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The final meeting of the Steering Committee was held on October 31, 2002. Having fulfilled its charge to coordinate the selection and implementation of a new automation system for all UH libraries, the Committee was disbanded on October 31, 2002.
(Recorded by James Adamson)
CALLED TO ORDER: Wil Frost, Chair called the meeting to order at 15:00 hrs. (3pm) PRESENT: Wil Frost, Chair; Sophia McMillen; Gwen Sinclair; Amy Carlson; Luella Kurkjian; Marlene Oishi; Lei Seeger; James Adamson Hawaii Voyager Users Group (HVUG) It was agreed that James Adamson would Chair HVUG. HVUG will have an organizing meeting and elect an executive committee to direct its activities, similar to the national Endeavor Users Group. An annual meeting will be arranged and set up by Systems. Agenda, date and time for the event are forthcoming. This annual meeting will be a forum to share information and LMS expertise between participants. It as agreed that Kamehameha Schools would be invited to be a member. Endeavor Information Systems, will be asked to participate in order to share software development status. UH Voyager Advisory Committee Proposal There was discussion about the original purpose of the Steering Committee. The purpose was to select and implement the system. It was agreed that purpose has been accomplished. It was decided that there is still a need for the functional area committees to exist, for the purpose of sharing information about decisions that in a large part affect the UH shared database in particular. External sites felt that they would like to be aware of changes affecting the shared database, but they no longer needed to be present at meetings, due to workload, and personnel since their sites are small, but could elect to attend if they desired. Also changes to the shared database do not directly affect their database. It was agreed that participation would be optional, and they could come to functional meetings if they so desired. James presented a communication flow diagram delineating current reporting to UH Manoa, Functional Committees, UH System sites, External sites, Library Council, and HVUG. It was mentioned that other functional groups could be formed one in particular being a reports committee. It was decided that Systems Librarians remain part of each functional committee and that the committees should elect their own chairs. It was agreed that a Systems Librarian could serve as a chair as well. It was decided that a new group UHVCC (University of Hawaii Voyager Coordinating Committee) be formed from chairs of functional committees. They would discuss issues related to the "shared" database. It was discussed that the library directors need information at a more general level and overall wish not to be involved in the details of every decision, but they do need to be informed of things that may impact their operations or service. The chair of the UHVCC along with the Systems Department Head would make reports to Library Council if there were something that needed to be brought before them, from UHVCC. It was decided the UHVCC would be a subgroup under the umbrella of the Hawaii Voyager Users Group, HVUG. It was agreed that Systems would give external sites, such as State Archives, Hawaii Medical Library and Bishop Museum individual attention and keep them in the information loop about things that are happing System wide. It was decided that HVUG would now consist of Voyager members not part of the Hawaii Voyager Consortium, such as Kamehama Schools, as well as the Hawaii Voyager Consortium External Sites, and UHVCC. It was agreed that James would be the transition chair of UHVCC and that he would set the agenda and call the first meeting of UHVCC, and elect a chair from the functional committee chairs. It was agreed that the Steering Committee had served its purpose and was now dissolved.
(Recorded by Lei Seeger)
Present: James Adamson, Amy Carlson, Thelma Diercks, Wil Frost (Chair),
Luella Kurkjian, Lei Seeger, Michelle Sturges
1. VUG Voting Proposal: In response to an inquiry about the status
of the voting proposal. WF related that he had as yet received no
feedback about the proposal. Information from UH Hilo was received
later. As many members of this group were on vacation, MS asked that
this matter be revisited at the next meeting. WF indicated that he needs
final information by December.
2. Voyager Unicode Release: is scheduled for Summer 2003. Staff PC
upgrades to XP or 2000 is forthcoming, but is not of immediate concern.
WF reported that an e-mail was sent to UHM library administration
regarding the UH Library Systems Office and certain sites serving as beta
sites for the Unicode version at the end of fall. As of the meeting date,
WF had received no official response.
3. Committee Reports: The Serials Committee gave a report (by AC).
AC reported that she and her staff have worked with Hawaii Medical Library
and Honolulu Community College staff on their use of the serials module.
Assistance with ledgers has also been provided.
4. Other Matters:
Bibliographic Template Option for Electronic Reserves: MS reported that
Sinclair staff and Ruth Marie Quirk, with the help of Susan Murata and
Carol Kellett, are developing a minimum bibliographic template option for
electronic reserves.
Pick and Scan Option: MS is testing the pick and scan option in the
cataloging and circulation modules, using lists of bar codes to perform
batch changes to data in item and holdings records, and is reviewing every
record to see if the change was made. AC asked if the option could be
executed using bar code ranges.
Collection Analysis and Reports: WF reported on a three-month project to
interview departments at Hamilton and Sinclair regarding data desired for
collection information, such as cancellations, and generation of those
reports by the Voyager system.
Bridge Module: TD reported that bridge module statistics regarding
approval plan materials are being tabulated (e.g., do the materials
acquired circulate; if so, in what LC classification ranges; when used; by
currency of material; etc.).
MS observed that the kind of collection development and use information
reported by WF and TD might also be useful to other UH sites.
Systems: JA reported that:
1. New system hardware specifications would be forthcoming;
2. Systems is working on the Cataloger's tool kit;
3. Carol Kellett is handling UHM's test;
4. Annual report completed, and available at
assist.hawaii.edu, under "Annual Report."
Role of the Steering Committee: Informal discussion of the future of the
Steering Committee ensued. As part of the discussion, it was agreed that
plans should move forward for a users' group meeting. JA volunteered the
UH Library Systems Office to organize the first meeting.
MS stated that she had been thinking about what functions of the Steering
Committee needed to be preserved for the good of the Cataloging Group. MS
suggested that all Steering Committee members should think about what
benefits the groups they represent derive from Steering Committee, and how
those benefits might be continued if the Committee is dissolved.
To preserve the functions she found beneficial, namely face-to-face
communication and coordination with other UH functional committee chairs,
Systems representatives, and related parties on Voyager issues, MS
proposed the formation of a Voyager Advisory Committee to the UH Library
Council. WF volunteered to draft and circulate for comment a letter
describing the proposal for dissolution of the Steering Committee and
creation of a Voyager Advisory Committee. If a majority of Steering
Committee members supported the proposal, then the letter, with revisions,
would be forwarded to the UHLC
MS expressed concern that the proposal would leave non-UH Libraries that
had representation on Steering Committee without an information-sharing
forum. LK observed that information-sharing on cataloging was an area
that she felt most benefitted State Archives.
Next Meeting: It was agreed that the next meeting would be held at
Hamilton on Thursday, October 31st, at 3 p.m.
(Recorded by Fredrick Allen)
Present: Wil Frost (Committee Chair), Fredrick Allen (Recorder, substituting for Susan Murata), Sophia McMillen, Amy Carlson, Michelle Sturges, Diane Sakai, Luella Kurkjian, Gwen Sinclair, and Swee Berkey. 1. Upgrade Update WF asked if anyone had something to report concerning how the 2001 update went (which occurred on July 22 for the UH Shared database). MS and DS replied that they have experienced problems in Cataloging with the 2001 update. DS went on to specify problems with the tag tables, the disappearing font problem, and bugs that have come back that were previously fixed. GS and Carol Kellet of Systems are compiling a list of bugs encountered in Cataloging and WebVoyage and will report them to Endeavor and Voyager-l. AC mentioned display issues in Acquisitions while FA had only one problem to report in Circulation so far (Incorrect total amount owed in WebVoyage Patron Information when a partial posting is made). MS asked if Systems could create a localized version of the "Road to 2001" page that would be more specific to UH libraries. FA will pass this suggestion along to Systems. GS stated that with the next upgrade Systems staff schedules should be taken into account when selecting the upgrade date. She brought up an example where one of the Systems staff was teaching an afternoon class on the days when the 2001 upgrade for the UH Shared database took place. WF discussed funding for PC operating system updates. 2. Committee Reports Two committees gave reports, Circulation (by FA) and Opac (by GS). FA gave a report on what went on at the Circulation Steering Committee meeting this morning. Highlights from the meeting were: A. A discussion of 2001 related circulation problems. No problems have been found in circulation so far, other than the bug with total amount owed in Patron Information. B. The publicity campaign for systemwide circ policy being implemented on 1/1/03. Revised sample bookmarks with the new policy were passed around for comments and corrections this morning. FA brought the color sample bookmarks to the steering committee meeting. A writeup is being worked on that will go out as a mass emailing to @hawaii.edu addresses and to the newspapers. C. Standardized patron registration forms to be used by all UH libraries. Sample forms were passed around for comments and corrections. FA brought these forms as well to the steering committee meeting. GS talked about the problems that the committee has found so far in version 2001.1, among which were problems with bookbag and holdings sort groups. 3. VUG Voting Proposal WF reported on the changes to the Voyager Users Group bylaws regarding voting. Previously one contract constituted one vote. With the changes to the bylaws it is now by institution with some conditions (ie. UHM one vote, UHH one vote, CCs one vote, etc). With the new system we now have 7 votes, instead of our previous one. WF passed out a handout which has more details on this proposal. WF also asked who will vote for each group of institutions. This will be discussed at the next meeting. 4. Hawaii Voyagers Users Group This discussion started with the question of how HVUG would be structured. A question was then brought up of do we need the Voyager Steering committee if we had HVUG? A proposal was then made by WF to evolve the Voyager Steering committee into the board of the Hawaii Voyagers Users Group. The question of the role of the functional committees in this proposal was raised. A number of people stated that the functional committees served a useful purpose in discussing standardized policy, migration and upgrade issues, and sharing workflow and problems. As such, the functional committees should remain. WF brought up the idea of having the functional committees under HVUG. GS proposed that the functional committee chairs should be elected, so no one person would be need to do this permanently. WF finally proposed disbanding the Voyager Steering Committee and creating in its place the Hawaii Voyager Users Group. As there were many people not present at this meeting no action was taken on this proposal. Discussion will continue. Next Meeting: Thursday August 29, 2002
(Recorded by Luella Kurkjian)
Present: Wil Frost, Chair (UHM), James Adamson (UHM Systems), Swee Berkey (Law), Amy Carlson (UHM), Thelma Diercks (UHM), Luella Kurkjian (HSA), Sophia McMillen (UHM), Susan Murata (KCC), Marlene Oishi (HML), Elaine Schultz (UHM), Gwen Sinclair (UHM), Michelle Sturges (KCC), Ralph Toyama (LCC). MARC Tag Tables Michelle Sturgis reported that copies of the Voyager 2001.1 MARC tag tables have been received for review. The existing Hawaii Shared Tag Table was found to be more up-to-date and correct. The most recent set of MARC revisions will be added to the Hawaii Shared Tag Table in July. Release of revised tables will probably be in August. Committee Reports 1. WebVoyage - Gwen Sinclair Version 2001.1 does not contain too many changes from earlier versions. The committee has made most of the decisions required and will be ready by July 8. Some changes include the following which are new features available through the "Your Account" button/page: "MyOPAC" will be retitled "Preferences." "BookBag" will be retitled "Saved Records." "Saved Searches" allow patrons to construct and save searches. This feature is available only to those with UH system accounts. A link from the opening page goes to a "New features" pages that details these new options. The committee continues to discuss "Simultaneous Searching" and is reviewing help screens and error messages. Also plan to implement the holdings sort, but are unable to test it and donÕt know how/whether it will work as desired. The new version also enables viewing of non-roman scripts. Gwen also reported on whether to implement PINs in WebVoyage. Doing so will create a major burden for Circ staff who must deal with patrons who have forgotten etc. their PIN. Circulation has decided not to implement this feature. Another matter under discussion is whether to allow use of Social Security numbers (in addition to barcodes) for login. A major concern with Social Security numbers is security. A decision on this may not be made by the live date. 2. System-wide Acquisitions Coordinating Committee (SACC) - Thelma Diercks The SACC met in May and Amy Carlson and Dave Brier presented reports from VUGM. The big subject for discussion was bulk import, led by Carol Kellett. 3. System-wide Cataloging Coordination Committee (SCCC) - Michelle Sturges At its meeting in May, the committee reviewed VUGM presentations and discussed problems with duplicate records from bulk imports. Endeavor recommends using unconditional profiles, which is a cataloging nightmare. However, Acquisitions has agreed to the use of a "conditional profile" which greatly facilitates cataloguers' work, but is more work for Acquisitions. The committee also came to an agreement on how to handle reproductions. 4. Circulation - Susan Murata The Circulation committee met in Hilo on June 13. The committee is working on marketing plans for the January 2003 introduction of new loan and fee policies. It has also set up an "Input Standards Committee" to promote consistency for data input. Additionally, the committee is working on matrices changes. ODBC Drivers for Cataloging Tool Kit James Adamson reported that Systems has worked with Endeavor on security issues relating to the installation of ODBC drivers on staff machines. It will be possible to isolate ODBC access so that high security information is firewalled. The ODBC drivers are intended for catalogers who use Gary Strawn's Cataloging Tool Kit and will allow access only to those files the Tool Kit requires. The Tool Kit cannot override established security measures. The ODBC drivers and Tool Kit will be put on the ftp server for downloading. This will require a password, available from Systems. Server Hardware Upgrade James also presented his findings concerning whether it is more economical to upgrade server hardware or continue paying higher and higher maintenance on the present server hardware. The evidence is that over a three year period, it is cheaper to buy new hardware than continue paying maintenance, with the added benefit that new hardware will triple performance. Hawaii Voyager Users Group Wil Frost reported that no work has been done on establishing a Hawaii Voyager Users Group yet. He had a good Voyager board meeting in Atlanta and they are beginning to plan for next yearÕs meeting. The name Voyager Users Group will be changed to Endeavor Users Group to be inclusive of those who use Endeavor products other than Voyager. Next Meeting The next meeting will be August 1, 2002 at 3:00 p.m., Hamilton Library Administrative Offices conference room.
(Recorded by Marlene Oishi)
Present: Dave Brier, Amy Carlson, Thelma Diercks, Wil Frost, Sophia McMillen, Michelle Miyaji, Susan Murata, Marlene Oishi, Elaine Schultz, Lei Seeger, Gwen Sinclair, Michelle Sturges 1. Michelle Sturges announced that, due to the recent departure of a staff member in her department and the heavy work load that has resulted, she will not be able to continue as the minutes recorder for the Steering Committee. Decision: Members of the Steering Committee will record minutes of meetings on a rotation basis. It was further decided that the rotation would be by the name of the Library. Marlene Oishi volunteered to serve as recorder for todayÕs meeting. Procedure for distribution of minutes is: a. Send draft to everyone b. Send final version to everyone Michelle will send Marlene a list of the email addresses for Committee members. Rotation by name of library is as follows: Bishop Library Hawaii Medical Library Hawaii State Archives Kapiolani Community College Law Library Leeward Community College Manoa (criteria for rotation among UH ManoaÕs Committee members will be determined at a later date) 2. VUGM Reports Attendees to the 2002 VUGM in Chicago presented reports on the meetings and sessions they attended Wil Frost: Version 2001 Wil referred to an email message that he sent out on April 30, 2002 to the Steering Committee announcing the release of version 2001. He confirmed that the version will be released by Endeavor on May 9, 2002. Cataloging SIG meeting It was a heated discussion because Endeavor has not yet addressed problems through its enhancement process. A petition was circulated. Endeavor said that it is currently working on the module for the Unicode version. Due to significant modifications to the data structure that will be required by Unicode, Endeavor said that there is no point in enhancing the current version although the 2001.2 version contains some enhancements. Endeavor plans to reactivate the Authorities Task Force by the end of this year. If anyone locally is interested in serving on the Task Force, he/she should contact Wil. Endeavor will investigate the possibility of licensing Gary StrawnÕs cataloging programs if sufficient interest is received. Endeavor might also be licensing a PDA interface created by the Western Michigan University if sufficient interest is also received. The first site to use Encompass for resource access is Loyola Notre Dame Libraries in Maryland. Enhancement Session Wil said that he learned how the process works and distributed the 2001 problem statements to Committee members. The Voyager User Group Enhancement Committee will prioritize requests and it will post the 2002 problem list on Support Web 2 weeks after ALA in June 2002. Board Meetings Wil announced that changes in the bylaws were passed. There were 2 meetings with Endeavor during which time Endeavor was asked to improve communication with its customers as well as provide better documentation of new developments at Endeavor. Australasian User Group Australasian User group was officially established. Membership is presently comprised of only Australian and New Zealand libraries. As of yet, there are no Asian Voyager libraries. Dave Brier Dave reported on poster sessions he conducted on web based tools that were developed by the Systems Office. The tools he demonstrated were the Serials Pattern Subscription tool, Foreign Currency Conversion tool, and the Selector Management tool. He also reported that Jane Burke expressed interest in the Selection Management tool. Michelle Sturges Michelle attended the Consortia Interest Group meeting where they discussed consortium structure and the handling of batch jobs for multiple sites. She suggested that the Committee check Support Web for information on the sessions. Susan Murata She reported on Circulation upgrades in the 2001 version. They are as follows: a. We will not need to reenter System Administration parameters in the training database when we upgrade. Libraries are also able to upgrade different databases to different versions. This is extremely useful if the training database can run a different version for testing purposes. b. Reported on a library that doesnÕt have a circulation desk Š only self check out stations. Circulation staff was transferred to other areas of the library, primarily Acquisitions and Shelving. The library does not charge fines; assesses fees only for lost materials. User assistance is provided at a combined information/reference desk. c. Calendars Š are easier to use d. Improvement requests that will not be fixed by Endeavor include multiple patron barcode problem, tracers, and the automatic deletion of lost book replacement charges. e. Unicode release will require Windows 2000 or XP on staff machines. Wil confirmed that sites should be concerned about this requirement because of cost factors and technical issues that are involved. It will also require Netscape 6.2 or IE. The 2001 release will be able to run on Windows 98, 2000 and XP. f. Citation Server/Link Finder This functionality allows the simultaneous searching and she learned at VUGM that it works. Gwen Sinclair reported that the Web Voyage Committee was polled about the implementation of Citation Server/Link Finder and there were no objections. Susan also reported that Ruth Marie Quirk is interested in EZ Connect and would like to see it implemented as soon as possible. Gwen reported that the Web Voyage Committee will experiment with Citation Server and the Link Finder in the training database. 3. ODBC driver Gary Strawn will be at UH Manoa on May 17, 2002 to demonstrate his cataloging toolkit. His applications require the ODBC driver on staff machines. Sophia McMillen said that she queried Voy-L and other Voyager libraries that have distributed the driver to staff reported that security is not a problem. She emphasized how the availability of GaryÕs product would facilitate cataloging activities in Voyager as the functionalities in the toolkit are either non-existent or do not work well in Voyager. Sophia McMillen requested that the ODBC security issues be investigated by Systems as sites are interested in not only using StrawnÕs product but also in report writing, statistics generation, etc. Dave Brier responded that Carol in Systems is looking into this matter. He believes that the issue is related to the UniversityÕs policy regarding security of social security numbers and other confidential information and that usage of the ODBC driver would give staff access to confidential information hence its distribution would be in violation of UH policy. At the next Steering Committee meeting, Systems will report back on the security issues relating to the distribution of the ODBC driver on staff machines. 4. Hawaii VUG Wil raised the question about the possibility of establishing a Hawaii Voyagers User Group. As a recognized user group, Endeavor staff would come to Hawaii at no cost for product updates and training. Dave Brier announced that Jane Burke is planning to attend HLA in Sept. 2002. He also discussed the possibility of Voyager training as a preconference or post conference session. The Committee decided to establish a Hawaii regional user group. Name of the group will be decided at a future date. Wil will follow up and work with Endeavor on this matter. 5. Upgrade to 2001.1 The Committee discussed the upgrade to version 2001.1. At a previous meeting, it was determined that upgrade can not occur before the of the current fiscal year and on weekends. Dave Brier reported that hardware requirements will not present any problems for the upgrade and that 2 members of the Systems Office have been certified to perform the upgrades. Dave also reported that Carol Kellet will be gone part-time in July. Thelma Diercks said that Acquisitions at UH Manoa will close the fiscal year by July 7, 2002 and that the upgrade could be done after this date. The Committee decided that the upgrade to 2001.1 will be scheduled for July 29, 2002 with August 5, 2002 as a second choice. These dates are contingent upon EndeavorÕs schedule. Dave Brier added that there is a possibility of scheduling the upgrade earlier in July if Systems is able to find someone to assume CarolÕs responsibilities. Bibliographic instruction staff will be able to use the Preview Server in advance to look at the WebVoyage changes in 2001.1. Michelle Sturges requested that a copy of the MARC tag table be distributed for review by catalogers prior to the upgrade. 6. Announcements Wil announced that ARL will be conducting a management skills training seminar for UH Manoa staff on October 28-30, 2002. Registration fee is $400 for the 3 day program. 7. Next Meeting Next meeting will be held on June 27, 2002. 8. Adjournment The meeting was adjourned at 4:45 p.m.
(Recorded by Michelle Sturges)
Present: James Adamson, Amy Carlson, Thelma Diercks, Wil Frost, Luella Kurkjian, Sophia McMillen, Michelle Miyaji, Susan Murata, Marlene Oishi, Diane Sakai, Lei Seeger, Gwen Sinclair, Michelle Sturges 1. Voyager 2001 Upgrade The Steering Committee discussed when would be the best time to upgrade to Voyager version 2001. The first phase of the upgrade, ver. 2001.1, is supposed to become available in March 2002. Systems had proposed upgrading to ver. 2001.1 on May 20 and 21, but the latter part of May turns out to be an extremely busy time for Hamilton's Acquisitions Department. Susan Murata reported that the Circulation Committee, which had originally supported upgrading to ver. 2001.1 as soon as possible, had reexamined the issue and was willing to wait. The enhancements to Voyager's Circulation module won't be included in ver. 2001.1, but will be included in ver. 2001.2, which should be released later this summer. Gwen Sinclair reported that from the WebVoyage Committee's perspective it is hard to tell how much work will be involved in configuring the new version of WebVoyage. Not being able to judge how much effort it might take makes it hard to decide on when would be the best time. Gwen noted that her department would be moving in May, so it would be difficult for her to work on the WebVoyage configuration if the upgrade happened around the same time. Several members asked what the ramifications would be if the Hawaii Voyager libraries skipped ver. 2001.1 and upgraded with the 2001.2 release. James Adamson said it was a crapshoot. He added that he was concerned that if ver. 2001.1 was skipped, some architecture change might end up not getting through. James noted that the libraries could just delay upgrading to 2001.1 rather than skipping it. He observed that 2001.2 might not be released as early as Endeavor was predicting. Wil Frost asked what the down time would be. James said the down time is always 2 days, (barring mishaps). He added that if the plan was to have Endeavor do the upgrade, he would like to schedule it for a state holiday weekend. Wil asked if any group wanted an early upgrade. He asked Amy Carlson if the Serials group was anxious to have the new bindery functionality in ver. 2001. Amy said Serials was willing to wait. What they are presently using for bindery works, and they have not had a chance to see the new Voyager bindery functions. Wil asked what would be a preferable time to May. He asked if Kamehameha Day (Tuesday, June 11) would work. Thelma Diercks said June 11 falls during a bad time for acquisitions and fiscal operations since at that point they have started working on end-of-fiscal-year rollover. Gwen observed that one problem with waiting until later in the summer to upgrade is that 9-month faculty are gone. WebVoyage Committee members who are on 9-month contracts wouldn't have a say in configuration decisions. Michelle Sturges noted that the Cataloging Committee has some 9-month faculty. In the summer they appoint alternates, (usually their head librarian), to represent their site on the Committee. Wil stated that another change with ver. 2001 is that not all databases on the same server have to upgrade at the same time. He observed that Systems needs to find out more about how the change in upgrade procedures works. James said that whatever the Steering Committee decides, he wants to talk to Endeavor representatives about upgrading while he is at the Voyager User Group Meeting (VUGM). James said he also wants to talk about copying parameters between databases on the same server. Wil asked if the Admissions Day holiday, (Friday, August 16), would be a workable upgrade date. Diane Sakai said doing the upgrade that close to the start of Fall Semester would make it difficult for bibliographic instruction (BI) people to modify their teaching materials. Gwen Sinclair asked if upgrading shortly after the end of Summer Session, (around August 9), would give BI staff enough time to modify their materials. Diane said no, not if you have a lot of instructional materials to work on. Wil asked if there was any available time between the two Summer Sessions, but it turned out that there was only a single weekend. Gwen observed that it sounded like July might be the best time. James said if Systems Office staff were to do the upgrade rather than Endeavor Staff, there could be more flexibility in the scheduling. He said he could assess the ramifications of having newly-certified staff do an upgrade at VUGM, then make a call on whether to do it in-house rather than having Endeavor do it. Noting that VUGM was two months away, Susan asked if James could talk to Endeavor staff and get an assessment before then. James wasn't sure he could get a definite answer from Endeavor yet, since Voyager 2001.1 was only in pre-release. Michelle Sturges observed it almost sounded like it was too early to make a decision. Thelma asked if the Systems Office was concerned about scheduling. James said times that are likely to have the list impact on users, such as holidays, are being snapped up fast. James asked what questions members wanted answered before choosing a date. Gwen and Diane both felt a major question was how big the changes would be to WebVoyage (both from a configuration standpoint and a BI standpoint). Wil noted that WebVoyage enhancements such as My Opac can be left turned off initially, then turned on later. Gwen agreed. She noted, however, that there are still some things that are supposed to be fixed in this upgrade but are not listed in the release notes. Susan expressed concern about the reliability of the release notes. She noted that the release notes she had printed out had a date of October 2001 and were noticeably different from the release notes Wil had distributed, which had a date of September 2001. Wil said it sounded like Steering Committee members needed to wait for the Preview Server so people could test the new version and evaluate the impact of the changes. Wil added that it also sounded like the group might need to wait for VUGM so Systems can decide whether to ask Endeavor to do the upgrade or to opt to do it themselves. Thelma said that in the meantime she would talk to John Awakuni about pushing the end of fiscal year activities to mid-June, (to free up Kamehameha Day weekend). She said she would also discuss with him the impact of a Voyager upgrade on May acquisitions activities. 2. Display of On Order Records in PAC In June 2001 the Steering Committee decided to suspend plans to have acquisitions On Order records display in WebVoyage, despite earlier plans to have them display beginning in July 2001. The decision to continue suppression was made at the request of Hamilton Circulation staff, who asked that On Order records remain suppressed while Hamilton's collections were closed to the public. The Steering Committee was supposed to revisit the issue in September 2001, after Hamilton's collections were re-opened to the public, but other business took precedence, postponing the discussion until this time. Gwen Sinclair reminded members that the WebVoyage Committee had wanted On Order records to display in WebVoyage when the issue was first discussed in 2001. Susan Murata reported that at the most recent Circulation Committee meeting, members had voted to continue suppression of On Order records. In 2001, Law Library had been one of the stronger advocates for display of On Order records. Lei Seeger was asked if the Law Library still felt it would be negatively impacted by suppression of On Order records. Lei said that her main concern was that accreditation and standards bodies often have members who choose to check a library's collections remotely, rather than waiting for a site visit. Lei explained that it would be good if they could see what is on order when they are checking the catalog. Wil asked if the display of On Order records is itself an accreditation standard. Lei said no, but she knew it is standard practice to save time by previewing collections via the catalog. Lei said she recognized that display of On Order records puts a burden on Circulation staff, who have to deal with patrons wanting to place holds on On Order titles. Wil asked if any members had strong feelings in favor of display. It was noted that order record suppression creates extra work for Acquisitions staff, and there are sometimes problems with people forgetting to unsuppress records after an item is received. Gwen said she hadn't received any complaints from Public Services staff about On Order records not displaying. Michelle Sturges asked about the possible impact on system response time. Gwen said that, while Endeavor does warn that a large number of suppressed records will impact system response time, we don't know what the threshold is for UH Voyager. Wil asked if it is possible to get a report of all suppressed records. Susan said that, according to David Brier at the Systems Office, the answer is yes. The Steering Committee decided to leave On Order records suppressed for now, and reexamine the issue February 2002. 3. Committee Reports Circulation Committee The Circulation Committee had met earlier that day. Susan Murata reported that they worked on standard loan periods, fines and fees for the UH System libraries. As part of that work, the Committee has decided to eliminate grace periods. Circulation Departments will start sending courtesy notices instead, to give patrons a heads up that books are coming due. The Committee is also considering a no-show fee for people who never come to pick up something they put on hold. The Committee is also proposing default lost book charges of $60 for regular books, $80 for law and medical books. If the actual replacement cost of a book is in the item record, the system will use that rather than the default cost instead. The Committee is suggesting that the total charges associated with a lost book be changed from fine, processing fee and replacement cost be changed to just processing fee and replacement cost. Diane expressed concern about under billing for expensive lost books. Susan said libraries get a report ahead of time called "Lost in 14 Days" which can be used to insert correct prices in item records of things you don't want to charge $60 for. A draft proposal listing the Committee's decisions will go to the UH Library Council for consideration. Susan said that if everybody can agree, the new policies could be implemented in January 2003. Susan added that the Committee also discussed the State Tax Set-off (money is coming in), and began discussion on using collection agencies. Also, Kapi`olani Community College has elected to be part of the paid community user card program. Cataloging Committee Michelle Sturges reported that the Authority Subcommittee had begun implementing authority work in the shared database. The Cataloging Committee had also developed a plan to add retrieval keys to assist retrieval and deletion of records for withdrawn items associated with purchase orders. Sophia McMillen reported that K.T. Yao had attended the second meeting of Endeavor's Unicode Task Force and was encouraged by the performance of the new project head. However, Endeavor was still having problems perfecting the mapping of EACC to Unicode. 4. Other Business New ITS Interface and student information system Wil Frost reported that there may be a plan to try letting students pay fines and fees via the new ITS user interface. The new student information system is supposed to be up and running for the community colleges by July 2002. It may be easier to get student information for the shared patron database once the new student information system is operational. James noted that issues relating to the Federal Privacy Act still have to be ironed out. He added that it is not clear whether the new student information system will include information on faculty and staff who are not students. If not, then records for faculty and staff who are not students will have to be added to the patron database separately. Wil observed that the system is being implemented in phases, but plans are for it all to be done in one year. UH Hilo Library News Michelle Miyaji reported that UH Hilo will be doing a major electrical project around July 22, 2002. As a result, UH Hilo Library might be closed for one week, but the dates are not set yet. Hamilton Library News Hamilton will be closed to the public the week between the end of Spring Semester and the start of Summer Session in order to move staff from their temporary offices to permanent locations. Additional moves will continue through September. Next meeting: March 28, 2002 at Hamilton Library [later cancelled]
(Recorded by Michelle Sturges)
