Maine Shared Collections Strategy Advisory Board/Collection Reps Meeting
May 21, 2012
Bumps Room, Memorial Union (University of Maine)
2-4:20

Attending: Venice Bayrd, Joan Campbell, Brian Damien, Sharon Fitzgerald, Valerie Glenn, Clem Guthro, Toni Katz, Bob Kieft, Lanny Lumbert, Susan MacArthur, Constance Malpas, Judy Montgomery, Peggy O’Kane, Lizanne Payne, Steve Podgajney, Deb Rollins

Valerie began the meeting by welcoming everyone and asking if there were any questions about the overview of collections activity in year one (distributed prior to the meeting). Bob asked if we had considered using Sustainable Collections Services to provide some of the collection analysis. Valerie has had brief, informal conversations with them, but not specific to hiring them for the project. Clem expressed concern about the pricing model; Deb indicated that what we’re trying to do through the grant is devise a solution that can be replicated without necessarily hiring an outside .

The group then began to discuss the challenges we’ve had when determining how to approach the collection analysis in order to begin making retention decisions.

Constance and Lizanne posed several questions to the group:

• Do you want to focus on unique items, or on space recovery?
• If both, what kind of balance do you want between these two?
• How can the division be quantified?

Several of the partner libraries utilize storage facilities for low-use materials. It was suggested that we look at the overlap between items already in storage and items in the stacks.

Other approaches to take:

• Unique Maine items – we know these will be retained
• Overlap with HathiTrust – both public domain and in copyright items. If a digital copy exists, even if it is not accessible, and if our copies have little to no use, do we really need to retain a copy? Related: if one library is a HathiTrust member, can they supply other libraries with a digital or print-on-demand copy? (We will need to investigate this rights issue.)
• Subject/call-number based (to aid the space recovery goal). It was suggested that this approach be taken later – once some of the “low-hanging fruit” listed above had been taken care of.

Lizanne stressed that we need to better define the scope of the project, in order to determine what we’ve actually accomplished something. What minimum number of “shared” titles do we think is a good baseline? Do we feel that, say, 250,000 titles is low?

How can these approaches/decisions be automated?

It was suggested that we develop a formula, involving the number of copies and total circulation (across partners).  It was also noted that in order to refine the decision-making process, we should test it, then actually look at the books that we determined could be withdrawn.

At various times during the discussion, it was noted that we will need to discuss and make decisions related to retention, including:

• How much does geographic isolation impact retention decisions? (It costs more to borrow an item from out of state, due to postage costs; van delivery is already a cost of doing business in the state.  If we decrease the number of copies available in the state, how will this impact those libraries who depend on access to the collections of the grant partners?)
• When is it appropriate to have a “preservation copy” and an “access copy”?
• What levels of preservation commitment will be required?
• What time commitments will be determined for retention agreements? (will we have more than one, and if yes, how will these be determined?)

The group continued the discussion of the 583 field from earlier in the day. It was re-asserted that we need a solution to both inserting and displaying the 583 retention commitment note locally and in MaineCat as well as in OCLC. We will need to explore the possibilities for batch loading 583s to records in III and OCLC. The UC Libraries have been working to automate adding 583s to LHRs – it was noted that the project’s systems librarian has already been in contact with UC San Diego about this very thing.