1. Announcements
2. Alumni Access – Jennifer Sawyer and Ellen Marsh
3. Web Vision Update – Zsuzsa Koltay
4. Delivery Services Update – Pat Schafer and Jesse Koennecke
5. Usability and User Studies Committee Charge – Adam Chandler

Attendees:

Scott Wicks, Kornelia Tancheva, Eli Brown, Marty Kurth, Kizer Walker,

Xin Li, Adam Chandler, Mary Ochs, Ellen Marsh, Jean Poland, Pat Schafer, Jennifer Sawyer, Jesse Koennecke, Zsuzsa Koltay

Announcements

·       Liaisons to PSEC committees should remind chairs of the March 19^th Orientation meeting and their responsibilities at the meeting - Pat

·       In May PSEC should consider the budget for next fiscal year – Xin

·       The University will centrally fund a site license for Microsoft Office – Mary

·       A more granular separation of academic staff from non-academic staff user types that feed into the Voyager patron database should be possible – Marty

Alumni Access

Kornelia first summarized the issues leading to having this item on the agenda and the invitation to Jennifer and Ellen to attend a PSEC meeting for a discussion.

·       Ellen and Jennifer will be working on a new web page

o      Page will be clear regarding alumni access privileges. It will also provide information regarding donation opportunities, including the honor with books program.

o      Jennifer mentioned having a link to Alumni and Friends page on the main Library page.

o      Zsuzsa pointed out that in usability tests people were able to easily find the Alumni and Friends page even though it is not on the main gateway page.

o      Time frame for launch will probably be in May or June

o      Jennifer will email Fiona Patrick about taking part of the old site down to help curb confusion

Web Vision Update

Zsuzsa gave a WebVision overview and progress report.

·       Four ongoing projects: WorldCat Local implementation, LibGuides (60+ guides to date), Library Outside the Library (includes: LibX, bookmark, RSS feed for new books, Wikipedia, Blackboard), Website Redesign (currently looking for feedback).

Questions from PSEC

·       Who has been doing usability testing? Members of the team

·       Who are the “sponsors”? Anne and CAT

·       What are the platform choices? Drupal, Commonspot, Contribute

Delivery Services Update

Borrow Direct

Pat briefed PSEC on a proposal from OCLC/VDX for new software platform for Borrow Direct. It is currently being discussed by the BD Policy Group for which Pat is Cornell’s representative.

The OCLC platform is based on the creation of a “Group catalog” in Worldcat that will consist of the combined Worldcat holdings of the BD partners. Patrons will search Worldcat as the discovery tool – there is no z39.50 broadcast search of partners’ opacs for discovery of items – and holdings from the Group catalog will be displayed first, followed by general Worldcat holdings that match the search criteria.

Patrons will then be able to submit requests from any of these records, and the request will be transmitted to VDX for placement and management of the request.

The major difference between this approach and URSA (the current software) are:

·       No search interface directly to BD opacs – all searching is done in Worldcat.

·       All requests placed through Worldcat are accepted by BD (VDX) – there is not real-time confirmation to the patron that the item is not locally available and available from a BD partner. If a BD partner can supply the item, the patron will receive an e-mail notifying him that the request was sent to BD. If a BD partner cannot supply the item, the request will be transmitted to the borrowing library’s ILLIAD ILL system for further processing locally.

·       Thus, all requests are accepted, then sent to BD if possible, or to ILLIAD if BD cannot supply. We lose immediate feedback to patrons about BD availability, but gain interoperability with our ILL system.

There may be a pilot later this year for which Cornell volunteered. 

Jesse Koennecke gave a progress report on the work of the Get It Team and the free document delivery investigation.

·       Making My Document Delivery free (Currently checking with other institutions for more information about services)

o      Project a 5-8 times potential increase (staff and lending vs. borrowing)

o      Free Document Delivery going to LMT in April

·       Get-it Team

o      Unmediated Rapid

o      ILLIAD will implement Rapid module

o      Through OCLC: Identify libraries that we like to borrow from

o      Decrease wait time

Usability and User Studies Committee Charge

Adam Chandler joined PSEC for a continuation of the PSEC discussion regarding the need for clarification of the Usability and User Studies Committee charge.

·       Adam’s suggestions

o      Clearer of scope of group and support of group

o      Members of the committee should be prepared to serve a certain number of hours per week/month (16 hours per month?)

·       Zsuzsa’s experiences

o      Testing took up a huge amount of her group’s time

o      Very valuable to have done testing themselves

o      Support service from U&US was very important

o      More training or mentoring would be necessary if the group had not already had experience

o      If function was centralized then process could possibly take much longer

o      Web support needs to be integrated somewhere

·       Other

o      There is a need to step back and look at the service, and what or needs are for testing and user studies.

o      Rotating appointees

o      Proper training

o      Having a person as a mentor could create a bottle neck

o      These skills maybe should be part of people’s job descriptions so there is accountability

o      What are the needs, skill sets, etc., if our current system is not used?

·       Xin’s suggestion

o      Boot camp for those who are willing to give up the time for training, similar to what ARL is doing

o      People train people, and they train people and so on….

·       Bonna and Melissa are due to rotate off committee

There was no resolution of the issue. It will be pursued by a subset of PSEC with Adam.