D&D minutes 12-10-09

November 12, 2009
Present: Peter, Dan, Shawn, Robin, Fran, Scott, Lyman, Elizabeth, Sibyl,
Donna

1. Linkresolver
Dean's Council is in favor of moving ahead on investigating a new link
resolver. Maybe when we update the new contract with ebsco we should
negotiate a shorter contract so that we're not locked in.

Expand the committee to investigate new link resolvers to include
Albert, because he best understands the options for separating the link
resolver vendor from the rest of our systems. We may also want a cataloger.

2. Hathi Trust
During the download some of the data went into odd fields. Lyman is
addressing this.
Records will always sort to the bottom because the items have no dates.
Several days to load, then several hours for keyword regeneration.
Lyman will load these records. We'll test Voyager afterward and see if
searches are badly mucked up or if there are any surprises.

3. Selecting a new OPAC
Check list of dealbreakers against list of Next Gen Library Catalogs to
make sure all the catalogs pass the dealbreaker test. Invite all the
companies to campus that have catalogs that pass.

What comes first, the linkresolver or the OPAC? Would a different group
be better at evaluating linkresolvers? Peter will check with Mara.

Complete the draft of the Criteria for evaluating completed and send to
all in library. Have an open forum to discuss. Discuss disagreements.
Record disagreements that remain after the open forum and bring to
Dean's Council.

We have some data from usability studies and from LibQual. We can also
look at data from other universities.

11-12-09 D&D meeting minutes

D&D November 12, 2009
Present: Peter, Dan, Shawn, Robin, Fran, Scott, Lyman, Elizabeth, Sibyl,
Donna

1. Criteria Next OPAC
We filled out a form to prioritize criteria for evaluating next gen OPACs.
We can pull out those criteria that the system must have and put them
together so that we can simply eliminate those systems that don't meet
the required curricula—show stoppers
Some things we will not be ranking but will need to gather the info:
e.g. cost and estimated staff time.

We will send out the criteria for feedback from others in the library
after the next revision. We should ask an open-ended question of our
coworkers for now.

Deal breakers:
In production
Supports indexing & importation of records in a variety of metadata formats
Ability to add new indices
Integrates with Voyager ILS
Known item searching
Reliability
Displays library holdings and circ status
Book jackets
Look inside the book
Icons to distinguish one type of material from another
Natural language searching
Spell checking
faceted browsing
create durable URLs
Automatically populate LRA request
Ability to place links in Blackboard
API
Highly customizable

Usability standards and visual appeal need to be added.

Will students ever use the OPAC, no matter how nice we make it?
Maybe we don't want to spend the most money on this system or spend the
most time on it.
OPAC needs to have more online content because most of our users are not
in the building.
Google is really bad at known item searching.

Donna

Re: D&D Minutes 10/29/09

Hi all,

I missed this meeting, as I had to take a kid to the doctor's office.

I just wanted to say how impressed I was with the Linksource
subcommittee's report. We've been talking about this for so long -- it
was really great to have some real data available, and it was really
well presented. Great job!

