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LOCKSS & Portico

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Evolution or Devolution?

Ex Libris Acquires Endeavor

SUNYConnect Updates

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Union Catalog
Another milestone was reached this past November. The University at Buffalo catalog was added to the SUNYConnect union catalog. Procedures for updating UB's portion of the union catalog are in place.

The union catalog now represents library holdings of 61 institutions, over 12 million records, and 6 million unique
titles. Find it at http://union.sunyconnect.suny.edu:8080/F

Task Forces
The Borrowing Task Force recommendations include:

• Negotiate a better pricing for sites not currently using ILLiad;
• Establish a SUNY pricing mechanism to make ILLiad as affordable as possible for all SUNY libraries;
• Establish visits/workshops (2-3 sites) for small sites using ILLiad to demonstrate ILLiad to sites not currently utilizing the application. This will allow non-ILLiad sites to better understand possible cost benefits of the system. These can be SUNY or non-SUNY sites. Non-SUNY’s can be brought in through regional 3Rs;
• Prior to workshops gather information about existing set up and workflows for sites not using Illiad;
• Follow the workshop with an exit survey to ask what changes they would make;
• Identify interest of small campuses, and determine remaining barriers;
• Survey libraries to identify sites that have the capability and capacity that may be used across the system to assist other sites with borrowing functions;
• Provide incentives for sites with capacity to provide borrowing functions for pilot for a library to manage another’s borrowing functions;
• Instruct OLIS to investigate the average number of the lender position for filling borrowing requests to see if it is worth doing development of an add-on application to SFX/ILLiad to check the Union Catalog and campus catalog for available requested items;
• Request Nylink to send communication to LAND customers regarding procedures for reporting and reimbursement of lost items. This will help with the issue of lost materials;
• Instruct the OLIS [to] provide several GPS devices to current interested libraries that are willing to utilize them to track LAND delivery service;
• SAC work with OLIS and SUNY Geneseo to establish new reporting environment comparable to the IDS project, but adding or substituting statistical median calculations for the current calculations of statistical averages;
• SAC work with OLIS and SUNY Geneseo to establish new reporting environment comparable to the IDS project allowing the University Centers and Community Colleges to view their data in separate sector groupings for calendar year 2007;
• Utilize this Task Force to work with SUNY Borrowing campuses to recommend a comprehensive statistical reporting environment during the 4th quarter of 2007;
• SAC contact the College of Environment, Science and Forestry to solicit their participation in this initiative;
• Work with campuses to establish appropriate cohort groups to for statistical review, and workflow analysis based on borrowing data. Nylink and regional 3R’s may also be used to assist in this activity;
• OLIS should establish procedures for collecting bibliographic data on items borrowed from OCLC Resource Sharing statistics for collection development purposes and the establishment of on demand purchasing parameters. This activity may require an additional working group/task force made up of collection development librarians and access services staff;
• Directors from SAC join the Task force to establish a dialogue with NYTRO (NY 3Rs) to show them that it is in their best interest to work with us on a state-wide ILLiad initiative [on] an ongoing basis.

Shared Services Task Force.
Among other areas, this group is looking at a pilot program for ALEPH managed services and an Ex Libris recommended model for large, shared ALEPH system archictecture. Campuses scheduled as part of the pilot program are Clinton, Niagara, Purchase, Rockland, Ulster and Westchester.

GVRL
Sixteen SUNYs are participating in an end of the year offer from Thomson Gale for electronic books. These are additional titles from the Gale Virtual Reference Library. For participating libraries their GVRL collection is now comprised of, at least, 250 titles. Examples include

• Writers Directory 2007
• World of Forensic Science
• Europe Since 1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction
• Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics
• Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd ed.
  The collection includes materials in the areas of art, business, education, history, law, literature, medicine, religion, science and other subjects.

Gale did make a SUNYConnect-wide offer as well. About 30 libraries expressed interest in that proposal.

The GVRL offer is a purchase agreement. MaRC records for the titles are included in that purchase price.

Personnel
The following is a selective list of personnel related updates from around SUNY. Best wishes to all in their future endeavors.

Carey Hatch -- Assistant Provost for Library and Information Services continues his other role as Interim Director of SUNY Learning Network. No additional updates are available at this time.

Andy Perry -- has accepted a position as System Librarian at New Paltz. Andy has been working on a release time arrangement (half time) between Binghamton and OLIS in the areas of ALEPH system support.

Mary Alice Lynch -- has announced her retirement from Nylink (effective January 31, 2007). Previously, Mary Alice was Library Director at Adirondack and Schenectady.

Certificate of Appreciation (OCTOBER 27, 2006).
"Whereas the SUNY OLIS staff have been responsible for:

• the successful upgrade to Ex Libris' ALEPH500 version 16 at 50 sites while simultaneously completing the initial implementation of the system at 6 other campuses;
• the provision of the necessary work to transfer the customized OPAC settings of each library moving from version 14 to version 16;
• the leadership for the project and coordination with the university centers to fulfill the realization of a system-wide SUNY library union catalog; and
• for accomplishing the actual version 16 installations, with the many individual libraries (and librarians) involved, in less than four months;

Be it resolved that the Community and Technical Colleges' sector of the SUNY Council of Library Directors conveys the sincere thanks of its members to SUNY OLIS Director Carey Hatch, SUNYConnect Project Manager Maureen Zajkowski and all of the talented and hardworking SUNY OLIS and ITEC staff involved in ALEPH support for their achievement in steadily 'herding the cats' of the State University of New York libraries to a successful outcome."