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June

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16,

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2022, 2:00pm

Agenda/

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Review action items from 5/10/21

•  Claire will follow on with Amy Dittman about a meeting with Comptroller's (Tom B, Sarah B) office to discuss proposed strategy for leveraging Ebsco to help with serials check in.

• Service would cover approx 9K annually (13% of our serials)
• Staff impact statement has been drafted to share with staff as a precursor to discussing

New Topics

• Governance questions and thoughts - follow up from 5/10/21 & review of any new information from the committee review process, org, refinement, etc.

EOC discussed our role in the Alma governance structure and how we can support the Alma Working Groups wtihout being a bottleneck to their decision-making in their areas of expertise. We proposed moving to a quarterly meeting cadence and creating clearer authority for working groups to proceed on matters in their functional areas. They will report out for our awareness on a more regular basis.

• Review of priority projects (All)

We reviewed the in-process project list, including the following progress or updates:

•  Alma-D for course reserves materials

--Portfolios in HART is an issue that is being examined based on a request in the reporting community

--News on Inscriptio replacement: There are 3 options being considered; We are awaiting a Springshare response. At this point, they estimated of 8 weeks by a team of 4 developers; with another 2-4 weeks on Accessibility

May 10, 2021, 2:00pm

Review action items from 4/5/21

• Reinstating Direct-to-Destination auditing reports (Michelle).  Minna created a report that pulls all the invoice numbers that were paid with D2D processes check for Item in Place (for both Remote Storage and Stacks).  Audit should occur at 6 months after receipt.  Working with Cynthia Winters to put the workflow back in place.
• Report back from Anne Adams to clarify her needs re: her batch process request from last month (Michelle).  Community would like a process like the 001 overlay process in place but with the 035 as a match point.

•  Claire will follow on with Amy Dittman about a meeting with Comptroller's (Tom B, Sarah B) office to discuss proposed strategy for leveraging Ebsco to help with serials check in.

New Topics

• Question about 920 analytics proposal from LTS (Claire). Proposal not yet ready for our consideration.
• Discussion of priority project prioritization process (Suzanne).
  • Reiteration that requests may come in via multiple channels (support tickets, email, working groups). work that can be done by LTS in less than 16 hours will be put forwards as work to be done by LTS as time permits. Work that will take more than 16 hours should go to the working group and then be prioritized by the EOC. At the simple end of the spectrum, the Working Groups can move forward on certain types of actions without EOC Sign Off when it is firmly in their area of expertise that they have vetted.

...

• Special guests Allison Powers and June Rutkowski will provide an update on OCLC project and an overview of OCLC error reporting processing options.
  • How does this relate to general ongoing updates to upgrade records to a different OCLC number, etc?
    --NOTES:

Allison reported that OLC symbol consolidation is done; all holdings are now under 11 (?) symbols.  About 98% of collection is reclaimed. The project team is assessing the manuscripts and locally digitized holdings as the last outstanding collections.  [Claire asked Robin to list Claire as an admin for all the symbols. They will evaluate how the admin powers are used and what roles those powers map to in our organization to determine who should have admin powers with these symbols going forward.]

Allison reported that the project team is also working on systems details, such as what needs to be scripted and outlining a process for weekly files for maintenance and new updates.

Allison indicates they are about 50% completed for the overall project.  Some ILL specs are open questions, such as bytes for retention or deflection. Laura recommends that our lending data be uploaded to OCLC so that it is transparent for external communities. Allison has invited an OCLC person to join the weekly project meetings with June so that they can uderstand from an OCLC insider how those bytes function in ILL and could be used to improve our workflows.

