Minutes: SFX-Verde Group : MIT Libraries

4/25/2005

Attendees: Ellen Duranceau (minutes), Jennifer Edwards, Tracy Gabridge, Millicent Gaskell, Nicole Hennig, Kim Maxwell, Beth Siers, Rich Wenger.

1. Group process:
*We agreed to meet twice a month, on Mondays, but to extend the meeting time to 9:30 - 11:45am. We will not meet for the additional third Monday per month as was discussed at the last meeting.
-Nicole will adjust TechTime to reflect this decision.

*We agreed that the SFX subgroup, normally composed of Jennifer, Rich, Millicent, Graham, and Tracy, will meet irregularly with WAG [Web Advisory Group, chaired by Nicole] to work on specific current SFX operational issues, and getting version 3.0 of SFX to do what version 2 does for us now. (Conceptual and planning aspects of SFX services in light of Verde will continue to be handled by the SFX-Verde group.)
-Nicole will talk to Christine about the BAG [Barton Advisory Group]/WAG meeting time conflict so that BAG members can come to WAG as needed, and will invite the SFX subgroup to an upcoming WAG meeting.

*We briefly reviewed Tracy and Millicent's notes on Barton as an SFX source and agreed to defer discussion to the meeting on 5/2, or, more likely, 5/16.

2. Big Picture Vision Process
*We had two system demonstrations, of MetaLib version 3 and SFX version 3, and then a wide-ranging discussion of what questions we have about these systems and what limitations we see in using them, in combination with Verde and Barton, as a replacement for Vera.
-Ellen will send questions raised by the group in response to the demos to Jenny Walker [note: this is done.]

3. Planning and Timeline
*We reviewed a proposed timetable that results in submitting recommendations by September 1.

We agreed that we are near the point where it makes sense to reduce our list of implementation options and focus on the details of one scenario. We are currently conceiving of this one scenario in this way:

Type of Material	Type of Access: Discovery	Type of Access: Known Items
Databases	Metalib	Metalib
Ejournals	SFX A-Z List w/subjects	SFX Citation linker
	Metalib?	Metalib?
	Barton?	Barton?

Notes about this scenario:
Overall: this scenario is very preliminary and still requires more analysis. But specifically we discussed these points related to it:

For Databases, Barton would also be a tool for discovery and known item access, but in this scenario Barton is conceived of as more for known item seeking than for discovery, since making Barton into the kind of discovery tool we want would take too much work to configure, even to work as well as MetaLib does.

For Ejournals, There are still three possibilities under consideration: SFX tools, Barton, and Metalib. The ways we might best use Barton and Metalib for ejournals will need more analysis and discussion. Metalib might not necessarily be the main tool for discovering or seeking known items in the universe of journals, but it might play some role. Barton's potential role is yet to be discussed in any depth.

An option for discovery we have set aside for now would be to enhance Vera or create another homegrown tool. We felt it would be prohibitively labor-intensive both to develop and maintain so we have not included this idea in the main option we are considering.

Next steps:
-Ellen and Nicole agreed to check in with Nina and Marilyn about how detailed our discussion of alternatives/options needs to be, and whether there is flexibility in the timetable.

-We will further consider this idea and will discuss relevant usability testing (to help us determine the viability of the scenario we are outlining and the value of some features we could stand to lose) at the next meeting.