Barton Advisory Group

To: all-lib@MIT.EDU
Subject: Barton Advisory Group Minutes, Apr. 5, 2001
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 10:37:19 -0400
From: Walter Powers


Present: Darcy Duke, Michael Finigan, Charlene Follett, Erja Kajosalo,
Christine Moulen, Walter Powers (minutes), Sarah Shreeves
(facilitator,) Beth Siers


1. Members gave 3rd Barton Project updates:


       a. Erja reported that Ex Libris is working on a no-frames
          version of their Web OPAC, but meanwhile the OPAC Team will
          concentrate on the frames version; personnel from the
          Systems Office will be assisting the group with HTML; [the
          Team has set a deadline for itself to have a version ready
          by May 1] [Erja said Nicole Hennig expects to have the new
          MIT Libraries Web page ready by mid-June]

       b. Christine and Beth are in the midst of offloading
          bibliographic data, which they hopes to be done with by next
          week; Christine is also looking at problems reported in the
          first round of testing, at default item statuses, and at
          item captions.

       c. Beth reported that the Indexing Strike Force is working on
          Authorities indexing; Nina Davis-Millis will be meeting with
          members of the Reserves Team to discuss Reserves indexing
 
       d. Michael noted that increasing familiarity with the Circ
          module was helping to stimulate new ideas about
          configuration; a meeting of Boston area Ex Libris library
          circulation managers is planned to share information

       e. Darcy reported that the Doc Delivery Team had met with
          Sarah; it has been difficult to test procedures in the EXU
          and USM test databases; Sarah commented that a test database
          of MIT data, in which functions and workflows could be tried
          out, would be available in a couple of weeks

       f. Sarah reported that she and Christine met with Scott Thorne
          of the IS Data Warehouse to discuss patron information data
          feeds; Ex Libris will be sending someone in late May to
          demonstrate the new Circ and Serial clients (may be
          available with version 16); Sarah will be attending a PSMG
          meeting next week to talk about downtime; the amount of
          hours spent weekly on 3rd Barton implementation, so far,
          according to statistics from the time-tracking report, is
          equivalent to 11 FTE's

       g. Walter reported on the initial Staff OPAC training sessions

       h. Charlene and the Acquisitions Team met to plan for the
          next round of testing

2. Sarah and Christine met with Michael Kaplan: a fully-functional
   no-frames,  no-Java script Web OPAC, compatible with Lynx, will be
   available in June. Additional Ex Libris staff are being added to
   the MIT project; someone will be visiting in April to consult about
   the OPAC. (Michael also talked to Beth about the clean-up list,
   expansion codes, and the protection of local data in authorities
   records.) 

3. Sarah asked that team leaders be thinking about testing functions
   and considering new workflows when the test database of MIT data
   becomes available for trying things out.

4. Sarah is discussing reports with Michael Kaplan; only 2, serials
   claims and vouchers, are specified in the contract with Ex Libris

5. Items marked "Missing" will not be migrated; there will be some
   clean-up/deletion of bib records with no items before migration,
   but the majority of these bib records (and bib records with "Missing"
   items) will be migrated, and dealt with in Aleph.

6. Christine needs prioritized lists of reports necessary before
   migration 

7. Nina will join the Group next time to discuss training

Next meeting: Thursday, Apr. 12, 9:30-11:00, Hayden Conference Room