Support and Training Report: July 2011

Aleph


Global Changes on July 10

On early Sunday morning, July 10, we will globally change approximately 103,000 bibliographic records on SYS01.

In 1995, for 008/06 (Type of date), the value "c" (Publication date and copyright date) was made obsolete for all formats except Continuing Resources. In applicable records, we will change the value from "c" to "t" (Publication date and copyright date).

If you would like to preview records in which this change will be made, do the following CCL query in Aleph:

(wrt=a not wbl=(s or b or i)) and wff=00806c not wd2=9999

Note: We will not change the value of 008/06 from "c" to "t" for records in which Date2=9999. Many such records are Continuing Resources in which the value "c" is correct but for which the record format is coded incorrectly (e.g., in Books format rather than Continuing Resources format). In some cases, such records are monograph records, sometimes with 008/06 incorrectly coded "c" rather than "m" (Multiple dates); sometimes, "c" rather than "t" (Publication date and copyright date) with an incorrect value of 9999 in 008/11-14 (Date 2). After July 10, you can find and fix such records using the query (wrt=a not wbl=(s or b or i)) and wff=00806c.

Because of the large number of records, this change will take 5-6 hours. Please refrain from editing bibliographic records on the morning of Sunday, July 10. Also note that other services on SYS01 will be queued up until the job finishes.

We have tested and reviewed this change on the development server with both PALS staff and members of the Cataloging Steering Committee.

If you have any questions or comments, please submit them at https://pals.custhelp.com/

ILL

  • Service pack scheduled to be installed on production on July 17, contains a fix for Borrowing requests with a status of Locally Owned. To process a borrowing request with a status of Locally Owned staff can click on Locate to find potential lending libraries. Currently staff are changing the status on Locally owned requests to New status.
  • Service pack contains a fix when a borrowing library does a Return and includes a note, the note can now be seen on the Request Log.

Upcoming Training

  • Jenny to train RCL-Hutchinson on Course Reserves August 4, 2011

Evergreen


ECRL Implementation

  • Anoop is close to resolving issues with billings from an earlier (March 2011) fix.
  • Questions and minor issues continue to be submitted and addressed.

Training

  • Still waiting on ECRL for Serials/Acq/Booking training dates

Documentation

  • Jenny is finishing work on merging/editing two sets of Acquisitions documentation. Dee will review the documentation and then it will be submitted to DIG for inclusion in the official documentation.
  • Jenny downloaded a 2.1 client on July 1 and has started investigating the new version on the general community demo server. As time permits, documentation will be tested against the new client.

Other Products/Services


EZproxy

MnPALS Plus

  • Book Covers in MnPALS Plus
    • We believe we have a better handle on book cover images than we did a few months ago. We get our book cover images from Amazon. We have looked into other sources, but I don't believe we are actively pulling from anywhere other than Amazon for MnPALS Plus.
    • We added and stored around 6,000 book cover images in the last week. Al believes they are coming through OK currently. Once we get an image we store it on our server. If we ask for an image and it doesn't exist, we also create a link to a blank image so we don't ask for it again. We have about 400,000 stored images and 400,000 blank images at this time.
  • For more information on this product, check out the MnPALS Forum: http://forums.mnpals.org/index.php?board=35.0

PALSconnect Linker

  • Inver Hills Community College was trained to use PALSconnect Linker. They switched from OCLC's Link Manager product.
  • Northland Community and Technical College will be trained to use PALSconnect Linker sometime the week of July 18.
  • We invite you to post all your Open URL Link Resolver questions and tips on the PALS Forum: http://forums.mnpals.org/index.php?board=68.0

Task Forces


Authorities

Indexing

MnPALS Plus Working Group

Reports Task Force

Office Teams


Communications Team

  • Current projects include user surveys, compilation of a communications guide (including disaster communications), systematic website revisions, and continued investigation/implementation of social media.
  • Next meeting: 7/13/11

Marketing Team

  • Gearing up for fall conferences, presentation (NDLA) and vendor booths (NDLA, SDLA, ILA, MLA).
  • Updating the Evergreen brochure to follow logo rules and highlight new features.
  • Redesigning the PALS folders and will order a new supply.

Meetings Attended by Support Staff

  • Jenny attended ALA at the end of June and presented with Shae Tetterton (ESI) and Melissa Lefebvre (Bibliomation) on Evergreen migrations. "Hot topics" included collaboration, discovery interfaces, and mobile technologies.