Prospector Catalog/Reference
Committee
October 9, 2003
Present: Barbara Allen, Wendy Baia, Pam Blome, Mary Beth Chambers, Gwen Gregory, Florence Jones, Lois Jones, George Machovec, Carol White, Cynthia Wilson.
Minutes of the September 18, 2003 meeting were approved.
SSL is not a problem in Phase III. Innovative set it up so that implementation of SSL is optional site by site. For it to work properly, both the local and central sites must install Phase III and activate SSL. Sunday, October 19 is the tentative date for George to load Phase III.
The Voyager test server is now installed at the Alliance offices and is running. For the moment, III has “unplugged” the live Voyager system in Prospector, and the test machine is plugged in. On the first try, the effort to connect the circulation functions did not work right. Innovative is looking into the problem. Patron authentication, lending, and borrowing will all be retested. George proposes tagging 10 or 20 items from the Mines database to show as available for testing purposes. Then, a couple of other Prospector sites will be asked to test borrow the items. Each step of the entire process must be tested to ensure the Endeavor coding is correct.
Loading of the University of Wyoming bib records will not occur until after this testing is done. Once the circ testing has been done, the live Voyager system will be plugged back in, and the circ transactions for the gap period from the test date forward will be run. This brought up a discussion of diacritics and precedence tables for master records. George suggested we may want to start reviewing the precedence tables on an annual basis.
George distributed statistics on NetLibrary purchases through August 2003. He also distributed a cost distribution analysis. In addition, he passed out collection and usage reports of the most popular NetLibrary titles. The next batch of MARC records is available. Member Council needs more time to determine which libraries are going to participate, and the Alliance will go on a month-to-month arrangement with NetLibrary until the new contract is signed. The directors are leaning toward leaving the older records in the database for now.
At the recent Alliance conference, the topic of coordinating collection development of print and electronic versions of works among the Prospector/Alliance members was discussed.
It was proposed that we should have NetLibrary test providing a list of purchased titles for at least the first batch purchased so we can test removing the records for unpurchased titles. George suggested that we would need to limit that discussion to the NetLibrary participants after they have had time to discuss with their consituents. First, we need to find out what libraries are planning to participate in NetLibrary. If more libraries pull out, the remaining participants may need to limit financial exposure, at which point the idea of pulling out unpurchased records becomes a higher priority as one of the easiest ways to reduce financial exposure.
George will start making firm plans for implementation. The implied “and” was approved. George will distribute a final copy of the indexing changes requested for implementation of AVS.
Member Council/Directors meeting
George distributed the proposal and timeline for the PLUS/Prospector merger that was distributed at the Directors meeting. With one reservation, the proposal to add PLUS libraries to Prospector was approved by the Directors.
The purchase of a new server was approved.
The Directors asked that the Document Delivery Committee prepare three options for handling lost book reconciliations. In addition, the proposal was made to create a public library borrowing cluster at the top of the precedence table (with the exception of DPL) so that requests would go to the public libraries before going to the academics.
Wording of “no local holdings” has been changed to “copy information unavailable.”
Wording of “click on the following to:” is not in the WWWoptions file. George called the Help Desk at III and is waiting to find out if the wording can be changed. If not, we will submit an enhancement request.
New Business
Books 24x7 does not work if frames are turned on. The topic of whether or not to turn off frames will be turned over to the web redesign task force.
This title is either an overlay problem or an URL problem. Wendy will do more research into the problem.
CSU loaded these records coded as a system resource. They mismatched against print records for the same titles because the ISBNs were the same. CSU is working on untangling the problem and has changed the bcode3 to “-“ instead of “g” so that the holdings for the print versions will now display.
Next meeting: November 20, 2003. 12:30-3:30 pm. Alliance Offices, 1st floor conference room.