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8 September 1997
RWA Notes.
1. Schedule. PSPC will continue to meet on the second Monday of each month. I will always try to get the agenda on CU-LIB by the preceding Wednesday, so that discussion at the unit level, if needed, will be possible before the meeting.
2. New Staff. Lynn Brown introduced Brendan Wyly, who is a new reference librarian in JGSM. Kathy Chiang introduced Nan Hyland, who is a new public services staff member in Mann.
3. Bear Access. Lydia has made the changes we agreed upon at the last meeting to kiosk Bear Access. I have, however, neglected to pass on the information needed to ask CIT whether they could make the key changes to standard Bear Access (adding buttons for Indexes and Abstracts-WWW and Indexes and Abstracts-Telnet) sooner rather than later. Those changes will be made in any case at the fall break in October, but we were hoping that CIT might be persuaded to make these changes earlier. I am trying to follow up on this now.
4. ISI/UMI. The Web version of the ISI citation databases, 1992-98, has been purchased. We should receive the URL and other implementation information very soon. We are beginning with only fifteen ports (and we need to bear in mind that Cornell Med will also be using this). I asked that Ed or I be informed, if we experience serious contention. Given what we are paying for this, we should not shy away from adding a few more ports, if we need them. Marty wondered how well tended the ISI ports are: are we certain that we will have such access that fifteen people can use this service at the same time? Later in the meeting, Kathy Chiang said Mann would test this by having fifteen staff log on simultaneously. -- As for UMI, our salesperson left the company without telling us-which slowed down our negotiations somewhat. But we are now back on track, and expect to have the UMI full text versions of Periodical Abstracts (ASCII only) and ABI-Inform (ASCII and images) available very soon. We will need some testing in the production mode, to ensure that it works. We will not have Navigator access to ABI-Inform, at least for the time being, but we will have Web and Telnet access. Eventually, when it is possible to move ABI to Mann's Z39.50 server, we should be able to provide Navigator access.
We talked about whether to bring up these ISI and UMI databases as soon as we get them, or whether we should leave them unlinked for a while, so that staff can learn a bit more about how to use them. We agreed that we should not make these publicly available for a week after we have them, to give reference and instruction staff some time to work with them. I will be sure everyone is aware of when that week begins. Marty wondered whether we might provide individual access to users who really need it now, by providing them with the URL. No one had any objection to this.
5. Navigator Progress. Fred said he is making slow but reasonable progress adding databases to the Navigator. Some of the databases have special difficulties, so he has done the mapping for them, but has not yet added them. The main problems seem to be in the index screen displays. Each database is different. The hook to holdings is not working in ERIC, for example, because the ISSN is in an unusual place in the record. Fred has sent a list of all of the problems to OCLC; they seem to be having some staff turnover at the moment, so they have not been as response as we might have wished. Fred said he hopes to have Agricola, Biosis and Readers Guide up by the end of the week, although that may be too ambitious a goal. He has divided the navigator into five categories, which are basically a collapsed version of the captions suggested by Karen at our last meeting: (a) arts and humanities, (b) business, economics and law, (c) general interest, (d) science and technology, (e) social sciences. All of the databases are also listed alphabetically by title.
Fred asked whether he should try to add databases to the Navigator that do not have a hook to holdings-since the hook to holdings is now being seen as the main value of the Navigator. Kathy agreed that the long-term purpose of the Navigator should be understood as the hook to holdings, and Michael said we are calling the databases on the Navigator "linked indexes" to emphasize this. The general sense was, therefore, that Fred should limit the databases on the Navigator to those that provide a hook to holdings.
6. Sytek. Susan Currie explained that CIT has decided to try finally to eliminate the remaining Sytek lines. CIT no longer has replacement parts for Sytek, and very few CIT staff (only one, at this point) know how to repair Sytek. There are nineteen such lines, connected to circulation printers throughout the system. These printers are essential for circulation operations. Joel and Susan attended a meeting with CIT last week to discuss this. The decision was made at that meeting to begin testing printers that could effectively use Ethernet. Susan will send a note to the circulation list with the details. CIT understands the importance of these printers, and of the need to ensure that the replacement printers work as well or better than the ones we have now.
7. Library Gateway Steering Committee. I reported that Ed is chairing the group that will coordinate the creation of the Library Gateway for next semester. This group includes Tim Lynch, Tom Hickerson, Joel Zumoff, Paul Constantine, Karen Calhoun, and Zsuzsa Koltay. The group is working on a timetable, and is aiming to have the Library Gateway in production by 2 January. Zsuzsa is chairing the public services design committee, and Karen is chairing the technical services indexing committee. Care will be taken to ensure that this effort is fully coordinated with all affected Library operations. The link between Zsuzsa's group and IRPC is especially critical.
