SUNYConnect Advisory Council

Minutes

June 14, 2006

Geneseo

 

Present: Rick Winant, Steve Roberts, Dave Ritchie, Randy Gadikian, Walter Lukhaup, Janet Potter, Nancy Van Deusen, Judy Sikora,Carey Hatch, Maureen Zajkowski  and new members Mary Beth Bell, Cerise Oberman, Lynne King

 

Chair elect Rick Winant called the meeting to order at 10:05 am

 

1.      Introductions were made.  New members were recognized: Mary Beth Bell, representing SCLD Executive Board, Lynne King representing Community Colleges, and Cerise Oberman, representing 4-year colleges.  Farewell and thanks to retiring members, Randy Gadikian, Judy Sikora, and Janet Potter.

 

2.      Approval of minutes.  After a clarification regarding responsibility of the OLIS office on the E-Resources team, the minutes of the May 17, 2006 meeting were approved.

 

3.      Aleph Union Catalog update:

 

Maureen provided the following update:

 

Implementations

·        University at Buffalo (BUF) - the production extracts have been pulled, the load has now begun, and BUF is on schedule for the July 17 STP. Circ training among all staff will begin next week. Tech services training has already begun based on the train the trainer model.  Those who were in the Ex Libris training are now participating in the wider training for staff who did not attend those earlier sessions.

 

Version 16 Upgrade Activities

·        19 campuses are now in production with v16

·        27 additional campuses have been notified that their v16 DEV regions are available

·        4 campuses - work is underway to develop their v16 DEV regions

·        WebOPAC customization:

o       28 campus WebOPACs have been completed

·        Aleph v14 to v16 training:

o       6 training sessions have been completed

o       4 additional training sessions are scheduled

·        Version 16 Upgrade support

o       Access to a GUI, to documentation, to web-based overview sessions, and more http://www.sunyconnect.suny.edu/aleph/v16upgrade.htm (login: aleph500/ aleph500)

 

Union Catalog Activities

·        Data loads

o       Group9 campus data has been loaded

o       60 campuses are now represented in the Union Catalog

o       University of Buffalo data will be added after they STP in July

 

Maureen reported that 60 of 61 campus catalogs are now in the Union Catalog.  The catalog from the University at Buffalo will be added after they switch to production, probably sometime in the fall.  The catalog currently contains 12.2 million bibliographic records, making it the second largest Aleph catalog in North America.  Buffalo will add another 2.5 million records.

 

Request items functionality has been turned on with a drop down to choose your campus.  The request then goes through the campus SFX server to ILLIAD or to the OCLC review file. Tompkins Cortland Community College is testing direct request functionality in this configuration

 

A problem with the match algorithm has been reported, uses the Aleph system number rather than the OCLC number.  This issue has been reported to Ex Libris and Atlas.

 

Carey reported that Syndetics can provide covers, table of contents, first chapters, etc to SUNY for $71,000 per year.  There is a survey which has received few responses.  OLIS is looking at Amazon services as a free alternative.  However concern was expressed about the political problem of advertising Amazon.  Carey will re-send the survey information and by conference call get a vote from SAC before the next meeting.

 

4.      E-Resources update

Ebsco provided 800 printed flyers; PDF flyers will be sent to all campuses for local printing.

Opposing Viewpoints will be purchased SUNY-wide as campuses who were willing to pay individually for this resource have resulted in more than enough money to pay for SUNY-wide licensing.  OLIS will work out the specific financial arrangements and will bill campuses.

Provost Salins has provided the money for 149 additional SUNY Press titles which will be loaded into D-Space.

There is now a website for Science Direct statistics.  OLIS will be meeting with the staff at UB to try to get a better handle on the actual Elsevier subscriptions purchased within SUNY (because Elsevier doesn’t do a good job.)

OLIS is investigating the load of SFX bibliographic records into the union catalog to provide serial records for materials in electronic databases.  This will be a separate collection in Aleph so that it can be purged and reloaded on a regular basis.  These will be loaded into individual catalogs on request.

The UUP grant is still in development.  OLIS is  working with UMI to get SUNY dissertations into our D-Space.  Steve Roberts indicated that we should already have them available and should not be paying additional money to UMI for them.  Steve will work with John Schumacher on this.  The UUP grant will also include streaming software and travel money.

 

5.      Strategic Directions.

A.     SUNY Borrowing

The SAC discussed the charge and added to the Phase 1 Deliverables:

Analyze the ILLiad GS system and full ILLiad and the applicability for smaller libraries

Analyze options for delivery tracking to include cost analysis of delivery and tracking methods

Recommend basic, simple load balancing strategy.

On motion by Dave Ritchie, seconded by Steve Roberts, the SUNYConnect Borrowing Task Force was approved as amended.

B.     Shared Systems

Ex Libris is looking at different system architecture to enhance system management within a consortial environment.  This will include a single bibliographic file and different ADM libraries for each campus.  Some Ex Libris clients already do this with each campus still doing their own cataloging.  Campus view is a subset of the union catalog.

During training for version 16 conversion, OLIS uncovered the extent to which campuses had not implemented some basic functions such as overdues.  The goal is to bring everyone to a base-line level of functionality, then look at the different architecture starting in December.

Carey moved and Janet seconded the creation of a single group to work with OLIS/SAC on Aleph shared system services as outlined in the document titled: Creation of the Task Force on Aleph Shared Services dated 6/12/ 06.   This was approved.

C.    Business Plan for Electronic Collections

Rick provided a draft for discussion.  Discussion included the following points:

·        the Chancellor wants 3 options

·        need comparisons with other big state systems

·        we need a big hook/vision

·        need the Presidents on board

·        need snippets from campuses/faculty

·        indicate willingness of campuses to match, at least some portion

·        need clearer description of what will be funded

 

Rick will work with Steve, Cerise and Dave to revise the document to include:

·        Vision

·        Snippets from the campuses

·        Money to get content

·        Description of money already saved

·        Research/education needs

·        Cost containment/leveraging money already spent

 

The revision will be out within 2 weeks.

6.      Election of Officers

Lynne King was elected chair elect

Nancy Van Deusen was elected secretary

     

7.      New Business

Meeting dates for 06-07 (decided to meet on middle THURSDAYs rather than Wednesdays)

            September 14           Albany

            October 12                 Syracuse

            November 16 Albany

            December 14            Syracuse

 

Recommend a joint meeting with the SCLD Executive Board when we have the Business Plan.  Still need a checklist of talking points for Directors to take to their Presidents. Need to get UUP and Faculty Senate on board.

 

            SAC Friend of SUNYLA award includes $500.  SAC agrees to use this for a seminar on “The Future of the Book.”

 

Respectfully submitted

 

Nancy Van Deusen,

SAC Secretary