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CONSULS Systems Committee Annual Report 2008-2009
INTRODUCTION
The CONSULS Systems Committee mainly works together to react to environmental, campus, and system pressures at five institutions that, at times, have vastly difference cultures and priorities. Our list of accomplishments reflects work initiated by individuals in the five institutions, and implemented with the agreement of the whole consortium, but with minimal regard for strategic vision.
We see opportunities to change this culture, and become more proactive in determining the future of systems and technology for the consortium. Our list of goals for the next year (and beyond) reflects a desire to more effectively pool our intellectual resources and to learn to collaborate on joint projects and initiatives that will benefit the libraries, the universities, and the state of Connecticut as a whole.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS 2008-2009
- CONSULS contract. The list of modules and services was finalized and sent to the directors.
- ERM implementation. Steady progress has been made, with CCSU and CSL having completed coverage loads. WCSU and ECSU are working more slowly and may ask the others for assistance over the summer. In Este Pope's absence, SCSU has deferred immediate implementation.
- UTF-8 implementation. Achieved May 26.
- SSL for CONSULS. Pursuing solutions for making CONSULS a secure server: a) get a wildcard server entry, b) make connections directly to csulib.ctstateu.edu from web pages. System office not historically willing to change their naming convention to www.consuls.org, but we may want to ask again.
- Scoping. Completed scoping project, including Curriculum scope.
- RSS/saved queries/create lists. Continued experimentation with various applications of RSS feeds. Pursuing subject/fund based feeds.
- Collection development reports (http://www.consuls.org/manage). Discussed possibilities to utilize these canned reports.
- WebPacPro implementation. Continued refinement/customization of screens and functionality. Discussed various ways to streamline the proposed changes procedures.
GOALS/PROPOSALS FOR 2009-2010
- Training. Propose advanced system administration training for one person from each institution to attend training - for redundancy and backup.
- Statistics collection from III. Explore various methods to retrieve information systematically.
- Improve communication and information sharing. Consider a public blog/wiki to communicate issues, decisions, questions
- LDAP. Experiment with the possibility of using campus LDAP servers for authentication (universities only).
- ERM Implementation. Continue progress, including statistics collection using SUSHI.
Note: The following ideas would require deeper and more sustained collaboration, as suggested in the introduction to this document.
- Institutional/Consortial Repository. Explore possibility of creating/maintaining a repository for the intellectual output of the consortium.
- Implementation of a next generation OPAC. Explore products such as WorldCat local (commercial) or LibraryThing for Libraries, VuFind, LibraryFind, Zebra (IndexData), etc. Alternatively, move away from Innovative Millennium into an open source catalog environment (such as Evergreen) to allow more local flexibility but continue to maintain a union catalog.
- Metadata format standardization. Develop (adopt) a common metadata format and system (OAI-ORE compliant) for the purpose creating and sharing local collection inside and outside of the CSUs (see repository above).
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