Ares vs. Voyager - pros and cons

ARES PROS:

• Keeps track of reserve request statuses for processors 

• It is POSSIBLE to have open URL which would speed instructor submissions and link course listings to Voyager records with complete bibliographic information
  

ARES CONS: 

• The software is temperamental and will crash if some tasks are done in the "wrong" order

• Diacritics do not display  - worse they add extra characters

• Software issues - does not consistently save formats of lists.  Default columns are mostly useless and when adding a new column it makes it as wide as the page, so you are forced to scroll over find the end and compress it so that all of your information displays on one page.

• Sorts only alphabetically - including "A" and "The"!

• CAN'T PRINT RESERVE LISTS

• Creates a duplicate database of information - much of which already exists in our Voyager Catalog.

• Only displays to the public a fraction of the information held in the ARES database.  (Huge problem for A/V materials since their unique information is most often contained in the Participant (not included in Ares anyway) and Publisher Information fields. 

• It is a complicated system that requires the cooperation and efforts of many units and individuals (in that sense it is very expensive) and so it extremely cumbersome to address changes

• The display in Blackboard is ugly and slow

• It lists articles in alphabetical order by Journal title...

• The auto creation of class lists when Instructors enter through Blackboard creates linking problems

• Slow and clunky

• ATLAS response time to issues is VERY slow

• Requires too many work arounds to get items to display properly

• Circulation statistics are hard to come by
  

VOYAGER PROS:

• Simple
• Quick
• Easy work arounds to small issues
• Records display nicely on course lists and link directly to the catalog for complete bibliographic information.
• Ability to Print reserve lists sorted by CALL NUMBER, author, title, barcode, etc.

VOYAGER CONS:

• Does not keep track of item processing statuses
• Cannot upload pdfs  - must use blackboard content areas
  
  

Hi could not expand pro/con grid: See below -

Ares Cons

+ Numerous glitches, ie, changes video to book format; flips default pickup location from Uris to Africana as many as three times before it stabilizes

+ When uploading many e-reserve items, no memory of file worked in; it takes 19 clicks to get to pdf files

+ Unable to organize e-reserve items by the week (blackboard allows this function)]

+ program generally unstable

+ Unable to use Tom T's tools in Ares 3. This would require lots of time doing data entry

+ Instructors have made said they do not want to learn how to use this software. Most want CUL to process reserves. 

+ Extra steps when using Ares & Voyager increases the risk of errors

Ares Pro

+ staff generally likes to speed of putting materials in hand on reserve using Tom T's tools

General comment:

Using blackboard and voyager to process reserves has been the smoothest system in past 3 years. It would be great to improve/modify software to add functionality without loosing what both offer.

I  just wanted to point that you can archive lists in Voyager (and then "clone" them as necessary) throughout the years, and I post them electronically for professors to view every semester (or on demand). 

Pros:

1) Hotel's Course Help reserve lists are sourced by Ares lists, of course.   Hotel's own reserve list page  - see:

 http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/library/services/circ/course.html\\

are sourced by Voyager alone.   When the Ares server has crashed 2-3 times over the last year or so, rendering Course Help unavailable, or slow and buggy to use, our own page has remained available and "up", due to the relative stability of Voyager.  It's my reliable back-up.

Hotel workflow:

2) If you look in the Voyager Reserve module, and do a search for HADM 9......you will see all our "archived" Hotel reserve lists from Spring 2010 and earlier; they disappear from OPAC/our Hotel page as their semester date ends.  So if HADM 1120 is taught in the spring but not in the coming fall, I put a 9 in the list header (i.e. 9120) and it "disappears" from view.

So that anyone in the reserve module looking at all HADM 1  courses, will bring up all the 1XXX courses for the current semester only (as the unused ones are "hiding" as "9" courses).

3)  If a course is being re-used for the following semester (going from spring to fall), then only the ending date needs to be changed.   If a "9" archived course is coming back into use, I change the "9" to a "1" (or whatever applies), and change the end date, and once again the course is "active" and viewable by professors.

4) If a course is not being used currently and a professor wants to view it, post the "9" course by adjusting the end date to be current.  See: http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/library/services/circ/reserve-detail.html?id=2354

to view an older HADM 3365 course (currently 9365).

5) Cloning an archived course into a new one (because the items have changed, and you want to remove some and keep others), is the way it was done before.  Create a new list, and in the Item grey box, right click and "Copy items from another list".  Find your "9" course (or any other course) and hit Ok.   Then you can remove the items you don't need, by highlighting and removing. 

6) Pick lists (for dereserving, sharing, etc) are easy to print. You could PDF these in the process of printing if you wish.  It's  not as pretty as the Ares reporter tool (which has many flaws that need to be addressed), but a similar Reporter tool could be made to work with Voyager.

7) Hotel takes care of the reserve process from beginning to end, most of the year. We have 80-90 courses on reserve (I'd say about 80-90% of the entire Hotel course catalog). We start early and we email the professors the link to their current reserve list that semester (if being re-used the following semester) just to remind them how to get there, or, "enliven" an archived list from the 9 courses and send them the link to that. 

8) Our professors never learned to use the old Reserve request forms (and have no interest in doing so/adding more work to their schedule), and they haven't yet learned to use the Ares reserve requests,  either.  To send a quick phone call or a 1-2 line email saying - 1) I saw the list, everything's the same, 2) I saw the list, there's a new course packet and a new edition of the text, please order, and 3) I saw the list; drop this stuff and keep the rest.