Present: James Adamson, Wil Frost, Ted Kwok, Sophia McMillen, Marlene Oishi, Diane Sakai, Lei Seeger, Gwen Sinclair, Michelle Sturges 1. Announcements Wil Frost attended the Voyager Users' Group (VUG) Board Meeting at the American Library Association (ALA) Conference in New Orleans. The main topics of discussion were revisions to the VUG bylaws, making Endeavor's SupportWeb site easier to navigate, and how best to represent minority users, (e.g. those that only use the EnCompass product, those that are in the Southern Hemisphere). 2. Draft Letter of Acceptance to Endeavor Wil reported that while at ALA, he had a meeting with several Endeavor representatives, including Tom Owens, the director of implementation projects. Diane Perushek was also able to attend. Wil observed that it was a pleasant meeting. When Tom was asked when the 45-day window began for Hawaii Voyager libraries to provide an assessment of the degree to which Endeavor met contractual obligations, he had no idea, but said it was probably at the point of acceptance of the last database to be migrated. Wil added that Tom said Endeavor personnel had already looked at the technical specification reviews posted at our Endeavor Implementation Project web site. (http://www.hawaii.edu/uhlib/endeavor/evaluation.html) Wil distributed a draft letter of acceptance he had written based on the functional committee reviews. He noted that for those areas where no summary was submitted by a functional committee, he first tried to pick out specifications to include, then chose to just write a general statement. Wil also observed that he would like to revise the first two paragraphs to make it clearer which parts of Voyager we would not be accepting. Ted Kwok asked if the letter was required. Wil said it was. Ted asked if the letter was linked to paying Endeavor. Wil said yes, the letter was linked to Endeavor receiving about 30% of the license cost (roughly $150,000-$200,000). Sophia McMillen asked if we could do a partial acceptance. Wil said yes, because one part that is not acceptable, Image Server, is a separate line item. Wil observed that the Voyager software has been operating successfully in our environment for one year, though not always in the way we would like. James Adamson said the only thing he could think of that might be an outstanding problem was authority work. Sophia agreed, noting that the Cataloging Committee's Authority Subcommittee had been unable to test authority functionality, partly because the duplicate authority record problem required the authority database to remain frozen until very late in the migration. James agreed, saying the situation we have been in is not allowing us to do testing. Marlene Oishi pointed out that at Hawaii Medical Library (HML), authority control is being successfully used. Wil said he didn't think there was a legal issue here. He said he thought Endeavor wants us to be happy with the system. He added that he hadn't heard a call to not accept until authorities are tested. Sophia said, "I so call." Wil asked her how much time she would need. Sophia said she didn't know, as it would partly depend on how high a priority Fred Allen in the Systems Office would be allowed to give such testing. Ted asked if sending a letter of acceptance was what we want to do, assuming that sending the letter triggers the payment. Wil said he thought the answer was yes. Ted asked if triggering the payment would cost us leverage. Wil said he thought that if we accept and authorities don't work, the UH libraries would work with Endeavor Support on the issue that authorities don't work as described in the documentation. Sophia said she felt that what testing had been done indicated that authorities don't work like the manuals say. Duplicate detection hasn't worked as described during testing in the test database. She added that two important areas, bulk import and global change, hadn't been tested at all in the shared database. Noting that the letter would be due at Endeavor 10 days after February 8, Wil asked if tests could be done by 2/8. Sophia said she wasn't sure. Wil asked if the group did not want to accept until the authority module was tested. Sophia said yes. Gwen Sinclair said she felt authorities were in the same category as support for display of vernacular characters (CJK). It is something Endeavor will fix eventually. Gwen asked if it was really a showstopper. Diane Sakai observed that lack of good authority functionality has been a major issue for UH catalogers for some time. She asked if the authority module was working at other sites. Marlene said that HML was able to do bulk import and global heading change in their authority database. She told James and Sophia that they were welcome to use HML's file of sample records to test. Marlene noted that HML did a lot of testing and had a lot of failures before they got the profile right. She said they would be happy to share their experiences. Sophia said she thought testing could be done in time if Fred would be allowed to do a test bulk load into the test database soon. She noted that under the existing Systems schedule, the test load wouldn't be done until the end of the month. Wil asked James if the test load could be moved up. Michelle Sturges observed that a lot of presentations at the 2001 VUG meeting were about authority control. The common theme was that people aren't happy with the functionality or with the documentation. Wil said he thought the appropriate thing would be to work through Endeavor Support for assistance in testing authority functionality in the shared database. Ted said that Endeavor needs to understand that if they want their money, this needs to be addressed. Michelle observed that there were really two issues: (1) does the authority functionality work properly according to the documentation; (2) when working properly, does it live up to the claims Endeavor made in its response to the RFP. Michelle said she thought it was appropriate to work with Endeavor Support on the first issue, but she wasn't sure it was realistic to suspend acceptance until the second issue could be worked out. Ted asked if there was a timeline for CJK. He asked what the status was for the project. Wil said that CJK is split out as a separate item. He added that 10% of our payment is geared to CJK display, 10% to CJK editing and creation via the cataloging module. Gwen reported that at this point, CJK was not displaying correctly. Citation server and hook-to-holdings work. The Hawaii-Pacific Journal Index (HPJI) is now being accessed via Citation Server. Wil noted that there is a question whether we can have a direct link to HPJI rather than treating it as a citation database. He added that we expressed that wish to Karen Gegner, but it is not in the contract. James asked what would happen if Karen quit. He felt the HPJI request should be documented, rather than relying on a verbal agreement. Wil suggested that we say we would like to have an acknowledgement from Endeavor that the need for there to be a direct link to the HPJI database is an outstanding issue. Ted said it is an outstanding issue for any database, not just for HPJI. With respect to Media Scheduling, Wil said Ruth Marie Quirk thinks it doesn't work all that well, but they are using it at Sinclair Audiovisual. Diane asked if use of media scheduling by other sites would mean an extra charge. Wil said he couldn't recall if we are limited to the number of client installations. Diane noted that as systemwide policies get implemented by the UH Library Council, it would be helpful to know what software can be used. Wil said he thought sites wanting to use media scheduling should go ahead and do so. He added that if Endeavor says we are using too many clients, we can look at finding ways to pay for more clients. Wil asked if there was anything else with respect to acceptance. Sophia asked if he still planned to send out a letter on February 8. Wil said no, not until we have consulted with Endeavor on authority control. He said he would ask for more time to test, and he didn't think they would object too much. He asked James to do authority testing within the next week. 3. Upgrade to Voyager version 2001 Wil reported that the early release of Voyager version 2001.1 is due in March, and may be available for general upgrading in May. He assumed libraries would want to do the upgrade during the summer. He added that he knew there was concern among UH libraries about test database restoration. James said the Systems Office was looking at May 21 and 22 as upgrade dates. He noted that Circulation staff want to upgrade soon, since the new version is supposed to make a lot of changes to their module. James said that he hoped the upgrade to the second release, (version 2001.2), could also be done later in the summer. He added that if the second upgrade is incremental, it shouldn't be a big deal. Michelle noted that the upgrade to ver. 2001.1 would be the first test of the theory that Systems can take a snapshot of the test database before the upgrade, then restore it after the upgrade. She asked James to be scrupulous about communicating when the snapshot would be taken so that sites would know when they should suspend work in the test database. Michelle pointed out that UH Acquisitions staff should especially be kept in the loop, since the Acquisitions Committee requires all UH sites to do extensive prep work in the test database before they can use the Acquisitions module in the live database. 4. Test server Wil asked if the process of using Endeavor's preview server in Chicago to test out new version functionality works okay. The answer was yes, apart from the fact that only a limited number of connections are allowed. James said he was looking into getting another server that could be used as a test server. Conversations with the head of continuing sales at Endeavor indicated that costs might be lower than originally estimated, perhaps around $30,000. Wil pointed out that that estimate assumed that we already have hardware. He asked if we could get a hand me down from UH Information Technology Services (ITS). Wil noted that a test server would not have to be as big a system as the production server. Wil observed that another thing a test server might help with is if the Hawaii Voyager libraries were to be a beta test site. James asked if beta testing could be done on a test server, since the idea is that you are putting the new version into production. Wil said staff would have to do everything twice, once on the test server and once in live. He acknowledged that it would mean lots of work. Wil said he didn't think anyone would want to consider beta testing for another year. Diane asked if a test server would be a recommendation by the Systems Office. Wil said they would be tasked to look at costs. Diane noted that the UH Library Council was meeting with Pres. Dobelle tomorrow. She said it would be good to identify major cost items so that the Council could present a list to him soon. Wil agreed. He said he knew that tomorrow Jean Erhorn would be presenting a proposal for systemwide licensing of electronic resources, including some hardware costs for equipment upgrades. 5. Hawaii Voyager production server James noted that Systems needs to put more storage on the production server, which is presently running at 95%. Wil agreed. James observed that in a meeting with Endeavor representatives, they were surprised at the effort needed to set up multiple databases on the same server. Michelle noted that at the Consortial Special Interest Group meeting at last year's VUG meeting, server set-up was a major topic of conversation. 6. 2002 Voyager Users Group Meeting(VUGM) Wil noted that people who thought they might be going to this year's VUGM should make hotel reservations as soon as possible. He added that it would not be possible for Manoa to send as many people to VUGM as last year. Because of budget constraints, UH is being conservative about how many people to send to a single conference. James said that the Systems Office would need to send two people for Certification training, Fred Allen and Jerard Yagi. Wil suggested that Fred go to as many functional meetings as possible, while Jerard should concentrate on the technical track. Wil added that another important meeting would be Alan Manifold's reporting session, which would be held in the hotel ballroom. James said he would be going as a presenter, giving a talk on disaster recovery. Wil noted that the users' group pays for presenters' costs. Wil said he would go as a member of the VUG Board. Wil asked people who went last year how valuable the meeting was. Sophia said she felt it was valuable. She added that she would like someone from each functional area to go. Gwen said she felt presentations on WebVoyage were behind where she was. She suggested that, if a new librarian were hired for the vacancy in the Systems Office, that person be sent to VUGM. Wil asked what the status was of the hiring process. James felt it likely that the new librarian would be on board in time for VUGM. Michelle and Sophia said they were interested in attending, but wanted to see the program to determine how much of the meeting would be relevant to cataloging. Wil said he would get a draft copy of the program to them as soon as possible. 7. Other Wil reported that in the meeting with Endeavor's director of continuing sales, he learned that Endeavor has repackaged EnCompass into at least two versions with different features and prices. He said brochures about the new versions could be found on SupportWeb. EnCompass version 2 is supposed to be released soon, and is said to be much improved. There are 19 EnCompass customers. Endeavor is touting EnCompass as the future of library systems. Another feature is Linkfinder Plus, now bundled with EnCompass to allow linking from a database to a full-text article. Next meeting: February 28, 2002 at Hamilton Library
(Recorded by Michelle Sturges)
Present: Amy Carlson, Thelma Diercks, Jean Erhorn, Wil Frost, Luella Kurkjian, Sophia McMillen, Michelle Miyaji, Susan Murata, Marlene Oishi, Gwen Sinclair, Michelle Sturges, Nancy Westcott 1. Announcements The new UH Manoa Librarian, Diane Perushek, will begin work on Dec. 20, 2001. Wil Frost has been appointed to fill a vacancy on the Voyager Users' Group Board of Directors. The Board's current topic of discussion is the paucity of beta sites for the upcoming new version of Voyager. 2. Multiple Formats Task Force recommendation Michelle Sturges reported that the Cataloging Committee had met with members of the Multiple Formats Task Force and agreed to a recommendation for multiple format situations. A multiple format situation was defined to be a situation in which there are holdings for the original and one or more reproductions _or_ a situation in which there are holdings for more than one reproduction version of the same original, (even though no one owns the original). The recommendation was that as much as possible libraries should make an effort to link all holdings in a multiple format situation to a single, shared bibliographic record. It was also recommended that the base record should always be the record for the original version, and that notes or fixed field data specific to a particular reproduction should be entered in the holdings record for that reproduction, rather than in the shared bibliographic record. Finally, it was recommended that the new policies should not apply retrospectively except in situations where another library needing to use an existing record asks that it be brought into conformity with the new policies. The Steering Committee agreed to accept the Task Force's recommendations. 3. ITS portal project Wil Frost reported that UH Information Technology Services (ITS) has been developing a "My UH"-type of portal where students can customize what's on the page. The goal is to provide a sort of one-stop-shopping service for students accessing the UH web site. ITS asked the UH libraries to participate by allowing students to access their patron information for interactive, on-the-spot lookup via the new interface. Wil reported that the portal was still in testing, but he thought it was likely to be implemented. The UH Hamilton Systems Office had worked out a way where, when a student logs in with their uhunix id and password, the system queries the UH patron database in Voyager. Gwen Sinclair asked if the patron information access worked for patrons who have two barcodes. Wil said he would ask the Systems Office to test that scenario. Wil reported that the portal developers also wanted a search box on the My UH page to allow simple searching of the catalog database. UH Hamilton said "no" because such a feature would bypass the searching functionality of Voyager. Gwen said she thought the portal already bypasses functionality since patrons can renew books in Voyager but won't be able via the new portal. Sophia McMillen asked if a message could be added explaining to patrons what additional features were available via Voyager. Wil said a message could be added. Gwen observed that if the idea of a portal is to have one-stop shopping, she felt that some of the aisles are missing. Sophia asked why not just have a link that sends people to Voyager. Wil said he thought ITS wanted to increase its importance and have a more central role by making this interface essential. Sophia asked if security would be compromised. Wil said no. Thelma asked what other departments were being pulled in. Wil said he didn't know all of the departments being asked to participate. He said he would distribute the url for the portal information page. Wil added that he was expecting to see another test in January. Susan Murata pointed out that the decisions Hamilton was making shouldn't just be Manoa decisions, since all UH Voyager libraries would be affected. 4. Functionality review statement ideas Wil reported that the HPJI migration had yet to be accepted, as the second test load was still being evaluated, but the 45-day closing period was likely to start soon. With respect to the Hawaii Voyager libraries' formal assessment of how much Endeavor met its contracted commitments, Wil said he hoped to use the functional committee summaries as the basis for a letter to Endeavor describing our findings. Thelma Diercks noted that it was difficult deciding what to include in the summary and what to leave out, especially since rejection isn't really an option. Wil said he saw the letter as a chance to give Endeavor a list of things we most think should be fixed. Gwen noted that was the approach she used, focusing on the big things rather than the nitpicky things. Susan Murata observed that the Circulation Committee findings were all over the map, which made them very hard to organize. She said she would probably pull out the top ten issues to include in the summary. Michelle Sturges asked what the Steering Committee's role would be in the review process. Wil said he would draft something, then give it to the Steering Committee for input. 5. Hawaii Voyager Users Group (VUG) Wil asked the Steering Committee to consider whether a Hawaii regional Voyager users group should be formed. Michelle Sturges asked if her recollection was correct that a regional VUG couldn't be formed until there were at least two Voyager contracts in the region, which is why last year the Hawaii Voyager libraries tried to form a group with libraries from Australia and New Zealand. Wil said he wasn't sure if that was the case, though it made sense. He observed that the Hawaii-Australia-New Zealand group (PACVUG) might be a non-starter, given that Alan Manifold was declining to recognize it as a valid regional group, partly to vocal opposition from some Australian libraries. Wil noted that Kamehameha Schools have signed on with Voyager and have expressed interest in joining a Hawaii VUG. Wil said he liked the idea of being able to have local meetings of users with participation from vendor representatives, as was once the case with CARL. He added that he was willing to wait on a decision. Sophia asked if meetings could be scheduled around other gatherings to facilitate planning for travel and accommodations. Wil said yes. Sophia asked if the Hawaii Voyager libraries could just assume control of PACVUG and tell Alan Manifold it does exist whether the Australians participate or not. Thelma suggested that a proposal be sent out to PACVUG-L saying that the Hawaii libraries would like to keep the group going and keep the name. Wil said he would send out a message to that effect. 6. Updates Circulation Committee Susan reported that the Circ group was making a concerted effort to standardize loan periods across the system, but it was proving to be difficult. Wil asked if there was any timeframe for the standard loan period decisions. Susan said probably next semester. A proposal had been drafted, which representatives were to take back to their campuses for consideration. Fred Allen provided the Circulation Committee with a report of items returned to a different campus (either due to the new returns policy or as part of an Intra-System Loan (ISL)). Between June 1, 2001 and Dec. 11, 2001, 2,065 items were returned to a campus other than their home campus. Susan felt such numbers would help build a strong case for the need for a courier service between libraries. Acquisitions Committee Thelma Diercks reported that Hawaii Medical Library (HML) was preparing to go live with Voyager Acquisitions. Marlene Oishi reported that they had started laying the groundwork in their training database, but were not working in their live database yet. Marlene said they would start with serials and hopefully they would have 25 titles checked-in online by January 2002, 100 to 200 titles by February 2002. She noted that they were starting with the simple titles. Marlene said HML did not expect to bring up monograph acquisitions until July 2002. Thelma noted that there were now four Hawaii Voyager libraries using acquisitions: UH Hamilton, UH Law, UH Hilo and HML. Marlene reported that HML was also testing authority update loads. Once the loads were successful, HML would have ongoing authority control. Amy Carlson reported that Hamilton's first processing of an invoice via EDI had been successfully completed. The invoice total was $2.5 million. Wil asked what work was saved using EDI. Amy said staff don't have to match purchase orders and invoice line items manually. WebVoyage Committee Gwen Sinclair reported that she was working on contacting head librarians about WebVoyage Committee representation. She said she would give the information to Wil Frost to update the Endeavor Implementation web page when the membership list is finalized. 7. Other Test Database Concerns Gwen noted that a growing concern for her committee is what they will do when the test database goes away. Wil said people would recreate it. Gwen asked which people would recreate it, given the amount of work that would be involved. Thelma observed that what was needed was a test server. Several members said a test server would be too expensive. Michelle Sturges asked what configuration UW Madison used for its live and read-only databases, LIBR and FIBR. Wil and Thelma said they would try and find out. Sophia said she wasn't sure you need an exact duplicate of the live database, especially if it takes a lot of work to create. Gwen noted that the existing test database, despite the best effort of Systems staff, doesn't entirely meet WebVoyage testing needs. Thelma admitted that Hamilton's fiscal unit had done testing of the purchase order receiving report in live because it couldn't be done using the test database. Voyager Upgrade The next upgrade of Voyager may be delayed. Beta testing is going slowly and lots of problems are being discovered. Instead of the planned major Circulation overhaul, changes will probably be broken up into three Circulation upgrades. VUGM Wil noted that there would probably be a Voyager Users Group Meeting registration announcement in a month or two. Jean Erhorn reported that, due to UH budget constraints, situations where there are multiple attendees at the same conference are being closely monitored and require extra justification in funding applications. Next meeting: January 24, 2002 at Hamilton Library
(Recorded by Michelle Sturges)
Present: James Adamson, Amy Carlson, Susie Cheng, Thelma Diercks, Wil Frost, Luella Kurkjian, Marlene Oishi, Gwen Sinclair, Michelle Sturges Guest: Maureen Grant, Associate Information Processing Consultant (Systems Support) for the Acquisitions and Serials Department, Central Technical Services, University of Wisconsin, Madison. 1. Announcements -- Citation Server chat session. Wil Frost reminded members that the Endeavor chat session on the new Citation Server with LinkFinder Plus product would be held at noon on Monday, Dec. 3. Thelma Diercks said folks interested in the product who would not be able to participate in the session should be able to find a transcript of the session posted to SupportWeb not too long after the session itself. She noted that chat session transcripts tend to be posted in reverse chronological order, with the start of the discussion at the bottom. Michelle Sturges cautioned that in the case of the Hawaii Pacific Journal Index (HPJI), Citation Server linking has meant that catalogers in the shared database have to use special precautions when working with HPJI bibliographic records. Expanded use of Citation Server might be undermined if serials cataloging personnel aren't involved in preparation and decision-making. -- Patches for Voyager client software. James Adamson announced that the Systems Office will be releasing patches to version 2000.1.3 client software, (i.e. the software loaded onto staff workstations), to try and eliminate some run-time errors that have been reported. James said that one school of thought had been that it wasn't necessary to load all patches for client software. He noted that the test of that approach was deemed unsuccessful, and the Systems Office would now like to follow the philosophy that all client software updates should be done to keep the client software and server software as compatible as possible. -- Status of HPJI database. While the test loads have been successful in some areas, modifications needed to be worked out for the load to be the way it is envisioned. The next load could be the production load. 2. Report on Systems Office meeting with Maureen Grant James reported that much of the discussion focused on how Voyager reporting is handled at UW Madison and, in particular, what sort of reports are run for Acquisitions. Of particular interest was a monthly report of all titles ordered, received or cancelled. Selectors are sent their relevant section and asked to approve the report via an email message if all information for their section is accurate. The reports are kept on file for auditing purposes, eliminating the necessity to keep whatever was originally submitted to generate the orders. At UW Madison, where selectors don't share funds, the report is organized by fund. James noted that at Hamilton, where selectors do share funds, such a report would probably need to be organized by selector in order to be used in the same way. Another report discussed was the weekly acquisitions order report, a custom programmed report listing the number of orders in aggregate that were processed as a way of assessing workload. UW Madison also makes regular use of the Voyager canned open order report and the canned fund snapshot report. UW Madison has a systems setup that supports two Voyager databases, LIBR and FIBR. LIBR is the production database. FIBR is a copy of the production database, updated once a week, that is used for running reports and testing report queries to avoid negatively impacting production database response time. Maureen noted that FIBR had allowed decentralization of reporting. 3. Talk with Maureen Grant Noting that the Hawaii Voyager libraries were nearing the end of their migration to Voyager, and that the Steering Committee would soon be assessing Functional Committee findings as part of the final accept/reject process, Thelma Diercks asked Maureen to describe some of UW Madison's experiences in making the transition to Voyager. Maureen began by describing the library environment at UW Madison. The General Library System (GLS) consists of Memorial Library and about 16 smaller, subject-oriented academic libraries. In the GLS, Memorial Library is the main library. All GLS acquisitions and cataloging operations are centralized at Memorial in the Central Technical Services Unit. In the Acquisitions and Serials Department, the GLS has 3000 funds in 3 ledgers. They handle about 40,000 serials orders, including gifts, and order about 54,000 monographs annually. The GLS libraries share their Voyager database with a number of professional libraries on campus (e.g. law, health, engineering). GLS also shares Voyager policy decisions with the professional libraries, (but in Voyager Acquisitions, some of the professional libraries have separate ledgers from GLS). For the migration from NOTIS to Voyager, there were four implementation committees: Acquisitions, Circulation, Reserves and Cataloging. These committees have been retained since the migration was completed. An additional group, MIRAG, looks at public services issues involving Voyager. MIRAG includes representatives from each of the implementation committees. The four implementation committees have input in MIRAG, but MIRAG does not have input into the implementation committees. Maureen observed that division along functional lines speeds decision-making, since group members work in the same environment. The Voyager system was selected by the UW System as a whole. Maureen's sense was that libraries for smaller schools in the UW System love Voyager, but libraries for larger schools find their size leads to a lot of complexity with Voyager use. After NOTIS, having a system like Voyager that does not permit local customization has required a big adjustment. Maureen noted that one key to making the most out of Voyager is to re-work workflows. At UW Madison, Voyager provided an opportunity to re-examine how work got done. At one time, workflow at the Central Technical Services unit had been structured around subject areas. Voyager forced the unit to return to a more traditional functional structure for improved productivity. Another area where Voyager is having a workflow impact is EDI, which saves a substantial amount of time. There is thinking at UW Madison that implementation of EDI may make it possible to reassign some fiscal people to other work. Maureen has high hopes that bulk import may also prove to be a great time-saver. There have been some problems. After UW accepted the system, a ghost holding problem was discovered. Single holdings records in NOTIS, with holdings data and order records, migrated as order records attached to blank holdings, with holdings data attached to a different ghost holding record. Endeavor ran a report detailing the records so manual consolidation of data could be done. The staff-side font causes problems since it is hard to read due to its small size, and because it is a sans serif font that makes the lower-case l and upper-case i indistinguishable. Maureen said she feels they still have at least a year's worth of catching up to do, primarily in the serials area. With respect to the serials part of Voyager Acquisitions, Maureen said they didn't claim for two years. They loaded the University of Pennsylvania's publication patterns when they migrated in 1999, (the same set that Hawaii Medical Library and the training databases have). They knew the Pennsylvania publication patterns would be insufficient for some UW titles. They discovered problems with some of the serial patterns, and it took time to begin the process of creating new publication patterns so that the work of subscription component creation could begin. They have found the fact that the collapse function doesn't work properly to be problematic. Thelma asked Maureen if they were satisfied with the level of granularity Voyager provides in the security module for operator profiles. Maureen indicated that the most recent version of Voyager (2000.1.3) allows for more specific configurations of security profiles than previously. With respect to the revamped Acquisitions module in Voyager version 2000.1.3, Maureen noted that at UW Madison the upgrade led to slowdowns not encountered in version 99. She believed one problem is the number of windows that end up being opened in Acquisitions to allow quick access to data from different sections of the module. With respect to workarounds that might be necessary while waiting for bug fixes or enhancements, Maureen advised that any workarounds be very carefully constructed so as not to result in data that deviates from how it would be if the system worked properly. Otherwise, when the bug gets fixed or the enhancement is implemented, you will have a lot of retrospective clean-up work on your hands. Next meeting: December 13, 2001.
(Recorded by Michelle Sturges)
Present: James Adamson, Amy Carlson, Jean Erhorn, Wil Frost, Luella Kurkjian, Sophia McMillen, Susan Murata, Lei Seeger, Gwen Sinclair, Michelle Sturges, Zoe Stewart-Marshall Updates Migration Timeline The Hawaii Pacific Journal Index (HPJI) database may be accepted as having been successfully migrated to Voyager in the next few weeks. Since HPJI is the last database to be migrated, the day it is accepted will be the day the 45-day countdown for Hawaii Voyager libraries to comment on the degree to which Voyager meets specifications begins. The Steering Committee will start reviewing functional committee findings at the next meeting, scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 29, 2001. The functional committee chairs need to finish the summaries for their section of the specification review findings and get them to Wil Frost in time for Steering Committee members to read them before the next Steering Committee meeting. Functional Committee Communication Wil Frost asked for a summary of the steps being taken to improve functional committee communication. He was told that each functional committee chair was now subscribed to all functional committee lists. Functional committee chairs will send copies of messages containing committee decisions, guidelines, policies or procedures, as well as authoritative statements on functionality to the assist*hawaii.edu address so that the assist account can serve as a central log. To avoid confusion, Systems Office personnel who handle assist*hawaii.edu messages will be trained that, with respect to UH libraries, only requests for reports or information on system status should be automatically handled by them. All other UH library requests should be referred to the appropriate functional committee chair. The UH shared catalog database will be down on Nov. 12, 2001 so that the cleaned-up shared authority database can be loaded in. Endeavor found 109,000 duplicate authority records during the clean up. All other Hawaii Voyager databases should remain available while the UH shared database is down. Since UH libraries will be closed on Nov. 12, inconvenience to users will be minimized. Cataloging Committee (SCCC) Michelle Sturges reported that she had yet to send out the Multiple Version Task Force recommendations. She promised to do so before the next Steering Committee meeting. Zoe Stewart-Marshall reported that a new report of bibliographic records without holdings records (MFHDs) had been run. Most of the records on the report appeared to belong to UH Hamilton/Sinclair. Paul Beck and his team would be going through the report and adding MFHDs with a "REVIEW" location to all bibliographic records without MFHDs. Adding a holdings record protects a bibliographic record from accidental deletion. Once Paul and his team have finished, the SCCC can re-examine their policy on availability of delete bib capability in the shared database, especially with respect to minimal bibliographic records created via Voyager Circulation. Circulation Committee Susan Murata reported that there was no new business. WebVoyage Committee Wil Frost asked if the question of how often changes are made to WebVoyage had been referred to the UH Library Council (UHLC) for consideration. He was told that the question had not been referred, but the Steering Committee felt that making changes once a month was acceptable. It was suggested that Diane Sakai bring up the proposal of WebVoyage changes happening once a month at tomorrow's UHLC meeting. Gwen Sinclair reported that the Committee was getting more questions about how particular kinds of data should display. A common concern is whether particular kinds of notes should display as part of the bibliographic record or the holdings record. Another big question being considered by the Committee had to do with obsolete language codes in the 008 fixed field. WebVoyage language limits are based on 008 language codes. For certain languages whose official code was changed, some records in the database use the old code, and some use the new. If WebVoyage only allows limits by one code or the other, not all records will be retrieved. For WebVoyage to allow limits by both codes, the particular language has to have two entries in the language limit list, and the user must select both entries. One way to avoid such confusion is to ask catalogers to change all obsolete code entries to the new code. Michelle noted that one problem is that Voyager does not prompt the operator if a new record with an old code is being saved to the database. Even if a clean-up of old codes is done, there is no surefire way to keep old codes from re-entering the database in the future. Michelle noted that another coding problem involves Japanese language records that were given the non-existent code jap rather than the correct code jpn as part of an outsourced retrospective conversion project. Migration Zoe reported the following items as still outstanding: -- There is no working loader for MARCIVE records. The MARCIVE loader will have to take a backseat to the Pinyin record loads. -- Loads of UH Hamilton Chinese records converted to Pinyin romanization will be the first big load into the shared bib database involving overlay of existing records. Systems Office and cataloging personnel will be watching to see the effect of the load. UH Hamilton records Japanese and Korean will be loaded at a later date. -- After the cleaned-up authority database is loaded on Nov. 12, a plan for loading the authority backfile updates has to be worked out. No decision has been made on whether to purchase a new base tape for authorities. Zoe said it might be good to start with the existing retrospective files and see how that approach goes before considering acquisition of a base tape. She pointed out that Voyager only allows loading of 10,000 records at a time, even when a file is larger. Zoe noted that such large loads will be pushing the system in unprecedented ways, and one side-effect may be slow-downs in system response time. The HPJI database's first test load went very well. Citation server hook to holdings functionality worked perfectly. Zoe noted that HPJI implementation in Voyager would happen in two phases. In actuality the migration won't really be completed because the specification was that you be able to search and see hook to holdings information at the same time. Right now, you have to cutover to the "Other Libraries" button to select HPJI from the "Citation Databases" menu. Once you're connected to HPJI, you can do a search. Zoe said what UH is asking for will require special programming. Wil asked if Endeavor would do the work for free. James said no. Zoe agreed Endeavor probably wouldn't do the work for free, but they understand UH won't consider the work complete until HPJI is a standalone database. Zoe said the final HPJI output would be done on Sunday, Nov. 11. Data entry personnel had been alerted that their Tandem cutoff day would be Friday, Nov. 9. Unicode Project: K.T. Yao is taking over as UH point person. She will represent UH at Task Force meetings, be the contact person with Endeavor Unicode personnel and coordinate testing. Zoe noted that feedback in testing has to come from both Technical Services and Public Services personnel. She added that the Unicode project is not just a CJK project. When the Unicode conversion takes place, every character and diacritic is flipped, not just the ones for Chinese, Japanese and Korean. At the testing phase, every single character will have to be checked to make sure nothing has been lost, including diacritics in languages such as Hawaiian, Thai and Vietnamese. After the flip, libraries will have to switch to a Unicode Voyager client, including a whole new version of cataloging. Zoe observed that UH couldn't be a beta partner for the conversion because we don't have a true test server. We can only evaluate what we see on Endeavor's test server in Chicago. Zoe said K.T. would need a select group of people able to go look at the test server when notification is received. The test Unicode flip on Endeavor's server is scheduled for January 2002. UH participants will be asked to check for problems in test record displays and give feedback to K.T. for relay to Endeavor and the Task Force. Zoe told Gwen that Unicode implementation will require a number of decisions from the WebVoyage Committee. Will there be multiple interface options (e.g. glyph server, true Unicode), or a single option. Glyph server advantages include the fact that it is not browser dependent. A true Unicode interface requires Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher loaded with Unicode fonts in order to get a correct display. Unicode interface advantages include the ability to meet ADA compliance standards and the ability to copy vernacular characters into other documents, such as a bibliography. Other Business Upgrading to Voyager version 2001 Gwen reported that a concern for the WebVoyage Committee is what kind of WebVoyage configuration work will be called for when the Hawaii Voyager libraries upgrade to version 2001, and when that upgrade is likely to take place. Zoe said that there was no release schedule as yet. James Adamson noted that there is some information on SupportWeb about v.2001. He added that he wasn't inclined to be first in line for the upgrade, and thought summer 2002 would be a good time. Zoe pointed out that there are some aspects of v.2001 that are big issues, such as the "My Voyager" user customization feature that is likely to eat up space on the server. She felt talking about such features now could be worthwhile. Gwen said discussions aren't really constructive until there are hard facts to go on. She noted that a summer upgrade is good, except for WebVoyage committee members on 9-month contracts who are off during the summer. Wil Frost noted that another problem is Unicode. As part of the Unicode Implementation Task Force, UH can't afford to wait too long before upgrading. Zoe stated that the "Unicode flip" in which Voyager data is converted to Unicode won't happen until 2003, but to qualify, UH has to do at least one upgrade in 2002. Michelle noted that another upgrade complication is the possible loss of the customized test database. She suggested that the Acquisitions Committee be consulted, since members plan to make heavy use of the testing database as a prerequisite to bringing up Acquisitions in the live database. Sophia McMillen said that she thought the Hawaii Voyager libraries needed to make an appointment soon to avoid being frozen out by other libraries wanting to upgrade during summer. Wil Frost asked Amy Carlson if v.2001 would include bindery functionality. Amy wasn't sure. Zoe said the functional committees need to pull up the v.2001 release notes at SupportWeb and see if there is anything compelling in the new version such that they would want to upgrade sooner rather than later. Gwen said one compelling feature is the ability to limit headings searches. Another is the reported fix of a feature that floats locations at a user's home campus to the top of the holdings list. Wil asked if it seemed reasonable to ask functional committees to begin looking at the release notes? Zoe said the Steering Committee might let things ride for a little while, since v.2001 is only in Beta now. She suggested that the Steering Committee watch what happens when v.2001 goes into release. Sophia asked if the goal would still be for a summer upgrade date. Gwen said she thought sometime around the end of the semester, such as early May, would be preferable. UH System Use of OCLC Sophia McMillen reported that OCLC representatives had presented a proposal at HLA on systemwide use of OCLC. She gave copies of the proposal documentation to Michelle Sturges for presentation to SCCC and to Susan Murata to pass along to Diane Sakai for presentation to UH Library Council.
