NASIG Newsletter

USER GROUP MEETINGS

ER&L
Jill Emery, University of Texas Libraries; Dana Walker, University of Georgia Libraries
Reported by Lola Halpin

Electronic Resources & Libraries is a conference that has been held for the last 2 years.  The conference was developed as a result of a survey done by Bonnie Tijerina of Georgia Tech.  See http://electroniclibrarian.org/moodle/.

At the 2007 conference Jane Burke gave a presentation on ERAMS (Electronic Resources Access & Management Systems) and emphasized the need for more collaboration among people and systems.

There was an ER&L forum at ACRL and another will be held at ALA annual in Washington at the Hawk ‘n’ Dove.  The goal is to get more contributors who are working in the e-resource spectrum to ask questions, offer suggestions and work collaboratively.

The following questions were discussed: 

•  If the belief that we need an ERM Knowledge Base (KB) is valid, what can we do to improve the KB?
• How should libraries manage staffing for e-resources?  If 60-70% of the budget is spent on e but only 20-30% of the staff there’s a gap – and – typically managing e requires more staff and at a higher level and training is labor intensive.
• What’s still holding us back from driving the market?  We created homegrown systems and stopped when vendors started creating ERMs.

The audience included publishers, agents, system vendors and library staff.  The discussions of each question led to many more questions and proposals.  There was general agreement that we not only need standards but that we also need adherence to standards.  Everyone was urged to develop an understanding of the issues and to talk to their various contacts.  The ER&L has provided space on their site to make contacts, ask & receive info, see  http://www.electroniclibrarian.org/forum/ 

Endeavor
Maggie Rioux, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute; Bob Persing, University of Pennsylvania
Reported by T.J. Kao

Maggie Rioux began this meeting by giving some updates from the last Endeavor End User Group conference.  Both Aleph and Voyager will continue to exist.  Ex Libris will continue its support of Voyager at least till Voyager 8.0.  At this point, there is no information on what will happen next.   There will be no more Endeavor End User Group.  Both Aleph and Voyager users will become members of one of the two Ex Libris user groups, ELUNA for North American users and IGeLu for other users.  The 2008 ELUNA meeting will be held in Long Beach, California.  In order to be more involved in the process, for example, being a member of the Steering Committee, an institution needs to pay dues.  The previous enhancement work group will be replaced with the Voyager Product Working Group.  In addition, other Endeavor products, such as OpenURL and the ERM product, will be replaced with Ex Libris equivalent products.

Three issues were raised by attendees.  One is the concern regarding interoperability between SFX and Verde.  A librarian sent an e-mail to Voyager-L mentioning some problems after migrating data from SFX to Verde, including holdings not being imported into Verde correctly, and the collapse of the SFX database.  One attendee suggested that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology might be able to provide some insights on this issue.  The other issue is about the continuing support for Meridian in the post-Endeavor era.  Maggie replied that the support might end in 2008.  However, for users who purchase the software and install it on their local servers, there should not be any disruption on their usage. Another issue concerns the timeline of migrating SFX from MySQL to Oracle.  Maggie responded that the migration might happen sometime by the end of 2007.

SirsiDynix
Sharon Dyas-Correia, University of Toronto; Jane Grawemeyer, SIRSI Dynix
Reported by Sharon Dyas-Correia

Almost thirty five SirsiDynix customers attended the NASIG joint Unicorn and Horizon informal user group meeting.  Sharon Dyas-Correia, SIRSI Serial Enhancements Forum Moderator, began the session by welcoming everyone, presenting a basic agenda and introducing herself and Jane Grawemeyer, SirsiDynix Technical Product Manager.   Sharon reminded attendees of the enhancement process for SirsiDynix products and encouraged users to actively participate on SirsiDynix lists and enhancement forums. 

Jane Grawemeyer then gave an informative summary of improvements scheduled for release with the product Rome later this year.  Enhancements discussed included improvements to sorting options for received issues and prediction as late reports; a serial control not linked to the vendors’ report; and a report on serial controls without predictions.  Enrichments to MARC holdings report selection criteria, as well as improvements to MARC holdings report output, MARC holdings export, and CONSER pattern loading support were also discussed.

