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TRELLIS Pilots Group

UW TRELLIS Pilots Meeting
Minutes

August 11, 2003 – 1:30-2:40 p.m. – Davis Library Conference Room

Present: Carolyn Dirks, Betty Graf, Alex McCulloch, Patti Metzger, Darlene Radicioni, Dan Sich, Gail Sperling, Linda Teather (facilitator & recorder), Debbie Tytko, Charles Woods

  1. Prototyping Team leader update
    The current Prototyping Team leader, Scott Gillies, is moving to the position of Information Resources Librarian at Guelph. He will continue as Prototyping Coordinator until a replacement is appointed.

  2. Guelph updates

    1. Guelph/Humber program
      The TRELLIS go-live date has not yet been determined for the Guelph/Humber program. Charles has not yet received records from Humber for a test load.

    2. Guelph affiliates
      Work to bring Guelph’s regional agricultural colleges on to TRELLIS is on hold for the time being.

  3. Voyager 2001.2 upgrade

    1. Upgrade planning
      The 2001.2 upgrade is scheduled to begin at 6:00 p.m. on Friday, August 15th and continue through the weekend. The backup catalogue will be in place when TRELLIS is down. On Monday morning, prototypers will do their usual checking of database integrity and system stability. It is hoped that the system will be available for normal work by 10:00 a.m. that morning. No site is planning to use offline charge during the upgrade. More specific instructions will be issued later this week.

      Software will be distributed to the IT support person for each UW affiliated library before the upgrade.

      Dan is coordinating upgrade PR announcements at UW: Library web page, Daily Bulletin, uw.general, uw.library.

      The TUGdoc request form will be turned off for the weekend. Alex and Dan will add a note about the downtime to the request area. VDX implications were discussed and the group recommended that TRELLIS VDX be disabled during the upgrade. Charles will ask Don to have TRELLIS removed from the Racer menu over the weekend.

      Gail will stop cube builds and take down the reports servers for the weekend. Data cubes will remain available.

    2. New features/Evaluation results
      Acquisitions: Debbie described two new features: serials prediction patterns for continuous items and the ability to add vendors’ email addresses and generate email from the Acquisitions client. Since only one email address can be added for each vendor, this feature will have limited usefulness. Debbie noted that prediction patterns look different but work well. She found no new bugs. The recommendations of the Acquisitions Task Force Debbie served on will not be implemented until the release following the Unicode release.

      Cataloguing: Betty reported several bug fixes: entering long fields, diacritics, lower case NUC codes, save/save again. There is a new global update feature and bulk import bi-directional merge, neither of which could be tested with the prototype. There is a new leader code in the tag tables for use in linked records when there is no 7xx linking field. Cut & paste still doesn’t work. Function keys did not work sporadically and there were miscellaneous problems related to Chicago response time.

      System administration: Charles had previously sent a detailed report via email. He highlighted several items at the meeting. WebVoyage architecture is unchanged. There is a new Circulation Cluster feature to define sets of Patron Groups and Policy Groups. TUG will use a single cluster to start, then later review the possibilities of using clusters to advantage. Version 2001.2 is Open URL compatible; this would be needed if we implement LinkFinder.

      Reporter will return email data back to the TRELLIS server and email will be sent from the server not the workstation as in 2001.1 and earlier. Alex noted that there are times when being able to view sent mail helps in problem solving. We may need to develop a local solution to provide for this.

      Circulation: Alex reported that there are few new features in 2001.2. It is possible to email to a patron from the Circ client. Some bugs have been fixed (e.g. total fines are now accurate after partial payments). Locations can now be suppressed from display as pick-up locations. There are Reserves processing workflow improvements. The Missing In Transit report has been fixed. The ability to clear patron data from the screen is new but using it closes the charge window. Alex will report this as a bug after the upgrade. In 2001.2 it is possible to set a specific due time for overnight loans.

      WebVoyage: Dan reported that there are few changes to WebVoyage. There is a new ability to create specific request block messages. TUG will start with Endeavor’s default messages, then the OPAC and Circ groups will review these after we go live. The bookbag and alert bugs are still present; the saved searches bug has been fixed.

  4. VDX update
    Alex asked for comments about VDX/Racer. Several problems were discussed, including:

    • Workflow is overly time-consuming for staff.
    • Some requests are going to the wrong location.
    • Users do not find the interface intuitive. (The OCUL committee is working on instructional materials to address this.)
    • The ISO protocol makes the interface user-unfriendly; another layer is needed.
    • Users assume they’ll be getting the item from the location they select (e.g. a user may pick McMaster, assuming the item will come quickly from a nearby location; if it was known this would not be the location, the user would have gone to McMaster to get the item directly)
    • Sometimes the copyright window comes up and cannot be closed; the user cannot continue with the request.

    Alex and Dan reported that a new TUGdoc form is being created that will pull specific details into the form. It will contain separate boxes for volumes and pages and include some pop-ups. An implementation date has not yet been set but the goal is to have it ready for September.

    Work is being done on a better version of the picklist and on the ability to scan barcodes when items are received.

    The VDX Committee wants feedback. Problems, with specific examples, should be sent to Alex, Christine and/or Dan (for the user interface). Alex reminded the group that OCUL has been successful in getting some fixes to VDX and this will be an ongoing process.

  5. Early English Books Online (EEBO)
    Betty reported that, after the upgrade, work will begin on loading approximately 100,000 TUG EEBO records. She has tried using MarcEdit with good results when editing batches of records. Betty will demo MarcEdit at the next Cataloguing Management Group meeting.

  6. Next meeting
    The next meeting was tentatively scheduled for October or November, unless agenda warrants an earlier meeting.

UW TRELLIS Pilots Group
LibPilots@uwaterloo.ca
July 26, 2005