Governance / Technical Services Committee Meeting: August 23, 2016

Technical Services Committee Meeting: August 23, 2016

Conference call

Members attending: 

Melissa Burel (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville); Keith Eiten (Wheaton College); Jessica Grzegorski (Newberry Library); Ann Heinrichs (Catholic Theological Union); Mary Konkel (co-chair; College of DuPage); Joelen Pastva (co-chair; Northwestern University); Nicole Ream-Sotomayor (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign); Sandy Roe (Illinois State University); Cynthia Romanowski (Governors State University)

Members absent: None

CARLI staff attending: Jen Masciadrelli; Nicole Swanson

Announcements: 

Committee members:

CARLI reports:

  • Jen reported that all CARLI committees are invited to make a short presentation on their annual project at CARLI’s Annual Meeting on Nov. 18 in Champaign. Keith agreed to make the presentation on our MarcEdit project. There may not be time for all ten committees to present, so Jen and Nicole will submit our intentions to Anne Craig (CARLI Senior Director) and wait to hear. If we are not chosen, we can at least provide a URL for our project so interested parties may see it. We are also to submit an abstract/summary. Jen and Nicole will write this up and submit it to the full committee for comments and tweaks before sharing it with Anne.
  • Nicole reported that CARLI continues to work with OCLC on migrating our batchloading projects to Collection Manager’s data sync collections. The transition is scheduled to take place on Sept. 23. This will affect iShare members’ backloading projects and LHR projects. OCLC is reviewing our Third-Party Agreement which enables us to assist with setting up backloading and other batch projects.
  • Nicole demonstrated several functionalities of our group page (www.carli.illinois.edu/user). We could use this page as a collaboration space or place to store program planning information as an alternative to email or even GoogleDocs. Any member can post a document or comment on existing documents. It's a good place to share important links, resources, dates and deadlines, etc. 

Discussions:

  • Box—Discussion of the group page led to discussion of other ways to conduct group editing of documents. Some members favored Box, citing its ability to show previous versions of a document. Jen then set up a test document in Box; everyone logged in, tested it out, and discussed its capabilities.
  • Annual Project and Spring Forum—A brainstorming session yielded several discussion topics:
    • Formats other than in-person for the Spring Forum due to many libraries’ reduced travel budgets; for example, making a presentation via Adobe Connect, then uploading it to a private YouTube location.
    • A Spring Forum scenario involving our collaboration with one or more other committees.
    • Possible collaboration with Public Services on updated LCSHs, genre/form terms, etc., as an aid to searching and research.
    • Developing training videos: LCSH video training modules have recently been/are being created by Janis Young & Daniel Joudrey. These might be great examples for us, as well as free training that we should disseminate.  See http://www.loc.gov/catworkshop/lcsh
    • Tying Access reports in with database maintenance priorities.
    • Featuring Access queries and reports, including ways to customize an existing query to get more granular (thus more useful) results.
    • Sending out periodic newsletters to members about flaws in their catalog databases that can be corrected with the help of Access reports.
    • Possible format for the Annual Project (an Access training document):  First, feature some of the most commonly requested Access queries. Go step-by-step with screen shots, the way we did with last year’s MarcEdit project. Follow this with a more advanced section featuring ways to customize queries.

Decisions:

  • Minutes of the June 5 and July 25 meetings will be approved via email.
  • The committee agreed to hold their FY 2016–2017 meetings on the fourth Wednesday of every month at 9:00–10:30, except for the November meeting (Nov. 30) and the Dec.–Jan. meeting (date TBD following Doodle poll). (Update: That meeting will be Wed., Jan. 4, 2017, at 1:00–2:30.)
  • The co-chairs will reach out to other committee chairs to gauge their interest in collaborating on the Spring Forum. Mary Konkel will contact the Collections Management Committee, and Joelen Pastva will contact Public Services.
  • The meeting was adjourned at 3:21 p.m.

Tasks assigned:

  • All members: For the next meeting, review the database maintenance priorities listed on the CARLI website (https://www.carli.illinois.edu/products-services/i-share/cat/Cat-maintpriority). Consider how it can be improved.
  • Jen and Nicole will review their ticket history to see what kinds of reports people are requesting.
  • Jen will contact Ted Schwitzner to see where he’s at on updating or reformatting the database maintenance document.
  • Jen will invite Ted to our next meeting because the projects we are considering involve him.

Meeting Dates and Deadlines:

  • Next meeting: September 28, 2016, 9:00–10:30 a.m.
  • Schedule of upcoming TSC meetings (all via conference call): 
    • September 28, 2016, 9:00–10:30 a.m.
    • October 26, 2016, 9:00–10:30 a.m.
    • November 30, 2016, 9:00–10:30 a.m.
    • January 4, 2017, 1:00 p.m.–2:30 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,
Ann Heinrichs