Maine Shared Collections Strategy Project Team
April 10, 2013
Fogler Library Conference Room
2:00 – 4:00 pm
Attendees: Sara Amato (on phone), Clem Guthro, Barbara McDade, Matthew Revitt, Deb Rollins
Absentees: James Jackson Sanborn
1. Project Updates
a. Collections Analysis
i. SCS – collection summaries & scenario development meeting feedback
Matthew reported that the collections summaries provided by SCS had been well received by the MSCS library representatives. They had stimulated debate both before and during the scenario development meeting held on Monday April 8th.
At the time of the SCS meeting there had been some issues with the data: not all USM internal counts were included and for Portland Public ‘last return date’ was omitted from ‘last charge date’ calculations’. These issues had now been resolved, with the only issue still remaining the discrepancies between HathiTrust counts for MSCS items in the HathiTrust quote and SCS figure for MSCS overlap in HathiTrust. Sara reported that the discrepancies may be down to differences in what SCS & HathiTrust count as Public Domain: HathiTrust includes: pd, pdus, ic-world, and cc* (not und-world or icus). SCS reported that they include: “matching Hathi records are “pd” or “pdus” we flag the library’s record as available in Hathi with public domain access rights.” Sara is going to test her theory further by asking SCS to run their data like HathiTrust did to check whether they match.
The Project Team agreed that the scenario development meeting with SCS went well and that it was the correct decision to initially focus on a subset of the group collection, which at potentially 500,000 items is still a significant amount. Clem commented that doing the analysis en-masse is what makes MSCS reproducible as a model for other projects. Matthew commented that everyone is beginning to understand that MSCS cannot conduct granular analysis when looking at 3 million records! The grant application states that MSCS is going to use risk management principles to make retention and preservation decisions, which is what MSCS are now doing with SCS. That means that some items might appear on lists of retention & withdrawal candidates which shouldn’t, but there will still be safe guards to prevent inappropriate disposal.
SCS are going to return to working on MSCS data on the week of April 15th. SCS will have a revised summary for MSCS in two weeks and data reports with MSCS retention criteria applied to it in three weeks.
Matthew asked the Project Team to what level (if at all) should the Collections Development/Technical Services Committees be updated on overall project progress. Matthew wondered whether it would helpful for them to see how their work fits into the wider context of the project, which is what he attempted to do at the SCS planning session. Barbara commented that Monday’s session had given Judie Leighton from Bangor Public Library a much better understanding of MSCS. The Project Team agreed that Matthew will circulate his meeting summaries to the MSCS Collections and Technical Services representatives. Deb commented that the summaries are already available on the MSCS website. Clem commented that by the May 23rd MSCS meetings the MSCS groups should have a better idea of the technical consequences of the MSCS retention criteria, also the protocols and workload involved in disclosing retention decisions in the MARC 583 Field, which should hopefully alleviate the fears of the partner libraries technical services staff.
ii. OCLC WorldCat Collection Analysis – conversation with Meghan Hopkins
On Wednesday April 3rd Matthew spoke with Meghan Hopkins, the OCLC Product Manager for the new analytics tool. The purpose of the meeting was to specify MSCS requirements and scope for having deferred access to the analytics product, when group comparison functionality is available. In terms of MSCS requirements, Matthew used a combination of those sent previously to OCLC and functionality provided by SCS, which MSCS would expect the analytics tool to also provide.
MSCS will get beta testing access to tool in November 2013. However, OCLC are still working on the release of individual comparison functions and have not yet started work on the group functionality.
Comparisons will be available next day—currently the comparisons are only available quarterly. Comparisons will be available to the HathiTrust and obviously WorldCat. OCLC also intend to have the ability to compare to the Internet Archive, but have not designed this yet.
At this stage, only five years of circulations data will be available. Clem commented that this does not make sense at the beginning of the project. Circulation data should be available for a longer period than 5 years. Shared print projects are primarily looking at legacy print collections with low usage over a number of years.
WCA will offer collections analysis of journals. Matthew commented that perhaps this is something they can help MSCS with, as it is not a service SCS provides. Meghan wanted to know whether MSCS libraries load journal data into OCLC knowledge base and generally are they catalogued differently. Clem commented that practices for the data loading practices vary across MSCS partners, but that no one uses OCLC knowledge base. UMaine’s electronic holdings are in OCLC, but Colby’s are not. Clem commented that Sara’s collection analysis database functionality might lend itself to journals. Sara responded that this might not be a straightforward process because she’s not sure all of the records will be MARC. Clem recognized it wouldn’t be simple, but would be worth looking into.
WCA does not FRBRize records: they are working on Glimmer, but are not sure whether they will eventually go that route. Clem commented that FRBRize and Glimmer is not the same thing. Glimmer takes different cataloguing practices for example, between German and US practices and puts the record together.
WCA will have circulation data available from May, 2013.