(Recorded by Michelle Sturges)
Present: James Adamson, Amy Carlson, Susie Cheng, Thelma Diercks, Coreen Ishimaru, Luella Kurkjian, Sophia McMillen, Susan Murata, Marlene Oishi, Gwen Sinclair, Zoe Stewart-Marshall, Michelle Sturges Including List of Attendees in Minutes A request had been made that minutes include who was present at the meeting. Michelle Sturges asked if members were agreeable to the idea. Committee members felt the information might be useful. Sophia McMillen volunteered to record names of those present at meetings. Reports/Updates Acquisitions Committee (SACC) Thelma Diercks reported that the SACC met earlier that day. The Committee came up with some systemwide decisions on vendor code standards, component name standards, use of standard acqbib templates and the necessity of working with serials check-in in the test database as a prerequisite to implementing serials check-in in the live database. Committee members did hands-on work checking in issues, creating vendor records and setting up a new title for check-in. The SACC plans to meet during the third week of January 2002, after ALA midwinter. Cataloging Committee (SCCC) Michelle Sturges reported that the SCCC and Multiple Formats Task Force had come up with a recommendation for how to handle records for bibliographic entities held in more than one format. Michelle was asked to send the recommendation out to Steering Committee members via e-mail for review, after which it could be discussed at a future meeting. Michelle reported that the a third draft of the checklist of items to be included in procedures for adding bibliographic records to the database had been distributed to SCCC members. A number of suggested revisions had come in from SCCC members. Michelle said she would be working on a fourth draft of the checklist. A similar checklist for using merge in the shared database is being developed. Zoe Stewart-Marshall reported that Nadine Leong-Kurio will be migrating the SCCC web site to Honolulu Community College's campus network. Circulation Committee Susan Murata reported that the committee met two weeks ago, at which time they discussed implementing the systemwide state tax setoff. Nine out of 12 libraries plan to participate in the implementation. Each site will get a list of patrons to review before a final list goes to the General Accounting Office on Dec. 29, 2001. The criteria for inclusion on the list are fines totaling $25 or more for a period of 180 days or longer. The committee also discussed electronic reserves. Ruth Marie Quirk did a demonstration of how e-reserves work in Voyager. Several sites are interested and it is possible e-reserves will be implemented next semester. The Circulation Committee is discussing using WebCT rather than e-mail for communicating on committee business. If all committee members discussed circulation business via WebCT, all discussions would be archived in one place, even if some messages did not go to the committee list, voyagercirc-l. Greg Volker and Ruth Marie volunteered to set something up for testing. UH Library Council Susan Murata reported that the UHLC is working on a systemwide fine and fee policy, an intra-system loan (ISL) policy, a community user policy and a media policy. WebVoyage Gwen Sinclair reported that committee work has continued apace with the usual bunches of change requests and reports of PAC problems. Gwen felt there have been an unusual number of problem reports, especially with the use of pre and post-limits. Some problems can be replicated, but others cannot. Gwen has recommended all of the problems be reported to Endeavor so they can look for patterns. Gwen asked that Hawaii Voyager users continue to send reports of problems to assist@hawaii.edu. She noted that in the case of bizarre search results, printouts of those results can be extremely helpful. The telnet link on the opening screen of Hawaii Voyager has been made a live link, rather than a link to a telnet address. The link leads to a page with instructions for set-up, depending on the telnet client being used. The hope is that eventually the system will support automatic linking to the telnet version. The WebVoyage Committee web pages have been moved to the Hamilton library server. They are being maintained by David Flynn. Susan Murata asked if there had been any resolution on the question of whether WebVoyage was ADA compliant as determined by the Bobby web site test. Gwen said that Bin Zhang reviewed Bobby results for Hawaii Voyager and found that most of the problems listed are alt text problems where a graphic does not have underlying text describing the graphic. Gwen said the problem is that not all of the alt text problems can be edited locally. They are in parts of Voyager code that customers do not have editing access to. Gwen said that because of the alt text problem, the Committee decided WebVoyage is not truly ADA compliant and the telnet/text version needs to be retained. Sophia McMillen thanked Gwen for fixing display problems in the cataloging module. She noted that there was confusion among Hamilton cataloging staff about where to send messages. Gwen said she prefers that all WebVoyage requests and problem reports get sent to the assist@hawaii.edu address, so that there is a central logging location. Systems Office Gwen asked who would be handling Pat Gates' WebVoyage work after his departure. James answered that it would be a combination of himself and Randy Takehara. James said that he would be handling Pat's follow-up and communication responsibilities until the Systems Office is able to hire a replacement. Gwen asked who would be editing WebVoyage files on the server, noting that editing activity now happens only once a month. James said Randy would handle editing files. Gwen asked if there was any timeline for hiring replacements. James said not at the moment, but he should know in a few weeks. James added the idea is to hire and train new personnel as quickly as possible. Susan Murata asked who handles the assist communications. James said several people, depending on who is in the office and who is out of the office. He noted that handling assist rotates around. James remarked that everything should be covered. He added that Randy has been doing most of the Systems Office html work already. Thelma asked if Randy was working on the front-end for UH Hilo's purchase order. James said yes. Thelma told Committee members that if they had suggestions for James for candidates to fill Systems Office vacancies, they should please send them to James. Thelma noted that suggestions on how work might be shifted or rebalanced could also be sent to James via e-mail. She said people could cc her also if they wished. Migration Zoe Stewart-Marshall reported that the authority file has been sent to Endeavor for clean up. Endeavor is scheduled to send the file back on Nov. 12. Reloading the authority file involves bringing the UH shared database down for an entire day. The existing authority tables have to be purged, then loaded from scratch. Next, a system regeneration has to be performed to reindex the database. The entire process is expected to take at least 12 hours, but only the UH shared database should be down. Other Hawaii Voyager databases such as Hawaii Medical Library and Bishop Museum should not be affected. Zoe pointed out that once the Nov. 12 authority load is done, the authority database will not be unfrozen. Authorities will not be open for editing until the issue of loading the LCSH update files has been addressed. Zoe observed that the authority database is likely to remain problematic for some time. The Hawaii-Pacific Journal Index (HPJI) did a test load but had some problems. Zoe said hopefully enough has been fixed for people to review the data load. Work is still being done on getting the hook-to-holdings feature set up. Zoe reminded members that she and K.T. Yao would be away at the Endeavor Unicode Task Force meeting from Saturday through Thursday. Sophia observed that K.T. has made some very useful discoveries with respect to CJK display problems in the test interface. Apparently, EACC codes aren't being translated properly as they sometimes map to the code one line off from the code they actually match. Also, some codes that were missing from the glyph server files were recently loaded in. Zoe said mapping table problems are easy to address. Another issue is the problem with the glyph server program that causes it to stop displaying anything after it hits a problem character. Zoe thought the second problem might require a patch. Zoe reported that things are moving forward on the project to have all Hamilton RLIN CJK records output for reloading into the UH shared database. Right now Systems personnel are testing overlay issues. The State Archives Voyager web interface has been finished. Bishop Museum's interface is still being worked on. The purchase order receiving report problem has not been resolved. Systems is waiting for some work on Endeavor's part. Zoe reported that Karen Gegner, while still our project manager, would no longer be in her Endeavor Office after the coming week as she was being temporarily transferred to London. Due to the time difference, almost all communication with Karen will have to be via e-mail. Susan Murata asked who would be Karen's contact person after Zoe's departure. James said he would take over those responsibilities. Zoe was asked if all critical data is now off the Tandem machine. The answer was no, because HPJI is still being updated on the Tandem. Zoe said once the HPJI test load is accepted, it will be possible to set a cut-off date for the Tandem. She noted that the cut over from HPJI Tandem to HPJI Voyager may be a phased transition. Other Business Functional Committee Communication Thelma noted that, as a follow-up to discussion about communication problems at the previous Steering Committee meeting, the functional committee chairs had met and agreed that a central log for all significant functional committee communications might be good. Since the WebVoyage committee already uses the assist@hawaii.edu address as a central log, the other functional committee chairs were willing to try a similar model. For the WebVoyage Committee, all requests for changes and reports of problems should be sent to assist@hawaii.edu, with a cc to Gwen Sinclair. When the WebVoyage Committee makes a decision about a change, Gwen will send a message with the final decision to assist@hawaii.edu. Gwen noted she usually includes the text "FYI for logging" in such messages. For the Acquisitions, Circulation and Cataloging Committees, discussions will continue to be conducted via existing channels, (voyageracq-l for Acquisitions, voyagercirc-l for Circulation, uhcat and sccc-l for Cataloging). Whenever discussion leads to a decision about procedures, a statement of policy, or an authoritative statement of information about functionality, the functional chair will send a copy of the message to assist@hawaii.edu for logging purposes. James Adamson said that all Systems Office staff would be made to understand that such messages are coming in for logging purposes, not for Systems to act on. Systems Office staff would also be trained to refer any messages about Voyager functionality in the UH System environment to the responsible chair, if that chair was not already cc-ed in the message. The only messages coming into assist@hawaii.edu that would not need to be referred to functional chairs are requests for reports and inquiries about the status of the system. VUG Bylaws on Voting Three questions with respect to Voyager Users' Group bylaws are being considered. The first question is whether the Bylaws on voting for VUG board members should be changed. The current model for voting is one vote per contract. Under this model, all the Hawaii Voyager libraries share a single vote. Other models being considered are one vote per institution, one vote per database, one vote for any site that pays a membership fee. The second question is whether Board size should be increased to 8 to accommodate a permanent seat on the Board for a representative from a European library. Zoe expressed opposition to permanent seats unless there is a model where different interests are guaranteed representation. The third question is whether libraries should pay a fee for VUG membership. The question grows out of a concern that VUG has to rely on funding from Endeavor to support the annual VUG meeting. Steering Committee members asked if there was a deadline for response. Zoe said it would be good to give feedback before ALA Midwinter in case the VUG Bylaws Task Force meets there. Thelma offered to send out the original bylaws message to Steering Committee members for consideration at a future meeting.
(Recorded by Michelle Sturges)
1. Updates
Migration (Zoe Stewart-Marshall)
HPJI: Karen Gegner is preparing the data, but there appear to be CARL
problems that will require programming by Systems Office staff before
migration can proceed. The problems with HPJI migration at this point
are on the UH side.
Authority: Karen Gegner will begin work on this.
Purchase Order Receiving Report (PORR): Endeavor is waiting for an
answer from UHM about the acceptability of a PORR which is off by 1
cent. A conference call is planned.
Acquisitions Vendor Type: The problem with searching is in the process
of being fixed. Karen expects to be completed by Monday, Oct. 1. A
problem in the software caused the migration problem.
Acquisitions Committee (SACC)
Thelma Diercks reported that the Acquisitions module had been up and
down since Friday. The hope was that the vendor problem would be
corrected by Monday.
The next meeting of the SACC will be on Oct. 25 and will concentrate on
serials check-in. Lisa Sepa from Maui and Coreen Ishimaru from Hilo
will be attending. The hope is to hold the meeting at Hamilton so that
Hamilton staff can do PC-based demonstrations. There may also be some
discussion of issues to be coordinated with the Cataloging Committee.
The functional review of Acquisitions is about 40% done. The main
section left to do is for the fiscal section.
Because of the detailed nature of the individual specifications in each
section of the functional review, it was decided that each functional
committee chair would provide a short summary of their section of the
review. The summaries will be posted on the web along with the
specification-by-specification reviews.
Cataloging Committee (SCCC)
Michelle Sturges reported that drafts of a checklist for procedures for
adding bibs and of the minutes from the last meeting had been
distributed to SCCC members for review. The next step is to develop a
checklist for procedures for merging bib records. Selected staff at UH
Hamilton are developing draft merge procedures for review.
Nadine Leong-Kurio at Honolulu Community College Library has volunteered
to take over maintenance of the SCCC web site from Zoe. Michelle and
Fred Allen will be splitting operator certification duties formerly
handled by Zoe. When a request is submitted, it will be referred to
Michelle, who will verify that necessary standards have been met.
Michelle will then let Fred know he should go ahead and implement the
request in the Security section of the System Administration module.
Certification will be based on submission of written procedures that
will be used to train the operators.
WebVoyage Task Force
Gwen Sinclair reported that questions were coming up about the long-term
role of the task force. She noted that until now, the general routine
for the task force has been: (1) Requests for changes to the PAC are
received. (2) The task force investigates whether the request is
configurable and, if so, discusses whether the change should be made.
(3) If the change is approved, Pat Gates and Gwen would meet and make
the changes. Generally, Pat and Gwen met weekly to make approved
changes.
Gwen explained that one problem is that requests don't go to one place.
Some are submitted to her directly, some are sent to the Systems Office
assist@hawaii.edu account, some come up in meetings of Hamilton
departments such as Cataloging and then get relayed via Hamilton
channels. The lack of a single submission point makes requests hard to
track. Gwen noted another problem is determining how often changes
should be made. Should they continue to be done weekly? Should they be
held for the end of the semester? Gwen noted that another question the
task force has been wondering about is whether non-UH sites still
benefit from receiving task force e-mail messages discussing changes to
the UH PAC interfaces. And there is also the question of what the
future of the group should be, given that it was originally created to
troubleshoot WebVoyage issues stemming from the upgrade to version 2000.
Michelle observed that she knew of at least one non-UH library whose
WebVoyage person had benefited from the discussion about adding the full
title display. Zoe pointed out that keeping all sites in the loop helps
all Hawaii Voyager sites stay similar, which simplifies Systems Office
maintenance. She agreed that it might be time to redefine the purpose
of the task force. She felt it should not be dissolved, that Hawaii
Voyager PAC issues needed some continuity. Wil Frost suggested changing
the group from a task force to a functional committee. Zoe agreed,
noting that a subset of the whole committee could be pulled together to
analyze changes stemming from upgrades. Gwen said she envisioned such a
committee has doing routine maintenance decisions and also handling new
Voyager release configuration decisions. The Steering Committee agreed
to make the WebVoyage Task Force a standing committee, the WebVoyage
Committee.
With respect to determining how often changes should be made, Wil asked
if all changes Gwen makes with Pat Gates are reported to WebVoyage
representatives. Gwen said they are, but only major changes get
announced beyond the WebVoyage group. Zoe observed that the WebVoyage
Committee probably needs a log of changes made, major and minor,
preferably on a web page. Wil asked if the Systems Office keeps such a
log. Zoe said it does, but not for the public. Zoe noted that how
often changes are made is probably of most concern to public services
staff. Gwen said she would take the question of how frequently changes
should be made to the WebVoyage representatives, with the request that
they consult their public services departments. Thelma suggested that
all changes submitted and approved in a month be done at the end of that
month, say on the 30th. Gwen was open to the suggestion, but noted that
some requesters want things done right away. Michelle observed that a
less frequent rate of implementing changes would make the PAC more
predictable. Marlene Oishi noted that her understanding was that Hawaii
Medical Library's PAC would stay identical to UH's PAC. She asked if
that was happening. Zoe recommended that she ask Pat Gates.
With respect to communication problems in WebVoyage, (change requests
going to different places), Zoe said she felt it might be part of a
larger communication problem between functional committees and their
constituencies. Zoe felt that having a central point where all messages
are received and logged might be a more workable model than the
decentralized lines of communication that currently exist. She
suggested that all questions go to the Systems Office assist@hawaii.edu
account, to be subsequently routed to the relevant committee chair(s).
Michelle and Thelma were both strongly opposed to the idea. Michelle
expressed concern that committees which already have effective lines of
communication in place, such as the Circulation Committee, would only be
hurt by such a proposal. Thelma suggested that another means of
improved communication could be a system where all functional chairs get
every message. Gwen said one of her concerns was having a central log
of all requests. James Adamson noted that if assist@hawaii.edu got
cc-ed on all functional committee messages, the messages would
automatically be logged and archived. Zoe observed that, while the
Systems Office keeps records of configuration changes that get made, it
doesn't have records of any discussion that preceded the decision for a
change. James suggested that people just cc assist@hawaii.edu whenever
they send a message out to a functional committee chair or discussion
list. Zoe felt that method wouldn't work. Gwen suggested that all
requests that go to the chairs could be forwarded to assist@hawaii.edu.
Michelle asked for a definition of "request." Zoe said requests for
permission or requests for information. Zoe noted that responses to
such requests by chairs would also have to be cc-ed to
assist@hawaii.edu. Wil observed that there seemed to be two basic
models under consideration, one in which messages go to
assist@hawaii.edu then to the functional chairs, and one in which
messages go to the functional chairs then to assist@hawaii.edu. Zoe
said she felt whoever was in line to be first recipient should have to
keep the official log and should have to accept requests from all sites,
not just UH sites.
Non-disclosure Form
Jean Erhorn reported that she had contacted the UH Counsel's Office and
showed them the sample form. The approved it. Jean said she wanted to
make one change by adding a sentence about financial records in addition
to student information. She would them be ready to present the form at
the next UH Library Council meeting.
Jean noted that one issue to be resolved is the location where the
master form should be kept. She asked who is the final repository of
paper. Zoe suggested each site's personnel office should keep the
original on file, but a copy needed to be faxed to the Systems Office.
Once the nondisclosure form is in place, the Systems Office won't supply
logins and passwords for people accessing certain modules unless they
have received a copy of the form.
Specification Review
Zoe asked if a deadline had been set for the Steering Committee's review
of the functional committee lists of unmet specifications. Thelma said
she would like to include an overall statement about what we bought
rather than just the individual specs. Thelma observed that about half
the chunk of problems would come from serials. Zoe said it was okay to
have an overall statement, as long as the individual specs were also
retained.
(Recorded by Michelle Sturges)
1. Announcements Zoe Stewart-Marshall has accepted a Technical Services position at Cornell University and will be leaving in November 2001, after the Voyager migration. Her last day will be around Nov. 9. K.T. Yao will become the Univerity of Hawaii representative to the Endeavor Unicode Committee. Zoe will continue to serve on the committee, but as Cornell's representative. 2. UH Campus Name Changes and Impact on Voyager Wil Frost asked what impact Pres. Dobelle's proposed name changes for UH campuses may have on UH Voyager. Sophia McMillen noted that authority records for the various campuses will have to be revised. Wil observed that he had just sent a list of Hawaii Voyager site names to Endeavor for it to add to its customer list. Wil's list used the old names. Zoe observed that Endeavor only revises its customer list once a year, so it might not be possible to get the names changed in a timely fashion. With respect to WebVoyage, consensus was that PAC display location names and names on virtual host interfaces could be changed without difficulty. Functional committees were asked to look at other things generated by Voyager that might need campus name revisions such as notices, purchase orders, etc. Duane Wenzel asked if any standard terminology had been settled on for Hawaii Voyager libraries that are not a part of UH. He explained that Bishop Museum would like to put something on its WebVoyage interfaces acknowledging the connection they have with the other libraries. The Steering Committee agreed on "Member of the Hawaii Voyager Consortium." 3. VUG Bylaws Task Force Reconsideration of Voting Rules Michelle Sturges had distributed a message from VOYC-L, the Voyager e-mail list for the consortial interest group, announcing that the Voyager Users' Group Bylaws Task Force was reconsidering the rules relating to how users can vote. The present rule is one vote per contract. Proposed changes included one vote per institution and one vote per database. Zoe expressed concern that a revision to the rules might lead to some types of libraries being underrepresented. Thelma Diercks felt the Hawaii Voyager Consortium needs more votes than the single vote we have under the existing bylaws. Michelle said she would try to find the follow-up messages, (two or three at most) and forward them to the group to facilitate future discussion of the matter by the Steering Committee. 4. Request to Mount ODBC Software on Staff PCs Several functional committee chairs have approached the Systems Office about the possibility of selected staff being allowed to have special drivers loaded onto their Voyager workstations so that they can run Access reports themselves instead of requesting reports through the Systems Office. Jean Erhorn reported that James Adamson had concerns about server security. It was suggested that one staff member with demonstrated expertise in Access be selected to serve as a test case. James said that, apart from server security, he also had concerns about confidential data. Confidential data is not encrypted in Oracle tables and can be easily accessed by whoever has the ability to run Access reports on Voyager. Jean observed that concerns about confidential data actually extend beyond the Voyager reporting issue. Research James had done revealed reason to be concerned about what circulation student workers already have access to as part of their jobs such as social security numbers and home addresses. Zoe agreed with Jean's concerns, but said that what made the Voyager reporting issue more serious was a matter of scale. A person with access to confidential data via the Circulation module can only acquire small amounts of data at a time by writing it down or printing it out record by record. With the ODBC driver, an entire file of personal information can be stolen in 30 seconds. Zoe said that selecting a couple of people, say one from Circulation and one from Acquisitions, would allow the Systems Office to test ramifications of decentralizing such access. Zoe noted that another concern is that once someone has access to the tables in Voyager, they have access to all data for all sites, including acquisitions budgets, ledgers, etc. Diane Sakai felt that sort of access would be a concern for other campuses. She noted that some campuses are already seeing lawsuits about failure to preserve the confidentiality of personal information. Diane agreed that a careful, well-thought-out approach would be best. She also thought it there might be a need for libraries to check with their administrations about liability issues. James reported that there are federal laws about access to personal information by employees (including student employees) of the university. He said that employees at UH Manoa's Admissions & Records have to sign non-disclosure forms before they can be authorized to access confidential information. James said that it is possible to have a federal audit in which auditors want to see logs of access transactions. Lack of a log can mean loss of federal funding. James said that use of an ODBC driver bypasses the Voyager front-end, allowing access to all data without any password protections. Susan Murata asked what logs were being kept now. Zoe said the only logs Voyager keeps are about who has edited a record. She explained that the Systems Office keeps files of all user ids (active and defunct), so that these edit trails can be tracked if necessary. Susan noted that the only reason ODBC drivers were being requested was so that reports to meet immediate information needs can be run in a very short time-frame. James said the Systems Office might as well open up the use of ODBC drivers to everybody. Committee members pointed out that nobody was proposing uncontrolled distribution of the software. The proposal was to allow selected individuals access to the software as a text. James reiterated that he had great concerns about security. Zoe noted that in a survey of voyager-l responses on the question of ODBC drivers for staff, it seemed the trend was toward greater security. She felt it would be good to be serious about security from the start. Susan asked if all libraries should be requiring all employees with access to the circulation module to sign non-disclosure forms. James said that, according to the UH Information Technology Services Dept., the answer is yes. Gwen Sinclair asked if the Systems Office follows such precautions with its employees. James said that he signed a non-disclosure form for his department. If anyone in the Systems Office discloses confidential information, James is the person liable. Wil Frost asked Michelle how cataloging does its certification. Michelle said the Cataloging Committee would be looking at a system where sites submit written documentation for review and approval. Wil asked if such a system could be applied to using Access for Voyager reports. Zoe said it would be a good start, since having things in writing is crucial. Sophia pointed out that in cataloging certification, you can limit levels of authorization and that the voyager-l discussions had indicated that such a things was possible with Access reporting. Zoe said yes, but there are a lot of technical issues. Thelma Diercks noted that technical issues are the sort of thing you iron out in the sort of closely-monitored pilot project that was being proposed. She suggested DeeDee Acosta as a candidate test case, as DeeDee had specific information needs that could be clearly defined and DeeDee is knowledgeable in Access. Zoe asked if DeeDee running her own reports was really necessary. She asserted that turning around simple reports is a quick thing for the Systems Office staff. Thelma said that DeeDee's needs involved having to update lists on a daily basis. Several committee members wanted clarification on whether DeeDee's needs were for reporting or for data manipulation. Zoe stated that another problem with distributing ODBC drivers to staff is the question of what happens when such an individual leaves. Needed documentation and training may not be there for the person's replacement to do the same work. Zoe noted that the Systems Office has documentation and training in place. Michelle asked if the prepackaged reports that come with Voyager need the ODBC driver. The answer was yes. Michelle asked if people with expertise in Access could submit their own queries for the Systems Office to run. James said, "Yes." James added that the Systems Office can also set up programs to help with updating lists. Michelle asked if the Systems Office has mounted a list of reports they have written somewhere on their web site so libraries know what things have been successfully run. James said no, but a list could be added to the web site. Marlene Oishi noted that the Systems Office had set up reports for Hawaii Medical Library in such a way that HML can go to a web site, enter parameters and retrieve results. Zoe reiterated that since Voyager uses non-proprietary software, it is a much simpler and faster thing for the Systems Office to run reports than it had been with CARL. She noted that another decrease in turnaround time happens if the Systems Office is allowed to send the results as a post-delimited text file, leaving the formatting for the requestor to do using spreadsheet or database management software. Sophia asked if there could be reports training. She felt many people don't know what they can request. James said the Systems Office can have sessions on what is available and training on what reports you can request and how. Zoe suggested that in the meantime, sites should go ahead and submit report requests. She advised that requestors be specific about the information needed, give a clear time frame as to when they need the information, and clarify whether they can do the formatting part themselves. James noted that the Systems Office had been receiving very few report requests. Michelle pointed out that just prior to migration of the UH databases, the Cataloging Committee had been told that cataloging report requests could only be submitted by the committee. She observed that there had been no official notification from the Systems Office that reports had been opened up. James said he would send out a message stating that all sites are encouraged to submit report requests. Sites with staff who have expertise in Access may submit their own Access queries for reporting purposes. Thelma said she would tell DeeDee to submit requests to the Systems Office, to see what happens. The issue of ODBC driver distribution will undergo additional study. The issue of non-disclosure forms to be signed by employees with access to confidential personal information will be pursued immediately. Jean Erhorn, Wil Frost and James Adamson will develop a check sheet of security concerns and potential gaps. The checklist and sample non-disclosure forms will be distributed to all sites. Thelma proposed that the next time there is a call for VUGM issues, the issue of security for running Access reports in a consortial environment (as well as wider security issues) be submitted. 5. Outstanding Migration Issues Zoe reported that she had been unable to contact Karen Gegner. There had been no progress on migration of the HPJI database or clean-up of duplicate authority records in the UH shared authority database. Thelma reported that another migration-related problem has to do with UH Manoa vendor codes. For purposes of later clean-up, vendor records identified as having problems were given the vendor type "junk" prior to migration. Thelma's understanding from Karen was that UH Acquisitions staff could search the vendor type "junk" to retrieve problem records. As it turns out, searching on the vendor type "junk" retrieves everything. 6. Committee Reports Circulation The Circulation Committee had met that morning. The major topic was re-initiating the state tax set-off program for interested sites. A proposal from Dave Brier will go to the Library Council for consideration at their next meeting. The criteria for a patron to be listed is if their fine is at least 180 days old and the cumulated amount of any and all such fines is $25 or more. If re-started, the program would begin this tax season. The first draft of Circulation's specs review has been completed. Susan will post the draft on voyagercirc-l for review before doing the final draft. The group also talked about intra-system loan (ISL), which looks to be another topic for the UH Library Council. Cataloging Michelle reported that the first draft of Cataloging's specs review had been turned in. The SCCC would meet Monday, 9/17. Gwen Sinclair and Thelma Diercks would also be attending the meeting. Acquisitions Thelma reported that the acquisitions specs review had been largely completed and should be ready by the next Steering Committee meeting. The next SACC meeting is tentatively scheduled for 9/27, but Thelma planned to query voyageracq-l about shifting the meeting date to October. Dave Brier had sent out a survey about what libraries plan to do with the acquisitions module. The big issue is determining which sites are ready to implement, and deciding in what order they should be brought up. Zoe, Dave, and Amy Carlson planned to meet and work out a plan for coordinating site implementations of serials check-in, as well as a checklist for what sites should do to prepare. Thelma also asked Amy if the next SACC meeting could be devoted to serials check-in. WebVoyage Gwen Sinclair reported that the Committee's comments on the specs had been submitted to Wil Frost. She noted that the complaints generally fell into two categories: (1) aspects of the display that are not customizable and (2) searching that does not work as advertised. The group had been working on a key to what "In Process" means at various sites, but the project has expanded to a survey of what various messages mean at various sites. Gwen distributed a draft of the "In Process" results and asked the Steering Committee if it seemed worthwhile to pursue. Members felt it would be useful to reference staff, and might be handy for the public if placed on the web. 7. Other Wil Frost reported that he went through the general specifications. His feeling was that Voyager meets most of them. For certain specs, he planned to ask specific functional representatives for their input. The next meeting will be on Sept. 27, in HAMILTON LIBRARY, administrative conference room.
