Global Circ Development/Specifications
Date Tue, 27 Sep 1994 22:24:52 -1000
From: Martha Chantiny
To: hbj, haak
Subject: ILL/ESP, Global Circ, etc.
After the August meeting with Ward and Trish regarding ILL/ESP specs,
it was clear that ILL/ESP was really a form of "cooperative Circ" such
as is in place at Maryland. Therefore the first step toward being able
to produce the bells and whistles of the ILL/ESP specifications was to put
some form of "global Circ" in place.
To that end Wanda worked on site from 9/12 to 9/23. She was constructing
a test set up which involved merging copies of the Manoa and Hilo transact
and users files, in order to identify the issues and procedures that we will
need to address when/if we do a merge of a number of these files "for real".
At this point we have 2 test lines set up with Wanda's "dummy files" which can
be used to simulate some of the procedures that Global Circ will involve.
Wanda and I met with Susan and Sandi from Circ on 9/16 to go over the policy,
procedure and "political" issues of "Global Circ" as well as to discuss any
technical details that occurred to Susan and Sandi.
Some of the issues included:
- Global editing of ANY borrower by ANY site (since all borrowers are in one big bucket).
- Only one patron record required per patron, rather than multiple records at various
sites; the "owning institution" is recorded in the patron record
- Bad patrons blocked at one site will be blocked at all sites (with waive capability
if desired) as long as every site agrees on minimum blocking requirements
- Borrower type GROUPS will need to be created to describe classes of patron
types at the global sites which have identical treatment
- Global parameters in Dynamic parameter maintenance need to be turned on and tested
- Fines/fees - each site will only be able to receive, pay and/or waive fines on their own items
- Books from ANY site may be returned AT any site - which may involve increased transport costs
- Increased workload on Circ staff if UNchecked out materials are now being paged
("auto recall") from the shelves for transport to remote sites, patrons or hold shelf
("paging" or "auto recall" is afterall what ILL does - they pull unchecked out items
from the shelves and ship them to patrons who request them - a function that can be
used by ANYONE in a fully global CIrc/patron-placed hold scenario)
- Sites _can_ opt NOT to be part of the global Circ
- the fears of "collection raiding" will need to be addressed at all sites
- CARL recommends a global BIB database (i.e. all records in one file, with the
OWNERS listed rather than individual call numbers) to go along with global Circ -
this would have system storage implications
- the potential for assessing fees for delivery, in transit to hold shelves, etc.
is available with global Circ
On 9/22 Wanda and I met with John Haak to discuss some of the same issues with him
before he left for the Directors meeting. He agreed to contact Hilo when he got back
to discuss the possibility of an experiment involving their site and ours in a
"cooperative Circ" arrangement. He said that the issue of increased transportation
costs should be brought up with the University Executives (Provosts, Chancellors, etc.)
to see if system-wide action or funding was needed.
One part of implementing automated ILL (which is another way of describing "Global Circ")
involved putting the Router ('auto paging') function in place to test. Wanda did most
of the background work on this and has left detailed instructions for further testing
of the Router function.
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 1994 13:32:05 -1000
From: Martha Chantiny
Subject: [Re: ILL/ESP, Global Circ, etc.]
To: hbj@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu
Helen -
Just for your information ... I reviewed your 9/2/94 memo to John
Haak while going over the background of the "global circ situation"
last week with Carol Schaasma and actually NONE of the 4
points in Phase 1 of the September 2 memo have been completely addressed:
Circ 400.8 was only released by CARL last week. It is currently in
preliminary testing mode.
Router still does not work entirely correctly, neither does Patron
Placed Holds.
Basic validation is still undergoing testing in PAC version 107.01 -
however that version of PAC has serious flaws that may prevent it from
EVER being releasable Live at our site. Which means we wait until PAC
version 107.02 is released (date of release currently unknown) and
start all over again.
A test "semi-globalization" of a set of DUMMY files was performed by Wanda
when she was here ... but the procedure to perform a LIVE globalization
has not been worked out, nor have the political aspects of what that would
mean been addressed ...
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