Meeting Minutes for 03/01/2022

Demo of new features, bug fixes, and documentation for the upcoming release (Minute 12:34)

• Release Notes

Discussion of development priorities for the next release (Minute 38:04)

Road Map 

• Discussion of development priorities for the next release
  • Pascal is close to wrapping up the search improvement project and is hoping to have it accomplished for the next release.
  • There might be space for new priorities but they have not been chosen yet.
  • C.J. might be working on some organization for accessibility.
  • Chris will continue working on dockerization to put Pika in a dockerized environment. 
• Enhancement Priority Survey discussion and questions
• Survey closes 03.04.22
• Please remember that for Marmot that only one entry or submission per member library. For Discovery Partners one submission for your whole site.  
• Detail User Stories
  • The links are to the private board that is internal to Marmot staff. The Pika team does not want to lose track of the stories so they are linked in the user stories. However, you will not have access because they are listed on a private board.
  • No survey for the June release. A reminder that we will be doing the surveys bi-annually unless the team gets a lot of feature requests that need to get handled. The next survey will be in September. 

Other discussion topics 

• Libby versus Overdrive in Pika (Minute 00:20)
  • The Pika team does not have any plans as of now to make changes to the language in Pika.
    • Here is the reasoning:
    • OverDrive is still the actual home service.
    • Even though the OverDrive app has been sunsetted, the OverDrive site still exists, and OverDrive is still using that language for itself as well. 
    • There are several elements in Pika that reference OverDrive rather than Libby such as the search options and the landing link that directs patrons out to a library or consortium OverDrive site.  

• Accessibility standards for the state of Colorado (Minute 2:25)

  • The House Bill 21-1110 on Colorado web accessibility requirements was passed last summer. It is getting more attention because there is a requirement for entities to submit an accessibility plan for all of their web content. Whether it is vendor-provided, eContent, or the Pika platform these all would be included in the accessibility plan. Marmot, the Alliance, CLiC, CAL, and State Library have been working together to try to figure out what is expected and required from this law. The latest update has come from the Governor’s office and they have confirmed that local governments including public libraries, universities, colleges, and schools do not have to submit a plan this summer.  The law does require that libraries comply with the web accessibility standards that the state of Colorado has adopted by July 1, 2024. 
  • Marmot has always planned on making sure the Pika is fully compliant with the 2.1 accessibility standards that have been in their strategic plan. Marmot is only halfway through their plan at this time. This has always been on their radar and does allow them to scope out what this involves. Adam, C.J., and Ashley have done some initial work but will now refocus their efforts to look at the requirements for web accessibility, so they can get those different items that are identified into the development pipeline. Marmot will share updates over the next few years about different components to make sure Pika is fully compliant with the current 2.1 requirements.      

• Authority Control/Functionality in Pika (Minute 6:06)

  • Call for participants for a working group to detail needs and desires and lay the foundation for what folks would like to see for authority records and authority control in Pika.
  • Some Marmot folks from the Union Catalog Committee are interested in this functionality so Lloyd wanted to reach out to the Discovery Partners to bring in more points of view. 
  • Lloyd is looking for a working group to develop a formal proposal for this functionality. 
  • Adam mentioned that authority control is a higher-level functionality that we have had requests from within Marmot and some Discovery Partners. Marmot feels like this is a good time to start fleshing out what this would look like for the developers through use cases for the Pika authority control functionality. When Adam spoke with the Marmot Union Catalog Committee about this functionality, he made it clear that the development work was not a 2022 project. Adam thinks that if Marmot can help spec out the user stories in 2022, he thinks this could be a major theme for projects for 2023 along with the accessibility standards he mentioned earlier.
  • Pascal mentioned that from the development side, he wants to take the features that the experts with authority control want to have built and have enough information to be able to know how to build them correctly instead of guessing at what they would need. 
  • Action Item: Ashley will send out an interest email in the next week or so to get contact information from Marmot libraries and Discover Partners.   

     The next meeting is Tuesday, June 07, 2022