(Recorded by Michelle Sturges)
1. Change in Steering Committee chair. Wil Frost has agreed to return as chair of the Steering Committee until the Endeavor migration project is completed, at which point he will have fulfilled his duties as contract coordinator. Wil has revised and updated the Endeavor Implementation Project web page which now has all Steering Committee minutes, an updated calendar, and a section on the contract's status. The url is http://www.hawaii.edu/uhlib/endeavor/ 2. Updates Oracle License -- The University of Hawaii does not have an Oracle site license. David Lassner has asked for details about the Systems Office site license. Should the number of Oracle licensees within the UH System hit critical mass, a site license would become a possibility. Cataloging Committee -- Michelle Sturges reported that the final draft of the minutes of the last SCCC meeting has been distributed to committee members. The Certification Subcommittee has developed a draft list of knowledge areas for which understanding and integration into workflow must be demonstrated for Voyager cataloging certification. The Specs Review group will have its first meeting on Friday, August 10. The group is primarily composed of catalogers who were involved in developing the specifications for cataloging. Thelma Diercks asked Michelle how the group planned to perform the review. Michelle said there was no firm plan. The group would start going through the specs and decide whether to review them as a group or divide them up into sections for each person to handle individually. Circulation Committee -- The Committee had met that morning at Honolulu Community College. Susan Murata reported that the Committee had completed the first phase of specs review by compiling a list of things that don't work including comments on what the problem was for each item. The next phase will involve redistributing the list, and reviewing it along with Endeavor's comments. Members also discussed service changes that might occur due to changes in systemwide policy being worked on by the UH Library Council. Susan reported that Ruth Marie Quirk is looking at implementing electronic reserves. Zoe Stewart-Marshall asked if there was a firm proposal about e-reserves. Randy Hensley answered that the implementation is being worked on slowly and is not yet in the proposal phase. The plan is to start with selected faculty who have expressed an interested in making reserve items available in electronic format, and who have items that can be used without problems of copyright infringement. Randy said that the planners are still determining hardware and software needs, and there has been no decision one way or the other about whether to use Endeavor's image server product. James Adamson asked if implementation of e-reserves would affect the specs review. Zoe and Susan answered that e-reserves weren't part of the original RFP. Wil noted that a specs review of something like image server that wasn't part of the original RFP would involve comparing the product with Endeavor's documentation for the product and finding any significant discrepancies. Acquisitions Committee -- Thelma reported that UH Hilo's implementation of Voyager acquisitions is progressing. Michelle Miyaji reported that all work is presently being done in the test database until an accepatable set up and workflow have been decided on. Zoe reported that the first site to attempt to use Voyager just for serials check-in is supposed to be Leeward Community College. Dave Brier will be coordinating that project. It was suggested that Systems touch base with Leeward to verify that they still want to be the serials check-in pilot site. WebVoyage Task Force -- Pat Gates reported that Gwen Sinclair had forwarded the Task Force specs review comments to the ROLS committee that developed the original specs. Pat and Gwen have begun using the test database to explore the holdings sort group feature in WebVoyage. According to Endeavor, this feature cause WebVoyage to float holdings for a patron's site to the top of the holdings list, when the patron can be associated with a particular site. The UH libraries would like that association to be based on the user's IP range, so that holdings at the campus the user is searching from will be the first entries listed. Pat reported that he and Gwen were unable to get the feature to work. There is a bug report about failure of this feature at the Endeavor support web site, and Pat has added a "me too" to the report. Pat noted that there are ways other than IP range for associating a patron with a site, but they would require patrons login before using WebVoyage. Another new feature being tested is the WebVoyage glyph server, (a third-party product that is not actually a separate server). Pat reported that he and Gwen set the feature up in the uhshared test interface so that data in 880 tags would display as vernacular characters. Unfortunately, only Chinese characters are displaying. Japanese and Korean characters don't display. Catalogers who have done test searching also report that the glyph server is dropping characters, substituting characters and suppressing characters, even with pristine, post-migration records. Zoe has filed a report with Endeavor about the problems. Pat reported that the alternative to the glyph server is to use Unicode fonts. Internet Explorer version 5 or higher doesn't require special fonts, but other browsers and lower versions of Internet Explorer do. Libraries using browsers that don't have their own fonts would have to load their PCs with a 26 Megabyte unicode font set, (as would any patron searching from outside the library). The user would also have to manually select fonts to view the characters. Pat noted that the glyph server is intended to take the font problem away by supplying images for the characters which will display in any browser. He also noted that using the Unicode option noticeably slows down WebVoyage response time. Michelle asked if the glyph server is viewed as a long-term or short-term solution to vernacular language display. Zoe said that at the present time, Endeavor recommends using the glyph server until you have a Unicode-compliant stored database. At the earliest, the change to a Unicode-compliant stored database won't happen until the next Voyager upgrade. Migration update -- Zoe reported that the HPJI database migration continues to present difficulties. The database is still being updated and accessed on the tandem computers, which are starting to show signs of age, but snapshots are taken weekly so only one week of data at most can be lost. The Hamilton Serials Dept. keeps MS Word copies of all data for reentry purposes, so even if a week's worth of data is lost, it can be reentered at a later date. Among the migration issues are the fact that the database exists in multiple pieces that have to be linked, and some of these linkages can only be maintained during the migration by using translation tables between CARL journal i.d. numbers and Voyager record numbers. Another obstacle comes from the fact that the CARL software supplied elements that made the data intelligible. When the data is extracted, those elements are lost. Since the Voyager software doesn't supply those elements, they have to be added in. Zoe warned that once the database is loaded, display and searching options will be very different from what they were in CARL. Thelma asked what work was needed to overcome these problems. Zoe said the remedy requires output of data for clean-up by Endeavor; creation of mapping tables, (most of which have already been done by Sean Lai Hipp); creation and imbedding of links between article records and journal records. Zoe noted that CARL used a very idiosyncratic version of pseudo-MARC for the HPJI database, (the same tag would mean different things depending on where it fell in a sequence of identical tags), so Endeavor is finding the data hard to work with, especially since Voyager demands true MARC. Wil asked about the additional database Endeavor will be creating. Zoe reported the database will be for non-standard records such as those from the archives and photograph collections. Records in the live database can be exported to the new database. It may also be a place for image server records. In concept it will be similar to the function of the TTPI database in CARL. Wil asked if Endeavor is the only one that can create additional databases. James said yes. The Systems Office has a run-time only Oracle license, which means we are not allowed to build databases. Only sites with a full license can legally build databases, and a full license is very expensive. Michelle asked about the status of the test database. At the last meeting it was deemed almost ready for use. Zoe said all circulation SysAdmin work had been done, so there only remained some minor set up areas. Zoe said she would contact site liaisons about the remaining SysAdmin work. Michelle asked what the outcome was of the proposal to delete the Endeavor default publication patterns from the test database. She noted some sites may have held off on doing serials check-in set up since use of a publication pattern prevents it from being deleted. Amy reported that the plan to delete the Endeavor publication patterns has been abandoned as being too much work. Zoe asked if the Endeavor patterns could be renamed to make then distinguishable from the LC publication patterns that are used in the live database. Amy said they could be renamed, but since LC and Endeavor use different naming conventions, it is probably already possible to tell the two apart. Zoe noted that renaming might be helpful in that it would group all Endeavor pub patterns together, rather than having interspersed with LC patterns. Michelle asked that a message be sent out to the Acquisitions group updating them on the change in plan with respect to the test database pub patterns. 3. Specification Review Thelma Diercks had submitted a proposal to the Steering Committee that the specs review deadline be extended from August 23 to September 13 to give more time for the Acquisitions specs review, which is actually a review of three different sets of specifications: serials management, fiscal management, and acquisitions management. Thelma asked if it was true that there is no electronic copy of Endeavor's response to the RFP specifications. Zoe confirmed that there were only paper copies. It was noted that the many of the original specifications are available in electronic format via the web as they were mounted on one of the ROLS web sites. Any functional committee needing an e-version of its specs should contact Zoe. Wil Frost asked if the Steering Committee had discussed what the expectation will be on Endeavor about unmet specifications. Michelle observed that since the specs review is part of Endeavor's contract process, their expectation would be a guiding factor. According to the contract, if Endeavor concludes that it cannot satisfy a specification that it said it could in the response to the RFP, the Hawaii Voyager libraries have the option of cancelling the contract, returning all Voyager software, and getting a refund. Members agreed contract cancellation was probably not something the group would opt for. Wil asked how much effort should be put into specs review. Zoe said she felt it was important to compile a list of unmet specifications. Susan Murata noted that some functional committees had already done a lot of specs review work, so the Steering Committee might as well see the process through. Wil asked what the timing of the specs review process should be. Zoe explained that the Hawaii Voyager libraries have 45 days after migration of the last database to give Endeavor a list of problem areas. The last database to be migrated is the HPJI database, which is already being worked on. Zoe said the HPJI database won't be ready by the time Fall semester starts. The soonest it may be ready for acceptance is probably mid-September. Wil stated that the report to Endeavor would therefore be due at the end of October. He asked the Committee if it would be okay to extend the deadline for functional committee report drafts to September 13. The Steering Committee agreed that preliminary functional committee report drafts would be due to the Steering Committee no later than September 13. Thelma asked who was doing the reviewing in each functional committee, and how many people were considered a workable number of review participants. She expressed concern that only two libraries, UH Hamilton and UH Law, are using Voyager acquisitions and serials. Michelle pointed out that Thelma had sent out an open call to voyageracq-l inviting people to participate in the review for acquisitions. Thelma answered that no one had responded to the invitation. The Steering Committee agreed that it would probably be okay for UH Hamilton and UH Law representatives to perform the specs review for acquisitions. It was suggested that UH Hilo, which is currently implementing Voyager acquisitions, be kept in the loop during the review process. Susan Murata described how the specs review was being done in the Circulation Committee. All members had received a copy of the specs in July. They were instructed to review the list of specifications and bring their list of things that didn't work to the August Circulation Committee meeting. The group then went through page by page and compiled a single list. The process took about 3 hours. Only circulation and reserve specification were reviewed. Ruth Marie Quirk is handling the review of the media booking specifications. Noting that the RFP included a section of general specifications that applied to all modules, Wil asked if any decision had been made on who would do the review of those specifications. James volunteered himself and Wil to do the review of the general specifications. 4. Voyager catalog and ADA compliance At the previous Steering Committee meeting, ADA compliance of WebVoyage was a topic of discussion. Since that meeting, it was reported that a check of UH WebVoyage with the Bobby web site indicated a number of problems with ADA compliance. After receiving that report, Pat also generated a Bobby test of UH WebVoyage. Most of the problems listed in the results had to due with images that lacked alternative text. Pat reported that he used the uhshared WebVoyage interface, (a testing interface), to put in alt text for all images he had access to. A repeat run through Bobby indicated there were still outstanding problems. Pat said he would continue working on getting the uhshared interface to pass the Bobby test, but he had concerns that not everything can be fixed. It seems likely some things Bobby is flagging can't be changed by a site. Wil noted that the specs said WebVoyage is ADA compliant, and Bobby is the University of Hawaii's official test for compliance. Michelle asked if that meant anything Pat finds he can't fix locally needs to be reported to Endeavor. Wil said that was a possibility. Wil asked for clarification about the role of telnet Voyager in ADA compliance. James answered that Endeavor says they rely on the accessibility features of Microsoft Windows to make WebVoyage ADA compliant for a PC workstation. The telnet version does not play a role in ADA compliance. Pat agreed, saying he had thought the ASCII OPAC would be a way of meeting ADA compliance, but it appears to be a dead product that really isn't fully supported by Endeavor. James reported attending a UH ITS department workshop on ADA compliance. Workshop attendees were given a document by Ron Stewart from Oregon State University titled _Designing and Using Information Technology Accessible to Persons with Disabilities_. James found the document to be very helpful since it addresses a broad range of issues, not just those having to do with web accessibility. The document has not been distributed to campuses, but James can provide copies to interested sites. 5. Contract status. The Committee reviewed with Wil what the outstanding contract items are and which items are considered to be top priority by Endeavor. Zoe reported that Endeavor views the migration of the HPJI database, the deduplication of authority records, and the creation of an additional database for non-standard records to be the top priority items. James reported that one contract item, the migration of historical order information from UHCARL, will be done by the UH Systems Office rather than Endeavor. James noted that the charge for that item, ($7500) should be removed from the contract with Endeavor. Zoe observed that two of the outstanding items represent major undertakings. The authorities clean-up will be huge because, once Endeavor has deduped the authority records, Systems will have years worth of new and updated authority records that need to be loaded into the authority database. Wil asked if the duplicate authority record problem is an issue to justify non-payment. Zoe said that was an issue for Wil and Endeavor to work out. Zoe noted that the Unicode development project would be an even larger undertaking. She strongly recommended that UH Hamilton reload its RLIN records before the conversion to Unicode, to clean-up any coding corrupted during the migration. With respect to the outstanding item about defining what was meant by e-mail interlibrary loan, Wil said his understanding was the term referred to the kind of e-mail ILL functionality that was available in Voyager at the time of the RFP response. Susan Murata agreed, saying the feature is a bibliographic record-level form, (as opposed to a holdings or item record-level form). Susan noted that the e-mail ILL form will be removed from UH Hamilton's WebVoyage on August 16 when the paging form is removed. She explained that patrons have tended to confuse the two forms, and she doesn't want the ILL department to be flooded with paging requests. Jean Erhorn asked when the ILL form would be reinstated. Susan said plans were to switch to a web-based form designed by Bin Zhang. James noted that web-based forms are not considered to be ADA compliant. 6. Other James reported that the Systems Office had installed a patch for WebVoyage and was testing it.
(Recorded by Michelle Sturges)
1. Updates/Reports Circulation Committee. The Circulation Committee met on Thursday, July 12. Circulation statistics were distributed. The feeling is that statistics since the migration to Voyager are surprisingly low. Circulation reports being provided by the Systems Office were also discussed. Most reports that the committee has requested are being provided. Reports are either provided on demand or are generated on a regular basis and made available via the reports web site (http://reports.lib.hawaii.edu/cgi-bin/password.pl). Zoe observed that the Circulation Committee has been provided with so many reports because theirs was the most immediate need. Other functional committees can also request reports to meet their needs. The next major project for the Circulation Committee will be to review whether Endeavor is meeting the specifications it claimed to in responding to the UH Request for Proposals. Migration. Zoe Stewart-Marshall reported that she has been in contact with our Endeavor project manager, Karen Gegner. Work on migrating the HPJI database has resumed. Endeavor considers it a high priority to finish the HPJI migration. Once the HPJI migration is completed and accepted, the Hawaii Voyager libraries will have a 45 day accept period before the post-migration contract officially starts. Endeavor acknowledges that the duplicate authority record problem is also a priority as is creating the additional database for non-standard UH records. The problem with these projects seems to be finding programmers with enough time to work on them. Michelle Sturges expressed concern that the Cataloging Committee's review of Voyager specs would be hampered by the authority record problem. Thelma Diercks reported that she and Zoe had met with Endeavor representatives at ALA to review the contract and discuss what things were outstanding. Thelma said she would send a report of the meeting out to Steering Committee members. Zoe reported that in the contract with Endeavor it was agreed that the UH libraries would be developmental partners with Endeavor for Unicode and CJK implementation in Voyager. As part of that agreement, Zoe will be going to Chicago in August to attend the first meeting of the implementation task force. Acquisitions Committee. Thelma reported that the SACC had met earlier in the day. The Committee now has a web site (http://www2.hawaii.edu/~serials/sacc/). The Committee structure has been modified in that there are now three subcommittees: Serials check-in, chaired by Amy Carlson; Workflow integration, chaired by Eileen Yara; and Reports & notices, chaired by Pat Gates. The next SACC meeting is tentatively scheduled for September or October. Two guidelines have been tentatively agreed to for coordinating cataloging and acquisitions activities between libraries. People in the cataloging and acquisitions groups will be given time to review the guidelines, which will become official policy on August 1 if no objections are raised. Now that the UH Libraries training database has been reconfigured to serve as a test database, all sites are being encouraged to begin using it to test acquisitions operations as preparation for bringing up Voyager acquisitions. Cataloging Committee. Nadine Leong-Kurio has created a web site (http://www.hcc.hawaii.edu/~nadine/mfhd/) providing links to resources for creating holdings records, including a page of sample records that conform to the format agreed to by the Cataloging group. The url is The next Cataloging Committee meeting will probably be held early in the Fall semester. Sophia McMillen reported that at ALA she had preliminary discussions with OCLC representatives about consortial arrangements. OCLC does not confer any sort of price break on libraries that enter into consortial arrangements. Presently, UH Manoa, UH Hilo, the Law Library, and Windward CC Library are full OCLC members, while Kauai CC Library and Maui CC Library are opting for one of OCLC's limited access, non-member arrangements. Sophia reported that the UH Library System can arrange itself as a System membership, but there would be a trade-off in that only one library in the System might show up in OCLC as owning a title, even if other libraries owned it. This could cause problems for ILL operations at some campuses. Record cost for a System membership is higher than the cost if a library uses a limited access arrangement like CatExpress, where you have access to bib records, but not authority records. Systems Office James Adamson reported that Endeavor is releasing a patch for the 2000.1.3 patch. Since the patch does not involve client software, it should be transparent to Hawaii Voyager users. James reminded the Committee about the scheduled power outage on Saturday, July 21, when the Systems Office would be doing annual maintenance on the electrical system. Voyager would be 100% unavailable during that time. WebVoyage Task Force Gwen Sinclair reported that a subset of the group had gone over the functional specs for WebVoyage and drafted a list of concerns. The next step would be to have CC members on 9-month contracts review the list and sign-off on its findings. The New Items List has been refined and is being used by UH Manoa libraries. The program creates the list from data in the acquisitions order records. Michelle asked if there was a possibility items that don't normally go through Acquisitions operations will start to be sent through so that they can appear on the list. Gwen said it was too early to tell. Zoe noted that drawing the data from other records such as holdings or bib records would be even more problematic. Order records are the most consistent source of new item information. Gwen reported that the group is developing a list of bugs, problems and problematic features. They hope to post the list for people to refer to before reporting problems to the Systems Office. Another problem the group needs to address is the "In Process" status. They want to document what "In Process" means at each library, so that patrons and staff can know whether an "In Process" item is available for use. Michelle reported that one CC library member had expressed concerns about whether WebVoyage and telnet Voyager are ADA compliant. Gwen noted that Endeavor believes web-based Voyager is ADA compliant and the telnet version is not needed to meet ADA compliance. Endeavor holds that telnet Voyager is intended for people who cannot access the GUI version. James noted that Hawaii has posted state ADA requirements for web sites. He volunteered to check the state requirements to make sure WebVoyage is in compliance. 2. Test Database Zoe reported that all basic System Administration (SysAdmin) module set up has been completed for the test database except for some parts of Circulation, which was being left to the Circulation group. The database will be as exact a mirror of the live database as could be managed. 21,000 bib records with holdings (but no items) were copied over from the live database. All statistical categories, staff user ids and passwords and a sampling of patron database records are also in place. Some tweaking still needs to be done, but it will be left up to the SysAdmin liaisons at each site. The one thing that couldn't be replicated was the special indexing that exists in the live database. The test database only has default indexing. Staff user ids and passwords are identical to those in the live database, _except_ that test database user ids are prefaced by a lower case t. Because of the close correlation of live and test user ids and passwords, the Security button in the test database is only accessible to authorized Systems personnel. Some acquisitions people are already using the test database to develop their acquisitions configurations. All sites planning to use acquisitions are being encouraged to start testing setups in the test database. To this end, generic acquisition profiles will be set up for each site. It was not possible to copy over vendor records from the live database. The serials check-in publication pattern table for the test database is not the same as the one in live. Steph Nelson has volunteered to delete the test database pub patterns. Staff can then recreate live database pub patterns as needed in the test database. In summary, Zoe stated that the test database is not 100% done, but is largely ready for use. Test database ports in the Voyager.ini file start with 8 (e.g. 8000). Live database ports in a voyager.ini file start with 7 (e.g. 7000). Zoe warned that there is no guarantee that Systems can successfully restore the test database after the next upgrade. The restore can only work if an upgrade doesn't change system file structures. If Unicode implementation is part of the next upgrade, (which is likely), it is almost certain file structures will be changed and a test database restore will not be possible. Staff need to take advantage of the test database while it is available. Thelma noted that the restore problem is one of the reasons she believes a separate test server is needed. James said he didn't believe the UH libraries' testing needs justified the cost, particularly if the test database is mainly to be used for quality assurance testing. Several members stated that the testing being done is not quality assurance testing but rather, testing of configurations that are difficult to undo once implemented and testing of setups that would have systemwide impact once implemented. The feeling was that it is safer to do such testing someplace other than the live database. Since the cost factor for a test server comes from the cost of a separate computer and a separate Oracle license, James suggested exploring the idea of time-sharing a server and Oracle license with other libraries. It was suggested a proposal be made to VUGM. Since Unicode might be a good justification for such an arrangement, Zoe said she would report on her sense of things after the August Unicode task force meeting. Zoe noted that another likely use of the test database may be records generated by Endeavor's Imageserver, should Manoa decide to use that product. Sophia asked if the test database can be used for training new personnel. The answer was yes, but training should be structured and follow the shared database policies that are observed in the live database. 3. Future Meeting Dates. The Steering Committee tries to schedule meetings on the 1st or 3rd Thursday of the month, but the Circulation Committee meets on the 2nd and 4th Thursday. It was asked if the two groups could coordinate meeting days to lessen the travel burden for neighbor island representatives. The Committee agreed to start scheduling meetings for the 2nd or 4th Thursday. The next meeting is tentatively scheduled for August 9. To avoid conflict, Circulation meetings will be from 9 am to 11:30 am, Acquisition meetings will be from 12 pm to 2:45 pm and Steering Committee meetings will be from 3 pm to 4:30 pm. 4. Functionality evaluations. Functional committee evaluation of the Voyager specs are due to the Steering Committee by August 23 or Sept. 13. James Adamson volunteered to compile the Functional committee reports. 5. Other Voyager response time -- James Adamson asked if anybody had been experiencing bad response times with Voyager. Some Hamilton representatives said there had been occasional bad response times. UH Library Council -- The UHLC met at Hilo on July 6. The main topic was developing systemwide policies for media, circulation and intra-system library loans (ISL). A task force has been formed to work on the second draft of systemwide policies and practices with the goal being to move to more consistency between sites. Task force members include Susan Murata, Pat Okamura, Dorothy Tolliver, Irene Mesina, Ruth Marie Quirk and Deanne Acosta. The Library Council came up with a notice publicizing the new services and fees that have been implemented. The notice states that the new services and fees are effective the first day of Fall Semester. Some of the new services have been offered for some months, but have not been publicized. Susan Murata said all sites should be collecting statistics to see what the use of those services has been without any promotion.
(Recorded by Michelle Sturges)
1. Announcements Zoe Stewart-Marshall and Thelma Diercks met with three Endeavor representatives at ALA about outstanding migration issues and the process of moving fully into customer support. Zoe and Thelma felt the Endeavor staff were in agreement that all of the outstanding issues are valid concerns that need to be addressed by Endeavor. 2. Subcommittee Updates -- Acquisitions. Minutes from the first meeting of the Systemwide Acquisitions Coordinating Committee (SACC) have been distributed via e-mail to the voyageracq-l list. Thelma has sent a proposal to the list suggesting some organizational changes to SACC. In the original plan, SACC would be co-chaired by Eileen Yara and Amy Carlson. There would be four subgroups: Serials check-in, chaired by Amy; Workflow integration, chaired by Eileen; Monographs acquisitions, chaired by Thelma; and Acquisitions reports, chaired by Pat Gates. In the proposed revision, the SACC will be convened by Thelma. There will be three subgroups: Serials check-in, chaired by Amy; Workflow integration, chaired by Eileen; and Acquisitions reports, chaired by Pat. The feeling was that SACC needs would best be served if Amy and Eileen could concentrate on their subgroup work, and that most Monograph acquisitions subgroup issues probably fell within the scope of the Workflow integration subgroup. The next SACC meeting is scheduled for July 19 at Kapi`olani CC Library. At that time, all subgroups are expected to have members from both within and outside of Hamilton; each subgroup will have met at least once (even if only virtually) and will have mapped out an initial set of goals. -- Cataloging. Minutes for the last SCCC meeting still have not been distributed. Michelle Sturges apologized for the delay. A merge profile is undergoing testing. Michelle, in consultation with the testers, is developing guidelines for use of the profile. -- Circulation. The Circulation Committee met last week. The new practice of accepting fines and fees for other libraries seems to be working, but the payment report has problems in that some data is incorrect and some payments aren't listed at all. Susan Murata is working with Fred Allen on fixing the report. The Circulation Committee is finding that ILL (which is not a circulation function at all libraries) meshes so much with circulation operations in Voyager that it can't be ignored. The Committee has started talking about ILL issues, many of which touch on issues yet to be resolved at the UH Library System level. Susan hopes that at least some of the problem issues will be addressed at the next UH Library Council meeting. The next Circulation meeting is scheduled for July 12. The meeting will be devoted to reviewing how Endeavor satisfies the bid specs for Circulation. (See item 4 for more information about spec review.) -- Migration. Both Bishop Museum databases have been loaded and accepted. The System Administration and PAC set ups are still being worked on. The only database left to migrate is the Hawaii Pacific Journal Index (HPJI). The HPJI staff have begun working on the PAC interface for the database. The HPJI migration will require some data manipulation on the part of Endeavor, for which they will probably charge. The migration process will definitely require at least one test load with lots of subsequent tweaking before the production load. Other outstanding migration issues include the duplicate authority records, vendor code clean-up, and the creation of an additional database to be used for digital images and archives activities at UH. One outstanding issue, the purchase order receiving report, is almost done. In addition to the outstanding migration issues, there are some other elements in the contract that will need to be addressed: - UH contracted to be a development partner with Endeavor for CJK functionality. A plan for that partnership will have to be developed. - Within the contract, UH has the option to acquire EnCompass at a 25% discount, but only for the first 18 months after official release. The official release of EnCompass happened at VUGM, April 2001. UH has until October 2002 to opt for the discounted purchase. List price for EnCompass is $250,000. - The UH libraries still have some unused training days. As there is no expiration date on the training days, they are being held in reserve to meet a future, unforeseen training need. -- WebVoyage. Gwen Sinclair and Pat Gates have made revisions to the new items list. The list is still based on acquisitions records. Only libraries using acquisitions can have such a list. Gwen and Pat added more location limits and increased the range of date limits. They are working on including a formats limit. They succeeded in tweaking the program so that items with an In Process status are not retrieved. For Manoa, the new items list is being made to look like an additional WebVoyage tab, but it is not actually a part of WebVoyage. Selecting the new items list opens up a separate window. To make the distinction clearer, Gwen and Pat modified the banner for the new items list. Pat has also been working with Sonia Isotov at Business Research Library on Maui to develop the BRL WebVoyage interface. 3. Comments on the Patch James Adamson reported that the 2000.1.3 patch upgrade went smoothly. There were some snags at some sites, notably Bishop Museum, but all problems seem to have been resolved. James noted that Endeavor packages such software so that the clients aren't available until after the upgrade has been run on the server. To avoid the downtime that would result if clients were distributed after the upgrade, Systems used the preview server in Chicago to get copies of the client software for pre-distribution to sites. James observed that some sites do not appear to have staff on site who are proficient in doing client software upgrades. One solution might be for Systems to use scripts that would do automatic loading of client software, but it would require consistent naming practices on every PC at every site in the system. Duane Wenzel asked if patch upgrades are a frequent thing. Systems Office representatives answered that most patches only happen on the server and can be run at times when library staff won't be affected. They expressed the hope that a patch like the 2000.1.3 patch, which requires new client software, is a rare thing, necessitated by an exceptionally large number of bugs in the 2000 release. Zoe noted that Endeavor has made changes to its quality assurance operations and is moving to two software releases a year to try and prevent the need for such patches. Zoe pointed out that Hawaii Voyager Library staff have yet to look at the new functionality the patch is supposed to add, especially with respect to version 2000 problems the patch is supposed to fix. SupportWeb has a list of such problems organized by module. Functional committee chairs were asked to send out e-mail to their groups asking people to double-check the functionality for any problems or unfixed bugs. 4. Review/Response to Voyager Requirements In our contract there is a provision where we have to review formally whether what Endeavor stated in its bid response to the bid specifications is accurate. The review encompasses the bid specifications (specs), Endeavor's original response to those specs, and an addendum of specs that wouldn't be available until the release of version 2000. Zoe has distributed the original specs and Endeavor response for each module to the functional committee chair for that module. She is working on getting the addendum items distributed as well. Each committee has to review the specs and responses and determine whether Voyager meets each specification in the way Endeavor said it would. Each committee must report to the Steering Committee any areas where it feels Endeavor did not live up to what it said in its bid response. The report must include why the committee believes a particular claim was not met. The Steering Committee must then review the functional committee findings and prepare a response to Endeavor. There is no defined timeline for the review process, but Endeavor says the standard arrangement is that the resposne is due 45 days from the last data load. In our case, we have one data load left, (HPJI), which could be completed in a month. Susan Murata reported that Circulation plans to start reviewing the specs as a whole group starting with their July 12 meeting. Thelma Diercks expected that Acquisitions review would mainly involve staff from the two libraries currently using acquisitions, Hamilton and Law, but she said staff from other libraries were welcome to participate if they wished. Michelle Sturges reported that she is turning to members of the Cataloging Committee who served on the specs development committee to help with the review. She noted that a complicating factor for cataloging is the duplicate authority records problem. If the problem isn't fixed in time for catalogers to test out authority functionality, there will be no way of evaluating Endeavor's bid response to authority specs. The Steering Committee decided to require that functional committee reports be turned in to the Steering Committee (at least in preliminary form) by August 16. Zoe observed that Endeavor wants to make sure all provisions in the contract are covered one way or another. In the case of optional provisions, we need to clearly communicate which options we want, (and expect Endeavor to support), and which options we have decided we don't want. E-mail ILL may be one optional provision we have to make a decision about. 5. Show/Suppress On Order Records During Spring semester, the WebVoyage group was asked to make a recommendation on whether records with an "on order" status should display in PAC. The WebVoyage group recommendation was that on order records should display. Due to the garbled nature of many migrated on order records, the Steering Committee decided that on order records should be temporarily suppressed from PAC display with a tentative plan to have them start displaying with the start of the new fiscal year (July 2001). A new complication has since arisen in that all collections at Hamilton library are closed due to the move, and will remain closed throughout the summer. While the collections are closed all materials have to be paged, putting an immense burden on the Hamilton Circulation Department. Susan Murata asked that the display of on order records be postponed until Fall, when collections are open again. The Steering Committee agreed to continue suppression of on order records until September, when the Committee will review the issue again. 6. Training Database Zoe reported that all bibliographic records but one have been deleted from the training database. The one remaining record is, for some reason, undeletable. It turns out that a number of training database locations also couldn't be eliminated, even though all records for those locations had been deleted. Zoe has labeled these locations with the prefix EISI and has made them a separate owning library to distinguish them from test database locations. The decision on whether the Security section of SysAdmin in the training database will be limited to Systems personnel or accessible to SysAdmin personnel at sites has yet to be made. Zoe will send out a message to the SysAdmin group asking for their feedback. Zoe reported that she and Fred have done some preliminary entry of location data. Zoe said that once their testing is completed, a schedule can be implemented for institutions to start replicating their data in the test database Systems Administration module. Michelle asked if test database set up would go faster if Systems personnel entered the data instead of scheduling sites to do data entry. Zoe said it would probably be more efficient if Systems personnel entered all data, with the possible exception of circulation matrices and some acquisitions data. In order to make the test database available as soon as possible, the Steering Committee recommended that Systems personnel do all test database SysAdmin data entry except for circulation matrices and acquisitions. Once basic data entry is done, Systems will determine whether it can also do circulation and acquisitions, or whether sites will need to enter those areas themselves. Michelle noted that once a mirror version of the live database is set up in the test database, SysAdmin personnel will be committed to doing double work. Any change they make in the live database will have to also be done in the test database. Any tweak they do in test database that they decide not to implement in the live database will have to be removed from the test database. Even though SysAdmin configuration in the test database is not completed, Michelle asked if a snapshot of the database could be preserved so that it wouldn't be necessary to do another deletion of the training database bib records, should the database accidentally be reset to training database mode. James said a backup had been made and he would take steps to make sure it didn't get overwritten. The Systems Office is looking into whether the Manoa campus has an Oracle license. Such a license might make having a separate testing server more affordable. Next meeting: Thursday, July 5 at Kapi`olani CC Library.
