08/18/2006
by:Barbara Polowy
Five College Libraries
Research, Information and Outreach Committee (RIO)
Minutes of the July 28, 2006 Meeting
Present: Bryan Goodwin, Margaret Groesbeck, Chris Hannon (guest from AIC), Sherre Harrington, Barbara Morgan (for Beth Lang), Barbara Polowy (recorder), Bonnie Vigeland (chair)
Absent: Beth Lang
Setting OPAC Priorities
The Aleph Implementation Committee has recommends that a small group of those involved with the development of the OPAC interface (Chris Hannon, Bonnie, and Beth) identify OPAC problems that must be addressed before SDI, in the short term (before SDI if possible, as soon thereafter if not), and in later this year (after SDI).
Barbara and Margaret will compile all of RIO’s decisions and recommendations about the web OPAC into a single document and send it to this committee by August 4
All agreed that the most urgent priority is to have the Basic, Advanced, Results, Full Record, and My Account pages looking and functioning correctly by STP.
Chris will compile a list of all Aleph out-of-the-box OPAC screens that need to be modified with the Five College “shrinkwrap” as well as other changes discussed by RIO earlier this year (e.g., Modify Search, Preferences, New Titles). Chris and Bonnie will identify these as high priority (needed by STP), middle priority (needed asap after STP) and low priority (to be worked on post-STP as time allows). This list will be sent to Jan by August 8.
OPAC Testing
RIO will refrain from testing the Basic and Advanced search functionality and other catalog pages designed by Slate Room as the OPAC is still unstable.
When Jan gives the go-ahead, RIO will test the OPAC and report and prioritize problems problems as directed by the AIC.
After STP, RIO will report critical functionality problems that need to be handled immediately.
RIO, or a subcommittee of RIO, will continue to work on and identify other changes after STP. All agreed that it would be helpful if this group included members from the Five College Cataloging Committee as well as a programmer familiar with the Aleph OPAC to ensure suggested changes are possible to implement in the system.
RIO will coordinate usability testing late in the fall semester when the OPAC is complete and functioning as originally designed.
Immediate Problems
The OPAC is working well with FireFox and Safari but not with IE. Chris will report this to Jan.
856s display as raw links
The gold balls indicating clickable links in the full record view should not be visible
If possible, RIO prefers that clickable links in the full record view launch the search directly in the OPAC rather than bring up an intermediate menu with a variety of search choices.
Some buttons on the advanced search and view results pages are not appearing
Next Meeting
RIO will meet at the time originally scheduled for a general meeting of Five College reference librarians, August 17, 9:00.
