Full Presentation Descriptions

• Keynote
• System: Primo UI With the launch of Alma
• System: Voyager
• System: Aleph
• System: SFX
• System: General
• System: Alma

Keynote

Linked Open Data in Libraries, Archives and Museums (LODLAM) – Current Trends, Tools & Techniques, and the Role of Vendors

Corey Harper / New York University

Linked Data, long an emerging trend, is beginning to approach maturity. The gradual shift from the realms of library research and development into more mainstream production operations in cultural heritage institutions is starting to produce accessible tools and techniques, consensus around best practices, and an ever growing list of practical use cases. This keynote will explore the background and current state of LODLAM, with a focus on tools, techniques, use-cases and end-user facing applications. Potential vendor roles, both for Ex Libris products and more broadly, will be discussed along with user-group community efforts to bring the output of linked data research and open source development into the suites of tools available as off-the-shelf library discovery and metadata management solutions.

System: Primo UI With the launch of Alma

Scholar OneSearch

Steven Bassett / Northeastern University

Re-skinning Northeastern University Libraries’ Primo UI With the launch of Alma on July 1, 2013, Northeastern University Libraries introduced the new Scholar OneSearch, a Primo installation featuring responsive and user-friendly design. We’re especially proud of our responsive design, which allows flexibility and functionality beyond the default mobile stylesheet. We’re also happy to have WorldCat NRE requests integrated successfully. Scholar OneSearch also improves upon some of the features in the standard Primo release, including a reorganized page header, collapsable facets in the left-hand “refine my results” sidebar, and integrated feedback into each search result.

System: Voyager

Tools and techniques for accomplishing a large weeding project

Lori Stethers / Wesleyan University

We are in the midst of a large and complex weeding project. To complete this project in our allotted time frame we’ve made an effort to automate our weeding decisions, minimize time spent in the stacks, and use batch processing as much as possible. I’ll discuss the methods and tools that we are using to accomplish the weeding project goals, with a focus on our technological solutions. I will also pose a couple of the thorny issues that we have not been able to solve in hopes that group discussion may identify a solution, and will briefly describe the use of ShelfLister to facilitate in-stacks weeding in a prior weeding project.

What’s On Your Mind? A Circulation Roundtable Discussion

Barbara Mitchell / Homer Babbidge Library, University of Connecticut

Facilitate a discussion related to circulation issues and questions from attendees. The roundtable would be attendee driven and the presenter would like to obtain a list of topics for the discussion in advance for preparation (and or research) purposes. The intent is to have a lively and informative discussion amongst the roundtable attendees. The presenter expects that there may be a second individual involved in a facilitative role.

Cornell’s innovative batch processing techniques put into user-friendly practice

Boaz Nadav-Manes / Cornell University Library Note: This is currently implemented for Voyager, but is being adapted for Aleph

The presentation will describe the development and evolution of Cornell’s batch processing methods and the work on 2CUL’s Pre-Ordering Online Form (POOF!) (http://poof.library.cornell.edu/content/about). This innovative technology automates the manual steps required to review and place an order for an item in all formats in our LMS. On the point of order, selectors can check holdings information in the Borrow Direct universe and decide to order, reject or forward an item to a colleague. If the specialist decides to place an order, this action can be initiated directly from POOF! allowing the subject specialist to appropriately designate which collection (Cornell or Columbia) the acquisition belongs to. A preset matrix determines where the purchase will be made from (based on variables within the metadata associated with the material to be purchased.) Various scripts enact the decisions in the appropriate Library Management System (both libraries are Voyager users) that will create the acquisitions record and purchase order. its release in June 2011, Cornell Library has processed more than 40% of our manual monographic orders via POOF! The savings and efficiencies generated by this (and other) tool allowed us to invest our staff’s time in cross-training for eBook ordering and to utilize specialized problem solving skills in other areas. Last year, Columbia University Library has begun using POOF!. Harvard University Library has recently negotiated access to this innovative tool as well, and Cornell is now assisting Harvard to adept it to Aleph.

Item Checker

Cindy Greenspun, Sarah Tudesco, and Yue Ji / Yale University Library

At Yale’s main library, we have security measures in place where security staff checks to be sure that library materials are charged out to readers before they leave the building. They do this by looking at the due date slip for each book, matching the barcodes of the slip along with the book. We created a ‘home-grown’ system of electronically checking due dates as materials leave the building. The program gives out visual cues (similar to the red/green traffic light system) alerting the guard whether an item can leave the building or not.

