Centers and IDS colleges use ILLIAD (represents 90% of SUNY OCLC ILL users) – possible to pool ILLIAD transaction data?
  • Nylink will create a SUNY view of OCLC transactions
  • need SUNY-wide view of strengths and weaknesses

           

Preparations for the meeting:

·        by January 24, deadline for feedback on attendees

·        develop charge for meeting

·        prepare preliminary reports on University Centers and Colleges OCLC ILL transactions

 

Follow-up to meeting:

  • send recommendations from the meeting to SCLD and SUNYLA for comment

 

Ongoing budget considerations:

  • SUNY structure is to serve campuses, not the university – can a different funding structure be developed?
  • SUNYConnect – budget for support of ILL data gathering?
  • IDS was funded $30,000 over 3 years (mostly for training) through SUNYConnect as well as Geneseo contributions in hardware and staff resources - what is the future of this funding model?
  • LAND delivery costs - investigate other delivery services?
  • Storage (capital only, not staff?)

 

SUNYConnect II Strategic Directions

 

Strategic Direction 1 - SUNY Library Systems (Shared Services and Infrastructure)

  • Members decided that a group should be formed to look at the future of shared services.
  • Carey and Maureen would develop possible models for providing Aleph managed support services for a panel discussion at the SCLD Annual Conference in April.
  • Carey stated that this strategic direction will require a funding proposal.  A meeting of the SAC Finance Committee will therefore be scheduled.

 

Strategic Direction 2 – SUNY-wide Collaborative Collections and Access Management

  • Members of the E-Resources Evaluation Project Team, chaired by John Schumacher, have been identified and the charge has been written.
  • At a previous meeting, SAC discussed the use of $200,000 of capital funds over a two year trial to aid in the acquisition of materials requested by patrons through ILL that were not already owned in any SUNY collection.  As a follow-up to this discussion SAC decided to form a short term Task Force with representatives from the Collections Council and other library sector representatives to determine filters for purchasing monographs and to work on collection development tools.  They will concentrate on determining how the money is used and from whom the purchases are made in addition to how the items are ordered, delivered, processed and stored.

 

Strategic Direction 3 - SUNY-wide Digital Library

  • In November, Rick and Dave developed the following definition of a SUNY Digital Library from a library service organization/management perspective:

 

The SUNY Digital Library

§         Will be an independent library entity that is a seamless extension of the SUNY campus libraries.

§         Will provide students, faculty and staff with education about, as well as access to, information in electronic formats to support SUNY’s teaching, learning, research and clinical needs.

§         Will promote and facilitate the selection and creation of content, negotiation of contracts, and the collection development and management, organization, access, annotation and preservation of the University’s digitized library information.

 

Carey said he will build on this definition in order to put together a grant proposal.  Also, he plans to hold talks with UUP.  He recommended that the Digital Library Initiative, which is presently an informal group, be made more formal by adding a CIO and other representatives.

 

Next Meeting

The next SAC meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, February 15 in Albany (Room S137).

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

Nancy Van Deusen, Secretary

Draft prepared by Connie Perrin (Staff)