Minutes for 11/29/2016

MAC Meeting, Nov 29th at 1:00

November Agenda and minutes (Pika)
Meeting Leaders: Mary Walsh, Gayle Gunderson (absent) & Jamie Walker

Full meeting recording is at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehUQvOP90rQ

Review on how to use YouTrack.
Prioritizing development of our shared catalog for academic libraries
Mark demonstrated some ways to work with YouTrack, and Tammy directed us to the You Track documentation. (http://tinyurl.com/jh77qj8 - or, via Marmot tiki)

Please see this meeting recording for Mark’s demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehUQvOP90rQ

Mark: big priority for the past year has been the digital repository.  Also spoke to the “Road mapping” that is happening (timeframe commitments to various projects). It does not appear that the Book Cart enhancement will be entertained before Q2 2017.
  • Proposal for a "book cart lite" kind of functionality (much like what we used to have in Classic) (see: PK 240 in YouTrack)
Gayle and Mary submitted an enhancement requested back in April 2015. It is still languishing. Again, prioritization of backlog will be addressed at the Dec 6th Discovery meeting.  When I suggested that Academic needs be considered ahead of Discovery Partners, Karen said that the revenue generating work they do, makes the other work possible – Mark agrees that it’s a balancing act.
 

Martha mentioned that the Strategic Directions are set by the Marmot Directors at their annual meeting.  

"Browsing" --alpha lists of authors, titles, subject, call numbers (again, much like>Classic and VuFind) (PK 620.)
 

Mark again reminds us that this functionality was available in VuFind+ and that they spent a huge amount of time on and that no one wanted it (somehow I was left out of that discussion) and that it was a “huge maintenance suck”. There is a lot of complexity that goes into this from a programming point of view. He is reluctant to revisit it, for this reason. Though, at the MAC meeting in August (Durango) he and Jimmy did invite Jamie and myself to submit an enhancement. We did.

Please go in and vote on this!

Further discussion led to Karen offering suggestions on how some of this could be accomplished sooner by changing some of the display features to provide a more “trimmed down” listing when searching by “title begins with…” We will look into that, but it doesn’t fix the need to for a more concise listing such as is found in Classic. As Jamie says “a concise, somewhat predictable order would be helpful”. Jamie and Mary will look at this idea at the beginning of 2017. Not to replace the Browse function, but it’s a step in the right direction.

We will be soliciting “User stories” as we move forward.

Next Meeting: January?? TBD (We will not be meeting in December)

Addendum: Enhancement that Jamie and Mary submitted Fall 2016

Desirable Features for A-Z Browse in an Academic Catalog

Alpha browse should be a short and concise list (see examples below). Examples below are taken from Browse searches at Villanova University VuFind and University of Tennessee at Knoxville Alma/Primo.

Regardless of the type of browse, each search type should display ordered and concise results list which is critical for student and faculty researchers.

 
  1. Author browse (A to Z browse)

    1. Mostly single line A-Z sort

    2. Lines contain author and # results

    3. See references present

    4. Helpful if the target result shows some items that would occur before it as at Villanova.

http://tinyurl.com/zvr88mp  (Univ. Tenn – Knoxville)

 

http://tinyurl.com/gnn4rwe (Villanova)

 
  1. Call number browse

    1. Call # sort (A to Z)

    2. One line entries (mostly)

    3. Ideal would be a minimum of Call Number and title

      1. Author, date, # of items – are other possible fields to list (let’s talk)

      2. Needs to be concise and clean

    4. Helpful if the target result shows some items that would occur before it as at Villanova.

 

http://tinyurl.com/zaj6kek (Univ Tenn - Knoxville)

http://tinyurl.com/jywmus7 (Villanova)

 
  1. Subject Browse (A to Z)

    1. Subjects listed alphabetically with # of results

      1. Includes See Refs

    2. One-line display of results

    3. Helpful if the target result shows some items that would occur before it as at Villanova.

http://tinyurl.com/j2rzyzm (Univ Tenn - Knoxville)

http://tinyurl.com/zawtt2j (Villanova)

 
  1. Title browse (A to Z)

    1. Minimum would include Title and number of records

    2. Primo is concise and brief – Number of records and Title

      1. Primo groups records

    3. Our own "classic" catalog also displays titles very concisely.

    4. Vufind has Title, author, format, year, and number of results

      1. Not concise/clean display (looks junky)

      2. Too many columns of information to be concise, especially awkward in the second sample from Villanova

    5. Helpful if the target result shows some items that would occur before it as at Villanova.

 

http://tinyurl.com/gwbuppx (Univ Tenn - Knoxville)

 

http://tinyurl.com/jflnhpj (Villanova)

 

http://tinyurl.com/jd456l7 (Villanova)

 
Meeting Date: 
Tuesday, 2016, November 29
Documentation Type: 
Meeting Minutes
Committees: 
Marmot Academic Committee