Tom shared back the concern about the transparency issue with Slack, LG understands and said it’s okay; they wanted to make sure that it was addressed, which we did, so we’re in good shape
DOC is putting together an OA Project Team; they are reviewing the draft charge and they want to put together a nominee list that will go to OT, and we’ll look at that
OT may be handing off some items to the OA Project Team
Tom will have more information, as it starts to develop
Communication and the need for communication in both directions, between OT, Subteams, and LG
There is no longer a communications team; OT and LG both noted this
Tom dug around everyone’s kickoff presentations, and found out that OT is responsible for communication, including things such as SILS Newsletters
OT can use the SILS-News listserv for communicating to the cohort and to campuses
This is part of the OT’s role that we haven’t dug into yet
Core responsibilities for OT related to communication:
Communicating decisions to LG - doing that
Ensure info from SILS Ops Center is communicated to Ops Subteams and Campus Staff - kinda happening in this group
Coordinating communication from Ops Subteams and Campus Staff to LG and to CDL Ops Center - that happens here too
We’re the go-to group when it comes to operations communications
We should add this to our work plan, so we can discuss a procedure or process for how we want to communicate to Subteams, the cohort, and to campuses
Since we’re representative of campuses and CDL, that gives us the opportunity to figure out how we want to do that communication
Question: Who’s role is it if there is ever a need for something such as a town hall to update people on what all is happening in SILS? Would we still need such a meeting, or would a newsletter that includes a round-up of recent events be enough?
We should consider if we want to do a town hall type of thing; something we can talk about
We do need to discuss this further, maybe in the next 2-weeks, we can discuss how we want to do updates to the cohort and to all of the staff
We could prepare stuff and just have a newsletter, not sure if we would need a town hall, but that’s a good question for this group to discuss later on
All-Chairs
Discussion about the health of Subteams, how often they’re meeting, how much work they’re accomplishing, etc.
Subteams are still in the forming stage in a couple of instances, and haven’t gotten into the nitty-gritty of the work itself
Otherwise, the Subteams feel pretty good with where they’re at
Ex-Libris Support Call
There were some issues that Gem had brought up, where the fix date wouldn’t be until much later on
What we learned in that process is that Ex Libris builds in extra time, in case things go wrong i.e. things that they say will be fixed in August, might be fixed in June
So some of these are being resolved sooner than expected, and we hope that this will be the case going forward, where issues are resolved sooner rather than later
Superuser idea vs. consortial user idea
Superuser can see everyone, even beyond our consortia; so ExL would like to keep this type of user to a minimum
So ExL is suggesting the consortial user, which they are trying to put together, and have every campus and CDL have a consortial user
ExL was reluctant to give a superuser to every campus and CDL
ExL suggested Tom and Jackie be superusers for the consortia, and have things filtered through them
But this would be a lot to have on their shoulders
So we pushed back a bit, and said if ExL can have the consortial user set-up relatively quickly, then we’re okay with doing this for a short while, as an interim
But if it’s going to take a while to have the consortial user set-up, then we would still want to push for all of the campuses and CDL to have a superuser account
Question re: concept of all subteam chairs also having superuser accounts, is this still on the table?
This doesn’t seem like it’s on the table anymore; discussion wasn’t for chairs, it was a representative from campuses and CDL
Question re: difference between superuser and consortial user
Consortial user can see everything within the UC (all campuses and CDL tickets), but not outside of the UC
Superuser can see tickets for all other clients, beyond UC, in Salesforce
Question: are we asking to be superusers or consortial users?
