February 25, 2016
Colby College, Marchetti Room, Schair Swenson Watson Alumni Building
1:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Attendees: Deb Rollins, Matthew Revitt, Joan Campbell (on phone), Peggy O’Kane, Brian Damien, Patrick Layne, Ana Noriega, Evelyn Greenlaw, Chris Fleurial (present for first agenda item only)
Absentees: Becky Albitz, Cynthia Young
1. Maine Health Science Libraries and Information Consortium membership pitch
Chris Fleurial (Maine VA) gave a short presentation on why those Maine Shared Collections that aren’t already members should join the Maine Health Science Libraries and Information Consortium (HSLIC). Matthew plans on presenting at a future HSLIC meeting on why HSLIC libraries that aren’t already members should join MSCC. It might also be possible to conduct a group health library collection analysis to identify overlap and potential weeding and retention commitment candidates.
2. Retention commitment removal and transfer policy & procedures
Matthew presented the MSCC Retention Commitment Change Policy. Since the Committee last met in July 2015 there have only been a couple of occasions when MSCC member libraries have sought to transfer retention commitments to another library. Matthew felt that the transfers had gone fairly smoothly. There were a couple of titles from Colby that didn’t need additional commitments because they were ephemera such as a IT textbook, complete with a floppy disc.
Becky had submitted a question soon after the Committee’s last meeting regarding a reasonable cost for replacing MSCC titles. The Committee reaffirmed their decision that purchasing a replacement copy is a judgment call, dependent on the value to the holding library and Maine Shared Collections, availability elsewhere, and cost to replace. There is language in the Retention Commitment Change Policy about purchasing replacement copies which the Committee agreed was sufficient, as what is considered a reasonable cost will vary depending on the institution.
Matthew has been contacted by Janet Roberts from the USM Franco-American Center regarding titles that had MSCC commitments, but didn’t really fit the Franco-American Center’s mission (there had been a similar issue with the Osher Map Library). Matthew will be speaking to Janet (and Evelyn) about the titles and see what categories they fall into.
The Committee agreed that they would like to see a list of the titled USM plans to withdraw, in case their libraries would want any of the items. Matthew will add the list to the MSCC Google folder once he receives it from Janet.
Deb reported that University of Maine may need to remove duplicate copies of some stacks materials that have never circulated in certain LC ranges. If and when this happens, she will provide a list for MSCC libraries in case they would like to add any of the books.
Joan raised an issue Bowdoin were having with binding journal records into one consolidated record. The binding will include both volumes with commitments and newly added volumes that MSCS libraries were not required to make commitments to. Bowdoin’s concern was that the MSCC retention commitment would be lost in the binding process.
3. Review of existing retention commitments & future collection analysis
a. Suggested changes to existing commitments
In 2019, the Committee will be expected under the terms of the MSCC MOU to review the existing retention commitments (doesn’t necessarily mean make changes, just review). Ideas for the review will remain a standing agenda item for the Committee’s meetings. Matthew presented a comparison of the MSCS retention criteria with the criteria of other projects Sustainable Collections Services (SCS) have worked with.
Matthew had always thought the MSCS criteria was fairly conservative because of the rule that MSCS would retain titles based on only one usage at any of the MSCS libraries. However, a number of other projects had retained at least one title-holding of every title currently owned in the group, regardless of usage, while MSCS agreed to only retain a holding if a copy of the title had been used or fell into one of MSCS’s other categories. Deb remembered MSCS discussing with SCS the one copy approach, but eventually MSCS had rejected the idea because of the burden it would place on the partner libraries.
Matthew felt that it would be difficult for MSCC to make changes to commitments in bulk without recreating the analysis, which no one involved would want. One example of something MSCC could do is run a list showing all MSCC titles that have zero circulations (and also include location data) and consider removing commitments to these titles. However, that wouldn’t take into account the other retention criteria (a title’s rarity or whether it’s Maine related). Deb felt it would be interesting to see how many of the committed-to-retain titles had not circulated since commitments were agreed. Ideally Matthew would like to report on whether borrowing between the MSCS partners has been affected by the retention commitments and the withdrawal of titles that the partners hadn’t been allocated a commitment to retain. However, this kind of analysis is not possible in MaineCat and in any case even if borrowing levels had changed it would be impossible to say for sure whether it was the result of the commitments or other factors.
