Library Technology Advisory Group (LTAG)
Meeting, June 22, 2004
Minutes (FINAL)
Present: D. Bisom (UCI), L. Carver (UCSB), L. Declerck (UCSD), G. Gray (LAUC), L. Jaffe (UCSC), P. Brantley (CDL), H. Schmidt (UCSF), D. Snapp (UCD), T. Toy (UCR, Chair)
Absent: D. Barclay (UCM), R. Moon (UCB), T. Ryan (UCLA)
Meeting called to order at 10:05am.
1. General business
Minutes from the December 16, 2003 meeting had been sent to LTAG members previous to the meeting. LTAG members will notify the chair if any changes are necessary. If not, the minutes from 12/16/03 will be posted on the LTAG website.
Selection of the next Chair of LTAG was discussed. T. Ryan from UCLA had previously indicated she would assume the duties of Chair.
However T. Ryan was unable to attend the meeting. In addition, this was to be T. Ryan’s last LTAG meeting, and Stephen Schwartz would replace her as the representative from UCLA. It was decided that the current Chair would first contact R. Moon. If he declined the position, Stephen Schwartz would be contacted to assume the duties as Chair.
LTAG reviewed the list of SOPAG action items dated December 30, 2003. All items on the list were confirmed as completed except for item 4 on the list: UC Library Developed Software. This item is a separate agenda item that will be discussed later in this meeting.
2. CDL study of UC campus bibliographic transmittals to Melvyl
Cristina Campbell (CDL) joined LTAG to discuss the current study being conducted regarding bibliographic record transmittals to Melvyl.
During the Melvyl Transition, the ULs had agreed to spend $400,000 toward bibliographic record cleanup projects. As a follow up to the original project, $10,000 was made available for a Record Output Analysis Project. The project was to analyze the practices used to prepare the records to be exported to Melvyl to identify any changes that can be made that will result in gains in efficiency and quality control. Cristina mentioned that the load rates for new Melvyl were not as efficient as with old Melvyl. The Record Output Analysis Project was being conducted by M. Tapper (UCI), in consultation with R. Doherty (CDL). Two areas of particular interest were to determine if duplicate records were being output, and where the transaction/last updated date was stored in the output stream (equivalent of MARC 005 field), which is key to record updating. The final report will be released soon, and LTAG suggested that the first draft of the report be sent to LTAG, HOPS, and the designated Input Liaisons. The findings of the study have resulted in three enhancement requests that will be sent to Innovative Interfaces on behalf of the libraries that use Innovative as their ILS system.
3. UC Library developed software
SOPAG has been interested in development of a ‘registry’ of UC Library developed software available for sharing among the UC Libraries. An example of software sharing was described by UCR and UCD. UCR had developed a student timeclock and GA program that UCD had evaluated and are currently modifying (in collaboration with UCR) to use in their library. UCR also shared the letter of understanding between the ULs at UCR and UCD.
D. Bisom mentioned that UCI is in talks with UCLA about sharing a reference statistics program which is based on Cold Fusion.
D. Snapp suggested that a list of software could be created and posted on the LTAG web site. To keep this list up to date, it was suggested that this item be a continuing agenda item at each LTAG meeting, and only those programs in use/in production would be listed.
LTAG discussed minimum standards for documentation, it was suggested that a starting point would be to examine the standards written for open source software.
T. Toy will contact SOPAG for more guidance on what SOPAG expects on this particular subject.
4. CDL Digital Library services workshop
LTAG members who were able to attend the recent CDL Digital Library services workshop agreed that the recent workshop was informative and useful. P. Brantley mentioned the workshop MAY become an annual or biannual event. LTAG suggested that CDL publicize future workshops specifically to groups such as LTAG.
5. CDL Update
P. Brantley reported on the following:
Melvyl: reload of UCLA records is getting underway. There are approximately 4,600,000 UCLA records to load. Ex Libris software updates will change to a ‘service pack’ concept of software upgrades. However, any upgrades to the current version of Aleph will occur after the UCLA record reload. The upgrade from Aleph version 15 to version 16 is slated tentatively for winter 2004/2005. The upgrade will be time consuming.
SFX/VDX: SFX version 3 will be available September 2004 and brings a series of enhancements. Testing of Shibboleth with SFX (on version 3) will be conducted at UCSD. VDX will have an upgrade to Oracle version 9 in Fall 2004. VDX is in full production at UCD. CDL is moving to support VDX in full production. LTAG suggested that a VDX ‘status page’ to monitor the progress of VDX development would be helpful. Peter will take this information back to CDL.
NOTE: since this meeting, a VDX status page updated by M. Heath is now available at: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/request/currentVDXstatus.html
MetaLib: CDL has chosen to purchase MetaLib. Version 3 provides consortium support. Version 3 is still in Beta, but will be released in production mode mid-July 2004, with incremental roll out slated for winter 2004. Version 3 has both a google-like, and a more advanced search interface, and each campus can create ‘views’. CDL will produce default screens. UCD is using MetaLib in production.
Preservation Repository: work on this project continues and the repository will be up and running Fall 2004.
