As most of you will recall, a decision was made last Spring to delay for a year implementation of the Aleph system that will replace the NOTIS/LUIS/WebLUIS system many of us use to do much of our daily work.

Aleph STP (Switch-To-Production) is scheduled for May 3, 2004 at UF.

While a number of staff have been very busy with Aleph preparation activities throughout the past year (data review of several subset and full loads, indexing decisions, developing of training classes, etc.), all staff will now want to pay close attention to Aleph activities.

Three of the issues most frequently asked about are:

STAFF TRAINING -- A list of functional training classes being developed will soon be finalized. While training will begin sometime in March by offering the prerequisite Aleph 101 overview class that all staff attended last year, the months of April and May will be filled with the specific functional training classes. The number of classes you will each need to attend will depend on your assignment.

WEB OPAC-- You may also now review the current status of the UF Libraries' Catalog Web OPAC interface that FCLA staff have been working on. The records available for searching represent the entire UF Libraries' Catalog on a date last Fall when the data was captured for a test full load into Aleph. There are still lots of rough elements, and a number of problem reports made during data review are still being worked on by FCLA, but you can begin to get an idea of the direction this is heading by looking at real UF Libraries' records. NOTE: The current header/footer information was put together simply using our current WebLUIS interface model to illustrate that we will continue to have the ability to decide locally what will appear in these areas; no discussion about desired changes in content or design has been held locally.
http://aleph.fcla.edu:4545/F

You may also wish take a look at the Florida Community Colleges Aleph Web OPAC interface that went "live" in January.
http://catalog.linccweb.org/F

You may remember that a joint OPAC Task Force of the State Universities and Community Colleges was charged with making recommendations about the OPAC interface, so you will certainly notice some similarities between what FCLA and the Community Colleges have done.

Web OPAC comments or problems discovered are welcome anytime. A more structured review of the Web OPAC will be organized soon.

NOTIS "FREEZE" -- The date when adding of new records to the NOTIS system will cease should be finalized soon. We've been anticipating that the data extraction for the STP load would occur on approximately April 1, 2004 (approximately one month before STP). FCLA is currently doing another test full load to try to better estimate the amount of time that will actually be needed to complete the STP load.

Thanks. Rich