Catholic Research Resources Alliance (CRRA) Blog

CRRA Update
SEPTEMBER 2010

In this update …

• CRRA Welcomes Three New Members
  • Duquesne University, Laverna Saunders
  • Loyola Marymount University, Kristine Brancolini
  • University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto & Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Jonathan Bengtson
• Digital Access Committee (DAC) News
• Member meetings in January and March – Mark your calendars!

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CRRA Welcomes Duquesne University, Loyola Marymount University, and University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto & Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies!

We are pleased to announce the addition of three new members.   Following is brief information about our newest members, their collections and leadership.   A warm welcome to all!

[Watch for the welcome to Dominican University and University of San Francisco in October.]

New Member Highlights

Our new members bring a rich array of rare and unique resources to the CRRA.  Collection highlights and introductions to their member library deans/directors follow.  A warm welcome to all, we look forward to getting to working with you!

The Gumberg Library at Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, PA)

• Spiritan Collection http://digital.library.duq.edu/cdm-spiritan/.
  Many of the primary and secondary writings of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit.
• Papers of Cardinal John J. Wright and Vatican II http://www.duq.edu/archives/index.cfm
  Includes the Cardinal’s addresses, papers, sermons, writings, and personal library, with substantial material from Vatican Council II.
• Pittsburgh Catholic Newspaper http://digital.library.duq.edu/cdm-pc/ .
  Duquesne University has continuously microfilmed the Pittsburgh Catholic since its inception in 1844. To convert the Pittsburgh Catholic to digital format, Gumberg Library started with volume 1 issue 1 and will continue to digitize the newspaper from the oldest volumes to the newest volumes. Currently, the first 20 years covering from March 16, 1844 through 1864 are available by browsing or searching the full-text.

Laverna Saunders has served as University Librarian at Duquesne University since 2002 and worked at Salem State College, UNLV, DePauw University, Union College and Drew University over the course of her career.

She is a member of the PALCI Board and currently chairs LLAMA BES.  She has served on various ACRL committees over the years. She is a book reviewer for Technicalities, serves on the editorial board of Technical Services Quarterly, and has written articles and edited three books on the evolution of the virtual library. Her email address is lsaunders@duq.edu.

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Hannon Library, Loyola Marymount University (Los Angeles, CA)

• 1481 printing of Dante’s Divine Comedy illustrated by Botticelli
• Rare Book Collection including Biblia Sacra Vulgatae editionis Sixti V. Pont. Max. (1603), A late 15th century example of a Book of Hours, probably printed in Paris.
• Jesuit Collection: 518 rare books by and about Jesuits
• Leaf from the Gutenberg Bible
• Catholic Human Relations Council Collection, 1958-1992
• Prominent Roman Catholic families in Los Angeles
• Reverend Harold F. Ryan, S. J., Catholic Authors Collection
• Saint Thomas More Collection
• Thomas G. Hanrahan Jesuit Drama Collection
• Ygnacio del Valle Family Collection: Eighteenth and nineteenth century Spanish-language devotional works, novels, and instructional works
• Early California Mission Vestments, liturgical clothing in use in California Catholic churches and missions during the early nineteenth century

Kristine R. Brancolini is Dean of the Library at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) in Los Angeles. Prior to her arrival at LMU in July 2006, she had been a librarian at Indiana University in Bloomington for more than twenty years, where she held a number of positions.  From 1998–2006, she was the Director of the Digital Library Program (www.dlib.indiana.edu); during that time she was principal investigator on numerous digitization projects with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the U.S. Department of Education.  In August 2009, LMU opened a new library, the William H. Hannon Library, located on a bluff overlooking Marina del Rey and the Pacific Ocean.  The library has recently launched a number of new initiatives, including a Digital Library Program and a series of nearly 50 public programs in the library and elsewhere on campus.

