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09/17/2006
Minutes August 17, 2006
by:Beth Lang, UMass

RIO Minutes August 17, 2006
By: Beth Lang

Present: Bryan Goodwin, Margaret Groesbeck, Beth Lang (recorder), Barbara Polowy, Bonnie Vigeland (chair)
Absent: Sherre Harrington

Identifying and Reporting ALEPH OPAC problems

The Aleph Implementation Committee requests that RIO identify that most urgent web OPAC problems that must be addressed by the STP date and send them in a list to Jan Jourdain and Chris Hannon immediately. RIO member at each institution should set up a spreadsheet for documenting problem reports, prioritize them, and send the list on to Jan and Chris, preferably by Friday, 8/18. Margaret will send a copy of Amherst’s spreadsheet that we can all use as a template.

Highest Priority problems identified by RIO

MORE page: shorten the title to "More" (delete the word Databases from the title.) Also: what does link to FIVE COLLEGE CATALOG (non-union view) mean? Delete this if a duplicate.

ADVANCED SEARCH page: add the word "And" between the search box and the limits box. Advanced Search functionality is not working today, is this a temporary problem?

SEARCH RESULTS page: on the grey bar, far left, is the word "Holdings". Add the Owned/Out functionality back. Change the heading for the column to: Library (Owned/Out)

CALL NOS. and AVAILABILITY page: suppress the 4 grayed-out arrows on the bottom half of the page, as they serve no purpose.

NO RESULTS page: (to see example, type feloni and noodles in BASIC Search box, and you will arrive at NO RESULTS page). Remove the words in upper Left corner "Permute Search". Replace with "No Results Found" in the green font. Add the "Modify Search" button to the page. Change the choices in the drop-down box labeled Field to Search to the same choices as those found on Advanced Search page. Remove the words: Request permutation (No Adjacency)

MODIFY SEARCH page: Should go to NO RESULTS page, if there are no results. (Currently, stays on MODIFY SEARCH page)

Other Aleph OPAC display issues noted by RIO

The recommended browser for Aleph has been IE, but during recent Five Colleges testing more display issues have been noted with IE than either Firefox or Safari. Perhaps the recommendation should be changed. ALEPH OPAC was very unstable during the RIO meeting and much functionality was temporarily unavailable, so this should be rechecked at a later time.

Moving forward with Aleph

Publicity and promotion:
RIO members agreed to share with each other any Aleph publicity or promotion documents developed. Most of these efforts are still in the early stages. Ideas mentioned include: making tutorials in Captivate (Smith), having reference staff stationed at the entrance to the library armed with laptops for Q&A the first week of school (Amherst), and list of comparisons between III and Aleph (UMass). All feel that using a common language for promotion would be advantageous for the Five College library users.

Ongoing Aleph improvement group

RIO will make a recommendation to the FCLC that an ongoing “Aleph improvement group” be formed. Members may include: RIO rep, cataloger, web person, FCLC rep.

Next Meetings

RIO will continue to meet once a month at Hampshire College Library, Mondays at 9am. Fall meeting dates are:

September 18
October 16
November 13
December 11