June described the documentation work that she has been working on with Amy Armitage after the departure last year of previous co-chair, Karen Carlson Young, who retired in December 2020. June has picked up from Karen to partner with Amy on explaining to staff using WorldCat what steps they need to attend to for keeping our holdings up to date in specific workflow scenarios.  Also, June and Amy are working on error reports and how to make corrections without creating duplicates in WorldCat. Links to these docs are:

Maintaining Holdings in WorldCat doc:  OCLC Data Sync: Maintaining Holdings in WorldCat

Error reports doc:  OCLC Data Sync: Processing error reports from staging

This work has lead to their considering re-evaluating the timing of staff assigning Harvard holdings in WorldCat.  What once was an attempt to get early record updates through BNS by setting our holdings early in our workflows (i.e. on brief bibs, whether created by us or an existing brief vendor bib), it is now determined that it causes more problems than benefits. Our holdings are set often on the less-preferred record when the updates happen on another bib that OCLC neglects to merge with our record. Duplicates in OCLC has seemed to get worse after they moved to a different duplicate detection/resolution (DDR) process when their new Data Sync process was developed.  The group agreed that re-evaluating the workflow timing for setting holdings is warranted.  The project team will evaluate these scenarios further.

Allison mentioned a new backend database called WorldCat Staging, where rejected records are kept and can be promoted to WorldCat after error resolution or upgrades make the records acceptable for import to WorldCat. Claire and Michelle would like to learn more about WorldCat Staging to see what possibilities it may hold for metadata lifecycle workflows with Metadata Management and other units.

• Anne Adam's request for a batch process to update bibs in Alma with newer versions from OCLC (Forwarded by Michelle to EOC mailing list on 3/30)

The EOC discussed a request from Anne Adams to develop an on-demand batch upgrade process for bib records using OCLC number as the match point to enhanced bibs in OCLC.  Laura expressed that LTS scripting resources to make a fully automated tool would not be available sooner than September, the EOC discussed possible simpler solutions to Anne's request, such as one involving an Import Profile that could be rolled out to trained Alma users in the community.  Michelle will reach out to Anne to learn more about the use cases she has and the level of features she envisioned in her request.

• Alma Project Requests
• Review action items from 3/1/21
  •  Michelle will schedule a meeting with Controller's (Tom B, Sarah B) office to discuss proposed strategy for leveraging Ebsco to help with serials check in.
    --NOTES:

Michelle checked in with Amy Dittman as a first step, as this topic seemed like one that Amy Dittman was already shepherding herself, and Michelle didn't want to step in unnecessarily.  Amy corroborated that she and Claire already have this project well in hand and will be submitting paperwork to Finance that outlines costs and any relevant details that Finance needs about the vendor service.
--Re-reading the notes from Feb 1, which had the Action Item for Michelle, Michelle noted there was confusion on how the Action Item was framed for her for the March meeting which subsequently caused the confusion above.  The Action Item from Feb 1 meeting related to auditing for the Direct-to-Destination workflows, which Michelle has been working on during March with Minna Popkin.  She will report back at the May EOC meeting to close this loop!

March 1, 2021 1:00 pm

...

Dear Alma Executive Oversight Committee members,

The consolidation of Harvard OCLC symbols from more than 30 down to 12 is being implemented as part of the OCLC Data Sync Project. As the project nears completion, the OCLC Coordination Working Group will adjust the way Harvard libraries are represented to the world in OCLC’s WorldCat and WorldCat Registry, which includes, among other things, the name of the library, its address, email and phone contacts, homepage, and MARC Organization Code. All except the MARC code are visible to the general public in WorldCat (see sample WorldCat Screenshots, attached).  The current WorldCat Registry information for the symbols to be retained after Data Sync (plus Botany, for reasons explained below) is compiled at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-ICAJOU-X5RmIM8ponRq_NQca2fZ4UbQ0NXJE1Cf2Rs/edit?usp=sharing.

In many cases the symbol consolidation is straightforward. For example, the many small libraries that had been listed, oddly, as “HCL Technical Services” in WorldCat will now appear as “Harvard University, Harvard Library”.  The libraries that retained separate symbols –for example, Law, Fine Arts, Divinity, and Dumbarton Oaks-- did so because of business requirements: for accreditation, due to geographical distance, or to enable participation in subject-focused collaboratives. 

