2007 ELUNA Report

ELUNA (ExLibris Users of North America) conference was held June 5-8, 2007 in Spearfish South Dakota. The acquisition of Endeavor by ExLibris' holding company meant in addition ExLibris product tracks there were Voyager product tracks.

MnPALS consortium staff attending ELUNA were Rosie Mock, Peg Lawerence and Lynne Weber from Minnesota State University, Mankato and Kathleen Ashe Southwest Minnesota State University.

PALS staff attending ELUNA were Perry Madden, Susan Dueis, Sonja Eilertson, Dee Nolan, Luda Lindahl and Mary Ann Greenwald. Stephen Elfstrand, though not yet the PALS director, attended ELUNA.

Technical seminars were held as a pre-session on Monday & Tuesday. Those attending were: Al Rykhus, Luda Lindahl, Dee Nolan, Mary Ann Greenwald, Peg Lawrence, and Rosie Mock. The other Minnesota attendees came for the Aleph User Group which began on Wednesday and ran through Friday morning. Bobby Bothmann submitted a poster session. Susan Dueis presented a Patron Scrubbing and Privacy Issues. Sonja Eilertson participated in the Ask the Experts panel.

Sessions (reported by Mary Ann Greenwald)

At a session How to Improve the ALEPH ILS: What Keeps “You” Up at Night? ideas were requested for enhancements to ALEPH potentially for version 20. These ideas were posted to an ELUNA wiki for additional comments.

The session Aleph Product Leadership had chairperson Betsy Friesen, U of M, talk about establishing the Product Working Group. This group will work with ExLibris about creating an efficient and productive product. A WIKI was set up after this conference for anyone using Aleph to post discussion issues. Contact Betsy Friesen [b-frie@umn.edu]at the U of M to get on the WIKI.

Aleph Troubleshooting was presented by Jerry Specht, Chicago ExLibris Support Center. This was a very useful session for PALS Support & Tech Staff. He gave tips on how to find answers in the Pivotal Customer Relations Management System (CRM, check the current server log for error messages, look for changes in alephe_tab and alephe_root and then compare to last previous version, GUI Log-in problems, etc. Some of this was quite 'techie' for support staff but very informational.

Course Reserve Session presented by Dalia Mendelssohn of ExLibris. She addressed the new changes coming in ver. 19 where Course Reserves will be integrated into the GUI Client. One highlight is that Course will be identified by CNO, name and department. Section designation will be for the actual class being taught by a specific instructor (free-text alphanumeric). If nothing in common for course and section, 4 different professors teach the course ... they can have different course names.

Other highlights:

Course Doc list … may be shared by all sections linked to a Course,
Reserve collection … no changes,
CR D’base … same architecture,
Question about more bib records from CR30 created in xxx01 … no, that will not happen.
What happened to integrating e-resources in ver. 19? It will be the same as previous versions ... have connection between student in their profile and do with copyright where student can agree to copyright. E-materials will be done in CAT module in ADAM,
Problems with multiple course desks, gather materials from various libraries. Course is not identified with desk … need to link to sublibrary or OWN attached to course. (McGill Univ., Jane Aitkens, asked for this

ELUNA CAT-AUTH MEETING. Minutes were taken by Mary Ann Greenwald, PALS. They have been distributed to the PALS-CAT list.

ELUNA Business Meeting. Carlen Ruschoff, U of MD … Treasurer. Call for membership and process memberships each year. 2006 merged with SMUG with 100 members, merge with Voyager … 199 members. Anticipate membership double again in 2007. Dues- $200 down to $150. Growth rate that Steering Comm. Will have to look into accounting support. Univ. require W-9 form and credit cards require more expertise. More detailed reporting will be needed. Over $100,000 in the fund … testing activities and working groups. 2006 annual conference and escrow. New Steering Committee Chair will be Chris Meyer, U of M. ELUNA 2008 - Long Beach, CA. July 28-Aug. 1. Host: CA State University Office of the Chancellor, Margaret Pollard. Located downtown, 5 blocks from the beach!