8. ULMT/LTD Priorities. I reported on the University Library Management Team meeting last month. One function of the ULMT is to set priorities for LTD. I distributed a copy of Joel's list of open projects: if there are any items on this list that can be dropped as unnecessary, or that are considered to be of extreme importance, please let me know. The projects, upon which LTD is currently working, are (a) programming to record the movement of books to the library Annex, (b) reference database reconfiguration, and (c) OCLC Repeat Search. Following completion of these projects, LTD will be working on (a) the Annex inventory control system, and (b) programming needed to load the microform analytics that were purchased last year with special funding from Day Hall. Lance asked about the timetable for loading NOTIS 6.4. Joel said the intention is to implement this in January-although there will be admittedly many other pressures on LTD at that time. There was a clear sense among the group that 6.4 is important for a variety of reasons, and should be loaded.
9. Humanities Symposia. Paul announced that CIT, the Graduate School, and the Library are sponsoring a series of symposia on research in the humanities during the coming year. The speakers will be mainly (but not exclusively) Cornell faculty, and the audience will be Cornell faculty and graduate students.
10. IRPC. Lance reported on the work IRPC did during the summer with the Database Review Task Force, and he noted that Susan Barnes has asked reference staff for input on IRPC-L to be used on publicity for the new databases. The next meeting of IRPC will be in two weeks, on 22 September, 8:30-10:00. One of the issues that will be discussed at that meeting is the so-called vocabulary question: we now have a variety of ways to provide networked access to the same databases, and we need to agree on the terms we will use to distinguish those methods of access clearly for the user. The terms we use among ourselves are mostly jargon, brand names and nicknames that would have little meaning for our users. Lance said that Tony's Web page (note the nickname) now contains some 99 databases-i.e., all of the indexes and abstracts we have selected that are Web accessible; Lance asked that he or Tony be informed of any databases that might have been overlooked. A description has been written that shows how to use the four main modes of access we now provide (Mann Library Gateway WWW, Abstracts and Indexes WWW, Abstracts and Indexes linked to the Catalog, and Abstracts and Indexes Telnet). Copies of this handout can be ordered from Andrea Barnett in Olin 201, or it can simply be downloaded from the "Access to Networked Indexes and Abstracts" page (www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/inabhand.html). Lance concluded by saying that one goal for this fall may be to hold a workshop on teaching techniques; IRPC will work with Susan Markowitz on this.
11. Access Services. Carmen said that ASPC will be meeting in two weeks. The group is looking forward to two reports from subcommittees, one on billing standardization, and one on reserve standardization. A tentative agenda for the year will be set.
Susan Currie said that the group which originally had met to implement NOTIS 6.2 (Susan, Carmen, Deb Lamb-Deans, and Howard Raskin) had discontinued its work, on the assumption that a new LMS would be soon forthcoming. The group will now reconstitute itself, and do a study which will identify the main access services issues that need to be addressed in the near future.
12. Structure. I made some brief remarks on a possible working or matrix structure, based on the division between "delivery services" and "mediation services," as an alternative or supplement to the traditional division of public services, technical services, and collection development.
13. Web Page. We talked about which databases should be on the ("Tony's") Web page. In general, the sense seemed to be that we should put all bibliographic databases on it, as we have been trying to do-but that, since this is work only for this semester (we will switch to the Library Gateway in January), we should not devote large amounts of time to getting this just right. Paul made the point that Tony has other responsibilities besides this Web page, and the Library should not expect Tony alone to be its sole creator and owner. Michael said it would be helpful to have some indication of the type of interface that each title on the page provides-but we agreed that discussion of this would best be deferred until the advent of the Library Gateway. I think we agreed that a subject breakdown similar to, or the same as, the one Fred is using for the Navigator might be helpful. That will be discussed at the next IRPC meeting. Jill made a strong plea to arrange the index terms, so that the alphabetical list is still easily available. That alphabetical list is especially helpful to users (and staff) who already know which database they want to access.
14. CISER. Are we making good use of CISER? Most reference desks are referring users to CISER, although, as Lynn noted, CISER is probably referring many more users to Library reference desks. CISER is seen as providing special assistance, mainly to graduates and faculty, who want to do in-depth research on social science numeric data. Marty said that Mann refers students to CISER, but only after bringing the students as far along as possible with their project. Fred said that there is often good communication between CISER and Olin reference on specific questions. There was some sense that reference staff would profit by some better understanding of CISER services and holdings. Kathy said that there may be a need to develop a kind of service that falls between the regular reference service and the advanced, individual service now provided by CISER. I will follow up on this with Ann Gray.
The next PSPC meeting will be on 13 October.
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rev. 9/15/97 dih