Ernst Mayr Library of Comparative Zoology and the Botany Libraries are a slightly different case. Originally proposed to be merged into the Harvard Library symbol, the directors of both libraries explained that they needed to retain their symbols to support their contributions to the work of the Biodiversity Heritage Library (statement attached).  Rather than retaining both symbols, Harvard Library decided that in the OCLC context the Botany Libraries would share the Ernst Mayr symbol.

Data sync for these units has not yet taken place and is scheduled for the end of the project in March 2021. When it goes through, the challenge will be to make the result comprehensible to those at Harvard and beyond who encounter resources held under that symbol. The names, addresses, homepages, contact information, and MARC symbols for the Botany (BOH) and Ernst Mayr (HMZ) symbols are different, and there is no actual joint entity to reference. How should we proceed?

A second, much smaller issue is with the OCLC symbol (HUL) for Harvard Library itself, which now encompasses most of HCL, FAS, and many of the graduate school libraries.  What address and contact information should be provided for it?

Thank you for considering these questions,

Robin

notes

March 17, 2022, 1:00pm

Agenda/Notes

Reviewed consolidated project plan for Google and Hathitrust Discovery and Data Maintenance. This plan bring all tasks together so they can inform one another. Laura will update the project list. 

Discussed solutions for GFA.

Reviewed project list: Work to replace Inscriptio continues. Hathi work is prioritized. SAML work is on track. Work on RESHARE POD continues with schedule role out for mid-July.

Laura will add column to prject list for listing date of status update.

January 10, 2022, 3:00pm

Agenda / Notes

Amy Deschenes joined for discussion on HOLLIS Benchmark survey report.

Library is collaborating on migration of Borrow Direct back end to be in place for Fall 2022. Kara will participate on group and report back to LTS.

Amy presented new memebership refresh for fulfillment working group. The working group will focus on documentation and monthly enhancements while completing 2020 outstanding functioality such as lost reports, in-transit requesting, etc.

The project list was reviewed and updated.

September 16, 2021, 3:00pm

Agenda / Notes

Discussion focued on ExLibris Metadata Platform and opportunities to join as development partner and how it fits into other metadata sharig projects. At this time it is felt there is not the staff time available to work on a project with Exlibris, but that sharing metadata with them is in line with our open metadata policy.

June 7, 2021, 2:00pm

Agenda / Notes

Review action items from 5/10/21

•  Claire will follow on with Amy Dittman about a meeting with Comptroller's (Tom B, Sarah B) office to discuss proposed strategy for leveraging Ebsco to help with serials check in.

• Service would cover approx 9K annually (13% of our serials)
• Staff impact statement has been drafted to share with staff as a precursor to discussing

New Topics

• Governance questions and thoughts - follow up from 5/10/21 & review of any new information from the committee review process, org, refinement, etc.

EOC discussed our role in the Alma governance structure and how we can support the Alma Working Groups wtihout being a bottleneck to their decision-making in their areas of expertise. We proposed moving to a quarterly meeting cadence and creating clearer authority for working groups to proceed on matters in their functional areas. They will report out for our awareness on a more regular basis.

• Review of priority projects (All)

We reviewed the in-process project list, including the following progress or updates:

•  Alma-D for course reserves materials

--Portfolios in HART is an issue that is being examined based on a request in the reporting community

--News on Inscriptio replacement: There are 3 options being considered; We are awaiting a Springshare response. At this point, they estimated of 8 weeks by a team of 4 developers; with another 2-4 weeks on Accessibility

May 10, 2021, 2:00pm

Review action items from 4/5/21

• Reinstating Direct-to-Destination auditing reports (Michelle).  Minna created a report that pulls all the invoice numbers that were paid with D2D processes check for Item in Place (for both Remote Storage and Stacks).  Audit should occur at 6 months after receipt.  Working with Cynthia Winters to put the workflow back in place.
• Report back from Anne Adams to clarify her needs re: her batch process request from last month (Michelle).  Community would like a process like the 001 overlay process in place but with the 035 as a match point.

