NEWS: Vega Project Updates - February 23, 2023

Action: Informational

Project Updates

PrairieCat staff have regular bi-weekly meetings with the Vega Discover team from Innovative, which includes our project manager, trainer, and the Discover product manager.  PrairieCat will post regular project updates to provide the membership with a summary of the issues/questions that are being reported by libraries and staff that are discussed at the Innovative project meetings. 

Below is a summary of the meeting we held with the team on February 23. Further summaries will be provided as we move forward. If you have more questions or find other issues you would like us to investigate, please let us know by putting in a helpdesk ticket under the “Vega Discovery” topic. Visit the Vega Discover page on the support site for ongoing Project Updates and other Vega information. 

Summary of Innovative Project Meeting, Febuary 23, 2023

Issue: eRead Illinois integration into our “test” Vega site:

We have successfully integrated the Princeton Public Library Overdrive (OMNI) records into our test Vega site.  We are now moving on toward integrating their eRead Illinois collection into the test site.  The Innovative project manager is currently working with Baker and Taylor to refine this process for us.  With so many libraries involved, we need to come up with a process for both Overdrive and eRead libraries to integrate in an organized fashion.  Once we have finished our work on the test site, we will be working on the process for rolling out integration to our libraries’ sites, most likely in “batches” of 5 or 10 libraries at a time so we don’t overwhelm the vendors and make sure everything is working correctly as we go. After finishing with eRead testing, we will begin testing with Hoopla.

Issue: Some titles and authors not searchable in Vega:

We have had two reports of titles and authors that either are not searchable at all or do not return expected results. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (reported in the online catalog survey by a patron) and the author of this book, Gail Honeyman, do not seem to be searchable.  We had a previous report that C. S. Lewis could not be searched as an author (but keyword and title do produce hits).  Of course, if we see two incidences, we fear there are many more.
Update 3/2/23: According to Innovative, this seems to stem from a bug that Innovative has discovered, and they have now patched it.  As of 3/2/23, titles and authors are searching correctly and this issue is closed.

Issue: Item status not updating on some items:

This was reported at one library, but it appears that the ongoing loading of data may have put us out of “synch” with the server.  A few items that were marked as “available for checkout” in Vega were checked out. Innovative developers have a fix for this, and hopefully this will be resolved shortly.
Update 3/2/23: the server was found to be out of synch due to issues with a server migration that we attempted and had to be rolled back. The proper services were restarted, and the servers are now again in synch. This issue is resolved.

Of course, we are also keeping an eye on previously reported issues and enhancement requests and will continue to report out on changes or fixes as they occur.  Again, feedback from our libraries and librarians, as well as our patrons, is very valuable and we appreciate your help with this process.

Issues: Blu-Ray DVD Combo Packs “interfiled” with DVDs:

It was reported that Blu-Ray DVD combo packs were not breaking out in rollups from DVDs.  These should appear in a separate tab on the rollup, not be rolled together with the DVDS.  This turned out to be a configuration issue, which was resolved.  Blu-Ray DVD combo packs now appear on a separate tab from DVDs.  Of course, if there are cataloging errors in a specific record, those will need to be addressed separately.  We did see this in one record that was reported.  The DVD was erroneously cataloged with a material type of “videogame”.  That record has now been corrected.

Links that might be helpful:

Vega enhancements for 2022:

https://www.iii.com/whats-new/the-best-new-vega-discover-features-from-2022/

Vega products roadmap:

https://portal.productboard.com/iii/15-vega-product-portal/tabs/64-discover

Reminder: We would love for you to share your Vega catalog with your users. 

We would love to get feedback from patrons by having members share their Vega catalog address on their website. A link to “Try our new catalog” is enough to drive patrons to try the new interface and hopefully give us some feedback.  You can find your library’s Vega addresses by following the directions on our Vega support page here: https://support.prairiecat.info/documentation/65666