Selene

Donna O'Malley wrote:
> D&D October 29, 2009
> Present: Peter, Dan, Shawn, Robin, Fran, Scott, Lyman, Elizabeth, Donna
>
> 1. Criteria Next OPAC
> Should next OPAC be able to pull in CDI and Special Collections
> records along with Voyager records—yes, and it should look good doing
> it. Higher priority.
> Should the next OPAC be able to search external databases too?—yes,
> and look good doing it. Lower priority. How about CRL?
>
> 2. Hathi Trust (260,000 records)
> Catalogers' response raised concern about difficulties with leading
> articles in titles. Lyman said these could be fixed. Some issues with
> data being located in different fields than what we use, but we could
> move these if it's a problem for patrons.
> Amounts to a 17% increase in size of our database, with old material.
> If it turns out that these records drown out records to our original
> collection, we'll have to delete them. Loading will take time.
> Unloading will take time if we have to do it.
> Catalogers are concerned about degrading the indexes in Voyager, which
> may refer to authority control. It may be that the Hathi Trust
> records' date format will cause them to not sort properly.
> Next step is for Lyman to load 1000 records into Voyager and see how
> that works.
> We'll try it and at our next meeting we'll work on a survey.
>
> 3. LinkSource report
> Linksource fails to get to the article at all 20% of the time. 19% of
> the time you get to the A to Z list and can work your way to the
> article with effort. Our theory is that linksource's database has many
> variant titles for journals.
> Another problem is that we can't successfully prioritize the vendors.
> Linksource seems to override this ranking and pushes us to EJS.
> Identified problems:
> 1. Linksource fails (20%), perhaps because database is not clean.
> 2. Linksource sends you to the A to Z list (19%). This should never
> happen.
> 3. Linksource doesn't consistently accept our prioritizing of vendors,
> and often sends users to EJS instead of the publisher.
> 4. Linksource customer service has been unable to fix problems 2 and
> 3, and is sometimes slow to correct errors in their databases.
> 5. Linksource's intermediate page is difficult to customize and make
> attractive.
> 6. We'd like more functionality, for example, we'd like to turn on
> parts of Lexis/Nexis and turn of others.
>
> We can send the report on to the Dean's council with a cover letter
> from Peter.
>
> 4. Commenting in the OPAC
> Not used much at other locations

--
Selene Colburn
Asst. to Dean for External Relations
University of Vermont Libraries
Bailey-Howe Library
538 Main St.
Burlington, Vt. 05405
Phone: 802.656.9980
Fax: 802.656.4038
Email: selene.colburn@uvm.edu

D&D Minutes 10/29/09

D&D October 29, 2009
Present: Peter, Dan, Shawn, Robin, Scott, Lyman, Elizabeth, Donna

1. Criteria Next OPAC
Should next OPAC be able to pull in CDI and Special Collections records
along with Voyager records—yes, and it should look good doing it. Higher
priority.
Should the next OPAC be able to search external databases too?—yes, and
look good doing it. Lower priority. How about CRL?

2. Hathi Trust (260,000 records)
Catalogers' response raised concern about difficulties with leading
articles in titles. Lyman said these could be fixed. Some issues with
data being located in different fields than what we use, but we could
move these if it's a problem for patrons.
Amounts to a 17% increase in size of our database, with old material. If
it turns out that these records drown out records to our original
collection, we'll have to delete them. Loading will take time. Unloading
will take time if we have to do it.
Catalogers are concerned about degrading the indexes in Voyager, which
may refer to authority control. It may be that the Hathi Trust records'
date format will cause them to not sort properly.
Next step is for Lyman to load 1000 records into Voyager and see how
that works.
We'll try it and at our next meeting we'll work on a survey.

3. LinkSource report
Linksource fails to get to the article at all 20% of the time. 19% of
the time you get to the A to Z list and can work your way to the article
with effort. Our theory is that linksource's database has many variant
titles for journals.
Another problem is that we can't successfully prioritize the vendors.
Linksource seems to override this ranking and pushes us to EJS.
Identified problems:
1. Linksource fails (20%), perhaps because database is not clean.
2. Linksource sends you to the A to Z list (19%). This should never happen.
3. Linksource doesn't consistently accept our prioritizing of vendors,
and often sends users to EJS instead of the publisher.
4. Linksource customer service has been unable to fix problems 2 and 3,
and is sometimes slow to correct errors in their databases.
5. Linksource's intermediate page is difficult to customize and make
attractive.
6. We'd like more functionality, for example, we'd like to turn on parts
of Lexis/Nexis and turn of others.

We can send the report on to the Dean's council with a cover letter from
Peter.

4. Commenting in the OPAC
Not used much at other locations

Minutes 10/15/2009

Present: Laura Haines, Dan DeSanto, Robin Katz, Lyman Ross, Scott Schaffer, Shawn Biegen, Fran Delwiche, Selene Colburn, Peter Spitzform

• The Linksource subcommittee has finished; a report is forthcoming. Tina mentioned that an EBSCO rep had informed her that a new version of Linksource had been released, and is in use at UVM, with many alleged improvements.
  