System: Aleph

Text me, maybe: Implementing texting functionality in the Aleph OPAC

Alevtina Verbovetskaya / City University of New York

This speaker will explain how she brought texting functionality to the Aleph OPAC used by the 24 colleges & schools in CUNY, allowing users to send item holdings information to themselves. Implemented in April 2013, this feature is already incredibly popular, with over 2,100 messages sent in just over 3 months. Allie will share the code she wrote (already available on the EL Commons) and discuss possible enhancements for future iterations of the functionality, such as API integration and the use of a dedicated SMS server, as well as its potential for use with Primo.

Demand Driven Acquisition (DDA): Three Types, Three Configurations, Three Vendors

Steve Bischof / W.E.B. DuBois Library Sara Colglazier / Mount Holyoke College Ron Peterson / UMass Amherst

Consortially and individually our libraries (ALEPH) are implementing various Demand Driven Acquisition (DDA) programs. We will give overviews of each program generally but also specific to ALEPH, touching on set-up, workflows, on-going challenges and opportunities, tweaks, and evaluation. Steve will talk about the Five College’s consortial EBL DDA program, Sara about MHC’s YBP print-DDA program, and Ron about UMass Amherst’s Ebrary DDA program. Finally after some Qs & As, we hope the session will evolve into a sharing/discussion of DDA.

ALEPH Services Bonanza: stacked, scripted, used & abused

Steve Bischof / W.E.B. DuBois Library Sara Colglazier / Mount Holyoke College Ron Peterson / UMass Amherst

We are heavy users of ALEPH Services wishing to share our experiences as well as hear from attendees about their experiences. For routine tasks, for projects, run individually, run stacked, and even stacked-scripted. Tips and tricks & challenges (e.g., Help is a help but sometimes it also lies!). And let’s not forget ARC and/or SQL! As in using ARC and SQL output in conjunction with ALEPH Services to create input files (via Excel) and/or as quality control post-Services.

Acquisitions: the Backbone of the Academic Library

Caryl Ward / Binghamton University

Staying with ALEPH or migrating to ALMA? No matter which–an academic library is dependent upon Acquisitions staff to procure materials in all formats, and staff are dependent upon the ILS to facilitate the entire work stream.. This session will begin with a brief presentation outlining why and how we can ensure that the ALEPH Acquisitions process (including budgets, deadlines, rollovers) is understood and supported by bibliographers, systems staff and administrators, especially as discussions turn towards an ALMA migration. A round table discussion of Acquisitions will follow. Participants will have the opportunity to ask general and specific questions and share expertise regarding all aspects of the workflow.

Centralizing and streamlining course reserves workflows

Roshni Gohil / MIT

When the MIT Libraries reorganized in 2010, Course Reserves staff across 4 physical locations were centralized into a single functional team. At the same time, the team gained new visibility due to the Libraries’ involvement in the Institute’s Textbook Information Provisioning (TIP) service, which makes textbook information available to students when they register for courses.

Centralization of the Course Reserves Team, and the implementation of the TIP service forced us to rethink course reserve workflows, how we staff reserves (in terms of people and schedules), and the tools we use. This presentation outlines some of ways we’ve streamlined workflows and better leveraged the tools and resources available to us.

Implementing a Records Management Program Using Aleph

Kabel Nathan Stanwicks and Jeff Goldstein / University of Albany

UAlbany Access Services department did not have a comprehensive records management program in place. Paper and electronic patron records accumulated for decades until we implemented a records management program. This presentation will review various services and scripts that we use to pull expired paper patron registration forms, delete expired patron records from the ILS, and ensure that appropriate billing blocks are in place in Aleph and PeopleSoft.

Self-registration of Shibboleth Credentials in Aleph by External Patrons

Rich Wenger / MIT

When an external authentication system like Shibboleth is used for patron authentication, the patron’s Shibboleth identifier must be made known to Aleph in addition to his/her Aleph id number, barcode, and/or other identifiers. Doing this manually is problematic and inconvenient, and compromises password privacy. This session will present a scripted method for enabling non-university patrons to self-register his/her Shibboleth identifier in Aleph at a time and place of the patron’s choosing with minimal involvement of staff.

System: SFX

Comparing Medical Journal Holdings at Two University Libraries

Christine Moulen, Courtney Crummett, and Kim Maxwell / MIT

A collection analysis project was undertaken to learn about the medical journal collections at the MIT Libraries and Harvard’s Countway Library of Medicine in order to: – Examine the collection relationships (strengths, weaknesses, overlaps) between the MIT Libraries and Countway Library; – Inform future collections and services decisions at either library. Two factors driving our current interest in this area include: – Requests from faculty members for a list of medical journals available for their use and whether they are at MIT or Countway; – Open comments made by respondents to a recent MIT Libraries User Survey indicating that some of our users are unaware of the MIT Libraries medical journal collection. We compared data extracted from the SFX knowledge bases and Aleph catalogs at MIT and Harvard University. Come hear about our methodology, data limitations we encountered, and ideas for future research and collaboration.

