SPOT Meeting Minutes 2010-01-12

3. March Newsletter

• Subject headings worked well
• march 15 to Anya
• First newsletter was downloaded 342 times. Most recent newsletter was downloaded 190 times
  
• Add a SPOT Rep corner to the newsletter

• Heidi felt labelling of sections worked well, but we may shift some other sections. Volunteers for people who write what – write same sections as before? Anya thought we needed to randomly assign with Heidi as editor assigning/picking. March 15 to Anya and out by end of the month. Need to do more advertising on this to see if is worth it. Nancy has Friday updates – do we know if people are looking at them? Anya putting these into QuickLinks in newsletter so in multiple places. All of us should take a copy to at least two people at our institution – did you know about this? Is it useful? Get feedback? Print copy and route it? Post on an Intranet page, etc. Points do “how do we use our SPOT reps?” Should we send to SPOT reps and ask to distribute to library staff.

4. Radio  button constancy

• This is fixed

• Radio button working now. Bill asked OCLC for a date for this. We have to be pushy about this. We need to remind them we are a company and serve people as well.

 

• 
  

5. Statistics why is there a difference in NRE v Hub

6. How are we going to use the Spot Reps

• Learn general level of morale
  
• Bookbands worked well
• Send meeting minutes
• Have session for them at Summit Day

• Communicate about newsletter; communicate about what coming up for
  Summit Day and WorldCat Discovery day for what people want at these. WC Discovery day team has not met yet – still waiting for a cataloguer to join the team. Do we want internal speakers at Summit Day? Discovery Day different than Summit Day – more frontline people/people who interface w/ patrons. Different workflows. WorldCat day will cost $45/per person.
• Tried to use reps for who using telnet menus. Nancy got wide variety of responses from people who were not sure what this was versus experts. What is minimum level of expertise we should expect from SPOT reps?
• They should be good for communicating level of satisfaction/frustration/morale with system in general and where library is going (installing x software, etc.) Good example of SPOT reps – book ban voting.
• Should we send them our minutes from SPOT meetings? Yes – remind them of where they are on the web site. How were reps chosen? They were appointed. We should have an orientation session for SPOT reps at Summit Day w/ orientation packet. Really important at Summit Day to have a section on being a SPOT rep.
• SPOT rep should be are of changes in catalog – how can they get that info to Alliance staff so Alliance and other institutions can be aware of potential problems. The systems people go off and do crazy stuff and tell no one else. Overlap with summit-circ. Even those of us in the loop miss things.
• Check in with a list of questions to SPOT rep regularly? Yes. Any system changes/upgrades? Nancy thought before we did that, the kind of answer you get may or may not be correct.
• Need to pass on and get/give information – not just their opinions. Summit Day – we need to snail mail a personal invite to this. Allie and Laura point out that its OK to not know. It’s OK to not know everything and OK to ask. Get a little spot doggie mascot. Have a fill in the blanks form – who would you ask for X? Or Y? Who would you ask about ROTA mood swings? Who has access to change something on your catalog?

• 
  

7. Adding the ability for group catalogs to use the self configuration module with the February install

 

Known Issues / SPOT.CSI / SPOT.USER

1. Need to review this page (http://orbiscascade.org/index/worldcat-navigator-known-issues-staff-interface?highlight=known) 

 

2. Visiting patron

3. Pick up Anywhere

    Notes on both VP and PUA

Anya in a prep meeting with Al, Kyle tomorrow. OCLC wants the story on Pick Up Anywhere and other problems. This function affects different campuses differently based on where they area. Big for some and minor factor for others. May not affect all, but would be a huge morale booster, maybe for OCLC too. Should we even concentrate on this if basic functionalities are not working? Campuses getting more creative with distance ed, so over time, problem will increase.

 

Kyle – if they could just change how their authentication works – i.e. how EZProxy works.

4. Jump to (with in queues)

 

Can’t tell you total number of pages you have until the last page. Anya said she thinks we should hammer this in our OCLC calls. We have already informed them of this several times.