•  Claire will follow on with Amy Dittman about a meeting with Comptroller's (Tom B, Sarah B) office to discuss proposed strategy for leveraging Ebsco to help with serials check in.

New Topics

• Question about 920 analytics proposal from LTS (Claire). Proposal not yet ready for our consideration.
• Discussion of priority project prioritization process (Suzanne).
  • Reiteration that requests may come in via multiple channels (support tickets, email, working groups). work that can be done by LTS in less than 16 hours will be put forwards as work to be done by LTS as time permits. Work that will take more than 16 hours should go to the working group and then be prioritized by the EOC. At the simple end of the spectrum, the Working Groups can move forward on certain types of actions without EOC Sign Off when it is firmly in their area of expertise that they have vetted.

April 5, 2021, 1:00 pm

• Special guests Allison Powers and June Rutkowski will provide an update on OCLC project and an overview of OCLC error reporting processing options.
  • How does this relate to general ongoing updates to upgrade records to a different OCLC number, etc?
    --NOTES:

Allison reported that OLC symbol consolidation is done; all holdings are now under 11 (?) symbols.  About 98% of collection is reclaimed. The project team is assessing the manuscripts and locally digitized holdings as the last outstanding collections.  [Claire asked Robin to list Claire as an admin for all the symbols. They will evaluate how the admin powers are used and what roles those powers map to in our organization to determine who should have admin powers with these symbols going forward.]

Allison reported that the project team is also working on systems details, such as what needs to be scripted and outlining a process for weekly files for maintenance and new updates.

Allison indicates they are about 50% completed for the overall project.  Some ILL specs are open questions, such as bytes for retention or deflection. Laura recommends that our lending data be uploaded to OCLC so that it is transparent for external communities. Allison has invited an OCLC person to join the weekly project meetings with June so that they can uderstand from an OCLC insider how those bytes function in ILL and could be used to improve our workflows.

June described the documentation work that she has been working on with Amy Armitage after the departure last year of previous co-chair, Karen Carlson Young, who retired in December 2020. June has picked up from Karen to partner with Amy on explaining to staff using WorldCat what steps they need to attend to for keeping our holdings up to date in specific workflow scenarios.  Also, June and Amy are working on error reports and how to make corrections without creating duplicates in WorldCat. Links to these docs are:

Maintaining Holdings in WorldCat doc:  OCLC Data Sync: Maintaining Holdings in WorldCat

Error reports doc:  OCLC Data Sync: Processing error reports from staging

This work has lead to their considering re-evaluating the timing of staff assigning Harvard holdings in WorldCat.  What once was an attempt to get early record updates through BNS by setting our holdings early in our workflows (i.e. on brief bibs, whether created by us or an existing brief vendor bib), it is now determined that it causes more problems than benefits. Our holdings are set often on the less-preferred record when the updates happen on another bib that OCLC neglects to merge with our record. Duplicates in OCLC has seemed to get worse after they moved to a different duplicate detection/resolution (DDR) process when their new Data Sync process was developed.  The group agreed that re-evaluating the workflow timing for setting holdings is warranted.  The project team will evaluate these scenarios further.

Allison mentioned a new backend database called WorldCat Staging, where rejected records are kept and can be promoted to WorldCat after error resolution or upgrades make the records acceptable for import to WorldCat. Claire and Michelle would like to learn more about WorldCat Staging to see what possibilities it may hold for metadata lifecycle workflows with Metadata Management and other units.

• Anne Adam's request for a batch process to update bibs in Alma with newer versions from OCLC (Forwarded by Michelle to EOC mailing list on 3/30)

The EOC discussed a request from Anne Adams to develop an on-demand batch upgrade process for bib records using OCLC number as the match point to enhanced bibs in OCLC.  Laura expressed that LTS scripting resources to make a fully automated tool would not be available sooner than September, the EOC discussed possible simpler solutions to Anne's request, such as one involving an Import Profile that could be rolled out to trained Alma users in the community.  Michelle will reach out to Anne to learn more about the use cases she has and the level of features she envisioned in her request.

