2009 Upper Midwest ExLibris Users' Group Meeting - October 26 & 27

This was my first time attending an ExLibris User Group meeting - the variety of sessions was fabulous and I learned something at almost every one.
Day 1 sessions attended...
Link Resolver: Panel Discussion -- this was a nice introduction to three link resolvers currently being used and/or developed in our region. I like the A-Z list feature and it's uses as a collection analysis tool. I'm excited to see what comes out of the PALSconnect beta.

Eeney Meeney Miney Moe? : Loader Options in ALEPH -- this presentation was led by the University of Minnesota and discussed the variety of options available for loading records into ALEPH. This is beyond our current needs at Minnesota West, but it is nice to be aware of options!

Course Reserves:v19/v20 Usage & End of Semester Clean-up: Although we currently are not using the Course Reserves module, I wanted to hear how other libraries liked the upgrade we saw from Version 17 to 19. Overall the comments were positive and libraries are happy the functionality is back in the GUI rather than on the Web. This was a good reminder to me that we still have course reserves data to clean up...

Day 2...
The day began with the Keynote Presentation: Next Generation Software by an ExLibris exec. This was the low-light of the user group for me as the presentation seemed more geared to ARL libraries and didn't recognize the variety of library sizes we have in our consortium. It was too much from the sales perspective for my preference.
Walk-Up Sessions -- there were a variety of 15-minute sessions to attend during this hour. The four I attended were:
* Hierarchical Budgets for MnSCU Libraries -- this was led by Minnesota State University, Mankato, and it was interesting to see all of the Budget Data they've put into ALEPH Acquisitions. Our primary uses to date have been for Book and AV budgets, but they use it for all Acquisitions -- annual subscriptions to databases, etc. When I asked why they did that when those big transactions are in ISRS anyway, he referenced the nice clean reports they can pull from ALEPH and easily transfer to Excel. This is food for thought when next year's budget rolls around...
* Expand Procedures and Fix Procedures -- An ODIN Systems office staff member led this session and walked through some time-saving procedures that could be put into place. I have a feeling these would be set up at the system level, but some could be local. I'm not sure we would find need for those at MnWest. I am thankful that I have seen a few fix routines with the e-books we are cataloging now so I had a clue what they were talking about! :)
* Why is My Video Showing Up as Print Book? -- This was a nice close look at tab_type_config and how the LDR, 006, and 007 fields impact the OPAC display. Need to check this out and see how ours our displaying...
*Ask the Experts -- stopped by to visit with Al R./PALS and found a solution to a problem we had encountered earlier that week! YEAH ~ and it was an easy fix which made it even better :)

URM Discussion and Reaction -- this was a panel of ExLibris users who are on a variety of focus groups for the new ExLibris URM product. Like the keynote, this was too "out there" without enough clarification about what it will be, look like, etc. (especially in a consortium environment) that it wasn't very useful to me.

Analytic Linkages -- Bobby Bothmann led this presentation. Very informative and again, more to think about!! I hadn't seen this before, so it will take a little investigative work to put it into place. One title that came to mind to implement this with is the Rural Minnesota Journal...

Automatic Creation of Holdings and Item Records -- Another area I hadn't looked too closely at yet, but it would make the cataloging process more efficient so I'm all for that!!! It was nice to have a multi-campus library as one of the presenters...learned there is a lot of set-up work in the tables to get this up and running (so maybe a summer project?!?!), but well worth it once it is done. Also learned that we could be adding 856 $u into the Holding record to get the URL to display there -- would be a nice shortcut for patrons.