Maine Shared Collections Strategy Project Team
June 12, 2014
Fogler Library Conference Room
1:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Attendees: Clem Guthro, James Jackson Sanborn, Matthew Revitt, Deb Rollins, Sara Amato (called in), Barbara McDade
1. Project Updates
a. HathiTrust/Google Books & POD
i. URSUS record move
James has sent an email to the URSUS directors explaining the E-Book-On-Demand and Print-On-Demand services and the proposed move of the records from Solar to URSUS. So far there hasn’t been any response from the directors, but Alisia Revitt (Maine InfoNet) who will be attending the director’s meeting tomorrow will mention the move again.
Sara asked whether the load would happen after the Sierra migration. James responded that the migration work will be beginning this coming week and the EOD/POD records could be loaded sometime at the end of July/early August. Even if the MSCS grant funds used to pay Sara have ended by then Maine InfoNet can still use Sara’s guidance and if necessary their own funds to pay Sara for any work required.
ii. Potential partnership with UMaine Printing Services & Bookstore
Val McTigue (UMaine Printing Services) is confident that their webpage for POD orders will be ready in time for the record load into URSUS, so the records containing the link won’t have to be reloaded again. Matthew will contact Val next week to see how they are progressing with this work and billing for the remaining books (see below).
Following the comments at the Directors’ Council meeting, Matthew had Sara change the text of the POD link to read “Purchase Print Copy from UMaine Bookstore” (see example).
Deb commented that politically having the link going to the UMaine Bookstore would be more acceptable for libraries than a commercial vendor.
iii. Membership update – UMaine’s progress
UMaine are now officially a partner of the HathiTrust. Deb and Matthew have been promoting the availability of HathiTrust services on UMaine webpages.
Matthew commented that the appeal ruling in Authors Guild v. HathiTrust which was mainly in favor of the HathiTrust is good news for its partners.
Deb reported that she had received a partner message from HathiTrust regarding updates to institutional print holdings information. All institutions, except those that joined HathiTrust in 2014, are required to submit updated print holdings information by August 30, 2014. Deb asked whether because UMaine had submitted print holdings data for 2013, but joined in 2014 they would be required to submit holdings again. Clem commented that Colby would be submitting updated holding information because their bib numbers have changed with the move to their new merged system with Bates and Bowdoin.
Deb wondered whether they should be retaining records of withdrawn and missing items, so they can be included in the holding submission to HathiTrust which will allow UMaine patrons Section 108 and print disability access to the titles.
Matthew and Sara agreed to look into these issues for Deb.
A discussion then ensued regarding the appointment of disability proxies at UMaine and Colby.
b. Budget
i. Budget vs. actual spending update
Mathew presented a spreadsheet with the latest spending figures for MSCS. Matthew commented that since the MSCS Directors’ Council meeting the unallocated grant funds figure had come down slightly because of higher than anticipated POD costs, but there are approx. $6,000 unallocated funds.
In other spending areas:
● $23,000 remaining to pay for Matthew’s compensation until the end of August.
● $13,880 remaining for Sara’s work. Sara plans on billing 65 hours / mo. for June and July. Matthew commented that the numbers for Sara’s work were a little off because of issues with the UMaine financial system.
● $538.20 this month for travel for non-UMaine staff attendance at MSCS meetings. That leaves $833.22 to pay for travel for remaining in-state MSCS meetings.
● $2,838 for the OCLC batchloading fee.
● $1,000 for the Advisory Board’s year 3 stipends.
● $1,004.81 billed by Printing Services this month for printing costs and $6 in mailing costs by UMaine which means that MSCS have already exceeded the $2,000 amount allocated for testing POD.
Comparing the items billed for with Matthew’s list of requests received there are a remaining 10 titles that MSCS should still be billed for. Matthew has asked Val to confirm this amount, but she hasn’t got back to him yet. There will be another couple of hundreds of dollars that will come out for this. This will come out of the $6,000 unallocated amount.
● $30 Matthew’s attendance at the Academic Libraries event at Colby on Monday June 9th.