We want the consortial user, but that didn’t exist when we first asked for it, so ExL went back to their leadership and Salesforce and asked how can they create a user account that can see within the consortia, and limit it so that it doesn’t see all of the other clients
So we’re aiming for the consortial user, but we don’t know how far out we are from ExL creating this role; ExL is checking to see how far out they are from creating this role
It’s surprising that ExL hasn’t been asked about this type of consortial role previously
What ExL talked about with UCB’s bug that was related to the corrupted data issue, which prevented all of our requests from getting sent to NRLF
When we submitted that ticket, ExL gave us an August fix date, but then said that was just an automated response
ExL did mention that they’re going to keep working on the root cause issue, and they’re anticipating having more information in June
ExL is going to work with their development team to improve the logs that are available to the support team, because that was a lynchpin issue - we couldn’t see which request failed and neither could they, and it was just one request that was holding everything up
Gem reported 2 additional issues:
One from UCSD related to FTP and the files and differences they were seeing in the behavior between manual and automatic loading related to FTP
Also a dedupe issue that the Discovery Operations Subteam has been testing, where there is a work around to have dedupe select the electronic record preferred, but it’s not fixing everything
So this is the issue expected to be resolved in June
ExL also mentioned that their whole CDI support team is very new, from Fall 2020 to present
So this is part of the reason for the slow turnaround on the CDI tickets
ExL said we are welcome to nudge them on issues when they get delayed
NZ Analytics - Consortial Wide Reports
The NZ Analytics was one of the whole points in the NZ
ExL came back with that they need to work with support first, to figure out what is going on and whether they can fix anything; then have a general strategic discussion about that to figure out what they can do and deal with the challenges there
We are waiting to hear from them on what they’re doing to help us be at least somewhat satisfied with NZ Analytics, because right now it’s not working they way it’s supposed to and it’s not working the way they said it would in the RFP process
This is a big problem because now we’re in a situation where they’re not providing what they said they would provide
Caitlin did want to make sure that it was clear that if we were to jump ship at some point in the future, this could be one of those reasons why we would move to something else
We still need to hear back from ExL, once they go back to their support team to discuss it further
Pretty sure this will be a topic that will continue on in the monthly meetings
2
Q & A Session - Including Questions on Slack since last meeting
Any questions from the team?
Questions from Slack?
1 min
Team
None from the team
None from Slack
3
Discuss OT Workplan
Review OT deliverables and prioritize what tasks needs to be completed first
We have a couple of things in our Work Plan, but we also have items in our Work Handoff spreadsheet
Does the team want to go through the Work Handoff spreadsheet and decide what goes into our Work Plan? Or, should we put everything from the Work Handoff spreadsheet into the Work Plan, and then deal with them once they’re in the Work Plan?
Does the team have a preference?
No preference
Concern with dumping the handoff items into the work plan, makes it seem like we’ve decided to take them on
But we could put in the notes column that we’re still determining where things go, because for at least a couple of those items, the team might decide to hand them off to another Subteam
There are also some items that are done
Need to carve out some time to do this; will likely have more time next meeting, so we can discuss it further then
But in the meantime, we can put in an overarching item in the work plan that says we’re working through our work handoff spreadsheet and deciding what subteams might be more appropriate for certain items, and if none, then they will be assigned to OT - Mallory will add this to the OT Work Plan
@Mallory Gianola will put in the work plan an overarching item that says we’re working through our work handoff spreadsheet and deciding what subteams might be more appropriate for certain items, if none, then they will be assigned to OT; will send to Tom to confirm wording once it’s posted
Tom and Caitlin have added some notes, but the OT-SC wanted to get a good idea of what the rest of the team thought of it
It’s a really good first step at communication strategies for this kind of situation
Any comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback from the team?
Draft seems to cover all the important bases
When did this document come about?
This came out of the emergency situation Jackie experienced with the NRLF issue, and we realized there was no documentation on how to do this kind of reporting, when there is a system down or a component down that will affect the consortia
Jackie took a first pass at drafting this document, and it was reviewed in the Steering Committee (OT-SC) meeting - Tom and Caitlin helped to refine it a bit more, but there wasn’t a whole lot more to do
And the OT-SC wanted to bring it to the entire OT, to ask what everyone thinks and if this is something we would want to post as something for everyone to follow
Question - Could we use yesterday’s performance issue as an example of when we would use this?
Because we all get communications directly from ExL, Gem’s communication came out after the ExL communication, and we don’t want to create a scenario where CDL is doing duplicative work
And with yesterday’s issue, it wasn’t super catastrophic; we had no local reports of anybody seeing any issues, which is great
But ExL sent us emails, and CDL sent us emails later; every campus has a local plan for what happens if the system goes down, every campus has their own esoteric local workflow for who to notify or how to advertise when their system goes down
Where does the ExL notification come in, to this document, if it’s coming out first?
Seems like we’re talking about two separate situations:
This document is geared towards a local campus having a system or component down, and notifying everyone else about it
Where yesterday’s issue, we were all in the same situation
Is this document addressing both of those situations?
