Phone Conference Minutes Draft
ICS Task Force
April 23, 2001

 

Participants:  Kathleen Messer, Pat Lavigna, Kelley Martin, Gail Cosmo, Jo Ann Bradley, Deborah Schaeffer, Lore Gravino (reporter), Harold Schleifer & Marvin Pollard

 

Since this was a conference right after a Management Team Meeting, Harold started with a report of their reaction to the feedback from the Pilot Sites.  Following is a summary of the reports from Harold and Marvin with task force comments:

 

Harold’s Report:

Epixtech –The COLD Pharos subcommittee recommended to the Management Team 1. No further payment made to epixtech. 2. RSS is integral to Pharos 1.0.  3. Pharos 1.0 should be delivered in production mode.  4. Change relationship from development to maintenance. 5. Lending mandated as minimum contractual agreement.

 

RSS – Based on the problem log submitted to them, some members feels that given enough time, the pilot sites will work out most of the clunkiness they’ve encountered.  And also will have found ways to work around and batch tasks to integrate in the daily workflow of the ILL operation.  Management Team also wants clarification on whether or not Epixtech has met its contract with the CSU’s in terms of what RSS could do.  Has Epixtech technically and contractually fulfilled their obligation? Could the product be used at the very basic in lending mode?  And what is John Bodfish holding back for release until the pilot’s completion?

 

Survey – A few members questioned the efficiency of the survey submitted by the Task Force.  One member suggested a comparisons of x and y systems and clarifying its inefficiency by percentage.  

 

 Recommendation to COLD – A COLD meeting is scheduled for May 4 and the Management Team would like to be able to recommend something to them about RSS.  If the Task Force does not recommend implementing RSS we should justify that decision. If RSS is ready we should address implementation issues.

 

Marvin’s Report: Since testing with ten libraries for three weeks, we certainly know more about the product now than ever.  He believes we should use this knowledge and build upon it; revisit some of the enhancements and match the features on the list to find parallels; analyze the workflow for a better understanding.  Marvin suggested the following would be needed to continue implementation:
  1. Receive new build from epixtech that corrects known bugs from the Pilot test.
  2. Revise current enhancement list to include pilot suggestions and develop a new list to present to epixtech.
  3. Receive Reports for statistics from epixtech
  4. Stress to epixtech the need for automatic defaults for unmediated functions.

 

Comments from the Task Force Members - We certainly know more than ever but we didn’t think we’d be stuck with a product that is clunky and difficult to integrate with the existing ILL/Doc Deli software in place.  One member pointed out the CSU system needs software that would work for large volume ILL operations yet it was demonstrated during the pilot test that RSS does not work for large volume operations. Enhancement team members, who have worked with this software the longest, pointed out that basic enhancement items not addressed by Epixtech were not in the current build used for the pilot test. Interface with local circulation systems, interoperability with OCLC, and the Reports package rank high up in the list of things that are supposed to be delivered soon.  How soon?  We have to go back to the enhancement list and review priorities 1-2 and see if Epixtech will be able to deliver them.  The task force feels strongly that RSS is not ready to be implemented at this time.  Epixtech may have partly fulfilled the functionality under their contractual agreement but the inefficiency of the system would preclude actually implementing it at this time.  The task force will review the 1-2 priorities for implementation for the final report to the Management Team.

 

Next Phone Conference is scheduled for May 11, from 1-3 p.m.