How to build some web features/tool based on real-time SFX usage data

Fengzhi Fan / Rutgers University

SFX statistics offline tables are primarily used to generate various reports for understanding library users and e-resource management. However, the usefulness of the corresponding online tables are not fully recognized by the SFX user community. The presentation will focus on utilizing the existing online tables to build some interesting popularity-based widgets, data visualization enhancements, and a supplementary tool for quick testing/troubleshooting link resolving issues. The presenter will detail how to implement these apps with code samples and also talk about how to find solution for performance issues. Summary of benefits and future enhancements will be given at the end of the session.

You CAN Get There From Here: Resolving online links in Aleph

Rich Wenger / MIT

Reserve records sometimes contain links to online content which is unknown to the SFX Knowledgebase. Regardless, SFX can be configured to communicate with Aleph’s reserves library to fetch and resolve URLs of this kind. This session will examine the general mechanism of MARC record fetching from Aleph to SFX, and highlight the configuration steps required in Aleph and SFX to enable this mechanism for reserves.

Fill ‘er up! Automated loading of external data into SFX

Rich Wenger / MIT

We have scripted the regular loading of database records into SFX as local objects and the construction of the requisite object portfolios. This session will describe the process, highlighting the use of an external configuration file, use of the command-line data loader, and a debugging mode that enables a user to single-step through a complex, multi-step process.

System: General

Dublin Core from a stone: Extracting and enhancing embedded metadata from digital photographs

Rachel Jaffe and Edward Corrado / Binghamton University

This presentation will describe the process used by Binghamton University Libraries uses to extract embedded metadata from digital photographs and transformed into Dublin Core for use in the Libraries’ digital preservation system, Rosetta. The workflow will be shared; issues and challenges involved will also be discussed. While Rosetta will be the point of reference for the presentation, the concept is not Rosetta specific and should be applicable to any digital preservation or institutional repository system.

What can data mining our systems tell us about our services and our users: Solutions Fest Part I

Ray Schwartz / William Paterson University

The reason this is called a “solutionsfest” and not a hackfest is that we wish to invite coders, administrators, reference librarians, tech service librarians, and developers for a cross-disciplinary sessions of brainstorming, data-diving, story-telling and action. Do you write code or work with data? Help us mine data for insights that will help understand how your libraries deliver services. Are you an expert in the use of your modules at your library? Are you an expert in the domain of the data housed on your systems? Contribute your knowledge and insights to our projects. Showcase your skills and knowledge Help expand the use of data and computational thinking in librarianship, higher education and nonprofit organizations. This is a two part event. The first part will introduce ourselves and form teams. The second part will be the following day and will continue the work and present the work of the teams.

What can data mining our systems tell us about our services and our users: Solutions Fest Part II

Ray Schwartz / William Paterson University

Part II. Continuation from the previous day’s Part I

Automating MARCit! for a single-record approach

Beth Brennan, Christine Moulen / MIT

Batch loading records is a huge time saver, we all know that. But how can you maintain a single record approach when your batch only describes your online holdings? Come and find out how MIT has set up out MARCit! processes: the loading, including merging with records for print; the deleting, including the untangling of print and e; and the updates, focusing on holdings updates and upgrading stub records. While we use MARCit with Aleph, we will not be focusing on Aleph-specific setup.

Authorities processing with RDA Conversion

Joan Chapa / Marcive

The implementation of RDA is a topic of great interest to many libraries. Learn how you can have your legacy data updated to RDA compliance in conjunction with backfile and ongoing authorities processing and why having an up-to-date catalog matters in a keyword environment.

System: Alma

Alma Analytics: a whole new world of data extraction

Janet Lute / Princeton University

Many libraries are looking at Alma with great interest and a key question often is “how can I run the reports that I am used to producing in my current system?” The presenter will demonstrate Alma Analytics using the Oracle Business Intelligence package. Some basic but popular queries will be run and the use of Alma Dashboards will be demonstrated. Handling large bibliographic queries will also be shown using Alma set management tools.

An Alma Spine Label Printing Solution

Glenn Manino / Boston College

When libraries migrate from Aleph to Alma, they may find that tried and true methods for printing spine lables no longer work. Boston College has developed “SpineOMatic,” a software application that makes printing spine labels and flag slips in Alma quick and easy. This presentation will talk about the issues involved in Alma spine label printing, and demonstrate the SpineOMatic application.

Invoicing in Alma: Minimizing Manual Processes

Kate Benning / Boston College Libraries

This session is designed for participants to share their successes and challenges in streamlining invoice processes in the Alma environment. How have you reduced the work involved in creating manual invoices? What kind of linkages have you created with external systems? What information are you able to import beyond EDI invoices? What streamlining do you wish you could get to work? This will be a “Show and Tell” session, so be ready to share your experiences.