MINUTES NOVANET ACQUISITIONS SUBCOMMITTEE DATE: June 6, 1995 1:00 a.m. PLACE: King's College Library PRESENT: Linda Aiken LAW Susan Cameron SFX Paulette Drisdelle KNG Gail Fraser WKK Peter Glenister MSV Mary MacDonald WKK Kevin MacNeil SFX David Manning SMU (chair) REGRETS: Mark Bartlett TUN Mary Dobson UCB Ilga Leja NCD Louise Mader KIL Alison McNair KIL Elaine Murray AST Michele Sullivan MSV Terri Winchcombe TUN ==================================================== 1. Agenda : There was no agenda prepared for this meeting. 2. Minutes of May 25, 1995 were deferred. 3. Business Arising 3.1 Geac Acquisitions/Serials Training [Week of May 29-June2] A brief report of the Geac training week was given. It was stressed that the training covered only the basic operations. We did not use the full entry feature for order creation during the week, we did not create parent/child records for monographic series or for title changes or memberships, we didn't renew subscriptions or explore price projection capabilities. We didn't cover the processing of vendor status reports and the various ways to cancel an order. Considerable time was spent going over the Setup Tables and Codes, something that we will not incorporate into our own training. Little (to no) time was spent on the editing commands for system screens and the separate commands for windows editing. A quick half hour on editing at the outset would have saved a lot of frustration later on. During the week we did get further insight in developing Setup Tables and we can now incorporate those changes. The event of the week came at about 11:00 on Friday ( forever to be recalled in the vein of "where were you when Kennedy was shot" ) when we saw in full glory the woeful inadequacies of serials check-in from a multi- agency perspective. [see Section 5.1 of these minutes] Many other issues need to be explored before we will know the full functionality of the modules. Examples : where do we see the dollar values associated with a tracking fund (in a report?); are there, or are there not, note fields that can be associated and displayed with a check- in screen. [Haven't seen any, but the manuals entice us with mention of Copy Set Notes and the possibility of transferring the acquisitions Processing Note into this field/screen?? see Serials Users Guide 3-12 and 5-21] 4. New Business 4.1 Schedule for Novanet Acquisitions/Serials Training There was discussion on the training requirements for the Subcommittee members. The Subcommittee had previously booked the Training Room for the weeks of June 19-23 and June 26-30. It was decided to continue with the plan of providing two training sessions. Space at each session is limited to 10 persons. The first session was reduced to a three-day session from June 19-21. This first session would serve several purposes. It would provide an opportunity to develop the Novanet training package and incorporate the kinds of examples and scenarios encountered at a working multi-agency site. The input from staff at this early stage will also be useful in developing the teaching skills of the trainers. This first session will not cover all aspects of Acquisitions/Serials (e.g. issues such as budget setup, journal entries, setup codes, etc. will not be covered in favour of emphasis on day-to-day clerical procedures). The list of attendees follows: Michael Bramah AST Karen Chandler KIL Valerie Cochrane SMU Paulette Drisdelle KNG Carol Janc KIL Alison McNair KIL Valerie Mickelberg KIL Stephen Murray LAW Heather Saunders SMU Terri Winchcombe TUN The second session will run the five days from June 26- 30. This is the principal training session that Novanet is offering for Acquisitions/Serials work. Provision for representation from every Novanet agency has been made. The list of attendees follows: Mark Bartlett TUN Paulette Drisdelle KNG Gail Fraser WKK/VG Ilga Leja NCD Mary MacDonald WKK Anne-Marie MacKenzie UCB Kevin MacNeil SFX Lloyd Melanson AST Michele Sullivan MSV Cathy Toomey UCB 5. Other Business 5.1 Novanet Chairs Committee Meeting, June 6, 1995 a.m. A meeting of the chairs of Novanet committees was held June 6, 1995 at 9:00 a.m. at Saint Mary's University. There will be a delay in receiving the migration database for testing. We are still waiting for a date. There was discussion of possible conflicts with the Training Room bookings if the Training Room was to be used for migration testing. Scott felt that the testing could take place from any site via telnet and the room wouldn't be required. Acquisitions has the room booked for the last two weeks of June. Training on the migration (test) database may not be possible until the last week of June ( if then ), so training will proceed on the 'training' database . When the migration arrives it will be loaded on a database containing the Setup Tables and Codes developed by the Novanet subcommittees. The chair of the Acquisitions Subcommittee is preparing a list of their completed codes for the Novanet office. Deficiencies in ADVANCE for serials