8th Annual ICAU Meeting Aalborg University, Denmark 8.-10- September 1997

ICAU 97. Opening Session. Monday, September 8^th

by Alessandra Bezzi

ALEPH development requests procedures

Suggestions from EB members

I. Constitute an Editorial Board of members specializing in particular Aleph modules.

Every year before the editing process begins, someone should be responsible for assigning the "Cross-requests" (requests that have effects through several modules) and general requests to specific members of the Editorial Board.

II. Each year the Steering Committee's role is to negotiate the following with Ex-Libris:

time table for the entire process

number of requests submitted to be reviewed each year with Ex-Libris

Ex-Libris staff responsible for requests project

schedule times for discussion between Ex-Libris and E.B. members about unclear and misunderstood requests

point of complexity needs to be reviewed each year

 

A letter of commitment on the above points needs to be agreed upon each year.

III. Sending of the requests

The requests should be submitted according to the timetable set by the Steering Committee every year.

Requests are checked against the database or the list of requests that were placed in previous years. After reviewing Ex Libris' comments regarding duplicate or similar requests and new features in upgrades created by Ex-Libris, each library submits a list of requests. Libraries are committed to sending only NEW requests.

In order to coordinate and limit the number of requests sent to the Editorial Board, all members (from the regions that are covered by the national/regional user group) are strongly requested to first discuss their requests inside the national/regional groups.

The technology of the sending requests:

A WWW form has been prepared for simple submission of requests on the ICAU WWW server.

Information about patches that are implemented in the submitting library should be added to the form.

Requests are stored on the server (now on the server of the National Library of the Czech Republic). Announcements are sent to a mailing list (now Alephint, possibly to a special mailing list to where more information about the request could be included). Full information is sent to the submitting librarian as a confirmation that request has been accepted and, more important, to the Editorial Board member/s responsible for the function specified in the MOD field. (There should be a difference between the form of the information that is sent back to the submitting person and the form that is sent to the EB member to help to EB member to recognize what should be processed and what is only the confirmation of the request that has been submitted by EB member.) Each submitting librarian should pay an attention to entering the particular module/function on the request. If it is not clear or unique to a particular module, it is better to indicate more than one module/function. We should consider the level to which we shall request the classification of request by submitting persons. Would it be enough for the requestor just to pick out the module the request concerns and have the EB member add more detailed function?

An html file is created and presented giving the information about title of the request and its submitter/s and receiver/s.

 

IV. The editors will edit the requests:

Clear questions, merge duplicate or very similar requests, discuss overlapping requests with submitting libraries, and clarify vague or confusing issues. Unfulfilled requests from preceding years could be resubmitted by members.

V. At the end of the first step of editing process, the editors should decide which requests would be included in the final list of requests to send to Ex Libris for evaluation.

The number of requests will comply with the number agreed upon by Ex Libris and Steering Committee. Parameters adopted to limit the number of requests would be determined by:

Checking the previous list of rejected requests

Checking Ex-Libris' development plan (A500)

Requests concerning one specific topic defined by Board of Icau Members every year as to be strategic, i.e. WWW, etc.

Requests concerning functionality / module which will strongly impact a large number of users.

Requests having a strong effect to the end-users’ satisfaction

Requests having a lot of coo-submitting institutions

Requests without which users cannot comply with their national law

 

The result should have been taken as a suggestion. The SC, who should take overall responsible for the list submitted, should make the final decision.

VI. The Editorial Board discusses the requests with Ex Libris development staff people to obtain their input regarding company development plans.

In addition, the Ex Libris development staff assesses the requests concerning resources needed and assigns them a relative value of one being the easiest to 10 the most difficult.

VII. The Editorial Board presents the clarified requests together with Ex Libris assigned "points of complexity" to the Steering Committee.

After approval by Steering Committee, the requests are presented to members for voting.

Requests that are rejected by Ex Libris are maintained in the separate list for ICAU member's comments. Those of common interest should be discussed between SC and Ex Libris.

Technology of processing and presenting:

Rules for processing the records containing requests.

They will be processed in which way each editor would prefer i.e. word processing, database, etc. but, at the end, they must be in a format like UTIL 90.

On each request should be added fields:

RQID identification number of submitted request

PQID identification number of processed request

EMB name and e-mail address of pertinent editor

NOTE optional

 

Requests are published electronically. Paper forms should be used only by special request from a particular ICAU member.

VIII. The membership votes online

IX. The Steering Committee meets with Ex Libris and discusses the prioritized requests and rejected requests of the common interest.

X. The Ex Libris comments are appended to each request-indicating version for implementation of request.

XI. Following the implementation in the database, users should check the functionality in accordance to the information provided by Ex Libris.

The final information provided by the users that are able to test it (as they already have

that particular version, patch). should be entered into the REQ database.

Suggestions about 1998 time table:

Submission deadline Dec 31

Time for first step of editing process Mar 31

Time to define final list of requests by Steering Committee Apr 15

Time for discussing requests with Ex-Libris May 15

List of edited requests with "points of complexity" assigned presented to the Steering Committee May 31

Steering Committee approval Jun 7

Voting deadline Jul 7

Steering Committee meeting with Ex Libris Jul

Ex Libris response published via WWW Jul 31

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