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CSU — Ameritech Representatives from eight California State University libraries and six representatives from Ameritech Library Services attended UIAS development meetings held at the Chancellor’s Office WestEd facility in Los Alamitos the week of September 29. The Tuesday, September 30 meeting focused on the software that will be delivered to each CSU library. This includes the UIAS Gateway and ILL/DD server software. Ameritech Library Services representative James Steenbergen spent most of Tuesday demonstrating Horizon WebPAC and the Resource Sharing System. A portion of the demonstration can be accessed today from the UIAS web site [http://uias.calstate.edu]. The WebPAC demonstration included a preview of the UIAS union catalog, the ability to search the 19 CSU libraries which have already upgraded their local library systems with Z39.50 server software, and patron empowerment via the Resource Sharing System’s patron initiated Interlibrary Loan Request Form. The union catalog used in the demonstration currently contains bibliographic records from Chico and authority file records created for the new CSU San Bernardino Horizon System. The UIAS Union Catalog prototype is running on a Sun Server located at Ameritech’s Provo office. In addition to James Steenbergen, who works out of Ameritech’s Evanston office, Jim Wilson, General Manager of Horizon, Tyler Gingrich, Vice President for Software Engineering, Jeff Griener, Director of Horizon Services, Aaron Uppencamp, Horizon Product Development, and Parris Cobb, Horizon Training Services, participated in the day-long preview of the UIAS. Jeff Griener was introduced as the Ameritech Library Services Project Leader for a cross-functional team that includes product managers, software engineers and service technicians committed to the success of the UIAS Project. Jeff Griener has been working with the Horizon Group for over six years. During this time Jeff has seen the Horizon customer client list grow from one library, the Microsoft Corporate Library to a long list of corporate, academic, national and school libraries. The Resource Sharing System [RSS] staff workstation was demonstrated by Steenbergen using database searches conducted on the 19 CSU library systems operating Z39.50 servers on that day. James showed that the RSS was able to receive a request for a book, located in WebPAC search, from a library patron authenticated against the patron database at the CSU San Bernardino local library system. The request that this patron made was then submitted, in a broadcast search, to the CSU libraries. San Diego State University was the one library owning this title. The SDSU INNOPAC system provided the local call number and status to the Resource Sharing System. In a second demonstration of the RSS, Steenbergen generated a request from the CSU San Bernardino library’s Resource Sharing System which was received moments later by the Bakersfield Resource Sharing System. This exchange was accomplished using the ISO 10161 Interlibrary Loan Protocol. All 22 CSU libraries will have their own Resource Sharing System and will exchange requests and acknowledgments using this protocol. ILL requests can also be sent to OCLC using ISO 10161. The Resource Sharing System supports the Simple Mail Transport Protocol [SMTP] as well as Group 4 Fax when it is necessary to send requests or acknowledgments to library systems and service agencies that do not yet support the ILL protocol. Steenbergen demonstrated that the Resource Sharing System can be configured to search new Z39.50 servers automatically when using the Z39.50 Explain feature. Done manually, this can be a tedious and error prone process. Steenbergen reviewed the reports that the RSS can generate today, adding that customized reports are easy to create because the Resource Sharing System uses the standard Structured Query Language [SQL] and can interface with industry standard report writer software packages. The CSU pilot site participants, as well as UIAS Management Team members, attending the demonstration were able to ask questions and make suggestions for future development of the Ameritech products being used to build the UIAS. Tyler Gingrich, Vice President for Software Engineering noted the ideas suggested by the CSU library staff for future enhancement. He also outlined the schedule for future releases of the three products that Ameritech is delivering to CSU libraries as part of the UIAS contract. Jim Wilson, General Manager of Horizon, discussed the partnership that CSU and Ameritech have in the development of Ameritech’s products and how the partnership will contribute to the building of the UIAS. Two areas requiring further development by Ameritech are broadcast searching in WebPAC [RSS has this functionality in the Staff Workstation already], and extending the authentication and authorization capabilities of the Resource Sharing System. RSS can interoperate today with the Horizon system’s patron data, but needs to be extended to include systems from Innovative, GEAC, DRA and Endeavor. Tyler Gingrich discussed some possible solutions for a dynamic interface to these local systems. Ameritech currently has broadcast searching available in a version of WebPAC developed for Dynix systems. Tyler Gingrich will notify the UIAS Project Manager by October 13th, of the target date for delivery of this functionality in the Horizon version of WebPAC. Jim Steenbergen returned to WebPAC later in the day to demonstrate the variety of customizations that are possible in WebPAC interface. These interfaces are available today at: