Barton Advisory Group

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Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 10:24:39 -0500
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From: Michael Finigan <fin@MIT.EDU>
Subject: Barton Advisory Group, minutes of 1/24/02
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Barton Advisory Group, minutes of the meeting of 1/24/02

Present: Michael Finigan, Charlene Follett, Stephanie Hartman, Erja Kajosalo, Christine Moulen, Beth Siers
Guest: Keith Glavash

Groundrules: The group agreed that minutes should go no later than 1 month of a meeting.

Columbia University Site Visit: The Columbia University libraries are considering Aleph for their next system and have asked to visit MIT to talk about our experiences with it. Keith Glavash, who is coordinating the event, was present to discuss final preparations for the site visit on Tuesday, Jan. 29 from 9:30 - 1. The event will begin with a general session, then breakout sessions for the different modules.

Test server update: Problems continue with getting the test server ready for use. It was discovered this week that another piece of software needs to be ordered and installed before the files can be copied into the test database.

Emmy's life extended: In response to a strong argument from some staff for using macros and other Advance data as time savers in their work, a reprieve has been granted to Emmy until May 1.

Recent reindexing: The logical bases are now up to speed with current indexing

Updates:

OPAC: Erja has added to the thesis search page a link to the list of thesis degrees and departments abbreviations, along with an example on that page that shows how to search a department which has "&" in the abbreviation (like Media A&S) since Aleph cannot recognize "&" as a search term. Christine will follow up with Ex Libris as to why it is not possible to search with "&" in the web OPAC although it works fine in the GUI. {Christine has followed up, and Ex Libris reports that their staff is investigating the problem.)

Systems: Christine has been working on the reindexing and on reports extracting from Emmy information requested by staff before it goes away.

Circulation: Circ staff have been discovering incomplete barcodes attached to items. Christine will run a report to capture them all; Beth will see that they get cleaned up.

Processing: The item created when an order is placed is usually overlaid with the updated record when the piece is received. In the case of back-ordered journal issues, this is not the case. The piece is sent directly to the local unit. However, there has already been an item created for this issue as it has been checked in and gone missing, or claimed. The question was raised whether it is alright to delete the order record from the items list. The information contained in the item for the order can be found elsewhere, although there is the drawback that the older item for the piece will not have an order number attached. Stephanie asked whether this would be a problem? The discussion continues.
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Next Meeting: Feb. 7, 9:30 - 11:00 in the Hayden Conference Room