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University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto & Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies

• The Chesterton Collection includes over 3000 volumes connected with the life and work of the English journalist, G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936). It embraces virtually all the works of Chesterton. The collection also includes original sketches, complete microfiche of his personal papers, and the papers of John O’Connor (1870 – 1952), the Catholic priest who became the model for Chesterton’s character “Father Brown”.
• Henri J.M. Nouwen Archives and Research Collection documents the life and work of Henri J.M. Nouwen (1932-1996) and includes the vast majority of Nouwen’s manuscripts and published works, as well as secondary material in all formats about Nouwen.
• Archives of the Faith and Sharing Federation / Foi et Partage, a bilingual Catholic organization with a mandate to deepen and foster the experience of Christian community through week long retreats.
• The Counter-Reformation Collection includes over 3500 volumes of primary source materials showing the Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation up to the time of the French Revolution.
• The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies library has one of the largest primary and secondary source collections of medieval documentation in North America.

The library is also a lead partner in the development of the Humanities Knowledge Kiosk . The software has been applied to Newman’s works and is in development for Lonergan, Nouwen and Chesterton.

Jonathan Bengtson is the Director of Library and Archives for the University of St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto and the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, and a Fellow of the College and the Institute.  Educated in California, Oxford and London, he has held various senior positions in academic, research, and nonprofit libraries in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom—including Executive Director of the Providence Athenaeum (founded in 1753) in Providence, Rhode Island; Head Librarian of the Queen’s College, Oxford (founded in 1341); and, Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Resources at the University of Toronto. He is currently on the Board of Directors of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing and the Multicultural History Society of Ontario. Since 2004, Jonathan has been the coordinator for the University of Toronto’s partnership with the Open Content Alliance and Microsoft Live Books mass digitization projects. He is actively involved, and one of the key collaborators, in a partnership with Crivella West Inc. of Pittsburgh to apply advanced textual linguistic analysis to public domain and in-copyright digital texts.  He is also writing a book for University of Toronto Press on an introduction to medieval manuscripts.

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Digital Access Committee News

The Digital Access Committee met on September 2 to discuss topics 3 and (data input and ingestion; search functionality and display from the CRRA Strategic Plan Draft: Goals for 2010/2011.  (Minutes from CRRA meetings are available to all members.  Contact Pat for login and password to CRRA documents.)

Eric Frierson (St. Edward’s) and Wei Zhang (Georgetown) Join the CRRA Digital Access Committee (DAC)

The Digital Access Committee (DAC), under the leadership of Tom Leonhardt, welcomes two new members.  Eric Frierson of St. Edward’s University and Wei Zhang of Georgetown University bring technological expertise that will help us to move forward with development of the Catholic portal. Welcome, Eric and Wei!

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Mark your calendars …
We have tentatively set the date for a CRRA reunion and meetings during ALA Midwinter in San Diego and for our Annual All-members Meeting during ACRL in Philadelphia.

Please reserve space on your calendars now – Thursday, January 6, 2011 and Tuesday, March 29, 2011. For the March 29, 2011 meeting, plan to join your CRRA colleagues for dinner on Monday evening and dinner on Tuesday as well for all who can.  We will organize the day to include both separate Board and committee retreats and plenary sessions for all.

Further details will be distributed in future Updates, the CRRA Blog, and email.

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All CRRA events and events of possible interest to members are posted to the CRRA calendar, available at http://tiny.cc/Calendar798 and also accessible from the Admin area of the CRRA website.

Check our progress and news on the CRRA blog: http://www.catholicresearch.net/blog/.

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CRRA Update is an electronic newsletter distributed via email each month to provide members with an update of CRRA activities.  Please contact us at 575.631.1324 or email plawton@nd.edu with your questions, comments, or news to share.

This posting outlines how I plan to prepare EAD files for indexing with Solr, the underlying indexing technology of VUFind.

The problem

I am aggregating sets of EAD files from Catholic Research Resource Alliance members. I am expected to index these files at the most granular level possible — meaning at the did level. In order to satisfy both human and computer requirements, each indexed record needs at least a unique identifier, a human-readable descriptor, and a location code. The unique identifier can be gotten from the unitid element. The human-readable descriptor can come from the unittitle. The location code can be inferred from the url attribute of the eadid element.

Unfortunately, not all of the aggregated EAD files include a unitid, and when they do, they are not always unique. Additionally, the hierarchal nature of EAD files make the values extracted from unittitle elements almost meaningless unless they are placed within the context of their parent unittitle values. In short, indexing EAD files without some preprocessing makes the indexing process all but useless. What to do?

