The SFX Product Working Group met in Zurich last month to discuss priorities and focus for the PWG for the year. While conference planning is always a constant activity, we identified a couple of additional areas to work on. This year we will continue the ongoing KB and software enhancements voting processes – the KB process runs multiple times a year, and the software process runs once a year. The other area we are looking at closely is to work with Ex Libris on ways to improve the quality of the KB update process, following the flurry of concerns expressed on the SFX discussion list.
Since we mentioned the software process, we want to report out on progress. Process collaboration with the Ex Libris Users of North America continues to progress well. This past winter, we completed the Software Enhancements voting process. Full results can be viewed on the ELCommons wiki but in short Ex Libris considered the top 13 results – 6 were accepted and are in process, 2 were rejected, and 5 were postponed for further analysis. We are currently working with Ex Libris to finalize the status of the 5 that required further analysis, and will report out on the results in the next newsletter. Since the voting two requests (a display indicator for titles that have active portfolios in the KB manager, and configuration options for the object search screen) have already been added to SFX. We will periodically update the wiki with updated information.
Progress continues with the KB resources voting process. To see the full results of all of the voting cycles go to the ELCommons wiki. Our tireless KB voting team continues to track progress of resource implementation with Ex Libris. We have seen a slow-down of KB requests entered into the system and want to encourage institutions to keep adding them, especially the region/language specific resources. Remember – institutions that put resource requests in the system have a good chance of getting those resources selected!
As always we continue to look for ways that we can best assist the SFX community. If you have thoughts, ideas, or concerns, please send them to us.
Mark Dehmlow, SFX PWG Coordinator