ERM Minutes
5-2-2007

Present: Baia, Culshaw, Gobrecht, Graber, Helgoth, Holladay, Jobe, Kellsey, Lamboy, Moeller, Wakimoto, Wicht

Type Designations—After discussion of the issues associated with Type Designations (examples include [full text], [citation database]) in the Title and Other Title fields, the committee decided to strip them from resource records. Gobrecht will remove. Jobe will update the documentation. There was some discussion of using icons that would show that the material was available online. Unfortunately icons in webpacpro are generated automatically by values in the bib record. The package and license link of resource records appears in results list in the area in which an icon for material type displays. Since we were displaying a small “i” icon next to package and license, it may be possible to display another icon for resource records in the same space. Because the type designations will no longer appear in the results list, Baia suggested that information about the resource type should appear in the first line of the resource description.

General Subjects—During Phase 1 of the ERM deployment, the Libraries will not add any new general subjects to the pull-down menu of the Subject/A-Z page. The ERM committee recommends establishment of a formal mechanism for requesting new local subjects during the next phase. Although various options were discussed the committee was not ready to make a recommendation. Holladay will compare the existing list of subjects to the academic departments on campus.

Communication with Bibliographers—Since resource records will always be a work in progress, the bibliographers need to understand the process for requesting modifications to existing resource records and creation of new ones. Wicht agreed to modify the summary created by the work flow sub group for distribution to the bibliographers list. The e-mail should include the URL for the Find Articles page on the staging server and convey the sense that it’s first-come-first-served for modifications to records. Modifications requested late in the month probably won’t happen before the June launch date.

Suppression of bib records—Although the committee decided to suppress bib records in favor of resource records, Baia wonders if this is worth reconsidering. The committee decided to suppress bib records to avoid dual display in results lists generated by title or key word searches. Bowling Green and University of Washington have both embedded the resource record within the bib record—resulting in one record combining the best features of both. Members of the ERM committee attending IUG will try to contact representatives from those libraries to learn how they did it. It is worth noting, however, that with the re-indexing of Chinook, titles, authors, and descriptions are searchable in Chinook. Unless we “undid” the earlier work, we would still have the dual display problem were the Libraries to adopt this combined record format.

Concerns raised by Gobrecht in e-mail dated 4/30—Items one, two, and three were quickly resolved. With regard to item 4, staff in Acquisitions agreed to insert the public note when the resource record is created. There was further discussion on standard phraseology used in public notes. Currently we are using “Full text in” for databases that provide a direct link to the browse by journal title. We use “Search for full text in” for cases in which there is partial full text (example?) or you need to search for the article, for example, in LexisNexis Academic or Factiva. See ABA Journal for an example of a record including both types of public note. Jobe agreed to communicate this information to the library list.

Scopes—Since scopes such as “Internet Resources Only” do not work with resource records, some on the committee wondered if we are doing a disservice to our patrons by providing this option. Holladay noted that the WebPacPro implementation team found during usability tests that students did not understand the intended meaning of the phrase. According to Culshaw the Government Publications library pushed for this scope during a time when post-search processing took a considerable amount of time. With upgrades to equipment and software, this is no longer a significant issue. Perhaps it’s time to reconsider this issue.

Next meeting—The committee agreed to meet on 5/9 and 5/23 in order to resolve any last minute issues that might arise before the June 1 launch. Because of reports from IUG and any very last minute issues, the May 23rd meeting will be from 12:30-2:00 if necessary.