Support and Training Services Report: May 2008

Acquisitions/Serials – Dee Nolan

• Attended and worked on Open Source ILS Team tasks.
• Attended and worked on Communication team tasks.
• Preparing for Budget Rollover web meeting on Thursday, May 29 from 10:00 – 11:00 a.m.

Booking – Cathy Colby

• Working on table configuration, setup and testing.
• Meeting with test libraries, Concordia and MSU, Mankato.
• Web training will be held on Tuesday, June 24 from 9:00 – 11:00 a.m. This session is full. There will be another training offered in late summer or early fall.

Cataloging – Mary Ann Greenwald

• Attended and worked on Open Source ILS and Discovery Tool Team tasks.
• Preparing Inventory Management presentation for ELUNA.
• Reading documentation, communicating with other Aleph libraries, and preparing for Authorities in Aleph version 18.

Circulation – Susan Dueis

• Dealt with Support Center questions on table setup, running services and patron record problems, etc.
• Compiled Aleph version 18 Go Live Information document and posted to MnPALS-Discuss List and created associated answer in PALS Support Center Answer Book.
• Tested offline circulation in version 18 and updated answer in PALS Support Center Answer Book.

MnLINK Gateway – Susan Dueis

• Worked with MINITEX/MnLINK to update the "i" information link window for MnPALS in the MnLINK Gateway.

Communications – Susan Dueis

• Working on reorganizing the MnPALS Forum boards, so that the General boards (Announcements, Tips and Tricks, Discussion and Feedback) are viewable to guests without having to log in.
• Working on having a better “News” section on MnPALS Forum board.

Interlibrary Loan – Sonja Eilertson

• The ILL2 update training sessions have been completed. Two live training sessions were conducted during Spring ILL User Group and three web sessions were completed. Libraries have been trying out the software and fixing up their privileges.
• Sonja Eilertson and Agnes Lee (MINITEX) presented a breakout session “Ex Libris Aleph Interlibrary Loan Information and Update session” at the 17th Annual MINITEX ILL Conference.

Reference – Perry Madden

Google Books Search in the Aleph Web OPAC

• A new feature in the latest Aleph version 18 Service Pack is the ability to incorporate links to Google Book Search information in the Aleph Web OPAC. Google Books Search information includes book covers, tables of contents, reviews, and more.
• We have implemented this feature on each of the version 18 Web OPACs. You can get to your local Web OPAC at http://dev18.mnpals.net/.
• You can find the link to Google Books on Individual Bib Records to the right of the bibliographic information. If a book cover is available, it will also be displayed.
• Discussion on this feature can be found on the MnPALS Forums: http://forums.mnpals.org/index.php?topic=461.0. Let us know if you have any suggestions on how we could best implement this feature in your Web OPAC.

Web OPAC Changes for Version 18

• If your library would like to make changes to the version 18 Web OPAC, please let the PALS staff know by sending in an Incident to the PALS Support Center http://pals.custhelp.com/.
• A reminder: If you change your Collections in tab40.eng, those changes will not automatically be made in the Collections dropdown on the Advanced Search Page in the Web OPAC. You need to let the PALS staff know about those changes if you want your new collections to appear (or to remove any collections that you don't want displayed).

Report the "Golem"

1. The date/time the error occurs.
2. Which server you are searching?
3. Screen shots including the URL displaying in the browser.
4. As best you can recreate, the sequence of actions (you selected "xxxx" as the Individual Catalog, did a search on yyyyy, etc.)
5. What showed on the screen as the logical base (the catalog) at each point (and if the results corresponded to this base);
6. Click on "Current searches" (which produces a "Previous Searches" display), do a Print Screen, and paste the results into a Word document.

Meeting Dates to be aware of:

• User Council and Executive Committee Meetings:
  • Thursday, September 18 (Hennepin Tech College: Brooklyn Park or via Web Conference)
  • Thursday, November 13 (Web Conference Only)
  • Thursday, February 12 (Web Conference Only)
  • Thursday, April 16 (St. Cloud or via Web Conference)
• MnPALS Annual Meeting
  • Thursday, April 16 (St. Cloud or via Web Conference)

Minnesota Library Events Calendars 

Speaking of calendars, there are a couple that cover Minnesota Library-related events. Minitex has one at: http://lists.minitex.umn.edu/forums/calendar.php.

Mary Martin (Mary.Martin@state.mn.us) also posts a "Calendar of Events...to centralize information about continuing education opportunities for members of the Minnesota library community" at http://evanced.info/minnesota/evanced/eventcalendar.asp.

Systems – Dan Honetschlager

EZproxy

• Currently working with Theresa Borchert at Concordia. We are configuring the last few SFX items to work with EZproxy. Theresa is preparing her web pages to reflect the new proxy address.
• Beginning the setup for MSU, Moorhead.

Task Forces and Working Groups

• MnPALS Indexing Task Force: http://forums.mnpals.org/index.php?board=6.0
  
  • The MnPALS Indexing Task Force gave a report of their most recent activity at the Spring 2008 Cataloging User Group. That report is at this link: http://wiki.mnpals.org/index.php/Indexing_Task_Force:_Spring_2008
  • The group plans to have their next meeting in September 2008.
• Reports Work Group: http://forums.mnpals.org/index.php?board=31.0 The Reports Work Group gave a report of their most recent activity at the Spring 2008 Systems User Group. That report is at this link found under item #8: http://www.mnpals.org/sections/ug_sys200804.html
• MnPALS Authorities Task Force: http://forums.mnpals.org/index.php?board=5.0
  • The MnPALS Authorities Task Force met on May 2, 2008 to discuss these issues:
    • new authorities file load in Aleph ver. 18 and its implications
    • involvement with the MnPALS Discovery Tool Task Force
    • Name Authority Cooperative Project (NACO) update
  • The minutes can be read on the Authorities Task Force Forum
• MnPALS Access Task Force: The Reference Users Group and User Council voted to disband the Access Task Force. The PALS staff would like to thank everyone who served on this task force over the years for their service. The Reference Steering Committee has agreed to serve as the conduit for system wide Aleph Web OPAC change requests. The Discovery Tool Task Force will handle requests for changes to the Discovery Tools interfaces.

Meeting Attendence

• April 21-23 MnSCU ITS Conference -- Perry, Paul
  
• April 29-30 Equinox/Evergreen demonstration – all Support Staff
• May 1 User Council/Executive Committee meetings – Susan
• May 5 MINITEX Annual ILL Conference – Susan
• May 12, 14 & 16 InSync Capstone Synchronous Learning Expert training – Susan, Sonja,  Dee, Mary Ann, Cathy, and Dan
• Attended three web meeting trainings (total 4.5 hours) on Local Holdings in OCLC conducted by Dave Linten at MINITEX – Mary Ann, Dee