Matthew made it clear to Meghan that MSCS wants the deferred access agreement in writing. Meghan is going to get back to Matthew with an agreement.
b. OCLC Shared Print Symbol & 583/856 testing
i. ILL Testing
Sara had nothing new to report because she was waiting for issues with the shared print symbol (see below) to be resolved. Sara thanked Deb for the work she had done testing the ILL implications of having two OCLC symbols (See March 28th Directors Council Meeting Summary for more detail).
ii. Communications with OCLC – Bill Carney response
Matthew reported that he had made Bill Carney at OCLC aware of the discussions regarding the shared print symbol at the March 28th MSCS Directors Council meeting. Following discussions clarifying MSCS requirements Bill sent Matthew, Sara and Deb a message outlining OCLC’s position on the shared print symbol. Matthew provided the Project Team with a copy of the message. Sara felt the message was saying that MSCS should use the OCLC disclosure guidelines (the shared print symbol and the LHRs), that using two symbols is not formally endorsed by OCLC, that OCLC/Atlas are not willing to make concessions on the ILL fee at this point, and there may be unknown changes in the future.
Matthew commented that he believed MSCS were at crossroads with the shared print symbol. The MSCS Directors have made it clear they are against any sort of fee associated with the symbol and OCLC/Atlas are not going to make any concessions with the fees. Therefore, Matthew asked the Project Team whether they still wanted to continue working on the symbol, or whether MSCS should instead concentrate on disclosure in local catalogs as was discussed at the Directors Council meeting. Clem responded that MSCS has to disclose in OCLC and that Sara should go ahead and start the preparation work for implementing the two symbols on items. Deb agreed that she thought Sara’s idea a good short-term solution, but asked whether this would still mean MSCS libraries would be charged $300 for setting up the symbol. Sara responded that the $300 fee is only charged when libraries use the symbol for ILL in OCLC’S WorldCat Resource Sharing, so as the symbol will be made non-requestable there would be no fees charged.
The Project Team recognized the effect the additional symbol is going to have on OCLC holding counts, but hopes OCLC will deliver on finding an alternative method of disclosure in the near future. Sara can now go ahead with testing the use of the two symbols on items.
iii. 583 Testing
Sara reported that she had been testing the display of fields with Karl Fattig from UMS and intends to schedule a MSCS Technical Service meeting by the end of April.
Matthew reported that he had received a message from Peggy O’Kane that she was pretty sure that The Maine State Library (MSL) would be happy to put a retention note (583) on all of the items MSL owns that have the local Maine protection flag. So to keep that in mind when the MSCS Project Team are looking for a test set for batch record uploads.
c. HathiTrust
i. Consortial membership & accessibility issues
Matthew reported that he had found the discussions at the Directors Council Meeting regarding the HathiTrust very informative. It was clear that membership was not a certainty for all of the partners and that further investigations into benefits were required.
Matthew had circulated prior to the meeting responses to questions the Directors had wanted him to ask Jeremy York. In summary: only public domain items are available to view and download. For in-copyright material, member patrons can conduct full-text searches, but not access to view or download the entire work. The exception is where copies of the works held currently or previously by member institutions fall under Section 108 conditions: where the print copies of the works are damaged, deteriorating, lost or stolen, and a copy is not available on the market at a fair price. As a member you are paying towards the costs of preserving backup e-book copies of items you own which includes in-copyright material. Matthew asked the Project Team whether this had changed how they viewed HathiTrust membership.
Clem responded that at this time HathiTrust membership makes no sense for the public libraries because of authentication issues they would not see the benefits of being able to access material. The Project Team agreed that the ability to view and download the growing amount of public domain material was the main benefit for joining. The SCS collection summary showed there was only 6% overlap of MSCS Public Domain items in the HathiTrust, so membership would open up access to a lot of new material. The ability to conduct full-text searches for in-copyright material is also a useful function.
Matthew questioned the ability to ILL HathiTrust items to non-members. Clem responded that ILL was possible because HathiTrust records would be loaded into catalogs.
In light of delays in implementing Shibboleth at MSCS partner libraries, Clem wanted to know from Jeremy York whether if Colby (who have implemented Shibboleth) became an individual member could it move to consortium membership at a later date, when other MSCS libraries were ready to join. In the revised budget matching funds had been committed by Colby to join as an individual member. The demand for HathiTrust items can then be tested as we stated in the MSCS grant application. Deb commented that she was happy to experiment with Serial Solutions for HathiTrust items.
ii. Authentication issues
Matthew reported that it appeared from emails forwarded from James and Joyce that UMaine was making slow progress in its attempts to install Shibboleth. Deb commented that Dick Thompson had been provided with the details of the company Colby used to install Shibboleth, but that they may also use this as a chance to hire systems administrators to help with this instead.
Sara reported on a webinar she had attended regarding copyright issues, in-particular The Author’s Guild’s decision to sue HathiTrust over use of orphaned works (those whose rights holders could not be determined).
