Keynote
- Open Access e-Books and the Post-Privacy Library
- Eric Hellman / President of Gluejar, Inc.
Eric Hellman is a technologist, entrepreneur, and writer. After 10 years at Bell Labs in physics research, Eric became interested in technologies surrounding e-journals and libraries. His first business, Openly Informatics, developed OpenURL linking software and knowledgebases, and was acquired by OCLC in 1996. At OCLC, he led the effort to productize and expand the xISBN service, and began the development of OCLC’s Electronic Resource Management offerings. After leaving OCLC, Eric began blogging at Go To Hellman. He covers the intersection of technology, libraries and ebooks, and has written extensively on the Semantic Web and Linked Data. Eric has a B.S.E. from Princeton University, and a Ph. D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University
System: Voyager
- Fetch It! : A custom Holds/Retrieval Service on Voyager without using the Reporter program
- Victoria Wagner and Ray Schwartz / William Paterson University
The Cheng Library, Lending Services Department has launched a new service called “Fetch It!” Members of the William Paterson University community may request books available in the Cheng Library’s circulating collections, and the books will be held for them at the Lending Services Desk. Users may search for a title in the Library’s online catalog/discovery layer and click on the “Fetch It!” option in the item record. After logging in to “My Account” users simply click on the “Fetch this for me!” link to place a hold on the book. Staff members in the Lending Services Department will page the materials and hold them at the front desk for three days. Staff will retrieve requested items several times each day the Library is open. After using the service, users will receive an email confirmation notice that their request was submitted. Users will also receive a second email notice once the book is ready for pick-up at the Lending Services front desk. Requested items will be held for three days before returning them to the stacks or to the next person on the waiting list. The Fetch It service is presently offered to current members of the University community, and an University ID is required to login to the My Account feature of the online catalog/discovery layer.
The service is isolated from Reporter. “Pcircjob –j5” is run three times per day as a cron job. But the results are segmented from the crcnotes.CircDesk.inp file and run through a series of shell and perl scripts. This process allows the procedure to be automatic and have an audit trail (a record of transactions and messages)–something that Reporter cannot do.
- Using Voyager and Primo to Manage a Non-Library Digital Image Collection
- Eugene Dickerson / Ralph J. Bunche Library, U.S. Department of State
This presentation will describe how the Bunche Library partnered with another organization in the Department of State, Diplomatic Security Public Affairs (DS/PA), to create metadata to describe images in their 87,000+ digital image collection using Voyager Cataloging. The presentation will also show how DS/PA uses the Bunche Library’s Primo as their user interface to search for digital images that they use for presentations, publications, and promotional materials. The presentation will also describe how the collaboration developed and how the Bunche Library was able to demonstrate to DS/PA that Voyager and Primo could be their solution for efficient access to their digital image collection.
- Authority Control and Bib Enhancement with Marcive
- Mark Sandford / William Paterson University
William Paterson University recently completed a bibliographic database enhancement project with Marcive Inc. on Voyager. The project included traditional authority control processing, conversion to RDA, and the addition of reading level scores. The presentation will discuss some of the enhancement options available from Marcive, an overview of the process from start to finish, and an evaluation of the completed project. Presenter will also offer some practical advice on managing a full re-load of the bibliographic database.
System: Aleph
- DVD browsing using Aleph’s X-Server
- Rob O’Connell / Smith College
This presentation will focus on Smith College’s development of a DVD browse using Aleph’s X-Server and RESTful API. The presentation will look at the creation of the Browse and the workflow that went into it’s development. Some technical information on how cover images and data is returned will be given as well as how information is sent and returned from the two servers.
- A large scale DDA consortial e-book project: What we have learned after one year
- Steve Bischof / Five Colleges Inc.