● There is just under $7,000 allocated for remaining out of state travel costs for ALA and fees for room and AV equipment hire for MSCS’s session. And the keynote speaker fee. Because of the higher than anticipated attendance levels at MSCS’s ALA session Matthew has informed Marie Waltz from CRL (who organizes the PAN session) that MSCS will contribute towards the refreshment costs. Matthew had actually included refreshments in his original predicted costs, so it won’t make a huge difference in costs.
c. MSCC sustainability planning
i. Survey results, candidates for MSCC & SA collection analysis support
Survey results and candidates for MSCC
Following comments at the last Directors’ Council Meeting, Matthew extracted the results for question 14 of the Cooperative Collection Management survey which asked libraries to rate their interest in MSCC elements. Taking on board Gene’s point about partnering up with a non-MSCS library to show how MSCC could be of benefit, Matthew presented a list of possible candidates of libraries. Matthew’s list only included those non-MSCS libraries that responded ‘interested’, ‘very interested’, ‘or this is main reason for interest’ in any of the MSCC elements. The list was further filtered to only include Innovative system libraries because this will be important for data wrangling purposes.
Matthew asked the Project Team to agree on a couple of candidate libraries who Matthew could approach to be a test case for MSCC, particularly working with him and Sara on collection analysis which they could then present with at the Maine InfoNet Collection Summit. Matthew felt the candidates should be public libraries that have the respect of other Maine libraries and can be considered their peer i.e. not a special case. Matthew also asked the Project Team to bear in mind that the library director from the library would need to be able to deliver a presentation at the Maine InfoNet Collection Summit.
A discussion then ensued regarding the suitability of the libraries on Matthew’s list.
The Project Team agreed on three libraries that would be good candidates. Matthew will contact the directors of these libraries to gauge their interest in being a test case for MSCC.
SA collection analysis
Matthew has spoken with Sara about running comparison reports between MSCC commitments and a new MSCC member’s collection to identify overlap. MSCC could then provide the library with withdrawal candidates which Matthew felt most libraries would primarily be interested in rather than committing to retain items. Sara could also produce reports showing overlap with OCLC holdings to help libraries identify what titles in their collection are “rare” and candidates for retention commitments. Alternatively, as James suggested at the Directors’ Council meeting, libraries could self-nominate titles they think should be retained and preserved as part of MSCC.
Matthew commented that in speaking to MSCC member candidates they might find that those libraries want different services to what is currently envisaged by MSCS. Deb suggested that Matthew doesn’t go into the conversations with the libraries suggesting what MSCC will provide for collection analysis, but instead seeks to find what the libraries want themselves.
Matthew is waiting to hear back from Brian Damien (Portland Public Library) about the Maine periodicals collection because as part of MSCC data comparisons they may be able to identify titles that could be added to the collection and complete runs.
The Project Team debated different business and financial model ideas to support MSCC. Barbara commented that ideally there would be state funding to support libraries retaining and preserving titles, but that this was unlikely in the current political environment. Clem commented that for MSCC to be a sustainable business model there needs to be retention commitments from non-MSCS libraries because MSCS libraries are reliant on the fact that other Maine libraries hold titles they need.
The Project Team also discussed the involvement of current MSCS libraries in MSCC. Clem commented that his interpretation of Gene’s point at the Directors’ Council meeting was that MSCS libraries should contribute funds to ensure the collection analysis is done thoroughly and that MSCC is not undermined. Matthew commented that MSCC support and Sara’s help would ensure that a proper job is done. Clem felt the MSCC Collections & Operations Committee could provide support to new members, but if the demands on staff time becomes too high there might need to be membership fees to reimburse MSCS libraries. Matthew observed that at the moment the levels of work for the Committee are still an unknown. Therefore, at least initially, there would just be the costs new members would have to pay for Sara’s data wrangling which is needed to facilitate the collection analysis.
ii. Teaching Document – review MR draft & Advisory Board intro
As part of MSCS’s legacy to other shared print projects, Matthew has spent a large part of his time over the last two months working on the shared print teaching guide which he will have a final version of ready to promote at MSCS’s ALA Annual Conference session (see below). Matthew has requested feedback several times, but only received a few responses. Matthew has some specific questions about the contents of the document that he will ask the Collection Development and Technical Services Committees at the meeting next week. But he also had some questions for the Project Team:
● How much time could a shared print project team expect to spend on project related activities?
The Project Team felt this would vary depending on the scale of the project and the organizational size and structures of project partners, but that 20% was probably a fair number. Clem commented that the document should emphasize that a shared print project requires significant local staff; particularly for activities such as the OCLC reclamation.
● Do you have any other suggestions and comments regarding the document?
Clem felt that it’s important to emphasize the importance of working with a collection analysis vendor like Sustainable Collection Services (SCS). Also, it was important to have a full-time project manager to oversee the project. And a systems librarian who is an expert in the ILS used by the partners and able to ensure that data wrangling work was consistent. Both these roles meant at MSCS there were fewer demands on local staff time than otherwise there could have been without dedicated project staffing.