Improvements will also include: a new dialog box to alert receivers when there are no more expected issues; a deleted issues tool button on the received tab; a delete received issues report; and a print serial issue label report.  In the near future, it will also be possible to have ISSNs appear on printed serial claim notices.

A question and answer period followed Jane’s presentation and there was considerable discussion of future directions and product development.  Many tips and tricks were shared as well.  Sharon asked if there were any final questions or comments and adjourned the meeting when the allotted time was finished.

CALL FOR INFORMAL DISCUSSION AND USER GROUP IDEAS
Rachel Frick and Sarah George, PPC Co-Chairs 

The NASIG Program Planning Committee (PPC) invites ideas for topics and volunteers for session conveners for informal discussion groups and user groups.    

The purpose of Informal Discussion Groups (formerly known as Networking Nodes) is to promote discussion among NASIG attendees who have a shared interest in a topic, idea, workflow, or problem.  The emphasis of these sessions is open discussion and the generation of new ideas.  Informal Discussion Groups will take place over lunch on Saturday, June 2.  

In addition to Informal Discussion Groups, there will be sessions dedicated to user groups of a specific product or service.  The purpose of these sessions is to share product implementation or development experiences and ideas. User Group attendees will have an opportunity to discuss topics of common interest in a non-commercial setting.  This year, user groups will have two distinct sessions.   The first session, on Friday, June 1, from 3:15-4:15 p.m., will focus on ERM products and services.  On Saturday, June 2, from 4-5 p.m., the sessions will involve other technologies and services used by serialists. 

The Program Planning Committee invites suggestions for topics to be considered by these groups and would like to hear from any conference attendee who would like to facilitate an Informal Discussion Group or User Group. The facilitator must be registered for the full conference. 

Please send your suggestions or volunteer to lead a group by contacting the Program Planning Committee at ppc1-l@nasig.org.  The deadline for submissions of topics and volunteers is April 4, 2007.  

For more information about the North American Serials Interest Group, please see: http://www.nasig.org.

USER GROUPS

SirsiDynix
Facilitators: Sharon Dyas-Correia, University of Toronto; Matt Hensler and Ed Riding, SirsiDynix
Reported by Sharon Dyas-Correia 

Almost forty SirsiDynix customers attended the first NASIG joint Unicorn, Corinthian and Horizon User Group lunchtime gathering.  Sharon Dyas-Correia began the session by welcoming everyone and introducing herself and the representatives from SirsiDynix.  

Dyas-Correia presented the agenda and reminded everyone of the enhancement process for SirsiDynix products.  She encouraged users to actively participate on SirsiDynix lists and enhancement forums since these are the vehicles by which users influence product evolution.

Matt Hensler, SirsiDynix Serials Technical Product Manager, began the presentations with an informative summary of new enhancements scheduled for Unicorn GL3.2 and Corinthian and Horizon 8.0 Serials.  Announced Unicorn enrichments included improvements to sorting options for received issues and prediction as late reports, a serials controls not linked to vendors’ report, enhancements to MARC holdings report selection criteria, as well as improvements to MARC holding’ report output, MARC holdings export and CONSER pattern loading support.  Corinthian and Horizon enhancements included 72 customer requested improvements related to streamlining serials check-in, publication pattern groups, prediction domains, routing lists, printing issue labels, batch production of issue labels, review and dispatch of claims and the addition of a graphical calendar for pattern work and testing.

Ed Riding, SirsiDynix ERM Technical Product Manager, spoke next and delivered an informative presentation on the SirsiDynix forthcoming ERM interface with Serials Solutions.  The planned system will use Serials Solutions’ KnowledgeBase and be integrated with both Horizon and Unicorn products.   

There was a question and answer period after each presentation and when the speakers were finished, Sharon Dyas-Correia asked if there were any final questions as the session time was almost up. When no more questions were raised, Sharon adjourned the session.