From: Hyman, Ben EDUC:EX Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2010 1:50 PM To: 'Lori Bowen Ayre'; 'Evergreen Discussion Group' Cc: 'Amy Terlaga'; 'Anoop Atre'; 'Jed Moffitt'; 'Jim Corridan'; 'Jim Craner'; 'John Boggs'; 'John Houser'; 'kate sheehan'; 'Kathy Lussier'; 'Rayner, June'; 'Sharp, Chris'; 'Steve Willis'; 'Turner, Jennifer M'; '[email protected]'; '[email protected]' Subject: RE: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Re: Cataloging enhancements for Evergreen
Hi all, Peter asked me to respond and I'm grateful for the opportunity, especially because I had meant to get an anno out about Sitka ideas to the lists over a week ago. *Warning* - long email, entirely composed on a blackberry. Apologies. With the recent launch of Sitka Ideas, Sitka libraries can now easily propose ideas for improving Evergreen, vote on the best solutions (consortial policy or development), comment on each others' ideas, and track the development of Evergreen enhancements made by Sitka. Sitka ideas came about in part because we were growing weary of tracking Sitka site Feature Requests using every piece of 'productivity software' under the sun. That, and our ticketing system (Request Tracker) doesn't provide Sitka sites with enough of a sense of the overall Feature Request queue - nor could we necessarily infer priorities at any given moment. And then there was the issue of checking in with other potential development partners; we wondered if we could create a bit of a space to provide for maximum shoulder surfing with a minimum of fuss for all potential audiences. Here's the Sitka ideas faq http://ideas.sitka.bclibraries.ca/node/1 We selected IdeaTorrent as our software solution based on a variety of criteria that included: -it is open source -how well it appeared to perform for the ubuntu community, in a similar environment -it allows for continuous polling and, of importance for Sitka, we were able to modify the code to respect weighted voting (as established in the Sitka governance docs) -Chris Sharp at GPLS mentioned it in passing at one point, and he's really smart :) -Honestly, for what we needed - and especially the weighted vote piece - it was hard to find a nicer comparable Ultimately, in addition to the motivations above, we didn't want to be duplicating development efforts. Having said that, we certainly didn't want to pre-judge where the overall EG community might want to go with respect to coordinated approaches to feature dev. Quite simply, we needed an internal solution in a bit of a hurry (Sitka now has 41 libraries in over 85 communities and we're growing...). It may be a solution that also works for some others, or even all others, or not. And we're good with that. We think its a neat tool and we welcome you to look over the fence and let us know especially if you are interested in getting together on any items in 'popular idea' flagged with this statement: "Coordinating priority & funding with other partners." We're also happy to participate in discussions about how this approach might work on another level. Kudos to Kevin Reed on the Sitka Team for setting up Sitka Ideas 'just so' based on input from the rest of the team/ kudos to the team for thinking through the workflow. Lori, here are some specific responses to your questions: At what point does a good idea become something you will actually pursue as a development project? -if its a high priority, if it doesn't look like it will appear in, say 2.0, if no one else appears to be doing it, if the team can do it, and if the budget allows it (resourcing etc)...then! Believe it or not, all those if's can be checked off fairly quickly in many cases. The current plan is to base the Team's work plan on snapshots of the continuous polling results - say, 3 times a year. We may need to revisit this / season to taste. And what do you do next? Do you have a team that is doing your own development or are you working with a 3rd party? -If all the if's are satisfied, but the team feels the dev is over their heads, e.g., then Sitka would reach out to 3rd parties. I should mention that the Sitka team has strength in training, support, dev, migrations, project management, documentation and sysadmin; like any consortial environment, balancing the priorities and resources is a fluid process informed by a number of factors. How do you interact with the core developers of Evergreen throughout this process? -Sitka developers engage in the broader dev community in a number of ways. Based on that engagement, I think you'll see that the dev we typically take on attempts to anticipate broader future dev directions. That is to say that we try to make contributions that respect the great work of the core developers. Code, patches and bug reports are all/will continue to be submitted through the appropriate global community channels. I hope this helps. Please let me know if questions. Ben, with my Sitka hat on. