MnPALS User Council: September 18, 2008

Thursday, September 18, 2008, 9:00 - Noon
Hennepin Technical College, Brooklyn Park Campus - Room C-103
Bobby Bothmann, Chair
Directions to the campus: http://www.hennepintech.edu/about/map-bp.htm
Building Map: http://www.hennepintech.edu/about/images/HTC%20Maps%207-07.pdf

Adobe Connect meeting: https://breeze5.metnet.edu/ucec091808/
Enter as GUEST.
Conference Call Phone number: 763- 488- 2636

Draft Minutes

Members present: Robert Bothmann (Chair), Robin Horowitz (Secretary) , Perry Madden, Adam Marsnik, Julie Rustad, Orrin Aussen, Steve Elfstrand, Heather Biedrmann, Todd Digby, Mary Ann Greenwald, Michelle Ehlert, Pete McDonnell, Ruth Anderson, Michael Kirby, Angela Wortham, Pam Sukalski, Keith Ewing, Susan Dueis.

Web meeting discussion inserted before the break. Motion to adopt agenda passes.

Mary Ann – 8F, Michael will work on NCES report; Bobby will send him what MSU has done. Minutes approved.

Next year does not look good from a budget standpoint. MNSCU still working up a budget proposal – will ask to increase funding. Todd will meet with Assoc. Vice Chair of Funding. 2 Proposals – stage two on discovery tool funding, and institutional repository for MNSCU. MNSCU made it to the next level of the funding process. Stage 2 of discovery tool would involve open URL linking, and how other tools can be incorporated, e.g. federated searching. Funding decision will not happen until spring.

Met with IT manager for hardware and servers. Looking into using from MnSCU IT support for the Aleph and PALS servers to free up time of PALS staff; also what levels of backup we can get, where it’s housed, how can restart if there is a problem.

MINITEX is ending its serials exchange program. What are other options for us for disposal of these withdrawals? Current policy: share it within MnSCU, and if no one wants it, then it can be sold. This issue has been referred to the General Counsel. Todd waiting to hear. Todd doing textbook initiative work. Has five or six pilot programs running. Try to continue text book reserve. Looking at online textbook initiative with Metro State; they are losing their lease on their bookstore.

Staffing – Mike Barnett retired; Cathy Colby has left PALS for MSU Business School. Hope to recruit both a technical and support person – looking at strategies, deciding what kind of level of experience new people should have. PALS has hired some student workers.

Aleph v. 18 upgrade was successful. Ran patron delete, deleted 400,000 patrons, helped clean out the database. Beginning to support booking module; training has started. Angela Wortham is in the process of getting started with booking. Bobby said MSU is getting started with it also. Keith said patron side of booking via Web is not being implemented yet.

Integration of ILL into the client has gone well. Julie has not heard anything negative about the integration from the ILL user group.

Currently working on how to export periodical holdings to OCLC local holding records. Mary Ann and PALs staff is meeting with MINITEX to start this process.

Taking a look at v. 19. Al went to ELUNA and reported back that in v. 19, reserves go into the client, and there is an improvement in services and staff permissions. U of M said v. 19 has been their best upgrade. Steve thinks we should upgrade to v. 19.

Steve went to sessions on URM(Universal Resource Manager, Aleph successor product). Primo will be part of URM, so will SFX. Inventory manager is the last piece they expect to develop. Looking at 2011 for a rollout. Ex Libris will still support Aleph and Voyager indefinitely.

Sent detailed proposal on maintenance agreement to Ex Libris. Waiting for a response. There is a new president of Ex Libris North America.

Open source ILS – not ready for “prime time.” Koha does not support MARC holdings, but consortium functionality is coming. WALDO is coming along, but going slowly. Steve thinks Evergreen is a better product for a consortium, but the WALDO people tell him that is not the case. Steve will have a conference call with the WALDO people. Evergreen has promised to support MARC holdings.

CUFTS project – will now support knowledge base at no cost. Has a link resolver that PALs will test.

PALS has brokered OCLC link manager for some consortium members; 10 have been setup, two are in the process. PALS also brokered WorldCat Local for some consortium members.

Ezproxy is ½ done (5 libraries done; 15 are set up and have to finish their end of the work.)

Formed a marketing committee, made a brochure about MnPALS Plus, there is interest from ODIN to install and deliver discovery tool; CLIC has asked about it as well. Going up to North Dakota conference, will have a boot there. Did site visits with Mary Ann in Moorhead on the way to NDLA.

Steve went to Iliad and ELUNA conferences; has been invited to MINITEX open source round table. MNLink looking for a future product, Steve volunteered for the RFP committee. Adam asked what is the final version of Aleph. Steve was not sure. Also re: LDAP procedure for authentication in Aleph – no progress to report.

Discovery Tool Task Force met last week. Adam presented draft charge. Will do usability testing. There have been problems with some of the indexing and retrieval. It is on Al’s to do list. Having problems with truncation; getting strange results from some searches. Adam asked : What does User Council need the DT task force to do? Do they need to rewrite the charge? What role do we want the DT task force to play? Bobby suggested this be brought up at User Group meeting at Reference Subsystem Group.

User Council decided that its November and February meetings will be via Web only.

Consolidated community and technical colleges are not being represented in steering committees. Ruth and Pete suggested doing steering committee elections differently, via e-mail or at a workday. The problem is, reference is the last meeting at User Group and they don’t get many people at the meeting. Discussion about lack of volunteering for steering committee elections. Discussed problem of technical colleges having libraries staffed with one person - can’t take time off to attend User Group. Also, small libraries staff don’t specialize; they tend to do a little bit of everything. Also difficult to get representation on task forces. Bobby asked if we could get someone representing small libraries who would just come to User Council and Exec. Committee meetings? Is the Web meeting a way to solve this? There is better attendance from small libraries at work days— discussed more emphasis on workdays – they have more practical value. Can we record workdays via Adobe Connect? Would people look at the recording? Is it worth all the work just to have a few people look at it? Decided to have elections at fall meeting.

Wednesday and Thursday, October 29 – 30, 2008 in Mankato. Conveners met via conference call to set schedule.

Discussion about the need for breakout sessions during User Group Meeting. Bobby suggested we make all user group subsystem meetings an hour – just to focus on business, and have the big discussions via the forum. Then there would be more time for breakout sessions. Suggested breakout session topics: Libdata, ERM, MDL, IR, MnPALS Plus & discovery tools, digital materials/ managing digital content, Subject oriented groups, course reserves/inventory, serials exchange discussion. Motion made to restructure User Group meetings to one hour subsystem group meetings( for business only) and added breakout sessions. Motion passes. We will keep the general session, but it will be shorter. This new format will begin with the October 29-30 meeting in Mankato. Adam stressed people need to read the task force reports themselves, so not to waste time doing this at subsystem group meetings.

Steering Committee elections – lack of technical/community college representation – this structure is no longer working.

MnPALS User Council: September 18, 2008

Draft Minutes

Agenda

MnPALS User Council:
September 18, 2008