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Minutes - 19 January 2006

Members present: Hennig (chair), Duke, Quirion, Skuce (minutes)
Guests: Bartley, Gabridge, Stout, Wenger

1. User needs assessment

User interviews are getting underway, and our partners in this undertaking (Maggie Bartley, Tracy Gabridge, and Amy Stout) joined WAG for a progress report and check-in session.  Nicole will be creating a page on the staff web with a timeline, documentation, forms, etc. to help us as we proceed.  Nicole, Tracy and Millicent will meet again on February 6 to go over next steps, and to continue planning for the undergraduate portion of the assessment.


2.  Barton as an SFX source

Rich Wenger joined us as we reviewed his work in the test area of Aleph, and discussed placement of the SFX button on various Barton screens.  There was also discussion of guiding principles and of certain complicating factors: we want the button to show only when full text is available -- and many Barton records already contain URLs that lead to other-than-full text.  Furthermore, there are issues with the conditional logic that defines which individual issues on an Availability screen will get the button.  Regarding placement of the button, we have to contend with Brief and Full displays, as well as 2 different Availability displays (1 from brief record, 1 from full record).  We know we want the button above the title in Full display, but other decisions will require additional scripting by Rich.  He will also be meeting with Beth to look at the conditional logic driving the button instances, and will get back to us as work progresses.  Nicole will make a new version of the SFX button for Barton.  It will consist of a yellow box (same as the current "next" and "previous" buttons) and contain the words: "Electronic access" along with the SFX logo.  Rich will place this in the Full display and then we'll look at it again and modify it if necessary when we see how it looks in context.  Overall plan: once we have a working prototype ready, we will meet with PSMG, host a brown bag lunch for staff, and communicate with the "piggybacking group" to make sure all the parts fit in this complicated project.


3. Other Rich-dependent items

IEEE publications in SFX: Mark at Notre Dame wrote an app that works pretty well, but as it stands, it reflects only Notre Dame's IEEE holdings and carries their logo.  Rich suggests, and WAG agrees, that we should host our own version of this database.  Rich will speak with Mark about sharing his table definitions and his script for automatic loading.  Overall status of this project: very early development.

RSS for "new book" reports:  We looked at Royal Holloway's RSS-generated new book feed, and considered some of the decisions we need to make.  Some tentative directions:

  • Timeframe: cataloged in the past 30 days
  • Run script: once per week
  • Publication date: last year forward
  • Subject identifier: call number
  • Formats included: non-serial, non-thesis
  • Info included: title/author (245 tag), publication date, owning library
  • What to call it: "Recent Acquisitions"
  • Darcy will prepare a sample call number range for mechanical engineering, Stephen will do music, and get these to Rich. 
  • Darcy will meet with Rich once he has something to show, and she will also contact Royal Holloway.
  • Once we have a working prototype and know what's possible (technically speaking) we'll get input from other subject librarians about how the new book feeds should be set up.

WAG's overall priorities for Rich: #1, Barton as an SFX source; #2, special script for IEEE conferences in SFX; #3, RSS for recent acquisitions.


4. ILB move to ILLiad

The ILLiad implementation will mean some changes for First Search databases, where users can already request items in a First Search form that fills in the citation for them.  This functionality will change, and users will be routed to ILLiad for these requests, through the OpenURL for the item.  The user will have to log into ILLiad, and then the citation will be filled out for them.  There may be some issues with the logic in the SFX menus improperly routing users to ILB when MIT owns items, which could lead to more ILB requests for items owned by MIT.  WorldCat may be a good place to start with enabling ILB requesting through the SFX menu, but the issues with the menu logic need to be explored more fully as the ILB staff do not currently have the capacity to deal with a large increase in the number of requests for MIT owned items.  Christine will bring this issue to Steve Gass for clarification.


Next meeting:

Wednesday, February 1, 2-3:30 pm, Cubespace

http://libstaff.mit.edu/webgroup/minutes/20060119.html


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