2025-10-30 Resource Access Meeting Notes

Date: Oct 30, 2025 

Recordings

NOTE: RESOURCE ACCESS SIG USES EITHER ZOOM’S AI NOTES FUNCTIONALITY OR MICROSOFT COPILOT TO PROCESS THE TRANSCRIPT. If you would prefer that we do not use AI any session you attend, we are happy to! Please alert the convener at the start of the meeting.

Find all recordings here: https://recordings.openlibraryfoundation.org/folio/resource-access-sig/ (pw: folio-lsp)

Zoom

https://zoom.us/j/337279319 (pw: folio-lsp)

Attendees

@Laurence Mini

@Katie Rahman

@Paivi Rentz

@Erin Weller

@Thomas Trutt

@Cornelia Awenius

@Susan Kimball

@Olga Kalachinskaya

@David Bottorff

Discussion Items:

Meeting Notes

Meeting summary

 

Quick recap

The meeting began with updates on scheduling changes and process improvements, including a postponed welcome session and plans for better outreach to library adopters. The team conducted reviews of Valeris and Vega feature tickets, discussing various items and determining which tickets needed further attention before proceeding with refinement work. The group explored several technical implementations including changes to the templating engine, notice systems, and permission controls, while also addressing challenges with ticket reviews and discussing ways to improve SIG participation.

Next steps

• Susan: Reach out to vendors to get lists of recent adopters for the welcome and introduction session

• Susan: Reach out through access services circulation listservs to promote the welcome and introduction session on November 10th

• Susan: Create a list of remaining Vega tickets and add details to the spreadsheet after the meeting

• Cornelia: Update the Vega spreadsheet with UX prod numbers as tickets are reviewed

• Susan: Reach out to Khalilah to get a list of RA-related tickets that are not closed from the WolfCon session

• Thomas: Make a note to roll ticket 3104 into Phase 2 fee fines work

• Thomas: Check functionality in Eureka for ticket 3186

• Susan: Run a list of tickets marked as "intend to close" and send to the SIG for final review before closing

• Susan: Incorporate Cornelia's updates into the ticket review spreadsheet

SummaryLibrary Process Updates and Promotions

The meeting focused on ticket reviews and process updates. Susan announced that the welcome and introduction session, originally scheduled for next Monday, has been postponed to November 10th to allow for better promotion and outreach to recent library adopters. She plans to reach out to vendors like EBSCO and Bywater for potential contact lists, and may also use access services circulation listservs. Magnus will present ideas about title-level requesting behavior in relation to paging and recalls at the next meeting. The group also discussed profile picture updates and meeting attendance.

Volaris Feature Ticket Review

The team reviewed the Volaris feature tickets, discussing several items including custom fields integration, user account deletion checks, and consortial borrowing requests. They determined that many tickets were either not their responsibility or had already been addressed, with only a few remaining to be reviewed. The team noted that after completing the Volarhis ticket review, which followed a previous Vega ticket review, they need to prioritize the remaining flagged items before proceeding with further refinement work.

Vega Ticket Review and Prioritization

The team discussed reviewing Vega tickets, with Susan discovering approximately 161 tickets assigned to Vega, of which about 60 were created in the last 4 years. Cornelia agreed to update the spreadsheet with UX prods as they review the tickets. Susan mentioned that Anne had previously suggested looking at UI and front-end work, but they clarified that their current focus is on prioritizing tickets for potential refinement rather than refining existing tickets.

Improving Ticket Review Process

The team discussed issues with reviewing tickets, noting that previous submissions were too technical and developer-focused to be effectively evaluated by the UX team. Susan and Thomas explained that many tickets were vague or incomplete, serving as mere reminders for developers rather than actionable items. Susan mentioned her efforts to identify relevant RA-related tickets in Jira, considering reaching out to Khalilah for assistance in finding tickets with specific tags. Thomas suggested modifying the search criteria to include keyword searches for terms like "requests" and "fee," which could help locate more tickets. The team agreed that finding all relevant tickets would likely require an iterative approach due to inconsistent labeling practices.

UXPROD Tickets Review Meeting

The team discussed several UXPROD tickets, including a request to change the refund date from a number of days to a fixed date at the end of the fiscal year, which Tom agreed to roll into existing work on refunds. They reviewed the status of check-in permission controls, with Laurence confirming that check-in all permissions was the only remaining check-in permission, and Thomas indicating this work could proceed to development. The team also discussed a ticket about expanded permissions in the user app, which Thomas suggested could be moved to refinement due to its age and potential obsolescence with planned changes to loans and fee fines functionality.

Library Due Date Change Policy

The team discussed an issue with due date changes during library closures, where staff members were setting dates when the library was closed. Thomas suggested a solution involving checking the hours of both the current service point and the item's home service point, while Olga highlighted that equipment circulation is limited to specific campus locations. The group agreed this was a lower priority issue that could be addressed through a simple solution of restricting due date changes to the service point where the item was checked out, though more complex solutions were also proposed. They then briefly touched on a separate issue regarding error messages in the Circulation Rules Editor.

Circ Rules Editor Refinement

Thomas and Susan discussed the challenges of implementing live error feedback in the Circ rules editor, concluding that it would likely cause more issues than benefits due to constant validation and increased front-end to back-end traffic. They agreed to mark this item for further refinement. The team also reviewed several other items related to staff slips, including the addition of custom fields and logic flow templates, determining that these needed further refinement as well. Thomas mentioned having mock-ups for alternative Circ rules approaches that could address some of these issues. Susan concluded by noting that the next phase involves sending out a list of items intended for closure to the SIG for final review.

Templating Engine and Notice Updates

The group discussed changes to the templating engine, specifically moving from Mustache to Handlebars to enable flow control and conditional logic in emails and staff slips. They explored the potential for implementing different notice types for recalled items, though David noted complications with loan tracking and cross-library item movements. The team also discussed enabling checkout notices for different service points, with Thomas presenting two approaches: using Handlebars for flexible notice content or defining notice packages by checkout service point. The conversation ended with Katie providing feedback about SIG participation, suggesting that more staff should join, and Thomas proposing asynchronous meeting options to accommodate busy schedules.