[Dcmosls] Fwd: SCOOLS 2007 Inauguration

[John Brock]

John P. Brock
School Library System Coordinator
Delaware-Chenango-Madison Otsego BOCES
6678 County Road 32
Norwich, NY 13815-3554

(607)  335-1371
FAX (607) 336-6518
E-mail: brockj at dcmoboces.com 
Website: http://www.dcmoboces.com/sls 


>>> "Harry Chan" <harry at bibliofiche.com> 9/11/2007 4:27 PM >>>
Greetings to all

I just met with the programmers and they are confident that record indexing for the last of the SLS component databases will be complete later this evening. We will do some system verification early tomorrow morning... it appears that it should be ready to roll around 9:30 AM to 10:00 AM. There are over 1.1 million unique titles in this latest update... we will have the exact holdings count tomorrow morning, but we think that it is over 3 million.

We manually re-entered demographics for three hundred component schools... so it should not be necessary for any of you to do this. It is possible that some email addresses were missing, and that some editing needs to be done where staff changes have occurred. You will be able to edit and update these cases. Dan Weeks is designated to receive any email messages that are sent to sites that do not have email addresses, and he will help you to identify and whittle those thorns down. 

There are significant changes to SCOOLS Union this year, and here are just a few of them:

1) We have reorganized the filter and data to permit an additional level for searching:

- SCOOLS Region
- School Library System 
- District (This is a new level)
- Building

2) When you login to a specific location (ex. ONC SLS, Binghamton High School, etc.), the system retains that location as its default.. you can search that location, and scope out to any other level. The system will "remember" your login coordinate as "My Library"... 

3) Authorized staff can import and merge new records to update the union databases progressively during the year. This will reduce the frequency of massive annual updates, and provide access to currently acquired resources. 

4) Programmers have been working on functions that will enable authorized staff to delete individual holdings or groups of holdings from school compiled data files that you can retrieve (from OPALS users) or that non OPALS users can submit by scanning or entering deleted item barcodes into a Web-based form online from each remote location. This will take two weeks more and must be beta tested. 

5) Programmers are preparing to submit a report and export function to Z-Test, that will enable OPALS users to compile a report of modified records. The report function will include an export function that will enable union database managers to update local holding modifications (ex. classification numbers). 

We have been working on a September OPALS newsletter to announce updates for building level users. This has not yet been posted on the Website... we are sending it to you for preview and comment. We plan to move most of these developments to our hosted sites, and if the transition works well, we will ask those that have their own servers when they would like to receive these updates. 

Thank you for your patience..... 

Harry





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