NOVANET ACQUISITIONS COMMITTEE MINUTES DATE: June 13, 1996 1:30 p.m. PLACE: Saint Mary's University Library PRESENT: L. Aiken LAW H. Blanchard MSV S. Cameron SFX (acting secretary) K. Chandler KIL G. Fraser WKK P. Glenister MSV A. Grantham AST M. MacDonald WKK K. MacNeil SFX D. Manning SMU (chair) A. McNair KIL T. Winchcombe TUN REGRETS: L. Mader KIL ================================================================ 1. Agenda approved 2. No recent minutes to approve 3. Discussion on nominations for new chair for Acquisitions Committee. The current chair spent some time outlining the duties of the position. A document listing the outstanding issues and items which have been deemed necessary for full implementation was prepared by the current chair. He also discussed some possible alternatives for sharing the workload. It was generally agreed that the chair(s) not be responsible for minute taking and that the recording secretary assignment would rotate amongst all members (excluding the chair(s)), that the Task Force/Working Group structures be maintained, that the chair(s) could (but would not necessarily have to) be members of the Task Force/Working Groups. It was also pointed out that some of the current duties of the chair may be reduced as some activities such as report printing may be done either by the Novanet office or be distributed in the future. The concern was expressed that it is helpful for the chair(s) to have some experience in all aspects of both of the modules. As it exists now, the various Novanet Institutions have differences in implementation of these modules. After some discussion it was decided that we would move to a co-chair situation, with a representative coming from each of the two modules, acquisitions and serials. The two members who volunteered were Terri Winchcombe and Gail Fraser. The participation of these members will need to be verified at their institutions before their names will be forwarded to the Novanet Management Committee. If there is a problem here, we will report it to the management committee as an issue which needs to be addressed. We also decided that this would be for a one year term commencing on October 1, 1996. The possibility of Kevin MacNeil and Susan Cameron co-chairing the committee for the next one year term (commencing on October 1, 1997 ) was also put forth. The current membership of the acquisitions task force was amended to include Susan Cameron and Kevin MacNeil. 4. David Manning outlined the various reports and forms which are being currently produced and distributed by him from Saint Mary's. These include vouchers and serials and monograph claims. He has also been working with the report writer on the various reports required to do serial claims. A report that lists all serial "Item(s) Due" is available and was run for libraries doing serials check-in. A similar report that lists "Expected Items" could not be produced. Neither could the main serials claim report, the Serials Claims Verification Report. These two latter reports were referred to the Novanet Office on June 4, 1996. It was also mentioned that the serial claim code field in the Copyset ( field 13 on the HLDM - COPY SET EDIT screen ) seems to be a necessary element for serials claiming to work. Libraries expressed a desire to have the ability to run these reports for themselves. 5. 6. 5 upgrade:- System Enhancements: Serials: The check-in type codes (CHKT) with their associated functionality were explored. There are currently 15 types. David has an updated code table for this code. CHKT CHECKIN TYPE CODE DESCRIPTION OF CODE FIELD 2 FIELD 3 1 Received 0 0 2 Returned 0 0 3 Claimed 0 0 4 Exp issue 0 0 5 Exp index 0 0 6 Exp suppl 0 0 7 Missing 0 0 8 In Bindery 0 1 9 Bound 0 1 10 No Action 0 0 11 Item due 0 0 12 Withdrawn 1 1 13 Microform 0 1 14 Superceded 1 1 15 Unavail. 0 1 N.B. The Novanet Office has been supplied with a computer file of the committee's complete Code Table document and were asked to make it available on the Novanet Home page. The focus of the discussion turned to the No Action code and the implications it has. When we developed the code tables last year we overwrote the #10 name No Action with UNAVAILABLE. However it turned out that when the 6.5 upgrade was done the functionality associated with the #10 code was changed. In other words, after the upgrade if this option was chosen it would in effect delete the item from the checkin box and the checkin history display. In fact if you were the only active copyset in that box the entire box would be deleted. So in view of this it was decided that we would put the option #10 name back to NO ACTION. An example of when this choice might be useful was outlined. If a checkin box has a supplement in it which Library A gets as part of their subscription and Library B doesn't recieve it, then Library B now has the option to use No Action and effectively delete this item from your checkin history display. { This new option makes it much easier for us to use the serials module in a consortium situation. } The other benefit of this is that this code also treats the item in such a way that the system drops it from the displayed totals shown in the checkin box, in effect saying 1/1 received in this case instead of 1/2 received since, in fact, you will never receive it. An additional 6 spaces for codes was created in this code table with the 6.5 upgrade. We used one of them to create a new Unavailable code. Further