Vote on ALEPH development requests

Dear ICAU members,

finally, Ex Libris evaluated the 1997 requests.

Access

You can see and search all records (except those deleted during the editing process) together with ExLibris comments. We would appreciate all comments and suggestions as to the scope of fields for displaying and for searching.

You may also see (but not search effectively) the formatted requests. The whole file can be seen [and downloaded] from here (97kB).

If you prefer, you can also use telnet, (login as visitor), bases req and cli; the 1997 requests start at sysno 801. The telnet access is to be used for on-line voting. The printed version of 1997 requests was dispatched to you by snail-mail on 10 June.

Voting techniques

After you log in using the login and password that you received together with the printout of requests, you are placed to the main screen of Aleph in English. This user name gives you the privilege to update records, it is limited to the fields TO97 and NOTE. You are expected to enter your vote into the TO97 field: voting points into the subfield $$a (instead of words <voting points>), your new client code into the subfield $$b (instead of <client code>). If you are the first one who modifies a particular request record, you may just replace the contents of both subfields. If, however somebody did modify the record before you, i.e. subfield $$a contains a number and subfield $$b contains a client code, you have to create a next occurence of the TO97 tag and enter your voting points to the $$a subfield and your institution code into the $$b. You may enter whatever sensible comment into the NOTE field. You are kindly asked to identify yourself at the beginning of the message by either your name, e-mail, or client code of your library). Similarly to the above, if the record contains a NOTE field already, simply add a next occurence.

If you - for whatever reason - do not have this login name & password, you may contact Iva Pribramska

You can use CL command on the draft screen or dynamic edit form (on the full screen you will have both fields). We do prefer this way of voting since this would save our scarce human resources.

Nevertheless, we are ready to accept your vote in whatever format containing always SYSNO and/or PQID of the request and number of points assigned for each request you would like to vote on. You may send it to us via e-mail, fax +420 2 21-663-118 or by snail mail to the hands of Iva Pribramska, National Library, Klementinum 190, 110 01 Prague 1, Czech Republic.

At the beginning of the voting period there will be only one concurrent user allowed as we do not expect a too heavy traffic. Two weeks before the end of the voting period (i.e. starting June 23) the number will be increased to 5. The editors will be allowed to modify the rest of request records through CAT and MA module as we see that some formal changes would be very useful.

Voting points

The number of voting points remains the same as it was last year, i.e. 1000 points per ICAU member. This decision of the Steering Committee was taken last year based on the fact that the value of membership fee is also the same for each member, not taking in account their relative "size". You can distribute these 1000 points over as many requests as you wish. If a request receives enough voting points to score high in spite of being evaluated as Refused, we would try to re-negotiate this with Ex Libris.

Client codes

Please, note that you are invited to use new client codes (i.e. the code you can find on the member fee invoice) for voting that are already used in 1997 request records. You may find them as a flat file.

Deadline

As you know, we are remarkably behind the planned schedule. To be able to conclude the whole process before the ICAU meeting, the voting period started already and the deadline will be July 7.

Please try to have a look into the database and let us know your experience, in particular if you get in any problems with access, or if you need any further explanation. Please contact Iva Pribramska

Yours,

Martin Svoboda
ICAU Chair