James commented that the document should emphasize that shared print can be as much about preservation as weeding.
All the Project Team felt that having both director and institutional buy-in (e.g. board or provosts) were essential for a project to succeed.
● What format should the document be released in? A static PDF on the MSCS website? Or a way which allows interactive discussion by those using it?
The Project Team discussed possible formats for the document and issues with moderating comments.
The Project Team agreed that as the document is the work of MSCS it should reside as a PDF on the MSCS website.
The Advisory Board have agreed on the content of their introduction. Matthew has used sections of Bob Kieft’s original version of the introduction for a foreword.
iii. Policies & procedures
Since the loading of retention commitments is now coming to an end, Sara will be working on documentation for the MSCS libraries to follow once the grant ends for any one-off work that is required for both adding and reversing retention commitments in catalogs and also the HathiTrust work. This documentation, along with the procedure Matthew produced for transferring retention commitments, will be discussed at next week’s joint MSCS committees meeting, so staff know what is required of them. All this documentation will eventually be added to the MSCC website for the benefit of MSCC and other libraries doing similar work.
iv. Appointment of MSCC committees
Matthew asked Clem, as a chair of the new MSCC Executive Committee to speak to his fellow board members about appointing the MSCC Collection & Operations Committee. Although it’s likely that the Committee will consist of the current MSCS Collection Development Committee members they still need to be appointed officially.
Matthew asked the Project Team whether they thought it should just be Collection Development Committee members, or whether some Technical Services members should be included as well. Also, whether each library should have a representative on the Committee. Clem responded that because each institution is structured differently they should decide who represents them. Clem also felt that while there is still some tidying up from MSCS that needs to be done, all MSCS libraries should have a representative on the Committee.
v. MSCC working areas & data storage
Matthew has met with Albie Dunn (Maine InfoNet) and James to create a MSCC Google Group and Drive using the Maine InfoNet Google business account. This shared folder can be used as a working area for the MSCC committees.
Maine InfoNet will take over the MSCS Dropbox account in October, when the account needs to be renewed. MSCC will keep a folder in there for larger files such as the large text file MSCS have from SCS containing collection data. Matthew commented that another “to do” on Sara’s list is to turn the text file into something more database like in format, so it can be of use to the MSCS libraries. James responded that the file can be converted from a text file to a MySQL database on Maine InfoNet’s HostGator system. Sara confirmed that she has a login to the HostGator system.
Matthew has informed RainStorm that MSCS will no longer require their services once the current yearly plan for the website ends in December 2014. RainStorm have set-up Albie Dunn as a website administrator, so he can be responsible for WordPress updates, etc.
d. Loading & display of retention information in catalogs
i. Local Catalog – CTR filtering and loading updates
ii. OCLC WorldCat – LHR batch loading process update
iii. MaineCat – loading updates & III solution
Sara reported on the status of loading retention commitments loaded into local catalogs, OCLC, and MaineCat. Sara has now received all the data she needs for serials from the MSCS libraries and hopes to have the local commitments loaded for both monographs and serials by Tuesday’s MSCS committees meeting. The final summary will be found here.
Matthew commented that once the retention commitment numbers have been finalized he will ask the MSCS Collection Development Committee to calculate what percentage of their monograph collection has received a CTR, so he can include this data in his reports to IMLS.
Sara reported that based on feedback from the previous Technical Services Committee meeting she will show the effect of the OCLC Shared Print Symbol on ILL workflow and what happens when the OCLC API is used to generate retention statements in MaineCat.
James and Clem reported that they hadn’t anything new to report on Innovative’s long-term solution for the display of retention information in MaineCat, but it should be in Innovative’s July release of Inn-Reach. There is an Inn-Reach meeting at ALA where some of the new functionality might be presented. Matthew commented that one of the MSCC Collection & Operations Committee’s first issues to discuss could be the recording and display of the retention statement in MaineCat and whether Innovative’s fix meets MSCC’s needs.
iv. PAPR holdings submission – test examples for BPL & USM
Sara has submitted to the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) holdings information for Bangor Public Library and USM as examples of MSCS serials commitments. Amy Wood (CRL) hopes to have some initial holdings and data reports based to present at the Print Archive Network (PAN) meeting that proceeds the MSCS session at ALA Annual.
