VALE Steering Committee

Minutes of the November 3, 1998 Meeting

Present: Chervenie, Ciliberti, John Cohn, Judy Cohn, Gaboury, Gaunt, Getaz, Price, Simpson, Sweeney. Also: Martin Crabtree from MCCC, John Mihalick from OCLC and Dave Hoover from Rutgers.

1. Marianne opened the meeting with a request for an update on the database contracts. John Mihalick reported that the UMI contracts are ready to be signed, with ABI scheduled for delivery first, followed by Periodical Abstracts. He noted, however, that UMI required the subscription period to be September 1, 1998 to August 31, 1999, not November to October as originally planned. The APA and CINAHL contracts are nearing final review before signing.

The group discussed the problem that VALE invoices had already been sent indicating a November to October subscription period. Marianne agreed to post an explanation on the Council listserv noting the change.

2. John Gaboury reported that efforts are underway to position ourselves for further funding and for preliminary vendor negotiations as ALA. All members of the group interested in working with John and Anne with vendor negotiations and demos at ALA should let John know and dates will be arranged in advance.

The Commission on Higher Education continues to be favorably impressed with the VALE progress and Marianne and John are on the agenda of the December 18 Commission meeting. John is being careful to have press releases and other publicity efforts reviewed by Commission staff to ensure that the messages are politically sensitive.

3. Marianne announced that she is ready for a live demonstration that afternoon of the VALE interface. She noted that Dave Hoover is trying to finish several projects before the freeze frame date of November 13. These are:

a. Eliminate references to library holdings.
b. Provide more bibliographic information on the brief record in the hit list.
c. Flag those records with full-text.
The next major interface upgrade will be done in January, so Dave is making every effort to accommodate as many suggestions as possible now.

4. With regard to IP authentication, Marianne proposed that at the beginning of VALE, all authentication be based upon campus IP addresses, except in those three institutions which do not have IP ranges where the authentication will be ID and password. Later, during second semester, we will explore setting up customized Ids and passwords for each institution so that remote access can be provided to the user population.

5. Marianne summarized some of the important next VALE steps: the meeting with Regional Library Cooperative Directors and the State Library to discuss further database collaboration and exploration of funding initiatives. She encouraged all members to read and post VALE messages to the various listservs for further communication purposes.

6. Training and technical support issues for Day One will be handled by a team of two technical specialists identified from each institution. A Tech Support Listserv will be set up and Dave will communicate technical problems to the local campuses via the listserv. It will be the responsibility of the tech support people to communicate the problem locally. When problems occur locally, the tech people should do all local troubleshooting before sending the problem to Rutgers or Seton Hall staff. The exact method for reporting problems to the host sites, particularly on weekends and evenings, needs to be addressed.

7. The Seton Hall server should be available by mid-December and a separate meeting will need to be held with the technical people to determine how to balance load, staff and other resources between the two sites.

8. Barbara Simpson reported that the Training group has developed a Day One "cheat sheet" and plans to continue to develop other documentation as soon as the interface is available for study. Anne agreed to post the cheat sheet on the VALE website.

9. Joan Getaz distributed drafts of the press release, memo to the directors and invitation to the reception. She will send these to Anne for copying and distribution. Anne will also extend the reception invitation to the major vendors. The flyer and mousepad information will be sent to OCLC for production.

10. John Cohn will hold off having another Technical Support meeting until after Day One, so that the initial experience can be discussed and Dave will hopefully be more available.

11. Paul Chervnie inquired if any determination had been made about the availability of collecting use data beginning on Day One. Dave will try to find the time to explore what can be captured at the beginning for analysis later.

12. Judy Cohn reported for the Electronic Resources group and discussed its focus on three areas: local resources which could easily be added to the VALE suite, Internet links to government and NJ sites and commercially produced databases and full-text resources.

13. The next meeting of the VALE Steering Committee will be on November 30 at 2 pm.

Minutes prepared by Anne Ciliberti

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