SFX Systems Committee Meeting April 13, 2016

Minutes

Attendance:

Members present: Max King, Steve Oberg, Andy Meyer, Peter Tubbs, Mary Burkee, Cynthia Scott, Denise Green, Xiaotian Chen, Joanna Kolendo, Jeff Matlak, Lauren Jackson-Beck (minutes). 

 1.    Comments on meeting minutes from 23 March:

•    No comments, the minutes were accepted.

2. CARLI Updates: 

•    Denise is working with the SFX weekly updates.
•    No date has been set for the upgrade from MySQL to MariaDB software. From the testing that CARLI has done, it appears that the upgrade will be fairly easy.
•    Wiley Targets: Denise has been spending time making Wiley open access targets more helpful. She is reporting title errors to ExLibris for editing.
•    There is no big news to report from CARLI. The application deadline for a new Head of CARLI has passed, but there is no additional news on candidates.
•    Mary Burkee had no additional information to add.
•    Steve Oberg thanks everyone involved in troubleshooting and implementing a quick fix for EBSCO article linking problems from a few weeks ago that affected the whole SFX community.
•    Denise mentioned that she tried to test to see if the Ebsco API was working, but it went to a default Ebsco URL instead. She finds it hard to test unless someone has a specific title. Xiaotian said he did this when Ebsco wasn’t working and the titles he tested worked. Steve said that the API, when turned on, was an improvement. At least, it is no worse. Denise concurs.
•    Denise brought up a question about the DOCDEL_LOCAL target.  She wondered if it would be a worthy enhancement to the SFX community to program the CGI file to allow patrons to receive a copy of their article request. Denise and Gordon Fellows have been working on this by adding a line of code to the CGI file to allow patrons to receive a copy of their request. Andy thought this would be a nice feature to advertise to the CARLI community. Max said he would love that option. The question was raised if the same feature could be offered in the DOCDEL_ILLIAD target? Denise will look into this.

3.    Deliverables:

•    There were several updates to deliverables: Lauren added a new version of the document ProQuest 360 Core and a document for Primo Discovery was added as well.
•    Steve noted that he agrees with the consensus of the last meeting that progress has been made.
•    The majority of the discussion focused on the possible format for the final documentation. Steve would like everything to look the same.
•    Discussion followed on how best to make all of this material available to the CARLI community and how to make the documents look similar.
•    The committee discussed having each document in a .PDF format on the CARLI page.
•    Earlier in the year the idea of a spreadsheet was suggested.
•    Andy thought an HTML version on the CARLI website would be more navigable and easier to change and update in the future.
•    All felt that documents would need to be maintained and updated.
•    Denise suggested that both formats (html and .PDF) could be handled on the CARLI website.
•    Mary suggested that we might want to see if Margaret Chambers, as Director of Communications, might have a preference or a suggestion for the website. Denise will contact Margaret and ask.
•    Steve summarized that the committee has two actionable items as follows: to determine the formats for the CARLI website and to make sure each document has a similar style.
•    Denise will coordinate the publishing of the deliverable documents to the CARLI website using HTML and .PDF, if appropriate.
•    The group agreed with Steve’s idea of him editing all of the documents to make them similar in format and tone, with Peter volunteering to take care of doing that for his document.

4.    ELSEVIER_SCIENCE_DIRECT_AUTOLOAD_JOURNALS (Xiaotian):

•    Xiaotian reviewed his work on this target. He will receive monthly updates and will double check the work when these updates come in.
•    Xiaotian found that before he began this auto load, he had 78 journals for Elsevier. After the auto load, he has over 900. Many of these are regular subscription journals, some of only one or two years of a title.
•    This work will reduce the university’s cost of purchasing articles.
•     Xiaotian used 2 spreadsheet files and put them together to compare the original 78 journals in the old target with the titles in the new auto target.
•    Steve expressed concern that if Elsevier doesn’t do the work at their end correctly, there could be problems with the data.
•    Denise noted that both Elsevier and ExLibris both have documentation for anyone else who would like to try the auto load.
•    Xiaotian noted that there is an institutional code that one has to receive from Elsevier Admin Tool to have auto targets work. Also, the last step has to be done by the CARLI office.
•    There is one UNIX file that needs to be updated. Denise will add the links to the documentation from SFX to these minutes. She noted that all the information in the documents isn’t fully applicable, and this makes it more complicated.
•    The work that CARLI staff has to do isn’t much. Libraries should tell CARLI whether they want to do the Elsevier books or journals and the how often they wish to receive updates. Denise also noted that these targets include free and open access materials as well.
•    Andrea Imre of SIC was one of the earliest librarians to try this. Her auto targets have been activated on the test server and she said she would activate the auto targets on the production server.
•    Xiaotian and Andrea have shared their experiences with each other.
•    Denise thinks it is worth exploring auto loads. She mentioned that other publishers are talking about this approach to supplying electronic publication data to libraries. They would like to simplify how libraries are getting their data. Elsevier is the first to take this approach using SFX.
•    The Ebsco EJS Service is somewhat similar. A library can get an excel spreadsheet and use the Dataloader.
•    Xiaotian stated that after the autoload is finished, the old target is not necessarily turned off. Libraries must be careful to check their old targets if they do this work.
•    Xiaotian mentioned that he will have more information after he receives his first monthly update.

•    Here is the link to documentation from Denise:

http://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/SFX/Knowledge_Articles/Elsevier_ScienceDirect_Autoloader_automated_download_and_KB_loader
•    Any steps that mention SFX ServerAdmin Utility are done by CARLI staff due to our consortia set up of SFX. The relevant targets are discussed in the “SFX Target & Alma E-Collection Configuration Guide” pp. 61-63. The guide is at:
http://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/@api/deki/files/26602/SFX_Target_and_Alma_E-Collection_Configuration.pdf

5.    Next Open Conference Call:

•    Denise suggested that our next open conference call on June 15th might be a good time to talk about the Elsevier autoload. This will be at the end of the fiscal year, and many libraries might be interested in making this change for the next year. Hopefully, Andrea could finish her training video by then. The problem is that Xiaotian won’t be available for this call, so listeners won’t be able to hear his experience.