Libraries: DEDCC : Meeting Notes

Meeting Notes > 2008 Minutes

07/22/2008
Meeting Notes

DEDCC Meeting Minutes
July 22, 2008, 9:00-10:30 am, Five Colleges

Present: Emily Alling, Rachel Beckwith, Marilyn Billings, Janet Ewing (chair), Rebecca Henning, Chris Loring, David Podboy, and Mary Stettner (recorder).
Absent: Anne C. Moore

Committee membership/housekeeping
• Farewell to Anne, hello to Emily – Anne was unable to attend the meeting due to transportation/packing issues. We wish her luck (in absentia) at the University of South Dakota :-) Emily was introduced to everyone and welcomed into the committee. She will be taking over Anne’s role as DEDCC liaison to the FC Archives Committee.
• Schedule next meeting – Tuesday, September, 23 at 3:30pm, tentatively at Five Colleges (Janet will check space availability).

FCLC update from Chris
• Latest thinking on nextgen – During their July 7th meeting, the FCLC briefly discussed next steps for DEDCC’s exploration of Next Gen catalogs. The biggest issue is that there’s no money to implement one right now because no one budgeted for it (and they didn’t have the time to pursue in depth discussion of whether or not the money could be found). There’s still the sense that a next gen catalog would be desirable but also a reluctance to spend a lot of systems and design time on it, certainly nothing on par with the lengthy Aleph implementation experience. Further investigation would be helpful at this point, especially talking to other sites already using Aquabrowser in order to get a clearer picture of the extent of work involved in implementation. Some questions suggest by Chris: Which staff members are needed? What type of tuning is involved (e.g., if you want to look at algorithm and relevancy ranking, can you just take what another institution has done or will you find yourself doing more work because of the realities of your local system)? How much can be out of the box? Is there a level of installation that could be good enough to begin with but still be further modified as necessary on the fly? Another thought: should we try to get some feedback from our users about such Aquabrowser features as the word cloud and my discoveries to find out if they think these are at all useful?
• Still outstanding questions concerning DEDCC’s proceeding with investigation of a possible next gen catalog for the Five Colleges: FCLC concern that, without a federated search tool, a product like Aquabrowser helps fix the OPAC but doesn’t go beyond the OPAC. Still no clear answer on how BLC’s choice of WorldCat Local impacts further investigation of Aquabrowser by Five College libraries since both UMass and Amherst are in BCL.

NextGen discussion
• Followup strategy
o Develop a list of questions we’d like answered about Aquabrowser – Primarily these revolve around the human resources and amount of work involved in the implementation process. Janet will come up with an initial list and email to group for any additions.
o Identify and contact some institutions currently using Aquabrowser then run our list of questions by them – Marilyn will ask Jeff (Aquabrowser rep) to ask for names of contacts at other insitutions (some possibilities include OSU, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Skidmore, Colby) using the catalog and set up conference call times. David will join Marilyn in conference calls. If possible would like to get some information back to FCLC before their September 8th meeting.
o If it turns out that implementing Aquabrowser does not look like it would take an undesirable amount of time/work, then go forward with negotiating the price – Take a closer look at Aquabrowser options (like MyDiscoveries, library web site crawler, federated search integration) to see if paring these might lower the quote. Also our Five College consortial catalog presents a testbed implementation situation Aquabrowser hasn’t tackled yet.
o Connecting techie people to carefully explore – Wait till we gather more implementation info first.
o Other – Rebecca offered to share pertinent ngc4lib (Next Generation Catalogs for Libraries) list serve emails with group since we’re not all on that list. Also offered to send url for Jennifer Bowen article on extensible Catalog (XC) project, a next gen catalog still under development but worth keeping an eye on for the future.