(Recorded by Michelle Sturges)
1. Corrections to Minutes for 5/10/2001 In Thelma Diercks' report on VUGM sessions she attended, the discussion about loading vendor information in Acquisitions 2000 should have read that the feature was broken but would be fixed shortly. In the Circulation Committee report, the discussion about how sites get billed for use of the system incorrectly stated that in the future sites would be billed by the number of holdings records they had in the database. The correct information is that holdings records may be used as a means of identifying which bibliographic records a site is using in the shared database, with an eye toward still basing charges on the number of bibliographic records being used. 2. Migration Updates The Bishop Museum Library mapping table has been sent to Endeavor, but the first test load has yet to be done. Bibliographic records for titles in the Hawaii/Pacific Journal Index database have been deduped for the most part. Migration of the database itself is still being worked on. 3. Acquisitions Committee Report Thelma Diercks had sent out an announcement about the first Committee meeting on 5/16. At the time of the Steering Committee meeting, two libraries had expressed interest in attending. Thelma felt 5/31 would be a better date than 5/24 as it would give people more time to prepare. Thelma also posted a message to the voyageracq-l list explaining about the presence of sub-minimal-level acquisitions records in the shared database. She explained that the records were part of a rush DVD order and that Hamilton Acquisitions does not plan to create such records again. 4. Cataloging Committee Report Michelle Sturges reported that a foundation is being laid to allow for the safe deletion of withdrawn items from the shared database. Once the Circulation Committee has finalized procedures for protecting Lost/Paid books from accidental deletion, it will be up to each library to work up procedures for how and when they delete their records and what statistics they keep. Zoe Stewart-Marshall noted that the Voyager system does not let Systems to perform batch deletions or provide counts of records deleted by a library. Michelle reported that Paul Beck in Hamilton's Cataloging Department had developed procedures that included a means of keeping statistics. Michelle planned to meet with Paul to see about sharing the procedures with other sites. 5. WebVoyage Committee Report Gwen Sinclair reported that Jerard Yagi in the Systems Office has developed a prototype new books list that is searchable. Gwen asked people at Hamilton and Law libraries to take a look at the list and provide feedback. Generation of the list relies on data from the Acquisitions module, so right now such a list is only available to Hamilton, Sinclair and Law libraries. List searches can be limited by date and collection, and it is possible to search by keyword. Gwen noted that some Voyager sites have more detailed search features, but these rely on statistical categories, which are not in use at most UH libraries at this time. Gwen observed that the retrieval sets include records that display in PAC and records that are suppressed. Zoe expressed concern about suppressed records being part of the retrieval set, particularly if the new books list is to be made available to the public. She asked if Gwen could find out how the list is being derived. Thelma suggested that using fund numbers might make if possible to sort the list by broad subject categories. Zoe noted that a post to voyager-l described such a list. She observed that lists generated from acquisitions can only pick up items with orders attached. 6. UH Training Database Status Zoe reported that, as of Thursday, 5/9, the number of records in the shared database was down to 22,000. Once the item, holdings and bibliographic records are deleted, the next step will be to strip out the Endeavor configuration from the Systems Administration module. Once the Endeavor data is cleared out, configuration of the Systems Administration module to mirror the live database can begin. Zoe thought configuration of SysAdmin could begin sometime next week. Thelma asked what the order would be for SysAdmin work. Zoe answered that the order is 1. Entry of operator profiles into the Security section 2. Entry of locations (including codes) and item types 3. Entry of cataloging policy groups 4. Entry of acquisitions policy groups 5. Entry of circulation policy groups, including circulation matrices With respect to the Security section, there was still the question of whether the training database Security section would be limited to Systems Office personnel, (as it is in Live), or would be open to all SysAdmin liaisons at all campuses. Open access would allow sites to test tweaks to their operator profiles, but would mean that passwords and logins for the training database would not be secure -- people at each site could see other sites' passwords and logins. For that reason, Zoe emphasized that open access would require that nobody have the same password for the training database as they do in live. If the training database Security section were limited to Systems Office personnel, it might be possible to have the same login and password for both Live and training databases. Michelle stated that she would like the logins to be different whether Security was open or locked down, so that people couldn't accidentally log into one database thinking it was the other database. Thelma suggested that Zoe contact the SysAdmin liaisons at sites and ask them whether they would prefer to have Security open or locked down. The Steering Committee agreed to leave the decision to the SysAdmin group. 7. 2000.1.3 Patch Status Thelma reported that late this afternoon Endeavor announced that the patch was in early release to testing sites, with general release scheduled for next week. Dave Brier reported that both the client and server have to be updated as part of patch installation. Installation of the patch on the server means that all access to Voyager, including WebVoyage, will be down, but hopefully for only a short time. Dave thought it was possible that server updating could be completed before libraries open in the morning. With respect to the client software, the patch will overwrite existing version 2000 clients. Session preference and defaults for cataloging, acquisitions and circulation are lost as part of the installation, so Endeavor recommends making a record of these before installing the new client software. 8. Meeting with new Endeavor sales representative. Thelma, Zoe and Jean Erhorn were scheduled to meet with Donna Hillcoat tomorrow. Donna is the new director of sales operations in this area. 9. Who Has Authority to Make Decisions (UH Hilo subscription database request) UH Hilo had asked the Systems Office to add some subscription databases to the Z39.50 section of SysAdmin so that the databases would be available via a button on UH Hilo's WebVoyage page. As the request meant setting a precedent, (all databases added to this time have been open access), Systems had referred it to the chairs of the Steering Committee and WebVoyage Committee with the question of who was authorized to approve or disapprove UH Hilo's request. With respect to the request itself, Gwen Sinclair reported that she had sent the request out to the WebVoyage Committee, but didn't think there would be any opposition to UH Hilo's request. While the Z39.50 section of SysAdmin is a shared section, virtual hosting means the UH Hilo databases will only show up at UH Hilo's web interface. Zoe noted that Z39.50 databases also show up on the staff side when catalogers choose to search remote databases. She recommended that the UH Hilo databases be suppressed from staff view so they wouldn't show up in the catalogers' list of available databases. With respect to who decides such questions in the future. Thelma asked if the decisions should be made by the UH Library Council. Michelle expressed concern that such questions may be too specialized for the Council. Jean noted that the UH Library Council deals with a broader scope of topics than just Voyager issues. Gwen said she felt such questions should go to the Steering Committee. Members agreed to take responsibility for such decisions in the future. 10. Future of the Steering Committee While the Steering Committee was originally created to see Hawaii Voyager libraries through the migration process, members agreed that once the migration is finished there will still be a need for some kind of group that coordinates aspects of functional activities; a body that can mediate and come to a consensus on issues that affect more than one area. The group decided that the Committee should continue to meet after migration is completed, and that they would retain the name Steering Committee. Thelma asked if the group should continue to meet weekly. Members felt weekly meetings would not be necessary. Thelma asked if the group should meet once a month, with interim business being transacted via e-mail. Dave felt an emphasis on e-mail would be the most practical approach, especially for members from libraries outside of Manoa. Other members felt reliance on e-mail eats up too much time and increases the risk of important information falling through the cracks. The group decided to try twice monthly meetings, possibly on the 1st and 3rd Thursday of each month. Thelma asked what the relationship should be between the Steering Committee and the UH Library Council. Members felt the Steering Committee should serve as an intermediary between the UHLC and the Hawaii Voyager functional committees. Next meeting: May 31 at Kapiolani Community College Library
(Recorded by Michelle Sturges)
-- Migration Updates Bishop Museum Archives has accepted their production database, but is still working on PAC configuration. The Bishop Museum Library database and the Hawaii/Pacific Journal Index database migrations are still being worked on. Bishop Museum Library is moving forward, but the HPJI database is proving to be a challenge. There should, however, be very little downtime for the HPJI database. -- Meeting with Endeavor representative Thelma Diercks and Zoe Stewart-Marshall will be meeting with an Endeavor sales manager next week. The sales manager will be in Hawaii to visit Kamehameha Schools. Thelma and Zoe will be meeting with the sales manager to review outstanding leftover issues from the migration, (such as the duplicate records in the authority file and the Hamilton and Law vendor code problem). Steering Committee members were asked to submit potential topics to Zoe by Wednesday, 5/16. -- Installation of 2000.1.3 patch Endeavor will be releasing a patch to version 2000 that will fix major problems in the circulation, acquisitions and WebVoyage modules. The main question about the upcoming patch has been when to install it, both out of a desire to wait until any bugs have been worked out and because it will require installation of new client software on all machines. Systems had yet to receive complete documentation about the patch, and did not know if it included a server-side upgrade or just client software upgrades. Complete technical specifications for the patch are supposed to be available when the patch is released on Monday, 5/14. At Hamilton, Desktop/Network Services (DNS) handles the installation of software on staff machines. However, DNS is also charged with moving staff computers as part of the relocation of staff due to the closing of Hamilton phases 1 and 2. DNS has said they cannot do a complete installation of client software on Hamilton machines until early June. The Circulation Committee recommended that the patch be installed the week of June 4-8, preferably on June 6. The Steering Committee agreed to aim for a June 6 installation, assuming Endeavor released the patch on May 14th as announced. -- Training Database All Hawaii Voyager library training databases were automatically refreshed during the upgrade to version 2000, which means they all went back to the Endeavor default version. In the UH system, the training database has come to be used as a testing database, but the unavoidable refresh that happens during each upgrade eliminates all locally created testing environments. An attempt is being made to create a local testing version of the training database to see if it can be preserved between upgrades. The catalogers have been asked to work on manually deleting the 40,000+ record sets in the default training database, which will allow Systems to eliminate the default Endeavor set up in the training database System Administration module. The System Administration module will then be configured to mirror the SysAdmin configuration of the live database. The Systems Office will then record this custom version of the training database. The hope is that next time the training database is refreshed by an upgrade, the record of the custom version can be used to restore the database to the local version. The goal is to get the work done as soon as possible, but no one can predict how long it might take to clean out all of the default records, clean out the default SysAdmin and enter in the local SysAdmin configuration. Zoe observed that one of the first SysAdmin configuration decisions that will have to be made is whether to allow the Security part of SysAdmin to be open. If Security is left open, sites can test tweaks to their operator profiles before asking that they be implemented in the live database, but all operators will have to have separate training database logins. If Security is locked down, operators can have the same login in the training database as in live, but any tweaks to operator profiles will have to go through the Systems Office. The non-UH library representatives were asked if they had any interest in doing something similar with their training databases. All answered no. -- Cataloging Committee (SCCC) Update Michelle Sturges reported that the SCCC met on Monday, 5/7 to discuss outstanding issues and concerns. One issue that has arisen is what to do in situations where one or more libraries own the same bibliographic entity in more than one format. Should all formats be included in a single record, or should there be separate records for different formats? Since the issue has ramifications for functional areas outside of cataloging, the SCCC proposed that a Task Force be formed which would include representatives from cataloging, WebVoyage and acquisitions. Michelle reported that she and Sophia McMillen had volunteered to serve as cataloging representatives. Gwen Sinclair volunteered to serve on the Task Force as WebVoyage and government documents representative. Thelma Diercks volunteered to serve as acquisitions representative. The SCCC also began discussions on systemwide standards for copy and original cataloging. SCCC is developing a checklist of required procedures for copy cataloging, which will be used as a framework for providing standards for training copy catalogers. Other concerns that arose at the SCCC meeting centered on use of the acquisitions module. The first concern was whether there could be some sort of education initiative to train libraries in how to do serials check-in without bringing up full acquisitions. In the near future, more libraries plan to bring up serials check-in than other parts of acquisitions, but there is not a clear understanding of how to go about setting up serials check-in using dummy funds and ledgers. Thelma said she would contact Amy Carlson about the problem. The second concern was whether there is going to be an active acquisitions functional committee that will set standards, recommend procedures and coordinate activities in the shared database the way the cataloging and circulation functional committees do. Thelma proposed an acquisitions summit, to be held either on May 24 or May 31, to begin laying a foundation for acquisitions work in a shared environment. Interested parties from Bishop, Hawaii Medical Library and State Archives would be welcome to attend as well. Thelma said she would post an announcement to voyageracq-l. -- Circulation Committee Update Susan Murata reported that the circulation committee had met that day. One major question at the meeting was whether it is okay to delete records from the live database. A freeze was placed on deleting records once it was discovered that deleting an item record associated with a circulation fiscal transaction erases all information about the materials involved in that transaction from the patron's history. Loss of information about the materials can cause problems later, as when a patron wants a refund for a lost/paid book. A number of libraries would like to start deleting records for withdrawn items. Zoe reported that at Hamilton, the database maintenance unit had developed procedures for deleting withdrawn materials and was planning to start deleting soon, now that circulation departments were checking out lost/paid materials to a dummy "lost/paid" patron to protect them from deletion. Susan responded that checking out to a "lost/paid" patron was a proposed workaround that hadn't been approved for implementation. Zoe suggested that circulation departments adopt the workaround and do so quickly. A library can start deleting withdrawn items once its circulation department has checked out lost/paid items to a dummy "lost/paid" patron. Susan observed that a number of UH libraries were anxious to delete withdrawn items because in the past their bill from Hamilton was based in part on the number of titles they had. Jean Erhorn noted that for the coming fiscal year, the bill will be based on the number of titles each library had in their old UHCARL database. Zoe observed that in the future, billing may be based on the number of holdings records a library has in the shared database. Another question that came up at the circulation meeting was the schedule for access to the SysAdmin module. The only existing schedule was set up for configuring the circulation section of SysAdmin. Susan asked if there needed to be a schedule for all of SysAdmin, rather than just circulation. Michelle observed that, at libraries other than Hamilton, the same person does all SysAdmin work. If the circulation SysAdmin schedule is already working for these people, it could serve as a general SysAdmin schedule. -- WebVoyage Committee Update The Hawaii Sheet Music Index and Hawaii/Pacific Journal Index PAC configurations still need to be completed. Sorting by location, (a new feature in WebVoyage 2000), is on hold until the committee has a chance to test it in the training database. CJK display is on hold until the 2000.1.3 patch has been installed. -- VUGM Reports (Note: Slides from all VUGM presentations can be viewed at SupportWeb.) Gwen Sinclair reported that she attended two sessions on customizing forms to get around limitations with the default Voyager online forms, one session on usability studies, and one session on training. Gwen felt the session on training had been the most useful. Susan Murata reported that she attended sessions on e-reserves and the ILL server. E-reserves can be done in different ways, such as via e-links or using the image server product. Susan said e-reserves would be nice to have, but it was apparent from the sessions that they are a labor-intensive undertaking. Endeavor's ILL product is basically the same CLIO product Hamilton is already using, with a Voyager interface added. Susan also attended a session on call slips, which proved very useful in that Hamilton will be using call slips for paging starting Monday 5/14, and the documentation for setting up call slips is not helpful at all. Michelle Sturges reported that she primarily attended sessions on authority control. Only one session, by the Washington Research Library Consortium, addressed authority control in a consortial environment. Their solution was to create a central authority control librarian position in their systems office. Michelle recommended the session by Dale Burke on basics of authority control as an excellent introduction to the subject. Marlene Oishi reported that she attended sessions on user initiated requests. Sophia McMillen attended sessions on authority control and EnCompass. Consensus at VUGM is that Voyager authority control leaves a lot to be desired. Sophia was impressed by EnCompass. Thelma Diercks attended acquisitions sessions, where she learned that one library had succeeded in having a successful EDI transaction. But she also learned that the Acq2000 feature allowing the loading of vendor information is not user-friendly and requires workarounds that make it challenging to use. Zoe Stewart-Marshall attended sessions on image server and EnCompass. Image server looks much more usable for e-reserves than for digital libraries. Zoe agreed with Sophia that EnCompass was impressive. Attendees reported that with the Australia/New Zealand Regional User's Group, who agreed to form a new group with Hawaii called PACVUG (Pacific Area Voyager Users Group). Zoe will be setting up an e-mail list for the group. The ANZUG members were especially interested in sharing the cost of expensive training such as certification training. James Adamson asked if there was any discussion of future directions Endeavor is taking. Michelle reported that Endeavor has split its development group into two -- one to work on Voyager and one to work on digital library products. Zoe reported that Endeavor is beefing up its quality assurance, to avoid problems that occurred with version 2000. Endeavor wants to go back to two Voyager releases per year, with the possibility of skipping a release, or the possibility of not requiring all databases on the same server to upgrade at the same time. Version 2001 is behind schedule. One of its features will be "My OPAC" which allows patrons to save preferences to the Voyager server. Use of "My OPAC" requires a lot more memory on the Voyager server. -- Future of the Steering Committee Thelma suggested that discussion of the future of the Steering Committee be postponed due to lack of time. The Steering Committee was organized to deal with the migration to Voyager. Thelma asked members to think about what the committee should do one the migration is completed. Should it disband, should it re-form, should it become an e-mail discussion list? -- Other Systems reported that a lot of Sun servers have had problems due to outside attacks. The Voyager server has not had this problem yet, probably because Jerard Yagi has kept up to date on all security patches. Another helpful factor was the upgrade to OS 8 which is less prone to attack. Next meeting: Thursday, May 17, 2001.
(Recorded by Michelle Sturges)
--Acquisitions update. The receiving report Hamilton needs for handling most orders is not working properly. Systems will have a conference call with Endeavor to discuss the problem. Copies of Endeavor's Acquisitions 2000 video have come in. All requesting sites should have received their copy. Thelma Diercks reported that the video is about 2 hours long. Anyone having questions about the video order should contact Dave Brier at the Systems Office. Michelle Sturges asked how much pre-planning and coordination would be necessary for multiple sites to use acquisitions in the UH shared environment. Zoe Stewart-Marshall reported that the only area of shared acquisitions data appears to be the vendor file, where all vendor codes show up in one file. Thelma confirmed that all codes are visible, but pointed out that operators can only use those codes associated with their acquisitions policy group. UH Hamilton and the Law Library are using their 3-letter Systems Administration prefixes, (Ouz and OUL respectively), at the start of their vendor codes to make it easier for operators to select the codes associated with their library. Zoe noted that the Systems Office will need a timeline of when and how sites plan to implement Acquisitions. She noted that a phased implementation might be preferable to having several sites go up at once. Thelma will bring the issue of acquisition implementation plans up for discussion on voyageracq-l in May. --Cataloging update. The first version of the Voyager 2000 shared tag tables has been completed. Zoe will put the files up on the Systems Office ftp server and send out a message to all sites instructing them to copy the files and load them onto all staff machines. There was a recent thread on the uhcat discussion list about sudden loss of the ability to jump through code drop-down menus in the cataloging module. Some Hamilton catalogers believe the problem stems from a change in the language code file that shifted heavily used language codes to the top of the file. Michelle said she thought the problem might be associated with loading version 2000 on machines still running version 99.1. Part of the load process involves executing a system file that sets up how Voyager and the Windows operating system interact. Michelle observed that her cataloging workstation never allowed jumping in version 99.1, but it works in version 2000. Michelle was reminded that she hasn't done any work on setting up another SCCC meeting. Because of concerns about a faculty strike, it was suggested that a date in late April or early May be selected. --Circulation update. On March 1, notices were sent out to all patrons in the shared database owing $10 or more. All of the notices said to make checks payable to the University of Hawaii Library, rather than to the library where the money was actually owed. The Circulation Committee will have to work out how to transfer money from the campus receiving payments to the campus originally owed. The Committee also needs to agree on how to make sure blocks get cleared at the patron's home campus when the patron pays a fine at another campus. Hamilton is investigating whether it needs to revise its procedures for withdrawn materials, in light of the fact that deleting an item record associated with a paid fine means a loss of all information about that item in the patron's fine history. John Awakuni is getting clarification about how long such information needs to be retained for the purpose of audits. It would be preferable not to have a solution to the withdrawn problem involving record suppression. Given the shared database environment, it might be good if there were a systemwide policy for handling items that in CARL were handled by deleting the record, such as withdrawn items, lost/paid items, missing items. The policy will have to take into account the fact that with Voyager acquisitions, you can't delete item records that have purchase orders linked to them. --WebVoyage Task Force update. Gwen Sinclair reported that the Task Force has finished with the shared database Voyager 2000 interface except for some tweaks that can't be done until after the upgrade. The Task Force is asking people to watch for odd behavior or things not working right in the new version of PAC. All problems should be reported to the assist@hawaii.edu e-mail address. Gwen has asked Dave Brier to look into whether information about known bugs in WebVoyage 2000 can be distributed to all sites. The Trust Territory of the Pacific database interface still needs some refinements to its version 2000 configuration. Gwen reported that several sites would like to put a logo or library name on the opening screen of their virtual host for WebVoyage 2000. The Task Force wanted feedback from the Steering Committee. Most members felt it was a good idea to have information telling the patrons which site interface they are using, since some information and links on the opening screen vary from site to site. The Committee felt text would be preferable to a graphic. Zoe reported that there will be no CJK display capability on day 1 of Voyager 2000. She and Pat felt it would be easier to get CJK display to work once they could work with the UH database rather than with the proxy server in Chicago. --Load updates. The reload of Bishop Museum's Archives database will hopefully happen on Friday. The data will then wait until after the upgrade for review. Bishop Museum's Library database is still at LTI. Their clean-up profile is undergoing some fine-tuning. The Hawaii/Pacific Journal Index database is still being investigated. Endeavor has determined that additional programming will be needed to make the migration work, which will mean an additional charge of around $1,000. Endeavor is willing to set up a separate database for use with their image server product. The image database can be a shared database, although which other sites may be using image server is uncertain. At this time, only Bishop Museum has a reserved copy from the original licensing agreement. Zoe Stewart-Marshall listed outstanding things from the migration that need to be cleared up before we accept the system: 1) The authorities problem in which over 100,000 duplicate authority records were loaded into out authority file has yet to be resolved. The duplicates prevent us from doing batch updates of authority records using LC authority update tapes. Endeavor is still investigating the problem. The authority database remains frozen. 2) The vendor problem involving a bug that UH discovered in the acquisitions software. Endeavor may have fixed it in the version 2000.1.3 client, but not in the 2000.1.2 client that we will be using. The Marcive full bibliographic records are still waiting to be loaded. In serials, 22% of the 4700 top priority serials at Hamilton have had deduping work done, 8% have been completely done, including holdings clean-up. No Hamilton serials are being checked-in on Voyager yet. Michelle asked if Hamilton's clean-up effort will be complicated once other sites bring up serials check-in. The answer was no, as long as sites make sure they link their purchase order and check-in grid only to records with a 591 keepx note. Sites planning to bring up serials check-in should: 1) Create a list of the serials they plan to check-in using Voyager. 2) Search each title in the database and organize the titles by their deduplication status: a) Status good - there are no duplicate records or there already is a keepx record among the duplicates. b) Status fixable - there are duplicates but determination of a keepx record and subsequent clean-up will be straightforward. c) Status bad - there are duplicates and unraveling the trail of title changes and deduplicating records will take a lot of work. 3) Keep up with deduplication work. Deduplication of serials records helps familiarize you with what keeper titles are already identified as well as what standards are being used for keeper records. 4) Make decisions on how holdings will be done. Will open or closed statements be used? If the library only keeps so many years of a title, what will the public note say? Will the years covered be included? Will check-in grids display to the public or only to staff? -- Voyager upgrade. James Adamson reported that it is again uncertain whether the Voyager PAC will be available during the upgrade. The project manager initially handling our upgrade said a mirror could be used, but when our upgrade was handed off to a second manager, he said that he couldn't confirm mirroring was possible without a hardware check, which Endeavor had not done. After reviewing UH's set-up with the upgrade manager, it was determined that the UH Voyager computers are missing a part necessary to make PAC available. The missing part is a fiber board that has to be installed in one of the servers so that it can connect directly to the mirror. The part should have been there when we purchased the system. James reported that the part had been purchased and was being flown over. He was confident it would arrive in time to be installed before the upgrade. James will send e-mail notifying all sites once he knows whether Voyager PAC will be available. For the upgrade, Systems will do a complete back-up of all files on Monday, March 26, around 5 a.m. Zoe noted that Karen Gegner at Endeavor had instructed us that a second back-up, usually done at a different time from the main back-up, has to be done at the same time as the main back-up prior to the upgrade. Once all back-ups are completed, Systems will notify Endeavor to begin the upgrade. The upgrade will hopefully be completed sometime on Tuesday, March 27. Voyager PAC will be cut over to the new version, and Systems staff will test the behavior of staff modules. On Wednesday, March 28, James will send out e-mail to all sites when it is time for staff to start using the new version of Voyager. Staff will be asked to start slowly and watch for any odd behavior in their modules. -- Solaris upgrade. James reported that he was unable to negotiate a different time for the operating system upgrade on April 9. He distributed a memo explaining Endeavor's position about staff working on weekends. The upgrade will start at 3:30 am on April 9. The time the upgrade will take is estimated at 4 hours, with a 2.5 hour cushion, so Voyager will be down until some time between 7:30 am and 10 am. -- Voyager 2000.1.2 vs. 2000.1.3 Members wanted to know how the transition will be made to the 2000.1.3 version of Voyager, once that version becomes available. There was concern that it might mean more down time. James and Zoe explained that the upgrade to 2000.1.3 is done with a patch and does not require bringing the system down. The only question is whether 2000.1.3 will require installation of a new version of the client software rather than using the version already loaded. -- Voyager User's Group Executive Board. Thelma will try to find out from Wil Frost which candidates the Hawaii group voted for.
(Recorded by Michelle Sturges)
-- WebVoyage Task Force update. The Task Force is still working on the help files, but most of the other work is done. The group is in a review period with respect to some design options after having asked for comments from members of the UH Library System. One unresolved issue is whether the Basic Search Quick Limits menu has to be the same for all sites. The Task Force roughed out some basic default limits: English, Last 5 years, Videorecording, but some sites would like to include a limit to their locations in their version of the Basic Search. The overall Task Force consensus is that some customization should be allowed. The Steering Committee agreed that sites should be able to modify the Quick Limits menu of their virtual host to meet their needs. Zoe Stewart-Marshall and Pat Gates have been working on getting Unicode CJK coding to display as CJK characters with the Hawaii interface. They have had no success so far. Zoe suggested that the Task Force might want to turn off CJK display for the upgrade, then turn it on once Systems has been able to get CJK display to work. Gwen Sinclair reported that the Task Force is finding a good number of bugs in the version 2000 WebPAC, not all of which are in the FAQ at Endeavor SupportWeb. Choosing to post-limit and sort after a search can result in especially problematic behavior. -- Cataloging update. The SCCC is reviewing minimum-level record templates sites should use when doing minimum-level cataloging. The hope is to distribute a package of templates in time for them to be loaded at the same time sites are loading in the version 2000 client software. The Tag Table Subcommittee has learned that changes in the version 2000 cataloging module mean the 99.1 tag tables won't work with the version 2000 client. The problem lies with the three fixed field files. The Subcommittee is trying to find a workable solution in hopes that a shared tag table can be distributed in time for the upgrade. -- Acquisitions update. One copy of the Acquisitions 2000 video will be supplied to each requesting site without charge. Additional copies can be purchased for $30.00. Dave Brier is the contact person for requesting the video. -- Load updates. Zoe reported that all migration clean-up projects are going well. Duplicate item barcodes have largely been fixed. Systems will re-run the report to check if new duplicates are being created. All sites are working on cleaning up their holdings that mapped to Review locations. Most sites have cleaned up their monographic relinx and dedup problems. Serials deduplication has made a lot of progress. Bishop Museum did not accept the first load of its Archives database due to problems with the CARL data extraction. Systems has revised the output and sent the file to Karen Gegner at Endeavor. Zoe asked Duane Wenzel to designate someone to review the modified version of the Archives mapping table, as the original person, Linda Laurence, is on jury duty. The paperwork required by UH before LTI could do authority clean-up of Bishop Museum's Library database was completed and faxed to Endeavor. Endeavor has sent the files to LTI to be worked on. The Library files will migrate after the upgrade, probably in mid-April. Zoe will work with B.J. Short on the Library mapping table. Karen Gegner and Zoe are scheduled to talk about the Hawaii/Pacific Journal Index next week. Migration of the data will likely wait until after the upgrade. There is still data in UHCARL that has yet to be extracted. Once Karen and Zoe have determined exactly what data is needed for a Citation Server database, Systems will do the extraction. -- Update on the Upgrade to Voyager 2000. Endeavor has confirmed that we will be upgrading to version 2000.1.2. Systems has made version 2000.1.2 client software available for sites to retrieve and load onto staff machines. Some local auxilliary files, such as template .cfg files and shared tag table files, are not present in the client software Systems has made available for distribution and will have to be added in. James Adamson spoke to Eli, the person overseeing our upgrade, about preparations. Endeavor is verifying if there is enough space on the UH server configuration to allow for mirroring during the upgrade. Mirroring is the only way WebPAC can remain available while the upgrade is being done. James will send out a message to all sites once Endeavor tells him if mirroring can be done. At 5 a.m. on Monday, March 26, Systems will do a complete back-up of files on the Voyager server. Systems will then contact Endeavor to begin the upgrade process. Systems will have operational staff on-site to assist Endeavor with the upgrade. During the upgrade, client software will be locked out by Endeavor. After the upgrade is completed, Systems will do another complete back-up and perform pre-checks of module software behavior. Eli believes the upgrade will be finished sometime on March 27. James will check to make sure Endeavor has factored in the time that will be needed to reindex Hawaii Medical Library's database. James reported that he would like to prepare the PAC configuration files for all sites ahead of time so that they can be copied over with minimal tweaking once the upgrade is complete. James said he would like to switch from version 99.1 of WebPAC to version 2000 as soon as possible. He estimated that this would mean WebPAC would change from version 99.1 to version 2000 late in the afternoon of Tuesday, March 27. Once the upgrade is complete and Systems has done the pre-check, sites will be contacted to begin testing and checking the system using version 2000 client software. Testing and checking by sites may not begin until Wednesday, March 28. --Upgrade of Voyager server operating system, 4/9/01. In January, Endeavor announced that it would like most sites to upgrade to Solaris 8 during March and April of 2001. Sites had to be at least on Voyager 99.1 to upgrade their Solaris operating system. Sites planning to upgrade to Voyager 2000 could do the Solaris upgrade before or after the Voyager upgrade, but Endeavor does not allow both upgrades to happen at the same time. Endeavor's argument is that it is too hard to troubleshoot problems if the operating system and the Voyager software have been upgraded at the same time. James Adamson secured a Solaris update time of Monday, 4/9/01 for the UH machines, with a backup time later in April. For an operating system upgrade, Endeavor sends someone out to work on the site's server. During the upgrade, all access to Voyager, including WebPAC, is down. There are two machines in UH's configuration that will need to have the upgrade. The hope was that if the Endeavor representative started the upgrade at 3 a.m., it might be finished before Hamilton opens at 8 a.m., but a more realistic estimate is that the upgrade won't be completed until 9 or 10 a.m., so all Voyager modules will be down for part of the morning. Hamilton representatives were concerned about having to maintain library operations without connections to the integrated library system. They asked if an alternate schedule could be worked out so that all work is done when Hamilton is closed. James said he would talk to Endeavor, but reminded Steering Committee members that Endeavor has a fairly strict policy against staff doing work on weekends. --Voting for VUG Executive Board members. The Steering Committee had planned to discuss which of the candidates for Executive Board positions they felt the Hawaii Voyager group should vote for. Michelle Sturges and Thelma Diercks had received a message from Wil Frost informing them that he is designated the "primary library contact" who votes on VUG matters for the Hawaii Voyager group. He had already received the Executive Board ballot and hoped to complete it soon. Thelma asked Wil to recommend 3 candidates in addition to himself for submission to the Steering Committee, but did not receive a reply before the meeting. Thelma proposed that Steering Committee members come up with a list of candidates for Wil to choose from when filling out the ballot. Three names were suggested during the meeting. Thelma asked representatives to submit any additional names to her by tomorrow, so that she could get a list off to Wil as soon as possible.
