- Continued discussion of group development:
- Co-chair volunteer
The group has benefited from a co-chair model, with co-chairs sharing the meeting duties of chairing/minute-taking, and also providing continuity as membership rotates.
It will be difficult for members to make a commitment until budget and workload are better known. We will look at sharing some of the administrative activities (such as minute taking) among group members now. - Schedule for minute approval and public sharing, agenda and open invitation to meetings
The group would like to increase communication and open participation, including timely sharing of minutes and announcement of meetings. We have been informal with our minutes and approval process, and agree that this continues to be appropriate. Our goal will be whenever feasible for the minute-taker to share notes with the group within about a week of the meeting, and then after making any corrections post to SUNY LibGuides within another week, with subsequent announcement of minute availability and next meeting date/time to SUNY Basecamp. At this two-week period, we we also try to start collecting agenda items and looking for a volunteer for minute taking. - LSP Advisory Board
Nancy is now on the Advisory Board and has shared Discovery WG updates with the Board, including a request for outreach for two new members, from the Board and/or Jennifer Smathers. The next Board meeting is Monday, July 27; Nancy will follow up then.
- Open discussion of any ongoing/new CDI issues
- Link in Record issues
- Link in Record vs Link Resolver links in Primo VE records
A change in CDI is that Link in Record and Link Resolver links can't be displayed together on a single record in Primo, and currently the Link in Record links are being given priority. We would generally prefer to give priority to Link Resolver links instead, since Link Resolver collections are ones we pay for and we also have more control over these links.
There are a number of problems with Link in Record collections in the CDI, with links not resolving properly, or displaying incorrect availability. There are a number of tickets open across SUNY.
Ex Libris is planning revision of link priority in August; see CDI Known Gaps and Issues > CDI (Primo) - Linking. Their fix will give priority to Link in Record over Link Resolver only if the Link in Record collection is not open access. We would prefer that Link Resolver be given priority or better yet that all links be included and that institutions be able to select their desired priority. There is a proposal in the Idea Exchange: "Preference CDI Link Resolver records over Link in Record when merging" - Link in Record collections in Alma - to suppress or not suppress the bibliographic record?
Currently, if you want the content within a Link in Record to be discoverable in Primo, you must unsuppress the record for the collection in Alma. This is a change from PCI, where the collection-level record could be suppressed but the content discoverable because of separate PCI activation. Ex Libris is updating the interface to enable full-text search/discoverability in Primo with suppression of the collection-level record. The fix should be applied in August. - "View full text in collection" labels with no collection identified -- this problem was slated for fix in May (per Known Gaps and Issues doc) but we are still seeing many instances.
- Other linking problems
- Campuses are investigating other problems with linking and availability. For example, Gale is an ongoing problem; there are some workarounds possible with parser parameter overrides (see: Gale link resolver issue fix). Many of these problems pre-date CDI, but some seem worse since the CDI -- possibly because the priority of Link in Record links prevents the display of Link Resolver links that work better.
- Open discussion of any ongoing/new discovery issues
- Search and Ranking in CDI: there have been many discussions at individual campuses, across SUNY, and on discussion lists like Primo-L about CDI functionality with relevance, phrase searching, stop words, and other issues.
Question for group discussion: How are campuses reacting and adapting to these changes?
Some campuses with focus on advanced users (such as Upstate Medical) may be advising users to search within Primo only for quick and superficial searches, recommending that deep searching be done within individual databases.
Other campuses may be sharing documentation with instruction-oriented librarians and recommending testing.
Different campuses will likely have very different experiences with and responses to these issues. Campuses like Upstate Medical, for example, may find that the majority of their Primo use is driven by OpenURL searches from other products rather than native searching directly within the Primo VE environment. - Response time to support tickets: SUNY has a meeting with the Ex Libris content team this week and learned that they have been surprised by the volume of support tickets since CDI implementation; they are somewhat overwhelmed right now.
The group shared some very positive experiences with ticket responsiveness, as well. - Developing a script for Sandbox testing (Michelle)
SUNY has asked the DWG to help develop a test script for testing new releases in the Sandbox before they go live. Recent regressions from new releases have blindsided us, and while it wouldn't help us get things fixed in time for the release (there's usually only a week between sandbox and live release), testing might give us some lead time. SUNY looking for a list of 20 things or so to test, something like check to make sure fulfillment options are working for both print and electronic, check export functionality, etc. A list of to-dos, along with specific titles to test and the sandbox to test them in would be super helpful.
The group agreed to collaborate on a script: Sandbox Testing script - Discovery Working Group
Our goal is to have a draft ready before the August release, to be ready for more intensive testing and revisions for the September release.