They don't want to be involved more than that (I have doubts whether *any* faculty or AAA really wants to be intensely involved with reserves processing - that is what libraries are for).  They are happy to give us Course Builder access if they or their AAAs don't have time to load their PDFs or links either.  Some just want us to scan things  and/or send links via email or do research.  We recommend that they add a link back to the print reserve list in OPAC or Course Help or the library's own reserve list page, which is easy enough to do via a link.

Blackboard was the original "course management" tool for faculty who want websites that are easy to manage.  They post their readings and links there and *if* they lack the time or the know-how, they have us do it.   Students know their "electronic readings" are going to be on Blackboard regardless.  They have to log into Blackboard - regardless.  It is necessary to preserve the security and limited access that publishers require.  The only thing that's missing in Blackboard is a link back to a print reserves list, and that is easily accomplished by a link, and a quick email to the prof to say, add us as Course Builder and we'll take care of only reserve items under "Course Reserves".

All of the above, if I didn't procrastinate, would take a week per semester for me to accomplish, with the only delays coming from professors who don't respond in a timely fashion, requiring a later reminder.  By and large, because I've made it almost a "Yes/No" proposition for them, in that we take care of everything, they are quick to respond, because it's off their plate and requires very little of their time. 

We have made it as easy as possible for us to process and for the faculty to barely process. I start the process in the late part of the current semester and by June/July we pretty know what will be on reserve, because we catch faculty before they leave town.  By August 1st, August 15th at latest, it's 95% done, with only waiting for course packets to arrive from the campus store.  The reserve staff takes time off in August...

I think reserve units need help on determining best possible workflows for their individual units and customer base.  You need to be concertedly organized about it, to begin early (and to make it a year long process) and to establish good relationships with faculty such that they don't need a "nagging" function in Ares to determine that their reserves lists aren't finished yet.

My final thought (for now):  is that we need to be working *for* faculty; they should not be working *for* us.  The reserves process, in however way you choose to do it, should take the burden off them and make their working lives easier. This is the *last* thing they should be thinking about.  They'd rather do their research, teach their classes, advise students - in short do anything else besides worrying about the piddling details on whether their reserves are being worked on (the "nagging" view of Ares reserve lists) and why their reserves aren't showing up in Blackboard, because, as they've been told by reserve staff when questioned, they (or their AAA, TA or IT person) accidentally "wandered" into their Course Reserves Tools area, creating a duplicate course in Ares.

This is bad customer service, to expect the customer to do all the work, and to fix their own problems, or remember to NOT do certain things in order to avoid problems, when the problem lies within a faulty and mis-used reserve system that the primary users (the reserve staff) have little control over due to too many parties that are not acting in sync, technologically and personally.  The only thing reserve staff can do is clean up all the mistakes.

For faculty, nothing has changed since the old reserve system.  They still have to fill out, field by field, item by item, items they want on reserve (if a unit doesn't handle it directly as the workflow above indicates, and there are several units that do), and submit.  There's  no direct access to the catalog to make this process easier for them.  The only benefit is that they have online verification that reserve staff aren't working on their reserve lists as quickly as they would like, and that's if they check in on it at all.   This creates a nagging pressure on reserve staff who are already under much pressure to process lists.

Faculty now have an additional annoyance that they didn't have before (when their ereserves were processed directly in Blackboard) of having their reserve items (e and otherwise) disappear because of duplicate courses showing up in Ares, because they "wandered into the wrong area".

I would be happy to support Ares if it worked as it supposedly does in the utopia that is Syracuse University. I'd like to know whether this utopia was actually witnessed or verified by SU staff, rather than being told so by Atlas.  I would *never* trust a third-party vendor to tell me the truth about their products.  They'll tell you the good stuff prior to the sale; they will never lead you down the path of probable obstacles, unless the buyer had the concerted organization and prepared-ness to think of *all* the viable factors - involving labor, training time, implementation, for all the viable players - faculty, students, and staff.  Reserve staff were not adequately included in the process to ferret out a suitable reserve system.

Apparently Ares is the only "programmed" reserve software application out there.  A shame that no library engineer exists to program an application that makes it easy for faculty to use (takes as little time as possible), and is EQUALLY efficient and usable by staff.  A reserves application should not only be able to take reserve list and item requests, but to serve as a communication area for the myriad of reserve staff (working different hours and different days, and often not seeing each often) to leave detailed notes and communiques to each other so that anyone who logs in knows exactly where a reserve list is in terms of being worked on and updated, and by who.

However in order to do requires the aligning and the willingness of several ducks in the current process, and there are more ducks involved now than there ever was in the old system.

Cornell is staying with Blackboard for cost and other reasons (the sheer task of having to retrain faculty, for one), and will not be moving to another content management system in the foreseeable future. Reserve staff should be more involved with Blackboard, not less.  They have the technical skills, and the time, to be able to at least be able to handle any course aspect that the faculty does not upload of or take care of themselves (library eresources and library print reserves), for faculty who either lack the skills or lack the time.

The number of assistants assigned to faculty is increasingly decreasing.  The importance of library staff to serve as support becomes more important.

Unless the multi-system alignment and conflicting priorities issue can be fixed in an expedient fashion, you are asking faculty to do the same type of work as before, if not MORE work than before, while resulting in more errors than before, and the only thing reserve staff can do is chug along and fix errors as they come up (and before they come up, with good communication) with piecemeal patching. 

Cornell is trying to attract good faculty, and they will not be attracted to come here (and stay) if given so little support to do what they are truly meant to do (whether from the academic side or the library side). 

+ Cross listed courses do not come up when searching Ares. You need to know the primary course listing to find items on reserve. An instructor created two lists for the course he is teaching, creating some confusion.