Endeavor Consortium Workgroup Minutes

Friday, September 9, 2005

Present:  Tari Keller, Dave Block, Granuaile O’Flanagan, Margaret Foote, Todd King, Margaret Hecker, Cathy Reilander, Mark Paul, Clara Stethen, Michael Stapleton, Linda Voyles, Dantrea Hampton, Paul Fuller, Ray Hyatt, Jr., Michael Reid, Kelly Vickery, Nelda Sims, Aleeah McGinnis, Perry Bratcher, Enid Wohlstein, Charlene Davis.

Endeavor Update:  From Linda Voyles’s report:

• Endeavor was pleased with the rollout of Version 5.0. 
• Approximately 70 customers are now on Version 5.0; half of the customer base has migrated to Unicode. 
• Endeavor is now looking at patches for Version 5.0, hoping to release them before year’s end.  Several of the patches will resolve AIX issues.  Endeavor continues to refine the usability of a new Voyager OPAC, and continues to work on including Cognos as the reporting piece.

· Encompass 3.6 was released in late August.

· Meridian has 27 customers

          8 Endeavor sites are implementing EJOS.

• EISI has undergone several organizational changes.
• Endeavor plans a goal of 2 to 3 releases per year.
• Software fixes should come out more quickly.
• Endeavor is doing more webcasts.

Upgrade Evaluation

Overall, the entire upgrade process was successful.  Continuous OPAC worked throughout the upgrade.  The AIX upgrade went pretty smoothly.  Access to a preview server would have been helpful, but the timing of the upgrade precluded its use.

Upgrade problems:

Post-sort has failed to work for some sites; the problem has been forwarded to Endeavor (Josh).  There are sorting issues affecting course reserves. 

There are problems with email notices; Michael Stapleton has figured out a workaround.

Off-line circulation is not running well. 

Problems with claiming in the acquisitions module was mentioned.

Communication

Mike Reid asked about communication with Endeavor Support.  Can communication be improved?  Generally, we all call Endeavor directly to report a problem.  We also share the problem on the listserv to determine if others have the same problem.  Aleeah mentioned that she usually does not a response from Endeavor regarding reported problems.  Linda said she would check with Liz Best of Endeavor about this lack of response.  Mark stated that he has seen improvement in Customer Support over the past four years.  Linda added that we can see every incident logged by going Knowledge Base.

Other

It is hoped that Endeavor will monitor carefully IBM and Oracle and their software developments.  Tari mentioned that server hardware will need to be updated soon.  This led to a brief discussion about the hubs of other consortial sites.  Some sites have one and others have more than one.  Enid mentioned that capital budget planning is now underway.  We would be competing with other IT projects.  Capital requests have to be made in advance.  The list is prepared for the meeting of the legislature in January.  So, if we need servers, we need to request the equipment now.

Enid announced that Kentucky Wesleyan College and the Kentucky History Center would like to join the consortium.  A decision will need to be made on what hub they would join. 

The next workgroup meeting will be Thursday, December 1, 2005, not Friday, December 2.  The change in meeting date is resolve a conflict with the fall KSUG meeting, scheduled for December 2.  Items on the next agenda include training from KYVL.