Voyager Consortium Work Group
March 5, 2008
CPE, Frankfort

 

Attending:

Charlene Davis, John Detwiler, KDLA
Todd King, EKU
Tari Keller, Kelly Vickery, UK
Clara Logsdon, St. Catharine 
Enid Wohlstein, KYVL
Paul Fuller, Michael Stapleton, KCTCS 
Sheri Myers, NKU
Rose Davis, Nelda Sims, WKU
Leonor Lopez, KSU
Alex Grigg, Lexmark  
Shirley Ackerman, KHS
Linda Voyles, Robert Mercer, Ex Libris
Stuart Johnston, Allen Lynn, CPE

 

On the phone:

Mark Paul, Dave Jones U of L
Granuaille O'Flanagan, Morehead
Aleeah McGinnis, MSU
Herman Collins, Ray Hyatt, UK
Perry Bratcher, NKU

 

1. Update on Ex Libris – Robert Mercer, President Ex Libris North America

Robert Mercer presented on Ex Libris - the company, product status, trends

The company:

Ex Libris is the world leader in academic libraries with revenue of $70 million, 420 employees, 4000 customers and 4500 institutions. 75% of employees are in development, service, support.  Emphasis is on support and R&D; support personnel in Chicago, Israel, Australia = 24hour live support.

Product status:

- Voyager Voyager 7 is on scheduled for beta release February 2008, general release 2Q2008; vastly improved WebVoyage.

- SFX   SFX4 is in development.

- MetaLib  Metalib v 4.2 release for 2Q2008. MetaLib is becoming more integrated with Primo, a demo will be available on June 2008.

- Verde  Verde is now more integrated with SFX, is setup to work with the Voyager ACQ module, works with SUSHI.

- Primo Primo v 1.0 released May 2007. Additional open source web services on v 2 April 2008 to work with most ILS, Open URL and Met Search.

Trends:

Dissociate backend and frontend.

Collaborative testing is central to development and deployment.

Higher expectations - from librarians towards their ILS providers and from endusers towards libraries - want access to all kinds of information whenever and wherever, want to be able to customize the format and the manner in which information is accessed.

Fast growing digital collections - emerging issues of digital repositories, collecting and preserving in digital formats.

Librarians are technically sophisticated, attuned to Web 2.0.

Unified Resource Management (URM) approach: open APIs, plug-ins, extensions. 

2. Collaborative Testing - Tari Keller

Tari participated in collaborative testing of Voyager 7.0 at Ex Libris in Chicago. Tari will present on KVUG in detail; some highlights:

Concentrated on the OPAC and Circulation module; a lot of process work, some bug-finding work, checking the workflow.

It was good to meet  face-to-face with Ex Libris developers, support, and QA staff.

3. Update on Servers – Enid Wohlstein

MOAs with UK and U of L were signed at the end of February for FY 07-08.

             - UK= MetaLib, Voyager

             - U of L= Voyager

Issues:  Disaster recovery: A draft of the new Consortial Governance and Support MOA is expected by April 2008, created by the Systems Subgroup from both hubsites as well as in consultation with both the Portal and Voyager workgroups; Migration to new servers; Implementation of MetaLib.

4. Portal Work Group – Michael Stapleton

Waiting on hardware; discussions are finalized and are getting ready to purchase.

Operating Systems to be installed - at this point, Red Hat Linux 4.0

Enid Wohlstein - set the MetaLib training for mid-June; dependent on ordering the hardware in the next week.

5. Other Business

Enid Wohlstein informed the group that Brescia University would be joining the consortium as an add-on member.  UofL will be the hubsite.

Enid Wohlstein talked about creating a Virtual Library Users Group Conference - perhaps merge KSUG and KVUG, minimize number of groups.  Have a VLUG conference (two days) once a year. Tari Keller noted that KSUG has been the ILL and Reference venue.

Rose Davis, chair of KVUG suggested that in the future there should be a single group to deal with all Ex Libris issues.  Voyager and MetaLib are in the agenda for KVUG meeting in June 2008 at WKU, Bowling Green.

Tari Keller asked should we meet in Bowling Green next meeting, Thursday June 5 the day before KVUG? With limitations on travel and time concerns it was decided to meet at CPE in Frankfort; will again set-up a phone line for those who wish to attend that way.

6. Meeting dates for 2008

Thursdays:  June 5 at CPE in Frankfort, September 4, December 4.

 

 

Submitted,

 

Leonor Lopez, KSU