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Lori Bowen Ayre Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2010 4:46 PM To: Evergreen Discussion Group Cc: Hyman, Ben EDUC:EX; Amy Terlaga; Anoop Atre; Jed Moffitt; Jim Corridan; Jim Craner; John Boggs; John Houser; kate sheehan; Kathy Lussier; Rayner, June; Sharp, Chris; Steve Willis; Turner, Jennifer M Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Re: Cataloging enhancements for Evergreen Hi Peter, I'm intrigued by your use of IdeaTorrent to capture enhancement requests from your members. I'd love to hear how that is working for you and understand your workflow. At what point does a good idea become something you will actually pursue as a development project? And what do you do next? Do you have a team that is doing your own development or are you working with a 3rd party? How do you interact with the core developers of Evergreen throughout this process? Lori We've been looking into something like this for RSCEL or maybe the larger community.. On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 4:29 PM, Peter Plett (Project Sitka) <[email protected]> wrote: Hi Kathy (and list), * The ability to detect and inform the user when items don't load because of a duplicate barcode. On behalf of Sitka, I am beginning work on implementing this during the coming month... Also see http://ideas.sitka.bclibraries.ca/ideatorrent/idea/35/ for a description, proposed solution(s) forthcoming. First post on list, Peter. Peter Michael Plett Sitka Implementation Team - Development/Data Migration Quoting Kathy Lussier <[email protected]>: Hi all, Some of you may have seen the RFP that MassLNC posted to this list last month for cataloging enhancements for Evergreen. MassLNC has recently been in discussions with Equinox to proceed with general cataloging improvements as well as enchancements to the MARC batch import and overlay utility. We would be interested in partnering with other organizations that may also benefit from these enhancements. The description of the enhancements are as follows: General cataloging enhancements * The ability to enter call number, barcode number and all copy information on the same screen. * The inclusion of a "Fast Item Add" link next to the (View MARC) link in the staff client record summary display area (similar to the Fast Item Add link that displays in the MARC record editor). This link will spawn the combined Volume/Copy/Creator/Item Attribute Editor, with the workstation library chosen as the owning library. * When searching for records in the staff client, the ability to immediately land on the bibliographic record instead of the search results screen when there is only one matching search result in the system. * Delimiting the call number so that the prefix resides in a separate field. This prefix can display with the call number in the OPAC and in spine labels. * When adding items, the ability to include the classification scheme and call number prefix in the copy template. * The creation of a parts structure to store volume information for items in a multi-volume set and to allow users to place holds on these specific parts. In essence, users will be able to place a hold on disc 2 of Lost season 3, and, as long as the parts information is entered uniformly, the system should be able to target any copy of that disc, even if it is using a different call number. Batch import & overlay improvements: * The ability to configure multiple record matching rules to match on one or more MARC fields using Boolean logic. * User interface improvements to support importing items as part of the batch load, including an option in the user interface to configure the system to import items without overlaying the MARC record. * The ability to detect and inform the user when items don't load because of a duplicate barcode. * The ability to import failure messages that display in the queue and to print, e-mail or export these messages from the queue. * A mechanism that will examine the encoding levels of the record being imported and of the existing record. This mechanism will determine whether to overlay this record based on those encoding levels. If your library is interested in being a development partner on either of these projects, please e-mail me directly at [email protected]. Thanks all and have a wonderful Thanksgiving! ------------------------------------------------------------- Kathy Lussier Project Coordinator Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative (508) 756-0172 (508) 755-3721 (fax) [email protected] IM: kmlussier (AOL & Yahoo) Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier -- ==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-== Lori Bowen Ayre Principal Consultant The Galecia Group www.galecia.com (707) 763-6869 [email protected]
