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[Editor's note: the following is Maureen Zajkowski's June 7, 2007 Aleph Update to the SUNYConnect Advisory Council]

• upgrade to 1851 has been completed for all production regions including the Union Catalog
• installation of future service packs prior to the v18 upgrade are to be determined

• discussions with Ex Libris to determine what needs to be updated to accommodate an Oracle upgrade with Aleph v18
• OLIS and ITEC continuing to work on the process to follow and activities that need to be addressed
• anticipated timeframes - testing and creating processes for the 56 campus upgrade to take through the end of 2007; actual campus upgrades to begin sometime in 2008
• possible regional v18 demo/webinar to be scheduled for fall 2007

Task Force on Aleph Shared Services

• May conference call - reviewed draft guidelines OLIS is developing to outline support services for campuses in the Managed Services Pilot and for campuses not in Managed Services.
• Managed Services
  • OLIS will plan for a 6 month review with the campuses currently in Managed Services
  • review will help determine results of pilot to date, issues that need to be addressed, and feasibility of adding additional Managed Services sites
• Support Related Activities underway:
  • developing definitions and expected response times for Footprints priority statuses
  • identifying files best edited centrally rather than at the campus level to improve efficiencies in Aleph support
  • updates to Sandbox web editor to enable read only of designated tables, provide abilities to copy files among directories and access to the Aleph Utilities
• Aleph Reporting
  • report requests submitted to Footprints are being reviewed to determine common needs across the campuses
  • an inventory of SQL programs created/run at the request of campuses are being reviewed to determine common needs across the campuses
  • an ARC webinar will not be scheduled at this time; it has been difficult scheduling times to accommodate schedules and there are still a major question as to whether ARC will work within the SUNY shared servers architecture

Status and Direction of Aleph Support Services
A basic expectation of the SUNY community for the SUNYConnect Aleph implementation was that campuses would have the ability to maintain their own campus data and local configurations. A distributed support model was set up to enable campuses to maintain their own Aleph regions within a shared server environment. Ex Libris was designated contractually and financially to be the provider of first line support. At the time of implementation, each campus contact received a logon to the Ex Libris problem reporting database (now called the CRM). Over time, the campuses increasingly turned to OLIS to provide first line support rather than go the Ex Libris.

The Managed Services Pilot was established to help campuses that were having difficulty maintaining Aleph locally. As guidelines were developed to outline what services OLIS would provide the Managed Services sites, it became apparent that there were no real differences between the level of Aleph support OLIS would provide to campuses in Managed Services and those not in Managed Services.

Consequently, OLIS began to draft guidelines as to the level of Aleph support to provide campuses not in Managed Services. These have been reviewed with the Aleph Shared Services Task Force. The guidelines will be reviewed with the SUNY Council of Library Directors and with SUNYLA. Here is a summary of changes in the guidelines.

Version 16 - Examples for campuses not in Managed Services

• Aleph Table Configuration questions/Troubleshooting/Functionality related questions for the various modules
  • provide for analysis of reported problems, suggest possible solutions, point campuses to documentation and standards, and recommend that campuses submit their question to Ex Libris via their Ex Libris CRM accounts
• WebOPAC
  • support on troubleshooting functionality rather than customization
• Fees
  • workflow analysis outside of Aleph (ex., general cataloging practices, use of MARC in serials implementation)
  • specific Aleph training for new systems librarians or new library staff
  • requests for refresher training at the campus

Version 18 - Examples for campuses not in Managed Services

• policies for Aleph tables that will not be edited locally at the campus
• use of Sandbox as the access to the Aleph server
• support for standardized WebOPAC; support limited to defined Aleph tables and HTML files