[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Requirements for academic reserves: request for comments

[Dan Scott]

Hi Stuart:

2008/7/2 Stuart Miller <stuartwm at uchicago.edu>:
> I assume it's ok to post comments here. Some reactions:

Yep, this is perfect! Thanks for kicking off the discussion!

> 1. This is fine as far as it goes, but it's based on all print--half of our reserves are electronic. We don't make photocopies any more--anything that needs copying is scanned and files stored locally; anything that is in an online subscription resource gets pointed to that resource. Any course reserve module has to be able to deal with virtual as well as physical items.

You are correct, the current RFC is all based on print. But given that
there is no course reserve support in Evergreen today, I would argue
that building course reserve support that deals with half of the
course resources is better than no support at all. Perhaps I should
rename the proposal "Academic reserves (print materials)" as that is
currently what it is aimed at; our university is a world in which the
ILS and the course management system are two completely separate
worlds. The RFC is therefore based on the practices that I am most
familiar with, so in replacing our current ILS with Evergreen the
requirements expressed in the RFC would meet our present needs.

On the other hand, with the help of you and others, perhaps we could
add the requirements that would be needed to offer a better solution
than what we have today. For example, adding the ability to maintain a
list of URLs (with basic citation info) for electronic materials in
online subscription resources is not much of a stretch.

> 2. We no longer offer a course reserve catalog to the public because access is provided via Blackboard so only those registered for a class have access to the course list--which is what we want for copyright compliance. We want something that can be tightly integrated with a course management tool like Blackboard.

Interesting. So in your institution, when a print item is placed on
reserve it is no longer available to anyone outside of the course? Or
is this restriction only for digital materials - and even then, only
for locally scanned digital materials (as presumably your online
subscriptions continue to be accessible to the rest of the
institution)?

Out of interest, how does Blackboard integrate with other library
systems? Does the company behind Blackboard have to provide the
integration module, or is it possible to "roll your own" layer of
integration? I was deliberately fuzzy on system integration beyond
supporting basic standards like RSS feeds because at this point I
don't want to get into a discussion of exactly how WebCT, Blackboard,
Sakai, Moodle, etc. integration would work. I'm confident that OpenSRF
will surface the required read/write mechanisms for any course
management system capable of a customized integration layer - which is
why I wrote the very generic: "To enable integration with other campus
systems, the reserve materials for a given course should be able to be
accessed via various methods".

> 3. We are in need of copyright compliance features; there is no mention of that.

Can you describe what you mean by "copyright compliance features"? Is
this strictly for locally scanned digital materials? Perhaps you could
craft a few points to add to the RFC in a new "Requirements"
subsection called "Copyright compliance" (which would also cover the
visibility or invisibility of reserve materials that you mentioned
above); that would be a great enhancement to the RFC.

> 4. Making brief MARC bib records for copied articles, etc. has been the bane of our existence for years--it has caused endless problems. We want records created specifically for course reserve to be in a separate database. But it's also true that when an existing paper title is temporarily placed on reserve, we want to be able to change the location, loan period, etc. as described in the RFC.

Well, you're jumping ahead to implementation details, when the current
RFC just talking about requirements. Note that in the requirements I
didn't specifically say that this would result in a MARC record, I
just said that "Staff need a minimal cataloging interface for
ephemeral items". This could be a simple Web form with four text
fields that results in a MARC record. Or it could be stored in a
separate table entirely. That's something that we decide later.

The current RFC deliberately avoids implementation details because
they distract from the main discussion point: would a system that
meets these requirements meet your library's needs? In your case, no:
so you're helping by providing the additional requirements for your
library.

> 5. We definitely want to offer our faculty more options than sending us an email of titles.

Okay. So you agree with the requirement "Instructors must be able to
place items on reserve with minimal effort."?

> We are seriously evaluating Ares for course reserve--I would suggest that you take a look at that product if you want a good sense of what many would consider an up-to-date course reserve product. It is integrated into Blackboard and offers practical copyright compliance features--two very strong features that make it very attractive to us.

Thanks for the contributions, Stuart!

-- 
Dan Scott
Laurentian University