Minutes of July 14, 2005 Meeting

Present:

Stephanie Bartz, Judy Gardner, Elizabeth Leister (for Mary Beth Weber), Ann Montanaro, Gracemary Smulewitz, Christopher Sterback (chair, recorder), Bob Warwick

Excused:

Nancy Hendrickson

1. Update from SIRSI Meeting at ALA

Chris and Gracemary reported on the SIRSI meeting at ALA. The primary topics were 1) a report from the CEO, Pat Sommers, on the merger with Dynix and 2) planned enhancements to the Unicorn software for the next 12 months.

A. The Merger

• SIRSI and Dynix have been working on the merger for a while but in earnest the last three months; should have been completed by Friday, 7/15. (Subsequent to this meeting, SIRSI sent an email message on August 1 announcing that the financial/legal aspects of the merger were complete.)

• Although the two companies are describing it as a merger, technically SIRSI is buying Dynix.

• Why Dynix? The areas beyond the basic catalog that Dynix and SIRSI are moving into generally complement each other well, rather than being 100% direct competition. The design of Horizon 8.0 is remarkably similar to Unicorn GL 3.0. They plan to support both products for the foreseeable future and plan to 1) take things Horizon does well and add them to Unicorn and 2) take things Unicorn does well and add them to Horizon.

• SIRSI is not planning to buy or get bought by anyone else any time soon.

• The officers of the Dynix users group will be talking with the officers of UUGI over the coming days/weeks/months about the possibilities of merging or staying separate.

• The operations of both companies will be integrated more quickly than with DRA. They learned with the DRA merger that they did not communicate enough and that they lost a certain number of Classic customers that felt neglected. Right now there are over 500 Dynix customers on older versions of their software that they will help move to Unicorn or Horizon.

B. Unicorn Enhancements - Version 2003.1.4.5 (currently in production at Rutgers)

The J client now includes a fully wizardized Acq module and is available to customers at 2003.1.4.5. (We'll need to perform a mini upgrade to receive this enhancement.)

C. Unicorn Enhancements - Version GL3.0
(due out in August '05)

• There will be "themes" for the J client (like Windows themes--different screen colors, etc.)

• Item Scoping - Adds policies that will control which Unicorn staff logins can modify a specific library's call, copy, and/or Marc Holdings records

• Support for LDAP authentication in iLink/iBistro

• Support for Linux servers

• New Demand Management (Holds) features:
  1. ability to set default hold expiration dates to facilitate clearing items from the hold shelf that have not been picked up and 2) gathering of service metrics
  2. New Display Title Hold wizard will allow a more detailed breakdown of holds by range/level & priority.

• Birthdate(lastload) field will be converted from the current 4 to 8 digits. Existing records will be converted from e.g 1978 to 1/1/1978. (Since RUL uses this field to store the last month/year a patron record was updated by the patron loader, Systems will determine how this change will impact our continued use of this field.)

• Multiple types of patron notices can be combined into a single "uber" letter/email message

• Cataloging Enhancements
  1. New options for loading newly received copies so that they don't immediately satisfy outstanding holds in the J client
  2. Item Search and Display wizard in the J client will include the ability to search by Library Groups
  3. Marc editor opens in edit mode by default in J client
  4. Will be able to limit by language code in the 008

• Adding barcode validation (i.e. support for check digit algorithms)

• Support for notes in EDI purchase orders

D. Unicorn Enhancements - Version GL3.1
(tentatively due out late 4th quarter '05 or early 1st quarter '06)

• Many reports will have the option for "fixed output", suitable for importing into Excel. 75 of the standard reports will allow this to start out, and more will be added in future releases.

• Ability to scope policy drop-downs to only show the policies your library is currently using rather than always displaying the entire list

• LDAP authentication support for J client

• Support for credit card payments via VeriSign in iLink

• First release of the Electronic Resources Management product

• Browse lists use mixed case & retain punctuation in both C and J clients (so that United States--Fiction. will display as United States--Fiction. rather than UNITED STATES FICTION)

• Additional patron privacy features - log files can be scrubbed of personal patron data

E. Unicorn Enhancements - Version GL3.2
(tentatively due out around 3rd quarter '06)

• Books by mail support

• RA card links to faculty member's card for fines, holds, etc. (So fines can block faculty member if RA is delinquent)

• Multiple match keys on bibload

• Ability to assign a single item ID to an entire group of items (in addition to an ID for each item) so that the entire group can circ together, or each item can circ separately

• Ways to compress MHLD records to avoid hitting the inherent MARC record size limit

• Support for taxes in Acquisitions module

• Adding more columns in J client search results lists, possibly the edition statement and maybe record format

• Combination (binoculars) searching in the J client

2. Revisit Proposal to Change use of Item Types in Unicorn

Two years ago, after patron initiated holds was implemented, it was noted that placing non-circulating items in circulating locations caused problems with self-service holds. At that time Bob Warwick proposed that we could more effectively utilize the features of Unicorn if we identified our items with item types instead of duplicating the contents of the sublocation in this field and he agreed to create a white paper outlining the issues for review at a future LIS meeting. LIS still believes this is a problem and Bob agreed to draft a document for review at the October LIS meeting.

3. Status report on routine change of Unicorn Staff login pins

Chris reported that some supervisors still had not reviewed their Unicorn logins and that this has delayed the implementation of the first change of staff login PINS until the first week of August. On a positive note approximately 60 Unicorn logins were expired/disabled as a result of this process.

4. Update on install of Director's Station

The install of Director's Station has been a bit slower than we originally hoped/planned but the base installation is now complete. The nightly extract has been running without incident and DS system administration training is now slated for 8/18. Chris was recently contacted by the DS project manager to announce that SIRSI is offering one end-user webinar training to each site at no charge.

5. ERM beta testing

Gracemary reported that SIRSI may be interested in Rutgers as a beta test partner for their emerging ERM product. This was also reported at Technical Services Council. At TSC, Grace Agnew responded that she would support this as long as it did not include a commitment to purchase the product.

6. Patch/bug fix upgrade

Chris asked LIS team members whether they were interested in installing the mini upgrade so that we could potentially use the latest version of the J client which now includes the fully redesigned Acq client. Since our last opportunity to upgrade the software until next Spring is right after the end of the summer session, LIS agreed it could be installed at that time. Chris will review the academic calendar and tentatively schedule this upgrade for one late Saturday or Sunday night during the intersession.

7. Number of bib records

There were 1,880,863 bib records on July 14. This is a 18,785 record increase since our last meeting on on April 14.

8. Information sharing, announcements

Judy - working with Bob Warwick on exporting a file of serials holdings for RAPID

Gracemary - Collection Services staff focusing on completing a serials inventory of currently received serials at Alex and LSM

Chris

• the first file of Camden Shelf Ready materials arrived and the associated file of bibliographic records was loaded into Unicorn on July 1
• Rollover routines begun
• awaiting new EEBO content which will include approx. 20,000 records that correspond to STC I Units 64-67, STC II Units 100-113, and the Thomason Tracts.

9. Next meeting

The next LIS meeting is scheduled for Thursday, September 8, 2005 at 1:30 in the TSB conference room.