Barton Advisory Group
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Date: Fri, 08 Feb 2002 14:32:46 -0500
To: all-lib@mit.edu
From: Christine Moulen <orbitee@MIT.EDU>
Subject: Barton Advisory Group minutes 12/6/01
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Minutes: Barton Advisory Group, 12/6/2001
Present: Finigan, Follett, Hartman, Kajasalo, Maxwell, Moulen, Siers
1. Diacritics display in the web OPAC
Aleph stores our MARC records in UNICODE format. Some web browsers, and most
fonts, are not equipped to display these characters properly. This has been
noticed particularly in the Music library, where foreign names, such as Dvorak,
are commonly searched. It is possible to search for these names, but the resulting
display can be unreadable.
Nicole Hennig has offered to look into browsers, fonts, and options for adding
useful settings in our HTML. Christine will ask one of the LTC's from Systems
to work with her. [Pam Nicholas later volunteered, and a recommendation has
been made.]
2. Your account (self services in the web OPAC)
We're having some issues with passwords, and need to figure out more specifically
what's working and what isn't and try to get some help from Ex Libris.
Erja asks if any of the configuration tables changed in the past 2 weeks that
might be allowing holds on items that should not allow holds, and then not allowing
these holds to be deleted.
Michael asks if it's possible to allow renewals of certain items in the GUI
client but not through the web. We think not, but he will confirm with Ex Libris.
[This is not possible.]
We should do a stress test of the Your account functionality, before going fully
public.
Plan to put Your account into production 2 weeks after the test server is available.
Circulation needs to have fixes that will come with patch 3 (to be tested on
the test server) in order to set up/change users' MIT ID and passwords.
Publicity will be done by Sarah Wenzel and Oliver Mentken. We'll have a spotlight
on the Libraries home page in February, maybe on the MIT home page as well?
[Delayed since test server is not yet ready.]
3. Item statuses
What can we do about the confusion revolving around item statuses such as "28
day loan" displaying when an item is on the shelf? Experiment with making
the status labels blank, use Term Loan as a test case.
The holdings strike force will meet before our January 10 meeting to review
existing statuses and processing statuses.
4. Test server
Waiting for a part to arrive that will allow connection with the external disk
array, where all our data will be stored.
5. Indexing
Try to finish the alphabetizing long headings job this coming weekend. [Moved
to January and done now.]
Do we want to rebuild the keywords indexes over winter break? We can't really
test the new fixes until the test server is ready, so wait on this.
6. Shutdown of Emmy, the previous Barton server.
Planned shutdown is Dec 31. Before we can do this:
Copyset note database needs to be ready to go, and preferably tested for a couple
of weeks.
RSC has linked title issues. [Was this solved enough by GUI display changes
that were made? Who was going to look into this?]
Catalogers are nearly finished with orders that had been received in Advance.
Download all loader scripts, MARC archives (esp. those not yet loaded), data
extraction programs.
[Shutdown has been delayed to May 1.]
7. Schedule for future meetings.
We will meet next on January 10th and every 2 weeks after that.