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December 6, 2000
The CUL Holiday Party will be held Dec 18, from 2-4 PM. Supervisors should allow anyone who wants to attend. If staffing is tight, the CUL office will coordinate assistance. LMT has declined to provide entertainment this year. (This announcement followed by hearty applause.)
E-reserves were originally deferred when Voyager was brought up. The current plan is to start in spring '01. However, very little information is available on how to implement it. Uris & Mann will bring the module up to some extent in spring 01. Ross stressed that this is not a Uris-Mann project...it's a CUL effort which will require the participation of all the Circulation units. We will compare e-reserves to existing systems and Courseinfo to make sure it's the most effective system prior to implementing it system-wide.
"Ubiquitous returns" refers to the ability of users to return materials to any library. This service is planned to start Feb 1st (avoiding the beginning of the semester deluge). It may require some adjustments of equipment and staff over time and may slow down recalls. Shipping will now go to every library every day, which may effect the shipping cost to individual libraries. The service will not include reserve items.
Fines will be adjusted so that they will be credited to owning rather than returning units. The problem occurs in the 10% of overdue items where money comes in with the item. For lost book fines in this category (mostly endowed) the cost to track the money outweighs the total amount that would be collected.
John Dean expressed concern about condition of books given the inadequacy of book drops in outlying areas. Ross responded that we need to examine this issue to make sure that smaller units near dorms are not deluged. Some outlying libraries will deliberately not have outside bookdrops to force patrons to return items to the desk, which should protect them from abuse.
Lenore Coral is concerned that all libraries make sure that books with separate parts will be counted accurately. Ross agreed that some retraining of Circulation staffs may be necessary.
Sarah Thomas sees this service as important to meeting customer needs and suggests that we will deal with problems as they arise. She anticipates that this service will increase the productivity of our customers.
A question was raised about an advertising campaign, including the suggestion that we call the service something other than Ubiquitous Returns. Send suggestions for alternate names to Ross, and he'll get a publicity proposal to Beth Fontana.
CUL will change its public photocopy vendor to Eastern Copy Services the week of January 2nd. All libraries will participate except Mann, Entomology, and Geneva. The primary contact persons will meet with the new onsite manager before the Christmas break. Konika equipment will be installed on a one for one replacement, including ten digital copiers at high volume sites. Revenue sharing of $.01 per copy will go to endowed units. Because of the decline in revenue over the last 3 years, we cannot count on revenue over the long haul. Sharon will work with individuals to ensure that the sizes of machines are acceptable. New XCP Vendacard equipment will be installed. Eastern will allow Icon cards to be used for 90 days. After that time, patrons can go to office in Clark Hall and exchange the amount remaining for same amount on a new card. After the 90 day period the ECP cards will be used campus wide.
Susan Markowitz announced that the job review committee will be looking at generic job descriptions in the coming months. Managers will be asked to submit updated job descriptions for all jobs with Library job titles. Subcommittees will look at all job fields and compare them for equity across all libraries. They then will compare them with campus-wide jobs at the same band. This is a long-term project.
There have been a few instances lately where pay reps have not been monitoring leave balances correctly. Susan asks that we please keep an eye on balances, and make sure that leaves are not allowed to go into negative balances.
Susan asks that we encourage employees to use direct deposit so that they can be paid in a timely manner during long vacation periods.
John Hoffman announced that lattés are coming to Olin Library. A change in the first floor of Olin Library designed to make it a more vibrant space will begin Friday. The Café will be completed by the 1st day of classes. Unbound periodicals are moving downstairs next to the compact shelving. The Café vendor will be Cornell dining. The ETC is to move in January - February, and there will be a reduction of the card catalog case. These moves (along with the shifting of other spaces) will provide space for more computers and study areas. This will allow for distributed learning and scholarly communication services. Sarah also suggested that CUL might develop a service to seek copyright permissions.
Lynn Personius went over the plans for Voyager 2000 implementation. Her notes are attached to this document [below]. However, she inadvertently left out the plans for the Acquisitions module. Acquisitions will be very different in this release and is still the most difficult. Endeavor is releasing a patch and will allow us to have an early look at it and test it against our database. If it works they'll include it in our installation.
