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LMS Implementation Management Team
Meeting Minutes--December 2, 1999--10:30 AM
303 Olin Library
Present: Lynn Brown, Karen Calhoun, Susan Currie, Elaine Engst, Philip
Herold, Diane Hillmann, Susan Markowitz, Lynne Personius (chair), John
Saylor, Pat Schafer, Linda Westlake, Scott Wicks
1. Lynne Personius reported on the following items discussed at
the December 1 meeting of the Steering Committee (Ross Atkinson, Tom Hickerson,
Sarah Thomas):
Cut over schedule
The Steering Committee expressed concern about the amount of testing time
IMT built into the schedule and asked Ross Atkinson on its behalf to get
more information. According to Lynne, the Steering Committee's major worry
was the potential for building sizable backlogs in cataloging and acquisitions.
After some discussion, IMT decided to invite Ross to a special meeting
prior to the next Steering Committee meeting in two weeks. The sense of
most, if not all, of the group was that a full discussion with the whole
committee, representing managers from a wide range of functional and geographical
areas of CUL would persuade Ross, and subsequently the full Steering Committee,
that this schedule was justified and unmanageable backlogs would be avoided
with careful planning. This special meeting has since been scheduled for
December 13, at 3:30 p.m. in B59 Kroch Library.
Voyager 2000
Another topic discussed by the Steering Committee was the timing of CUL's
move to Voyager 2000. Lynne asked for IMT's views. After much discussion,
the strongest sentiment seemed to be for moving as quickly as possible
after coming up in 99.1. Lynne told the group that Endeavor planned to
try to keep its releases in sync with the academic year. Therefore, the
group reasoned that by moving quickly we would experience an especially
disruptive summer, but we would minimize the amount of disruption for
our users and staff over the course of the 2000/01 academic year. Furthermore,
we would already have a training team in place from the 99.1 installation
which could then move on to 2000. Karen Calhoun said that if Cornell decides
to follow this plan, we should minimize the number of customized reports
that we request for 99.1. Many of the changes in Voyager 2000 will impact
the technical services modules, especially acquisitions, and are positive.
Equipment
Lynne reported that the Steering Committee decided that Oliver Habicht,
the Director of Desktop Services in Library Information Technology, will
be responsible for recommending equipment for Voyager. IMT had many questions
regarding the process, the scope of Oliver's assignment and his plans.
After some discussion the group decided that the most practical approach
was to invite Oliver to its next scheduled meeting on December 16. Lynne
said that she would invite him. Diane Hillmann said that basic specifications
would eventually be posted on the CUL Voyager Implementation Site.
VUGM Attendance
The Steering Committee asked Lynne to ask other Voyager sites about their
approaches to VUGM attendance. In addition, Lynne said that she would
question Marlene Harris, CUL's Endeavor Project Manager. She asked IMT
for its views. The discussion focused on the benefits of full participation
in all areas. Early in the implementation process the benefits center
more on information gathering through interaction with representatives
from other Voyager sites. After implementation participation means more
opportunity to influence development and enhancements. Real participation
necessitates a budget to cover costs.
Reporting and OPAC Working Group Recommendations
The recommendation from the Reporting Working Group to have a strategy
of decentralization of report production was accepted by the Steering
Committee. In response to the OPAC/Gateway Configuration Working Group's
recommendation to use the WebVoyage and ASCII for the public access catalog,
the Steering Committee questioned the need for development of a text based
interface. Lynn Brown agreed to draft the rationale based on the recommendation
and send it to Ross for the Steering Committee's consideration. Key points
are that we need the text based interface to be ADA compliant and we will
be able to rely on it as a backup during slow periods and downtime. Karen
Calhoun also mentioned that many users have a preference for telnet access
to the catalog.
Miscellaneous
The Steering Committee also discussed the work of the various committees.
Lynne mentioned the announcement regarding the changes in George Kozak's
and Surinder Ghangas' responsibilities for the project. She said that
both would attend IMT meetings in the future. Finally, Lynne said that
the Steering Committee planned to meet more often in the future than they
had to this point.
2. Diane Hillmann reported that the data migration questionnaire for
the first test migration will be completed on schedule by Monday, December
6. She said that some special programming items were just about settled.
She said that there is a schedule for keeping the work on track for the
test and made a special mention of Jim LeBlanc's help. She also said that
plans are under development for the actual test and for getting feedback.
In regard to web sites, Diane said that Karen had offered to assign someone
to be responsible for posting technical documents for the staff that are
developed. Diane also said it is much easier for Deb to work from e-mail
minutes. Diane said that Deb would pick them up from cu-lib when they
are posted there.
In response to a question from Ed Weissman regarding the discussion on
voyager-l regarding MFHD's and copies, Diane said that at CUL every copy
would have a MFHD.
3. Susan Currie reported on the work of the Patron File Subcommittee
of the Voyager Access Services Working Group. She said that they were
planning a patron file migration in December so that they could see how
information migrates and what it will look like. She said that they are
also planning to test CUL's interfaces for the patron file.
4. Susan Markowitz discussed various training issues with the group.
In regard to training for the trainers, IMT recommended the first two
weeks of February. IMT also recommended that its 99.1 update training
be scheduled for Friday, February 11, the only day in those two weeks
when all members are likely to be available.
IMT agreed to select the people they will recommend as trainers at the
next meeting on December 16. A training subcommittee of Lynn, Diane and
Susan M. will prepare a training model by that meeting. Susan M. passed
out the names of the people who had been recommended so far. She said
that she believed Endeavor would permit us to send 20 people to the February
training in two groups of 10. Therefore, she said that we needed to supply
the names of more people.
Susan M. and Karen will meet separately to discuss issues related to training
for reports.
5. Ed reported that the OPAC customization training had been effective.
He said that the OPAC group was in good shape for making the necessary
decisions and doing the configuration work. He said that Tom Gale would
serve as the technical expert. He knows Unix. Ed also said that he thought
that it was unlikely that we would try to integrate the Gateway Networked
Resources into the catalog by June. However, he said that this was still
under discussion.
Other members of the OPAC group agreed that they came out of the training
prepared for the work ahead, but said that they were not impressed with
the training or the documentation for the configuration work. The OPAC
Group took charge of the final afternoon session to go screen by screen
with the trainer to itemize the decisions they would have to make and
the location of the files they would have to work with.
Finally, prompted by the mention of configuration files, Lynne suggested
that an issue for the future will be how CUL decides to manage accessing
and changing files. At that point Pat's pencil ran out of lead and Lynne
adjourned the meeting.
Minutes recorded by Pat Schafer
For information about the LMS implementation and meeting minutes for all
of the IMT working groups go to:
http://www.library.cornell.edu/iteam/
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