http://harry.amlibs.com/ CSU participants discussed the pros and cons of having similar or different UIAS interfaces for each campus. The Task Force for User Services will be dealing with this issue when they meet later this Fall. What the CSU participants learned from this meeting is that Ameritech is making progress in developing new and existing products that will, with input from the CSU, become the foundation for the UIAS. One of the early development milestones for Ameritech in their effort to deliver products and service for the UIAS is the completion of a project that is porting WebPAC from UNIX to NT. Ameritech is contracted to deliver WebPAC and the Resource Sharing System on the new IBM Intellistation. The IntelliStation is designed for Windows NT. A new IBM IntelliStation was used at the demonstration at the WestEd facility for one of the Resource Sharing System Servers used in the live demonstration. Ameritech expects to deliver WebPAC on NT later in October. This version of WebPAC, will need to be enhanced, however, to support simultaneous Z39.50 searching. Based on the demonstration that Ameritech made on September 30th the UIAS Management Team is prepared to go forward with a pre-pilot testing of a Gateway/ILL/DD Server at San Diego State University when WebPAC is shipped for NT. The Resource Sharing System was released as a product on October 1. At the September 30 meeting attendees learned that the UIAS will be receiving a hardware upgrade from Ameritech for the Union Catalog server. Jeff Griener announced that the IBM RS/6000 server ordered for the UIAS Union Catalog has been upgraded from a J50 to a S70. The S70 was introduced Monday October 6 and scales to 12 64 bit processors and 16 GB of ECC SDRAM. The S70 uses a new 64 bit version of the AIX operating system. The meetings scheduled for Wednesday, October 1 and Thursday October 2 were oriented for the persons responsible for making recommendations for profiling the UIAS Union Catalog, i.e., the Interim Task Force for Database Management and the participants from the pilot sites that will be involved in the testing of the interoperability of the Horizon-based union catalog with the 22 CSU local library systems. Parris Cobb spent most of Wednesday training the attendees in the use of the Horizon staff searching and cataloging client software. The Horizon system offers PC-based client software that will be delivered on the Windows platform to the CSU. The software used for the training session was running on OS/2. The training demonstrated that the Horizon system was easy to learn and offered great flexibility. The Thursday session offered a review of the default settings that a Horizon System now uses when building a database. The three members of the Interim Task Force for Database Standards and Management took advantage of the opportunity to ask Parris Cobb and Jeff Griener questions about the options that the UIAS could exercise in profiling the database for the union catalog. During the day-long meetings on Wednesday and Thursday, Jeff Griener took notes about features in the Horizon system that will need to be extended to accommodate the UIAS multi-vendor environment. The Task Force for Database Standards and Management has planned a meeting for October 13th where they will review the Horizon profiling default settings and list their recommendations for the UIAS Union Catalog. These recommendations will be forwarded to the UIAS Management Team. After approval from the Management Team, these recommendations will be sent to Ameritech. Ameritech will review the profiling choices to determine if there are any choices that are not advisable. After the adjustments to the profile have been reviewed and approved by the CSU, then the test database will be built which will implement this profile. The test database will then be reviewed by the entire Task Force for Database Standards and Management. After the review and modifications to the profile have been made, Ameritech will begin to load the records extracted from the 22 local library systems into the Horizon/Sybase database running on the IBM RS/6000 S70 Enterprise Server that will be installed in Provo during the database load and testing period which will last six months. The three days of meetings and one day of preparation prior to the live demonstration on Tuesday helped to raise the level of understanding of the UIAS for all of the participants. The high expectations of the UIAS project were reinforced by the availability of demonstrations of running software and the encouraging words from the persons at Ameritech responsible for developing these products further to accommodate the needs of the California State University. Depending on the delivery date of WebPAC on NT, the Pilot testing could begin in November. It is likely that the building of the union catalog could begin in November as well. the new IBM RS/6000 S70 is scheduled to arrive in Provo between mid October and mid November. The UIAS Project Plan is being adjusted to accommodate the new dates for the delivery of WebPAC on NT and the delivery of the IBM RS/6000 S70 server. The following individuals attended the September 30th meeting. CSU
Ameritech Library Services
The following individuals attended the October 1 meeting. CSU
Ameritech Library Services
CSU
Ameritech Library Services
Ameritech will communicate the date of expected availabilty for broadcast searching in Horizon WebPAC. CSU ITFDSM will meet to discuss
the profile parameters for the UIAS Union Catalog
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Updated October 15, 1997
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