Apparently Zoom is touching up everyone's appearance.
On the topic of cameras, apparently digital cameras were new in the 90's.
Chris took pictures on a box camera!
Tara has a Minox. Everyone had cool cameras! Spy cameras are so inexpensive now.
11:06
Housekeeping
Last week's notes are approved.
11:07
Courses Introduction
Thomas says Cornell will be looking into Courses this year. They currently use Ares.
Thomas says our goal today is to talk about current gaps, bugs, and issues. This group could potentially take on some of these issues and flesh them out for future development. There is no PO for courses and no developers assigned to it currently. However, some work does move forward, so our effort would not be wasted.
We do an informal survey and about half the folks in the room currently use Courses in FOLIO.
11:08
Courses at Biola
Chuck notes that Biola tested out the Courses app, but decided against using it. Instead, they use a reserves location and associated loan rule without going through the Courses app itself.
The main drawback to this approach is discovery: there is no way to scope the search in EDS.
Additionally, there were issues with the workflow of adding and removing items from courses.
Kara notes that when the course is over, EDS suppresses the items from discovery.
11:13
Some Courses Bugs
Kara notes that there are issues when you remove a reserve item that is attached to two completely separate courses--there is no warning that the item is on reserve for two courses, and FOLIO removes the temporary location even though the item is still on reserve for the other course. (
UXPROD-3901
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Getting issue details...STATUS
)
Kara notes a couple of bugs:
Temporary location doesn't always show or displays inconsistently.Â
UICR-204
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Getting issue details...STATUS
Olga notes that she has seen this bug as well.
Kara created new locations in a temporary space. Some items appear to be going to a different location.Â
UXPROD-4870
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Getting issue details...STATUS
Olga notes that if you have more than 20 items on reserve, the 21st item's location doesn't show up. (
UICR-192
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Getting issue details...STATUS
→fixed in Poppy?)
(From Chat) Lynne says: "For long lists of reserves, the add a new item is at the bottom of the list. That can be a lot of scrolling to add more items. We wish that the add a new item function was at the top of the screen." Clay agrees. This comes up several more times–it is a major pain point. (
UXPROD-4869
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Getting issue details...STATUS
)
Thomas says that he will go through and add support to the tickets that we identify. He notes that the issues described here sound like UI bugs. Sometimes during development cycles, there is time for UI developers to address bugs like these--we may be able to get some traction on these ones.
11:19
Courses at Cornell (Ares)
Thomas says Cornell uses Ares for Course Reserves. Ares is an Atlas product that manages reserves workflows with queues similar to ILLiad. It ties in to the course management system at Cornell. Faculty members are able to submit their reserves online. Ares is able to handle both electronic and print reserves. It collects article information and prompts staff to scan the articles. It has some copyright functionality, but Cornell does not use it. Cornell has a slick discovery interface that they wrote which brings in both Ares and FOLIO information. For actually moving items on/off reserves, Cornell uses temporary locations. They are considering moving to Bulk Edit for handling the temporary location and temporary loan type.
11:23
Courses Wishlist
Thomas asks what we wish Courses could do: What is keeping folks from using Courses, and what are major headaches?
Tara notes that people want to be able to add e-resources without creating an item, and to be able to add items by searching rather than by barcode. (
UXPROD-4871
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Getting issue details...STATUS
)
Kara notes that scanning a barcode moves the user to the top of the page. It should keep the user on the same part of the screen so that one could scan in items one after the other.
Olga notes that reserves data is not synched with inventory data. If inventory data changes, Reserves data is then incorrect. The connection should be live. Kara agrees. (
UICR-125
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Getting issue details...STATUS
)
Danielle's library would like to be able to add e-resources, and would like to be able to add multiple items at the same time. Only being able to add one item at a time when working with 500-1000 reserve items is unmanageable.(
UXPROD-4872
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Getting issue details...STATUS
)
Danielle would also like a communication tool. Danielle also would like a way to track items that are being sent to ordering (a workflows tracker).
Danielle would like a way to communicate with instructors, the way Ares has.
Thomas clarifies: you would like Courses to be able to track the full request lifecycle of a reserves item.
(11:17) Kara notes that we need statistics for reserves. These is no indication that something circulated while on reserve once it has been removed from reserves. Currently she is handling this with APIs and spreadsheets of data.
11:28
Re-using and activating courses
Thomas asks if folks re-use courses once they are set up.
In general, people do not re-use courses as FOLIO is not set up to work this way. Kara notes that you cannot inactivate a course to revert the items to their original location, then reactivate it when you need it. Olga says that her library reuses the course itself, but removes the items as needed. Paivi (in chat) says they would like to be able to reuse lists in FOLIO.
Danielle says that being able to build the course without immediately making it live is a big wishlist item. Not being able to "activate" the course means that work cannot be completed ahead of time.
(11:31) Thomas asks what folks think of cross-listing. No particular complaints about cross-listing.
(11:33) Thomas notes that Voyager had the ability to flip over course reserves on a particular date, bulk remove items from reserves, and had a specific data field for reserves statistics.
Thomas is also a proponent of keeping old course lists, and faculty reuse many of the same items semester to semester.
(11:34) Kara notes that it would be nice to be able to clear a course with one click rather than delete the items one by one.
11:36
More Courses Wishlist
Rebecca asks what it would take for Cornell to move from Ares to FOLIO. Thomas says that the major hurdles are e-resources and article scans. Additionally, direct access for faculty.
Rebecca asks about add-ons for FOLIO for courses that Thomas mentioned. We will look around for those. (Course Reserves - LTI connectivity)
(11:39) Lynne notes that the "doom scroll" of getting to the bottom of a reserves list to add a new item is ridiculous. Everyone agrees: this is not how we would prefer this to work.
(From Chat): Tara wishes we could use temporary loan type. She would like to be able to sort on the reserves list by additional columns. She would like a view-only view of reserves items.
(From Chat): Kara notes for bugs: "UI in general. Readability of items attached to the list. So much scrolling, can we just have a table with columns." Would like: "When in inventory know what course an item is on reserve for."
(From Chat): Everyone agrees we need statistics
(From Chat): Clay wishes we had an exportable table
Danielle's team has a wishlist of items:
Automatically recalling/paging items placed on reserve.
E-resources for Courses
Being able to make a course inactive/dormant. Being able to batch activate and deactivate reserves.
Pull lists for reserves
Being able to create reserves that are not associated with a particular course (permanent reserves)
Being able to search inventory from the courses app
Integration with Canvas or another LMS
Thomas asks how folks handle e-reserves and scans currently? Many leave it in the faculty's hands.
Olga notes that they use Talis Aspire, which integrates with Blackboard and FOLIO.
(11:45) Thomas says that storing articles is tricky. We aren't sure if FOLIO has the capacity to store large amounts of electronic documents (potentially thousands of full color article scans).
11:47
Next Steps
Thomas asks if we want to shepherd some of these issues along and flesh them out so that they are development ready? We agree that this would be a good idea.
Thomas will schedule one of our future meetings to work on fleshing out these tickets as a group.
Action items
EVERYONE will send along the courses tickets they know of, mentioned above
THOMAS will add support to identified Courses tickets
THOMAS will schedule a future meeting to work on fleshing these identified courses issues out together.