Examination of Access Services: there is talk of redesign to enhance performance. Services in this category include: OAC, e-scholarship, Counting California, etc. The redesign goal would be to become more web-friendly, provide unified searching, indexing, and presentation.
SRB: Peter wanted to bring attention to an incident with SRB (SDSC Storage Resource Broker) involving data that had been harvested by Stanford and stored at both Stanford and SRB. After a raid failure at Stanford, the data was requested from SRB, but an SRB system failure in December 2003 resulted in SRB reporting the data was no longer available. Eventually the data was restored from backups. The result of this incident is that CDL wants to investigate ways to use SRB that will not result in this type of incident in the future.
CDL study: CDL has commissioned a study to determine how people find things on the web (user study). The study queried undergrads, graduates, and faculty. Questions included what finding tools are used, what tools are used to work with content, and whether they had knowledge of software such as endnote or procite.
UC federated Identity Management project: David Walker is responsible for a project with the overall objective to
‘enable members of UC campus communities (initially, UCSD, UCI, and UCLA) to access UC For Yourself (UCFY) and Your Benefits Online (YBO) through the use of their local campus login systems. The project will also create the infrastructure needed to access CDL-licensed resources through the use of campus login systems, when the vendors for those resources have implemented Shibboleth.’ More on this project can be found at: http://www.ucop.edu/irc/itlc/ucfedauth/
Digital object standards: CDL continues to revise the Digital Object standards.
6. Round Robin
UCSB: The library is using a collaboration tool named Confluence mainly for text interaction: sharing documents, power point, etc. They are currently using a beta version. For more information see: http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/default.jsp
Santa Barbara is also investigating enterprise solutions for disk storage. Isilon is one of the solutions: http://www.isilon.com/
The goal is to no longer use tape storage solutions. Currently they send streaming data to the SDSC (ADL content only). The move to version 16 of Ex Libris (Aleph) will occur this summer on a test server with a roll out next summer. There will be a complete overhaul of the Library web site. There were over 290 directories and now there are 19 directories. They are evaluating/considering using Google as a search engine. The campus is also considering putting a CIO in place and consolidating shared services such as email.
UCSD: San Diego is currently implementing DSpace for the management of its internal digital assets. For more information see: http://www.dspace.org/. They are implementing an SRB instance to facilitate the transfer and replication of data to SDSC servers and they received a grant from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to work with MIT and SDSC to link SRB to DSpace. They also received a Mellon grant to develop an Archivist ToolKit. They are continuing to implement Fretwell Downing’s Scholar Portal and hope to have version 3.1 tested by September 2004. San Diego is also reviewing their website and reassessing their web server infrastructure, which at the moment is spread far too widely. Beta testing of the III ERM product will expire soon and the general decision will be to purchase the product.
UCR: Recruitment is underway for five librarian positions; the AUL positions have not yet been advertised; there will be one Programmer Analyst 3 position advertised for Systems Dept.; additional wireless APs will be installed in the Rivera Library in 2004; 74 new staff PCs were purchased and will be deployed this summer (running on XP); new public workstations will be purchased during the next fiscal year (2004/05); the library plans to have circulating laptops by Fall 2004; the Infomine project will soon be running on it’s own 10gig private network.
UCD: During the next 6 months Davis will be upgrading to Aleph version 16, MetaLib version 3, and SFX version 3.
UCSC: The University Librarian position has not been filled, the Chancellor position is still vacant, and the Executive Vice Chancellor position is vacant. All positions are currently filled with interim staff. L. Milsap (tech. services dept. head) will be retiring at the end of June, and the Dept. head for Access services will be leaving to attend graduate school. The remodel of the Library building will begin Fall 2004 with completion in 2007. The Library will move to a new addition after it has been completed, then will move back and get the entire building in 2007. Because of general campus consolidation, the new CIO has money for an identity management project which the library may be able to be able to benefit from. People soft is being implemented on campus.
UCSF: Beginning July 1, 2004 the Library will report to the EVC for Research; the EVC for Academic Affairs position will not be replaced; UCSF is currently undergoing a strategic planning process; an NLM grant was received and will be used to build a Multi Media digital library repository; another tobacco document library is being compiled; UCSF is partnering with CDL on the preservation repository project; a grant from the National Cancer Institute will be used to build a PC grid application to create searchable PDF’s from document images using OCR software; they are currently building a SAN (storage area network) using Sun equipment and it is almost complete.
UCI: Installation of XP on public workstations has been completed; installation of XP on staff workstations was completed in Feb. 2004; plugins are routinely updated; there will be an Innopac server upgrade to a Sun Solaris platform in August 2004; hardwire ports for public access were added in both Langson and Science Libraries; additional APs were added for wireless connectivity; the library wireless network, including the wired public access, is part of the campus network and a login is required from faculty/staff/students to access the campus wireless network; UCI continues to ‘tweak’ Spam Assassin in conjunction with the campus and the Library’s mail servers; there is a proposal to close/block campus IRC ports due to increased worm/virus activity; it is hoped that the campus proxy may be discontinued, at some point in the future, due to increased reliance on campus VPN.
Meeting adjourned at 2:50pm.