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PUBLIC SERVICES FORUM

10 May 1999

RWA Notes

1. Databases. Yoram Szekely, Chair of the Database Review Committee, explained that the function of the Committee is to review on a continuous basis the (now ca. 75) centrally funded databases. At budget time, which we are now entering, the Committee will also recommend additions and deletions. The databases now available are those that were agreed to by collection development and public services over the past two years. Yoram urged public services staff to look at the central databases, which are listed at: www.library.cornell.edu/elecres/DRTF/519.html . If anyone wants to recommend additions for next year, these can be made to one of the selection teams--or to Suzie Palmer or Suzanne Cohen, who are the public services representatives on the Committee. I asked about Academic Universe, the price for which will be increasing next year by 11.5% (to ca. $25,000). There was a strong sense on the part of the group that we need to resubscribe.
2. Student Records. Joel Zumoff reported that the University is planning to bring up the new PeopleSoft student system in January 2000, although everyone agrees that this target date is very ambitious. As part of this process, all students will be receiving a new ID number, which is equivalent to the Empl-ID of faculty and staff. In the current system, there are two files run concurrently--one for the spring semester, and one for the fall semester. In the new system, there will be only one central file, which will identify all active students. Joel urged that the Library stay intimately involved in the discussions about who qualifies as an active student--because this is something that has caused us considerable difficulty in the current system. This would be an excellent opportunity for the University to come to some unified decisions as to which students are or are not active. Susan Currie and others noted that, if the January 2000 target appears to be in the realm of possibility, then we will need to do some work to prepare ourselves and our users for this change.
3. Annex. Pat Schafer explained that we are now approximately half way through the Annex moving project: over 500,000 items have been transferred. A large number of archival boxes have also been moved from the old Annex to the new one, because the climate control in the new Annex is much superior. There are only two libraries with materials still to be moved as part of the moving project--Engineering and Olin. Plans are to finish Engineering's move by 12 June. Both Engineering and Olin are providing smaller sized volumes, and these can fit on the shelves on the old Annex. RMC will be undertaking a reboxing project this summer: they plan to replace some 10,000 Corning boxes with Hollinger boxes. The Annex will also be accepting some 1,000 boxes from the Kheel Center on a temporary (three year) basis. In January 2000, Mann expects to begin transferring some 220,000 items to the Annex, where they will remain for five years. This material will be included in the inventory control system, and will be shelved in call number order--because there is every expectation that these will be medium to high use items. Contingency funding was available to purchase a second, much-needed fork lift. The ongoing operating funding for the Annex has been identified. A third staff member is being hired at the Annex, and shipping has been increased by .5 FTE. Circulation is increasing: in March, 1,175 items were circulated from the Annex, compared to 791 items one year ago. Surinder, Pat said, has devised a way to provide read-only access to the inventory control system; any staff who need such access for their work should contact Susan Currie.
   Access Steering has been working on a recommendation for a document delivery process for Annex materials. Susan explained that there are two broad options:
   • sending the item in some way directly to the user, and
   • sending the item (by Ariel) to the appropriate ILL unit on campus.
     
   Rick Lightbody and Adam Smith have been working with Access Steering on this. If this process is put into effect, the Web form for Annex materials will be changed to include requests for electronic document delivery. Access Steering intends to test this new Web form during the summer. Anyone knowing of faculty or graduate students who might be interested in participating in this test should contact Susan. Howard noted that hardly any users are going to the circulation desk any longer to request materials from the Annex. Almost everyone is using the Web form, and feedback from users on the form is very positive. Marty Schlabach added that delivery time for materials from the Annex is excellent.
4. Music Library Move. Lenore Coral reported that the Mathematics Library will begin its move to Malott as soon as the examination period is over. On 1 June, Music will begin moving all of its books, folio scores, and opera scores temporarily to Olin; Music rare materials will be temporarily transferred to RMC. Beginning on 7 June, all other materials, as well as furniture and staff will move to White; the expectation is that this move to White should be completed by 16 June. Music plans to move back to Lincoln in July 2000. In response to a request by Nancy, Lenore said that she would provide all of the details of this move in a message to CU-LIB. Marty noted that the library map on the Gateway will be changed as of 1 June to reflect all of these moves.
5. SHARES Meeting. Julie Copenhagen reported on the regional RLG SHARES meeting that was held at Syracuse on 21 April. The primary purpose of the meeting was to introduce the RLG ILL Manager system (previously known as the ILL Workstation). This is a system intended to remove much of the paperwork in ILL. Several such systems, including ILLiad, are now commercially available. A few of them work with OCLC, but none have so far worked with RLIN. Now RLG's ILL Manager is available, which does work well with RLIN--but not yet with OCLC. Dennis Massie at the SHARES meeting said that RLG plans to have the work completed by the end of this summer for ILL Manager to interact with OCLC. Julie noted that the ILL Manager is, in her opinion, much less flexible than ILLiad. Also ILL Manager provides users with the capability to bypass RLG or OCLC and go directly to the lending ILL unit. For us, this would mean that we would need to provide such users with separate invoices, rather than relying on the OCLC and RLG billing systems--which would cause us a great deal of work, and would be in effect a step backward from what we have now. Julie reported on other issues raised at the meeting, including international ILL. Despite much searching, it appears that RLG has not been able to locate an international shipper who would provide us with reduced rates. The only answer, Julie said, will probably be that prices charged RLG international members will need to be considerably more than the $7 now charged domestic members, in order to cover shipping costs. The preferred lenders program was also discussed, which is a kind of automated white list that allows ILL units to set up strings of lenders they prefer. Julie said that this is intended to remove as much of the thinking from ILL borrowing decisions as possible, so that, for example, more student assistants can be used. In general, Julie said, we have always found that a bit more thinking gets the right item to the right user much more rapidly than relying on automatic systems. Finally, Julie reported, the EDD project was discussed at the SHARES meeting, which will allow document delivery to the user via a Web page. This is very similar to services now provided by ILLiad.
6. ILLiad. Howard gave a short history of our work with ILLiad. They came to CUL and provided a demonstration in October. There was an OCLC interface at that time, but none for RLIN. Julie Copenhagen and with Cynthia Golos have since been advising ILLiad on this--and the RLIN interface was received last week. All of the CUL ILL units will now work together to test it. The next steps will be to work on the contract with ILLiad (this is being funded by an internal grant) and to establish an implementation task force. There are many advantages to ILLiad, but it will above all allow us to move closer to our goal of a paperless operation. The Web form will need to be adjusted, and Access Steering will be bringing this issue to IRPC for input. Users will be able to track their requests on the Web. The software is now on a server at Mann; Adam Smith and Rick Lightbody are collaborating on the technical support. * Nancy wondered whether we could not put something on the Web form to alert users to the possibility that an item they are requesting may already be held by CUL; such a notification of some kind might be advisable, Nancy said, since such requests for ILL are now no longer being submitted to the reference department. Susan said we would raise this issue when we discuss the Web form with IRPC. Howard noted that this concern is somewhat related to the increasingly controversial question of the extent to which user requests should--or should not--be mediated.

We deferred the discussion on change management to the next meeting.

Minutes recorded by Ross Atkinson.

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Rev. 5/11/99, mc