The solution

The solution includes: 1) adding and/or normalizing the unitid values, 2) constructing a more complete “title” based on previously enumerated unittitle values, 3) and outputting the whole thing to an XML stream easily indexable by Solr.

Adding and/or normalizing the unitid values (Step #1) can be accomplished with a stylesheet called addunitid.xsl. Essentially an identity transformation, the stylesheet loops through an EAD file using the generate-id() function to create or replace unitid values. The result is an enhanced EAD file.

Constructing more complete “titles” and outputting XML streams (Steps #2 and #3) is done by looping through the each did element, extracting the necessary metadata, creating a record describing each did-level element, and sending to STDOUT a rudimentary XML stream of my own design. The heart of this second stylesheet (ead2solr.xsl) is the ancestor::*/did/unittitle selector used to find all the parent unittitle values of a given did.

Finally, a simple shell script was written (clean.sh) making it easy to do the above transformations from the command line.

(I would not have been able to do this work if it weren’t for the XML4Lib mailing list and a few fine repondants to my pleas for help. Thanks go to MJ Suhonos, Tod Olson, Stefan Krause, and Alexander Johannesen. “Thank you!”)

Next steps

Software is never done. If it were, then it would be called hardware. Therefore next steps include:

• automatically adding the modified EAD files (the output of the first stylesheet) to Archon
• enhancing the output of the second stylesheet with scope notes, abstracts, etc.
• indexing the output of the second stylesheet

Fun with XSLT?

This posting outlines how I believe I will add unitid elements to did elements of EAD files.

The problem

As the CRRA matures, I expect a greater amount of the metadata ingested into the “portal” will come from EAD files. In order to index EAD files meaningfully, I need to extract unique identifiers from each container-level element, a human-readable description of the container, and a location code. The identifier and human-readable description can easily come from unitid and unititle elements of did elements.

Unfortunately, unitid (and maybe unititle) are not required elements of did elements. While the CRRA could mandate the creation of such elements, it turns out to be almost just as easy to create them on-the-fly.

The solution

The good folks apart of the XML4Lib provided me with my solution — an XSLT stylesheet, below:

<xsl:stylesheet
  xmlns:xsl='http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform'
  version='1.0'>

  <!-- match everything and copy it -->
  <xsl:template match="node()|@*">
    <xsl:copy><xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()" /></xsl:copy>
  </xsl:template>

  <!-- special case; match dids with no unitid -->
  <xsl:template match="//did[not(unitid)]">
    <xsl:copy>
      <!-- add a unit id -->
      <unitid><xsl:value-of select="generate-id()"/></unitid>
      <!-- continue copying -->
      <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()" />
    </xsl:copy>
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

While not perfect, it certainly is a step in the right direction. Short and elegant. The next step will be to include some sort of parameter as input or to generate some EAD-specific identifier so each unitid value is unique across the corpus. (Actually, that is another issue I need to address.)

Thanks go to MJ Suhonos for the cool //did[not(unitid)] expression, Tod Olson for the idea of identity transformation (copying), and Stefan Krause for the use of generate-id.

VUFind is the technical backbone of the “Catholic Portal”, and this posting documents my experiences at the VuFind 2.0 Conference held at the Villanova Conference Center on September 15 & 16, 2010. In short, it provided an opportunity for the community to share successes, challenges, and visions for the future.

Day #1

The Conference was divided into a number of presentations, group discussions, and informal social events. Joe Lucia (Villanova University) facilitated and opened the meeting with a number of general remarks surrounding libraries and the current environment:

The question is, “Who will fulfill the social mission of libraries in the future?” If libraries don’t do it, then some other institution will. Libraries represent a locus of knowledge for our communities and a place for cultural conversation. Open source software is rooted in this same social mission and congruent with the mission of libraries… Is Google Books and the HaitiTrust a new form of the “Information Commons”? Maybe, but maybe not… Cloud computing is a trend towards aggregation, concentration, and commercialization, but is that the best solution, since it too is not immune to proprietary lock-in… Software as service is also a current trend and we must ask ourselves, “Why not just build something based on the WorldCat APIs?” Public libraries are pointing a way towards the creation of knowledge spaces — a possible lead for academic libraries. Seen in this light, libraries may be new cathedrals.