Deb commented that for reporting purposes it might be interesting to know the attrition rate of commitments i.e. how many commitments remain from the original list of commitments added.
Brian reported that Portland Public’s ability to weed titles has been limited by the commitments; this lack of weeding has exacerbated space issues. Portland will likely run out of space before the 2019 review, so if changes were made to remove certain publishers (see below) they would prefer not to wait until 2019. Deb commented that Portland could always weed those titles that hadn’t received commitments; Brian responded that Portland is weeding these titles, but they had traditionally aggressively weeded children’s fiction, but many of these have commitments (there is a similar situation at Bangor Public).
Brian felt that retaining large numbers of children’s fiction titles might also be an issue for other public libraries joining MSCC. However, Matthew reported that new MSCC libraries were generally not committing to retain children’s fiction because they are seen as ephemeral. Matthew suggested that Brian and Patrick speak to their respective children’s librarians and add new publishers to the list of ones to remove commitments from, both for the review of existing commitments, and in the next round of group analysis. Matthew will create a new version of the publishers list for the 2019 review and add it to the MSCC Google folder.
Matthew reported that the Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust (EAST) is going to use a version of the MSCS publishers list in their analysis.
b. Scope of future collection analysis – dates, government documents, maps, etc.
Another item regarding planning for 2019 is the scope of analysis for the next group collection analysis. Matthew had a series of questions/issues for the Committee to consider:
● Should MSCC only include in the analysis monograph titles published or added to the collection between say 2003 to 2008?
Matthew noted that this rule would only apply to the founding member libraries because in the post-grant analysis all monograph titles have been in-scope regardless of publication or added date.
The Committee discussed whether the scope date refers to publication date and/or the date a title was added to the collection. In the grant analysis the scope had been only titles added or published pre-2003. However, there had been some difficulties in applying this rule in a group project because of the different dates a title might have been added, for example, a title added by Bowdoin in 2002 might have been added to Colby in 2004. MSCC will also need to consider how it can apply such scope rules without the support of a commercial collection analysis vendor.
The Committee agreed that it made sense to look at titles in 5 year windows, so only titles published or added from 2003 to 2008 would be included in the 2019 analysis.
Matthew commented that, partly because of the large number of commitments made by the grant libraries, the new libraries joining MSCC have only been expected to make commitments to a relatively small percentage of their collections. Asking these new libraries to take on more of a retention burden in 2019 may prove to be difficult and will need to be factored in for the 2019 analysis.
● Does MSCC only look at monograph titles, or also journals & serials?
The Committee agreed that they only want to consider monograph titles in the 2019 analysis. MSCC will also exclude titles from the list of ephemeral publishers.
● What about materials out of scope during the grant (e.g. government documents & maps)?
Deb commented that the University of Maine already has specified commitments to document retention as part of the Federal Depository Library Program.
The Committee agreed to exclude government documents from the 2019 analysis.
Peggy reported that at the ALA Map & Geospatial Information Round Table (MAGIRT) meeting at Midwinter there had been discussions regarding a shared print program for maps. As with monograph titles there is presumed to be a large overlap in map collections with some, like U.S. topographical maps, being widely duplicated. However, the feeling amongst the Committee was that it didn’t make sense for MSCC to consider maps in the analysis. Evelyn commented that USM would keep maps in the Osher Map Library regardless.
Deb reported that Ian Fowler from the Osher Map Library is interested in repairing, preserving, and/or digitizing books with maps in them, and also ingesting them into the Osher collection (with the exception of government maps).
c. Future retention criteria – publishers to remove, treating usage data, how many holdings to retain, & using EAST commitments
Matthew had a series of questions/issues for the Committee to consider:
● Publishers to remove
See above for discussions.
● Does the Committee feel any differently about using circulation data versus just retaining one copy of everything? Should the circulation thresholds be changed?
Peggy and Deb reported that at both the Maine State Library and University of Maine a lot of titles had received commitments because they had been used. Matthew commented that SCS had reported that where titles were held by only 1 or 2 libraries, approximately 95% of titles retained were chosen because they were used.