No, this document is meant to be used if you feel a local SILS-related issue may affect other campuses, including communicating to other campuses, the cohort, and reporting to ExL
There isn’t specificity to the local response, this is from the local group out
That is why you see the first one being the audience of ExL support and staff involved in troubleshooting, which is local or SILS cohort, whatever that might be
But it’s more getting ExL involved in this situation
Okay, but maybe Gem could be absolved of her responsibility to notify us all of something we’ve already been notified of
That’s outside of the scope of this document, but yes, these messages are duplicative
We talked about this a bit at the last meeting, that CDL has been maintaining a list of ExL issues, and so are we all kind of, but maybe this is something else we can look into in the spirit of trying to take some things off of CDL’s plate
They don’t always know when folks on OT are also getting notifications directly from ExL
Something to highlight for the future, if it’s just an ExL issue, maybe we can investigate are we all getting enough notification and can we let CDL off the hook for that
Would be worth looking into that aspect, did feel duplicative
But at the same time, Gem’s audience was the SILS Cohort channel, and not everyone on the channel subscribes to the status updates from ExL
Might feel remiss to not put something out as well, so that it’s clear CDL knows about the issue
Should think about this some more, might be helpful for CDL to publish what their steps are and have some visibility on what their plans are for this situation, for a UC-wide issue
Maybe OT publishing this document will prompt them to publish their own?
It’s a little tricky for those who are responsible for communication locally, because there are three different situations - local issue, consortial issue, or an issue that affects some campuses but not others
Trying to evaluate this is sometimes a little tricky, could be a sensitive matter
Should it be ignored, should you keep it in your purview, or is it something that requires full attention and then communicating out
Difficulty with determining when to worry about an issue, and when to not
Does ExL share out why issues happen when they do occur? Like with yesterday’s performance issue, will they send something out explaining what caused the issue?
If they do, it’s usually not very detailed
Sometimes you need to go to the status site, and really look for what is causing the issue
Sometimes ExL will provide root cause analysis, but it’s usually published months after the issue
It’s published in the knowledge article
Might want to add a note to this document about confirming that the issue isn’t being caused by a local issue such as SSO issue, Network outage, etc.
Perhaps this could happen on Slack, confirm with other OT members whether the issue is affecting other campuses
As we move into the Level 2 part, where it says Operations Team Rep duties, would it make sense there to really get an idea if the issue is affecting other campuses? Would that be another step we might want to put in there?
Something to that effect, but not sure where it should be
Would this be on Slack?
Yes, that’s the obvious place - checking with other OT people
Would also be helpful so that we’ll know if another campus’ issue might affect others
Need to start thinking in the bigger picture for all of these things, if they’re minor or major
Would it make more sense if the document was drafted as a step-by-step process, based on need for escalation?
Start local, then consortial stakeholders, then broader audience
Seems like there should be some transparency that things are happening, in some cases
Could see a benefit to a decision tree, especially if it’s something that we’re all planning to use
Listening to the “if, thens” it makes sense to change the document to a decision tree format, which might make it more usable
Next steps: keep this document available to everyone in OT, for more discussion and suggestions for the editing, and help work it into a decision tree, then discuss it further at our next meeting
The document is in our Google Drive, so everyone feel free to go in there and make some notes on the document
This is a good springboard into other possible documents that we can provide out as helper documents to either the Subteams or other folks in the cohort
Thanks to Jackie for her great notes, and putting this together for the consortia
5
UCOP Statistics and Analytics
Review and discuss; determine next steps
10 mins
Tom / Team
This came up at Steering Committee, we have had a lot of questions locally about having to start thinking about UCOP statistics and what is the role of NZ in UCOP statistics? What kind of reports are they able to do?
We don’t have a UC wide analytics group to address that in this ongoing SILS
Might be valuable to discuss with the OT, UCOP statistics and whether we should have a task force or project team who addresses statistics consortially
There have been whispers in this group about UCOP maybe reevaluating what statistics they ask for - what’s the status of this?