The Five College consortium embarked on a large scale demand driven E-book project with EBL and YBP. The core concept of the project was to come up with a common set of titles to display to the consortium as DDA canidates, share in the short term loan cost, but any purchases would be done at institution level. Since purchase were not be done on the behalf of the consortium, specific permission was needed from the publishers. This opened up the potential candidate list to anything carried by EBL. The consortium selected nearly 150,000 candidate titles, which were loaded into the local ALEPH OPAC, and various discovery solutions. The workflow and interactions with EBL and YBP were automated, requiring minimal staff intervention. Data will be present on usage and cost, and a discussion of the publisher short-term loan price increase this summer and how it is affecting the project.
- The Mobile Back Office: Integrating mobile hardware and RFID technology with Aleph and 3M software
- Anthony Dellureficio and Alan Behler / The New School
We will present some of the technology and mobile devices which we have been using at The New School to facilitate stacks maintenance and technical services. This includes installing Aleph and editing its .ini files for a Surface tablet, connecting a bluetooth barcode scanner, and utilizing 3M RFID tags/handheld readers with Aleph data. We will talk about what we have seen as the benefits of this technology as well as where it fell short. We will also talk about what type of and how much data normalization is required for this system to work.
- Good Fences Make Good Neighbors
- Rich Wenger / MIT
We use a competing vendor’s Discovery platform and wish to project Aleph patron data onto that system. There are potential problems when one vendor programs directly against a competitor’s API. We are developing a light-weight intermediate layer that accepts API calls from the external system, and then handles the requisite calls to the Aleph APIs. This session will describe why we did this, how we did it, and some specific use cases that demonstrate how this approach enabled us to solve some known problems.
System: Alma
- Alma update breakout session
- Ex Libris
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- Recent released functionality
- Update on how customers are using Alma and Primo since going live
- Analytics
- APIs
- Moving to cloud based library systems
- Guoying (Grace) Liu / University of Windsor
In May 2014, the University of Windsor libraries went live with the cloud based library systems: Alma and Primo. Alma replaced its legacy systems, including Evergreen Integrated Library System (Conifer), Syrup homegrown course reserve system and SFX link resolver, etc. This presentation will share our experience of the selection and implementation of the two new systems, including challenges encountered as a member of Conifer consortium and the first OCUL (Ontario Council of University Libraries) institution adopting a cloud based library management system like Alma.
System: Discovery
- Zero Hits Task Force – Redirecting users from a dead end search
- Abigail Baines / Hampshire College, and Ron Peterson / UMass Amherst
In Spring 2014 the Five Colleges’ Aleph Advisory group assigned a Zero Hits Task Force to provide options in the OPAC when a user does that search that results in zero item hits. At that time, the user hit a dead end with no directions as to what to try next. Staff were appointed from both the Aleph group (a committee comprised of members from each of the Five Colleges who work with the ILS and chaired by the consortium ILS Coordinator) and the Research and Instruction Librarians. The Task Force aimed to address first, the search function and direction to expanded search options, and second, directing users to help pages where they may chat or otherwise contact library staff. / One challenge to this project was to create a campus specific redirect so that patrons from any of the Five Colleges will get their respective discovery tools and help pages. Now in production, the page a user hits when no results are found after searching their own institution, they get links to that institution’s discovery tool and help pages. From off-campus, the user is asked to select their institution. This session will provide insights to our process and technical details for implementing the zero hits redirect.
- Using Voyager and Primo to Manage a Non-Library Digital Image Collection
- Eugene Dickerson / Ralph J. Bunche Library, U.S. Department of State
This presentation will describe how the Bunche Library partnered with another organization in the Department of State, Diplomatic Security Public Affairs (DS/PA), to create metadata to describe images in their 87,000+ digital image collection using Voyager Cataloging. The presentation will also show how DS/PA uses the Bunche Library’s Primo as their user interface to search for digital images that they use for presentations, publications, and promotional materials. The presentation will also describe how the collaboration developed and how the Bunche Library was able to demonstrate to DS/PA that Voyager and Primo could be their solution for efficient access to their digital image collection.