ExLibris Q & A - This was a Q&A session for all Aleph products; e.g. Aleph, Voyager, SFX, MetaLib, etc. Some of the Aleph Q/A:

Do you feel Evergreen is ready for primetime? How will you compete with them in the coming years? Will your ideas of Unified Resource Mgmt be the strategic product? Omri response … In principle, we welcome. Evaluate open source upon certain criteria: roadmap commitment, EX benefit from open source (Lucien … basis of Primo). Investigate lots of $$$ in Lucien to productize and stabilize. Evergreen … not evaluated, so can’t comment. ILS large system lots of time to maintain and keep current with standards. URM framework…not a product.
Will there definitely be an ALEPH v. 21? Matti ShemTov ---Yes, develop ALEPH and Voyager at same time. As move along to versions will see the evolution of technology … now to continue developing Aleph and Voyager.
Can you shed light on pricing structure for Primo? Seemed high for med-size university! Pricing structure consistent … combination of FTE and # of objects put into system (bib, digital object). Project to look at diff. service package for Primo that could be hosted to take work in-house to EL. Flexibility in terms of Primo … off-shelf with everything is the full pkg, all-inclusive; limited application of Primo could scale back pricing … EL will look at it.
How is EL keeping up with implementation through maintenance and troubleshooting? Matti – merge 2 similar companies there are redundancies – no 2 CEO needed, etc. Stronger company by taking the best out of both companies. R&D in 2 companies is number increase. Support has increased.
Has any customer tested the oracle 10g grid feature; dividing the oracle load over several smallish oracle servers? Small Israeli college is using this. EL will become certified under 10g, but isn’t certified to do the wrap … don’t offer the service. Affects support which would require certain level of certification and expertise.
Questions from the floor …
1. Serious look at the underground process of Aleph … not true relational database structure based on Oracle? No plans to rewrite ALEPH. As move to URM will start to address underlying data structure. No timeline. Need to look at all functionality and do all at once. URM will not be done in cobol,
2. CCLA – v. 18 xml records in the patron load have some fields only in xml, not in flat file.… trend to only have xml files and fields loaded for ALEPH? It is open question … direction is going that way.

How to Improve the ILS: What keeps you up at night? Session provided by ILS users. Focus: one module, multiple modules and/or processes. ITEMS! (Inventory management, Item process status, arrival date is not populating). Beyond ITEMS, lots of ideas were offered. Product Group will meet to choose 5 priorities.

Product Update provided by Kathryn Harnish, EL Director of Product Management. Her powerpoint can be seen at the ExLibris Documentation Center listed below.

A list of sessions and presentations are on the ExLibris Documentation Center at: http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/docportal/logon.php. For Log on information for the ExLibris Documentation Center please see answer number 3062 in the PALS Support Center http://pals.custhelp.com. Once you are logged in choose Aleph/Tree Search/Seminars/Spearfish SD ELUNA meetings (June 2007).

ELUNA Report from Rosie Mock, MSU,Mankato

Three MSU, Mankato representatives, Rosie Mock, Peg Lawrence and Lynne Weber attended ELUNA 2007 and tried to stagger attendance to different sessions at ELUNA hoping to get as much out of the conference as possible. These are some of the sessions attended and some brief comments about them.

Technical Seminar

There were sessions on System Architecture, Building a Homemade Fix and ALEPH Troubleshooting that dealt with server settings.

ALEPH starts using java in v.18
U17 or 18 are user files
A17 or 18 are system files

GUI Components that use HTML and XML: Customizing Services and Displays

This session showed how to add new services and customize menus in the GUI. It is not something an individual library can do, but it was interesting to see how it is done and to know that it is possible.

SQL Reporting – Mike Rodgers U of Tennessee, Knoxville

SQL works faster if you are using indexed fields but it can be done on non-indexed fields also.

He went through several scripts and files needed to run SQL and showed several reports generated.

Printing Tips and Tricks—Joan Kolarik, Exlibris

Clean out files in the Print directory.
.prn files are from letters printed in ALEPH not from Task Manager
Email letter or report to yourself from the print history
Print.ini has NewPrintType=Y to turn on or off html print. Defines margins and footer/header independent of browser settings. I think this is in version 18?
HTML print settings for footer/headings and for number of copies or orientation can be set. A Logo can be put into letters and margins can be set.

For more information see this website: http://bersoft.com/htmlprint/index.htm or to download:

http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Business/Printer_Tools/Bersoft_HTML_Print.html

How to Use the ALEPH Binding Procedure

Serials Binding Process--we thought this might be helpful at MSU. The session went through the binding process and running reports to select the serials that need to be bound. MSU already has a procedure in place for this, so we won’t be using it.