work needs to be done to explore the functionality of some of the codes we haven't really used yet, as well as come to some agreement on the definitions used for the codes. Also, with the 6.5 upgrade, there has been an additional field [Field 3] added to the checkin type code which is outlined in the new online serials manual. This new field allows us to treat items associated with particular codes as received on the initial checkin screen. [ This is on page 4-15 and 4-16 of the SERIALS MANAGEMENT GUIDE (updated electronic version)]. For example: If two libraries have received an item but one has sent their item to the bindery and has used the code for In Bindery; since the In Bindery code's field 3 is set to Treat As Received, the checkin box will display 2/2 Received (instead of 1/2 Received). It was further outlined that we had not been using the other field [Field 2], the Suppress Display in OPAC field. This field allows us to retain checkin data in the Serials module for record keeping purposes but suppress the display in OPAC for the same piece of data. This is particularly good for material that is withdrawn or superceded. This field also allows libraries to use the same checkin box, retain the checkin information, but individually decide whether they will display the item in OPAC. It was pointed-out that Code 12, Withdrawn and Code 15, Superceded were now both set to suppress the checkin display from OPAC. Acquisitions: parts /cpy field upgrade: David outlined the fuctionality of the new field used to handle the ordering and receiving of material having multiple physical parts. The new parts/copy field is found on the ORD-ordering data screen and on the standard location display in receiving. To illustrate its use David did an online demo showing the steps in ordering both a three volume set as well as a twenty one volume encyclopedia. By using the notes option on the ORD screen we are able to use the NUM START, NUM END and LABEL fields to specify enumeration. Finally moving to the standard location display screen, it provides us with two new options. These are DETAILS and NUMBERING to receive multi-part orders. This option is not for use with serials. 6. Task Force Reports: A. Acq/Ser Task Force: David Manning reported that this task force met several times and produced a document with hypertext links which is available on the web Acquisitions Home page, entitled NOVANET STANDARDS FOR MODULE USE. The document covers the work done by that task force. The serials part of the document is still being developed and it was decided that the task force would have to be enlarged to include people using the module on a daily basis in order to iron out some of the remaining details. This expanded group will meet in either July or August. B. Reports Task Force: Linda Aiken reported that this group met two or three times. They identified the most important reports necessary for serials and acquisitions. It had been planned originally that Chris from the Novanet Office would go and take training in Ontario from GEAC on the Report module, but Chris left and this had to be postponed until at least the fall. So the work on this front was stalled. The next approach was to identify reports that we could pay GEAC to run. The group then was asked what reports acquisitions/serials would really need in this scenario. However the fiscal year-end was already done at this point, so priorities had changed somewhat. Two reports were identified as being important, and then the work of communicating the exact parameters to GEAC was to be undertaken. These two reports were, 1. OPEN ORDER REPORT by Department (fund) and 2. OPEN ORDER REPORT BY TITLE. These were deemed important because some of the member libraries needed to do serials cancellation projects. The chair of the Acquisitions Committee was asked to prepare specifications for these reports. C. Indexing Task Force: Gail Fraser reported that this task force had two or three meetings also. It was felt after several meetings that this task force seemed to be covering similar ground to the Authorities task force and was really absorbed by it. It remains an issue whether we have some membership in this task force as choices on fields to index and how they are indexed could have implications for either or both the serials and acquistions modules. 7. Other business: The need for additional training or "refresher courses" for the modules was aired. It was decided that this need could be met through our meeting as a committee to explore the problems in a workshop fashion. There was some discussion around invoice loaders and X12 claims. It was stated that the invoice capability is still a high priority. Those libraries requiring them for the fall should make Novanet aware of the necessity for this software. Some libraries stated that the long manual processing time required for processing invoives without the 'loaders' was having a direct relationship on their ability to spend time implementing other serials features such as checkin. Novanet's inability to have this working for last year has also had the effect of causing other libraries to choose not to invest any more time in pursuing this functionality. Confidence in having this issue addressed for this year by the Novanet Office and Geac was deemed to be very low. Adjournment at 4:30 No next meeting scheduled, a tentative date for July for expanded serials/acquisitions task force was discussed.