 

Nancy and others will add needed information into this page on error messages: http://orbiscascade.org/index/error-messages?highlight=error messages (summit.vdxhost.com)

5. Unclear error message. Would be good if it could explain problems at logon e.g. no patron with that user/pass combo, expired record, record has been blocked, etc.

Rick demo’d problem in NRE of random “Check error” messages that don’t say what the error is. To fix, have to delete bib-item record in their ILS and process it again. What a pain! How to fix? When it makes a bib item record, will place hold for patron 1, then record is busy before makes second request and can’t place a hold. Kyle thought it would be good to webcast this issue to others. Problem is when we bring these issues to light they say “there are only so many things we can deal with at once.” Anya = we just need to hold them to this account. Rick = there are so many issues like this – don’t know how we are supposed to track on them and get on them for every single one. Anya asked for these issues to be sent to her and she would hold OCLC feet to fire on this and go through lists with them of what they need a date on. Kyle has a database to track on all this that they can use. Bill = tired of beating a dead horse. Anya = how long do we want to deal w/ certain issues before we want to think about creating our own issues? We need to make system as good as it can be, but need to maintain vision of what it can be.

6. Telnet automatic Check in

 

Rick at Lewis & Clark working with check-in. When goes to check-in if a hold on an itme, trying to get a message to staff so staff don’t have to page them again.  Works great if just one site, but if have multiple sites, even if on same campus, although items held everywhere, things are just set up to be processed at main. Patron gets message their item is in their branch, but still at main needing to be in transit. Need to have message to tell people is in transit.

 

For UW – will have one Millennium login for shipping and one login for shipping and will have different location for circ. Would have to have two different logins in NRE that would have logins associated with these.

 

Shipped, received, returned, checked-in –just talking about the last two.

 

Understanding the gateway – some hit gateway, some hit telnet. What hits where? Rick had provided screens on this. We need to see this from OCLC’s perspective.

7. Understanding the Gateway

a. How it works

 i. functions in III does it relies on 

8. Volume , Issue

 

– Anya had five different libraries in last month saying “we know this is on known issue list, but...” Ultimately goes back to the picking branches in alpha order. OCLC needs to know and understand that it is something we cannot work with long term. Can’t place a hold with just OCLC number. How was this overlooked? Was always an issue. In ILL you have humans looking at the volume. Can pass parameters to circ gateway, but insane amount of library how cataloging is done, how patrons request. Like building a car w/ no handles on the doors. Nancy felt this easy to grab at build level in the code to see if a multi-part monograph, etc. You can get this information from that one part of record leader, but instead we still have to go through all this screen scraping.

 

Kyle – data too inconsistent. Need to have more consistency for this to work. Only way is to show patron what system came up with and choose from there – no full text. Not library holdings statements, but fake items. Realistically what can we do in next six months? We can’t b/c the system architecture was not designed to be fixed for this. So, until we have a different system architecture we have the best workaround we can. Kyle thought it was theoretically possible to make some progress.

9. Request for periodicals getting to NRE and failing 

 

If labelled as monograph and local = OK, but if gets to NRE let it be filled through NRE. UW problem is that because it comes through as Copy-Non-Returnable, UW can’t receive it. Anya said to send it as a monograph to make it work. UW has labelled as serials pageable.  

 

Problem with having it run through serials – if route through NRE most of time will get non-supply message. It’s a processing, not a cataloging, problem. Anya thought we could push a bit on this.

 

Having to work through two systems = you can the disadvantages of both.

 

10. NRE to help patrons one after another (for example, at a circ desk), for example requesting something for them, without opening a new browser and starting over. 

11. Why requests fail

 

Anya thought they had a good start on this on the known issues page.

http://orbiscascade.org/index/reasons-for-failed-request?highlight=failed . Will designate which SPOT is actively working on and which have been handed to OCLC or a known issue as a system issue.

 

SPOT reps should be familiar with this page so they can comm,unicate with their people if it is a known issue, etc. Anya = something we should put in newsletter? After we have reps face to face at Summit Day.

 

New Summit home page – much shorter – http://orbiscascade.org/index/summit  - possible to have links in left nav of all pages, but these are in the 100s. Changed what is in purple bar at top – contacts, SPOT homepage, Latest SPOT newsletter, Report a Problem, etc. Left nav constant also. Kyle looking at broken pages.

