June 16, 2022, 2:00pm

Agenda/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

New Topics

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.

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

--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

New Topics


April 5, 2021, 1:00 pm

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.

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.

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

February 1, 2021 1:00 pm

January 13, 2021 1:00 pm

Review of past action items

Notes - See also public notes

December 7, 2020 2:00 pm

November 2, 2020 11:00 am


October 9, 2020 11:00 am


September 8, 2020 3:00 pm

August 13, 2020

June and July 2020 Meetings Cancelled

May 13, 2020


April 8, 2020

Suzanne agreed to take meeting notes.

Review action items from 3/2/20

OCLC update from Allison and Karen - see Data Sync project notes. 

March 2, 2020

Michelle agreed to take meeting notes.

We reviewed action items from 2/3; all prior commitments had been completed.

SHAER portal & Bibliographer needs for data:  We are interested in creating a culture shift to make "data literacy" a core skill. Currently SHAER plans to show each bibliographer how to add the widget and where to see the usage data on the Alma front screen.

3-day Loan Code:  Spruill requested that the EOC reinstate the 3-day loan within Alma. It is needed for existing technology loans and would work within the new framework that is being established for technology lending being worked on by an RTL working group. "Technology" will be made another Fulfillment unit in Alma/Primo, with the Tech loaning locations listed, and the 3-day item loan would be associated with this Fulfillment unit.  The 3-day loan code will only be appropriate for tech loans.

    --Spruill will update the wiki page that lists the Item Policies that are active and those that are superceded, along with their mapping chart to show how former loan codes are mapped to active.

    --Laura will have a Fulfillment unit created.

Establishing terms for Working Group members:  EOC supports two-year terms with staggered terms and with the LTS members as ex officio/co-chairs.

--We will plan to host a meeting with all the working groups to review highlights with each other of what groups are working on and what would benefit from communicating across the WGs.

    --Suzanne will ask Victoria to find a late-April date that works with the EOC membership's calendar

--We will also host an open meeting for the larger Harvard Alma community; we can use above meeting to help plan agenda.  

--Laura will contact Corinna to answer her question regarding WG terms

We spent the remainder of the meeting reviewing the "Requests To Be Prioritized by the Alma Executive Committee" section of the Project ListWe 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.

General Updates:


February 3, 2020

Scott agreed to take meeting notes.

We reviewed action items from 1/6

Scott and Michelle have initiated the process to bring the FAST headings discussion to D2D.

Michelle determined there was no need to submit an Alma Support Request detailing requirements for 920 addition to loaded vendor records as the need will be met through a local solution.

Laura will have LTS close the Development Library in Alma.

Michelle communicated our prior meeting decisions to the Google Books Discovery and Access WG

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.



January 6, 2020

The EOC reviewed and discussed recommendations from the Google Books Discovery & Access WG report. EOC agreed to move forward as follows:

Recommendations 1 – 4:  These recommendations require similar work and can be looked at as a project. LTS will review requirements and scope work for project prioritization. LTS has begun work updating inventory (recommendation 4) for items sent in most recent scanning phase.

Recommendation 5: As there is no source for this data from google, the EOC does not approve this recommendation.

Recommendation 6: The EOC will refer this recommendation to D2D for prioritization

Recommendation 7: The EOC believes this recommendation needs further analysis after the new Hathi user interface is released.  LTS work to update GLIB related scripts would be needed. This will be referred to D2D for prioritization when new Hathi UI is available.

Recommendation 8: The EOC will further discuss this recommendation at the February meeting.