2/10/2009

Present: Jon Gorman, Amanda Pippitt, Kitti Canepi, Paula Dempsey, Greg Morrison.

IUG representative: Keith Eiten.  CARLI representatives: Paige Weston, Kathy Chang.

Absent: Nancy Bohm, Jana Brubaker, Susan Prokopeak, Karen Becker.

CARLI Updates from Paige:

Voyager 7.0-  version in CARLI’s hands right now is version 7.03.  It is likely the upgrade will be to that version, though there is a possibility that it could be version 7.04 (which some other libraries have right now) or 7.1.  To upgrade the alternate training databases to the new WebVoyage for libraries to test is going to take some updating of other systems as well (hardware upgrade→ Solaris upgrade → Oracle upgrade → alternate training database upgrade), which will take some time.

The training database is also where development WebVoyage instances are, so libraries will need to be notified when upgrades are made for testing because they will affect the development areas.

CARLI has not yet set a freeze date on local WebVoyage development, but will have to soon.

VuFind-  currently there is a lot of frustration because version 1.0 has not yet been released and there is really no way of knowing when it will be.  This is chipping away at the resolve of CARLI staff to freeze local development until 1.0 is released.  Some fixes are being worked on:

1. for bib. Type B identification
2. for the date sort function
3. boosting unstemmed searches.  Currently, due to fuzzy searching, non-exact hits can float to the top of a results list (for example, a search for Tomkin will also find Tomkins…and some of the Tomkins results can end up above exact matches for Tomkin).  Exact matches will now float to the top of the result list.
4. data will be fresher.  (as of 9pm yesterday rather than as of 3am yesterday)

Keith asked about a previous request to have CARLI look into improvements so that data on the reports server will only be 15 minutes old.  Paige said that they were still looking into that and that two possible software solutions didn’t end up panning out.

IUG Updates from Keith:

IUG’s last conference call was on 1/16/2009.  The team discussed:

1. the draft for usability testing.  They are waiting for the reactions and comments of the OPAC team before moving forward any further.
2. there will be a reports forum through Wimba.  They would appreciate any suggestions for speakers for the forum.
3. they discussed updates from an ad hoc statistics task force formed last year.

Mini task force on End Note/Refworks Report from Jon:
Greg, Nancy, and Jon have been discussing ways to make End Note and Refworks work with WebVoyage.  Jon has been looking into possibilities to have direct export options (rather than using a desktop client) and will report what he finds to CARLI. 

Jon also reported a question to a listserv from Bill Dueber at University of Michigan, who is working to make EndNote work with VuFind.  Jon will contact him via email to see what he has found out.

Discussion of Usability Draft:

Paige is concerned that libraries won’t feel any incentive to be testing libraries as it seems to be left to their desire to benefit the greater good.  The testing library assumes all costs (as CARLI will not be able to support them).  Other members of the team (Keith and Kitti) brought up their libraries (Wheaton and SIUC) and others where movements are under way to make assessment, including usability testing, a regular activity.  Hopefully they would be able to fit some of our requested testing in with their activities without too much difficulty.

Kitti brought up a concern over how reliable testing data would be if the testing scripts are not standardized.  The team decided that while that would be a good goal for the future, the goal for now is to increase the frequency of testing and get some data (some is better than none).

Some of the language in the draft was unclear to the team (in particular the second paragraph).  Jon volunteered to take another pass at it and send his efforts out via the listserv for more team member comments.  We need to have our reactions and revisions ready by Feb. 20th, which is when the next IUG meeting is scheduled.

Ideas for Usability Testing So Far:

From Amanda:  1)  what do people expect to happen in an anyword anywhere search? (should it remain as an implied Boolean 'or', or do they expect it to find all their search terms?  And if they expect it to find all their terms, should it still be called 'anyword anywhere'?)  Pros and cons of leaving things as is, or changing.  2)  what do people expect to happen in a title search? (should it remain as is, or would they prefer a title words search?)

From Paige:  User preferences/expectations on tagging in VuFind.  What do they expect to happen with different syntax options, and what seems intuitive for them (spaces, commas, quotes).  There doesn’t seem to be a standard for this as of yet, and different sites (like Flickr, etc.) seem to use different rules.

The team will collect more test ideas on the OPAC team wiki.  Amanda will post the ideas so far on the wiki.  Suggestions are welcome for both catalog interfaces.

New Business:

From Jon:  A patron at UIUC brought up a concern with privacy and Syndetics and Google Books.  They are concerned that the ISBN of the book they and other patrons are searching on their home computers will be collected by Google and Syndetics.  Is there a way to turn these features off?  Jon suggested the possibilities of disabling javascript and turning off images.  Another suggestion was to block those IP addresses.  Paige may receive an ‘official’ email containing this complaint in the future so we should be prepared to think about how serious a concern this might be.

Next meeting:  March 10, 2009 at 10am.

Notes submitted by Amanda Pippitt.

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