Catalogers Group

February 28, 2002, 2:00-3:00 p.m.

West Electronic (Media) Classroom

Minutes

Present: John Riemer, Rebecca Aiken, Gia Aivazian, Joan LoPear, Renée McBride, Nancy Norris, Beth Feinberg, Janice Matthiesen, Jeff Morehead, Louise Ratliff, Paul Priebe, Luiz Mendes, Sharon Benamou, Kathy Brill, Angela Riggio, Jean Rashedi, Claudia Horning, Chamya Kincy, Rita Stumps (recorder)

Discussion of people’s impressions of Voyager & ExLibris--OPAC & cataloging modules (All)

VOYAGER

Good:

1. L.C. has gone with it (Joan L.)
2. Heard response time was really fast (Jeff)
3. Can stop a search that’s taking too long (Beth F.)
4. Fully-integrated, all modules (Louise)
5. Overnight URL link checker (Louise)
6. Ability to save to a work file (John)
7. URLs can be automatically inserted into bib record from an open browser (John)
8. Links between bibliographic records, holdings, items smooth; can easily move from one to the next (Luiz)

Bad:

1. Not ready for Unicode (Louise)
2. Cat. client: too many windows; search results screen not sizable/cannot be maximized (Louise)
3. Closed system; little control over local functionality; difficult to do local programming (Louise)
4. Felt like vendors hedged re.: global change capabilities (Louise); John: had impression that changing authority record changes linked headings in bib. records; might be overnight job; need heading that matches a cross reference (“wrong heading”) so that change can take place.
5. Not clear what happens if authority records load after the bib. records (John); what happens with post-cataloging authority work, like we do here? (Paul)
6. What about series editing (4xx, 8xx issues)? How does global change work on series? (Often need to look at bibs. one-by-one to edit series headings) (Paul)
7. General impression that representatives don’t understand authority control issues (Louise)
8. Concern re.: records with errors in them now. What happens in migration? (Paul)
9. PrintKey only way to print (John)

John’s experiences with Voyager:

1. Authorities: Authority headings and headings in bib. records link with exact character string match. If you want to break the link, need to change the heading in the bib. record. Georgia prepared for system migration by sending out bib. records for authority clean-up. Vendor did the clean-up, returned the records, and supplied Georgia with needed authority records. Joan L.: How did Georgia protect local authority records which differed from the national standard? John: Georgia didn’t have local authority records.
2. Bib. loading: At Georgia, catalogers did “real time” download of bib. records to the local system one-by-one. No longer did batch loading. It took the catalogers longer to do their jobs. Rita: How were error reports generated? John: Can overlay anything you want; validation lets you know errors; fix errors at that point. Rita & Luiz: this seems very inefficient; workflow seems awkward, cumbersome (i.e., to load the bibs. individually and fix local errors as the bib. loads).

EX LIBRIS

Good:

1. System can generate reports, incl. new-to-file headings lists (Luiz)
2. Barcodes can be swapped out (Joan L., John)
3. Since Melvyl and some other UCs are going to Ex Libris, would it be easier for us to have Ex Libris, too? (Joan L.)
4. Unicode-compliant already (several people)
5. Can already support non-Roman alphabets (John)
6. Can size search result windows in cat. client, unlike Voyager (Rita)
7. Seem to be good controls on controlling number of records people get back in search results (John)
8. “Administration records”: seem to be catch-all records for acquisitions, items, holdings, etc. Seems like a flexible function (several people)
9. Navigation window seems to be the place to move items, holdings most easily (Louise)

Bad:

1. Heard from colleagues at an ExLibris institution that response time in cat. client is really slow (Luiz)
2. Scrolling through browse results seems to go very slowly (Louise)
3. No “keyword in heading” search (John)
4. Do duplicate authority records, upon loading, bounce out or automatically overlay? (Paul). Impressions varied: Some people thought the records would overlay automatically, others thought it depended on how the profile was set up
5. Moving from bibs. to holdings to items seemed awkward (John, Luiz). Can only move item records, but not holdings (Luiz). Angela pointed out that both Voyager and Ex Libris do things very differently than what we’re used to, which is why these things might not seem clear now. Rebecca: A lot depends on how the data migrates, too.
6. What about printing? Nothing was said at the OPAC, cat. client sessions.

GENERAL COMMENTS ABOUT BOTH VENDORS AND THE DEMOS

1. Teams that go to the individual libraries need to check very closely and learn what we didn’t see (Beth F.)
2. General agreement that both systems were superior to what we have now.
3. Both are Oracle-based, which is widely used. This is good. (Louise)
4. Documentation and training procedures are already in place for both (Rita)
5. What about money issues? Would it be cheaper to go with Sirsi? How much will we really be listened to? (Janice). John: Would cost approx. $1 million to acquire an ILS other than Sirsi.
6. What about response times? Both seemed faster than ORION2 (Janice). Luiz: Response time seemed good for both. Jeff: What happens when 500 people are working at the same time? Response could be good when one or two people are on the system, but could deteriorate when more people use the system simultaneously.
7. Might be good to be able to bring OCLC records into local system, and catalog them there, to save OCLC costs. (Rebecca). John, Rita: this would cause problems if catalogers wanted to Enhance/BIBCO records; need to go back to OCLC to do those. John: We get larger credits for doing this kind of kind of cataloging directly in OCLC.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Next meeting: Mar. 7, 1:00-2:00 to discuss impressions of the Sirsi demo that Thursday morning. Location: Cat Dept conference room.