• 260,000 HATHI truest records are now available and can be uploaded to Voyager. The records contain minimal cataloging. OCLC is working to create fuller cataloging for these records, but it's unclear what the status of the project is, or what the cost will be. Lyman will upload a sample batch of 100-200 records, and Peter will share these with cataloging librarians. D & D supports the project; we're interested in getting something added to the record, such as [electronic resource] or [electronic book], so that when it comes up as a duplicate in search results, the user will understand the difference in format.
• We looked briefly at some Vu Find implementations, then talked about the process for evaluating and recommending "next generation" solutions. Two subcommittees were formed: one will create a comprehensive list of possible solutions, reporting back in two weeks (Scott, Robin, Peter); a second will create a rubric/list of evaluative criteria (Lyman, Selene, and up to two others -- to be recruited by Peter), reporting back in four weeks.

10/1/09 D&D Minutes

D&D October 1, 2009
Present: Peter, Dan, Shawn, Robin, Laura, Fran, Scott, Daisy, Lyman,
Selene, Donna

1. Linksource sampling
Using the find by citation search feature: 75 citations tested by each
of the 4 testers
If success is defined as: Got to either the article, the issue, or at
least the journal with full citation: Scott found 77% worked. In his
opinion the majority of the problems were non-scholarly things (eg
newspapers) in Lexis-Nexis. Also some problem with Open Access. 40-50%
went to the article level.

Shawn was checking title search, title plus ISSN, full citation search.
Problems found: linksource linking back to the Title on the a to z page.
Lyman and Laura saw that too.

Lyman found that Lexis Nexis and Gale did not work very well.

Laura had 41% that were "successful" as defined above.

Lexis nexis may have improved more recently.

They will be meeting soon to aggregate their findings.

What are we going to compare these percentages against? Is this the
industry standard or could we do better with another vendor? Is there
anything in the literature?

Linksource does provide for a way to skip less reliable vendors, but
Shawn reports that this feature often doesn't work.

2. Relevancy Ranked Search
Why didn't we implement this? Let's take a look at this and see if we
can just provide it as an option in the production catalog?

3. Downloading Hathi Trust records
A lot of work. Is there enough interest in this to justify Lyman's time?

4. More info in stacks on what subjects the call numbers correspond to.
We like the idea. The signage project is currently in process. Maybe
this is a good time to pilot something? Maybe Trina can talk to Access
Services?

5. Next OPAC
Started reviewing desirable traits for our next OPAC
Icons to distinguish one type of material from another—we have a few,
we'll keep an eye out when we look at other systems to see if this is
handled better elsewhere for books, journals, and gov docs and
electronic resources.
Boston College Aleph catalog has a locate button with a map.
http://library.bc.edu
From the ASU library catalog you can click on a button and rerun the
search in the CRL catalog.
We'll continue this discussion next week.

--

Improving Library Catalogs

Chronicle of Higher Education
September 28, 2009
"After Losing Users in Catalogs, Libraries Find Better Search Software"
http://chronicle.com/article/After-Losing-Users-in/48588/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Donna

Google Scholar

Here's an article from C&RL with the conclusion that Google Scholar is in many ways a better database than traditional library databases.
Title: How Scholarly Is Google Scholar? A Comparison to Library Databases
Journal Name: College & Research Libraries
Source: College & Research Libraries v. 70 no. 3 (May 2009) p. 227-34

A blog post on the article.

D&D minutes 4/30/09

D&D April 30, 2009
Present: Peter, Dan, Shawn, Laura, Scott, Daisy, Lyman, Elizabeth, Donna

1. Proposal from Birdie on TSWG recommendation on merging Dana and BH duplicate bibliographic records in Voyager.
May have ILL implications.
May have implications for order records—bib records are attached to order records.
Is this really a question for D&D?
As far as patron discovery and delivery, this proposal sounds fine with us.
For those records for items that are online, we already have only one record. This proposal only affects records for print materials.
It would be nice if there was only one record for serials that are available in print and online.

2. Invite someone from CTL to D&D
Most of what we talk about (see item #1 above) wouldn’t be very interesting to them.
We’ll be sure to include them in issues where their input would be beneficial.

