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

[Stuart Miller]

Comments below at >>>.

Hope this helps.

Stuart Miller

-----Original Message-----
From: open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org [mailto:open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf Of Dan Scott
Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2008 10:44 AM
To: Evergreen Discussion Group
Cc: David Larsen
Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Requirements for academic reserves: request for comments


> 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.

>>>We would not/could not use a course reserve module that did not support both print and e-reserves. There would be no point in moving to a CR module that didn't offer both. I really think many academic libraries--at least in the U.S.--have embraced e-reserves with a vengeance. And there are just different processing requirements--a scanner interface, for instance.

> 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)?

>>> When any physical item housed somewhere in the library is temporarily placed on reserve, the location, item type, etc. is changed to the reserve location parameters. If a user finds the record in the online catalog, s/he will see that it is on reserve. But users can no longer search by course or by instructor to find reserve items. You have to be registered for the course and access the list by going through Blackboard--we provide the URLs to Blackboard. Any records (bib and item) created for a course packet, e-reserve item, etc. are marked "staff only" which keeps those records out of the online catalog but does not keep them off the course reserve list accessible through Blackboard--the course reserve lists in our system do not reference the "staff only" flag. [We consider this a very fortuitous bug.]

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".

>>>I think you are correct to keep it general, but I would say that integration with course management software is an essential requirement. Our integration with Blackboard is really more of a kludge than anything else; I believe Atlas worked directly with Blackboard on its integration with Ares. What it does is essentially open a window in Blackboard that is in effect a front end to the Ares product--one for those accessing the lists, another for faculty to initiate course reserve requests.

> 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.

>>>Features that would let us comply with the requirements of the Millennium Copyright Act which puts specific rules in place as to the number of times you can use a copy of a copyrighted item for the same course within a specific time period before you must pay for permission. For purposes of the RFC, I would guess you would want to phrase it along the lines of whatever is required by national copyright law. Of course, every country is different so if we're talking ideal world here, this particular feature should be designed so that installation would require you to select a country to get the specific features you need.

> 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.

>>> When you say "cataloging" to me, I hear "MARC record". Course reserve operations really should not need to be concerned about "cataloging"--just making a comprehensible description of the piece in hand as needed. And whatever format they are in, we at least would NOT want them available through any type of "regular" search in our user interfaces. Which to me almost requires them to be stored in their own database and appear only in a course reserve listing.


> 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."?

>>>Well, yes, if that encompasses instructors having the option to supply citations that could automatically be plugged into a course list so that our staff wouldn't have to rekey anything. [That's what the Ares/Blackboard interface allows.]