11/24/2008
DEDCC Minutes - Meeting 11/24/08
at Five Colleges, Inc
Attendees: David Podboy, Chris Loring, Rachel Beckwith, Kelcy Shepherd, Rebecca Henning, Mary Stettner, Janet Ewing
AGENDA
1) Agenda Review:
a. Two additions:
i. Discuss updating library information on Five Colleges website
ii. Re-consider sending of minutes directly to FCLC. (Decided to forego because Directors all get minutes via their own campus DEDCC rep)
b. Janet will take minutes – Emily will do them next time
2) Welcome to Kelcy
a. Introductions and brief housekeeping details
i. We will re-examine committee liaison responsibilities and also schedule spring meeting dates next time.
3) FCLC Update from Chris
a. No major news. Confirmation that the hosting of New England Code4Lib this spring was approved.
4) WorldCat Local Update
a. There was a meeting at BLC on Nov 5th to go over timelines
b. Focus has been on gathering and supplying information needed for basic implementation with BLC. Questions remain to be discussed regarding end goal beyond using WCL as a resource sharing tool among the BLC libraries.
c. UMass has put a task force together looking specifically at the resource sharing functions.
d. Kelcy is now on the task force at UMass. (Rebecca is on the implementing team at Amherst)
e. The former “VDX” system functionality has been renamed “WorldCat Navigator”. This is what allows different Circ systems to talk to each other and facilitates borrowing requests.
f. February 27th, 2009 is currently the target date for all libraries to get the WCNavigator function.
**Added agenda item re: Five Colleges website
Briefly discussed whether DEDCC should take on the task of getting the Five Colleges website on the Libraries updated and/or reconfigured. Librarians at Smith (and elsewhere) noted that there were many pieces of outdated or erroneous information.
It was not seen as something DEDCC is clearly responsible for – and yet there is no obvious other avenue for making (or requesting) changes. Changes to the website need to be made by Robyn Cutler. We have no authority to dictate what they should do, although we can certainly make suggestions.
Janet noted that although they had said they would remove the outdated PDF Guide, it had not yet been done. Chris noted that Five Colleges folks will want to keep certain information on the site and so would not likely be willing to make any radical change.
Rebecca volunteered to look over the Five College Libraries website and take stock of exactly what needs fixing. We will take that information under consideration next time and proceed from there.
5) Code4Lib Meeting Planning
a. Talked about logistics of spaces, specific dates, costs, how to manage cost recovery, etc.
b. A few of us may be able to attend the Code4Lib meeting in Boston which might help inform some planning. David will check further on the general theme of the conference and others will check their schedules to see who might attend.
c. Janet willing to check for spaces at Mount Holyoke as an alternative, but nothing seems like an obviously good space – i.e., flexible space for large group and smaller break-outs
d. Hampshire is holding reservation – for May 29th – on Red Barn only until tomorrow (11/25). The date seems optimal and the Red Barn is a great space for this except it would require catering as there is no option for “lunch on your own” around there.
e. Rachel will check on penalty for cancelling a reservation and also on whether Hampshire would be willing to front the bill for food costs and then have registration fees go to them.
6) Selection of next project(s)
a. Look back at our brainstormed list to consider what rises to the top as a focus for the next few months.
b. After discussion, we decided to look at both federated search – in broad terms, i.e. where is the state of the art and what does that mean for Five Colleges – and also to think about some programming surrounding the idea of the “future of the catalog”.
c. In spring semester, informed by the RIO program in January, we may also look further into various web 2.0 tools
d. In addition to these, we will continue to monitor the implementation of WorldCat Local and the nextgen catalog issue in general (federated search being a potential piece of that).
7) Wrap-up – action items
a. Rebecca will review Five Colleges, Inc. website section on the Libraries.
b. David will ask Jodi for a little more info on the focus of the Code4Lib Boston meeting.
c. Rachel will ask at Hampshire about cancellation penalties and whether they can deal with the upfront costs of the event and be reimbursed later.
d. Rebecca and Kelcy will begin working on the ‘Future of the Catalog’ idea.
e. Kelcy will look for the article re: the current state of federated search.
f. Mary will post some websites on fed search that s
