OPAC/Gateway Configuration Team
Notes from the January 3, 2000 meeting

Attending: Lynn Brown, Karen Calhoun, Elaine Engst,Tom Gale, Philip Herold, Fred Muratori, Pat Schafer, Ed Weissman

1) IRPC Meeting on January 24
The Team discussed what we'd like to accomplish at the IRPC meeting on January 24. We'll focus on getting feedback on the design aspects of WebVoyage (i.e., look and feel) rather than the guts (i.e., how searches are configured, help text.) We'll go over the January 24 meeting objectives in detail at our January 19 meeting.

2) Introductory Screen
Fred presented the Introductory Catalog screen he designed. We asked Fred to make the following changes:

Add a "Requests" button to make the function buttons consistent with the search screen.
Change the banner from a hotlink to plain text.
Remove the text under the banner.
Remove all text related to limiting searches. Information about limiting searches will be on the search screen.
Change the text "The Card Catalog is still ..." to a shorter statement "Check the card catalog in Olin Library for items in the humanities and social sciences published before 1974 ..."
Make the hot links at the bottom of the page match the "buttons" at the top of the page.
Remove the border around the table.

3) Search page
We reviewed the buttons at the top of the search page. We thought we could eliminate the "Exit" button but realized that selecting this function clears patron information, search limits, and other session preferences set up on specific work stations. We agreed to rename the button "Start over." We will have to encourage WebVoyage users at public work stations to click this button when they finish their sessions and when they begin new sessions in case the previous patron did not click "Start over" when they concluded their session.
The "Database" button opens a page with a pull-down menu listing Z39.50 databases and other Voyager catalogs. The value of the "Database" functionality is that it allows connectivity and hook-to-holdings and the simultaneous searching of the databases listed. The problem is that the interface does not allow us to organize and present these databases in an effective way. We now offer twenty Z39.50 database through the Navigator . Ed will check on whether this simplistic WebVoyage interface will be improved in release 99.1.
Lynn and Elaine agreed to draft text for the search hints for each of the search options (i.e., Heading (author/title/subject...), Ranked keyword, Advanced keyword, Guided search).

4) Heading (i.e, author/title/subject ...) search
We discussed whether to include the option of searching by Publication date and agreed that this would be a good issue to raise at the January 24 IRPC meeting.

5) Record displays
The generic WebVoyage has a brief (referred to as "Bibliographic") and a long (referred to as "Holdings") record display as well as a MARC display. Karen and Fred will come up with recommendations with regard to these displays.

6) Integration of Library Gateway Networked Resources Catalog into Voyager
Philip distributed a draft recommendation regarding Gateway Catalog/Voyager integration. We'll review this by e-mail and present the recommendation to the Implementation Management Team at the IMT's next meeting.

7) Next Meetings
Wednesday, January 12, 8:30-10:30 am in the Mann Library Conference Room
Wednesday, January 19, 3:00-5:00 pm in 106 Olin Library