April 30, 2014
Perry-Casteñeda Library, University of Texas at Austin
Welcome—Kristi Park
Kristi welcomed attendees and gave some information about logistics for the meeting
Organization—David Reynolds
David explained the mission and organization of the Vireo Users Group (VUG). The VUG Steering Committee comprises Stephanie Larrison (co-chair and Product Owner), David Reynolds (co-chair), Joy Perrin, Laura Spradlin, and Ryan Steans.
Introductions—Stephanie Larrison
Stephanie started out a round of introductions of attendees. Each representative was asked to give his or her name, institution, role, and institutional profile highlights about their ETD program and use of Vireo. Following are some of the highlights.
Texas State University—Stephanie Larrison
On current version 2.05.06
Host own Vireo
50-75 masters per semester, 20-25 Ph.D. per semester
Baylor—Billie Peterson Lugo (glue between grad school, cataloging dept., etc.)
hosted at TDL
130 submissions per semester
starting to use Vireo soon
Angelo State University—Susan Elkins
started using Vireo last semester
15-20 per semester
starting capstones soon
TDL hosted
her duties with Vireo are teaching grad school how to use, etc.
Tex. A&M – Laura Hammons; Gail Clement
ETD since 2002; Vireo in 2008, one of the first schools to use it
host their own instance
not many customizations; created new status called “archived”
accept theses and record of study
undergrad office has separate instance of Vireo; students submit chapters in stages—unique way of using Vireo
1000s of items in Vireo; about 450 per semester
UT Austin—Ann Marchock manages cataloging of theses and Colleen Lyon (repository manager), Renee Babcock in Grad School
Vireo in spring 2009
Dissertations, theses, masters reports
about 850 in spring and 450 in fall and summer (1700 per year)
catalog theses and submit to UT repository
Johns Hopkins—David Reynolds
Vireo in September 2013
Dissertations, theses, capstones
about 500 submissions per year—mostly dissertations
locally hosted
allows embargoes of up to 4 years
TAMU International—Tim Bogue
playing with archived PDF of ETD and putting in IR
1 in Vireo now; now a requirement for graduation
still learning
Others
Micah Cooper (Texas A&M), Michael Bolton (Texas A&M), Gad Krumholz (TDL)
Marlene Coles—ProQuest ETD evangelist
Who is missing
Harvard, MIT, Ga. Tech, Illinois-UC, East Carolina is trying, Arkansas
UNT is evaluating
Inquiries from Canada
Another meeting at USETDA in Orlando to reach out to non-Texas schools
By-laws
By-laws were ratified; no discussion or opposition
Vireo ProQuest documentation
The export document was just approved by everyone (including ProQuest) last week and posted to the website; will go out to the listserv now
Questions
Students want to block sales. No way to do that within Vireo. It would have to be arranged directly with ProQuest. PQ says that there is no such thing as a “permanent embargo” feature. Marlene will bring this up. Right now there is only “traditional publishing” option with PQ out of Vireo
You can strip out the PDF and do a separate export, but this may not be o.k. with ProQuest
TAMU and JHU are interested in a separate embargo option for PQ that is different from the institutional embargo. That is, a student should be able to select a 1 year embargo in IR and a permanent embargo at PQ (but still have the metadata available)
Comment: need to clarify the version of Vireo that is necessary to FTP to PQ in the documentation
Comment: expand documentation to clarify what needs to go into embargo codes
Comment: clarify that even if you have two separate licenses (PQ and IR) but not necessarily two separate files. TAMU has both licenses integrated in one file.
Discussion about fair use and PQ. Determination of fair use might be different for publishing in IR than it would with third-party commercial publishers like PQ
ETD Metadata Working Group–Sarah Potvin (Texas A&M)
TDL-sponsored working group
responsibilities:
update guidelines produced by the 2008 guidelines
focused on NDLTD guidelines
need VUG help on use cases—let them know what we are encountering
timeline: will have first meeting in June; should have some starting documents done by that time. Will work with VUG during process. Will probably take 9 months to 1 year to get work done. Will not affect next Vireo development cycle
TDL-sponsored Software Development
Looking to reconcile the Vireo code trunk with branches that are developing on various campuses
Look at integrating fixes that have been submitted to Github
Try to upgrade the Java Play framework to the current version—at least look at the effect—don’t break the code
not sure whether this upgrade will include new features or will just update the “scaffolding”
you might not have to change Vireo or you might just change your Play instance
Forming Vireo Technical Developers Group
will be a page where users can submit change requests
will develop project charter
trying to recruit developers from around the country; try to get this nailed down in next 30 days
Enhancement Voting Process and Timeline–Stephanie Larrison
June 1 will be the deadline for new enhancement requests
actual development sprint will not happen until August (VUG voting process needs to be done by end of July)
feature and issue requests go to https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SCZ2WXR
“Sizing”: the development group gets together and makes an estimate of how difficult an individual enhancement might be. They talk about what each of the scores mean. If VUG has put a lot of high-value things at the top, the Steering Committee may need to re-prioritize the items
Prioritization will be done by a combination of popularity and size
Customizations Outside the Master Branch
When someone makes a change in their branch, they can put it on Github as a “pull request” that is asking the change to be pulled into main branch
Developers Group will review all six current pull requests and report back to VUG. They will pull these into a test version that people can dry.
Steering Committee will evaluate the feedback given by users after the trial period to decide whether it needs more discussion or to just accept as done.
True bug fixes will not be voted on by VUG, but they will keep us informed.
people want to vote on individual changes, not on a whole package
If a pull request is voted down by VUG, it can still go on the enhancement list
individual libraries can still feel free to pull these down into their own branch
Feature Requests for Next Ballot
Should we start with existing list or start over? some found the existing list daunting because it is so big. We might ask everyone for top 3 needs: you can choose from the list or add new ones
How can we weight the voting process? rank them all? give voters a number of poker chips?
Possibly use Jira to track and categorize requests? probably too expensive
do we need more detail on the requests? Steering Committee will ask for examples if things aren’t clear
DECISION: we will start over. use the URL above to submit new requests. Requires some institutional information.
DECISION: each institution can put in 6 enhancement requests—the institution gets to decide how to divide these up. This only for formulating the ballot. May have a different way to prioritize things once we get the ballot.
Other orgs
Another VUG meeting at USETDA in September
Next TxETDa meeting at Baylor