 

Look under Local Procedures and Workflow at http://orbiscascade.org/index/summit for details of config, how process NRE, etc. Millennium is a separate page. Separate page now just for physical processing. Includes pictures showing how to ship items, etc.

 

Look at Workflow overflow from http://orbiscascade.org/index/summit - Nancy in process of updating this documentation.

12. Reason why a Rota will not build

13.  Known Issues Pages

a.  Who maintains it? 

b. It’s not mentioned on this page, about Problem reporting - is that intentional?  Do you want people to report some of those, but others that are "known" they don't need to keep telling you about?  We should mention which are which. 

c. It seems to contain problems and bugs, but also possibly screen display requests and enhancement ideas.  Should we be collecting all ideas on one page? separate pages

d. Before we tell people about it, it probably needs to be thoroughly reviewed, clarified, expanded, etc., so I don't know if that would happen before the typical Friday message.

14. Adopting patrons – making it clear that all libraries in the Alliance must do this and how

15. Training sessions in different geo locations on NRE

General Notes

Is OCLC attention turned to other projects? Interesting they have this more ILL and not item-level orientation. We haven’t communicated this or they haven’t heard it.”You’ve ID’d that this is super important, but you suck at it.”

We need to remind them that we are not public libraries and will affect more people over time.

Libraries are getting into bigger and bigger groups to solve these issues – idea of a state library card (library card that works at all libraires in Oregon, etc.)

 

OCLC has to get the story first! Nancy said were problems w/ underlying structures of system why none of these things work. They can tweak things to get to halfway of what they want, but this won’t serve them in long run – problems related to multiple campuses and shared servers, etc.

“We’ve spent so much time putting out fires we haven’t had any time for visioning.” There will always be fires, but we have this other thing and we need to stop staring at fires all day long b/c we will never get prescriptive if we keep looking at fires.

Editions – Trying to see requirements as rewritten from us. Ed got it and going to tell us what we could do. Anya has asked at last two OCLC phone calls on these. Will be a big morale winner too if we can post these outcomes.

 

Outstanding issue w/ workflows – Has to do with the actual workflow – what people do to process items. What type of documentation do we need, what types of things do people need to look at every day in NRE? Nancy said procedures page is there and is being updated/improved. There is a page that talks about work queues and how often to process, etc. Could send out info to SPOT reps to circulate re:  survey on “how often you do this,” etc.

Discovery Day

Beth Lindsey – User Interface lead – will be chair of WCL Discovery Day. Don’t know if breakout sessions or multiple speakers b/c haven’t met yet. Anya said they would be sending out poll when they should have first meeting. Phone conference February 2.

 

At this point about 1/3 of Summit libraries have WorldCat Local – http://orbiscascade.org/index/local-choices-catalog .

 

Will cover issues of discovery and item availability. Things Carolyn hears mjost frequenstly are known item searching unhappiness. Why would you want to search a known item if you didn’t want to know availability?

 

Information in different position on brief record display. Has to do with all the other things that go into creating that. Can set up your search box to say clear things. Allie said “just use a phrase search” and don’t use Advanced Search.  Also problems with booking – equipment appears on WCL and they don’t want it to. Allie said user group should think about this at some level.

 

The people with these problems are library people – students are used to using Google and having stuff barf up at them.

 

We cannot go back – we won’t have Navigator forever, but it’s about “from where we are, what is our best move?” Sometimes all your options are dodgy. Not sure everyone shares Kyle’s perception that we are moving towards other things. Not a lot of staff people have that perspective.

 

Info from breakout groups
Both need to categories and prioritize items from the survey.  UX group to address untrue availabilty messages/status, error messages (including WCL vs. Summit), training looking at browser issues (i.e. known issues for certain browsers), training around adoping patrons/possible videos. By February 1 will have some action plans and future dates.

Next face to face meeting = day after Summit meeting in July
If want 3x a year, do Summit Day, then Novmeber, then March. Monday, November 8, 2010; Monday, March 7, 2011.