Minutes of October 2, 2003 Meeting

Present:

Judy Gardner, Nancy Hendrickson, Linda Langschied, Rhonda Marker, Mary Page, Gracemary Smulewitz, Christopher Sterback (recorder), Bob Warwick

1. Preparing for Unicorn 2003

Chris handed out a summary of the enhancements that appeared most relevant to RUL's installation of Unicorn. They were:

Acquisitions

• New Receive Order wizard - Acq toolbar changes to accommodate the new wizard
• New Acq Selection list wizards, toolbar, reports
• 9XX ordering - this feature is only available at additional cost from SIRSI. Ann will ask our sales rep for a price quote
• Order type can be modified if same type of order (single order can be changed to another single, recurring can be changed to another recurring etc.)
• Orderlines with "AMOUNT_SPLIT" fundings roll correctly

Cataloging/Authority Control

• After the upgrade Systems needs to run three authority rebuild reports to fix two problems. The problems are a) thesaurus entries containing a dash were not deleted when deleted from the authority record and 2) some authority headings would not display in correct alphabetic order when they contained numbers
• More corrections to Transfer Item
• A URL checker is now part of the standard suite of Unicorn reports.
• Item comments replaced by "extended information fields" - currently Unicorn supports up to ten 75 character comment fields attached to the item level record. During the upgrade, the comment fields will be converted to extended information fields that can each store up to 9,999 characters. These new fields can then optionally display directly following the item holding in Webcat

Circulation/Academic Reserves

• New user categories 3, 4, and 5 are being added to the patron record
• New Lost Item Processing - SIRSI has redesigned the functionality for long overdue/lost items; can automatically add bill and processing fee to patron's record for long overdue items but will remove the bill if the item is returned
• New option to display inactive charges (i.e. those marked lost in the new Lost Item Processing)
• Will not be able to take item off of reserve if charged to patron
• Blanket Holds - a blanket hold is a single hold request that is placed on multiple titles or copies and requires a specified number of copies or titles to be made available before the hold is considered to be satisfied
• Can email pull list reports to specific individuals - for this to work an email address field needs to be added to the LIBRARY patron record
• Graduated Fines - amount of fine accrual can change based on time period
• New Suspend User wizard to suspend privileges for a defined period of time
• Can define blocks by library group
• Any report in which you are using user status as a selection option needs to be recreated in U2003 because there is a new selection tool just for user status

Reports/Systems Admin

• Can change ownership on finished reports
• Numerous Database Conversions in Unicorn 2003 - to accommodate new enhancements such as the new user categories and the new item extended information fields, the upgrade will run longer
• New Category of reports called Inventory - existing reports related to Collection Inventory will be organized into a new report group

Serials Control

• Improvements to X12 invoicing for Serials

Webcat

• Can configure Public Notes to display in Webcat - new extended information fields can be configured to optionally display in Webcat
• Catalog Search Hit List Display Limit Now Configurable - the number of hits that display in a hit list (currently set to 20) is now configurable. SIRSI warns that higher numbers may increase response time
• Support for Patron Booking Added to WebCat - booking navigation button displays in single item view if any copies in searched library have a media desk policy defined
• Marked search results are retained during a session and can be printed at end of session instead of after each search

2. The tentative U2003 Load Schedule is as follows:

10/13 - 10/17 -- load upgrade on test server
10/20 - 12/03 -- test upgrade, revise custom scripts and Webcat pages
12/4 -- LIS signoff
1/1 - 1/2 -- load upgrade on production server

3. IPAC Update

IPAC has put other projects on hold so they could focus on revising IRIS, based on Vanderbilt's Acorn catalog, with a planned Spring semester rollout. Bob is making these changes in test IRIS and, so far, keyword searches are working but browse searches are still being implemented. Once the searches are working IPAC will send a message to RUL_EVERYONE asking them to review the changes and provide feedback.

4. Superconference 2004

Next year's annual SIRSI conference will be held April 18-21 at the Renaissance Grand Hotel, St Louis. Just like last year, there will be a 50% discount on registration for presenters. The program chairs are seeking presentation proposals by Monday, October 20 and will confirm whether your presentation was chosen a week later on October 27. Also like last year there is a separate track for Directors and Administrators.

5. Information sharing, announcements

Mary - Acq staff had OCLC/CatME training; moving ahead on using OCLC to load records for orders and hope to integrate this with the new 9XX ordering capability coming in Unicorn 2003

Rhonda - will train staff in Cataloging to run bibloads

Gracemary - training branch managers to inventory serials and add marc holdings records with item holdings in correct sequence; staff are realizing the value of standards and consistency

Judy - Bob has made enhancements to patron loader to 1) expire students that withdraw from RU 2) modify the privilege of GRADS and UGRADS to ALUMNI upon graduation

Nancy - working with Bob Sewell on budget allocations

Chris - replaced one floor-mounted air conditioner in Systems Office machine room with a ceiling-mounted unit - awaiting removal of old air conditioner so that we can recapture floor space and reconfigure some of the machine room hardware

6. Next Meeting

The next LIS meeting will be held on November 6 from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. in the TSB conference room.