The Committee will consider for 2019 raising the usage threshold that triggers a commitment.
● Should MSCC consider retaining some titles (regardless of usage) solely based on their rarity?
Matthew had always been of the opinion that MSCC should concentrate on protecting rare (for MSCS & MSCC this has meant less than 10 holdings in OCLC) and local interest materials, but he commented that it’s clear from the post-grant work and the data from other SCS projects that this would only going to account for approximately 1% of the overall collection, so as retention criterion it wouldn’t have much of an effect. Also, being able to go through lists of rare titles for the new MSCC libraries has revealed how much of this material is only rare because other libraries have weeded their copies, or there is a cataloguing anomaly which means a title really isn’t rare.
Joan commented that without OCLC holding levels it would be difficult for MSCC to identify and retain rare titles. Brian felt that MSCC libraries could consider using the MSCC Policy on Retention Commitment Changes to deal with issues with the commitments. Deb commented that the titles in scope for the 2019 analysis will be far less than during the grant, so it may be possible to review lists of titles to identify those the libraries weren’t willing to commit to retain.
● Is it necessary for a title to have multiple retention commitments?
Deb was unsure why for some titles there were commitments from all eight grant libraries. Matthew showed how in the retention criteria for titles in the “rare” in OCLC category MSCS had agreed to retain at least one copy at each holding library. Also, in the allocation rules MSCS had agreed that because of disparities in loan rules between the three private colleges and the other partners if a title was held by any of the Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin College Libraries then at least one of these libraries had their holding marked committed to retain. Also, all Maine State Library’s “local interest” title-holdings were marked committed to retain. Matthew felt that these rules may explain why some titles had received multiple commitments.
Again, retrospectively it would be difficult to go back and change the allocation rules and there is always the danger that the last library to weed is stuck with the retention commitment.
Going forward for 2019, the Committee felt that perhaps two holding commitments across the group would be sufficient (this is something Matthew is already implementing in the MSCC collection analysis).
Note: Another issue is whether it’s necessary to make commitments to multiple editions of common titles?
● Committing to retain all 19th century editions
Matthew asked the Committee whether they felt 19th century editions should be treated differently to the mass produced 20th and 21st century editions. Professor Andrew Stauffer (University of Virginia) has proposed research looking into what people write in books, not just the books themselves. By looking at this one might be able to see who owned it, read it and any interesting things in the book for example, marginalia. Andrew also argues that some books should not be seen in isolation, but instead as part of a collection.
Peggy commented that marginalia in books from a private library should be viewed differently. Deb had not seen many examples of interesting marginalia at the University of Maine.
Deb felt that 19th century items should not be treated differently just because of their age. Also, if the University of Maine were to weed items, there is always a final check of the actual copy that will include identifying any special characteristics.
Peggy and Deb disagreed with Brian’s point that most 19th century titles have been scanned anyway.
Some of the MSCC libraries have large numbers of 19th century items so it may not be realistic to retain them all. And, many are commonly held.
● Could the Committee conceive of a situation where MSCC would rely on retention commitments from other projects, particularly EAST?
One of the debates being had in the EAST project is whether in the light of differing retention periods and expiration dates and where there aren’t existing resource sharing agreements, libraries would be willing to rely on retention commitments made by other shared print projects. So far it seems unlikely that EAST will agree to not commit to retain titles that have commitments from MSCS or Connect-NY, but it could affect how many copies EAST decided to keep across the group.
The consensus was that as a general rule an EAST retention commitment would not affect MSCC retention policy. However, Brian felt that EAST commitments to specific categories of material like children’s literature might be taken into consideration.
● Could the Committee conceive of a situation where MSCC would rely on a HathiTrust copy as a digital surrogate for print?
The fact that of MSCC libraries only Colby and the University of Maine have full download rights to public domain titles in the HathiTrust is still the major issue when it comes to relying on HathiTrust copies instead of print. As non-members the other MSCC libraries and their patrons can generally only view the items in the HathiTrust viewer or download items on a page-by-page basis. Deb pointed out that in the 2019 analysis most of the titles would be in-copyright, so a HathiTrust copy is not going to be of much help for access.