Demian Katz (Villanova University) then shared how he has integrated VUFind with Serials Solutions’ Summon. After considering a number of options, he decided to go with single search and a two-column display. Do a search. Query the local VUFind (Solr) index. Simultaneously query the remote Summon index. Display both results in a common window with VUFind on one side and Summon on the other. Especially this means books are on the left and articles are on the right. “You can’t modify the Summon relevancy ranking, and thus you get a lot of noise. Merging the indexed content often places local materials lower in the relevancy ranked output.” There are a few things on Katz’s to-do list: the addition of social features, the highlighting of query terms, advanced faceting options, and a mobile interface. You can try this VUFind/Summon combination at library.villanova.edu/Find.

A similar presentation was given by Chris Spalding (Ex Libris) in his description of how VUFind can be integrated with Primo Central. “Through an API access to Primo Central content can be integrated with VUFind. We do two searches, get results, re-rank, and display. The key to the solution is the PC (Primo Central) add-on. We hope to do more collaboration and be as open as possible… We use AWS (Amazon Web Services) to host our content… We hope to share the code as soon as the end of the year, and we are sincerely trying to bootstrap the process of combining VUFind with Primo Central.” The approach described by Spalding is the approach I expected Katz to implement with Summon. Apparently there are problematic issues with both techniques.

Greg Pendlebury (University of Southern Queensland) then demonstrated a portable Javascript library called Anotar which is integrated with Fascinator (fascinator.usq.edu.au). Using CouchDB for a foundation, Anotar is intended to support the sharing of annotations across systems. Add comments to a Web page and have those comments syndicated across the ‘Net and accessible in other applications. The point for the community present was, “Maybe this sort of thing could be integrated into VUFind.”

Name & title authorities as well as controlled vocabularies was the focus of the next presentation, given by Katz. He first described how he experimented with prototypical Perl “hacks” found in a recent issue of Code4Lib Journal. These hacks exploit the WorldCat API to list authoritative names and subjects. He described another experiment where he integrated locally created authority content with the local VUFind (Solr) index. Finally he described a third possible solution taking advantage of the linked data provided by the Library of Congress. His next experiment will surround the use of the eXtensible Catalog Metadata Services Toolkit to munge and use authority records. “The use of authority lists make it possible for a person to do browse against the ‘catalog’.”

The group then broke into two or three smaller groups to discuss “birds-of-a-feather” sorts of ideas — breakout sessions.. Because of my interest in archival materials and EAD files, I went with the group called Beyond MARC. There we discussed things such as but not limited to the indexing of many different things: websites, EAD files, METS records, and full text. We also discussed the challenges of indexing hierarchical data, the content of boutique collections, and the provision of non-bibliographic services against metadata. In the end, we advocated for the greater use of VUFind record drivers, making it easier to support local customizations, and figuring out how to handle hierarchies.

Day #2

Working on a project called SWWHEP, Luke O’Sullivan (Swansea University) described how he hacked VUFind to work in a multi-ILS environment with the ultimate goal of providing reciprocal borrowing. Calling himself a “shambrarian” he described MARC as the “Dark Side of open source”. After being given sets of MARC records whose 001 fields had been modified for uniqueness, O’Sullivan essentially created a multitude of configuration files associated with each library system under his charge. When records were returned from searches his code looked at the 001 values and branched accordingly. Of all the implementations described during the Conference, O’Sullivan’s hack was the “kewlest”. See his good work at ifind.swwhep.ac.uk.

Birong Ho (Western Michigan University) was second up on the second day with a description of how she and her team exploited the use of Web Services computing techniques to communicate between VUFind and their local Voyager system. She uses these services to support holds, renews, etc.

I was then given the chance to describe a future for “next generation library catalogs”, a thing I call services against texts. In a nutshell, I advocated for discovery systems to go beyond find and move towards use, and with the increasing availability of full text content such a prospect is increasingly possible. “Quantitative metadata — as opposed to qualitative metadata — makes it easier to compare, contrast, and analyze individual items in collections or collections as a whole.” I then demonstrated how digital humanities computing techniques can be applied to full text content to discover underlying patterns.

