OSL Minutes: Reference Working Group, October 23, 2007

RWG welcomes Lisa Davis from OSL as a regular member of the group. She has already answered many of RWG's questions and is a great resource for the group.

Reference Round Table
The first joint production of RWG and OLIS was successful, with great turnout from many libraries. There was a sense that library staff appreciated the forum and would participate in future sessions.

Future roundtable topic ideas:
        Marketing databases
        Outreach to schools
        Library trends & changing services
        Patron Behavior Issues
        Dealing with Difficult People
        Space Issues and Building Projects

RWG would like to continue this OLIS partnership and plan 2-3 roundtables per year, with Hope Houston's cooperation. It was noted that other roundtable groups meet more often (YART is monthly).

Meeting Space
Lisa Davis mentioned that the new OSL office's conference area is being renovated to hold 30 people. Elaine Clarke is the OSL contact for scheduling conference room use. OSL is not able to provide refreshments for meetings, but has contact info for area providers if food needs to be ordered in advance of a meeting, at the attendees' expense. RWG will meet in the new space for the November meeting.

Millennium Count Use & Create Lists
The Millennium Count Use module can be used in conjunction with Create Lists to generate statistical reports. Linda Caisse will share an email from her boss that explains this feature in greater detail.

Lisa Davis offered onsite training at individual libraries and at a future RWG meeting. It was mentioned that the Cataloger's website includes Create List instructions.

Millennium Telephone Server
The Millennium telephone server is moving from PRO to OSL. Due to the change, system phone calls will not qualify for e-rate status since the server is not housed at a library facility. Due to the anticipated cost increase, it's recommended that patrons be encouraged to move notice preference to email or postal mail.

NELA report
Mary Anne Quinn reported some trends presented at annual NELA meeting.
         Allow food & beverages
         Library Commons environment
         Defined Spaces: Teens or Meeting Rooms, etc.
         Signage: Natural Language

Pat LaRose talked to Barbara the III rep at NELA about Encore and WebPac Pro. Encore is an add-on product that is III's offering that allows special "tagging" and other patron interactibility. This would be a product OSL would have to buy.

Webpac Pro is already available to OSL and offers some new features which OSL has not implemented. Webpac Pro is a free upgrade, but some features need to be purchased. Also Peter has determined that some features of WEB pac pro would result in additional costs for OSL to implement. Customizations we have already made to improve the OPAC would be wiped out if we went to Web Pac Pro. Peter feels this may change if we wait for the next iteration.

Pat went to a session at NELA on Scriblio, a specially designed program being used by the Cook Library in Tamworth, NH. The session was similar to the previous day's session on Library Thing. These are new ways to add subject headings and tagging to a library's catalog and at Tamworth incorporates a blog, etc. Encore resembles Scriblio in some ways, and is better because it ties in to the bibiographic database without having to locally upload bib records. For more information about Scriblio go to the Cook County Library website, or check the links from the NELA conference session at the NELA website.

Ebsco Full Text
It was reported that some libraries were not receiving full text of some journals (Consumer Reports) from within the library. [Update - Lisa talked to Ebsco the day after our meeting, about these cases and reported that the affected libraries had disabled PDFs via EBSCOAdmin. EBSCO was going to contact libraries affected to fix.]

OPAC Icons
New opac icons must be compatible with the current system, per Rick Payette.
Image requirements are: .gif format, 96 dpi, 40 x 40 pixels
Icons can be changed at any time, not just at the 2 yearly OPAC updates
Revisit the OPAC icons from the Capital Area District Library: http://opac.cadl.org
They are .png format images ~ can they be converted to .gif?
HELIN uses .jpgs, but they could possibly be converted to gifs: http://helin.uri.edu/
Do we need to pursue permission in order to use in our OPAC?
We will discuss at November meeting.

Local Holds Committee
The Local Holds Committee is not ready to present to Steering this month. There is a meeting planned for Nov. 15 to try to reach a concensus for a presentation or recommendation to Steering for its November meeting. As a result of her participation on the committee, Pat LaRose will recommend that the system remain as is. She feels it is the best option for customer service to OSL patrons, and the that the "local holds" is not a good solution based on how it would have to be implemented.

RI E-Zone
E-Zone materials will not be integrated into the OSL catalog at this time. Lisa will ask Overdrive what other libraries do in regard to cataloging Overdrive materials.

[Update: Overdrive sells unedited MARC records that act as pointers to the RI E-Zone site. This will be a topic at the November E-Zone meeting. ]

Next Meeting is November 27th @ 2:15 PM @ OSL Offices

The Summit South, Suite 103
Warwick Executive Park
300 Centerville Road
Warwick, RI 02886-0226

Directions: www.oslri.org/about.html

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Ocean State Libraries
The Summit South, Suite 103
300 Centerville Road
Warwick, RI 02886-0226
401-738-2200