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CDL Database Transitions

May 31, 2001 Author: CDLCategories:

a. Advisory Group Roles for Catalog and A&I Transitions

Citing the importance and complexity of major transitions for both the Melvyl Catalog and the CDL-Hosted A&I databases, the CDL recently asked the Systemwide Operations and Planning Advisory Group (SOPAG) to confirm their own role and those of other contributing groups.

SOPAG confirmed their role of discussion and advice on large policy issues related to the transitions (see the following CDLINFO item for an update on Melvyl Catalog policies). They also endorsed a proposal that the A&I Transition Steering Committee continue to provide assistance with implementation issues beyond the July goal for recommendations on vendor choices for the databases.  Finally, they agreed that the Melvyl Catalog User’s Council should continue to play a strong role in campus and partner communications about the catalog transition, whose implementation details are divided among three functional teams.

A reminder to all that background and status information on the transitions meant for library staff is available from the CDL’s libstaff page (http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/), and that information for the public is available from the CDL News page (http://www.cdlib.org/news/).

b. Policy decisions for the Catalog Transition

At their most recent meeting the Systemwide Operations and Planning Advisory Group (SOPAG), discussed several of the large policy issues related to the catalog transition.  They discussed possible arrangements of non-UC periodical records in separate physical or logical databases and agreed with the recommendation of the transition implementation team – presented by project manager Cris Campbell – to structure the merged CAT and PE database as a single database while seeking to use interface options to clearly identify non-UC materials or to allow for searches to be limited to such subsets.

On another policy issue, also related to scope and content of Melvyl-T, SOPAG endorsed a decision to continue accepting journal analytics records in the new catalog and to explore ways to link the analytic record to the full serial record.

An overview list of policy issues with updates as available, can be viewed along with other Melvyl-T information at http://www.cdlib.org/libstaff/catalog/.