[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Cataloging enhancements for Evergreen

Thu Nov 25 22:12:36 EST 2010

From: Hyman, Ben EDUC:EX 
Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2010 1:50 PM
To: 'Lori Bowen Ayre'; 'Evergreen Discussion Group'
Cc: 'Amy Terlaga'; 'Anoop Atre'; 'Jed Moffitt'; 'Jim Corridan'; 'Jim
Craner'; 'John Boggs'; 'John Houser'; 'kate sheehan'; 'Kathy Lussier';
'Rayner, June'; 'Sharp, Chris'; 'Steve Willis'; 'Turner, Jennifer M';
'pplett at sitka.bclibraries.ca'; 'dan at coffeecode.net'
Subject: RE: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Re: Cataloging enhancements for
Evergreen

Hi all,

Peter asked me to respond and I'm grateful for the opportunity,
especially because I had meant to get an anno out about Sitka ideas to
the lists over a week ago.

*Warning* - long email, entirely composed on a blackberry. Apologies.

With the recent launch of Sitka Ideas, Sitka libraries can now easily
propose ideas for improving Evergreen, vote on the best solutions
(consortial policy or development), comment on each others' ideas, and
track the development of Evergreen enhancements made by Sitka. Sitka
ideas came about in part because we were growing weary of tracking Sitka
site Feature Requests using every piece of 'productivity software' under
the sun. That, and our ticketing system (Request Tracker) doesn't
provide Sitka sites with enough of a sense of the overall Feature
Request queue - nor could we necessarily infer priorities at any given
moment. And then there was the issue of checking in with other potential
development partners; we wondered if we could create a bit of a space to
provide for maximum shoulder surfing with a minimum of fuss for all
potential audiences.

Here's the Sitka ideas faq http://ideas.sitka.bclibraries.ca/node/1

We selected IdeaTorrent as our software solution based on a variety of
criteria that included:

-it is open source

-how well it appeared to perform for the ubuntu community, in a similar
environment 

-it allows for continuous polling and, of importance for Sitka, we were
able to modify the code to respect weighted voting (as established in
the Sitka governance docs) 

-Chris Sharp at GPLS mentioned it in passing at one point, and he's
really smart :)

-Honestly, for what we needed - and especially the weighted vote piece -
it was hard to find a nicer comparable

Ultimately, in addition to the motivations above, we didn't want to be
duplicating development efforts. Having said that, we certainly didn't
want to pre-judge where the overall EG community might want to go with
respect to coordinated approaches to feature dev. Quite simply, we
needed an internal solution in a bit of a hurry (Sitka now has 41
libraries in over 85 communities and we're growing...). It may be a
solution that also works for some others, or even all others, or not.
And we're good with that. We think its a neat tool and we welcome you to
look over the fence and let us know especially if you are interested in
getting together on any items in 'popular idea' flagged with this
statement: "Coordinating priority & funding with other partners." We're
also happy to participate in discussions about how this approach might
work on another level.

Kudos to Kevin Reed on the Sitka Team for setting up Sitka Ideas 'just
so' based on input from the rest of the team/ kudos to the team for
thinking through the workflow.

Lori, here are some specific responses to your questions:

At what point does a good idea become something you will actually pursue
as a development project? 

-if its a high priority, if it doesn't look like it will appear in, say
2.0, if no one else appears to be doing it, if the team can do it, and
if the budget allows it (resourcing etc)...then! Believe it or not, all
those if's can be checked off fairly quickly in many cases. The current
plan is to base the Team's work plan on snapshots of the continuous
polling results - say, 3 times a year. We may need to revisit this /
season to taste.

And what do you do next?  Do you have a team that is doing your own
development or are you working with a 3rd party? 

-If all the if's are satisfied, but the team feels the dev is over their
heads, e.g., then Sitka would reach out to 3rd parties. I should mention
that the Sitka team has strength in training, support, dev, migrations,
project management, documentation and sysadmin; like any consortial
environment, balancing the priorities and resources is a fluid process
informed by a number of factors.

How do you interact with the core developers of Evergreen throughout
this process? 

-Sitka developers engage in the broader dev community in a number of
ways. Based on that engagement, I think you'll see that the dev we
typically take on attempts to anticipate broader future dev directions.
That is to say that we try to make contributions that respect the great
work of the core developers. Code, patches and bug reports are all/will
continue to be submitted through the appropriate global community
channels.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if questions. 