There needs to be a space/group for this; we’ve talked about this before and the idea then was for it to come up organically
Stats for other institutions are currently open, and UCOP is looming in September
For the campuses that haven’t done these statistics before it’s been trial by fire for gathering some of these stats, such as ARL
UCSC has a dashboard for UCOP statistics, and if they stay the same, Sarah is happy to show others what they’re doing
This analytics group doesn’t have to meet all the time, but there are these dates by when we need to submit these statistics, and it would be healthier for all of us to collaborate, so that we’re all not re-inventing the wheel
And for something like UCOP, we should all be doing it exactly the same, because then the stats are actually comparable
They’ve never been comparable, really, before because we were all on different systems
Jeremy’s experience at the CSU’s - someone at the President’s Office creates the reports and shares them in a shared folder
Then people take them locally and tweak them as needed
But the standard of the report and the criteria would be done by the equivalent to CDL
Seems like a good function for them, and seems like it’s in their best interest
There was a discussion during the first few meetings about whether John would have to get a local campus group going on figuring out how to derive ARL stats in Alma
John was told no, and that ULs were being consulted on what they wanted to report out, and if they hadn’t rendered a judgment by April, then the OT and CDL would be doing it the same way we always have done it and they’d be doing it the same for all of us
Didn’t know whether this was NZ analytics, or if they have permissions to get into all of our IZ’s and collect the data in the same identical way
They can’t get into our IZs, and the risk there is they don’t know the eccentricities of our data, so if they did something exactly the same, it might gather something wrong
Who determines the criteria for UCOP statistics? Is it UCOP? Is CDL involved in the discussion at all? Does CDL have any say in what UCOP collects from the libraries?
If so, they should revisit what data we need to collect vs. what the tool can provide
Not sure if CDL has any say in the matter
Would also be helpful if UCOP gathered data that is similar to the other data that we are already collecting for other stats/surveys
These don’t have a lot of overlap, so it means we’re doing two totally separate processes
Some include databases, some don’t; some include streaming media, some don’t
What’s the point of every stats gathering institution collecting stats that can’t be compared to each other?
The Steering Committee has an email that Caitlin shared with them, from Danielle Westbrook
Caitlin asked Danielle about what would be the appropriate path forward for producing the statistics
We know that we can’t run centralized reports for everything - that is the problem, and is the problem that came up during the most recent ExL support call
From email: Not all annual stats are ILS-based, so local data submissions are still in part required even in the best-case scenario. . . we still don’t know the extent to which, at present, we can export the applicable stats from the NZ.
The question to Caitlin was what the SILS Ops Center has capability of by the end of June, and what’s possible at present given the data, to run from the NZ - which we know isn’t really much
So they’re trying to find out by June, what they can get
But this June date doesn’t leave us a lot of time to work with, if that’s when their decision point is
Need to discuss this further when Caitlin is available to provide more information, and hopefully she’ll have an update for Danielle
6
Topics or questions for the Ex Libris Support Meeting
Any topics or questions that should be addressed at the next monthly Ex Libris Support Meeting?
1 mins
Team
No additional questions at this time
7
Taking the Temperature Survey
Discuss Responses from Survey
4 mins
Tom
Our team is pretty much inline with each other, for the most part
5 responses so far
Outcomes that folks would like the team to accomplish in the next 18 months:
A lot of focus on collaborative problem solving methods, as a group
Communication process, how to best smooth out communication pathways
Seeing us develop a strong SILS communication and process for democratically governing and advancing services
Working in shared files
Collaborative, communicative idea in our group
Some ideas that folks have to strengthen collaboration and communication across SILS:
Develop process workflows
Obtain definitives from leadership; what’s mandatory vs. optional
Identify and create, where necessary, communication paths between the SILS governance structure and CKGs
Zoom sessions open to all cohort members
Spread the philosophy that we always need to be thinking about the big picture, especially now that we are a living consortia. Understand all the impact(s) that even one small change can make, positively, negatively, or neutrally
Dream, ask, study, test, know, and communicate
A lot about communication paths, identifying communication paths and starting to understand that big picture
How will we know if we are successful?
Able to replicate outcomes we previously had, pre-Alma
If we're able to adapt to address any problems that arise in day-to-day operations and ensure the smooth functioning
Only way to know is to ask...so, regular staff and user surveys
If all members on the OT feel that they have the opportunity and space to speak and express their opinion
Random samples
A lot of the responses show that this team is united, so great job and we have the right team for this
We’ll cover a little bit more about the What worries you? and What are you most excited about? sections when we meet next time
8
Executive Session
Private discussion as needed
9
Parking Lot
Capture important topics for future discussion
Communication with Subteams, Cohort, and Campuses
Taking the Temperature Survey
Internal Training / Training Documentation Hub
Need to create a page for System Down Reporting
10
Total
60 mins
The SILS mission is to transform library services and operations through innovation and collaboration. The future is shared!
Question? Contact AskSILS-L@ucop.edu