(Recorded by Michelle Sturges)
-- Acquisitions Update. Endeavor has announced the availability of an Acquisitions 2000 video. Dave Brier will send out a message asking sites if they want a copy. The hope is to provide each requesting site one copy free-of-charge. The Law Library has approved their first serials purchase orders. In serials, the purchase order must be approved before a title can be checked-in. Approving a purchase order means that the bibliographic records for all line items cannot be deleted, so purchase order approval can only happen when clean-up of duplicate records for the line items has been completed. At Hamilton, clean up of duplicate records has been completed for about 200 serial titles. The purchase order receiving report is being run for Hamilton. The report gathers all orders from any one vendor so that the disbursing office can pay a lump sum to the vendor rather than paying invoice-by-invoice. At the Voyager Acquisitions session for fiscal officers, there seemed to be some interest in using the report at other sites. The library directors will need to meet with the fiscal officers to discuss integrating Voyager acquisitions with campus business office workflows. The purchase orders Hamilton is creating using Voyager Acquisitions are being done via Blackwell North America's collection management database. The resulting records are incomplete bibliographic records that lack the 591 note present in manually created purchase orders. Zoe Stewart-Marshall will send a message to voyageracq-l and uhcat describing elements other libraries can use to identify these order records. Hamilton Acquisitions needs to work through cleaning up existing order records that migrated from CARL so that they are identifiable and usable by other libraries. Overlap is occurring between items on Hamilton purchase orders from CARL and items the Law library wishes to order using Voyager. -- Cataloging Update. While the basic standards for minimal bibliographic records have been agreed to and distributed, additional elements to be required for special formats such as audiovisual materials are still being worked on. Michelle Sturges reported that she has completed the revision of the SCCC minutes and will send out the revised portion next week. Zoe has identified a problem with the authority record database and is working with Karen Gegner to clean it up. Over 100,000 duplicate authority records have to be removed from the authority database before any updates to the database can occur. The duplicate records were in the authority file from LTI. It appears that only topical and geographical headings have duplicate records, but Zoe is not certain some name headings aren't duplicated as well. Karen is doing a final count of how many records. The hope is that Endeavor can extract the duplicates. Systems will know more after next Tuesday's conference call with Endeavor. In the meantime, Endeavor has instructed us not to do any manipulation to the authority database. -- Circulation Update. The Circulation Committee has been discussing how to handle lost/paid items given that deletion of the item record removes item information from the patron record, while retention of the item record leaves the lost/paid charge in the patron record, even after the fine is paid. Circulation will use the workaround of checking a lost/paid item out to a Lost/Paid account so that records are protected from deletion. Lost/paid items will have a status of "Lost." The Circulation Committee has decided to allow site-specific variations to the original set of 12 standard operator profiles, to accommodate difference in staffing and workflow. The only stipulation from the Systems Office is that profile variants have distinctive names. The WebVoyage Task Force would like to turn the PAC request button on after the upgrade to version 2000. The Circulation Committee is not ready to handle patron-placed holds and requests yet, so the button will be set to only provide access to the Sinclair reserve room book request form and the Sinclair media booking form. Access will only be available to faculty and staff. In the future, other forms may be accessible via the PAC request button such as an ILL request form and a book purchase request form. -- Load Update. Bishop Museum is reviewing the test load of its Archives database. There appear to be problems with a couple of locations, but Zoe is waiting for specific examples to give to Karen before deciding if the load has to be redone. The PAC interface for the Archives database is still being worked on, but Bishop may choose to delay providing access to the Archives database until the Library database has also been migrated. The Systems Office received a quote from LTI for authority work for the Bishop Museum Library database, but the paperwork has turned out to be more complicated than anticipated. The authority work will require a contract modification by UH Manoa, which must then be approved by Endeavor. Given the resulting delay, it now seems a certainty that the Library database will migrate after the 2000 upgrade. Zoe has given Karen samples from the Hawaii/Pacific Journal Index database. For the citation server hook-to-holdings feature to work, the data the HPJI records will link to have to be in the journal records in the UH shared database. Zoe has been identifying keeper records for HPJI titles and putting in the CARL BID number that the HPJI records will link to. Work on the HPJI database may not be completed before the 2000 upgrade. Zoe reminded Steering Committee members that the Voyager version of the Hawaii/Pacific Journal Index will not look or function at all like the CARL version. The Hawaii Sheet Music Committee, which includes representatives from Hawaii State Library, Bishop Museum, Hamilton Hawaiian Collection and the Sinclair Music Collection, met on Monday to discuss the Voyager interface to the HSM database. The group agreed to wait until the WebVoyage Task Force's 2000 prototype is in place to use as a guide for the HSM interface. The group is willing to wait until after the 2000 upgrade. -- WebVoyage Task Force Update. The Task Force is almost finished with the 2000 prototype. All decisions about functionality have been made and work on some design aspects and help messages is being finished up. Gwen Sinclair observed that all of the Task Force members have done a tremendous amount of work. Gwen made special mention of Pat Gates, who handled configuration entry; Kevin Roddy, who worked on the help messages; and David Flynn, who worked on the prototype layout and style. The Committee thanked Gwen for her work in heading the Task Force. Gwen observed that there has been a lot of discussion about holdings sort groups, a version 2000 feature that allows Voyager to sort holdings so that a particular library's appear first, rather than always defaulting to an alphabetical listing. The WebVoyage Task Force want to implement the feature, but because there are several configuration options, the group would like to hold off until they have a chance to test the various options in the UH training database. The plan is to implement the holdings sort groups, but not on Day 1 of version 2000. -- Upgrade to Version 2000 The start date for the upgrade is March 26. The rough estimate is that if all goes well the upgrade will be done within 2 days. James Adamson is checking with Karen Gegner on exactly what steps are involved and will send out e-mail to all sites about end user responsibilities, (including how to obtain the version 2000 client software). The Voyager server has a mirroring configuration so that normally during an upgrade PAC is still available. However, during the migration from CARL to Voyager, Endeavor has disabled the mirroring configuration so that there will be more storage space available for migrating data. James has inquired if mirroring can be turned on during the upgrade. If it cannot, sites may have to be without PAC access, or they may opt to temporarily resurrect access to the CARL PAC using Wyse terminals or OVLite on PCs. The question that is still unanswered is what version of version 2000 we will be upgraded to. There have been several patches to version 2000. Client software for version 2000 cannot be distributed until we know the version we will come up on. Once the version is known, Systems will make client software available from an ftp server in their department. Sites need to plan to allow time to obtain the software and install it on staff machines. Zoe reminded Steering Committee members that one of the special tasks to be taken care of during the upgrade is a reindexing of Hawaii Medical Library's database so that it shares the same indexing as other Hawaii Voyager libraries. * Tentative timeline * 1. Instructions go out to sites about preparing for the upgrade. * 2. Version confirmation is received from Endeavor. Distribution of * client software to sites is initiated. WebPAC 2000 configurations for * all sites are finalized. * 3. Sites install client software. (See NOTE.) * 4. Upgrade process begins. Systems Office does backups of all files * before upgrade is started. * 5. Upgrade is completed. Systems Office does backups of all upgraded * files. Systems Office staff see to any necessary adjustments to the * System Administration module. Systems Office copies over version 2000 * WebPAC configurations. Sites do test work in all modules. * 6. System Administration of training database is reconfigured to match * the SysAdmin configuration of the live database. * NOTE: The 2000 client should not be installed on any more PCs than are * already running version 99. The UH System has a licensing agreement * with Endeavor that sets the number of machines that can be running the * client software. Staff machines can be loaded with both the * 99.1 and 2000 versions of the at the same time. Each version needs to * be distinctively identified in a separate folder. Version 99 is used * until the upgrade starts. Version 2000 software has to be used after * the upgrade is completed. Circulation departments planning to use the * Voyager offline circulation feature during the upgrade will need to use * version 2000. Machines that are used to run the Reporter module will * need to have Access 2000 installed if they are to run version 2000 of * the Reporter module. Be aware that Access 2000 is not compatible with * Reporter version 99. -- System Response Time. James reported that he had received very few responses to his call for reports of slow response time. He had asked ITS to provide data on network activity for selected sites. The data indicate network load problems at Kapi`olani CC, Leeward CC and Honolulu CC that need to be addressed at the campus level. A number of representatives from other libraries, including the Law Library, asked James to obtain data on network activity for their sites. The Steering Committee decided to schedule the next system response test after the upgrade to version 2000. -- Voyager Users' Group Executive Board representatives. Candidates for election to the Executive Board for the 2001/2003 term have been announced. VUG bylaws allow one vote per contract. Steering Committee members were asked to review the list of candidates so that next week a decision can be made about which candidates our group will vote for.
(Recorded by Michelle Sturges)
1. Acquisitions update. Zoe Stewart-Marshall reported that Hamilton Acquisitions had placed their first orders via Voyager. 2. Cataloging update. Minutes from the Feb. 14 SCCC meeting had been distributed to all Steering Committee members. The SCCC came to agreement on a number of issues, the most important being approval of the acquisitions minimum bib record template and development of standards for minimal-level catalog records in the shared database. A number of Steering Committee members found the section in the SCCC meeting minutes about relinx and dedup activities confusing. Michelle Sturges will revise that section to clarify the nature of those activities and their impact on other cataloging work. The SCCC discussed the question of where to put urls in catalog records. Michelle reported that the SCCC recommendation was that urls for free resources should go in the bibliographic record, but urls for resources with restricted access should go in the holdings record of the institution providing the access. Zoe Stewart-Marshall reported that sites meeting the necessary criteria would be able to start adding bibliographic records to the shared database without using bulk import starting next week. Criteria that have to be met are completion of monographic relinx work, attendance at all SCCC meetings and/or a demonstrated understanding and implementation of the standards, policies and guidelines developed at those meetings. Zoe said sites can contact her via telephone or e-mail to work out their go live date. Michelle reported that she hopes to have one more SCCC meeting before the end of the academic year to discuss standards for copy cataloging and full-level original cataloging. 3. WebVoyage Task Force update. The Task Force also considered the issue of urls in catalog records. Gwen Sinclair reported that the Task Force also recommended that urls for free resources go in the bibliographic record, and urls for restricted-access resources go in the holdings record. The Task Force further recommended that a standard public note be used for restricted-access resources. The note would go in subfield z of the 856 tag in the holdings record and would read "Access for [institution] faculty, students, and staff." The Task Force hopes to have the basic configuration of WebVoyage 2000 finished sometime next week. The configuration can be accessed at Endeavor's 2000 preview server in Chicago. Gwen noted that they can only test the configuration against Endeavor's generic server database, which limits the Task Force's ability to test the configuration's behavior with data unique to the UH Shared database. The Task Force's inability to do true live testing increases the likelihood that there will be unforeseen problems with the new configurations that can only be found and fixed after we go live. WebVoyage 2000 has the ability to display Chinese and Japanese characters in Unicode, but apparently not Korean characters. Unfortunately, coding for CJK characters in UHCARL records was corrupted during the migration and their characters will not display in WebVoyage 2000. New RLIN records with coding for Chinese and Japanese characters may display in WebVoyage 2000. Patrons can only view Chinese and Japanese characters in WebVoyage 2000 if they are using a web browser equipped with the necessary font and encoding software. A tutorial for WebVoyage 2000 cannot be developed before the libraries go live on version 2000 as it is impossible to create a tutorial for a configuration that is not in place. The WebVoyage Task Force asked if the Tutorial button for version 2000 should be turned off until a WebVoyage 2000 tutorial has been developed. The Steering Committee agreed that the Tutorial button should be turned off initially in version 2000. As each site is ready with its version 2000 tutorial, the tutorial button can be turned on for that site's virtual host configuration. The WebVoyage Task Force views tutorial development as being a bibliographic instruction issue rather than a software configuration issue. While the Task Force is working on informational components that are a part of the WebVoyage configuration, such as editing the default help screens, members feel the tutorial falls beyond the scope of the Task Force's responsibilities. The Task Force recommended that there should not be a single tutorial for all sites, and that each library should develop its own. The Steering Committee agreed that the Task Force would not be expected to develop a tutorial for version 2000. Diane Sakai observed that some libraries might like to pool their efforts and resources by forming a group to develop a basic tutorial libraries can customize to meet their individual needs. Diane will contact directors of libraries outside of Hamilton to see if they would like to form a tutorial development group. Jean Erhorn will find out if anyone from Hamilton's Library Instruction Committee would like to participate in a tutorial development project. The WebVoyage Task Force wanted to know if any sites plan to use the Voyager call slip function, as use of the function will require some configuration work on the part of the Task Force. The Task Force does not know if use of call slips can be limited to one site, or if turning on the function will affect all sites. Zoe suggested that Gwen speak to Susan Murata about call slips. Zoe noted that, in addition to the library-specific version 2000 configurations, work also needs to be done on the version 2000 configurations for the Hawaii Sheet Music database and the Trust Territories of the Pacific database. 4. Load updates. The three Bishop Museum archival databases -- Mele, Visual images, and Sound recordings -- have been sent to Endeavor. They will be merged into a single database. A mapping table has been submitted, and the records won't be having authority control clean-up so the first test load should happen early next week. If the load is accepted, the archive database can go live as soon as it's WebVoyage interface is completed. Zoe is still waiting to hear back from LTI about the cost and time needed for authority control work on Bishop Museum's library database. The hope is that the database is small enough for authority control work to take less than the normal 4-6 weeks. If LTI says the work will take 4-6 weeks, then Bishop Museums's library database will migrate after the 2000 upgrade. Bishop Museum's databases did not use item records in CARL, but dummy item records will be created as part of the migration in case the museum wants to use Voyager's circulation or call slip functions in the future. While Bishop Museum's records are at LTI, Zoe will be working with Karen Gegner at Endeavor on migrating the Hawaii/Pacific Journal Index database. The HPJI database is being migrated as a citation server database, which makes it different from all databases migrated up to this time. The Hawaii Sheet Music database has migrated. The HSMI Committee meets on Monday to discuss configuration of the virtual host for the HSMI database. Bulk import of Marcive full bibliographic records has been delayed due to a problem with the checks Voyager uses before overlaying an existing record with an imported record. 5. Tandem update. James Adamson reported that the Tandem machine suffered a hard drive crash to one of the mirrored hard drives, resulting in the loss of the mirror backing up the operating system. Systems Office personnel moved another hard drive to back up the operating system, but that leaves another part of the system without a mirror. James had done some preliminary investigations about purchasing a replacement hard drive and the cost could be around $8,000. James reminded the Committee that any maintenance problems have to be paid for as the Tandem is no longer under a maintenance contract. All files on the Tandem are being backed up. Systems personnel will take snap shots of Hamilton fiscal data as soon as possible. The hope is now to keep the Tandem running until July, when another snap shot would be taken of the fiscal data. Data that still have to come off the Tandem are the Hawaii/Pacific Journals Index database, circulation financial archives, acquisitions financial archives and serials financial data. Migration of the HPJI database and archival data output for the circulation and acquisitions data are covered by our contract with Endeavor. The serials extract was not included in the contract, and Endeavor would need $7500 to do the work. Systems Office personnel will try to do the extract of serials data themselves instead. 6. UH Library Council. A new group is being formed consisting of the directors of all libraries in the UH System. The intent is to more formally organize a university library council oriented toward policies that need to be developed across the system. At the group's first meeting directors from UH Hamilton, UH Hilo and the community college libraries were in attendance. Susan Murata, Stephanie Nelson and John Muth also attended as guests. The main topics of discussion were systemwide issues relating to circulation policies, interlibrary loan, and document delivery, including the establishment of a courier service on Oahu. The directors agreed to an April start date for collection of circulation fines across the system. The next UHLC meeting will be on March 23. The UH Law School Library and the UH Medical School Library are being invited to join the UH Library Council, and it is hoped their directors will be able to attend. One topic of discussiion will be joint publicity with respect to new, seamless circulation services implemented since the Voyager migration. The group has also requested information on proxy servers and on the formula for next year's Voyager billing. Hamilton Steering Committee members said next year's formula will be the same as the one used last time. Diane Sakai said most members of the UHLC still want to discuss the billing. 7. Refreshing the Training Database. Discussions with Endeavor revealed that, while live database configurations are preserved during a Voyager software upgrade, training database configurations are not. All training databases are refreshed during an upgrade. The Steering Committee agreed there is no point in scheduling a database refresh prior to the upgrade, which is scheduled to begin on March 26. SysAdmin liaisons at all sites will need to be contacted and a schedule worked out for reconfiguring the UH shared training database after the upgrade. Until the configuration has been entered, the training database will not be fully useful as a means of testing and training in Voyager 2000. 8. Proxy Server. Concerns about where to place urls handled via a proxy server have been solved by the decision to put such urls in holdings records with a standard note. The UH Library Council will address the issue of sites which do not have proxy servers at this time. 9. Slow Voyager Response Times. Non-Manoa representatives reported that there is some confusion at remote sites about reporting slow response times. Sites have been experiencing periods of slow response time, but have not known how or when to report their observations to the Systems Office. James Adamson said that the Systems Office needs to know about slow response times that cannot be traced to a problem at the library's campus. James said he would send out a message to sites about reporting slow response times. Zoe suggested scheduling another system response time test before the end of the school year, to compare with the test performed last semester. The Steering Committee agreed that another test should be scheduled.
(Recorded by Michelle Sturges)
1. Acquisitions update. The Acquisitions Committee is working with the Systemwide Cataloging Committee to finalize the acquisitions bibliographic record template. The template will be used by UH libraries to manually enter purchase orders in Voyager acquisitions. 2. Cataloging update. The Systemwide Cataloging Committee will have its third meeting on Feb. 14. The main agenda items have to do with setting standards for adding new bibliographic records to the shared catalog database. No one is adding bibliographic records on a large scale at this time. 3. Circulation update. Fred Allen and Susan Murata have made site visits to Maui Community College Library and Kauai Community College Library. They checked for problems staff might be having with Voyager Circulation functions. Next week Fred and Susan will visit the School of Medicine library. They also hope to make site visits to other UH System libraries on Oahu. Sinclair's AV section plans to implement Media Scheduling next week on Monday, Feb. 12. Media Scheduling training will be on March 1. The Circulation Committee still has some outstanding issues, but these are mainly policy issues that have to be resolved at the Library Council level such as accepting fines and fees for other libraries, interlibrary loan between libraries, and implementing a courier service between libraries. 4. PAC update. The WebVoyage 2000 Task Force has met several times. They have begun configuring the simple search screen in the 2000 WebVoyage product. The Task Force is developing a web site that will list all decisions made by the group. They hope to have a link to it from the main implementation web page. The Task Force had reviewed several messages from the voyager-l discussion list about ADA compliance. Endeavor holds that providing access to the telnet version of Voyager PAC is not necessary as WebVoyage itself is ADA compliant. A number of sites had asked for access to telnet PAC but there are a lot of configuration issues involved with their requests. The Task Force wanted to know how many of those sites would still want to use telnet PAC if it weren't necessary for ADA compliance. Systems representatives reported that several sites need access to telnet PAC because a lack of PAC PCs is forcing them to continue using dumb terminals. Also, there is still a significant population of remote users who access the catalog via systems like Hawaii FYI, which can only connect to the telnet version of PAC. Since there is a need for telnet PAC access for reasons other than ADA compliance, the Task Force will continue work on telnet PAC. However, it will not be possible for the Task Force to make the telnet version do everything WebVoyage does as Endeavor will not do upgrades to the telnet version to keep it in step with WebVoyage. Sites using telnet PAC will be asked to use it as is without modifications. The WebVoyage Task Force understands that their immediate charge is the configuration of WebVoyage 2000, but some members want to know what other responsibilities are likely to fall to their group. There will be a need for usability tests to make sure the PAC configuration is working as expected, and each upgrade of the Voyager ILS will bring some need for revision to the PAC configuration. It is unclear what, if any, part the Task Force will play in ongoing tweaks to an existing version of PAC after an upgrade is in place. The future role of the Task Force will be discussed in more detail after the upgrade to Voyager 2000. 5. Load updates. Hawaii State Archives has accepted their production load but is live to staff only. The TTPI load has been given to Special Collections staff to review. They have until Monday, Feb. 12 to accept or reject the load. There is no official go live date for the TTPI database. If the load is accepted, the TTPI Web PAC files will be copied over to the live version of the database. Questions have come up about which Voyager databases on the shared server will be accessible via the "Other Libraries" button in WebVoyage. The Systems Office assumed all databases would be accessible to allow for simultaneous searches. Maintainers of the more specialized databases have concerns about users doing searches without first seeing text explaining the nature of the collections being searched. Randy Hensley volunteered to look into their concerns. Bishop Museum has two databases that will be migrated. They won't be entirely done before the end of February. The last database to be loaded will be the Hawaii Pacific Journal Index database, sometime in March. The Journal Index database will use Endeavor's citation server software, making it a different type of load from the Voyager catalog databases. The Systems Office has successfully run the pre-bulk import program to strip out tags from a set of records prior to bulk import. The remainder of the Hamilton gap 2 records that had been worked on have been loaded. There are still some outstanding gap 2 files to be loaded, but the majority of the files have been loaded. 6. Suppression of On Order Records. The WebVoyage Task Force and Circulation Committee had been asked to discuss whether they favored suppression or display of on order records. Opinion was divided in both groups. The WebVoyage Task Force decided to recommend that on order records display, as the reasons to display, (particularly the Law Library's need to display on order records for accreditation purposes), were more compelling than the reasons to suppress. The Task Force also felt that suppression or display would have to be a systemwide policy, not a site-by-site decision. In the Circulation Committee, the big concern was what to tell patrons who want to know when an on order item will be available. In addition to an "on order" status, Voyager also displays an order date, but there is no simple formula to say when from that date the item will be available. The order date cannot be suppressed without also suppressing the "on order" status. Zoe Stewart-Marshall will check whether version 2000 of Voyager allows the "on order" status to display without a date. Another Circulation Committee concern was patron placed holds. In CARL, Hamilton patrons could place holds on items that were on order. Patrons can place such holds in Voyager only if the on order item has an item record. But creation of an item record at the point of order is optional and probably doesn't fit the acquisitions workflow most libraries were planning to use. The Steering Committee decided that while the long-term goal is to have on order records display in PAC, such records will be suppressed for now until support issues are worked out. 7. Refreshing the Training Database. The WebVoyage Task Force had wanted to refresh the training database to test the Voyager "Request" button. There was also some thought that testing of Acquisitions and Circulation modules would benefit from a refreshed database. Zoe Stewart-Marshall reported that all libraries which were known to have used the training database as a cataloging gap workfile had retrieved their records, so it would be safe to do a refresh. Once Endeavor refreshed the database, the System Administration configurations would have to be reentered, Endeavor database records would have to be deleted to make room for a substantial number of UH System database records, and things already created for testing, such as ledgers, would have to be reconstructed. Steering Committee members were reluctant to ask people to take on that amount of work at a time when they are already burdened by clean-up projects. Another option would be to do the refresh as part of the upgrade to version 2000, but staff would have no place to test version 2000 behavior until the System Administration configuration had been reentered into the refreshed training database. The Steering Committee decided to postpone the training database refresh. The Committee will reexamine the refresh issue at its March 1st meeting. 8. Steering Committee Website. Michelle Sturges reported that she is still investigating options for hosting and maintaining a new Endeavor implementation website.
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
1. Hawaii State Archives. The database and modules are live for staff. Public unveiling will happen later, following data cleanup. 2. Trust Territory Archives. A second test load of the TTPI database is expected on February 2. 3. Circulation update. Media Scheduling module is scheduled to go live at Sinclair Library on February 12. Training will be done by Endeavor staff on March 1. Endeavor is writing a program to fix 9,000+ UH Manoa item barcodes that loaded with extra characters. Non-Manoa sites, with far fewer barcodes to deal with, are fixing this problem manually. Systems is writing a program to identify duplicate item barcodes for UH Manoa and UH Hilo. Systems is working on the patron record update loader. 4. Cataloging update. UH shared database standards for holdings records have been finalized. The System-wide Cataloging Coordination Committee (SCCC) will meet in mid-February to address remaining standards for the UH shared database. 5. Loads. The October gap records are loaded; Gap2 records are loading now. BNA on-going loads are being discussed. In general, there remain a large number of records to be loaded. 6. Hawaii Medical Library. HML will re-authorize its database to address MeSH headings. 7. Acquisitions update. Thelma Diercks has added a sample ledger to the training database. Do a search for a ledger whose name is A SAMPLE LEDGER. In this one ledger there are varied examples of organization of funds: 1000, 2000 series by SUBJECT, 3000 series by SELECTOR, 5000 series by GEOGRAPHIC AREA, 9300 series by FORMAT (serials), etc. 8. WebVoyage. The WebPAC Taskforce had its second meeting today. It has determined decisions to be made for version 2000 and has addressed changes requested for version 99, including the timeout length and display of additional MARC tags. Decisions will be posted on a forthcoming web page. There was brief discussion of activating patron-initiated services in the UH shared database, possibly in May. Members of the taskforce include: Linda Laurence, Bishop Museum; Alice Witkowski, Hawaii Medical Library; Luella Kurkjian, Hawaii State Archives; Xin Li, Honolulu Community College; Ginny Tanji, JABSOM; Bin Zhang, Kapiolani Community College; Sloan Sakamoto, UH Law; Ralph Toyama, Leeward Community College, UH West Oahu; Gail Ainsworth, Maui Community College; Kevin Roddy, UH Hilo; Laurel Gregory, UH Center West Hawaii; Tiffany Severns, Windward Community College; Kyungmi Chun, David Flynn, Randy Hensley, Ruth Marie Quirk and Gwen Sinclair (chair), UH Manoa. 9. Suppressing on-order records in OPAC. The topic was summarized for new committee members. Discussion will continue at the next meeting. 10. Refreshing the training database. When the database is refreshed, it will contain Voyager's default configuration and standard 60,000 record database. System Administration must be manually edited to match the configuration of the live database. A limited number of local records can be added to the database. When it is set up as desired, Systems can to a backup so it can be restored as needed. Access to System Administration will be limited to system administrators so that the database remains usable for testing and training. Lei Seeger will verify that UH Law has copied any records needed from the training database. At this time, no other site has records in the database that they need to retrieve. The refresh will be done after the TTPI and Bishop implementations are completed. 11. Proxy server update. Steph Nelson described work done to date at UH Manoa and asked if URL links to databases should be placed in bib or holdings records. Gwen Sinclair will bring this up as a topic of discussion in the WebPAC Taskforce. Discussion ensued regarding the deployment of proxy servers. Steph will arrange a meeting for further discussion. 12. Steering Committee web site. Kapiolani Community College staff are discussing the possibility of Kapiolani providing support for the committee's web site. 13. Next meeting. The next meeting will be on Thursday, February 8 at 3:00 - 4:30 pm.
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
1. Steering Committee update. Michelle Sturges, Kapiolani Community College, and Thelma Diercks, UH Manoa, have kindly agreed to co-chair the committee beginning February 5, 2001, when Wil Frost, the present chair, goes on sabbatical. James Adamson will be the UH project manager during this time. He will facilitate technical updates, contract-related communications with Endeavor, biweekly conference calls, 2000 upgrade and similar aspects of the project. 2. Circulation update. Circulation record clean-up is underway. UH libraries are now discharging each other's books. Campus mail and priority mail are being used to return items to owning locations. Cost is borne by the sending library. This is not being advertised. A UH courier system will be discussed at a Library Council meeting on February 9, 2001. UH sites are not collecting each other's fines. Implementation of this service is awaiting further discussion. All UH sites are configured to have the system block users at $10 in unpaid fines and fees. All UH sites have agreed to allow users to self-renew books online. A question was asked if the telnet version of the OPAC allows self-renewal. This is an ADA issue. All UH sites are sending email notices to users. The Media Scheduling module will be released for use beginning February 12, 2001. Wong Audiovisual Center, Sinclair Library, will be the first site to use this module. Michelle Sturges will check with other sites to see who needs training. 3. Acquisitions update. Acquisitions record clean-up is underway. UH Manoa and UH Hilo have been discussing online ordering and vendor records. Thelma Diercks will be happy to talk with other sites and can provide copies of ledgers and acquisitions reports, such as purchase orders and claims. 4. Serials update. 3,000+ of the 12,250 bib records without MFHDs are serials. Editing of these records is a high priority as the data will be lost when CARL is turned off. UH Law will work on several hundred of these records. 5. Cataloging update. Michelle Sturges will be sending out an official SCCC statement regarding the UH Manoa draft headings standard. Two changes were made by the SCCC. An OPAC example of the standard use of angle brackets was shown. Catalogers have been experiencing client freezes, usually with an accompanying error message. James Adamson asked that they be reported to Systems. The acqbib.cfg template will be discussed by SCCC in early February. It is at the top of the priority list. A Systems FTP server is being used for sites to get cataloging-related files. 6. James Adamson will send out a request to sites to report all error messages to, including a list of suggested items to report on and a sample report form to insure reporting consistency. 7. WebVoyage update. The new chair of the WebPAC Taskforce is Gwen Sinclair, UH Manoa Library. She will be asking all sites to confirm who their current taskforce representative(s) are. Other new UH Manoa taskforce members are: Kyungmi Chun, David Flynn, Randy Hensley and Ruth Marie Quirk. Out-going UH Manoa members are: Kris Anderson, Tokiko Bazzell, Martha Chantiny, Pat Gates and Ted Kwok. The committee extends special thanks to Kris Anderson as out-going taskforce chair for coordinating many months of excellent work on WebVoyage version 99. 8. Loads update. Hawaii State Archives test bib load will likely be its production load. Trust Territory test load is expected during the week of January 29, 2001. All CARL workfiles have been loaded. Loading of Marcive shipping list records is up-to-date. Government Documents libraries group is working on Marcive-related procedures. Marcive full bib records are still to be done. UH Manoa GAP 2 records will be done soon (top of priority list). Discussion of adding new bib records and standards for copy cataloging and original cataloging of new records will occur in the near future. 9. Training update. Diane Sakai will check on who will attend the "Fiscal Officer training" in February to represent the community colleges. UH Manoa, UH Law and UH Hilo are sending two people each, one fiscal and one acquisitions person. That leaves six seats open. 10. Training database refresh. Previously, the committee discussed refreshing the training databases in mid-January. Circulation and Acquisitions need this to happen in order to make testing configuration changes easier. Systems will ask Endeavor for more information. 11. Suppressing order records in OPAC. Migrated on-order records were loaded as suppressed from OPAC display. Suppressing new order records has been suggested as a short-term policy to avoid user confusion. Major impact is on Circulation units where guidelines would be needed regarding holds. Users may be confused by the date shown in OPAC, which is the date the processing status (either Pre-order Processing or On-order) is applied. Some members felt that time is needed to determine details and policies. UH Law prefers that on-order records be visible to the public, but is willing to consider suppression if for a limited period. The decision was to let the Circulation and WebVoyage committees make a recommendation. Those chairs should talk with Lei Seiger, UH Law and Thelma Diercks, Acquisitions. Feedback from sites was requested by February 8, 2001. 12. Voyager Users Group Meeting. Sites are encouraged to send staff to this training opportunity. UH Manoa Library is sending Systems Department staff (James Adamson, Frederick Allen, Pat Gates, Zoe Stewart-Marshall, Jerard Yagi), functional committee chairs (Amy Carlson, Thelma Diercks, Sophia McMillen, Susan Murata, Gwen Sinclair), the chair of Systemwide Catgaloging Coordinating Committee (Michelle Sturges) and Wil Frost. Preconference sessions are April 19, general sessions are April 20-21, 2001. Location is the Chicago Marriott O'Hare Hotel. Information is available on SupportWeb. A list of preconferences and the registration form should be on SupportWeb by February 12, 2001. Hotel reservations should be made now as space is limited. 13. Next meeting. The next meeting will be on Thursday, February 1, 2001.
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
1. Hawaii State Archives. The HSA test bib load is being reviewed. 2. Systemwide Cataloging Coordination Committee activities. Michelle Sturges reported that notes on which libraries are to edit bibs with no MFHDs are being input into the records. Circ-on-the-fly and reserve minimum bib record templates have been completed by the SCCC and are being distributed. Acquisitions mimimum bib record template will be worked on next. UH Manoa Library needs this template finalized to allow work to proceed. The committee plans to discuss cataloging of images in the shared database. 3. User aids. The Quick Start Guide prepared by Hamilton's Business Humanities Social Sciences department was shown. The WebPAC Taskforce plans to create a guide to connecting to the http and telnet versions of the OPAC. This has been a common question from users. 4. WebPAC Taskforce. Kris Anderson requested that a letter be sent from the Steering Committee to each member of the taskforce acknowledging their contribution to the version 99 implementation. [Note: it would be appropriate to thank the members of all the committees in this way. Wil Frost will work on this.] 5. Handouts. A copy of the Troubleshooting Guidelines from the project web page and a copy of the Release 2000 deliverables that are part of the UH contract with Endeavor were distributed, as requested at the previous meeting. 6. Next meeting. January 18, 2001 if agenda warrants. Please send agenda items to Wil in advance so we can determine if a meeting is needed on the 18th.
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
1. Circulation. The HML circulation notices problem has been fixed. The patron self-renewal problem appears to have been fixed for Manoa. Hilo has noticed a similar problem and will check to see if it is still occuring. This function needs further study by Systems as the factors involved are not fully understood yet. Catalogers cannot delete an item immediately after it is discharged (circ-on-the-fly records). The item status is changed from "discharged" to one that allows deletion after a periodic server operation is done. 2. CARL Workfile records. Leeward CC's workfile records have been output from CARL and bulk imported into Voyager successfully. Kauai CC and Kapiolani CC are next, to be followed by Windward CC, UH Hilo, UH West Oahu and UH Manoa (not necessarily in that order). 3. Reserves. The brief bib cataloging template issue (circbib.cfg) needs to be resolved soon. Zoe Stewart-Marshall will follow up on this. The ac1bib.cfg files need to be worked on, also. 4. Site troubleshooting procedures. These have been described in several emails and need to be consolidated. They will be placed on the web (Zoe and Wil). 5. Circulation page. The web page (http://www2.hawaii.edu/~fallen/) maintained by Fred Allen for Circulation is linked from the Endeavor project main page (http://www.hawaii.edu/uhlib/endeavor/), also. 6. Steering Committee. We discussed the continuing role of the committee and the need to identify a new chairperson when Wil Frost goes on sabbatical leave beginning February 5, 2001. The committee will continue to be useful, at least through the final acceptance of the system, as a forum for discussion of system-wide issues related to Endeavor databases and products. It provides a venue for sharing of information among functional committee chairs. It was suggested that the committee be expanded prior to the upgrade to version 2000, to include Bishop Museum, Hawaii Medical Library and Hawaii State Archives. The upgrade will affect all libraries and all should be represented. 7. Version 2000 preparation. Work on learning the basic configuration requirements of version 2000 Acquisitions and WebVoyage will need to begin soon so that configuration decisions are finalized by approximately March 9 (two weeks before the upgrade). This work is expected to require about one month. A limited number of workstations can be set up to work with the Preview Server in Chicago for this purpose. The steering committee will identify the individuals to participate in this activity. Wil Frost will distribute a list of contractual requirements for version 2000 to steering committee members. 8. Next meeting. Our next meeting will be Thursday, January 11, 2001.