Ben, with my Sitka hat on.

From: loriayre at gmail.com [mailto:loriayre at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Lori
Bowen Ayre
Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2010 4:46 PM
To: Evergreen Discussion Group
Cc: Hyman, Ben EDUC:EX; Amy Terlaga; Anoop Atre; Jed Moffitt; Jim
Corridan; Jim Craner; John Boggs; John Houser; kate sheehan; Kathy
Lussier; Rayner, June; Sharp, Chris; Steve Willis; Turner, Jennifer M
Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Re: Cataloging enhancements for
Evergreen

Hi Peter,

I'm intrigued by your use of IdeaTorrent to capture enhancement requests
from your members.  I'd love to hear how that is working for you and
understand your workflow.  At what point does a good idea become
something you will actually pursue as a development project?  And what
do you do next?  Do you have a team that is doing your own development
or are you working with a 3rd party?  How do you interact with the core
developers of Evergreen throughout this process?

Lori

We've been looking into something like this for RSCEL or maybe the
larger community..

On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 4:29 PM, Peter Plett (Project Sitka)
<pplett at sitka.bclibraries.ca> wrote:

Hi Kathy (and list),

* The ability to detect and inform the user when items don't load
because of
a duplicate barcode.

On behalf of Sitka, I am beginning work on implementing this during the
coming month...

Also see http://ideas.sitka.bclibraries.ca/ideatorrent/idea/35/ for a
description, proposed solution(s) forthcoming.

First post on list,
Peter.

Peter Michael Plett
Sitka Implementation Team - Development/Data Migration

Quoting Kathy Lussier <klussier at masslnc.org>:

Hi all,

Some of you may have seen the RFP that MassLNC posted to this list last
month for cataloging enhancements for Evergreen. MassLNC has recently
been
in discussions with Equinox to proceed with general cataloging
improvements
as well as enchancements to the MARC batch import and overlay utility.
We
would be interested in partnering with other organizations that may also
benefit from these enhancements.

The description of the enhancements are as follows:

General cataloging enhancements
* The ability to enter call number, barcode number and all copy
information
on the same screen.
* The inclusion of a "Fast Item Add" link next to the (View MARC) link
in
the staff client record summary display area (similar to the Fast Item
Add
link that displays in the MARC record editor). This link will spawn the
combined Volume/Copy/Creator/Item Attribute Editor, with the workstation
library chosen as the owning library.
* When searching for records in the staff client, the ability to
immediately
land on the bibliographic record instead of the search results screen
when
there is only one matching search result in the system.
* Delimiting the call number so that the prefix resides in a separate
field.
This prefix can display with the call number in the OPAC and in spine
labels.
* When adding items, the ability to include the classification scheme
and
call number prefix in the copy template.
* The creation of a parts structure to store volume information for
items in
a multi-volume set and to allow users to place holds on these specific
parts. In essence, users will be able to place a hold on disc 2 of Lost
season 3, and, as long as the parts information is entered uniformly,
the
system should be able to target any copy of that disc, even if it is
using a
different call number.

Batch import & overlay improvements:
* The ability to configure multiple record matching rules to match on
one or
more MARC fields using Boolean logic.
* User interface improvements to support importing items as part of the
batch load, including an option in the user interface to configure the
system to import items without overlaying the MARC record.
* The ability to detect and inform the user when items don't load
because of
a duplicate barcode.
* The ability to import failure messages that display in the queue and
to
print, e-mail or export these messages from the queue.
* A mechanism that will examine the encoding levels of the record being
imported and of the existing record. This mechanism will determine
whether
to overlay this record based on those encoding levels.

If your library is interested in being a development partner on either
of
these projects, please e-mail me directly at klussier at masslnc.org.

Thanks all and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

-------------------------------------------------------------
Kathy Lussier
Project Coordinator
Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
(508) 756-0172
(508) 755-3721 (fax)
klussier at masslnc.org
IM: kmlussier (AOL & Yahoo)
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier

-- 
==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==

Lori Bowen Ayre

Principal Consultant

The Galecia Group

www.galecia.com

(707) 763-6869

Lori.Ayre at galecia.com

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://libmail.georgialibraries.org/pipermail/open-ils-general/attachments/20101125/5e3b174a/attachment-0001.htm 