06/25/2008
DEDCC Meeting Minutes
Wednesday, June 25, 2008 at Five Colleges
Attendees: Janet Ewing (chair), Marilyn Billings (recorder),
Rebecca Henning, Anne C. Moore, David Podboy, Mary Stettner
FCLC update – none (Chris was unable to attend)
Committee membership / housekeeping
Next meeting – changed from July 21 to July 22, 9-10:30 so that new member Emily Alling can attend. Anne will also be able to attend that meeting. Janet will communicate with Emily about this schedule change.
Next chair – David Podboy has agreed to take this on. He and Janet will discuss this in more detail, with transition probably in September.
Annual report – Janet will make the changes recommended by DEDCC and forward to FCLC, copying DEDCC.
NextGen discussion
Update from Anne – BLC is going to pursue a contract with WorldCat Local (WCL) for its virtual catalog to request book materials. Non-returnables process will continue to use RAPID. The Request Item using WCL would be one of the choices available to our patrons, possibly one of the SFX options. Amherst College is now a BLC member so both UMass and Amherst College will be using WCL.
The group discussed whether this news had implication or added complication to our study. Feedback from session attendees indicates that a major concern with WCL is that it only retrieves materials in OCLC; additional feedback on the poor presentation. We agreed that we should recommend what we think is best, noting the BLC WCL information. Further discussion included going over the Aquabrowser quote and the elements included, several of which we most likely don’t need, to get cost down. Janet will talk with Chris to get clarification on next steps for this part of the process. We also agreed that we need to have additional conversation with folks who’ve implemented Aquabrowser and add their expertise to our information gathering. Marilyn will contact Jeff to get contact information.
RIO’s feedback is that we need to actively pursue doing something as soon as possible while they are still concerned that we don’t have sufficient information to determine whether either product will work well with the Five College ALEPH configuration.
Janet will write up a “Where we are now” document for the directors. Brainstorm session about thoughts to include in the document:
• Take examples from the sessions feedback summary that David prepared, and the NextGen “major improvements needed now” criteria list
• We recognize that ALEPH is not intended to provide this type of functionality.
• NextGen catalog interfaces have been very popular at the institutions where they have been implemented and, if we proceed, it would show that we’ve listened to our users.
• We recognize that the NextGen step is an intermediary one, hopefully a relatively low cost one, and we should promote it that way.
• RIO has expressed the danger of waiting is that we are losing people. Even providing relevancy ranking would be a wonderful boon and go miles for our users. Looking back at our criteria, the major improvement items are critical. (David will add the additional items brought forward today to the list on our wiki.)
• We need to put in writing that when we started exploring this topic, then doing the program, that we mentioned why this is important to do.
• Put forward the criteria list in a holistic manner to say that we need these features.
• It will be a short 1 page document, adding NextGen criteria list, feedback from sessions, and RIO’s report as attachments.
Next meeting: July 22, 9-10:30, Five Colleges
