November 27, 2006 Meeting at 1:00pm
Location: Conference Call at: 217-265-9888

Attendees:  Amanda Pippitt, Skip Burhans, Jonathan Gorman, Hilary Kraus, Stephen Wright, Kathe Conley, Jan Sung; CARLI Staff Liaison: Paige Weston.

Absent: Tom Goetz, Cason Snow.

Minutes for 10/31/06 meeting approved.

Jan inquired whether we would be having any further “in-person” meetings this school year.  Hilary said the custom was to meet in-person once a year.  Due to difficulties with travel and scheduling, it is easiest for everyone to meet via conference call for the rest of the meetings.

Paige reported that there were currently some Oracle-related problems with the test server.

Edit search page changes –

• Everyone agreed that everything within our control on the Edit Search page looked good and that it was now time to move on from this issue.

Box on new time-out warning pop-up –

• Jon pointed out that the box looks like it’s editable, but in fact is not, which is rather annoying. 

New, relocated count-down timer –

• clicking stop and start in the browser buttons does not re-set the count-down timer.  Paige confirmed that the timer is not actually “hooked into anything” and is “kind of decorative” in purpose.

OPAC Changes –

• Paige reported on a new “package” of OPAC changes about to go into effect (morning of 11/28/06):  includes the new AAA request work-around, the timer count-down moved to the header area, the time-out warning pop-up page, the new edit search page help text, and fixes to the local code that retains the user’s session when she navigates to a help page.

Endeavor & Ex-Libris merger with Francisco Partners –

• Francisco Partners, owner of Ex Libris, has signed an agreement with Elsevier for the acquisition of Endeavor Information Systems, Inc. We expect to learn more about what this means for Voyager users at the Enduser Conference. Paige reported that Susan Singleton has talked with the University of Rochester about the possibility of working with them on their prototype, open-source code catalog, which has some promising possibilities for features such as FRBRizing. 

Spell-checker –

• Kathe has investigated Lucien at Jaunter.com.  Several libraries (William and Mary, Stanford, and the Daniel Boone Regional Library, which, by the way, has a pretty cool catalog) are users of this product.  It seems to search what you put into the search box, as well as give alternate suggestions.  If you don’t use a real word, it suggests possible subject headings.  Paige remembers hearing about this product about 18 months ago, then it kind of disappeared.  The OPAC team deemed it worthy of looking into further.
• Jon looked at a product called Aspell, an Open Source spell checker.
• Kathe, Jon, and Jan will look into these products further and share findings via email.  They will work their findings about what they like and do not like about these products into a 1-2 page proposal to the New Products and Services Vetting Committee about what we would like in a spellchecker product, to be submitted by the end of January.

Search Types Discussion –

• Hilary opened the discussion by proposing that we look at the following possibilities:
  1. revisit the issue of the Any Word Anywhere Search, should it be default OR, or default AND?
  2. Keep the current subject and title search types
  3. Add a subject/title search combination search type to the options (default AND, relev.).  This would be a powerful search tool for those not using the Advanced search screen.
• Jon liked the idea of replacing the current Start of Title search with a Title Words search, but it was pointed out that this would eliminate the easiest search type for a known item search, and it would confuse users to have two title search times on the quick search screen.
• Jan and Amanda liked the Subject Words search, as it finds words in different subject headings.
• It was discussed that while librarians dislike the default OR in the Any Word Anywhere search, this is not something users complained about in previous user testing (even with encouragement from those conducting the testing).  Also, if we change to a default AND, the name of the search may have to be changed, possibly to All Words Anywhere.  Finally, even if we decide to change to this search option, it may have to wait until we have a functioning spellchecker added to the catalog, as the more search terms users enter into the box, the more likely it is that at least one of them will be misspelled.
• We decided to discuss options more via email and come up with some options to suggest for user testing.  It was concluded that user testing would have to be done before any final recommendations for changes to Quick Search options are made.

Kathe had to leave the meeting at 2:00pm

HKEY search –

• It was agreed to go ahead and add the HKEY search to the Advanced Search screen in the local catalogs.  This will be useful for searching things like donor notes, etc.  Steve agreed to write a paragraph about our recommendation to forward to IUG for a blessing.

New Books –

• Still moving forward.

Skins & SFX buttons –

• No progress on skins, SFX buttons.

Next meeting: January 11, 2007, 1-3pm.

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