3. D&D Membership
Should we have rotating membership on D&D to keep the committee fresh and ideas percolating.
If people want to rotate off the committee, let Peter know and he will work with Mara, etc to find a replacement.
We miss Winona and would like someone from that world on this committee, maybe in the fall.

4. Linksource
Dan and Donna were looking at how well Linksource works. Other things came up, but that was the root of it.
Shawn doesn’t think that the reporting functions are much help in evaluating Linksource.
Shawn has been testing linksource over the last week. He’s been taking webinars and courses. A lot of our links aren’t functioning properly. Maybe because EBSCO isn’t updating the linksource links. e.g. change in ingenta link wasn’t updated, California Digital Library doesn’t have a link.
Lyman and Scott have been identifying things that aren’t working in Linksource. e.g. links to IEEE journals don’t seem to work. Lexis Nexis only gets you to the journal, but the stuff they get you to isn’t that helpful. DOAJ journals also only go to the journal level. Gale is also reputed to be difficult.
Sometimes Smartlinks don’t work.
Lyman and Scott will write up their findings over the summer.
Does EBSCO linksource have a declining user base? Are most libraries using SFX or Serials Solutions?

5. Handheld device
Next year’s class will have even more students using mobile devices. Systems needs a handheld to ensure that library databases are optimized for this format. Lyman will have Paul put through an order.

6. Icons in test catalog
See http://voyager.uvm.edu:8080
Peter will write a note to liber and danews announcing this change.

7. OCLC
Worldcat is now pulling item information from local catalogs. If you look at the University of Delaware Library you can see how it works http://www.lib.udel.edu/
Peter is getting this set up for UVM Libraries.

OCLC report, Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want

Selene and Peter pointed us to this Report.

Excerpt:
What do end users want?

• Direct links to online content—text and media formats
• Evaluative content, such as summaries/abstracts, tables of contents and excerpts
• Relevant search results
• Item availability information—if the item is available and how to get it
• Simple keyword search with an advanced, guided search option

Voyager Makeover

Now that the website has stabilized, it's time to start thinking about a voyager makeover. I've put together a potential design using the new colors and logos. This is not a finished product but a request for comments which I'm sending to the Webteam and D&D. I'm out next week but would like to get this project moving when I get back.
http://voyager.uvm.edu:8080/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?clim=1&DB=local&PAGE=hbSearch


Thanks,
Lyman

D&D minutes 4/2/09

Present: Peter, Dan, Shawn, Selene, Laura, Fran, Scott, Daisy, Lyman, Donna

1. Format icons in Voyager test
They look great. The icons are based on the bib formats in the marc record. Some things though don't really have an image: gov docs, dissertations, generic online stuff. Titles that have both are tricky. Gov docs could be the book image?
Movie, audio, score—add these now
Leave books and journals unmarked until later when maybe we can do some changes in voyager marc records.

Daisy will make some sample Text It and LRA request buttons that look more like each other and not so much like the format icons.

2. Shibboleth
InCommon lists vendors who allow logins through Shibboleth so our users could be authenticated that way instead of VPN or ezproxy. That way the users don't have to come through the library to be authenticated—which is good because so many of them don't go through the library anyway. More secure because people won't be trying to enter their UVM id into username and password boxes where it doesn't belong, revealing their credentials to any non-uvm computer that asks.

3. New website issues
Articles and more part of the new web site is a possible area for usability testing, based on feedback that Selene's gotten from the Comments box.
More tutorials need to be written.
Libguides should refer to databases by the same names that are used in the Articles and more list of databases (and in Voyager as well). And should point to the bib record.
Logos on web site and libguides are the same. Logos on A to Z and linksource are different. Also Voyager. They should all be the same.

4. New site and handheld devices.
Viewing our web site on a handheld could be done using the style guide, but Lyman has no way to test it. He should speak to Peter B. about having the Libraries purchase an iPod Touch so he can test our systems on a handheld device.

D&D blog URL: http://dduvm.blogspot.com

Shibboleth / InCommon

I discovered recently that UVM is a member of a group called InCommon which is working on a framework for managing user identities across institutions. They're using Shibboleth for authorization and access. The following vendors are either members or support InCommon: CSA, OCLC, Elsevier, Ebsco, JSTOR and Safari. There appears to be growing support for this from our e-resource vendors.

