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LMS Meeting Notes, 4/14/97
No review was made of previous minutes.
Sarah Thomas introduced herself to us and started right in with her message:
1. We need to slow down the selection process which is not to say that we want to relegate this task to any back burner, but only that a June '97 selection date is not realistic for a number of reasons (on which Sarah elaborated later on--see below.)
2. Sarah admitted she regretted that the process had advanced at such a rapid pace. After securing funding for the Offsite Storage Facility in December 1996, she felt it was time to begin looking at replacing the current LMS. Catherine informed her that our group existed and, with a few added bodies, thus began the 1997 work of our Evaluation Committee. Our hard work, for which she wished to express her thanks, brought the selection process farther along than Sarah intended because:
We also need a longer lead time for those who are not directly involved in the selection process. We need to meet with all staff to give them an overview of the process and why it is happening in order to bring them along in the process.
In addition, we need to ensure that our choices fit as closely as possible with the future goals of CIT. We want to ensure coordination of our efforts.
Sarah want to involve the new AUL for Library Information Technologies in the process. This newly created position will be responsible for coordinating all of the various Library's digital initiatives. Sarah sees this position as having a close relationship with CIT to facilitate a coordinated effort between the two units. Sarah feels it imperative that this individual be involved in the LMS selection process.
Sarah opened the floor to questions/concerns/admonitions.
Diane, Bill, Susan, and Fred stated at various points that with a delayed schedule for a NOTIS replacement and given the current state of NOTIS, we MUST come up with a plan to support our flailing system and work actively on fixing many of the more aggregious bugs. By active support, they meant $$$ and staff. We MUST NOT limp along until we move to a replacement system. They expressed how the Library appears to the typical user--student and faculty. When something doesn't work, the Library looks bad. We imagagined some faculty senate meetings where Library funding was an issue... Some faculty have actually been yelling in staff faces to express the level of their dissatisfaction.
We expressed that it is important to determine the cost of maintaining the current system. Such costs include: lost staff productivity from a limping system, the need to upgrade CICS if we linger with mainframe NOTIS more than an additional year (our current version of CICS is not supported by IBM), the need to install what may well be a very "buggy" release, NOTIS 6.4, and the loss of Library credibility with our customer base.
Sarah explored our expressed need for a June implementation. Her main concern was that should we make a selection decision in November (hypothetically), we would find ourselves in no position to make the move by June of 1998, yet we would not likely want to wait until June of 1999 either given all that we have said about the current state of NOTIS. We expressed that June was really anytime from May 15th (after final exams) until well into July. Our main concern is that we have enough time to implement a system which will withstand common usage, that we have a viable system to introduce at a logical point in the academic year, the beginning of fall semester. From a public relations point-of-view, we run the risk of wrath by introducing any substantial changes in the midst of an academic term.
Sarah asked what we could do this year to keep NOTIS going. Susan said she had a list several pages long of current functional problems which need to be addressed if we plan to continue along with NOTIS. Sarah asked Lynne to forward this list to her and asked Susan if she would emphasize which of these fixes was most important. Diane mentioned that there is some amount of corruption occurring in the database which we are expending serious staff time trying to resolve. No one knows if this is corruption which is caused by the upgrade to version 6.3 or if there are other factors at work.
Lynne pointed out that NOTIS is not really under our control--that we depend on Ameritech for their ever shrinking support. Bill said that we should not expect anyone from Ameritech to fix the 6.2 and 6.3 problems as Ameritech does not have the staff to do this work. Unfortunately, neither does Cornell. We also observed that we can't depend on other NOTIS users to help with the bug fixes as most are using different versions of the software.
We talked a bit more about the process to get more Library staff involved in the vendor selection initiative, to ensure we all buy into the idea of the merit for switching systems. The distinction is that while we want total staff involvement in the review process, we don't want to create a situation where everyone plays an active role in the evaluation process, rather, we wish to leave the evaluation to a more manageable number of people.
We discussed a tentative timetable for the selection process. Sarah postulated that one scenario could have us select a system in November of 1997 with full implementation sometime in the spring of 1999 (if we're able to consider an implementation schedule which would not include waiting until a June.) Again, she wants the new AUL hired and in place before the new LMS is selected. She hopes, with great optimism, that we could have someone on-board by September.
Jim asked for some clarification as to when in the process we want the AUL involved. Do we wait until this person is hired before proceeding with a review of other systems? Yes and no. No, we shouldn't wait until this person is involved before we ask other vendors to display their wares, but yes, we wait for the AUL before we make the final selection. We could, perhaps, plan to have other vendors come to Cornell in September and October.
What should the Evaluation Committee do in the meantime (before the AUL is hired)? This may be the subject for our next meeting.
Recorder: Scott Wicks
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rev. 5/9/97 dih