Congratulations are due to Kathy Peters, Susan McCormack, Bette Stuart and Dustin Hoffmann as they’ve finished a successful round of testing and execution of the LSO Feeder System project. This project has been in the works for years, and these staff members have worked above and beyond their regular duties to accomplish this. The system is now in regular use, being monitored for any issues that may come up.
Kathy Peters and Bette Stuart comprise the Accounting Department in MU Libraries Tech Services, where they manage the payments for the acquisitions of library materials (monographs, serials, databases, etc.) from all over MU Libraries. Because of the large volume of these payments, a program called the Feeder System was implemented 10+ years ago. The Feeder System helps to automate the process of shuttling payment information between the MERLIN Sierra ILS (Integrated Library System) and the PeopleSoft Financial system run by MU Accounting. The Feeder System is a custom program that was written by a former MU Libraries employee, and is only in use by MU.
In 2012, Consortial Resources moved to MU from the former LSO at the UM System. This department, formerly known (and still often referred to as) the LSO eResources Team, manages library databases and other e-resources on behalf of the MERLIN consortium as well as two of the individual UM System campuses. It has been a goal since 2013 for these payments to be made through a similar Feeder System set up to work with newly-created LSO Accounting Unit in MERLIN.
Changing the Feeder System code to work with this new accounting unit turned out to be quite a complicated endeavor. The project has taken years of work to get to this point.
Many staff members were involved with this project over the last few years, and thanks are due to all of them. We apologize for missing any names, but we do appreciate your work!
Specifically:
Dustin Hoffmann of Library Technology Services (LTS) is responsible for the actual code changes to the Feeder System program. He worked closely with Kathy Peters and Susan McCormack to identify needs and make the program work to fit those needs.
Susan McCormack of Consortial Resources, in addition to providing guidance for Dustin, has worked endlessly on Sierra training, populating the new accounting unit with all the required data, both current and historical. Much of this was with great help by Kathy, Bette, and members of the Cataloging Department. Susan has also been training as backup on the Feeder System workflow processes.
Kathy Peters and Bette Stuart of MU Libraries Accounting, have had to adjust their workflows and create new processes in addition to providing assistance and guidance for both Dustin and Susan. Kathy Peters, in particular, is the undisputed expert on the Feeder System, and she has spent months on the testing phase alone, working back and forth with MU Accounting.
Great work to everyone involved!
This project now represents Phase One of a two-phase project with the Feeder System. Over the course of this project, it became obvious that the current Feeder System is in need of significant improvement. The current program is not just out-of-date, but it relies on quite a lot of manual wrangling of data by Kathy Peters and Bette Stuart. This work, which is crucial to the function of MU Libraries, is done weekly, and much of it is intricate detail that is hard to master. Current technologies could easily streamline and automate this workflow, reducing the learning curve required for new employees or backup training. To that end, Dustin Hoffmann, along with others in LTS, will be working on creating and implementing a new version of the Feeder System. Kathy Peters, Bette Stuart, and Susan McCormack will be closely involved with this project, helping to plan and to test the program in conjunction with Dustin and LTS.