Peggy reported that the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) has a commitment to e-books.
Brian would like to see more University of Maine Press publications digitized. Deb observed that many of the publication are still in-copyright, but suggested that Brian speaks to both Joyce Rumery (Dean of University of Maine Libraries) and Michael Alpert (University of Maine Press) about this issue. It is possible that some University publications (vs. UMaine Press) can be digitized.
Patrick commented that he finds it difficult to identify when other Maine libraries have digitized items. A discussion then ensued regarding URSUS and MaineCat policy regarding records for both physical and electronic content.
4. Project updates
a. MSCC collection analysis update – new libraries, data matching issues & marketing
Collection analysis update
33 libraries are in various stages of the MSCC collection analysis process, with almost 1 million titles included in the analysis so far. Approximately 1/2 of all Minerva have signed up. Matthew commented that he’s very pleased with the numbers that have taken part.
The overlap with MSCC continues to be high, on average 38% of the library’s print monograph collection has had a retention commitment at another library, so there have been plenty of weeding opportunities, which is what the libraries really want to get out of the analysis (even if weeding is not carried out immediately). In term of retention, rare titles (under 10 OCLC holdings and no Maine holdings in OCLC) make up on average less than 1% of a library’s collection and only a subset of these will actually receive commitments.
Data matching issues
For the past couple of months Matthew has not actively recruited new libraries because OCLC discontinued (with little forewarning) the API that Sara Amato (MSCC systems librarian) had used to generate the spreadsheets. Sara and Matthew have also had problems successfully matching titles which has been caused by a mixture of issues around the accuracy of local holdings data (particularly OCLC number) and with finding workarounds now that the API has gone. Sara has also been kept extremely busy with designing software for EAST’s validation study. The good news is that the analysis is back on track. Matthew had reviewed data for a library earlier that week and it looked a return to the standard seen pre-API issues.
Matthew spoke with Maine InfoNet and the chair of the Minerva cataloguing committee about using the data that Sara provides libraries regarding incorrect or missing OCLC and ISBN numbers to update the Minerva records. On average 41% of the monograph records could not match on the 001, be that either bad or non-existent numbers. This accounts for a total of 234,199 records (likely to be some overlap with errors for titles owned by multiple libraries). So there are significant opportunities for data cleanup which could benefit the whole of the consortium and beyond. It also goes to show just how important it was for the grant partners to go through the OCLC reclamation.
Marketing
Matthew continues to post updates on Twitter and the MSCC website in an attempt to attract new members and to keep current participants updated. Matthew has also attended and presented at a number of Maine library events to promote MSCC, including the Maine Library Association Annual Conference. Personalized emails to directors seem to also work well. Matthew and Peggy have each being promoting one another’s projects.
Matthew plans posting on Instagram book covers of some of the local interest titles the new MSCC libraries have committed to retain, with the hope that other libraries will see they have similar sorts of titles that they could make commitments to as well.
b. New MSCC member libraries update– additional commitments made, retention criteria, shelf checking & labeling
Additional commitments made
Of the 33 libraries Matthew has worked with on collection analysis, 18 have so far joined MSCC and have agreed to retain a combined total of 1090 titles. Most of those commitments came from the University of Maine at Fort Kent’s Acadian Collection which contains many truly unique titles. Unity College (who are still to agree their commitments) also have a number of interesting titles on environmental issues and land management which will be a good addition to the MSCC.
Matthew has been updating a spreadsheet in the MSCC google folder containing a list of titles committed to retain post-grant.
The library director of the Kennebec Valley Community College reported to Matthew that his supervisor refused to sign the MSCC MOU.
Retention criteria
Local titles tend to be the majority of commitments, but there has been some more scholarly material at the publics. Also as more libraries join, the pool of titles that need commitments becomes smaller.
