PROSPECTOR CATALOG/REFERENCE COMMITTEE

MARCH 18, 2004

 

PRESENT: Cynthia Wilson, George Machovec, Lois Jones, Florence Jones, Carol White, Janet Ryan, Wendy Baia, Joan Beam, Pam Blome, Mary Sacoman, Gwen Gregory, Terry Lewis, Mary Beth Chambers, Tova Aragon, Helen Reed, Barbara Allen.

 

  1. Minutes.  The minutes of the February 19, 2004 meeting were approved with the following corrections: Under 001 Matching, the third sentence was changed to read: Broomfield will adjust their load table and reload the records into their local system, stripping out the 001 prefix, and then resend them.  The fifth sentence should read: Also, some CSU [not UCCS] records had two 001’s, one with a GPO prefix and one without.  Under New Business, Banner, Cynthia Gregory was changed to Gwen Gregory. 

 

  1. Announcements.
    1. Endeavor sites.  Colorado School of Mines is close to starting its reload.  The expectation is that they will be live in Prospector sometime in April.  There are no substantial bugs left.  If all things go smoothly, the University of Wyoming hopes to begin its load by the end of summer. Right now Wyoming is merging the American Heritage Center database into their catalog, and the Law School, which previously wanted to remain separate, might also be reconsidering a merge.
    2. Center for Research Libraries.  The possibility of the Alliance joining CRL and loading their holdings into Prospector (approximately 750,000 MARC records) will be discussed at Member Council on March 19.  CRL has offered to fund $16,000 of the $24,000.00 needed to pay for the III loader fee.  Remaining III costs would be the $8000.00 difference plus an annual maintenance fee.  Voting members, CU-Boulder and DU-Penrose would incur no borrowing charges.  The other Alliance libraries would have the option to pay $110/loan, to set up a non-member deposit account and/or limit borrowing to specified patron types like faculty and graduate students, or to turn off the borrowing function in Prospector and turn to traditional ILL.  George asked the Committee for any technical and other issues that would need to be resolved with CRL:

1.       Are CRL volumes itemed and bar coded?  Yes, CRL is in the process now of iteming and bar coding all lendable pieces. 

2.       001 Field?  Do CRL records have any prefixes added to the 001 field? These will need to be removed before loading in Prospector.

3.       Currency of holdings? CRL records will be updated in real time to Inn-Reach sites.

4.       Lending fee negotiable?  The $110.00/loan fee that CRL charges for non-member sites is not negotiable and may be going up.

5.       Non-loanable titles in Prospector?  What will be the response of Prospector patrons at finding so many CRL records in the Prospector database that they can’t actually borrow (unless they go through the lengthier traditional ILL route)?

6.       What about other code mapping issues?  Specifically, will there be conflicts in status codes, Itype, Bcodes, circ status codes, location codes and display, consistent loan periods? All will need to be worked out before CRL records could be loaded into Prospector.

7.       What will be the impact on Prospector’s lost book table?  What does CRL charge?

8.       What will be the impact on ILL – more work for local ILL departments?

9.       What will this cost Prospector libraries?  Alliance members will likely pick up the $8000.00 loader charge.    

10.    Collection strength?  CRL has very unique historical collections, strong in international materials and foreign languages.  See CRL.edu for analysis.

11.    Patron authentication? Prospector patron authentication will allow users through to borrow or not.  The status may say “Available” if the user can borrow the CRL title, or something like “Please see ILL” if the user needs to go through his ILL department.  This already is happening with the web links on Prospector.

12.     Circulation status code?  Could another circ status code be added to indicate something like “available upon special request.”  This would likely be an INN-Reach enhancement request.

    1. New Server.  The Alliance Sun server is not yet installed – but soon. 
    2. Web Redesign Task Force.  The Task Force will meet March 29 at DU.  It will report any recommendations and suggestions to this Committee before implementing any changes.  The plan is to set up a testpac for committee members to view.
    3. New Programming Project.  Starting Monday March 15, Alliance staff put in place a new code setting up multiple pipes (i.e., IP ports) for Denver Public Library borrowing.  The goal is to show updated and correct item status for DPL records within 5 minutes of check out and reduce the backlog that currently exists. 

 

  1. New Business
    1. PASCAL.  PASCAL is a branch location in each PASCAL member library.  What controls the hold priority table for PASCAL items in Prospector is the load table of individual Prospector institutions.  Prospector has no control over branch level prioritizing, only institution level. The branches cascade in alphabetical order.   The loan period or charge for a lost PASCAL monograph is no different than any other Prospector loan.   There is a different check-out period, one week, and a higher replacement fee, $400.00, for bound journals only.  George will follow up with the Circ/Document Delivery Committee to re-evaluate this policy.
    2. Material type Mapping. Lots of questions remain: Do we want to institute mat type mapping to limit searches in Prospector? Do we think it will work and how? Is the lack of precision enough to make it worthwhile doing? Can non-III libraries even be included, and what if DPL, CSM, or UWyo is the master record?  George handed out a spreadsheet of BCode2 values prepared by III.  He asked committee members to review the values listed for their libraries, and bring suggestions to the April meeting.  Are the values correct? Can/should Column B names be relabeled? Can any be thrown out? Will a keyword search limited in a local catalog pass through to be limited in Prospector?  Committee members should seek input from their public services colleagues, and report at the April meeting.     
    3. GoldRush ISSNs.  Florence Jones/Auraria reported that any 022 subfields other than |a do not appear to be working in the link resolver part of Gold Rush.  Other e-journal management systems like Serials Solutions or SFX may handle this issue differently. Some use the current ISSN and some use an earlier ISSN.  CSU made it work by making all ISSNs |a’s.  GoldRush is neutral.  What does the open URL standard say? Did libraries index all ISSN subfields in III?  Prospector is only indexing |a.  This issue requires more research and discussion.  The Committee proposed using the regularly scheduled May meeting to discuss link resolver problems and to invite additional library staff members who are dealing with these issues locally.  Florence Jones tentatively agreed to host the meeting at Auraria – May 20 in the afternoon, from 1-3:30 pm.  
    4. Alexander Street Press.  Gwen Gregory asked if anyone else is loading the full-text Alexander Street Press MARC record sets.
    5. University of Colorado/Colorado Springs Server. Mary Beth Chambers reported that UCCS will be installing a new III server next Tuesday (March 23) and expecting to be down most of that day.

 

  1. Old Business
    1. Inn-Reach.  George has submitted the list of Prospector enhancement requests.  The national list of all Inn-Reach enhancements should be distributed shortly, and discussed at the national IUG meeting in April.  Committee members should post their comments or ideas to the listserv so that they may be discussed by the Committee before the IUG meeting.  Florence Jones and Gwen Gregory, who will be attending as Prospector representatives, need Committee feedback.    
    2. Net Library. George passed out a list of titles he received from David Wagner at Net Library. These were from the first quarterly group loaded in fall 2002. Because of contractual problems these titles should not have been offered to consortia, and are no longer available for purchase although they remain in the catalog.  In order to remove them each of the Net Library libraries will need to purge them from their local catalogs.  Once the last library has removed them locally, they should automatically disappear from Prospector.  Libraries may either need to delete each record one by one, or somehow reload the records from this list and then delete them based on a unique cat date or some other unique field.  George is still waiting for a new quarterly update from Net Library. Wendy Baia/CU-B reported on a discrepancy from that first quarterly load. Her figures show that 2588 records were loaded, and 2355 were removed, leaving 233 records missing.  No explanation was apparent, but George was positive that the Net Library cluster had really only purchased 697 titles from that first load.