We broke into small groups again — table talks — and brainstormed visions for VUFind 2.0. Some of the things we came up with at our table included: relevancy ranking based on social networking data, full text indexing, including content beyond books, personalization based on patrons’ characteristics or history, hooks to download full text from places like the Open Archives, the sharing of social data between VUFind implementations a la Ex Libris’s bX, tighter integration with Open Library, and an integration with VUFind into other applications through APIs.

Juicy quotes

Here is a short list of some juicy quotes I picked up from some of the attendees:

• “A plug-in architecture may be a good idea.” –Kun Lin
• “Consider bringing different views into VUFind instead of shelling out.” –Eoghan Ó Carragáin
• “Full text indexing is easily implementable as long as you tweak the boosting factor.” –Til Kinsler
• “Maybe part of the solution is to stop giving content to the vendor.” –Greg Pendlebury
• “Remember to exploit the record drivers in order to provide different services and views of content.” –David Lacy
• “Solr’s VUFind schema is currently flat but maybe the data model needs to be more flexible and maybe hierarchal.” –Till Kinstler
• “We are never going to have ‘one bucket’ searching.” –Joe Lucia

Observations and summary

The Conference was well-organized and provided a forum for plenty of discussion and idea generation. The setting was very nice and the food was plentiful. Everybody was able to participate. I heard a number of people say they were either implementing or toying with the idea of implementing Evergreen as their “catalog” and using VUFind as their “discovery layer”. I had not thought of this. Interesting. I appreciated the active participation of Chris Spalding. He was candid and sincere. It was very nice to put names from the mailing lists with faces, and thus the crowd was international. Blacklight was compared & contrasted with VUFind a number of times throughout the meeting. I believe both communities have something to learn from the other.

Alas, I was unable to stay for the fourth quarter of the event. I had a plane to catch, and I had made my reservations under the assumption the Conference would conclude at noon. I was wrong. Consequently I missed the last part of the meeting where next steps were to be articulated. If I had my druthers, two things would happen. First, I hope the development process becomes a bit more structured, complete with regular conference calls and software regression testing. Second, and along similar lines, I hope some entrepreneurial organization comes forward to provide commercial support for VUFind. Such a thing would make it more attractive to the libraries without local technical (computer) expertise.

Finally, I bounced my ideas regarding the indexing of EAD files off of as many people as I could. I think I am on the right track, even though few had experience with the same problem. Wish me luck.

We invite you to attend the CRRA reunion and discussions in San Diego on Thursday afternoon, January 6, 2011. We are scheduling this meeting before the ALA Midwinter Meeting meetings begin on Friday in hopes that many of you who are attending the ALA meetings will be able to join in the CRRA discussions as well.

At this time, we are putting together what promises to be a set of lively and informative discussions. This will be an opportunity to talk about CRRA activities taking place at your library, to discuss progress to date on the 2010/11 goals in the strategic plan, and to explore our readiness to promote the Catholic portal to librarians and scholars. VuFind 1.0 will be very near to being ready for implementation and this will be an opportunity to explore its functionality. Also, we will take a look at how the contents on the portal are growing particularly in regard to adding rare, unique and uncommon archival collections and other materials. The outlines of the proposal to be submitted to the NEH Challenge Grant will be ready for discussion. And, we want to hear from everyone – new and continuing members – how things are going at your library. Very importantly, this is an occasion to network and socialize with your CRRA colleagues.

Thursday, January 6, 2011, Copley Library, University of San Diego
• Noon to 2 p.m. Board of Directors (with both onsite and call-in participation for Board members)
• Noon to 2 p.m. Campus and library tours to be arranged
• 2:30 – 5 p.m. Open forum for all participants with refreshments provided by the Copley Library
• 5:30 Dinner for all participants at Le Gran Terraza which offers a fine dining experience on campus (your own treat)

Theresa Byrd, University Librarian, has graciously volunteered to host our group on campus at the University of San Diego. The University campus is situated on a mesa overlooking San Diego Bay. The Spanish Renaissance architecture and breathtaking views of Mission Bay, the Pacific Ocean, the community of Linda Vista and Tecolote Canyon make the campus a not to be missed destination in San Diego. The campus is also conveniently located near downtown San Diego. In addition to cabs (about $15), a regularly scheduled campus van to and from the sightseeing destination of Old Town San Diego offers an easy option for travel to campus. More information on location and travel will be sent at a later date.

