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I-Share OPAC Team Minutes
September 7, 2007
CARLI Office
Members Attending: Nancy Bohm, Paula Dempsey, Jonathan Gorman, Hilary Kraus, Amanda Pippitt, Susan Prokopeak, Jan Sung, Tom Goetz (present via phone conferencing), Paige Weston, Gregory Morrison, Kathy Chang
Guests: Susan Singleton (Director, CARLI), Brandon Gant and Chris Delis (CARLI staff)
Member introductions
The minutes of the July 24th, 2007 meeting were not reviewed or approved.
CARLI presents VUFind – Susan Singleton, Chris Delis, and Brandon Gant
Susan Singleton opened with an update on CARLI’s interest in VUFind, a potential open source front-end interface for Voyager. Villanova University released the code for VUFind since the last OPAC meeting, which gave Chris Delis and other CARLI programmers the opportunity to determine its suitability as a front end for Voyager. By all accounts, VUFind shows great promise as a replacement for Web Voyage.
Chris Delis commented further on VUFind’s scalability and delivered a demonstration of the user interface. According to Chris, VUFind and other front end products like it allow for more efficient server use, which could help minimize the potential of overwhelming CARLI’s servers during high-use periods.
Following the demonstration, Susan left the OPAC team with several questions to consider going forward: 1) what importance should a new front end have for CARLI? 2) What can we offer at no cost? 3) How sophisticated should the interface be? 4) How developed and de-bugged before it’s rolled out?
Lastly, Susan invited the OPAC Team members to inform Chris’s effort to develop VUFind.
Overview of WebVoyage in the CARLI environment – Paige Weston
Current procedure for WV customization is cumbersome. CARLI chose Voyager because of its UB system, not its user interface. Future of WV uncertain. Endeavor has commented only that WebVoyage (WV) will be around for awhile.
The central question: To what extent do we continue customizing WV given the likelihood of adopting a front-end like VUFind?
Tentative plan for VUFind roll out:
- Fall webcast to introduce VUFind and prepare CARLI members for beta testing in January
- Survey membership in April; determine interest in VUFind adoption and in further local WV customization
- If required, WV Customization Camp in June or July
Review of Enhancement Log:
Paige led team through the current items in the OPAC enhancement log.
Many of the items become non-issues if CARLI goes with VUFind.
It was suggested that we invite Chris Delis to evaluate the current enhancement log and discuss the items with us both in terms of WV and VUFind in the interest of re-prioritizing them.
Action on pending issues:
Material type code translations – Harper College and the 6 newest I-Share libraries encountered a problem of blank format columns since the latest upgrade. Amanda Pippitt has come up with a proposal that should work to correct this problem. CARLI staff will work toward implementing it.
Brief view vs. full view – This was not deemed feasible for WV. It might be possible to add a printer friendly view for local catalogs that was suggested in the Public Services Forum.
Stable links to catalog records – This received broad positive reception. Committee discussed what to call and agreed that “Bookmark” would communicate its purpose most effectively to users. CARLI staff will work toward implementing this in WV.
Improving I-Share team/library communication
CARLI committee chairs' meeting in September will address the issue of improving the communication among CARLI bodies. IUG will identify several points to include in the CARLI newsletter, and asks other committees to send to Margaret Chambers news-worthy items for the newsletter.
Can committees better use CARLI-based social networking organs (e.g. Blogs, wikis). CARLI webmaster will set up team wiki.
We should think about contributing items from our meetings that are appropriate for the CARLI e-mail newsletter and consider regularly contributing to the CARLI blog.
High priority future projects
Some of the “high priority future projects” listed in the agenda were addressed in part in the earlier discussion of VUFind and the plan to roll it out over the next several months. This has taken priority over our efforts otherwise to further customize and enhance Web Voyage.
High priority is given also to work on the “upgrade checklist” for the OPAC before the December Voyager upgrade (probably 6.5.3), which is intended to catch any bugs or problems before it is rolled out.
Time of the team’s next meeting (via conference call) was not determined.
Meeting adjourned 2:54.
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