The court ruled in favor of access for preservation, indexing and ‘snippets’ for searching and access for persons with disabilities. The court did not rule on the orphaned works question, as it questioned The Author’s Guild standing to bring that suit (e.g. do they represent the copyright holders?). The Author’s Guild is appealing to the 2nd Court of Appeals.
Matthew commented that this case highlights how what is accessible in HathiTrust may change overtime once different legal avenues have been fully explored.
iii. Implementation investigations
Sara wondered whether HathiTrust members using a separate link could conduct a search within a specific book in a local catalog (similar to what can be done in the HathiTrust catalog). The Project Team commented that this was a good idea and that Sara should investigate it further.
Sara reported that in the data harvesting she had been doing using the OCLC WorldCat API she had exceed the 50,000 data limit, which was when OCLC had noticed her data collection. This prompted a conversation with Dawn Hendricks and Bruce Washburn at OCLC regarding collections analysis, the API, and tools OCLC might consider developing in the future. Sara reported to them that she was interested in holding information and that the API was the only way to get this at the moment—even though this was not its originally intended purpose. Sara also mentioned to them that MSCS had a custom report last fall and that that the MSCS libraries had contracted with SCS, who did the full analysis for the project.
Sara, Dawn, and Bruce all agreed that there needs to be an intermediate model—easier than the do-it-yourself approach that Sara is taking with the API. Sara mentioned that smaller libraries who MSCS hope will join them in them in the future will lack the resources for SCS and the technical skills for a DIY model. One service all three agreed would be useful is the ability to batch submit OCLC numbers and get back holdings in a timely manner.
Matthew asked Sara whether there was anything he or MSCS needed to follow up on. Sara responded that she had informed Dawn and Bruce that Matthew was the person they needed to discuss this further with and that it was a just a matter of waiting to see if they had any more follow-up questions.
Sara reported that her data collections analysis work was about 10 days away from being caught up with SCS.
d. Budget
i. SCS next payment due
Matthew reported that he was pleased that Project Team had been impressed with the collection summaries (see above) because, as agreed in the contract with SCS the next 50% payment was due after they delivered the collection summaries. Although the Project Team expressed surprise at this being the case (because there is still a long way to go with the project), they agreed with Matthew that it would not affect SCS’s commitment to delivering on its promises. They requested that payment should be made after SCS had delivered its revised collection summaries, which Matthew commented should be in two weeks time.
ii. Partner contributions towards SCS costs
Matthew reported that he had produced invoices for the amount MSCS partners libraries have committed towards the costs of contracting with SCS for library collections analysis services. He had sent them to Susan Clement for forwarding to the partners. Colby and Bates are the only partners being billed in the next fiscal year. All others (and non-responses) will be billed in this year. UMaine will not be sent an invoice because of their higher contribution towards costs of the WCA subscription.
Following the MSCS Directors Council on March 28th, Matthew had gone back to his revised budget to double-check that the reduction in cash contributions would not mean that MSCS were no longer meeting their agreed matching fund contributions. The rises in in-kind contributions meant that MSCS were actually committing more than originally reported to IMLS. Matthew also confirmed with Andrew Ines from UMaine ORSP that IMLS does not distinguish between cash and in-kind contributions.
e. IMLS Reporting
i. New IMLS Officer
Matthew reported that Deb had received notification from IMLS that the MSCS current IMLS Officer Chuck Thomas is leaving IMLS in early April. The new IMLS contact for MSCS will be Kathy Mitchell.
f. MOU
i. Maine InfoNet Board Bylaw Group review update
Barbara reported that the Maine InfoNet Board Bylaw Group had produced a revised Memorandum Of Understanding, which they presented to the Maine InfoNet Board. However, the Board felt that the language to describe the governance structure was still not explicit enough. Clem is going to make some further changes to the MOU, so it can be approved by the Board.
2. Conferences & Meetings
a. Reschedule May 8th Project Team meeting
Matthew reported that the next Project Team meeting currently scheduled for May 8th will need to be rescheduled and suggested moving the meeting a week later to Wednesday May 15th from 2-4 PM at Fogler. Matthew will send an email confirming with the Project Team whether that date and time works for them.
b. Advisory Board & Jeremy York visit
Matthew reported that the Advisory Board had agreed to present on the subjects Matthew had suggested to them, which were:
Bob Kieft covering issues with transitioning from using print to electronic resources, Lizanne Payne providing an update on shared print projects happening throughout the US, and Constance covering OCLC’s shared print management program particularly use of 583 and the shared print symbol.
Matthew recommended to Jeremy that he uses the questions sent to him after the Directors Council meeting as a guide for what he covers. Jeremy is also going to mention (without commenting on it) legal issues facing HathiTrust. Matthew expects that Jeremy is going to have a lot of questions from attendees.
Matthew has received permission from the Advisory Board for recording their presentations and he will check to see if Jeremy is willing to have his presentation recorded as well.
Matthew will circulate a schedule for the MSCS meetings nearer the date. Matthew confirmed for Barbara that the meetings were on Thursday May 23rd at Colby College. