Prospector Document Delivery Committee

Minutes of the July 16, 2003 Meeting

 

Present:  Brice Austin, Lorrie Butler, Clark Driese, Jim Farmer, Carol Gyger, Evelyn Jamerino, Susan Kauffman, Kristen Kokx, George Machovec, Christina Martinez, Franca Rosen, Nancy Sensel, Mary Sponsel, Sarah Vaughn, Kathy Zipp

Via Conference Call:  Jan Tankersley, Shelley Walchuk

 

Conference call attendees were connected and introductions made.

 

1.  The minutes from the April 16 meeting were approved.

 

2.  News from George Machovec:

Regis will be going live on III on December 15, 2003.  There may be some difficulties relating to Prospector with the migration of their records from Carl to III, due to circulation information attached to Carl records.  More information will be available as the change draws nearer.

 

There is still a problem with the item loader for Endeavor libraries.  As a result, all of the bibliographic records from Colorado School of Mines have been loaded, but most don’t have item records.

 

The CARL tandem was moved to Denver Public Library in May.  The CARL circulation system for Denver Public was moved to DPL during the week of July 7th, which caused a brief period of downtime.

 

Mesa State has started loading records, and will start testing Prospector circulation with Fort Lewis once all the records have been loaded.

 

Alliance staff finished the programming that enables CARL sites to produce their own Long Overdue reports for the reconciliation process.

 

Advanced Searching has been ordered for Prospector, though no date is set yet for implementation.  This will involve a reindexing of the Prospector system, so George will let everyone know when the change will be made.  The cost for AVS will be included in each institution’s next bill for Prospector maintenance.

 

George has met with members of the PLUS system to consider an idea to merge PLUS libraries into Prospector.  The discussions are in a preliminary stage.

 

DU Law Library is moving, and currently off line.  The library closed on July 17th and will reopen on August 11th.  During the closure, DU Law items can still be sent as normal via the courier.

 

3.  Past Topics

The group discussed ideas for dealing with lost and paid or billed items that have already gone through the reconciliation process.  No one has found an easy procedure to address these items.  The enhancement requests relating to these items were not included on the enhancement request list that came out of the Innovative Users’ Group meeting in April.  Jim Farmer will contact members of other Inn-Reach systems to find out how their groups deal with these records.

 

There may be new hold parameters available which can stop Prospector holds on items due too far in the future, due too far in the past, or that have too many holds already.  Christina Martinez will send more thorough information to the group and possibilities will be discussed at the next committee meeting.  Clarification was also given that we do not have the function turned on that stops a renewal if there is a hold on the item. 

 

CSU has suggested that Returned Too Long items no longer be included in the reconciliation process.  These items were problematic for the reconciliation process last year because they were sometimes duplicates of items on other lists, and required a lot of research.  The group decided to include RTL items in this year’s reconciliation, then evaluate the process for future years.

 

4.  Enhancements:

Those items that Prospector supported but were voted down at the IUG were reviewed.  For a complete list of the approved enhancement requests, go to:  http://mco.mobius.missouri.edu/~mcogh/ir/

 

5.  Reconciliation:

For items that are damaged or lost on the courier, the group agreed to change the best practice to recommend that the owning library file a claim with the courier.  Jim will change Best Practice 10, and any other relevant items, to reflect this recommendation.  The group also agreed that the borrowing library can still circulate a damaged item with the owning library’s approval.

 

Differences between system-generated Long Overdue lists and review files created by committee members were discussed.  The differences were due to the “@” symbol’s location in the item records, and did not indicate a system problem.

 

Reconciliation packets were handed in by those who had them ready.  Others should send them to Jim via the courier as soon as possible.

 

6.  Round Robin & Best Practices:

A question was raised about whether committee members look at the Requested Too Long reports.  The answer varied depending on the size and philosophy of the library.  Denver Public noted that their system does not allow holds on any items, so a DPL item on a Requested Too Long list is definitely a problem item.

 

Fort Collins Public Library is still experiencing problems with requests from Denver Public Library, and with hold cancellation notices.  Other libraries were asked to test (and report to III if appropriate) whether the system generates a hold cancellation notice when the hold is cancelled from the patron’s account. 

 

7.  Next Meeting:

Denver Public volunteered to host the next committee meeting at the new Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library, at 24th and Welton.  Directions will be provided via the listserv. 

Dates for upcoming meetings:  August 20th, September 24th, October 15th, November 19th.

 

Meeting adjourned.

 

Minutes submitted by Sarah Vaughn, UNC.