Meeting Minutes for 03/04/2025

Demo of new features, bug fixes, and documentation for the upcoming release (Minute 19:35)  

• Release Notes

Discussion Topics

• Hoopla title updates (Minute 00:31)

  • AI “slop” titles removed wholesale

    • Ashley has been working with Marmot’s eResources Committee recently and the folks at Midwest Tape regarding a few different things. So this is going to impact all discovery partners that are using Hoopla, as well as Marmot libraries.

    • Hoopla is making content improvements to remove AI slop titles, which AI may have written. Hoopla Midwest Tape has flagged content they deem low value with AI titles, which have already been removed from Hoopla.

    • Ashley spoke about several processes, including how Hoopla interacts with Pika. This is a more robust side load rather than a full API Integration. We receive records from Hoopla every month. We load all those records as they update them throughout the month now. They may change a single API data point, the active or inactive title for items generally in the collection that are no longer available. This might mean the licenses expired or these titles are unavailable for other reasons. Hoopla has deleted these AI slop titles from their platform so they should no longer exist. Those titles would also be marked inactive and fall out of search results because they are still part of the record set.

    • We receive record sets on the second of each month. For most Pika sites they are processed the night they are received. For MLN1 libraries, the records are processed the following Saturday. These record sets capture everything, including additions or deletions made throughout the month.

  • Summaries removed from MARC sets (Minute 3:50)

    • That gets to the second point, summary titles. These summary titles have caused some confusion because they are often grouped due to how they are catalogued. So, the Midwest folks have removed these titles from the MARC sets Marmot uses for Pika based on two data points: the word summary or summarization in the 245 and the description in the 520. 

    • This does not necessarily mean they have been removed from Hoopla wholesale, unless they were also in that Venn diagram of AI slop titles. That means that for all libraries using Hoopa, Discovery Partner, or Marmot, any confusing summary titles have been removed from that record set. They will not display in Pika for discovery from our generic record set. They may still be in Hoopla if your library does not have unique settings to remove those titles. A lot of libraries are already doing that, but it depends on the independent choices that you make. 

    • Hoopla in Pika has content controls based on price, content type, and audience controls. These controls work with your library's settings in your Hoopla portal. 

    • Ashley wanted to clarify any unique settings you have for your library in Hoopla that aren't those more simplistic content controls; they are not currently available in Pika. 

• Feature development priority survey (Minute 9:09) & (Minute 51:08)

  • User stories review

  • One response per library

  • Ashley reviewed the Pika enhancement value survey user stories for 2025

  • Survey closes at the end of day on Friday, March 7th.

Discussion of development priorities for the next release (Minute 46:07)

• Digital Archive Upgrade

  • The Marmot Digital Archive is being upgraded from Islandora 7 to the new Islandora.

  • The top priority for the two releases will be rebuilding the integration with Pika.

• Marmot Website

  • The server is on an operating system we need to migrate from because the site is built on Drupal 7, now past the end of life.

• FTP Server

  • The FTP server is running on an operating system we must migrate away from.

  • The SD team will be rebuilding the Marmot FTP server.  

The next meeting is Tuesday,  June 2, 2025