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

ICAU 97. User Experiences Session. Wednesday, September 10th

by Else Marie Poulsen

 

ALEPH 300 & THE WEB-INTERFACE

Originally, I suggested Aleph-300 and the WEB-interface to be a topic for a work-shop session.

I would have liked to establish a forum for exchanging experiences, knowledge and good ideas - and for analyzing some of the answers Ex Libris has given to this year’s requests. To be frank, I didn’t quite understand the essence of some of them.

As the Steering Comittee decided not to run work-shops at this years meeting I’ve prepared this paper instead.

My main reason for doing so is that I find it extremely important that Aleph 300 and especially the WEB-interface are not lost in the intensive and interesting Aleph 500- presentations and -discussions. I still do, even after these last few days.

For those of us who for various reasons are not planning to implement Aleph 500 within the nearest future it is essential that especially the 300-WEB-interface is both maintained and improved in the years to come.

Here in Aalborg we implemented the WEB-interface shortly after returning from Israel last autumn.

I will not go through the list of problems we have had since then. I’m sure they are well-known and shared by most of us.

However, I soon realized that I needed more information than the manual could provide in order to e.g. tailor the screens. A meeting with our consultant at ICL was arranged. At this meeting, I finally managed to get a list of which Aleph-files the $-signs in different screens are refering to. This has been of great help to me and such a list - perhaps written in a more pedagogical tone - really ought to be part of the standard documentation.

Example from the list:

Screen: bor_details

Field-01

MAIL-ADRESS OCCURS 5

Field-06

MAIL-ZIP

Field-07

TELEPHONE

Field-08

BOR-STATUS

and so on ...

Having this list at hand the screens become much more transparant.

Earlier this year, I wrote an article for our internal newsletter summarizing the user-feedback we had received until then. The headline was "Hurrah-hurrah, Buh-buh .. or somewhere in between". And the conclusion was: "somewhere in between"

The first reactions were close to being ecstatic. Our users really enjoyed getting rid of the Common Command Language. In general, the construction of the pages, which is mainly the standard-Aleph concept, is considered to be well-arranged, not discouraging and well-matched with regard to colours.

Our users seem to like the somewhat humble appearance of the screens.

However, the first enthusiasm did flatten out and now most of the feedback concerns the missing functions within circulation related parts of the system.

These items together with the lack of flexibility within the correspondence with the Aleph-system are exactly what we as professional users have pointed out to be the weak points of this interface.

It is thought-provoking that almost at the same time as we finally get the flexible screens to the telnet-version we see the release of an extremely "hard-coded" WEB-version. A rapid glance at this year’s requests and the voting result shows a need for much more flexible WEB-screens as well. Also we have seen apparitons of bugs corrected in earlier versions of the telnet version.

I am aware that a number of corrections and new features are included in the 3.2-6 which we are planning to implement shortly after this meeting.

The Danish version has been delayed, but I do hope that those of you running the new version can confirm that major improvements have been made - hopefully not at the cost of new bugs.

In last year’s Update-Report DTV listed a number of enhancements made by themselves. And as far as I can see more have been added since then. Some of them appear in this year’s Icau-requests. They are now first to be considered - next, hopefully to be developed for the standard Aleph. I can not help wondering why it has taken so long when the basic work has already been done. One request - reversing the order on the short-screen - was even rejected by Ex Libris, but seems to be functioning well at DTV.

Now, maybe DTV’s solutions are not the best ones. I am not the one to be judge of that. But DTV has made solutions that seem to work.

We consider the WEB-interface to be the "end-user" interface, local as well as remote. The "end-users" of today are very aware of what they can demand (within reason) of a library system. They have seen it work in old-fashioned systems.

Explaining why there are functional limitations in the most modern version is not an easy task.

Bright prospects of the new system to come in an year or maybe two, when the it has proved its brilliance and the economy leaves room for new investments, are of no interest to the users who need better possibilities here and now. I can asure you that our MUST requests for next year will be WEB-requests.

From my point of view it is acceptable that further developments on the telnet-version are stopped. Most problems occur within internal modules and over the years we have found other ways or learned to live with it.

The WEB, however, is our public image (and the public image of Aleph as well). Therefore we need much more prompt answers and actions than we have seen until now. Last but not least we need much more stability as regard to running the server.

Last week I tried to connect to different Aleph-WEBs through the links on ExL homepage.

Many of them came out with URL-failure-messages. Probably this is mainly due to the above mentioned "shaky stability". However, I would like to take this opportunity to encourage you to let ExL know when you open your Aleph-web - or change the address. I find it very useful to have these links gathered in one place if you want to see how things are done in other institutions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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