Minutes: SFX-Verde Group : MIT Libraries

6/20/2005

The SFX-Verde Group met on Monday June 20, 2005, 9:30-11:45 in CubeSpace.

Present: Ellen Duranceau, Tracy Gabridge, Nicole Hennig, Kim Maxwell (minutes), Beth Siers, Rich Wenger.

1. SMUG (SFX / Metalib Users Group) Updates
Beth's main highlight was talking with the woman at Ex Libris who does MARCIt. She learned a lot about the service.

Rich had several things to report:

- Google Scholar presentation (a critique of how Google Scholar's metasearch is working
- Harvard gave an interesting presentation on customizing their MetaLib
- there were three sessions on MetaLib usability testing
- Karen Grove of Ex Libris spoke about deep linking into MetaLib from other applications
- there was a session about using extensions and plugins to SFX to populate problem reports
- regular expressions in MetaLib - refresher for people working on complicated expressions in MetaLib.
- Nettie from Ex Libris spoke about future directions of SFX; they are finally taking the X server more seriously, which provides access to SFX functions from programs
- in talking with Paul from Harvard, Rich thinks he can solve the 'appropriate copy' DOI problem

2. Interim Report
Ellen and Nicole spoke with Marilyn and Nina, respectively, about issuing an interim report from the group in September and a final report in December or January. Both agree this is a good idea and they will be proposing this plan to MacKenzie, Steve, and Carol. In September, a presentation will be made to a group (probably DLG/TSAC).

3. MetaLib Questions with Jenny Walker and Karen Grove of Ex Libris
Jenny and Karen joined us for an hour to answer more of our MetaLib questions. We discussed the X server, which seems as though it may be more of a possibility for MIT than we had previously thought. The X server can be used in conjunction with MetaLib; it makes calls and accesses MetaLib's functions, but the presentation of data is carried out by the library's own portal, so the library controls the look and feel of the user interface. Using the X server to control the presentation, rather than MetaLib itself, allows for more customization and less re-doing of work when MetaLib is upgraded to a new version. The X server is a cost-added option.

CDL (California Digital Library) is using X server but is still in Beta. David Walker at Cal State San Marcos is the only one doing the X server programming at his institution (though more are doing it at the CDL level), and it's only part of his job.

In thinking about which icons / text we'd like to show in which Ex Libris product screens, Jenny gave us an update on our "broken" icon. The fact that a product is currently broken would be stored in Verde. Verde will push the broken information to Aleph, SFX, etc, rather than Aleph or SFX calling Verde each time product information is displayed. Presumably, there will be relatively few things broken at any given time. Having Verde push the information out for the small number of broken things is more efficient.

In terms of the i button, we can customize which Verde fields will show there.

MetaLib 3.14 should be out early next year (early 2006). Jenny recommends that we come up on 3.13, but we will need 3.14 to integrate with Verde (unless we do our own interface).

Broad subject access for ejournals and databases can be locally defined in MetaLib; we don't have to use their terms if we don't want to.

4. Verde Data in Ex Libris Tools
After Jenny and Karen left, the group reviewed Ellen's June 8 draft of a document describing where we would like Verde information exposed for users in the various ExLibris tools (SFX, Metalib, Aleph), based on our June 6 meeting. We also reviewed Kim's list of statistics (e.g., how many Vera records exclude Lincoln, how many allow off-campus access, etc.) which helped provide a context for how often certain types of data are being displayed to users. With a few revisions, Ellen now has what she needs to make a final version to send to Ex Libris. Jenny will send Ellen the latest version of the Verde data entities. Ellen will use the new data entities sent by ExLibris to translate our Vera terms into Verde terms in this document. Once that is done, Ellen will send Jenny our document about which places we'd like icons to show, etc.