Labeling
The new MSCC libraries are adding a physical MSCC label (which McArthur produced) to the items they commit to retain, so they aren’t pulled for weeding.
c. 583 issues – Alexander St. Press, MaineCat display implementation, new commitments inc. validation & NExpress
Alexander St. Press
There has been issue at Colby (also perhaps Bowdoin and Bates) with Alexander St. Press adding a “retention note: excluded from New Books list” at the bib level in the MARC 583 field which is against Maine InfoNet policy and interferes with the 583 retention information for MSCC. Katie Donahue at Colby flagged this issue and she and Matthew have been speaking with Maine InfoNet and Alexander St. Press about getting this note removed.
The Committee will check to see if this issue is happening at any of their institutions. (Deb checked random MARC records for three Alexander Street databases UMaine has in URSUS; no 583 fields were noted.)
MaineCat display implementation
In August 2015, the Committee voted on how it wanted the MSCC retention note to display in MaineCat now that the retention information could now flow from local catalogs and MSCC no longer needed to pull in the information from OCLC.
In the vote, keeping the display as it is currently narrowly beat out having it display similarly to the display in local catalogs; Matthew clarified for Joan that this was the first option the “MSCC” not the URL spelt out. Unfortunately getting the link implemented was not as easy as Matthew had hoped. To have the display as the Committee wants requires some scripting which Maine InfoNet have concerns about. Matthew is still waiting to hear back from Maine InfoNet regarding a fix, so as things currently stand the commitments are still flowing from OCLC, which means that new commitments from non-OCLC libraries are not displayed. Matthew will continue to send reminders to Maine InfoNet to implement the display which might end up being the second display option. The Committee felt that the second display option was acceptable.
Note: Since the meeting Maine InfoNet reported that had been issues with the assigning of the ticket which meant it hadn’t been addressed.
On the plus side the retention note seems to be back displaying again in MaineCat. Last week Matthew couldn’t see the retention notes which as he was accessing MaineCat from a home PC might be a result of something odd with the scripting pulling data from OCLC.
New commitments that include validation data in 583
Matthew has been adding new retention commitments to Minerva and URSUS, including validation data for those that are checking their shelves before agreeing their retention commitments. MSCC is the first monograph shared print project to add this data to the 583 field.
University of Maine technical services staff have been adding retention statements to OCLC Local Holding Records for OCLC members that have joined MSCC. However, OCLC are no longer issuing new shared print symbols, so any OCLC members that join MSCC from now on will have to go through the new OCLC retention commitment registration service which will likely mean the commitments can no longer be added manually and there will likely be a fee charged (see below).
NExpress
Colby College had discussed in the fall having MSCC commitments from Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin Colleges displayed in NExpress. Ana confirmed that because of technical issues the retention statements are not going to be recorded in NExpress.
d. Reporting on MSCS/MSCC – ALA Midwinter, NETSL, & ACRL/NEC presentation & ALA monograph
There continues to be interest in hearing about Maine Shared Collections. After speaking at the RUSA Hot Topic session at ALA MidWinter, Matthew is presenting next at the NETSL (New England Technical Services Librarians, a section of NELA) Annual Conference on April 8th in Worcester, MA. Matthew will also be on a panel discussion on shared print alongside representatives from EAST & SCS on Friday May 13th at the ACRL/NEC Conference in Manchester, NH.
An ALA monograph on shared collections to be released in the spring will also feature a chapter on Maine Shared Collections.
e. Introduction of new OCLC retention commitment registration service – retro converting, removal of symbols, & fees
Background
Matthew reminded the Committee of OCLC’s plans for changing how retention commitments are recorded in OCLC. Essentially OCLC are doing away with the requirement to have a second shared print symbol and all the issues that comes with that, separate logins and ILL fees.
New service
Instead of ordering the symbols and going through the batch loading process, a program manager like Matthew would send OCLC the required data containing at the minimum: OCLC #, OCLC Symbol and local system number and they would create the Local Holding Record and ingest the data into OCLC. The hope is that by doing away with the need for local programs to batch load or manually add retention commitments it would make the registration process more automated. The shared print symbol will be replaced by a shared print holding type which will flag that a title has a commitment. After OCLC have registered the commitments they would then give projects the information back which can then be used to load the commitments locally.
Feedback
It’s still not clear how much of a difference the new registration process would have made to projects like MSCS other than not having the symbol and hopefully having OCLC process the data quicker.