ARC Version 2: An introduction –Kathryn Harnish (Exlibris)

ARC extracts data from ALEPH to create data warehouse.
Items added/withdrawn report – gives summary but you can get details right from the report in ARC.
Report of items missing/lost was run with titles and dollar amount. Reports can be grouped or sorted.
v.19 ARC contains 98 reports, 15 more than ARC 1.1
ARC 2.0 works faster 60% improvement in extraction of data

There are many different canned reports that looked really good.

ELUNA 2007 Conference Sessions

ExLibris Company Updates

President and CEO Matti Shem Tov, Robert Mercer, President Ex Libris North America, and ExLibris Vice President for Global Support Don Muccino spoke. There was indication of strong commitment to both ALEPH and Voyager and the associated products and considerable enthusiasm for the future. This was a wonderful opportunity to put faces with the names so often mentioned and to catch the excitement expressed by management.

ALEPH Product feature session and Upgrading ALEPH 16 (or 17) to 18 session

This included discussion of upcoming versions, including version 20, Task Manager, Primo, and enhancements.

Version 18

Going to version 18, email letters and printed letters do not need to be revised in the new version.
PLAIN text Email notices come up with some HTML in them.
Parameters need to be checked for overdues as it changed from All to None for running overdues in Services.
U of MN said nothing was reported lost from 16-17-18

Version 19

Easier privilege setup – list of privileges are listed clearly and tabs across the top for each module
Batch processing management
Interoperability
Course Reserves is integrated into GUI
Standards support for ILL is integrated into the GUI
Acquisitions Finance Systems is integrated with the Finance Dept.

Version 20

--Enhancements in system management
--Improved Acquisition workflows, more automation
--Additional development of course reserves

Filling the ILS Reporting Void (Voyager)

Even though this session was specifically about the Voyager ILS, the techniques could be used with ALEPH. The University of Georgia is using PHP to provide web-based reports against their production data base and a Windows client called VRS to construct MS Access queries from a fill-in-the-blank client and uses ODBC to retrieve data for building the report. No knowledge of Oracle DB tables or SQL is needed (but would need to be able to access the Oracle tables to build reports)

Primo Product Feature—Rich Wenger (MIT)

Primo User Interface

The reports from Vanderbilt and the U of Minnesota described the Primo interfaces they have developed and the administration of the usability testing process. These were scheduled to go into production at their respective institutions last summer.

ALEPH Reporting Center: Hype or Help?—Heather Hessel (U of MN) and ARC Interest Group session

Reports can be run for the different modules (i.e. Circ, OPAC, Tech services, etc.). She showed several reports that they run. Licenses needed for Query and Report studio. Staff can run reports themselves.

Hey, That’s OUR Data! Or Learning to Play Well with Others – Chris Rose and Betsy Friesen, U of MN

Reported the miscommunications that have occurred between Circulation and Technical Services.
They’re working with others areas, running reports to find errors and using SQL to fix call numbers.

Patron Scrubbing & Privacy Issues – Susan Dueis (MnPALS), Christine Moulen (MIT), John Osborn, U of IA)

Decision needs to be made including all areas, acq, circ and tech services
Recommended to scrub cash that is more than 1 yr. and patron data more than 60 days old
(cir-32) the process works differently in V17 than in V15, so even though MnPALS set it up for us in V15, we need to set it up in v17 as it does not work the same way.
Suggested to scrub in the cir-32 just the Z36H (Loan History), Z37H (Holds History) and Z35 (Events) not the (Z309) Update the Circulation logger
Patron data from ILL also needs to be scrubbed in the Admin, Services, Patron Link Removal (ill-32)
Circulation Logger (cir-78) process runs separately and cleans up the cash transactions or loan transactions or both from the Circulation logger. PALS Edesk #3170 All log events that are older than the input date will be deleted, if the transaction that they belong to is closed. This means that loan related events will be deleted only if the loan has been returned or deleted. Cash related events will be deleted only if the transaction has been fully paid. The cir-78 service will not delete active transactions from the circulation logger (loan not returned and cash not paid)

Systems Interest Group – Mike Rogers (U of TN)

One of the problems noted with version 18 was that in calendar hours, the default hours were at the top which is a problem. Christine Moulen from MIT has her staff save the source of the table to the computer for editing, then email it back to her. She loads it onto the server where it doesn’t put the default hours first.