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Minutes – ICS Task Force Conference Call Kathleen called the meeting to order at 2:05 p.m. and reviewed the agenda. RSS Update – Marvin Pollard The functionality for 3.1 is still being worked on. 3.1 was installed at San Diego and at Chico in December for beta testing. 3.1. will not be installed at Sonoma. However, it will be installed at Fullerton. Marvin has done testing from beta sites and it seems to be working. Two options currently working are: 1) patrons can’t request something a site owns and 2) a user will be pointed to where in their library the material(s) requested are located. Marvin has not yet tested Autofind in RSS 3.1. When a user submits a request, the system is supposed to build a lending sequence of all owning libraries. Marvin has not yet heard from Randy Menakes about the system’s reporting capabilities. An upcoming conference call on 12/9/99 should confirm this information. Marvin has been doing a lot of behind the scenes work with COLD, the Management Team, and Ameritech. Ameritech has been sold and the FCC probably will approve the sale later this month. Ameritech will get a new name and will be a privately held company. There are two groups of investors with the main monies coming from a Dallas based firm. Ameritech will now be recruiting for additional software engineers. Marvin noted that the present software engineers are very good, however, there have not been enough of them to get the job done. Timeline: Goal is to launch Pharos 1.0 – June 1, 2000. In order to complete the beta testing of RSS by January 21, 2000, Ameritech will have to speed up its delivery of the software. Harold noted that the sites would need sufficient time to complete the beta testing. Harold also stated that a newer, strict attitude had been put in place with Ameritech and that if Ameritech did not meet the newly established deadlines, the CSU System would take action. The RSS 3.1 Release Build should be finished by December 31, 1999. If this deadline is not met, a major "disconnect" will be prompted. Marvin noted that the Ameritech deadline was somewhat dependent on the OCLC interoperability. If OCLC is not quite ready by December 31st, we might want to suspend judgement on the 12/31/99 deadline. However, it was noted that we are now operating in a no excuses environment. Harold requested that Marvin obtain from Ameritech a statement indicating that all agreed upon functionalities will be in the 3.1 version with the items from the first and second priorities listed on the enhancement list. Kelley stated that the configuration and delivery of the software needs to be completed by January 7th if the testing is to be completed by January 21, 2000 by the three beta test libraries, San Diego, Chico, and Fullerton. At the end of the test period on January 24th, the three sites will need to inform the ICS Task Force about the status of the software, e.g., whether minor adjustments need to be made or if we should continue any further. The report will be made at a scheduled conference call on this date and the Task Force will also plan for pilot testing the software at the other ICS Task Force sites. Harold raised the question, de we need to have a commitment from Ameritech to have appropriately knowledgeable people available during the approximately nine days of testing and should we arrange this in advance? Harold also suggested this would be a way of helping to keep Ameritech on target with the established timeline. Marvin noted he would discuss the timeframe with Ameritech. Marvin announced that ALA Midwinter would occur during our testing of the software. However, Harold noted, that regardless of the ALA meeting, Ameritech should have available trained staff for our needs. The December 31st version should not be a beta version. Marvin will confirm this with Ameritech. On January 25-28th the system will be installed at the ICS sites and training will occur at the end of the month, January 31- February 1st. The ICS Task Force libraries will pilot 3.1 through February 15th. By February 15th, we should be out of the testing mode. At this point, the system should be a quality product working reliably. February will be used to develop best practices and workflow. The ILL Unit Heads meeting should occur early in May. This will leave the rest of May for follow up training at all the other CSU campuses. March and April will be used to prepare for the ILL Unit Head meeting (installing software and setting up the buddy systems). The ICS Task Force should have a meeting in March to plan for the May Unit Head meeting. Beta Testing Report At this point, there was not much to report. Marvin has been the only person to do any beta testing as the software has not been installed and/or configured at the three beta test sites. Article Delivery Report Rhonda reviewed the Article Delivery report. The recommendation of a limit of 50 book and journal requests was based on a limit established by OhioLINK. Rhonda discussed putting in a limit of 10 requests per patron per week, which was also an established limit at OhioLINK. It was decided by the group not to establish a weekly limit but to establish the overall 50 book and journal limit. 50 items should be responsive to most users needs. Regarding the copyright limit statement, it was decided to keep a shortened version of a copyright statement, as it is important for users to recognize that libraries do need to comply with copyright. Kathleen pointed out that copyright is not as important as it was in the past with our use of Infotrieve and UnCover Harold pointed out that the contact to the local ILL office should link the user immediately and directly to the ILL form. Users should no have an intermediary step. We need to be able to empower users with the best service possible and directly connect them to a site to input their requests. It was also noted that the statement regarding items not available on ILL was not needed. Rhonda will rewrite the statement with consultation from the other committee members, Deborah and Pat and will get back to the ICS Task Force soon. The newly accepted report will be presented to the Management Team and to COLD. Buddy Groups In January a report will be made to the Buddy groups, depending on what happens with RSS. Gail sent out a notice regarding the sale of Ameritech and we could also post our minutes to the ILL web site. Marvin suggested that we could say that we are doing everything possible to adhere to a rigorous timeframe recently put in place for Ameritech. Kathleen suggested we could assure the ILL sites that things are going on as planned. The timeline could also be sent out to the ILL sites. New Directions At the November 17th, COLD meeting there was an overwhelming sentiment to do an ARL workshop with Mary Jackson. The tentative dates for the workshop would be March 23-24th. This meeting would be open to libraries outside the CSU system and perhaps to the West Coast. ARL will handle the logistics. Harold will send a description of the workshop to the ICS Task Force members. ARL has completed a study of performance measures and has come up with a series of best practices. The workshop should be general enough for ILL practitioners and Library directors and will be held in Pomona. It was suggested that we could piggyback an ICS Task Force meeting with this workshop, perhaps on March 22nd. |
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