Jennifer Younger, Chair, CRRA Board of Directors

An inaugural VUFind “Midwest” User’s Group Meeting was held Friday, September 3, and this posting outlines my perceptions of what happened there.

The “Catholic Portal” uses VUFind as its “discovery interface” and sometimes I feel starved for people with whom to discuss issues surrounding the application. I then got wind of VUFind’s use at Western Michigan University (WMU) as well as the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (U of M). Since WMU is half way between me and U of M I thought a “user’s group meeting” may be in order. A few calls were made, a few postings to a couple of mailing lists were written, and the meeting came to fruition.

There were nine of us in attendance:

1. Bill Dueber (University of Michigan)
2. Birong Ho (Western Michigan University)
3. Dean Lingley (Purdue University)
4. Eric Lease Morgan (University of Notre Dame)
5. Keith Kelley (Western Michigan University)
6. Matthew Riehle (Purdue University)
7. Roy Zimmer (Western Michigan University)
8. Scott Garrison (Western Michigan University)
9. Tod Olson (University of Chicago)

The good folks from Purdue suffered through the entire 3 1/2 hour event via Skype. “Kudos to Dean and Matthew.”

As a group we discussed quite a number of things, listed here in more or less chronological order:

1. straying from the code base – The hottest topic surrounded the difficulty of implementing VUFind version 1.0 given the fact that at least a couple of us have modified (“hacked”) previous versions to such a degree that implementing 1.0 was almost too much of a challenge. As one person said, “It might be easier to start all over with Blacklight rather than migrate my changes.” This does not mean anybody was dissatisfied with VUFind’s performance or many of its features. Record display is good. There is a distinct separation of inventory and OPAC. VUFind offers great flexibility, and public services staff seem very happy with the ease patron interfaces can be customized.
2. Blacklight – Given that, the discussion turned to a comparison between VUFind and Blacklight. While the group seemed to have minimal experience with Blacklight a number of things were definitely seen in Blacklight’s favor, such as: a more disciplined community complete with project management, the insistence of regression testing before code submissions were included into the base, and regular conference calls. Much of this was summed up as the “open source conundrum” — the differences between free software, open source software, and community source.
3. Solr – We then turned to a discusion of Solr since we all understood that VUFind and Blacklight were essentially client interfaces to the increasingly popular indexer/search engine. A number of us believed it was absolutely necessary to modify the underlying Solr schema in order to satisfy local needs. These modifications ran the gamut from what fields exist to how those fields are defined and filtered. We compared & contrasted the use of the stock query interface and the use of the Dismax handler. The indexing of data then led to a discussion how to handle diacritics, dates, and date ranges.
4. miscellaneous – As the discussion wound down we we talked about various things such as systems administration tasks, and whether or not to move the Solr indexer to another host or implement it under a servlet container other than Jetty.

I told the group I was going to attend the VUFind User’s Group Meeting taking place at Villanova in a couple of weeks, and I asked for a short list of things I ought to share there — take aways:

• governance – the VUFind community could use a bit more structure and the application of project management
• patches – member-submitted patches need to be incorporated to the code to a greater degree; a couple of us felt our contributions were not accepted
• authorities – a greater emphasis needs to be placed on integrating the profession’s good work done in regards to named authorities
• local customizations – a possible solution to the “straying” issue may be the implementation of some sort of local code base, something Blacklight apparent has
• “light” flavor – given the spectrum of programming skills available in libraries, some thought a VUFind “Light” may be in order
• repository – there is a need for a central place for the community to share local hacks, normalization routines, changes to the Solr indexer, etc.

In summary, the meeting was definitely a success. Discussion was thorough and focused. I believe we used our time wisely, and no one went away thinking it had been wasted. I do not think the group was representative of the whole VUFind community. We were more skilled than most. We agreed that VUFINd is not broken, but we did outline a number of ways it could be improved. We all agreed that the implementation of VUFind in our institutions represents a giant step forward compared to where we were at least a few years ago. oss++