Matthew and Sara also have concerns regarding the discoverability of the commitments, including when it comes to being able to lookup commitments for the MSCC collection analysis service. This is one of the reasons Matthew is keen to have the MaineCat issues fixed, so MSCC can rely on MaineCat as the central place for commitments.
Note: In MaineCat (unlike in OCLC) one can’t limit searches to only MSCC titles.
Costs
Matthew will report on the fee structure for the registration service once he gets the details from OCLC. The Committee agreed that the introduction of fees might put off libraries from registering retention commitments.
Retro converting
For projects like MSCC that have already registered commitments OCLC are going to retro convert shared print symbols to the new shared print holding type. MSCC still remains by far the largest group of commitments in OCLC. Also, of the 82 shared print symbols 14 are from Maine (there are many projects that have ordered symbols, but don’t actually use them). The earliest OCLC hope to have the retro converting done is by the summer of 2016. Matthew had a phone call a couple of weeks with OCLC representatives regarding how MSCC are using the symbols. To complete the conversion OCLC will need certain information from the MSCC libraries which Matthew will send out requests for, once he knows what information OCLC needs.
f. EAST project update – MSCC involvement, collection analysis & validation study
Matthew, Clem, and Katie Donahue from Colby are members of EAST committees. Clem is on the Executive Committee and Katie and Matthew are on the Monographs Working Group (MWG), which is responsible for collection analysis and forming policies. There is also a Validation Working Group that is overseeing a validation sample study at specific EAST libraries. The validation is a first for a shared print project. The results of the study might inform how many copies the EAST libraries decide to commit to retain. Geography is also likely to be a key factor in deciding how many copies are retained as well.
The collection analysis is taking place in a short time frame. The MWG will have access to the collection data on March 7th and by March 17th are expected to propose their first go at the retention model. Through March and April the MWG be work on refining the retention model, including developing allocation rules. On May 19th the MWG we will make its final recommendations to the EAST Executive Council.
EAST will be using SCS’s GreenGlass for groups tool which means the MWG will be able to do a lot of the data wrangling themselves, without having to keep asking SCS to produce new spreadsheets. In fact SCS have moved away from spreadsheets pretty much all together with the new software.
By the time of next MSCC meeting in the summer EAST should have their retention commitments signed off.
Alongside the collection analysis will be the development of EAST policies i.e. agreeing the terms and conditions of the retention commitments and resource sharing agreements.
g. On-demand services — stats, State of Maine documents, update of “Maine Collection” & record move to URSUS
Stats
There are on average approximately 100 views of on-demand MaineCat records per month. Matthew has been adding to the Maine Shared Collection’s website and Twitter feed monthly updates for the top 10 of on-demand titles. There has been a diverse range of titles in the list, but generally a record only needs to be viewed twice for it to be in the top 10 and the top viewed records at the most have five views, but there over a million on-demand records to choose from.
Despite over 100 clicks on the print-on-demand request form in the last year there’s only been one actual POD request. Deb commented that it’s got to be the price that is putting would-be requesters off.
Update of “Maine Collection”
Matthew has sent multiple messages to the HathiTrust support center, but he’s not received a response in a while regarding them updating the “Maine Collection” to pull in newly added Maine related material (including the state documents Peggy had HathiTrust add). Matthew has also asked HathiTrust to correct some of link errors identified by the Maine State Library.
Deb agreed to contact the HathiTrust about updating the “Maine Collection”.
Record move to URSUS
The MaineCat on-demand records are still stored in Solar. Matthew will speak to Alisia Revitt (Maine InfoNet) about prioritizing the record load because Deb reported staff at Fogler Library had been contacting her about having the records in URSUS.
h. PAPR – submit changes to commitments
MSCC commitments for journals and serials are disclosed in the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) Print Archives Preservation Registry (PAPR). In early 2015, Matthew had sent the Committee a spreadsheet containing titles that their libraries had commitments recorded in PAPR for. Matthew will be sending those spreadsheets out again soon, with a reminder to send him any changes to commitments, so the information in PAPR can be updated if necessary.
5. Next meeting date
The Committee’s next meeting will be in August 2016. Matthew will send out a Doodle Poll closer to the date.