2. Conferences, Articles, Events & Meetings
a. MSCS/CRL ALA session, Las Vegas, LV, June 27, 2014 – registration update, MSCS introductions & CG slots
Registration update
Registration has really taken off since May. There are now 120 registrants! The room has capacity for 200 which should be sufficient.
MSCS introductions & CG slots
Matthew outlined what MSCS involvement will be during the session:
● Matthew will give a short housekeeping link between the Print Archive Network forum and “Looking to the Future of Shared Print”.
● Clem will then kick things off with a very brief introduction (only 10 minutes) to the goals of the session, provide background on the work of the Maine Shared Collections Strategy, and how it has shaped the agenda for today’s session. Matthew asked Clem to just mention who the MSCS partners are, mention IMLS, why each of the presentation subjects are important for MSCS, and then what MSCS have achieved in the project (and mention guidance on MSCS website including the teaching guide).
● Clem will then introduce Ben Showers’ presentation. Matthew will send bios to all of the MSCS staff introducing presenters.
● Barbara will introduce the panel discussion.
● Sara will be then introducing the session before lunch on digital collections.
● Matthew will come in again to announce the break for lunch.
● Bob Kieft is going to be introducing the afternoon group discussion on retention.
● James will be introducing the keynote speaker Emily Stambaugh.
● Finally, Clem will end things with a short 10 minute wrap-up of 1-2 takeaway points from each presentation.
b. MSCS wrap-up meeting
After some debate the Project Team agreed the MSCS project wrap-up meeting will be held on Thursday 7th August at Colby College. Matthew will confirm attendee numbers, so Clem can book meeting space and lunches.
In terms of content for the session, Matthew is going to send a project evaluation survey to MSCS participants prior to the meeting, so he can discuss some of the results. Matthew would also like the Project Team to discuss project results, schedule performance, problems that arose during the project, changes to the original plans, grant expenditure, whether MSCS met its objectives, lessons learned, etc. Matthew felt all this information will be of use in MSCS’s final reports to IMLS and any future collaborative projects. The Project Team can also discuss MSCS’s plans for the future of MSCC.
c. “Against The Grain” article on MSCS – MR draft
Matthew has produced a first draft for the 1,500 word article Bob Kieft has asked Project Team to write on MSCS for the Against The Grain column “Curating Collective Collections”. Bob would like Matthew to submit a draft to him by Sunday June 22nd.
Bob asked Matthew to include in the article: boiler plate information about MSCS, the factors that helped MSCS succeed, MSCS’s achievements, and five pieces of advice for other shared print projects. So far Matthew’s pieces of advice are: clean data before analysis (i.e. reclamation), importance of collection support, and warning against the dangers of drowning in data (too many title lists).
Matthew asked the Project Team for their thoughts on other pieces of advice for shared print projects. Barbara responded that her advice would be, in addition to deciding what to keep, define as a group what you are not going to keep. The Project Team felt that public library involvement was key in securing grant funds, but Sara also commented that they contributed diverse collections to MSCS. James responded that he thinks it important to emphasize that just because a title didn’t receive a retention commitment doesn’t mean the library will get rid of it. Sara commented that communicating to library staff that titles with retention commitments shouldn’t be weeded is important. Clem felt that project staffing and buy-in from high up in the institution were essential. Sara also found Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin willingness to share the retention allocation load (due to shared loan rules) interesting.
Matthew will send a draft of the article to the Project Team for review and comment.
d. ALCTS Monographs Series shared print chapter to feature MSCS
Matthew has been asked by the ALCTS Monographs Series Editorial Board to contribute to a chapter for a monograph on shared collections.
e. EAST Project – MR & CG updates
There is an Eastern Academic Scholar’s Trust (EAST) meeting on July 17th at UMass Amherst for libraries interested in becoming members of the group to discuss the plans the working groups have developed.
3. Upcoming meetings
a. June 17, Collection Development Committee Meeting, Colby College, Diamond Building Room 241
Matthew will invite Mike McGuire (Colby) and Alisa Revitt (Maine InfoNet) to attend this meeting.
b. July 10, Project Team Meeting, Fogler Library conference room
4. AOB
Clem has been invited by Constance Malpas to represent MSCS and EAST at a meeting during the ALA Annual Conference to discuss shared print at a national scale.
Matthew has been invited by Rick Lugg (SCS) to a meal at the ALA Annual Conference with other program managers from projects SCS have worked to discuss their experiences.
Clem and Joyce Rumery (UMaine) have scheduled the Maine InfoNet Collection Summit for October 14th at Colby College.