MnPALS Update September 2006

1. LaSSSI continues to meet on a regular basis. 
   1. In June, LaSSSI members met with Ex Libris for the purpose of talking about solutions to the key issues that are impacting shared systems and how both parties can work together to resolve them.
   2. In August, Ex Libris distributed a document that describes the company’s preferred system architecture for Aleph. The preferred architecture is the one used by MnPALS.
   3. The LaSSSI members are reviewing the document and a conference call was held in late August to begin discussion about it .
   4. In late October, Ex Libris and LaSSSI members will have an in-person meeting to discuss the technical issues of configuration in the preferred architecture.
   5. In November, LaSSSI has scheduled a Data Warehouse Technical meeting and a LaSSSI meeting.
2. The College Center for Library Automation (CCLA) recently put version 17 into production. CCLA’s upgrade experience has been similar to the MnPALS upgrade, since they upgraded from version 15.5 to version 17. The PALS staff has asked many questions of CCLA staff whose answers and suggestions have proven to be valuable for our upgrade.

1. Planning for the version 17 upgrade began in May.
2. Based on the documentation that described system resources needed for the upgrade, technical staff determined that adequate space for the migration was not available.
3. Additional disk was ordered, received, installed and prepped in July.
4. The existing version 17 which has 10 ADM’s data was copied to harp in order to provide a training and practice area for libraries.
5. A training plan was created and publicized for the version 17 upgrade.
6. The source and target regions required for the upgrade were configured and the upgrade process began in August.
7. The Upgrade Express scripts for 15.5 to 16 and 16 to 17 have been run once.
8. Technical staff is in the process of manually upgrading tables that were not converted by the Upgrade Express kit.
9. The target date range for the production conversion continues to be late December-early January.
10. The attached Version 17 Upgrade Project Plan provides additional information.
11. Version 17 documentation can be found on the Ex Libris Documentation Portal, http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/docportal/logon.php.

1. The PALS staff has formed a task force with members that used the PALS Report Writer extensively. Rosie Mock (MSU), Dave Wuolo (SBJ), Kathleen Ashe (SSU), Jean Kramer (TRM), Linda Swanson (TRC), Adam Marsnick (NDC), Anna Hulsberg (GAC), and Sonja Timmerman (GAC). Sonja will fill in for Anna during her maternity leave.
2. The task force will be asked to identify the reports needed from Aleph by the libraries, to evaluate the reports available from Aleph Services menus, and to evaluate the reports available through ARC.
3. The Reports Task Force has had a slow start partly due to other priorities, partly due to a vacant PALS position that is slated to work with the group, and partly because some members of the group had plans for their summer.
4. The group will meet on September 12 at 10 am via conference call to organize.

1. The open OPAC issues can be found at: http://boards.pals.msus.edu/fusetalk/forum/attachments/MnPALS%5Fconsolidated%5Flist%5F0608open%2Epdf
2. Many of the open issues will be addressed in version 17.
3. The working plan is to begin customization work using Union View web pages as soon as the pages are available. The MATF plans to make changes to the interface during the fall.
4. Internal discussion has begun on how and what libraries will be able to customize after version 17 is in production. PALS staff anticipates that modifying the style sheet and the help information will be desired by the libraries. A small group will be formed to identify which pages libraries want to customize. There may be some pages that cannot be modified.

1. Aleph maintenance agreement

1. The first Ex Libris Users of North America (ELUNA) conference was held in Knoxville, TN on June 4-7.
2. Rosie Mock (MSU), Peg Lawrence (MSU), Bobby Bothmann (MSU), and Sheila Hatchell (MHS) attended the conference.
3. Becky Bell, Susan Dueis, Mary Ann Greenwald, Deb Domek, Al Rykhus, Mike Barnett, and Todd Digby also attended.
4. Bobby Bothmann, Mary Ann Greenwald, Al Rykhus and Becky Bell were presenters during one of the breakout sessions. The title of their session was “Keyword indexing of fixed field character positions… Technical services answer to anything you ever wanted to know about records with coded information that is positionally defined” (the longest session title of the conference!)
5. Changes in the organization were discussed during several sessions. An important change in the organization is how the enhancement process will be handled. Here is how the ELUNA Steering Committee describes the process: “ELUNA Aleph Membership, in cooperation and coordination with Ex Libris, will identify and target a critical area of concern that will require major development by Ex Libris over the next year. Ex Libris will devote all development to this one area each year. After approval of the development, a group of ELUNA Aleph members with appropriate expertise will be formed to work with Ex Libris on developing solutions to these problems. This group will approve functional specifications and participate in development testing.”
6. To find out more about the ELUNA organization, go to http://www.ela-us.org/.