check-in were discussed. Basically, when you check in an item at one site you check it in for all sites ( you would then have to change the status of every new issue except your own ). This was a major discovery, as the Subcommittee did not know that the multi-agency defects were this serious. Geac has been assuring Novanet in writing for the last two years that both restriction of check-in to each agencies copy and multiple publication/frequency patterns would be available prior to Novanet's live use of the module. We were told that these features would be in release 6.0. Later (Oct.1994) we were told that they would be in release 6.2 and 6.5 respectively, and that 6.2 would be available for December 1994 and 6.5 would be available for June 1995. Questions relating to this issue, addressed to Geac by the Acquisitions Subcommittee in March 1995, have gone unanswered. David is to provide Scott with copies of the Geac correspondence so that this matter can be pursued. Apparently, 6.5 is due for release in December 1995. There was some doubt whether Novanet would install a new release in mid academic year or whether new releases would be introduced during the summer months. Scott related that qvtnet (a free windows-based telnet application) was to be used by sites accessing ADVANCE through a windows environment. A training session on qvtnet would be offered in the near future. Novanet would also be offering a session in PC Eudora ( the e-mail package that Novanet will offer to ADVANCE users ) and a session in basic Windows skills. Scott pointed out that if you have a campus network with its own e-mail package then you could continue to use that package. It was noted that the context sensitive help in some of the ADVANCE modules (e.g. Acquisitions) was practically non-existent. Novanet will be requiring input into Menu Designs for the ADVANCE system. Unique menus can be developed and mapped to specific users or groups of users. The priority to be followed for the development of menus would be those coming from 1) subcommittees, 2) library departments, and 3) individuals. When proposed menus are developed, Scott will post them on a Web page and we can e-mail our choices. Staff menus should not present the items that only supervisors need to see. Scott referred the chairs to the Utilities Manual for explanations of menus. The ADVANCE system does two transfers of acquisitions data to the cataloguing database files. One at the time of order and one at the time of receipt. In GLIS, since we only had a weekly transfer of data, we were required to turn off the second transfer so as not to overwrite values assigned to the item by cataloguing staff before the end-of-week transfer was done. We do not have this problem in ADVANCE since transfers will be done every night. [[ We would simply hold back each day's receipts until the next morning before forwarding to Cataloguing. { We could turn off the transfer for a rush item that was to be forwarded immediately.} ]] When we were using the two transfers in GLIS we were having both transfers post the message "on order" in the OPC. This was a Novanet decision made at the Advisory Committee level. Since records created in Acquisitions will be almost indistinguishable from records created by a cataloguer, Scott is recommending that we use whatever features ADVANCE offers to distinguish the state of the record. Therefore, he recommends that we do the second transfer and post the system-supplied message "in process" so that people can tell the state of the order without having to go into the acquisitions module. This will be brought up at the next meeting of the Cataloguing Subcommittee to get the input of cataloguing staff. [ The reason that we posted "on order" after the second GLIS transfer was to avoid having the public requesting items that had not been fully catalogued or were in the end-processing stage. ] Scott advised that we will not have any certainty as to the effect that the migration will have on records that are in process. He was speaking particularly of financial transactions such as invoices. He recommends that, where possible, invoices started on GLIS be finished on GLIS including cheque request. Another reason to wait for live ADVANCE use for some types of processing is due to the fact that we will not have system reports for the first several months of live ADVANCE use and you will not be able to get a list of items from GLIS that are awaiting some type of action such as invoice verification. Careful monitoring of your workflow (manually) will be required until we get the system reports in place. 5.2 SFX requested a copy of the subcommitee document Novanet Policies and Protocols for the Geac Acquisitions Module. 5.3 The Acquisitions Subcommittee training team ( Linda Aiken, Louise Mader and David Manning ) will have their first meeting Monday, June 12, 1995 at 9:00 at the Law Library. 6. Next Meeting/Adjournment The next meeting will be held Thursday, June 15, 1995 at 1:00 p.m., at King's College Library. Adjournment