D&D Minutes 3/5/09

Minutes for D&D Meeting: 3/5/09
Peter, Selene, Scott, Dan, Fran, Laura, Lyman, and Daisy in attendance.

• Sean will be joining our group. He will begin taking responsibility for A-Z administration. Sean will begin attending our next scheduled D&D meeting.

• Shibboleth: There is still a question about how Shibboleth will work for authentication with our databases. Right now, Lyman knows that it will work with Science Direct.

• Both Scott and Peter voiced concerns that EJS Journals show an EBSCO link that should bring people to full-text but regularly does not. In these cases, full-text remains accessible through the publisher website. Peter will check in with Sean about this problem.

• The new website will roll out early next week. Updating URLs will be an ongoing process as problems are noticed. Comments will be solicited on the new site.

• Icons: Daisy presented new icons to be used in the catalog. She is still working on all of the icons needed, but all agreed that what she showed the group looked great.

• On the blog (below), Dan collected some sites that offer access to open-access journals. Most of the sites' listings will need to be checked for duplication with the open-access journals already in the catalog. Please look at the list below and comment on the packages presented. Please also add any other sites that offer open-access journals that could be considered for our catalog.

• Discussion took place regarding reassessment of our current catalog. Questions were raised about whether or not we should go forward with reassessing the choices for a new catalog or new catalog interface. There was general agreement that it would beneficial to look again at open-ware products like Vufind. People were asked to take a look at academic catalogs using Vufind for the next meeting.
  

Open Access Journals for the Catalog

I've done a very preliminary search of some open access journal collections. Here are some of the more promising collections:

DOAJ: http://www.doaj.org/
I believe this is the one Toni worked with the most. We have most of what's in here, but there is a good bit of content that we do not have in the catalog. I'd say every 8th or 9th title is missing. This makes me think it might be time to update the records or at least sort through to see what we're missing.

J-Stage: http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/browse/_journallist
This is a Japanese science and technology collection. We are lacking most of these titles. There is a lot of Japan-specific content, but also a lot of global research that would be useful to add.

University of Nevada Open Access Collection: http://www.knowledgecenter.unr.edu/ejournals/free.aspx
Again, we have many of these titles, but we could also glean the list to pull out titles we lack.

Electronic Journals Library: http://rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/index.phtml?bibid=AAAAA&colors=7&lang=en
Again, a bit heavy on the foreign-language content, but also gleanable.

CoAction Publishing: http://www.co-action.net/journals/Journals_index.php?%20sessid=02661871&user=346351&env=Firefox&item=no
Only six or so titles, but they look like good titles to add.

Hindawi Publishing: http://www.hindawi.com/journals/titles.html
Open access journals from this publisher. You need to click on the journal title and then on the "Table of Contents" tab.

Please continue to update this as we identify more collections.

Discovery & Delivery Council minutes; 2/19/09

Present: Peter, Donna, Laura, Fran, Dan, Lyman, Scott, Selene

1. General updates:

• Peter showed the note on social networking tools for books & film that Selene added to the Libraries’ Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/edit/?id=51124206465#/note.php?note_id=65070899950
• The Libraries now has a Goodreads account: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2045972-UVM-Libraries (we’ll add this as an application to the Facebook account)
• Peter reminded us about the blog, for now the primary audience is library colleagues.

2. Text it!

• Enthusiastic support for the new “text it” feature created by Lyman in the library catalog, which allows users to text title, call number, and location information to their cell phone.
• We discussed a proposal to change the link to read: “text a call number,” but decided in favor of the current simplicity.
• Peter will send a notice informing the Libraries of the change and then Lyman will make the change go live.

