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Library Management System Evaluation Committee

LMS Meeting Notes, 2/10/97

I. Administrative matters

• a recorder of the minutes will be chosen at the outset of each meeting by a drawing of names
• Bill Turner will set up a listserv by which the Committee can share and
• distribute information
• the regular meeting time (Monday, 1:30 - 2:30) and location (Kroch 2B49) have been reserved for this committee through June 1997
• the confidentiality surrounding comments we receive from colleagues at other institutions should be preserved
• as Sarah Thomas noted at the last Academic Assembly meetintg, the June 1998 target date for acquiring a new LMS is not fixed
• the requirements lists compiled by the Committee's functional sub-committees should be completed by the end of March 1997
• on-campus vendor demonstrations will begin in April

II. Work in Progress
Plan for ALA vendor meetings:

• Lynne P. will be able to attend all vendor meetings but one (III)
• Lynne asked for suggestions on what information to get from vendors at ALA. The responses were: customer lists, references, development schedules, and a list of accomplishments during the last year.
• our existing RFI will need to be updated.

It was agreed that at this point in the process there was no compelling reason to eliminate any vendor from consideration. Even possible technical limitations (e.g., the size of the database vs. the system's capacity to handle large amounts of data) may be hard to discern on the basis of hearsay since different institutions will define and allocate their resources differently. The SMG-appointed Steering Committee will consider the vendors' financial viability, so that factor need not be a major concern of this committee.

Functional review groups:

• The functional review groups will be chaired/moderated by LMS Committee members as follows:
• Access Services - Susan Currie, Howard Raskin
• Archiving - Elaine Engst
• Acquisitions - Scott Wicks
• Cataloging - Diane Hillmann, Jim LeBlanc
• CIT Operations/Project 2000 - Mike Garcia, Nancy Vanorman
• Collection Development - David Block
• Digital Library/Preservation - Anne Kenney
• Fund Accounting - Linda Westlake
• Reference/OPAC - Fred Muratori, Zsuzsa Koltay
• Technical Specifications - Bill Turner, Tim Lynch

In some instances, the services of existing Library committees will be recruited (e.g., Working Group on Cataloging, CD Exec). Membership of the functional review groups should represent as many units of the Library as possible.

Preparing Requirements:
Some functional groups (Access Services, Acquisitions, Archiving, Cataloging) have already begun drafting or have largely completed their requirements.

Lynne posed the question: Is it possible that no system will provide the functionality we already have with NOTIS? The consensus of the committee seems to be yes. Bill pointed out that over the years, in the absence of NOTIS-designed solutions, NOTIS libraries themselves have created and shared a number of programs and fixes. The system has improved thanks to these independent efforts.

Diane suggested that our questions to vendors be constructed in ways that require substantive, descriptive answers (e.g., "How would your system handle a situation in which...?") rather than a simple yes, no, or "we're working on it." Vendors should be able to elaborate.

Espionage:
Lynne and Diane passed out information gleaned from contacts at other institutions. We learned that DRA installations at two institutions have been delayed, that many problems with SIRSI are being reported, and that Endeavor has trouble with authority records, displaying diacritics, and data transfer with RLIN. Big libraries report "scaling issues," where there may be conflicts between the structure of the data/record (MARC and related records) and the structure of the system. NOTIS's ability to easily integrate item records, order records, and bibliographic records was adduced as an example of the two structures working well together.

Lynne asked each member of the Committe to answer the question, "Why do we want to replace NOTIS?" from his or her functional perspective and post the response to the listserv.

There will be no meeting on February 17th due to ALA Midwinter. The next meeting will be held on Monday, February 24th, from 1:30-2:30 p.m. in Kroch 2B49.

Fred Muratori, recorder

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rev. 3/31/97 dih