• Alma Project Requests
• Review action items from 3/1/21
  •  Michelle will schedule a meeting with Controller's (Tom B, Sarah B) office to discuss proposed strategy for leveraging Ebsco to help with serials check in.
    --NOTES:

Michelle checked in with Amy Dittman as a first step, as this topic seemed like one that Amy Dittman was already shepherding herself, and Michelle didn't want to step in unnecessarily.  Amy corroborated that she and Claire already have this project well in hand and will be submitting paperwork to Finance that outlines costs and any relevant details that Finance needs about the vendor service.
--Re-reading the notes from Feb 1, which had the Action Item for Michelle, Michelle noted there was confusion on how the Action Item was framed for her for the March meeting which subsequently caused the confusion above.  The Action Item from Feb 1 meeting related to auditing for the Direct-to-Destination workflows, which Michelle has been working on during March with Minna Popkin.  She will report back at the May EOC meeting to close this loop!

March 1, 2021 1:00 pm

• Review action items from 2/1/21
  •  Amy will send decision on OCLC Registry (re HLS address) to Allison and June Rutkowski
    

    • • 1/13 update.  Amy has cleared the addresses to be used with Laura Wood.   Because Botany is highly used for Special Collections (third highest), having them being the public address is Laura's preferences. Amy will close the loop with Laura and send update to Robin's email.

      • 2/1 update. FAS had some follow up questions. Amy Van Epps will get back to Amy Boucher with their final address decision. Allison Powers will be given the green light to move forward with the reclamation.
     Michelle will schedule a meeting with Controller's (Tom B, Sarah B) office to discuss proposed strategy for leveraging Ebsco to help with serials check in
    • • .
• Review projects list

February 1, 2021 1:00 pm

...

• • • 1/13 update.  Amy has cleared the addresses to be used with Laura Wood.   Because Botany is highly used for Special Collections (third highest), having them being the public address is Laura's preferences. Amy will close the loop with Laura and send update to Robin's email.
    • 2/1 update. FAS had some follow up questions. Amy Van Epps will get back to Amy Boucher with their final address decision. Alison Powers will be given the green light to move forward with the reclamation.
  •  Laura will ask Kara to update the Alma configuration to allow renewals on Hathi ETAS loaned items
  • • This is done.  But it won't really help because the items in question are likely overdue.  Extend due date doesn't work for items that are overdue.  Amy will look for examples for LTS to look into for determining if there are continued issues.
• Giving an Alma login to avendor.
  • Amy Dittman working on an alternative proposal for finding a way to allow Ebsco to assist with serials check in. Would allow for more of a remote workflow process. Laura pointed out that we'll need to run that proposal by Tom Becker to make sure that the new workflows satisfy audit requirements.
  • Tom and Sarah have also asked about the last time an audit was done for receiving processes. Direct to destination pilot was the first project  that included steps to cover the auditing needs with a new workflow.
  •  Michelle will pull together a meeting to discuss the auditing requirements with Tom Becker, Sarah Bento-Wensinger, Laura M. and Bill Walsh.
• Laura showed us the implementation of Hoopes prize papers from HUA in Alma D: Alma-D for Special Collections Access. Using the IA reader.
• Michelle asked if we should plan a meeting with Ex Libris in the future. Probably a good idea to first review our priority projects list. Hasn't been updated in a while due to all the other large scale projects this year. We will review at the next meeting.
• Laura updated the group on the university HART project for a data analytics tool from Oracle to replace Cognos. Includes Google analytics data, Alma item data, HD data. Power users have been testing it for the past few weeks. Will be adding more data over the next few months. Cognos is now off support. Eventually HART will expose all the data that used to be in Cognos. Only for reporting we cannot do via Alma Analytics.