3. Linksource

• The Linksource evaluation subgroup hasn’t met yet.
• Scott reported on an incidence of the “full-text linking” (different from a full-text PDF) not working when Find it @ UVM does, in Sociological Abstracts (CSA). “Full-text linking” is misleading. Can we eliminate it? Scott will follow through with Tina & Karl.
• Dan went to the Linksource webinar, but had to leave before they got to the short section on reporting. He will follow up directly with the trainer to see if we can get more clarity on this.
• Find it @ UVM enabled in Google Scholar? Yes!
• Responsibility for A-Z/linksource administration remains unassigned, but should be resolved shortly.

4. Open access

• We will do some research to ensure that all major open access journal packages are in the library catalog; Dan volunteered to begin research on this.
• We will also work with liaisons to solicit key open access journals in specific disciplines that might not be represented at present. Peter will talk to Jeanene about this.

5. Shibboleth

• The campus has adopted Shibboleth, a central authentication system. Remote users who log into webmail or another affiliate resource will stay logged into the proxy server [did I get this right?]
• We may be able to make some databases (e.g Science Direct) work with this. Pro: Easier remote access; Con: Users might be confused by having to log into some databases and not others.
• We’ll talk more about this at the next meeting. A key question: how many/which databases would work with Shibboleth?

Examples of Social Networking Add-ons to Library Site

We have received suggestions from both inside and outside D&D that the library feature one or more book-centered social networking sites within our libraries' presence. Such sites allow users to read about books and discuss them with others. Our approach is to link to some of these sites via the UVM Libraries' Facebook page. We hope that you will explore one or more of these sites and let us know what you think.

One such site is called Goodreads, and it allows one to write reviews of books you're reading or have read, and engage in conversation with friends about them. One can also look at what others have said about books you're thinking of reading to get a sense if it's a book you might like.

Similarly, LibraryThing serves as a social networking site for books and their readers, allowing one to rate books, write reviews, read others' thoughts about books, etc. but it also serves as a tool to catalog one's own personal library.

Metacritic serves as a social networking site for films, DVDs, music, and television, and thus might appeal to the users who frequent our media holdings. Metacritic compiles published reviews from significant reviewing sources (New York Times, Salon, New York Daily News, etc.) in addition to allowing one to write reviews and read those of others.

Finally, within Facebook itself, Visual Bookshelf and weRead can be added to one's page to easily engage in interactive discussion about the books you're reading.

Please explore these tools and let us know if you find them useful.

D&D minutes 2/5/09

Present: Peter, Donna, Laura, Fran, Dan, Lyman, Scott

1. Ebsco Webinar
Still not sure who will be in charge of LinkSource.
Waiting for structural changes in tech services.

2. E-Books/Hathi trust
http://www/hathitrust.org
Hathi trust books don't have MARC records, making them more challenging to move into Voyager. Disposition to back burner.

3. Limit Voyager searches to last 30 days or last 60 days
http://library.uta.edu/
Guy working in at UT Arlington has a new book list that works off of Voyager and allows limiting by date. He has recreated the Voyager look and feel for this option.
Very nice, but not a high priority at the moment.

4. Link from New Books records to Goodreads
http://www.goodreads.com/
Others: http://metacritic.com, http://librarything.com
Content of goodreads is not for a general audience.
Maybe this is something for the Libraries Facebook page? Load the iRead or Visual Bookshelf application in the Libraries Facebook account.
Let's talk about this some more.

5. D&D Blog
We're posting minutes in the spirit of transparency with the intent of pushing the envelope in thinking about our patrons
Will put minutes on the blog. Minutes are aimed at Library employees

Interesting Catalog tidbits

Hi all, I thought I'd pass along these two open-access catalog initiatives I happened across... The first one is called "Scriblio." As I understand it, it uses a Wordpress-like OPAC face that allows you to do things like faceted searching. Here's the link: http://about.scriblio.net/ The example that best matches our own catalog needs is the Hong Kong University's Library for Science and Technology's "SmartCat": http://catalog.ust.hk/catalog/smartcat.php <http://catalog.ust.hk/catalog/smartcat.php> The second is the eXtensible Catalog project. http://www.extensiblecatalog.org/ <http://www.extensiblecatalog.org/> I don't believe this one is up and running yet, but I think it will roll out this summer. I just thought I'd send these out as interesting fodder as we talk about catalog options in the future...they're definitely worth poking around. dan