08/07/2003
TO: Five College Library Directors
FROM: Stephanie Willen Brown, Chair DEDCC
DATE: August 7, 2003
RE: DEDCC Annual Report, FY2003
This is the DEDCC’s first full year of existence, and we have managed a full agenda, as you will see from our brief summary, below. We generally met bi-weekly but occasionally we met weekly. Raven Fonfa left her position at Mt. Holyoke, so we have been working closely with Julie Boisselle who was selected to replace Raven on DEDCC.
• Context-sensitive Linking & Federated Searching. We planned and presented two workshops in January to demonstrate the systems and a few of the vendors from the point of view of librarians at implementing libraries. Web pages were created to provide staff with basic information plus links to libraries and vendors in advance of the workshops. We solicited feedback from our colleagues and determined that there was great interest in open linking for Fall 2003 and some interest for federated searching for Fall 2004. To that end, we drafted an Request for Bid, which we sent to 11 companies regarding their context-sensitive linking and federated search products. We invited all vendors to demonstrate their products for the Five Colleges and many of our colleagues attended. We gathered feedback through the committees, analyzed the bids, compared projected costs over three years, and finally determined that the Ex Libris Group offered the best value with their SFX and Metalib products; we prepared a contract for Five College signature in June. We anticipate that SFX, the context-sensitive linking product, will be available for students by September, 2003 at all of the Five Colleges with phased implementation of some sources.
• We discussed a variety of other projects as well, including:
o A global instance of Google to search web pages describing subject resources and/or services across all the Five College library websites.
o Vera, a software system that tracks aspects of serials and database management.
o NetSnippets, a software application that saves bits of web pages for later use.
These projects were evaluated and not pursued further.
• We worked to enhance access to electronic resources, including:
o Monitoring the consortial implementation of TDNet.
o Coordinating minor modifications to the online catalog, including automatic verification and saving search history.
• We worked with other committees in several ways:
o Each DEDCC member is a liasion to the chair of another Five College committee. These liaisons share information and solicit input on DEDCC projects as appropriate.
o We worked with RIO to plan and present the context-sensitive linking & federated searching workshops in January.
o We compiled an updated list of Five College library committees, including membership and meeting frequency.
• The following tasks or topics are on our agenda for fy2004:
o Working with colleagues to set up and plan for maintenance of library committee web pages, hosted at Five Colleges.
o Organizing a Five College library workshop to explain XML and its benefit to libraries.
o Launching and monitoring the implementation of SFX and Metalib.
o Assisting with Five College projects such as DSpace and the selection of a new ILS as needed.
o Work with other committees on topics such as catalog enrichment services, virtual reference, and consortial implications of development of Information Commons.
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