Minutes for 10/06/2015

Discovery Committee Meeting 6 October, 2015 Minutes

Modification to development cycle

  • Mark described a new method of sprint planning which will coincide with Discovery Services meetings. Meetings will now consist of a demo of new functionality to be released, as well as a discussion of development planned for the next release with this group helping to prioritize. The development team will then take these priorities to their sprint planning meeting and make the final decision as to the final sprint plan. Mark suggested we try this method through the end of the year, then re-evaluate and make any necessary modifications. Mark also showed how to bring up the current sprint in YouTrack.

Demo of new features/bug fixes to be released

  • Mark demoed new functionality and bug fixes for this next release. This included:
    • Account linking
    • Mobile modified for easier logging in and out
    • Real-time indexing for Horizon ILS customers, which means all Pika users will have this functionality
    • Carnegie Library Branch (Boulder Public) – images now show in search results (where metadata is available). Also worked on oral history so that these can be played directly from Pika
    • Suppress based on item status. Marmot members will need to work with Mark to enable; discovery partners can enable themselves via Pika administration
    • Made improvements and fixed broken functionality for exporting search results to Excel
    • Phrase searching – using quotes forces Pika to not automatically correct search terms
    • Account updates – mostly for Sierra/Millennium customers
    • Having too many items checked out in OverDrive led to erroneous errors. A more meaningful error message now appears indicating users can place a hold instead. Let Mark know if any changes to the message should be changed
    • Horizon ILS libraries – Pika now uses the unique ID field
    • Added the display of the 690 field (local subject heading)
    • New option in Admin to edit the header text if desired
    • Improvements to placing holds and home location o Searching for lists now available (public lists only)
    • Documentation for how to link patron accounts now complete (intended for staff, not patrons)
    • Other bug fixes

Jamendo

  • Joseph Sanchez demoed Jamendo, a creative commons resource for music exploration. API’s are available for this free product, so wanted this group to consider adding in order to integrate with Pika. Mark will send the committee a survey regarding this.

Upcoming Development

  • Mark shared definitely to-do items:
    • Solr Performance o Real-time indexing for Horizon (finish what was started)
    • Arlington test server set-up
    • Item status using index rather than screen scraping
  • Mark then shared items for this group to help prioritize:
    • OR facets together (multi-select facets)
    • Detailed search between basic and advanced search (pre-select facets)
    • Advanced search as it was in VuFind o Accelerated Reader implementation
    • Library.Simplified
  • A couple of other suggestions were added, and Mark sent out a survey for committee members to rank their order of prioritization, which the development team will consider in their sprint planning.
Meeting Date: 
Tuesday, 2015, October 6
Documentation Type: 
Meeting Minutes
Committees: 
Discovery Committee