Brainstorm for future projects/programs
• Brief consideration of Horizon Report and/or other topics of possible interest for Fall – Discussed web collaboration tools (e.g., Google docs, Ning, Sakai) since these may be of ready interest in Five Colleges where we have so many people working together across institutions. Marilyn and Rachel also expressed interest in data mashups possibly for a program further out in time. Rebecca also mentioned the Google Book Search API, a topic that might lend itself to an exploration of “what more can we do with what we have.”
• Fall brown bag – It was decided to do a Fall brown bag featuring reports from people who have attended recent conferences. Tentative date is set for Thursday, October 2nd with the idea that the ELUNA conference could be the highlight. Everyone will check on own campuses to confirm that that date seems to work for most people then report back to the group. Assuming it’s fine, we’ll each send a save the date message to our own campuses possible followed up by message to fclib list.
• Marilyn also suggested gathering a list of Five College library staff and the conferences they’ve recently attended to facilitate finding possible presenters for brown bag. The idea of possibly making that list available on the web to facilitate conversation among staff with similar concerns was also mentioned (though we’d need to check to make sure no one has privacy issues). Since it might be difficult to discover conference attendance information ourselves, it was decided to try creating a web form and emailing the fclib list asking people to share their conference attendance information themselves. Mary volunteered to set up the form using Google Docs and will set up a DEDCC gmail account for this purpose. David volunteered to email the fclib-l list.
• Other ideas: Keep looking at lists to see if anyone outside is doing anything interesting we might like to invite them to present or do a brief workshop on (if we can get the funds). Also keep an eye out for local innovators (e.g., Nick Baker at Williams who has done some interesting work with video). Emily mentioned the idea of doing something on the Library Camp unconference model. This would be a little bigger and could touch on multiple topics, but we have lots of good library minds in the area and there’s potential for good participation.

Wrap up
• action items & communications
o Janet will start a list of Aquabrowser questions to send to the group for additions
o Marilyn will get in touch with Aquabrowser rep to get a list of names of people at other institutions using the catalog and schedule conference calls in which David will also participate
o Everyone will check with their own campuses to confirm that October 2nd is a viable date for a conference update brown bag
o Mary will create a web form for gathering conference attendance information from Five College librarians. David will email the fclib-l list once the form is ready.

Next meeting – Tuesday, September, 23 at 3:30pm at Five Colleges.