System: SFX
- Two From the SFX Toolbox: handling “handle” URLs, and modified display of Aleph print holdings
- Rich Wenger / MIT
This presentation will cover two local developments: 1. The SFX components and setup needed to provide differential resolution of ‘hdl.handle.net’ URLs with specific application to local DSpace instances. 2. A modified SFX plugin, displayer, and target parser that provide conditional display of a link to Aleph print items on the SFX menu.
System: General
- Ex Libris Plenary Session
- Ex Libris
- General welcome
- Update from professional services
- Update from support
- Visualizing Collections: Tools and Techniques for Practical Collection Assessment
- Sarah Tudesco / Yale University Library
The ability to explore the visual representation of data and detect meaningful patterns and trends is becoming increasingly important to organizations. Effective data visualizations lets people look at large data sets to better understand and gain insight. The ‘Visualizing Collections’ presentation will provide an overview of how data visualization techniques can be applied to library collections data. We will demonstrate visualizations using Excel and Tableau, one of the newer tools on the market.
- Table of Contents Online: Enabling off-site storage
- Christopher Manly / Cornell University Libraries
When Cornell’s Kroch Asia library wanted to move a number of un-indexed print serials to our Annex, we needed a way to make the contents of the journals discoverable online. Inspired by a similar tool built by Columbia many years ago, we built a web-based tool that stores scanned images of the tables of contents of journal issues, links them to the catalog record in Voyager, and makes them browsable online. This presentation showcases the tool, and discusses how we made use of some new (to us) techniques for building it better.
- Getting Started with Regular Expressions
- Christine Moulen / MIT
I’m no expert, but I do find regular expressions useful for manipulating text, such as MARC records and XML files. I’ll start with some pattern matching basics, and go into some of the more complex examples I’ve borrowed or created. Most of my experience and examples are with Perl and Aleph, but the concepts are applicable to other languages and systems.
- Joining Forces: Leveraging a Consortium ADM to House Licensed E-Resources Held In-Common
- Sara Colglazier / Mount Holyoke College, and Ron Peterson / UMass Amherst
Five Colleges, Inc. is a consortium of five campuses that includes Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and UMass Amherst. Each library has its own ADMs and maintains its own records. The Five College Catalog uses the union view to display a preferred BIB record with the individual libraries’ holdings/items. We share physical resources across the campuses, but for licensing reasons cannot do the same with e-resources. As we add more and more e-resource collections—like, the various Gale Online Collections, or Alexander Street Press Collections, or Ebrary Academic Complete, or Kanopy Streaming Video, etc.—the number of records we have to manage has exploded: BIBs, HOLs, items. Often all five campuses will license the same collections. Given that the different collection records are batch-loaded vendor records, individual items are not ordered individually, and the items are not physical, sharing the work of loading and maintaining the records together should eliminate redundant work being done at the five libraries and streamline the process of managing vendor records.
In addition to our individual ADMs, we have a “Five College Depository” ADM—that traditionally has been for the items in our shared off-site storage facility. Our goal is to leverage the Five College Depository ADM to manage licensed e-resources that are held in-common across the libraries, even when only two of the libraries have the collection in-common. Our presentation will be on the opportunities and challenges around making the proposal a reality.
- How to use the Developer’s portal breakout session
- Ex Libris
- Lightning Talks (length 30 – 60 minutes, for as long as we keep it going)
- Ray Schwartz (moderator)
A lightning talk is a very short presentation given at a conference. Unlike other presentations, lightning talks last only a few minutes and several will usually be delivered in a single period by different speakers. These lightning talks will last 5 minutes. The presenter may speak to any topic, may use presentation slides or not. Signup begins online during conference registration and continue up until the session itself. Follow this link to sign up. Please note that lightning talks are there to enable the audience to review as many potentially exciting ideas as possible in a short space of time. You are not there to provide the detail required for them to reproduce your work, you’re there to inspire them to search out your work.