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
UH is LIVE! 1. Circulation. Circulation went live the morning of December 21. Circulation units are manually inputting circ-on-the-fly (COF) and patron records that did not load. Circs will not use the discharge function until this data entry is completed. COF records are being entered with "Cataloging Review" status. Paul Beck, UH Manoa Cataloging Support Section, has created macros for Circulation that is speeding up the data entry work. Honolulu CC open circulation transactions did not load. They are adding them manually. There is a problem with circulation reports, similar to the problem seen in the Hawaii Medical database when it went live. Systems expects Endeavor to fix this on December 22. 2. Cataloging. Zoe Stewart-Marshall is working on bulk import of gap records for all sites, starting with the community colleges and ending with UH Manoa. Leeward CC volunteered to be the first test case for this activity. There will be duplicate records. The System-wide Cataloging Coordinating Committee met on December 15. They finalized the tag table and minimum bib record standard COF template (except for reserves); reviewed the acquisitions template; agreed on deduplication procedures. Discussion of bulk import profiles is continuing. 3. Purchase order receiving report. The first draft of this report was discussed with Endeavor today in conference call; needed changes were identified. 4. CARL. The Tandem computer and CARL software will continue running until the last database is migrated and clean up reports are finished, about two more months. The CARL PAC and CARLWEB will continue to be available to remote patrons, primarily for those databases that are not yet migrated. Wil Frost is drafting changes to both interfaces to advise users regarding Hawaii Voyager. 5. Systems Support Procedure. The cell phone and pagers specified in the procedure distributed previously have been funded by UH Manoa Library. No feedback has been received from sites regarding the troubleshooting procedure that Wil sent to all sites via email. Diane Sakai, Michelle Sturges and Lei Seeger will followup on this. Wil will send a reminder message to sites. 6. Voyager telnet OPAC. Systems needs to know how many terminals at each site will be used for telnet access to Voyager OPAC. Wil sent a message to sites earlier regarding this. Systems and Desktop Network Services (UH Manoa) will discuss what is needed to support terminal access. 7. Acquisitions/Fiscal training. Diane requested more information about the content and intended audience of the "Questions about Money" training on February 28. Sites need to know who should attend in order to make best use of the limited number of seats. Wil will ask Dave Brier and Thelma Diercks for details. 8. WebVoyage. Each site should have its own version of the Tutorial with its own email link. This should be loaded on a local server. Diane will check with sites on this. Wil sent email to all sites requesting that they announce WebVoyage to their patrons by January 8. There has been no feedback to date. He will send a reminder message. 9. Uncover. UH Manoa serial holdings are updated quarterly for Uncover. The December update output will be done in CARL. The next output will be done in Voyager in March. Whether the Voyager output can be limited to UH Manoa holdings needs to be investigated. 10. Patron load for spring semester. Systems has tested patron update loads in Voyager for UH Manoa and will test this for other sites soon. 11. Next meeting. Our next meeting will be on January 4, 2001. Happy New Year!
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
1. Fine/fee load. This data appears to have loaded satisfactorily. Only 108 out of approximately 48,000 fine/fee records did not load. It is likely we will accept this load tomorrow. 2. Circulation configuration. This activity is going very quickly; some sites are finished. 3. Cataloging. The system-wide cataloging committee meets on December 15 to finalize decisions about cataloging in the shared database. 4. WebVoyage. Systems is setting up the virtual host files for sites. This should be completed by December 21. 5. Remaining databases. The order of migration of the remaining databases is: (1) State Archives, (2) TTP, (3) Bishop Archives, (4) Bishop Library, (5) HPJI. 6. Purchase order receiving report. This report is expected on December 15. Manoa and Law acquisitions and fiscal staff will review it and report problems to Systems. Endeavor will fix problems during the week of December 18. 7. Training database. The committee decided to have Endeavor refresh the training database in mid-January, 2001. It will be easier to test changes and conduct training if the training database matches the configuration of the production system. System Administration for the training database will have to be redone to match the production database. Local records added to the training database will disappear. New local records will need to be added for training purposes. The committee will determine the refresh date in January. 8. Message to staff re going live. The functional committee chairs will provide text to Wil Frost to include in a lib_ids/sites-l message re going live in Voyager. This message will explain the extent to which we are live and what the exceptions are. 9. WebVoyage target date. The committee decided that all UH sites should make WebVoyage live to the public on or before January 8, the beginning of the spring semester. We need to be consistent so that users are not confused. Assuming circulation goes live at all sites on December 22, the public will not see up-to-date item statuses and patron information for up to 2-1/2 weeks. Wil Frost will send a message to all system administrators and head librarians advising them of the need to go-live in WebVoyage by January 8. 10. Public access to databases still on CARL. Sites will need to provide connections to CARL so that users can access databases that are not live in Voyager by January 8. These will likely include HPJI, TTP, Bishop Archives, Bishop Library and, possibly, State Archives. Alternatives: use the Other Resources button in WebVoyage to link to the site's listing of web resources, including CARL; provide an icon in Windows to start a CARL telnet and/or CARLWEB session; have Windows default to a web page with links to Voyager and CARL connections. 11. CARL. CARL software will continue to run on the Tandem, even though Manoa is ending its maintenance agreement with CARL as of December 31. Although Manoa will pay for support on a problem-by-problem basis, it is possible that CARL could cease to function at any time if a problem were too expensive to resolve. Sites should be prepared to cope with losing access to CARL unexpectedly even though it is not likely to happen. Systems will determine if it can remove all databases from the CARL PAC and/or CARLWEB menus except those databases still available only via CARL. Manoa and Law fiscal units need to continue using SRAQ for about another month. Serials check-in at Manoa will stop in CARL as of 12-31-00. Manoa Serials will continue to add HPJI records in CARL until HPJI is migrated to Voyager. 12. Web policies. The question was raised: what group will work on WebVoyage policies in the future. Should it be the WebPAC Taskforce or a different group of public services policy makers? Discussion was deferred to a later date. 13. Version 2000 training. Three additional hours of acquisitions training has been added to the training schedule for Febrary 2000. Thelma Diercks recommended a fiscal focus for this time. The committee agreed. This training session will be designed for fiscal officers and staff who interact with them in paying for materials. The community colleges will identify key people to attend. 14. Leaves. Thelma Diercks: vacation from December 21 to end of year (half-days?); Zoe Stewart-Marshall: December 26-29. Our Endeavor project manager will be on vacation from December 25-January 1. Wil Frost will be on sabbatical leave from February 5-August 5. We will need to elect a new chair of the steering committee, which will continue to function at least through the formal acceptance of the system in April after the upgrade to version 2000. 15. Next meeting. Our next meeting will be December 21. Tentatively, our next meeting after that will be on January 4.
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
1. Acquisitions. A conference call is planned for 12-8-00 with an Endeavor acquisitions specialist to discuss options for dealing with data clean up. 2. Patron load. This load is not going well. [Update as of 12-8-00: Systems and Endeavor believe they have identified the remaining major problem. Systems will re-output the records in modified form on Sunday, December 10 and Endeavor will load them on December 11. Endeavor says "there is still a chance we can go live on December 21." Circulation staff will review Endeavor's suggestions for accelerating the remainder of the Circ migration and set up.] 3. Circulation configuration. Susan Murata reported that Circ will lose a day of configuration time if we remain on the present calendar, i.e. accept the patron load on 12-8-00. Not all circ decisions have been made in the training database yet. While Susan is on leave, Sandi Ohashi of Hamilton Circulation and Fred Allen of Systems will be in charge of circ configuration. Susan will check in from time to time. 4. Other circulation loads. Test outputs of holds, recalls, fines, fees and transactions have gone to Endeavor for review. Susan requested that we try to do the holds/recalls load on 12-18 or 12-19 if possible (to shorten the circ gap). This will depend on the acceptance of the patron load. 5. Data clean up. Except for circulation, processing staff are moving out of the data migration phase of the project. Systems staff continue to focus on data migration -- for circulation and the other databases. Requests for reports will be considered second priority until work on the other databases is further along. Cataloging staff will be given access to the production database on December 11 to begin working on holdings and items. No new bib records will be created in the database. Acquisitions staff (UHM and Law) will begin working on vendor records. Systems has run a report that has identified 12,250 bib records with no MFHDs. This report is being distributed to UHM Cataloging and Michelle Sturges. These people will meet on 12-12-00 to plan how to use the report. They will present this plan to the system-wide cataloging meeting on 12-15-00. UHM catalogers consider this report to be their top priority for clean up at this time. Public service staff will be asked to look at the data to report patterns of problems, bib records for which they cannot find holdings and location names that look strange. If you find a bib without holdings in the Voyager database and need to find where the holdings are: 1) Select MARC display for the bib record you found 2) Find the 035 tag that contains an alpha-numeric starting with CARL 3) Copy the complete alpha-numeric, starting with CARL 4) Go to a Keyword Anywhere (GKEY) search option 5) Paste in the alpha-numeric you copied 6) Click the Search button This will retrieve all bib records that have the same CARL number. The missing holdings should have linked to one of the bib records in the set retrieved. The most useful information a person can give when citing a possible bib database problem is the Voyager bib i.d. number. It is the number in the 001 tag when you look at the MARC display. Kris Anderson will coordinate this activity. 6. Ordering at UHM. Thelma Diercks will send a message to UHM selectors that UHM Acquisitions will not be able to order materials until after essential data clean up has been completed and after they have moved to their temporary quarters in the Hamilton Addition. 7. Security. Circulation staff will have access to the production system as soon as the patron load is accepted. Circ user IDs need to be provided to Systems. Thelma explained that it is probably not possible to create a generic acquisitions profile. UHM has 14 profiles at this time. Sites may copy these as appropriate. There will be one read-only profile for each site. Systems will enter acquisitions profiles for sites other than UHM and Law during the upgrade to version 2000. Cataloging will have one read-only profile (all sites use the same profile). Profiles for public service paraprofessional staff will be created after technical services librarians are experienced with the modules and have documented procedures. It is too early to determine a calendar for this. 8. Staff announcement. Prior to going live, the steering committee will draft a message to the library staffs explaining what it means to "go live." 9. Systems after-hours support. Wil Frost distributed a memo from James Adamson describing plans for Systems after-hours support. 10. Preparation for public release. Wil distributed a copy of his email message to sites-l with recommendations for preparing public PCs, handouts, instruction, etc. for the switch from UHCARL to Hawaii Voyager. 11. WebVoyage. Systems is attempting to finalize the WebVoyage configuration this week so that virtual host files can be set up for sites other than UHM. Sites need to let Systems know where to point some of the WebVoyage buttons, e.g., Course Reserves.
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
1. Open order load. Mapping of Manoa and Law funds has been completed and reviewed by Endeavor. The shared database open order load is expected on Friday, December 1. Review will be completed by Monday, December 4. 2. Location Names and Item Types. Inputting of the shared database location names and item types for the production system is nearly complete. Maui is fixing some locations. UH West Hawaii has not finished their configuration. 3. WebVoyage. The shared database production interface is linked to the production database at URL uhmanoa.lib.hawaii.edu. System Administration configuration is underway. This URL should not be given to the public. Modifications to the interface will be accepted by Systems through Friday, December 8. After that date, the interface will frozen so that files can be copied for all sites. 4. UH go-live date. This date continues to be as early as December 22. Discussion suggested December 26 may be a better date to start circulation at the beginning of a week. 5. Bishop Archives, State Archives and Trust Territory databases. Systems is doing the final bibliographic record output of these files. 6. Accessing Hawaii Voyager from public workstations. The question was asked: what is needed to prepare public workstations to provide access to Hawaii Voyager? Presently, these workstations are set up to access UHCARL via telnet or CARLWEB in most libraries. Web page menus and/or bookmarks need to be revised to provide access to Hawaii Voyager and delete selections for UHCARL. This is the responsibility of each library. 7. Circulation. The circulation gap period starts on Sunday, December 3, the day the final patron output from CARL is done by Systems. In the Circulation Committee meeting today, circulation staff saw a demo of Voyager Offline Circulation today. About half the libraries will likely not use this function as it does not provide enough information about patrons to be useful. Each transaction includes item barcode and patron barcode only. At the same meeting, circulation matrices, policy groups and notice intervals were reviewed. Circulation units have agreed to do staff placed holds and recalls (no patron placed holds or recalls). 8. Cataloging. A meeting of UH System catalogers is being planned to discuss outstanding policy, procedure and security issues, and to reach agreement on guidelines. Catalogers can begin to do clean up of locations and summary holdings, but go-live date is being delayed until guidelines are finalized. Acquisitions and Serials are affected by this, as guidelines are required for creation of minimum bib records. Circulation Committee will make a recommendation regarding this. 9. MFHDs. Michelle Sturges recommended UH catalogers follow the "one MFHD for each copy" policy until we upgrade to version 2000. The bib load created one MFHD for each copy, so continuing to do so would be consistent with what we have now. After the upgrade, this policy can be reviewed. There was general agreement that this appears to be a sensible approach. 10. Item records. Michelle reported that she has found item records linked to the wrong bib records. These will have to be fixed as found. This will impact Circulation, as notices may have incorrect bibliographic data for items. Systems will run a report of these if possible. It will be long and include serials. 11. Display of on-order titles in WebVoyage. Systems will determine if virtual web hosting supports individual site decisions regarding the display or suppression of on-order titles in WebVoyage. Law Library wishes to display such titles. Some community colleges do not. Circulation units do not see suppressed on-order titles. This could affect staff placed holds procedures. 12. Acquisitions. Thelma Diercks expressed strong concern regarding bugs being reported in Acquisitions 2000. We will advise Endeavor that we will reconsider our upgrade date if customers continue to report serious Acquisitions problems on Voyager-L. 13. WebVoyage. Zoe Stewart-Marshall described display problems caused by data migration. She will provide a summary in email. 14. CJK 2000 review. This has not been completed. 15. Proxy server demo. Wil Frost announced that UH Manoa Library will give a demo of proxy server capabilities on December 19. This demo is open to interested UH System library staff. Time not yet determined. 16. Purchase Order Receiving Report. Endeavor has been advised that this report is required on opening day in order to pay invoices. We would like to see a draft of the report as soon as possible. 17. Sites not prepared. These sites are not yet prepared for opening day: UH West Hawaii (much to be done), Maui, Kauai, JABSOM. Maui is reported to be installing PCs now. From the circulation perspective, Maui, Kauai and UH West Hawaii will be ready to serve their own patrons only. They have not set up patron groups to serve users from other campuses. Maui has interpreted system-wide circulation policies idiosyncratically and may have difficulty supporting system users. JABSOM is not migrating circulation records. Business Research Library is waiting until February 2001 to use Cataloging. UH Manoa will assist them in linking holdings to existing bib records as a one-time project, and will visit BRL to do cataloging training. 18. Systems technical support. James Adamson initiated a discussion of techical support needs. For now, we will follow the same procedures as for UHCARL support. After we have some experience with Voyager, Systems will revise support procedures as necessary. A pager number will be provided for after-hours support. James expressed concern that the pager number be used only when a site has determined that a problem is not local. Sites will need written troubleshooting guidelines to help them determine if a problem is local or system-wide. These guidelines will be developed by mid-December.
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
1. Load Review. Cataloging, circulation and serials reviews have identified a variety of questions about the data load. Many appear to be CARL output problems that will require clean up activities in the future. Zoe Stewart-Marshall and Systems are investigating and will provide Wil Frost with a report on Friday, November 17. Michelle Sturges will remind non-Manoa UH sites to confirm with Zoe and Wil that they have reviewed their records in the load. Circulation notes and statuses did not load consistently. Zoe will ask Endeavor if notes are in the output files. Susan Murata will attempt to determine how many records are missing a lost book status and if that number is acceptable. She will let Wil know by November 17. The revised indexing appears to have been done successfully. We discussed the possible need to pay Endeavor to run chaser programs to do data clean up. On November 17, Wil Frost will inform Endeavor whether we have accepted or rejected the load. 2. Network Test. Although response times varied considerably, no major bottlenecks in the networks were identified in the system-wide network test done on November 15. The steering committee agreed that networking within the UH System is satisfactory. Wil Frost will report this to Endeavor. 3. Proxy Server. UH Manoa is having an internal demo of proxy server capabilities during the week of November 20. After that, a demo will be offered to other sites. 4. Swets Load. UH Manoa's load of Swet's serials invoice data has been delayed. It appears that the acquisitions-related load will have to proceed without this data being available to update Manoa's fund balances. 5. Security Profiles. Profiles from all sites/committees are due by end of Tuesday, November 21. Systems will send reminder email. 6. Shared Database System Configuration. JABSOM Library needs to work on its circulation matrix. Susan Murata and Systems will follow up on this. Systems will configure production Item Types and Statistical Categories. Systems will prepare a list and schedule of the configuration work that it will do. Cataloging will enter Locations for UH Manoa. Systems will send out the Circulation configuration schedule on file. Systems needs a list of the people who will do other aspects of the System Administration configuration. Zoe will set up a System Administration listserv for those individuals. 7. WebVoyage configuration. The default title display should be set to 75 instead of 100 since Voyager does not support print/save/email of 100 titles. Location Limit Groups have not been set up. This can be done later. 8. Serials Publication Patterns. At Endeavor's advice, UH will not use the Cornell publication patterns. Wil Frost will request that Endeavor load the Library of Congress patterns instead. 9. Coming Events for Weeks of November 20 and 27. Events scheduled to occur include: final vendor extraction, vendor load by Endeavor, final security profiles submitted, Systems changes passwords, final open order extraction/mapping, configuration of ledgers/funds for open order load, cataloging configuration, WebVoyage configuration, test loads for non-UH databases. 10. Next Meeting. Our next meeting will be on Thursday, November 30.
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
1. Full bibliographic record load. The status of the bib load review was discussed. Problems should be reported to Wil Frost as found. Zoe Stewart-Marshall is reviewing each report remotely. 2. Serial records to LTI. The question was asked if Manoa serial records were authorized by LTI. The answer, confirmed later, is yes. 3. Network test. Another system-wide network test will be performed on Wednesday, 11-15-00. 4. Acquisitions training. We agreed that acquisitions training will be done as part of version 2000 training in late February. Dave Brier and his committee will finalize plans with Endeavor. 5. Acquisitions 2000 video. Sites will buy their own copies of this video as needed. 6. Acquisitions EDI. Thelma Diercks asked what vendors sites use for ordering so that she can do preliminary planning for EDI (electronic data interchange) with vendors. 6. Workflow training. We agreed that this training should occur about two months after the upgrade to 2000. 7. 2000 configuration. Susan Murata asked how much configuration is required for the 2000 upgrade. The answer from Endeavor is that all version 99 configurations are saved during the upgrade. Circulation matrices, for example, do not have to be reentered. Any configuration work that is needed for 2000 will be minimal and will occur after the software is upgraded on the server and the new client software is downloaded to workstations. 8. Access to licensed databases. Diane Sakai raised the question of how community users will access databases in the future. System-wide approaches to database access and circulation services will be discussed in the Library Council. Diane asked if all sites can use one proxy server. Wil Frost noted that Manoa is testing proxy server software now. Bin Zhang is doing something similar at Kapiolani Community College. Wil briefly described the proxy functions being considered - remote resource access and filtering of mail/chat/game sites. He further noted that Manoa is not currently planning to provide proxy services to other sites (they are not an Endeavor function).
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
1. Full bibliographic record load. Endeavor expects to do the full bib load during the week of October 30 (mid-week). We will ask for the review period to extend through November 17 to give those who will be away in early November a chance to review the load. Zoe Stewart-Marshall will issue instructions, including how to access the database. Even though we hope to extend the review period beyond the normal five days, please REPORT PROBLEMS IMMEDIATELY. Rebuilding of the load can occur throughout the review period. Manoa's fall serials renewal invoice from Swets ($1 million) will be loaded into CARL to update Manoa serial payment records. This must be done before we accept the production load for fiscal purposes and so that a snapshop of the funds can be taken and used for inputting funds into Voyager. 2. Network test. The system-wide network test will be done on Tuesday, October 31. Systems will issue instructions and notify ITS. 3. WebVoyage. There remain about 8-10 outstanding requests. If we don't get answers from Endeavor soon, we will send them to voyager-l. Kris Anderson reported she has not received updates from Systems on the status of the outstanding requests. 4. Security profiles. These are being wrapped up this week. 5. Library Council project manager. During Michelle Sturges' absence, Diane Sakai will serve as project manager for the Council. 6. Next meeting. Our next meeting will be in TWO weeks - November 9 at 3:00 pm.
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
1. Update - Server. A failed disk drive caused a break in service for HML and the training databases. Systems, Endeavor and Sun worked on correcting the problem. Some loss of data and functionalty occurred; files are being restored. 2. Network test - Hilo. Response time in staff modules seemed okay; response time in WebVoyage was up to 24 seconds. Systems is investigating. Sites scheduled to test their connections during the disk drive crash have rescheduled. Maui has scheduled; Sinclair and JABSOM need to schedule. The systemwide network test is tentatively planned for October 27. 3. Circulation configuration/gap period. Susan Murata (Circulation Committee) distributed a document describing the gap period for circulation and configuration activities required for production. UH Manoa needs to decide who will do which parts of the Manoa circulation configuration. 4. Indexing. In two conference calls this week, Endeavor warned that requested changes to the default indexing would result in significant response time impacts. Ruth Marie Quirk (Indexing chair), Zoe Stewart-Marshall (Systems), Michelle Sturges (Cataloging) and Kris Anderson (WebPAC) have proposed changes that they will discuss with Sophia McMillen (UH Manoa Cataloging). A final decision will be communicated to Endeavor on 10/13. Endeavor is prepared to work on the final list of additions during the week of 10/16. See the revised proposal (http://www2.hawaii.edu/~elizab/uhvoy_indexing.html). 5. Circulation holds. The steering committee approved the Circulation Committee's request to remove the Request button from the UH Shared Database WebVoyage in order to disable Holds. (See last week's minutes for context.) 6. Acquisitions. The GAP2 procedures for UH Manoa should be posted next week here (http://www.hawaii.edu/uhlib/endeavor/gap.html).
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
1. Update. Systems is anticipating a test of indexing decisions during the week of October 9 and a second bib test load during the week of October 16. This bib load should include all authorities, LC subject headings, bib records processed by LTI, bib records from Manoa/Law gap period, temp bib records, MFHDs from 949 tags, Manoa/Law serial summary holdings, Manoa bib holdings with no item records. All CARL bib output files have gone to Endeavor for processing. Diane Sakai requested that sites have as much lead notice of the second bib test load review period as possible. 2. Open order load. No UHM acquisitions open orders loaded, but those orders that loaded look okay. Serial order output is being revised based on what was learned in the load. Problem of 2,000+ vendor records not loading is still being examined. Final order outputs are still to be done. Manoa/Law acquisitions order data is finalized; no new acquisitions work done in CARL will migrate. Serials can work in CARL until asked to stop. 3. Network test. All libraries have selected a date/time for the individual library tests, except Maui Community College. Leeward will do their test on October 11 at 10:00 am. Kapiolani and Windward have completed their tests. They saw no problems at their ends. Systems/ITS found a technical issue to be examined. The steering committee will schedule the full systemwide test at our meeting of October 12. 4. Custom reporting. Systems requested, and the committee approved, that all custom reporting be done exclusively by Systems until two months following the upgrade to Voyager 2000. Custom reports include any reports not available through Reporter. This will give Systems staff time to learn the techniques in order to be able to train others and assess how reporting affects system response time. ODBC drivers for custom reporting will not be distributed to end users until Systems is ready to train others in creating custom reports. Microsoft Office 2000 (Access 2000) will be required. Systems is asking the Acquisitions, Cataloging and Circulation committee chairs to provide lists of needed Day One reports that are not available through Reporter. Each committee is to submit one list with reports prioritized. Circulation Committee has already submitted Day One report requests to Systems. Report list was not prioritized. 5. Indexing. We decided to have Endeavor proceed with making the Indexing Committee's most recent, most pared down indexing changes at a charge of $6,000. When an index regeneration is done, we will assess any impact on downtime, and make a decision at that time if it is necessary to revert to the default indexing. Any reversion cost will be paid by the project funding if possible. 6. Systemwide Holds -- Cataloging has discovered that adding or importing item records to Bib records that have an existing title level hold will trigger those holds to attach themselves to all records. Is this a bug? No - Title level holds are meant to be filled by the first returned (discharged item) throughout the system. Title level holds can be placed in the Circ module but also by users of OPAC. Given that no courier/delivery service is in place and the policy has not been set, the Circulation Committee would like to recommend that this feature be turned off in Web Voyage. It appears that to turn off the holds, the Request button must be removed from Web Voyage. Removing the button would make other user initiated requests (such as Materials booking and Requests for materials to be placed on Reserve) unavailable. An alternative method of users linking to those forms was discussed. Susan Murata will discuss with Kris Anderson. 7. Upgrade to Voyager 2000 date. An announcement has appeared on Voyager-L that sites may request dates for upgrading to Voyager 2000. We decided that our preferred upgrade dates are the weeks of: (1) May 14, 2001, (2) May 7,2001 and (3) May 21, 2001. Wil Frost will request these dates. 8. MFHDs/copies question. Catalogers are tentatively planning to hold a "summit meeting" on how to handle multiple copies -- one MFHD per copy, multiple copies on one MFHD, etc. Input from the WebPAC task force will be needed to reach a decision. 9. Next meeting. Our next meeting will be Thursday, October 12 at 3:00 pm.
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
1. Test load - bib. The second bib record test load is expected during the week of October 9. This load will help determine the remainder of the shared database calendar. At present, the earliest go-live date for Circulation that appears to be technically feasible is November 13. It could be as late as December 4. If the go-live date for Circulation is after mid-November, the decision was made to consider December 18 (after final exam period) as the tentative go live date for Circulation and WebVoyage. Cataloging and Acquisitions will go live earlier. Circulation people will discuss work flow during the period before (configuration) and after (cleanup) going live in Voyager. This will be a very busy time for them. Other work occuring at the same time, such as end of term book returns, student registration, etc. need to be considered to determine the optimum go-live date. Some community college staff typically take vacation during the December-January break. It is important that Circulation staff, or those staff who have made configuration decisions, be available during the go-live period. A firm go-live date is needed as soon as possible so that staff vacations can be approved. The calendar will be discussed at the steering committee meeting following the October 3 Systems/Endeavor conference call. We discussed that it will be helpful to have CARL available for at least two weeks following cutover in case CARL reports are needed to help with unforeseen Voyager data migration issues. CARL/Tandem maintenance will be extended to December 31 but not thereafter as Tandem maintenance will increase 35% in 2001. 2. Test load - open orders. An open order test load is expected this week. A problem with vendor record migration continues. 3. Network test. James Adamson has emailed a scheduling message to steering committee members for network testing starting on Monday, September 25. Each site should select a time slot in which to do their test and follow the instructions in the message. 4. CJK 880 tag data. A problem of 880 tag RLIN CJK data corruption has been sent to Endeavor. UHM Cataloging has found a pattern which may help in determining the cause. 5. Diacritics. Problem of diacritics displaying incorrectly in the Cataloging Module is being investigated by UHM Cataloging. The problem may be related to character set selection. This is not a data migration issue. Non-display of diacritics in WebVoyage may be a character set or browser issue. 6. Bib record task forces. The task forces for discussion of bib record creation by non-catalogers in the UH shared database now have convenors. Ruth Horie will convene the "minimum bib template" task force. 7. MFHD training. Attendees expressed that this was very useful training with an excellent trainer. Catalogers will give the WebPAC task force feedback on changes they wish to make to data in MFHDs that will affect display of summary holdings in WebVoyage. 8. UHM GAP catalog records. During the present GAP period (aka Daughter of GAP) new catalog records are being saved into the uhtest.lib.hawaii.edu database. Public service staff can search this database to find new records that will not be in CARL. Catalogers ask that others not edit these new (real) records. However, if they do, it is not a problem as catalogers have stored copies of the records elsewhere. Catalogers have been asked to add data to the records so that others can easily see that they are real records, e.g. to add "xxx" at the beginning of the 245 title. 9. BNA/Marcive. During the present GAP period there will be no loads of UHM BNA and Marcive records for shelf ready materials. A BNA/Marcive 949 tag data migration problem will result in the need for UHM to manually edit records added during a (relatively short) period of time. 10. Mapping tables (location/item type and call number). Michelle Sturges will notify site load coordinators that final changes to the two mapping tables are due to Systems (Zoe) by September 29. No changes will be accepted after that date. The call number mapping table is not yet completed. 11. WebVoyage. Requests fulfilled by Systems this week included (1) eliminating the need to type "library" to make a telnet connection to uhtest.lib.hawaii.edu and (2) hiding the display of the URL image column in the Title List [this was later changed so that a different image displays]. 12. Next meeting. The next meeting will be Thursday, September 28, 2000 at 3:00 pm.
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
1. Update - HML is fully live in Voyager 2. Update - Systems is reextracting selected bib and other data files based on knowledge gained from earlier test loads. 3. Update - An acquisitions open order test load is expected during the week of September 18. 4. Update - Hawaii Pacific Journal Index records have been output from CARL for review by Endeavor. 5. Update - Circulation Committee met on September 14; Systemwide Cataloging Committee meets September 15. 6. Update - VoyagerPac-L is back in operation after mysteriously disappearing. 7. Update - On September 12, UH Manoa Library held an internal show and tell meeting on proxy servers. Notes of the meeting recorded by Martha Chantiny are available at http://www.hawaii.edu/uhlib/endeavor/proxy.html. 8. Indexing - We are waiting for information from Donna Smith at Endeavor regarding cost and impacts on index regeneration times. No decision has been made by the Steering Committee regarding the final indexing recommended by the Indexing Committee. 9. Network testing - Sites need a list of tasks to perform and a schedule from which to choose a 30 minute time slot between September 18 and mid-October. The following summary of this discussion was prepared by Michelle Sturges. Sites other than Hamilton will be asked to perform a test of how their network behaves when carrying as close to the full anticipated load of Voyager client activity as possible. The testing will take place over the next three weeks, starting with Sept. 18. Systems will send out a sign-up schedule. To prepare for the test, sites should load the client software on as many PCs as they plan to use when live and make sure all of the PCs have working Internet connections. (If a site does not have all of its staff workstations at this time, it should try to come as close to the target number as possible with the equipment at hand.) Sites should consult with their campus network administrator in selecting a day for the test. The recommended testing time is between 11:30 and 1:30, when traffic on campus networks tends to be especially heavy. When a site's scheduled test time is at hand, the site's Systems Office liaison should call 956-7853 to inform the Systems Office that the test is about to start. To test, all client PCs should be connected to the Voyager training database and staff should do work in the database in various modules, as would happen in a live situation. PAC workstations can also be used during the test to search WebVoyage, but Endeavor says it is the client machines who put the most demands on a network, so if you don't have enough people for PAC and client machines, give preference to client machines. The test should be conducted for about 30 minutes. What to watch for: -- Slow response time. If response time seems instantaneous (less than a second) there is no need to time things. But if response time is more than a second, ask operators to try and time the number of seconds it takes for the system to respond. -- Connection problems. Unlike CARL, when you have a connection problem with Voyager the module automatically closes. That makes connection problems easy to detect. Test results should be reported to Michelle Sturges (sturges@hawaii.edu) and Systems (assist@hawaii.edu). After all sites have tested their campus networks, a systemwide test will be scheduled in which all sites will try to connect to the Voyager server and do work at the same time. Tentative date for the systemwide test is around Oct. 16. 10. Remote databases - Sites should submit a list of remote databases they would like to access through WebVoyage to Wil Frost by September 28. These include other Voyager libraries and Z39.50-compatible databases, especially licensed databases. Wil will sent out this request to sites. 11. WebVoyage - Kris Anderson is coordinating requests from the WebPAC task force to Systems. She will send Systems a list of requests that are outstanding (not the original request messages, but a list that identifies the requests). Systems will keep Kris up to date on the status of requests. When there is no news to report, Systems will periodically advise Kris that a request is still pending. 12. Circulation - Diane Sakai reported that Library Council sites will not collect fines for other sites until Systems is able to provide a periodic Voyager report on such collections (who collected, who is owed, amount, etc.). Fred Allen and the Circulation Committee are discussing this.
