Minutes of June 19, 2008 Meeting

Present:

Stephanie Bartz (chair & recorder), Natalie Borisovets, Ellen Calhoun, Theo Haynes (remote), Bob Warwick

Excused:

John Shepard, Li Sun

1. Annual report

A draft version of IPAC’s annual report for 2007-2008 was reviewed and approved.

2. Goals for 2008/2009

IPAC’s goals for the coming year were identified as:

• Implement changes to IRIS record displays, search screens, request forms, and the IRIS Guide that will take advantage of the benefits created by changes in the use of item types in Unicorn, and effectively explain and display those benefits to IRIS users;
• finalize the parameters of the new books list and work with the Web Advisory Committee (WAC) to make it accessible to visitors to the Libraries’ website;
• continue to work on improvements to IRIS that will allow for better functionality and improved displays (ongoing); and
• test and implement changes brought about through the release of patches and upgrades from the database vendor (ongoing).

3. Item types

Changes to item types are expected to begin in mid- to late July, after rollover, and continue into August. Large and easy collections will be done first and the process will continue until everything has been changed. During the transition IRIS will display new item types for some materials along with old format information for other materials. Keyword indexes will need to be rebuilt as a result of item type changes, but this will not require any system downtime.

• finalize record display – The “Type-circulate?” label and removal of the ‘Copy” field were given final approval by the committee.
• review changes in Advanced Search – A new dropdown menu for “type-circulate?” has been added to the Advanced Search page (in Test IRIS) above the “sub-location” menu. The menu label will match the related column heading used on the record displays. Bob will clean up the sub-location dropdown to remove anything that is not a Home Location. Bob will also investigate the possibility of adding information icons next to the “type-circulate?” and “sub-location” menus to link to the appropriate sections of the IRIS Guide.
• Review changes needed in text on request pages – Suggested changes to Request pages text will be forwarded to Judy Gardner for review by Access Services.
  • Book Special Request – Changes to item types will make it possible to remove Pending and In-Process materials from this form and allow them to be requested through the Book Delivery/Recall option. Scripts used to determine when the various request buttons appear will need to be updated to accommodate the change. Suggested Request page text:
  • Rutgers University students, faculty, and staff may use this form to request delivery of BOOKS and OTHER MATERIALS owned by Rutgers libraries when the item is:
    • ON-ORDER,
    • noncirculating,
    • or when delivery to a Rutgers law library or off-campus pickup site is needed.
  • If you need:
    • delivery or recall of circulating books or other materials between Rutgers pickup libraries, click [GO BACK] and use the [BOOK DELIVERY / RECALL] form.
    • a journal article, click [GO BACK] and use the [ARTICLE DELIVERY] form.
  • See Rutgers Delivery Service (RDS) for more information.
  • Use a Media Materials - Booking Form to book audio-visual materials to preview or for classroom use.
  • Book Delivery / Recall – Suggested page text:
  • Rutgers University students, faculty, and staff may use this form for delivery or recall of circulating BOOKS and OTHER MATERIALS between Rutgers pickup libraries.
  • Do not use for IN-LIBRARY items at your pickup library; these requests will be canceled.
  • If you need:
    • a book or other material that is ON-ORDER; a noncirculating item delivered between campuses; or delivery to a Rutgers law library or off-campus pickup site, click [GO BACK] and use the [BOOK SPECIAL REQUEST] form.
    • a journal article, click [GO BACK] and use the [ARTICLE DELIVERY] form.
  • See Rutgers Delivery Service (RDS) for more information.
  • Use a Media Materials - Booking Form to book audio-visual materials to preview or for classroom use.
  • Report Error – A new error type will be added to the pulldown menu to allow for reporting of problems with item types. The new listing will be “type-circulate error.”
• IRIS Guide – Stephanie has begun working on revisions to the IRIS Guide, including information on Zotero, the Rutgers Libraries LibX Toolbar, and item types. IPAC members will be asked to review new sections of the Guide before it goes live.

4. Feedback/new features

• Status of new books pages – Due to the immediacy of the upcoming item type changes, the new books project is largely on hold for the present. Bob asked that we begin to consider how far subjects should be broken down on the new books pages. For example, using the LC Class Outline (http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/), should we list “Social Sciences” as a heading, or break it down to the next subdivision to show “Statistics,” “Finance,” Sociology,” etc. Should areas where we have major programs and collections be broken down further than areas that do not have major programs and collections?
• Recent emails, etc.
• 880 tags – These tags display the vernacular equivalent of English language tags such as title, when the item is in a non-Roman alphabet. Due to the inability of the system to correctly display Unicode at this point, the field displays as a line of characters with no obvious meaning (e.g., _$1!F9!Ns!KY_(B /|c_$1!Yu!BP!1$!UN_(B.). The field is indexed, so it does occasionally appear in a browse list, but is not visible in the record display unless the display is changed to show MARC tags. The consensus was to leave the display as is since the problem will be fixed when we eventually implement Unicode. Removing it from the public display at this point would require extended downtime for reindexing.
• No Mark Items button in Call Number Search, ability to mark ranges of records, and display of on order items – Questions about these aspects of IRIS were received and responses given. The first two are known problems still on IPAC’s working list. Order records are displaying normally.
• “A team” email notices – Some notices being sent to library users are still making reference to the old IRIS button names (e.g., Deliver / Recall Book vs. Book Delivery / Recall). Bob will contact those responsible so that the macros being used can be updated.
• Unauthorized – The word “unauthorized” produces unanticipated results when included in an IRIS search. For example, a title browse search for “unauthorized appropriations” produces a browse list where the second item is the title searched; a words anywhere search for “unauthorized appropriations” brings up 17 records, none of which are the title retrieved with the title browse search. This seems to be an anomaly caused by the authorities used in the catalog and the use of “UNAUTHORIZED” in some MARC fields.
• Access denied – Incorrect logins to MY ACCOUNT produce an error which says “Access Control Failure – Access Denied.” The message will be changed to “Login incorrect – Please try again.”

5. Information Exchange

• A link to the IRIS Guide was added to the Quick Search page on the Libraries’ site following the May meeting of WAC.

6. Next meeting

July 17, 2008, 1:30 p.m., University Librarian’s Conference Room

6/20/2008sb