Minutes

Prospector Document Delivery Committee

March 15, 2000

 

Present:  Jim Farmer, Brice Austin, Anne Harmon, Lynn Taylor, Carole Hirschfield, Franca Rosen, Nancy Sensel, Chris Martinez, George Machovec, Kathy Zipp. Via conference call:  Donna Arment, Jan Tankersley, Enid Teeter.

 

1.                    George and Geri set up the conference call to Fort Lewis and U. Wyoming.

2.                    George gave the Prospector overview and update including a discussion on statistics (latest stats are printed in Datalink).  Kathy asked that we consider load balancing.  This was deferred to later in the meeting.

3.                    George reported on CARL integration.  New programmer begins April 1 to work on the Circulation interface piece.  Volume testing bombed due to indexing failures, so III is testing on a separate loader so that the volume loading problem can be isolated.

4.                    Ann Rakes wants to visit our committee—this will happen on Thursday, April 20 at 10:00.  The April 5 meeting is cancelled. 

5.                    Enhancements.  George noted that enhancements go to the INN-Reach listserve and are de-duped.  George will post both the Doc Delivery Committee’s list as well as the Catalog/Reference list simultaneously.   Jim read through the group’s list from last meeting.  Three new items were added to the already-established 1999 list:  1) ability to move unfilled requests to the OCLC ILL subsystem or other document delivery suppliers, 2) enhancement for paging slips to indicate whether an email address exists for the patron, and 3) allow the system to be configured to permit independent control over whether Prospector requests are turned into local document delivery requests.

6.                    Known bugs in Release 2000.  Group reviewed the list of known INN-Reach related bugs in Release 2000. 

7.                    Recent experiences.  Group discussed recent experiences on the system.  There was interest in discussing load balancing and the water damaged books process.  Anne noted a problem with JeffCo and Colo. Springs books—the book comes and requires the barcode to be added.  This is done but then at checkout it says the barcode does not exist.  George recommends formally writing a helpdesk report to III.  Fort Lewis had the experience of receiving a video from JeffCo, inserting the barcode, and then having the virtual records disappear.  Again, a helpdesk call is recommended if this repeats.  JeffCo talked about the Return Too Long report and how a workaround of marking the item as missing removes it from the RTL report.  This helps with titles showing up over and over each time the report is printed.

8.                    Best practices.  Group confirmed that Chris’s recommendation from last meeting is a good one.  We will start printing generic ˝ sheets without our library logo so that other libraries can recycle them on their shipments.

9.                    Group prioritized the to do list into three categories:  Category 1 is high priority, Category 2 is middle priority and Category 3 is lowest priority.

Category 1 items:                      Monitor new releases of software

                                                Recommend enhancements each year

Plan for end of year reconciliation

                                                Maintain a checklist of procedures for new sites

                                                Maintain a list of best practices

                                                Damaged books lost on courier

Category 2 items:                      Integration of non-III sites (will become category 1 when ready)

                                                Consider reducing the 55 day central loan once everyone is on Rls 2000

Category 3 items:                      Consider adding renewals

                                                Consider adding new loan rules for alternative media

10.                 New issues.  Jim will formulate a recommendation for items which have accompanying materials (e.g. CD-ROM’s) and are barcoded separately.  Jim reviewed Claims Returns and discussed examples.  Items damaged in transit led to a new best practice recommendation.  Jim will add to the best practice list and group will review next meeting.  Unclear messaging for holds was an issue brought forth and George noted it is a bug and will be fixed when the central site migrates to Release 2000.

11.                 Load Balancing.  Jim reviewed a workflow calculation approach that CSU uses for statistics.  After an active discussion, it was decided not to alter the load balancing at this time. 

12.                 Annual Prospector Users Group.  Jim noted that staff who do the day-to-day processing of items would benefit by talking to others who do the same thing at other sites.  An annual, summer user group type get-together might help in the sharing of ideas and discussion of common problems. 

13.                 Next meeting (April 20) plan:  Meet with Ann Rakes, review Best Practices and other recommendations.  Continue discussion on higher priority items. 

14.                 Note: Central will migrate to Release 2000 on Friday, April 21.  This time needs to be confirmed with Innovative Interfaces and an email will be sent to the Alliance and Prospector listservs when an exact date and time has been confirmed.  This will require approx. 2 hours of downtime.

 

Meeting adjourned.

 

Minutes submitted by Jim Farmer.  March 23, 2000