WebPac Implementation Team : Meeting Minutes
April 26, 2001
Present
- Mark Mounts
- Bill Ghezzi
- Jennifer Merrill
- Paul Merchant
- Becca Lee
- Bill Fontaine
- Reinhart Sonnenburg (recorder)
Announcements
- The Library Council meeting where Bill & Mark presented the new catalog went very well.
- A Vox article about the new catalog is likely to appear in mid-May. The text will be composed by Cyndy Pawlek.
- As soon as this announcement appears, a “explore our new catalog” link will be put on the main library page. The old Library Catalog link will remain in place until September.
- BibRecs and Bib Control are embarking on a major project to fix location codes, beginning with Sherman. A list of proposed location labels will be furnished to department heads, hoping for their timely response. The process will take considerable time
- We discussed Pam's suggestion that the hotlink from Baker/Berry should point to a general finding page rather than to the Baker/Berry Stacks guide. Since our group was charged by Cyndy to recommend what those links should point to, we would prefer not to make any changes at this time. The hotlinking was added to illustrate a system capability, so until we decide what they should do, hot links from locations will be turned off.
PIF Report (continued)
Becca continued the summary and discussion of the report.
Status messages
It was clarified that most status messages meant for staff affect only folks in circulation, and they will know to interpret the inno records. The public will therefore only see the “Missing” status message, no matter what the reasons for a book’s absence are. For books that are (allegedly) present, the group, after lengthy and stimulating discussion, reverted to the recommendation “On Shelf”. Jennifer and Becca will also implement the “Recent Acquisition” and “Time to reshelve” options
Requestable items
Circulating vs. non-circulating patterns vary from location to location. Becca will continue to deal with the details. Until the Request Rule file is set up, automatic processing of requested items cannot be turned on. Becca will take care of requested items manually; it is important to have this feature available as we enter the beta testing phase. Staff will need to be told (via LibGroup announcement) that the Request feature is now live and that the “go play with it” phase is over.
PIF enhancement requests will be forwarded as appropriate.
Automatic Logout
The automatic logout will be set to 5 minutes of inactivity. Separate inactivity settings for staff and public will be an enhancement request.
Journal Searching
As an outcome of the joint meeting with the CMDC Serials group we will try to refine our help screens to make it easier for patrons to find popular journals that are not easy to find. In addition, we may want to create “How do I…?” buttons that deal with this topic and other similar ones, such as how to find videos in the catalog, etc. Decisions about a possible journal scope etc. will have to wait until we have more comprehensive experience with actual user behavior.
Changes
In part based on faculty feedback, and in part as a result of our own deliberations, the team decided to make the following cosmetic and user-oriented changes:
- The main menu item for LC Subject search will now simply say “Subjects”
- Rather than renaming the Limit/Sort button we will try to make it more visible (e.g. for patrons looking for journals) by giving it a different color
- The Export Saved Items button will be renamed “E-Mail/Print Saved Records”
- MARC button will be left alone