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Summary of Collection Development Subcommittee Meeting, March 8, 2012

Maine Shared Collections Strategy Collection Development Subcommittee Meeting
March 8, 2012
10-12, Colby College Miller Library Conference Room

Attending: Brian Damien, Valerie Glenn, Clem Guthro, Tom Hayward, Toni Katz, Lanny Lumbert, Susan MacArthur, Deb Rollins

During the first part of the meeting, Meghan Hopkins from OCLC presented a demo of WorldCat Collection Analysis.  She highlighted various ways to limit the group analysis, and also mentioned several comparisons that could be done.

She was asked about oddities in the “overlap” piece (for example, in the “shared by 2” category, some records may have holdings for more than 2 libraries in the group). Meghan will investigate and get back to us.

It was noted that it’s frustrating that we can only export bibliographic data from WCA, and not holdings symbols. That would be a very useful feature, particularly for unique items (in comparison with WorldCat). Meghan mentioned that a future analytics tool is in development, and this may be a part of a future release.

Following the demo, Valerie handed out usage data (for all of the libraries) for the ~200 sample titles that had been identified prior to the last meeting. The discussion turned to the topic of what item-level data fields do we think should be required for analysis. Those listed below were seen as necessary for our analysis:

  • Total checkouts
  • Last checkin date
  • Location (with definition chart)
  • Status (with definition chart)
  • Internal use (ie, if an item can only be used in the library)
  • Renewals (note: systems may be configured differently. UMO doesn’t add renewals to total checkout, others do)

Other elements that were mentioned, but not necessarily seen as mandatory:

  • Volume number (not a fixed field)
  • Copy number
  • Date created

Following the discussion, it was mentioned that the Advisory Board would be visiting the University of Maine on May 21, and would like to meet with this group in the afternoon. Valerie will send information about a meeting time, and will also send a poll re: availability for April meeting.