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
1. Indexing. Ruth Marie Quirk reviewed the Indexing Committee's recommendation and distributed a handout titled, Suggested Additional Voyager Keyword Search Indexes. The number of composite indexes was reduced from 10 to 2 and the number of single tag indexes from 40 to 17. The number of indexes was reduced by adding subfields to other indexes. The adjustments to existing indexes were also reduced. Ruth Marie talked with the people who had requested the original changes and asked them to verify that the changes were necessary. These discussions and tests resulted in the new recommendation. Sites in general seems to want to avoid indexing changes that will result in significant increased downtime during software upgrades. Systems will ask Endeavor for an analysis of the programming time needed to make the changes, how the changes will impact the time needed for semi-annual (?) index regeneration and the cost to UH for the programming. Ruth Marie and her committee will begin identifying records for a small database against which to check the new/modified indexes before the second bib record test load. 2. Open order test load. The September 7 test load was not successful. Systems will work on the problems during the next week. 3. LTI report. A report on unlinked subject headings is available from Systems. 4. Circulation - Fines. The question of how sites will deal with fines collected for other libraries was raised. Diane Sakai requested a Voyager report showing the amounts collected, collecting site, receiving site, etc. This will be discussed at the Library Council meeting on September 8. Wil Frost will ask Endeavor if they can suggest a library system that may have created such a report as there is no canned report for this. 5. Circulation - systemwide holds. This topic was discussed briefly with the conclusion that systemwide discussion is needed. 6. Purchase order receiving report. Current requirements for this have been forwarded to Endeavor where a programmer is ready to begin work on the report. 7. Network testing. This topic recorded in the previous steering committee minutes will be discussed at the Library Council meeting on September 8. 8. Bib record test load 1. The group of "16,000 missing records" and serial records were not included. There were problems with temp bibs and CJK 880 tags; not all item notes loaded. Systems will be working on this in preparation for the second bib record test load. 9. Bib record task forces. The formation of task forces as recorded in the previous steering committee minutes will be addressed by the Systemwide Cataloging Coordination Committee (SCCC) in the near future. Michelle Sturges and Zoe Stewart-Marshall have started a SCCC web page. This site may offer a location for the documentation of UH system cataloging decisions. 10. System configuration procedures. Systems is working on procedures and guidelines for sites to use for configuring System Administration for the production. Sites should now be ending their experimentation in the training database and making final parameter decisions. This needs to be done for Circulation (locations, item types, policy groupts) before we accept the production load. Diane expressed that sites need a list of specific tasks to follow. Systems will set a deadline and finalize the procedures/guidelines/tasks as soon as possible. 11. Voyager server name. The server name appears in several places, such as circulation notices and the "from:" line of emailed search results. There is only one server name for all databases (UH, Bishop, HML, etc.); variations are not possible. The committee decided to make the server name, "Hawaii Voyager Libraries." Systems will ask Endeavor to make the change. 12. WebVoyage - logo. The selected logo has been modified by the designer. Systems will load it to all test sites in the near future. 13. WebVoyage - display of diacritics. There is a problem with the display of diacritics in the Web catalog. They appear to display okay in the Windows OPAC and cataloging modules. 14. WebVoyage - display of media type in Titles list. Zoe asked if the WebPAC committee decided not to display the media type (book, AV, serial, etc.) in Titles list search results. She, and others seemed to agree, suggested that it would be helpful to users to see the media types. 15. WebVoyage - documentation. The need for documentation of WebVoyage configuration decisions by bibliographic instruction libraries was discussed. A web page or hardcopy listing WebPAC changes to the WebVoyage defaults (description of the base UH WebVoyage), indexing decisions, site specific modifications (if any) and other information of interest to instruction/public service librarians was suggested. 16. WebVoyage - virtual web host training files. Kris Anderson suggested that two complete sets of web files be set up in the training system, one for the base UH WebVoyage and one for testing modifications such as site specific changes. She is waiting for feedback on this from her committee. It appears that sites will make few changes to the base UH WebVoyage. UH Hilo will have its own logo. 17. Circulation - documentation. Fred Allen is working on a web page of circulation information. Wil will link to his page from the main project page. 18. Hawaii Medical Library. HML is making progress on resolving its networking problems and is presently planning to start using Circulation fully on September 12. 19. Next meeting. The next meeting will be on Thursday, September 14 at 3:00 pm.
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
1. Update-HML. HML is live and using Voyager to checkin materials now. They will start using Circulation fully next week after unexpected network problems are resolved. 2. Update-Revised mapping file for shared database. The file is on Zoe Stewart-Marshall's project web page. 3. Update-Acquisition open order test load. This load for the shared database is expected to occur next week. Thelma Diercks and Sloan Sakamoto are finishing creating the ledgers required. 4. Update-Load schedule. The loader person at Endeavor will be on vacation for a week starting September 8. No loads will be done. Sean Lai-Hipp will finalize programming for data extraction during that week (he returns on September 10). 5. Update-Vendor test load. 2,000 of the 16,000 UHM vendor records were rejected. The load report is being studied. 6. Update-shared database bib test load. Zoe is compiling the UH load review report for Endeavor. 7. Update-LTI report. Zoe is studying the LTI report. The shared database authority headings hit rate was 90%. Main problem is with names. Hawaiian, Pacific and CJK headings are likely to comprise much of the 10% no-hit portion. 8. Update-second shared database bib test load. The week of September 18 is the earliest that a second test load is expected. All work in CARL acquisitions, serials and cataloging will stop several days prior to the load for the final data extraction by Systems. Files to be extracted will include temp bibs, serlev3 records, cataloging workfile records, open orders. After this extraction, nothing entered into CARL (except circulation-related data) will migrate to Voyager. The cessation of work in cataloging and the export of workfiles only applies to Hamilton and Law. Other sites will still be able to catalog on CARL. Other sites workfiles will not be extracted before the second test load, and records can still be added to those workfiles. Records added to those workfiles will be imported into Voyager at a later date. 9. Shared database calendar. The calendar will be updated after the second bib test load. Some refinement of dates may be done during the biweekly conference call with Endeavor next week. 10. Network test. Given the network problems that HML has experienced, it seems advisable for the UH libraries to perform a test of their network connections. Michelle Sturges and Diane Sakai will coordinate this testing with Systems. -Test 1: each site logs on and uses all of its staff and public PCs with Voyager simultaneously. Other sites will minimize connections during each site's alloted testing window. This will help determine if any site has internal networking problems. -Test 2: all sites log on and use all PCs with Voyager simultaneously. This will help determine if ITS and Hamilton routers can handle maximum load from non-Hamilton users. 11. Indexing Committee. The pre-final list of desired new indexes and default index modifications will result in an additional charge of around $4,500. The work of programming these changes will likely delay the second bib test load for the shared database. In addition, the additional indexing will result in an increase in the time required for annual software upgrades from 1-1/2 to 2 days to 3-1/2 to 4 days. All sites will be down during such upgrades, except for offline circulation and public catalog (probably). The steering committee questioned whether the benefit of the additional indexing is worth the cost and delay during upgrades. Such delay will be especially difficult for circulation units. We decided to ask the Cataloging Committee to review and prioritize the indexing changes. Michelle Sturges will coordinate this and will ask catalogers to solicit input from public service staff. Staff who have requested the changes will be asked to determine if they can find records needed by using the default indexes in the training database and reconsider how necessary the changes are be in light of what they find. Feedback from the Cataloging Committee is due by Wednesday, September 6 for discussion at the next Steering Committee meeting on September 7. 12. Shared database bib record integrity. Several kinds of bib records will be created by staff who will not have in-depth training in cataloging, e.g. public services staff. These include Circ-on-the-fly brief bibs, Acquisitions order brief bibs and Rapid cataloging brief bib records. There is a need for systemwide agreement on procedures to insure the integrity of records in the database. We decided to form task forces of cataloging, circulation, acquisitions and serials staff to address three major issues. Tentative names for these are the Brief Bibs TF, Serials TF (including members who are not catalogers) and Access & Training TF. Key issues to be addressed by these task forces include: minimum standards for data in brief bib records; use of non-authorized, local tags for names in brief bibs; certification, i.e. training program for staff and students who create brief bibs (to cover principles and data entry guidelines for creating and editing brief bibs); and creation of standardized operator profiles for use systemwide. 13. Logo. The winning logo is #13; first runner up is #3. The WebPAC TF will work with the designer of Logo #13 to modify to glottal stop diacritics. 14. Upgrade to Version 2000. Due to renovation of Hamilton Library and moves of technical services departments, the Steering Committee has been asked to schedule the upgrade to version 2000 after January 15, 2001. We agreed on Spring Recess 2001 as the desired upgrade period. When the announcement is made on Voyager-L that upgrade reservations are being accepted by Endeavor, Wil Frost will request the upgrade be scheduled for the week of March 26. 15. Version 2000 training. UHM Acquisitions and Serials units requested that version 2000 training be given by Endeavor about one month prior to the upgrade. Given the expected date of the upgrade, they will train other sites on version 99 Acquisitions rather than waiting to train on version 2000 only. 16. System configuration. Systems is working on procedures for inputting in System Administration during the production system configuration period. 17. Site status. Due to personnel shortages, several sites are behind schedule in the training configuration of System Administration, including Kauai, Public Health (JABSOM), West Hawaii and West Oahu. Systems is assisting Kauai and West Hawaii (except for Circulation) and Leeward is assisting West Oahu. Public Health is now getting up to speed. 18. Special Guest. Michelle Sturges introduced an observer at the meeting - YunYun Shen, who is a visiting cataloger from University of Beijing working at Kapiolani this fall. 19. Next meeting - Thursday, September 7, 2000, 3:00 pm.
(Recorded by James Adamson)
1. Loads. Systems staff informed the committee of the current loads and that two attempts of the shared DB load had bombed but it looked like all was going well now. Further we informed them of the current status of the HML load and followup on the stat categories which did not look all that well. [This was able to be worked out] 2. Staff Display Name Inital Codes Status. Michelle Sturges is working on the Display Name Inital Codes 3. Review of Indexing Specification Status. Zoe Stewart-Marshall gave a brief overview of the Indexing status and what was talked about in the conference call with Endeavor. Michelle and Zoe are continuing to work on the indexing. 4. Statistical Categories Status. Zoe gave a brief overview of what was up with the stat categories and again talked about HML. 5. System Administration Configuration Status. Systems reported still working on, and refreshed everyones memory of the project. 6. Calendar Task Sequence Tables Status. Systems reported still working on, and asked people to send in who was primary contact and backup. Several members of the committee reported the inital message was confusing to the committee which requested the submission of names. So we cleared up misunderstandings. 7. Web PAC Logo Status. It was determined that the final round of voting should take place and votes should be submitted to Systems (assist@hawaiil.edu). 8. Site Status - Kauai. It was questioned why Bob Kajiwara, head of Kauaii Community College Library, has not submitted any reponse to Systems as to who would be assisting Kauai in the implementation and set up. Systems has tried to get in touch with Bob by phone and email but has not been successful. It appears they are very short staffed. Systems is more then happy to help them with implementation, but needs certain information from them. Systems has sent email to Bob as to what is needed.
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
1. Update. Endeavor hopes to do another HML test load that will fix a number of problems on Friday, August 4. If that happens, they expect to do the first test load of the shared database on Monday, August 7. Sample flat files of serial, circulation and other data provided by Systems are being examined by Endeavor. Some fine tuning is required. 2. Staff display name initial codes. We decided that sites should decide what their code will be by August 10 and edit them to the final form, if necessary, in the training database. Wil will send a message to sites informing them of this and asking them to notify Michelle Sturges of their decisions. If non-Manoa sites don't edit Sys Admin, Michelle will do it for them after August 10. 3. Review of indexing specifications. Systems will send the indexing specifications to Endeavor this week for review and comment. An index for theses has been requested and the committee is reviewing it. The committee will compile a list of sample records to search in each index in order to test the indexes. 4. Statistical categories. Wil summarized news received from Endeavor this week that they would not be able to create statistical categories in the data loads. We advised Endeavor that this contradicted information provided by Donna Smith and that our staff had spent considerable time revising items types based on the availability of statistical categories. Endeavor responded this morning saying that they had determined that they probably could do something for us and they will test their idea in the HML test load. They did not promise that they would be able to create the categories. Without the categories, locations and item types would need to be rethought. 5. System Administration configuration. Wil will send a message asking each site to identify one or two staff who will work in Sys Admin and send the names toby August 10. For sites who elect to have Systems configure Sys Admin for them, they will be asked to send the name of their designated Sys Admin liaison to by August 10. Systems will compile a set of instructions for configuring Sys Admin for the production system, including keeping a log of who does what when, and provide it to the Steering Committee for discussion. Systems will compile a list of Sys Admin configuration task categories, such as Printing locations, Policy groups, Operator profiles, Happening locations, Web configuration, Location names, Item types, Order types, Vendor types. Systems will provide a list of outstanding questions that staff have about Sys Admin to the steering committee for discussion. We agreed that sites will make their final Sys Admin configuration decisions in the training database by September 1 or one week before the production load, whichever occurs first. Once the production load is done, the pace of work will accelerate and having these decisions made ahead will be very helpful. We agreed that User IDs will take the form of ccciii, where ccc is the three letter code for a site and iii is the individual's initials. Each ID must be unique, so if two people have the same initials at a site, one will need to change her/his initials. Systems will provide guidelines for creating staff passwords. Given that only one person can work in one part of Sys Admin at one time, sites will be given time slots in which to do their configuration work. Systems will propose a schedule and ask sites to choose their time slots. The amount of time may vary by module. The general sequence of configuration is:
Cataloging first, followed by
Location names/item types/WebVoyage (can be done in roughly the same time period)
Acquisitions
Circulation (over a week) We learned that Business Research Library, West Hawaii and Kauai are or may not be up to speed in making Sys Admin configuration decisions. Diane Sakai and Michelle Sturges will be talking with them. We discussed the possibility that if a site is not ready to do the work that has to be done in preparation for going live, they may have to wait to go live later. This, of course, depends on how long CARL will be available. 6. Calendar task sequence tables. Steph Nelson distributed draft tables to make clear the steps involved in the calendar. She agreed to revise them based on input from the committee, e.g. deadline for making Sys Admin configuration decisions and dates for MFHD training. 7. Logo. Wil announced the results of the logo voting in email sent to the steering committee (only) on August 2. Top vote getters were #13, #8, #12 and #3. These need to be revised to include the wording "Hawaii Voyager" and/or "Libraries of the University of Hawai'i System". The designer of Logo #12 and #13 has completed this task. Wil will send a message to Kevin Roddy at UH Hilo asking him to have the other top logos revised (with banner versions) and sent to Martha Chantiny by August 10. The final logo designs will be loaded in several of the web sites so that their download times can be checked. This will let us see them next to the blue buttons as well. We will put out the top logos for another vote when they are ready. The "rejects" may be of use to Bishop Museau, HML or State Archives. We will ask the designers of those logos if other sites may use them. 8. Coordination. While Wil is on vacation from 8/5-8/27, James Adamson will provide overall coordination for the project. Zoe Stewart-Marshall will continue to coordinate the data migration and Dave Brier will continue to coordinate the training. 9. Next meeting. The committee will meet on Thursday, August 10 at 3:00 pm in Hamilton. Wil reserved the room for all remaining Thursdays in August.
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
1. Next meeting. Our next meeting will be Thursday, August 3 at 3:00 pm in Hamilton. 2. New co-project managers. Our new PMs are Caryn Kent and Karen Gegner. Caryn has been working on our data migration for quite a while and Karen was our original PM before she became ill. Donna Smith will continue to participate but in a limited capacity. 3. HML test loads. HML is providing Systems with record examples for problems in their third test load. Problems included bad mapping, missing serial holdings, missing notes. 4. Shared database test load. The first shared database test load is expected early in the week of July 31. 5. Go-live version. Given HML's preferences and Endeavor's advice, the steering committee decided that all project libraries will go live on version 99.1. We will ask Endeavor to schedule our upgrade to version 2000 between December 16 and January 7. 6. Final bib extraction. Wil will clarify with Endeavor when the final bib record extraction will occur, i.e. before or after the last test load. 7. Catalog records in test database. Wil will clarify if catalogers can move cataloging records from the training database to the production database after we go live as a way of continuing to catalog (in Voyager) after the final bib extraction from CARL. 8. Serials data. The PMs advised us that they will migrate SERLEV3 data into Voyager in the 008 field instead of into a 9xx (the original plan). This will take some additional time to test and may affect the shared database calendar. The PMs asked if this data is really needed. Steph Nelson confirmed that it is NISO standard data that is important to keep. One use of the data will be for checking that serials data migrates correctly. The steering committee agreed. 9. Fund mapping in open order loads. UH Manoa/Law wish to have CARL fund numbers for open orders migrated to Voyager ledger fund numbers rather than the default fund number which is the outcome of standard Endeavor open order migration. Cost is $2,500 which will be covered by the project funding. This will take some additional time to test and may affect the shared database calendar. The UH Manoa/Law ledgers have to be completed earlier than expected to accommodate this work. The steering committee agreed. 10. MFHD format for holdings. Roberta Winjum asked if the steering committee could decide on a standard format for serials summary holdings to be used by all libraries. We decided to ask the trainer, Alice Permenter what she recommends before deciding. 11. Staff location names. Michelle Sturges proposed that libraries be allowed to decide what prefix they will use in staff location names (one or three-character codes). We decided that a one-character code is okay for storage locations and that circulation locations should have a staff location name that is meaningful to (readable by) the public. Where the public sees a listing of circulation locations, it is the staff location name that they see (instead of the OPAC public location name). We approved Michelle's list (sent earlier in email) of one-character codes. Law may use "oul" and Leeward may use "l" (el being the one case where there was some contention over the use of a letter for a code). 12. Ordering. Thelma Diercks clarified that entering monographic and serial orders can continue in CARL until the just before the final open order extraction. Orders can be input into CARL after the extraction as long as CARL continues. However, any orders entered into CARL after the open order extraction will have to be manually reinput into Voyager. 13. Leaves. Wil Frost will be on vacation from August 7-25. James Adamson and Sean Lai-Hipp will be on training leave from August 21-September 9. During Wil's absence, James will coordinate the project. During James absence before Wil returns, Dave Brier will coordinate. Data migration will continue to be coordinated by Zoe Stewart-Marshall working with Sean, Pat Gates and Fred Allen in Systems. CARL data extractions needed by Endeavor will be completed before Sean and James leave.
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
1. Next meeting. The next meeting will be on Thursday, July 27, 2000 at 3:00 pm. Wil Frost has invited Hawaii Medical Library to attend. 2. Indexing. The Indexing committee chaired by Ruth Marie Quirk has decided to recommend that we accept all default indexes and add a few more needed for reporting and specialized searching needs. An email call for descriptions of specialized searches done by staff has gone out with replies due to Ruth Marie by July 25. Indexing decisions need to be finalized before HML goes live and before the second shared database test load. Ruth Marie will offer an informational session on indexing on July 24 at 3:00 pm in Hamilton 401 (open to all). 3. MFHD serials summary holdings format. Alice Permenter of Tulane University will be doing MFHD (Z39.71) training in September. She has asked what format(s) we will use for serials summary holdings description. Roberta Winjum will forward this question to the cataloging and acquisitions email lists. We agreed that the format v.1(1980)-v.10(1989) seems appropriate. 4. Multiple MFHDs for multiple copies. Our understanding is that data migration will result in one MFHD for each copy. Cataloger and PAC groups need to reach a system-wide consensus on whether we will continue that or adopt a one-MFHD-per-location policy when we go live. There are serious workload issues involved in manipulating MFHD data to display status info for each copy or vol. PAC configuration experimentation will be required. 5. Full bib record display. The question was asked, Who is deciding what the full bib record display will include? The WebPAC and cataloging groups will work this out together. A list of MARC tags will be available on the Web soon. Questions for discussion include, but are not limited to: what tags are relevant to the public, how much information is too much? 6. Technique for configuring production system. Susan Murata asked if it would be possible to sit in front of two PCs when configuring System Administration for the production system. That is, to view the Sys Admin decisions done in the training database on one PC and enter them into Sys Admin for the production database on the other PC. Endeavor says "yes". 7. Purchase Order Receiving Report. Thelma Diercks informed us that Endeavor's canned report called Cheque Voucher Report may be usable for our PO Receiving Report used for acquisitions/fiscal matters. This report requires that a FMIS (UH Financial Management Information System) number be included. Each library fund number has a related FMIS number. Thelma believes that there is a way to enter the FMIS numbers in Voyager so that they can be reported out. 8. Calendar. We discussed the fluid state of the current calendars. The third test load for HML was received on July 21. The first test load for the shared database is expected early in the week of July 24. The production load date for the shared database remains at approximately August 18 based on LTI's estimate of finishing their work on August 15. 9. Version 99 or 2000. We had an extended discussion of the pros and cons of going live on version 2000 and decided we need Endeavor's and Hawaii Medical Library's input before making a decision. Wil has sent messages to Endeavor and HML to gather information, and has invited HML to next week's committee meeting. 10. Logo. We looked at the logos submitted and decided to ask all staff to vote for their top three choices. Six more logos were added Friday morning. Wil sent email to staff asking them to vote. Logos will be checked to find out how long they take to download via modem connections. Logos may need some design and size tweaking to be satisfactory. It is likely that staff votes will identify more than three popular logos and we can consider them all as necessary. 11. Report printing. Libraries need more information before they can decide whether to print reports locally or in Systems. Send questions to Dave Brier. Dave is working on setting up Reports examples in the training database. 12. Server Security. UHM Library Administration and two Systems staff met with Jodi Ito, Manager of Information Services and Cara Kawano, Unix Systems Administrator, of UH Information Technology Services (ITS) to give them an orientation to the Endeavor technology. They shared their experience and advice regarding server security. They confirmed that the current policy that only UH Manoa Library Systems Department staff have access to the Endeavor servers was sound policy from their perspective. They advised that files added to servers be checked for viruses first.
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
1. There were very few votes cast re the logo wording. By the 6/23/00 deadline (today), it was 6 to 5 in favor of "University of Hawai'i Libraries." The WebPAC Task Force is using the wording "Libraries of the University of Hawai'i System" during the design phase. Wil will notify the staff that any logos submitted may use any of the three phrases and the final wording will be determined later. 2. Wil Frost informed the group that UH Manoa Library is beginning to replace Wyse terminals with PCs in order to spread the work out instead of doing it all within a week or two just prior to going live on Voyager. Students will connect to CARL on the PCs using telnet. 3. A new list called VoyagerAcq-L is now in operation for acquisitions-related discussion. More information is available from Steph Duennebier. You may subscribe by sending the message "subscribe voyageracq-l Firstname Lastname" to "listproc@hawaii.edu" (no quotes). 4. Wil summarized a conference call with LTI and Endeavor held on 6/22/00. LTI's expected date to return all files to Endeavor is 8/15/00. Endeavor expects to be able to do the production load on 8/18/00. This makes the live date about mid-September. Systems prefers to go live on 9/18/00 (or later) so that they can load fall semester patron files into CARL and migrate them to Voyager. Test loads are scheduled for 6/27 (partial load) and 7/15 (full load). Wil has revised the calendar on the web to show a live date of 9/25/00. There was discussion of postponing the live date until December/January and the possibility of going live on version 2000. Wil has sent a message to Endeavor asking about the feasibility of going live on version 2000 in September. 5. Susan Murata gave an update on circulation-related issues and a conference call with Endeavor held on 6/22/00. A question was raised about reporting and the use of statistical categories. Systems will ask Endeavor for more information when it receives more detailed questions from steering committee members. 6. Sites have expressed interest in obtaining the Media Scheduling client software. Systems will work with sites on this. 7. Dave Brier gave an update on training. Discussion ensued about the timing of training now that the go live date is after the training dates already arranged with Endeavor. It was recommended that workflow training be postponed until after functional units have had time to work with the software for several months. It was requested that circulation-related training be postponed as well, including Media Scheduling. 8. There was a request for an acquisitions-related conference call with Endeavor. Thelma Diercks, Steph and Wil will arrange; Pat Gates and Zoe Stewart-Marshall of Systems will be asked to participate. 9. There was a request to send alternative ledger designs to Endeavor for comment. Thelma, Steph and Wil will handle this. 10. A question was raised about not being able to test foreign currency functions in the training databases. Thelma will provide details; Systems or Wil will ask Endeavor. 11. A question was raised about how changing staff location display names in Cataloging might affect what is seen in other modules. Susan will check how doing this affects Circulation. 12. Steph asked about preferences for using Endeavor supplied serial publications patterns (about 250 provided) or Library of Congress (many more). Group consensus was to go with loading the LC patterns. 13. A question was raised about which code lists can or cannot contain punctuation (used to force sorting of codes in a certain way). Feedback from Endeavor says it is only a problem in print location codes, i.e. do not use punctuation in those codes. 14. A question was raised about resolution of a procedural problem in getting WebPAC Task Force files to Systems for loading on the server. Given the workload involved, it is essential to pass files from the task force to Systems as quickly as possible. Systems has since confirmed that emailing files, an option that was offered to the task force in May, continues to be an acceptable way to submit files. 15. Next meeting: 7/20/00 at 3:00 pm.
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
Handouts: Agenda; Final production system URLs; Email re OPAC training; Calendar; System Administration security proposal; Flow of Communication; Project web site menu 1. Media Scheduling Module. Wil announced the decision to purchase the Media Scheduling module. Training will be planned for September. Production use will be phased in as sites are ready for it. Systems will focus on the basic Voyager implementation first and fit in Media Scheduling as time allows. Any site may experiment with the module once we get the okay to install/use the software. Those sites that decide to use it on a continuing basis will share in the cost of the annual maintenance starting in July 2001. 2. IP Addresses. Wil announced that he has sent email to sites asking them for the IP addresses of computers on which Voyager client software is installed. This information will be used to set up server access from those PCs. 3. Site Catalog URLs. Wil distributed the final list of production system URLs for site catalogs. 4. Training. Wil summarized training in progress and planned for the fall, and distributed an email from Gwen Sinclair of Manoa describing how OPAC/Web Catalog training is being planned for Manoa staff. This email is for your information in case other sites wish to contact Gwen for details. It was noted that Z39.71 (MARC holdings format) training is being discussed at Manoa. Roberta Winjum and Dave Brier will work together on this. 5. Calendar. We looked at the current estimated calendar for the UH shared database implementation. The UH files went to LTI on June 4 for deduping and authorities processing. We are estimating 8-9 weeks between June 4 and the production load. When LTI gives us an estimate of the date when it can return the processed files to Endeavor we will be able to firm up the calendar. 6. System Administration Module. We discussed System Administration module security. The decision was: A. Security button: Systems staff only Unit heads will create security profiles for staff in the training database and tell Systems what profile to associate with each staff member for the production system. Systems will create a mechanism to make this easy, e.g. a web page form. Initial data entry by Systems will take time but on-going maintenance should be easy. Systems will let people know when their staff/profile decisions are due and the schedule for Systems inputting them. We acknowledged that there will be a period of fine tuning the profiles. Systems will make changes as needed. B. Circulation, Acquisitions, Cataloging buttons: a. UHM Library: head of Access Services, Acquisitions, Cataloging, Serials, Collection Services Division b. Other libraries: 1-2 staff from each site, or site may choose to have Systems manage System Administration for them C. System(wide), OPAC buttons: Same as for Circ, Acq, Cat buttons plus Web Catalog liaison in each library We will try this approach and see how it works. We discussed that those with access to System Administration can do things that will affect all libraries in the shared database. Obviously, it is clear that staff need to be very careful. To develop guidelines, Systems and the staff granted access to System Administration will meet to work out appropriate policies and procedures. Systems will coordinate this activity, including providing training in how to use System Administration to those with access privileges. 7. Macros. We discussed the need for macros in the processing modules. Different libraries will have different needs depending on their work flows. It will take some time before processing staff know how they might do tasks in common. Some libraries or units may prefer to wait on developing macros until version 2000, which is likely to require fewer macros for efficient work flows. Two approaches were identified: standard macros and local macros. Consensus was to let each library develop its own macros to match its work flows and needs, and work toward common methods over time as appropriate. We discussed that it will be more difficult for Systems to troubleshoot problems when staff use macros. Systems will be able to check the Voyager functionality and determine if a problem is Voyager-based or, if not, suggest that it may be a problem with a macro. We agreed that macros should be documented and shared with Systems (and other libraries). 8. Reports. Wil announced that Dave Brier is working on reports and plans to begin a discussion on this topic via email after the modular training. We clarified the terminology: Reporter has the "canned" reports; Access Reports has the "pre-packaged" reports. Systems is working on being able to support the Reporter reports when we go live, and support the Access Reports/custom reports thereafter. 9. Logo. We decided to ask library staff system-wide to submit designs for the Hawaii Voyager Web Catalog logo. Wil will ask Kris Anderson what the requirements should be. Logos already under consideration are available via the project web site. 10. Decision Making. Wil distributed a handout showing the flow of communication at this point in the project. It is primarily horizontal, with committee chairs and site liaisons communicating with Systems staff who in turn communicate with Endeavor. Wil coordinates a biweekly conference call with the Endeavor project managers. Systems and Wil call the project managers as needed to accomplish their various activities. 11. Standing meeting. We agreed that the steering committee will meet every other Thursday at 3:00 pm.
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
Handouts: List of site catalog URLs; list of system names submitted to date; fact sheet for publicity purposes; letter from Ken Herrick to faculty and staff of Hawaii Community College and UH Hilo; list of community colleges committee representatives. 1. Structure of staff logins to be discussed by committees and Systems; e.g., should they include 3-character site codes plus initials? Will this help in sorting logins as needed? 2. Training database: at some point in time we will have to freeze the training databases so that the system configuration can be recorded and entered into the production systems. It's okay for staff to play in the training databases for awhile yet. 3. Systems and committee chairs agree that the work of entering the System Administration settings can be shared between Systems and committee/departments/sites as appropriate. 4. Decision: turn off Patron Placed Holds (PPH) - only Manoa is using and this will save some staff time while having minimal impact on users during the summer. 5. Wil is to send an email reminder to staff for submission of system names by May 19. (Done) 6. Communication issue decisions: - Wil will email a "decision tree" via lib_ids, sites-l, i.e. who is making decisions? - Wil will attempt to send weekly updates via lib_ids, sites-l. Committees and Systems need to provide update information to Wil. - List of who is on committees. This is on the web. Wil will update the lists in consultation with the committee chairs. - Committee members need to communicate to their own libraries what is happening in the committees on which they sit. 7. Selection criteria for a system name were listed, including: Name should be: - simple/short
- easy to pronouce
- easy to spell
- unambiguous
- memorable and reflect/describe the: - organization(s) involved
- geographic region
- library-related function of the system Steering Committee will select a name (by email) during the week of May 22 so that the name can be available for publicity and web catalog development. 8. The complexity of the circulation matrix was discussed. A subset of the Access Services Committee members will meet during the week of May 22 to discuss how it can be simplified. 9. The number of cataloging committee was discussed. It was decided that the systemwide committee that has one representative from each site (SyCCC?) will be combined with thelistserv and function as the main forum for making systemwide decisions on cataloging principles and procedures. At the same time, each site needs its own internal group for cataloging decision making. A member of each internal group should be on the systemwide committee. (Did I get this right?) 10. Sites will consider where they want their reports and notices printed. Systems is working on a list of reports received by each site. 11. It was decided that the sites' web catalogs will have a similar look and feel. The WebPAC task force will coordinate this. 12. Proposed URLs for the sites' catalogs were distributed and accepted. Wil is checking with Ginny Tanji on the URL for the JABSOM Information Resource Center (School of Medicine). 13. The publicity efforts planned for Manoa were described: fact sheet, letter to faculty, new web page with news update and FAQ, Ku Lama articles, Manoa campus newspaper articles, signs at workstations with newspaper articles, signs at workstations with basic searching tips, distribute information to other libraries in state, balloons at opening. It was decided that we will aim for a live-to-the-public date of August 14 to cooincide with the community colleges' faculty orientation week. 14. We will attempt to have Steering Committee meetings every two week for the remainder of the project (late afternoons).
(Recorded by Wil Frost)
Present: John Haak, Jean Ehrhorn, Nancy Westcott, Pat Okamura, Diane Sakai, Michelle Sturges, Roberta Winjum, Paul Wermager, Kris Anderson, Thelma Diercks, Sophia McMillen, Zoe Stewart-Marshall, James Adamson, Wil Frost 1. How to facilitate system collaboration. Decision: membership of functional committees (web catalog/OPAC, access services, cataloging, serials/acquisitions/fiscal) started at UH Manoa will be expanded to include members from as many UH libraries as is practical. Chairs requested that names be sent to them. The primary need of the committees in the near future will be to discuss what things have to be agreed upon system-wide. (The Voyager Training Planning Committee was set up originally with representation from most libraries/groups of libraries.) 2. Deduping bib records. It was noted that the goal of the data migration should be to simplify displays for users while preserving data important to individual libraries. Given that LTI, the data processing vendor, can save data in local tags and code it so that it is identified with the originating library, it seems appropriate to plan for deduplication of records without exception. 3. Updates. Attendees provided brief updates of what each committee or campus has been doing. 4. Windows literacy. Members were reminded that staff need to become Windows and mouse literate, and some staff Microsoft Access literate, as soon as possible. Such training is the responsibility of each library. Playing with Windows games and applications, and sending staff to Access training, were recommended. 5. Weekly conference call. Members were informed that conference calls with the Endeavor project manager are now being held weekly on Thursdays at 11:00 am. Questions submitted during the previous week will be discussed in each call. 6. Implementation calendars. Members were informed that the Endeavor project manager will be giving us revised calendars of the project based on our decision to have one shared database for all UH libraries. The new calendars should be received on Monday, April 3. 7. Publicity. Timing of publicity to faculty and students was discussed briefly. It is desirable to begin informing faculty of the change in systems before the spring semester ends. An article will appear in Ku Lama by the first week of May. Other communication channels will be determined. 8. Naming the system. The possibility of naming the system, and perhaps having a contest to do so, was discussed briefly.