...

• • • 1/13 update.  Amy has cleared the addresses to be used with Laura Wood.   Because Botany is highly used for Special Collections (third highest), having them being the public address is Laura's preferences. Amy will close the loop with Laura and send update to Robin's email.

  •  Laura will ask Kara to update the Alma configuration to allow renewals on Hathi ETAS loaned items
  • • This is done.  But it won't really help because the items in question are likely overdue.  Extend due date doesn't work for items that are overdue.  Amy will look for examples for LTS to look into for determining if there are continued issues.
• Batch Update Reminder.  How can we best remind folks who can run batch jobs about best practices for both testing and submitting jobs, but also for post job review of data to confirm the job worked as expected?
  • Jobs & Batch Processes - list of things to do
• Analytics & Reporting.  Laura summarized status of HART.  Roll out in process, login process to be designed.  Alma Item data in the system is available, bibs and holdings are in process.  Claire would like to explore ways to extend knowledge and comfort to more users to be report consumers/authors.  This will be an ongoing conversation.

Notes - See also public notes

December 7, 2020 2:00 pm

• Review of past action items
  •  Action items from 4/6/20
    
    •  Amy will send decision on OCLC Registry (re HLS address) to Allison and Karen
      Discussion Notes:
      While Amy was unable to join us for the December meeting, those in attendance discussed the background correspondence from Robin Wendler below.  The group agreed that given our past practice of not embracing brevity in our naming OCLC symbols, that we could simply concatenate the names associated with the two symbols being consolidated, and call it: "Ernst Mayr Library of Comparative Zoology & Botany Libraries" for maximum clarity.  We agreed that the address for MCZ would be most appropriate to use, since of the two libraries, MCZ will likely be more active with Resource Sharing.
• Status discussion regarding reimplementation of OCLC Bib Notification Service (BNS)
  Michelle inquired about the possible timeline for resuscitating BNS, knowing that LTS resources are scarce for projects.  Laura expressed that ReCAP and BD Shared Index projects are active projects that would take prescidence. The latter project does not have a hard timeline yet, so an estimate to completion is difficult to determine.

  The group discussed pre-work to the BNS project that might be done by others outside LTS. That could include analysis of the current OCLC service and developing a greater understanding of what would need to be added to protect our records more than previously. (To avoid such debacles as the "Winnie the Pooh" etc. incident)

  The OCLC service is now called WorldShare Record Manager and is a completely new architecture than the former BNS service, so it would be a whole new service implementation, even though some of the shared rationale and background work with the HL community that the prior BNS Working Group did would still have value.  Scott suggested that we should look at what peers are doing with OCLC and Alma, including what Penn is doing and what Minn is (Laura will inquire with Betsy at Minn before she retires at the end of the month).  We will revisit topic in new year when we review project list.

• Hathi Trust ETAS - renewals policy.  Is there anything we can do to renew items that were checked out at the time of shut down? We are not assessing fines so there is no financial impact but the overdue notices are stressful for users. Could alter the text of the notices to let people know that if their items are in ETAS they will not be able to renew them. Big push for the Sept. 10 due date is now done.”
  Discussion Notes:
  The group discussed how we can facilitate renewal of HathiTrust titles that have been prevented from renewal at this time. We decided to could turn off the "do not renew" flag for ETAS.
  

November 2, 2020 11:00 am

...

We spent the remainder of the meeting reviewing the "Requests To Be Prioritized by the Alma Executive Committee" section of the Project List.  We updated a few entries with newer information. LTS currently has no capacity to take on any additional projects, so EOC did not prioritize any new projects. Suzanne suggested that we make note of any projects that will help BD and ReCAP shared functionality and so that those can be first up when there is capacity.

...

We spent the remainder of the meeting reviewing the Project List

At our next EOC meeting, we will review the  'Requests To Be Prioritized by the Alma Executive Committee' list.

...