Support and Training Services Report: June 2009Aleph
Cataloging
- The automatic creation of holding and item records is available for bib records being exported into Aleph from OCLC. Currently, there are 4 MnPALS libraries doing this in production. They are: Crown College, Metropolitan State University, Normandale Community College, and St. Mary's University/Winona. Eight other libraries will soon be receiving training on how to set this up. Contact the MnPALS Support Center if you would like to implement this.
- We are in the process of collaboratively writing a step-by-step document with MINITEX on how to send your serial holding records to OCLC's local holding record update service (LHRUS). Testing with Inver Hills Community College has been completed so that a file of their holdings has been updated at OCLC. For libraries using WorldCat Local as their OPAC, it is imperative that you have your summary holdings at OCLC. Watch for the announcement that the document is available.
- On June 17th we will be meeting with a U of M librarian to learn the fine points of setting up the tables for the authority functionality available in Aleph since ver. 18. We have contracted Mike Barnett to work on the technical aspects of setting this up. Our plan is to do the set up and testing over the summer months, the re-load of a new LC authority file in August, and a re-index of the Aleph database to follow that. As a trade-off, we will be sharing with the U of M Librarian how we configured the Yankee Book Peddler GOBI process.
ILL
- St John's University and College of Saint Benedict have been setup to exchange requests with Great River Regional Library system. St John's Univerisity and the College of Saint Benedict use ALEPH ILL to manage their requests and Great River Regional Library system uses VDX ILL software to manage their requests.
- Bethany College is exchanging ILL requests with Traverse des Sioux and Martin Luther College. Bethany College uses ALEPH ILL to manage their requests. Traverse des Sioux and Martin Luther College use VDX ILL software to manage their requests.
- Minnesota State University, Mankato and Martin Luther College are exchanging ILL requests. MSU, Mankato uses ALEPH ILL to manage their ILL requests and Martin Luther College uses VDX ILL software to manage their ILL requests.
- The following ILL ELUNA enhancement requests have been submitted to ExLibris for development points rating. These enhancement requests will receive a points rating and the ELUNA membership will then vote on the enhancements to proceed with.
- Improve interoperability between Aleph and OCLC ILL
- Display additional patron information in the ILL request
- Control the number of renewal requests in the OPAC
- Include separate logical bases for borrowing and lending locate
- Allow printing of multiple requests within the module
- We have received 36 responses to the ILL User Group Direct borrowing survey. The ILL User group asked all MnPALS libraries that use the Minitex Overnight Courier service to decide if they want to participate in direct lending/borrowing among MnPALS libraries.Interlibrary loan staff can still complete the direct borrowing survey at http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB2296CP962XC
Upcoming Trainings
- Aug 19 - 9:30 am - Course Reserves Functional Training (online)
Not Aleph
EZproxy
- For more information on this product, check out the MnPALS Forum: http://forums.mnpals.org/index.php?board=47.0
- We signed up another 'New' institution - LSC. LSC was on their own EZproxy, but had problems with patron authentication. They felt it was cost effective to have the PALS office maintain the EZproxy server for them. Configuration and setup was completed May 20th. LSC will incorporate into their web pages when ready.
OCLC Link Manager
MnPALS Plus (Discovery Tool)
- For more information on this product, check out the MnPALS Forum: http://forums.mnpals.org/index.php?board=35.0
- ILL requests can now be viewed and canceled in production version of MnPALS Plus.
- Fixed a problem with patron passwords that had a space character in them (Worked previously in Aleph Web OPAC, and now works in MnPALS Plus)
- We've been working on the enhancements list and would like some testing of the new features as well as feedback. These enhancements can be found at http://plustest.mnpals.net/ Note: Since this is the our development site we only have a small set of records. You also might also see the site acting weird on occasion as we continue development. Feature Enhancements To Look For:
- Add Tag Fix
- Aleph Down Connection Fix
- Author Facets
- Availability Note
- Display/CSS Updates
- Email Records Updates
- Export to Refworks | Endnote | Zotero
- Formats Update
- Google Book/Preview Links
- Location Display Update
- Maintain selected library in searches and links
- Multilingual Updates
- RSS Feed Fix
- Spell Check (using Yahoo API)
Task Forces
Authorities
Indexing
MnPALS Plus Working Group
Reports Task Force
- For more information on this task force, check out the MnPALS Forum: http://forums.mnpals.org/index.php?board=31.0
- Check out the forum for the Reports Task Force meeting minutes of May.Highlights to report:
- Priv-21 is almost ready for production. The foreign language problems have been solved. This reports brings in multiple circulation events on each title, sorted by call number. It looks promising for collection analysis. TRC and NDC had problems with xml reserve characters that don’t translate into real characters, i.e. &, <, >, “. In particular, NDC had problems with an accented 'e' or with an 'a' accent acute.
- Sorting by call number has been fixed. Randi will announce this on the Forum and will send a message to the discussion list. Susan will send a message to the discussion list when priv-21 is available.
- The difference between Priv-08 and Priv-15 is that priv-08 is sorted by title and should have the title “Title Usage Stats by Circ Date Range”. Priv-15 is sorted by most loans and should have the name “Title Usage Stats by Date Title Created”. The Priv-15 date range is the open/creation date of the title, not the date when the stats occurred. The help tells what the dates mean and what the sort is. There was much discussion about whether the sort should be in the title of the report, but most people export reports to spreadsheets, so the sort doesn’t really matter. Circ-30 can also be used for statistics.
- Recommended report list: Adam presented a list of reports they regularly run and when. It’s linked in Answer Book 3319. Adam will post the PDF for the Forum under the Reports Work Group as well.
Meetings Attended by Support Staff
- Mary Ann and Dee attended the Evergreen International Conference 2009 in Athens, GA
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