	Meeting Notes > 2008 Minutes 07/22/2008 Meeting Notes DEDCC Meeting Minutes July 22, 2008, 9:00-10:30 am, Five Colleges Present: Emily Alling, Rachel Beckwith, Marilyn Billings, Janet Ewing (chair), Rebecca Henning, Chris Loring, David Podboy, and Mary Stettner (recorder). Absent: Anne C. Moore Committee membership/housekeeping • Farewell to Anne, hello to Emily – Anne was unable to attend the meeting due to transportation/packing issues. We wish her luck (in absentia) at the University of South Dakota :-) Emily was introduced to everyone and welcomed into the committee. She will be taking over Anne’s role as DEDCC liaison to the FC Archives Committee. • Schedule next meeting – Tuesday, September, 23 at 3:30pm, tentatively at Five Colleges (Janet will check space availability). FCLC update from Chris • Latest thinking on nextgen – During their July 7th meeting, the FCLC briefly discussed next steps for DEDCC’s exploration of Next Gen catalogs. The biggest issue is that there’s no money to implement one right now because no one budgeted for it (and they didn’t have the time to pursue in depth discussion of whether or not the money could be found). There’s still the sense that a next gen catalog would be desirable but also a reluctance to spend a lot of systems and design time on it, certainly nothing on par with the lengthy Aleph implementation experience. Further investigation would be helpful at this point, especially talking to other sites already using Aquabrowser in order to get a clearer picture of the extent of work involved in implementation. Some questions suggest by Chris: Which staff members are needed? What type of tuning is involved (e.g., if you want to look at algorithm and relevancy ranking, can you just take what another institution has done or will you find yourself doing more work because of the realities of your local system)? How much can be out of the box? Is there a level of installation that could be good enough to begin with but still be further modified as necessary on the fly? Another thought: should we try to get some feedback from our users about such Aquabrowser features as the word cloud and my discoveries to find out if they think these are at all useful? • Still outstanding questions concerning DEDCC’s proceeding with investigation of a possible next gen catalog for the Five Colleges: FCLC concern that, without a federated search tool, a product like Aquabrowser helps fix the OPAC but doesn’t go beyond the OPAC. Still no clear answer on how BLC’s choice of WorldCat Local impacts further investigation of Aquabrowser by Five College libraries since both UMass and Amherst are in BCL. NextGen discussion • Followup strategy o Develop a list of questions we’d like answered about Aquabrowser – Primarily these revolve around the human resources and amount of work involved in the implementation process. Janet will come up with an initial list and email to group for any additions. o Identify and contact some institutions currently using Aquabrowser then run our list of questions by them – Marilyn will ask Jeff (Aquabrowser rep) to ask for names of contacts at other insitutions (some possibilities include OSU, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Skidmore, Colby) using the catalog and set up conference call times. David will join Marilyn in conference calls. If possible would like to get some information back to FCLC before their September 8th meeting. o If it turns out that implementing Aquabrowser does not look like it would take an undesirable amount of time/work, then go forward with negotiating the price – Take a closer look at Aquabrowser options (like MyDiscoveries, library web site crawler, federated search integration) to see if paring these might lower the quote. Also our Five College consortial catalog presents a testbed implementation situation Aquabrowser hasn’t tackled yet. o Connecting techie people to carefully explore – Wait till we gather more implementation info first. o Other – Rebecca offered to share pertinent ngc4lib (Next Generation Catalogs for Libraries) list serve emails with group since we’re not all on that list. Also offered to send url for Jennifer Bowen article on extensible Catalog (XC) project, a next gen catalog still under development but worth keeping an eye on for the future. Brainstorm for future projects/programs • Brief consideration of Horizon Report and/or other topics of possible interest for Fall – Discussed web collaboration tools (e.g., Google docs, Ning, Sakai) since these may be of ready interest in Five Colleges where we have so many people working together across institutions. Marilyn and Rachel also expressed interest in data mashups possibly for a program further out in time. Rebecca also mentioned the Google Book Search API, a topic that might lend itself to an exploration of “what more can we do with what we have.” • Fall brown bag – It was decided to do a Fall brown bag featuring reports from people who have attended recent conferences. Tentative date is set for Thursday, October 2nd with the idea that the ELUNA conference could be the highlight. Everyone will check on own campuses to confirm that that date seems to work for most people then report back to the group. Assuming it’s fine, we’ll each send a save the date message to our own campuses possible followed up by message to fclib list. • Marilyn also suggested gathering a list of Five College library staff and the conferences they’ve recently attended to facilitate finding possible presenters for brown bag. The idea of possibly making that list available on the web to facilitate conversation among staff with similar concerns was also mentioned (though we’d need to check to make sure no one has privacy issues). Since it might be difficult to discover conference attendance information ourselves, it was decided to try creating a web form and emailing the fclib list asking people to share their conference attendance information themselves. Mary volunteered to set up the form using Google Docs and will set up a DEDCC gmail account for this purpose. David volunteered to email the fclib-l list. • Other ideas: Keep looking at lists to see if anyone outside is doing anything interesting we might like to invite them to present or do a brief workshop on (if we can get the funds). Also keep an eye out for local innovators (e.g., Nick Baker at Williams who has done some interesting work with video). Emily mentioned the idea of doing something on the Library Camp unconference model. This would be a little bigger and could touch on multiple topics, but we have lots of good library minds in the area and there’s potential for good participation. Wrap up • action items & communications o Janet will start a list of Aquabrowser questions to send to the group for additions o Marilyn will get in touch with Aquabrowser rep to get a list of names of people at other institutions using the catalog and schedule conference calls in which David will also participate o Everyone will check with their own campuses to confirm that October 2nd is a viable date for a conference update brown bag o Mary will create a web form for gathering conference attendance information from Five College librarians. David will email the fclib-l list once the form is ready. Next meeting – Tuesday, September, 23 at 3:30pm at Five Colleges.