Minutes of June 15, 2006 Meeting

Present:: Stephanie Bartz (chair & recorder), Natalie Borisovets, Ellen Calhoun, Bob Warwick
Excused:: Vibiana Bowman, John Shepard, Li Sun

1. GL3.0 status and release notes

Bob has completed the repairs to the public interface. The major problem related to syntax errors appearing at the bottom of some search results lists.
A review of the release notes for GL3.0 revealed nothing that required action from IPAC.

2. iLink progress

The navigation bar has been added to the bottom of many IRIS results pages, including the reserve displays. The numbering of results on reserves screens is still an issue. Stephanie will contact the Reserve Group for feedback on the suggestion that we make all reserve items for any single instructor/course display on a single screen.
The default display for visual materials has been updated.
Some obsolete sub-locations have been removed; others still need to be cleaned up.
The default search in the test catalog has been switched to the Advanced Search screen.

3. Firefox Extension for IRIS

The “SIRSI Library System: Easy Record View” extension for Firefox (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2460), developed originally for Rutgers, was reviewed. While it has interesting potential, there is definite room for improvement, and it is not something that we would recommend for general use in its current state. The most critical issue is that the record views it provides never include MARC holdings, so holdings information for serials is misleading. Bob will contact the developer of the extension to provide feedback and suggestions.

4. Annual report

Activities within the past six months were discussed in preparation for the annual report due this summer.

5. Information sharing

The IRIS Guide has been updated to include sections on navigation and punctuation/diacritics. The organization has also been changed slightly. Bob will move the draft into the production system and Stephanie will continue work on the context sensitive help screens and other revisions still needed in the Guide.
OPAC statistics are being retrieved from Director’s Station on a monthly basis. Stephanie will send a spreadsheet to the committee.
Technical Services Council endorsed the recommendation for “The Use of Item Types in Unicorn” and appointment of a committee is pending.
A new listserv is available for those interested in a discussion of OPACs. Information on the NGC4LIB (Next Generation Catalogs for Libraries) listserv is available at: http://dewey.library.nd.edu/mailing-lists/ngc4lib/
The E-Commerce update for Unicorn that was part of the recent purchase from SIRSI will require some work from IPAC when it’s implemented.
The federated search product that was recently purchased for the Libraries could also have some implications for IPAC.
Bob will take a look at a Perl script that “reads your Web search engine's log and produces a report listing your most popular search phrases in rank order” to determine its usability and potential usefulness for IPAC.