We've had a busy couple of weeks, and wanted to hold this week open for random questions. Nothing on anyone's mind to start.
(3:13) Tara asks to go over outstanding actions. These are piling up, but many are Tara catching up on notes.
Tara asks about the onboarding page. No one has any updates; Tara will look into it.
(4:00) Tara asks for volunteers to demo during our label printing meeting. Buddy mentions that they use SpineOMatic.
(5:45) Tara also asks for volunteers for our Connexion session. Darsi asks when that session is--it's February 21st. Darsi might have someone.
(7:30) Tara notes that it's SIG update week for product council. She asks if there is anything we wanted to bring to that...and also, what is it? Peter explains that this is for things that we want the project to know about--things we've done, things that are coming up. Peter suggests that talking about upcoming topics would be good. It would also be good to have a bullet point noting that we're seeking other ideas to explore as well. Peter says that if Tara were not available, someone would report in her stead--likely Peter.
(9:30) Tara notes that she'd like to create a guide for how to run this group, to make this an appealing role for the next sucker who signs on. (Ian says in chat that he thought he told Tara that she would have to do this--he absolutely did, and it went straight in one of Tara's ears and out the other.)
10:00
Requests and Discovery
Kara reached out to the Discovery group about request and pick up service points and locations.
The problem is this: When patrons place a request in either VuFind or EDS, they get three options for service points for the three branches. However, the library does not have the ability to courier items around. Therefore, the pick up location needs to be the item's home location. Currently, the library has to manually modify the requests to make sure they end up at the correct service point. (11:30) Kara wonders if this is really a discovery question, or if it's a FOLIO question. Kara asks if she's looking in the right place for answers.
(12:00) Tod says that this just came up at the discovery meeting. Tod asks if this should be in the discovery layer logic. Kara notes that FOLIO actually makes you choose a service point, so arguably it should also be in FOLIO. Kara would prefer that requests default to the item's primary location.
(13:45) Ian says that he would expect the item's available pick up points to be constrained to the service points connected to the item's effective location. However, that is not how FOLIO functions. Kara notes that locations do have primary service points, but they are not being used in the request logic.
(14:30) Ian notes that if the question is about what the discovery layer is presenting to users, then that's a discovery group question. Ian notes that there would need to be an appropriate endpoint in FOLIO to tell the discovery layer what the possible service points are. (This may already exist.) Ian notes that his libraries are all single service point set ups, so this isn't complexity that he's familiar with. Kara will keep pursuing this with the Discovery group.
15:30
EDS AND VuFind?? (And Locate)
Kara has EDS through EBSCO and VuFind through Index Data, so there's some additional complexity here. Tod notes that it will have to be solved in each place separately.
(16:10) Ian notes that this is a neat use cases, having both. Kara notes that it's nice to have a fallback.
Tara asks if this set up is uncommon?
Kara says yes--many EBSCO institutions only use EDS. Wellesley made the choice to have both because of their music library.
Holy Cross also has both. They also made this choice in part because of their music library, and in part due to their history with Sierra.
Tod says that when Chicago was first adopting EDS, they were loading catalog records there as well as their local discovery tool. However, it was better for patrons to have catalog searching separate from article searching. At Chicago, having them together didn't work well.
Zorian notes that Villanova is using only VuFind.
(19:00) Buddy mentions EBSCO's Locate. It may or may not address the music issues. Kara notes that they'd seen Locate when it was called OPAC, but it wasn't ready for their needs. (20:00) Ian tells us that Locate is up and running. It's a pretty novel system--it does not create its own index, it relies on mod-search and APIs. This is an interesting way to do it--fewer moving parts. Ian is keeping an eye on it. Tara reminds us that Locate is only open to EBSCO customers right now, but hopefully that will be changing. Kara notes that Advanced Search was not available when they were looking at it. Kara is also watching.
21:20
Loading e-books
Zorian asks: for your OPAC, do you choose to load e-books in the OPAC, or do you handle ebooks in the discovery tool? Subscription e-book packages with many records are problematic to load into FOLIO--this is many records that can't be deleted.
Bob at Holy Cross notes that they ended up loading records directly into VuFind. They harvest them and bring them together, then load them directly into the OPAC. The whole load gets refreshed once a month in VuFind.
(23:20) Zorian asks if this is a separate index. Tod says that VuFind does its indexing in Solr. Chicago loads some records into the Solr indexes, and does incremental updates. Every now and then, they do a complete reload of everything. Zorian asks if they do e-books in HLM . Tod believes that e-books go in the catalog with other books. Right now it is difficult to do that loading.
At Holy Cross, EBSCO loads e-books separately for them.
(25:20) Kara says that you can go to Proquest and ask them to do the feed into EBSCO's FTP server. Kara's records go to both EDS and VuFind, but not through FOLIO.
(26:15) Zorian's background is in e-resources. He previously worked in an institution with Aleph and Summon, where the e-books were loaded in Aleph by a cataloger, and Zorian would turn them on in 360. The librarians wanted books together, even though it was a real process to load. People generally don't like the metadata for e-books.
Kara says that they ended up trying to get e-book central, EEBO, History Makers, and JSTOR e-books loaded into VuFind separately for the better records.
(27:30) Zorian notes that depending on the size of a library's staff and how much time/know-how they have, it sometimes makes more sense to rely on the knowledge base metadata. Purchased books are one thing, and PDA and DDA are a whole...other thing.
Kara notes that they tried to stay away from loading e-books into FOLIO unless they purchased them. They are almost at the point of changing direction due to troubles.
Action Items
Tara Barnett will create a guide for the next convener.
. Tod believes that e-books go in the catalog with other books. Right now it is difficult to do that loading.