Maine Shared Collections Strategy Directors Council

August 22, 2012

1-3 PM

Colby College, Miller Library Conference Room

Attending: Clem Guthro, Linda Lord, Judy Montgomery (by phone), James Jackson Sanborn, Barbara McDade, David Nutty, Steve Podgajney, Deb Rollins, Joyce Rumery, Gene Wiemers

1. Grant Activity Update
   1. Output of records with attached circulation data

Files were gathered by Sara Amato from the five library systems, data was sent to OCLC, and we received output files combining local and OCLC data August 21. This data corpus can be used to run reports such as a Hathi comparison.

1. 583 Field Testing Subcommittee

Sara Amato, Consulting Systems Librarian, proposed that a smaller group look at implementation of the 583 field for monographs. While some other shared print projects have begun using the 583, it has been to document journal retention decisions, not monographs. Members: Chair, Sara Amato; ARRC, Sarah Campbell; CBB, Karl Fattig; Maine InfoNet, Venice Bayrd; URSUS, Sharon Fitzgerald; MSCS Project Team, Clem Guthro.

Their charge: create/export/display 583s for a specific, limited list of monographs, with tasks to include:

-Determining fields and contents for 583s, following OCLC guidelines

-Create procedures for creation of item level 583s in local catalogs

-Configuring display of 583s in local catalogs

-Configuring display of 583s in Union catalogs [MaineCat, NExpress, AquaBrowser, WorldCat(?)]

-Create export procedures for 583s; work with OCLC to create Batch Loading of Local Holdings Records in OCLC. These procedures will vary from system to system and may vary also on whether they can export Marc Holdings

– Document the above by October 1, 2012 and report back to the project team

1. Budget

Deb thanked directors and their staff who sent requested information such as additional resumes and salary data. We are still waiting on some information. Salary, travel and other budget allocations will be adjusted and the revised budget submitted with the additional resumes to IMLS by September 1.

1. Update on program manager position

We received permission from University of Maine Human Resources to fill the position without a nationally advertised search process, if an appropriate candidate could be found, and the Project Team was planning to meet with a candidate on 8/23/12. The Project Team thanks Joyce Rumery for her work on this.

1. MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) draft documentThe Project Team has proposed a December 1 goal for a finalized MOU to be approved by this Directors’ Council. The group reviewed and discussed the draft MOU sections as noted here:

1. 1.6 Collection Builders: Collection Builders are those Collection Holders who agree to ingest and validate retained materials.Preference was expressed  for “take in” rather than “ingest.” It was noted that “validate” can mean any number of things: Is the item there? Is it complete (all pages and plates confirmed to be present)? The WEST project has four levels of validation, for example. “Validation” will need to be defined somewhere so this is clear.
2. 1.7 Supporting Members: Supporting members will pay membership fees in exchange for ensured access to retained materials.Gene questioned why some members would pay fees and asked what the fees would be for. Joining this kind of venture is “the right thing to do” but there is no consequence for not joining, and there are potential benefits even if one is not a member; this is the typical “free rider” problem we have faced in other situations. Would a Collection Holder or Builder lend designated items only to member libraries in the state? No. Currently non-academics are served by the three state Area Reference and Resource Centers without paying membership or service fees, but there is no guarantee this structure will continue to exist. Would the ARRCs take in odd items from smaller libraries? One example of fee use: a smaller library might wish to have materials available, but does not want to store them; fees would be “pay to store” and the items – and perhaps the fees – would go to a Collection Builder who agrees to retain them. It was noted that 1.7 and 7.2 are related and should be tied together better. A suggestion was made that this or another section note that “the Executive Committee is authorized to establish membership fees.”
3. 2.1 Executive Committee: The program will be governed by an Executive Committee, consisting of the Maine InfoNet Board of Directors.
   It was decided that the Maine Shared Collections Cooperative’s Executive Committee would instead be better made up of a subgroup of the Maine InfoNet Board, drawn from those members of the Board whose institutions are part of or who represent the types of institutions that are part of the Cooperative.
4. 4.2 Holdings disclosure: Collection Holders will take all steps to ensure that the retention commitment is displayed in local and union catalogs and other applicable systems as established in the MSCC disclosure policy.

Question: will the disclosure policy by completed by the time the MOU is finalized? Answer: the 583 implementation group’s findings will form a large part of the disclosure policy.

1. 6.2 Duplicate materials: Members may retain or withdraw duplicate copies of titles retained by a Collection Holder. No library is required to discard any materials.It was noted that not just members, but any library, may choose to retain or withdraw duplicates retained elsewhere. This section may need to be re-worded.There was general discussion about institutional review of the finalized MOU after OK by the Directors’ Council. At Bowdoin, for example, the treasurer’s office and the deans would need to see it; for Maine State Library, the library commission/chair; for Bangor Public Library, the Board president.

Questions were asked about how we would decide who retains what, and is there any intention to parcel out retention responsibilities into subject specializations by location, for example? The data and resulting algorithms for retained items and their host library locations are as yet unanalyzed and undetermined. In general the Project Team has been thinking retention will be distributed/decentralized, not according to subject groupings per se, but that it could make sense to have some materials, like reference works, to be held centrally by a single Collection Builder. Steve noted that storage assets at places like Colby, BPL, and PPL will undoubtedly play a role, though, in the number and type of materials retained at those locations, and that we need to keep in mind the needs of multi-type/public institutions as well as academics.

1. Business modelsA list of business models at other shared print projects was reviewed. Hathi Trust business model not included yet on the list as it is changing and their print archive just getting developed. (Parenthetical note, Colby is digitizing a rare Thomas Hardy edition to Hathi standards for Cambridge University Press, and will report back on this at a later date).Steve noted that the ARRCs have been talking about cooperating in journal retention with shared holdings in MSL storage; this would free up space at BPL and PPL to be Collection Builders, possibly in selected subject areas. Comment: the distributed model feels “wrong” – we need a focus. If smaller libraries who participate giving up items, where do they go? Better to the appropriate subject collection than randomly to one of several Collections Holders/Builders.
2. Reminder: August 31 is the deadline for submitting travel invoices for this quarter