Barton Advisory Group

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Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 15:42:50 -0500
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From: Charlene Follett <cfollett@MIT.EDU>
Subject: BAG Minutes, 1/11/06
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Barton Advisory Group
January 11, 2006

Present:   Darcy Duke, Charlene Follett (minutes,) Lisa Harrington, Christine Moulen (chair,) Denise O'Malley, Elke Pointek-Ma,  Beth Siers, Rich Wenger.
Guest:  Howard Silver

Patron Loading
Silver joined the group to discuss increasing the frequency of our patron data loads and to assign "ownership" of this process, as well as continuing to send out a welcoming letter to new students from the libraries.  Including library barcode data from the MIT Card Office in these loads was done as an experiment last year and Silver requested that we continue this.  We learned that the load got new students up and running faster, engaged them with the Libraries and our services faster, and saved a lot of work for circulation staff.  

Moulen, Silver and O'Malley will meet with Dan Michaud of the Card Office to discuss future and ongoing options for transferring their data to us, including the possibility of getting their data from the Data Warehouse rather than directly from them.  O'Malley will communicate with the Circulation Committee about consistently filling in the Patron Type so that we can run statistics on this field.

Depending on the outcome of the meeting with the Card Office, Moulen and Wenger will work on getting patron loads and the welcome letter automated via scripts.  Moulen recommends the 15th of every month for these loads. 

Discussion of who would own the letter ensued.  There have been some thoughts that there should be a BAG committee member officially assigned to handle general public service issues, since items like this are not specifically OPAC or Circulation issues.  For now, Christine will consult with both Duke and O'Malley on the content and timing of the letter.

Wenger reported that he will investigate, as time allows, automatic re-set of Your Account passwords.

New Servers Testing
Everyone reported that they were close to finishing testing on the new test server, with no major problems identified. Moulen would like to switch over to this new test server on January 12. Moulen and Siers will then finish testing scripts and make minor adjustments, as identified, before updating the data in the test database over the weekend of January 21. 

Moulen would like to switch to the new production server before spring term begins.  Because of conflicts with ALA and anticipated reserves activity, the date agreed upon for this upgrade was January 28, 29 and 30.  The system will be down that entire weekend, as well as some time on the morning of 1/30, until all testers have verified that there are no problems.    O'Malley will convey these dates to circulation staff; Moulen will prepare a message to all-lib.

Moulen is waiting for confirmation from IS on when they will complete SAN work on the servers, which will take about 6 hours.  Possible dates are February 4, February 28, or during Spring Break in March.

Next meeting :  January 25, 1:30, Cubespace E25-131
Minutes:   Harrington