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SFX Forum Planning Task Force Minutes
February 13, 2007
The conference call was well attended despite the beastly weather.
Present: Xiaotian Chen, Bradley; Denise Green, UIS; Andrea Imre, SIC; Jennifer Masciadrelli, CARLI; Jim Millhorn, NIU; Sarah Morris, ICO; Paige Weston, CARLI.
Absent: Jeffrey Matlack, WIU; Sandy Roe, ISU.
The meeting convened shortly after 2:30. The purpose of the call was to generate ideas for the upcoming forum. As the meeting advanced it became clear that there was an abundance of potential issues to be addressed. For simplicity's sake I will enumerate the topics by the order in which they were presented.
- The ELUNA program sparked a suggestion of reviewing the MARCIt tool. Andrea was the only party that was currently employing the MARCIt. She explained that it was a service that generated MARC records of ejournals. It sounded like the initial set-up and analysis was complex, but once things were up and running the monthly updates would be very handy. Andrea volunteered that SIC's annual costs were $5100, and it was still to be determined how much labor and CARLI resources would be involved in completing the project. Everyone agreed that they would like to learn more about MARCIt.
- We had a broad discussion of statistics supported by SFX. The interest was not confined simply to the variety of usage statistics, but how they could be employed in planning and decision making concerning collection development. We could perhaps do some kind of presentation in this regard.
- Xiaotian raised the issue of Google Scholar as a source. Some of us have resisted the temptation so far of activating Google Scholar. It would be interesting to see a live demonstration of how it works in practice. Others also wanted specific directions on how to activate Google Scholar as a source. The discussion also ranged over the benefits of activating other free sources and targets such as PubMed, Open WorldCAt, DOAJ, etc.
- Although the discussion was brief, we all agreed that it would be beneficial to have a panel address the issue of instruction and marketing of SFX. Some of us feel that we still have a way to go in selling SFX to our patrons.
- We segued into a more technical discussion of the administrative aspects of SFX. It was clear we all do things a bit differently concerning the configuration of the SFX menus, the A/Z list, display logic, Citation Linker, etc. The issue of how to overcome the limitations posed by SFX reliance on issn's emerged as a common problem. Another common problem was how best to report KnowledgeBase issues. We can also group here some nuts-and-bolt items such as handling the monthly update, editing thresholds, and adding portfolios.
- A separate family of topics emerged related to the OPAC: how to handle local data and thresholds, linking to the OPAC, and editing and configuring the parser for the OPAC.
- The question arose of how SFX interacts with federated search engines, specifically WebFeat.
- Sarah suggested that it would be a good idea to have a variety of break out sessions premised on the size of the school and its electronic collections.
- The group discussed SFX services other than getFullTxt: getAbstract, getTOC. General feeling was that it was not worth discussing these at a forum.
- The group discussed the SFX Citation Linker. Considerations about how and when this can be used to good advantage might be worth presenting/discussing at a forum.
There were other odds and ends that entered into the discussion, but I believe this covers the major points. We all agreed that it was not possible to touch every base in the first forum. On the other hand, I think we were all impressed that a conversation was sustained for more than an hour and half, especially so considering that this was our first meeting. No doubt new concerns will arise as the discussion advances . It was agreed that responses to the minutes should be forwarded by the 22nd. The next conference call was scheduled for Wednesday the 28th at 2:30. Let me add, it was a pleasure speaking with all of you.
Respectfully submitted,
Jim Millhorn
Head of Acquisitions
Northern Illinois University Libraries
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