Sarah Thomas reported on LMT's attempt to develop a vision of the near-term future. They met with consultant Francis Pandolfi in September, and found that it was difficult to get their hands on a uniform University Vision.
Various information-gathering techniques are being used to help develop the CUL Master plan:
The LMT will develop outlines of a Master Plan based on the information gathered. Then we will need to answer the questions: What does it cost ? Can we reallocate funds? Can we get new money? Should we charge for services?
We are going ahead with architectural planning now. Some of these plans may need to change as the Master Plan takes shape.
If Cornell begins another big financial campaign, the Library Master Plan will be very helpful. It will include mundane (but expensive) issues like HVAC and wiring as well as the more innovative, exciting programs. Sarah will present the Plan to the Presidents Council in February. Susan Markowitz suggested a "Town Meeting" format to communicate the plan to the entire library staff.
Sarah will summarize and post the focus group results without divulging individual confidentiality.
Respectfully submitted,
Jean Poland
Associate University Librarian
Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences
293 Clark Hall
Council of Librarians
Client Distribution, MS Access, Hardware:
Reports:
December 6, 2000
Voyager 2000 Installation Status
Installation Schedule:
Endeavor takes system December 27, 2000 for up to 3 days.
OPAC to be available during the install except for short periods.
Test Server - Voyager 2000 is loaded on the test server.
Desktop Services is preparing for the upgrade possibly using the Salsa functionality, available through Bear Access, to deliver both the new clients and also to coordinate all updates in the future including those to tag tables and database files.
Wait to hear further information because testing is underway to determine what will need to change and when. Ultimately, we will move to Access 2000.
Library systems is investigating to determine what needs to be done. Some work may need to be done to reapply our local customizations that have been made to reports, and then to redistribute them.
Training:
The Blue room is scheduled for the 13th
OPAC:
Most configuration is complete; the splash screen and search screens are nearly ready. Most effort is being focused now on the help screens. IRPC gave input on highlighted changes at their last meeting. The telnet OPAC has remained basically unchanged. The patron log-in fix that Bill Kehoe wrote will not work in the telnet OPAC because it uses Javascript. CJK records remain to be tested.
Pubic Relations:
Suzy, Beth Fontana and Ed Weissman will be continuing as the public relations committee. They're planning on creating a poster for the libraries, putting an article in the Chronicle and updating the message box on the Gateway.
Image Server:
Image server will be used to implement e-reserve in Uris and Mann at the beginning of the spring semester. Other units will be part of this effort, in that they will learn from it what procedures and equipment they will need for their e-reserve operations. We will aim for other units to be ready for e-reserve by the start of the summer semester.
Annex Interface:
The new Annex computer is installed and running new software from GFA. The two vendors are busy working with each other on the system, and we will begin testing the new interface next week.
Circulation:
Have about two pages worth of things that are being tested in the new client. Joanne, Deb, Howard and Carmen are working on training. Bibliographic configuration for reserve needs to be included
Fund Accounting:
Want to test daily accounting reports with Library Systems. There is also a new accounting field in the Acquisitions screen that will need to be populated when we return.
Cataloging:
Testing of simultaneous searching in staff module is mostly complete. The left-anchored searching gets disabled but the key word searching works ok. We will be able to search CU and LC records simultaneously. Marty Kurth is busily working through the tag tables and will deliver the new folder to Amy for testing when complete. There's a web page in progress that will identify the changes in Voyager 2000.
Acquisitions:
The acquisitions module in Voyager 2000, as it was in Voyager 99, is the most problematic of all. CUL sent three acquisitions staff Jean Pajerek, Julie Stiles and Scott Wicks -- to a training class at Endeavor the week before Thanksgiving. Testing of the system has begun here, and problems have emerged. Scott Wicks, Bill Kara, and Lynne Personius discussed this with Jim Miesse, head of Customer Services at Endeavor, earlier this week. Endeavor will be releasing a "patch" for Voyager 2000 that is expected to help with the major acquisitions problems. It will be made available to us to evaluate by the end of this week.
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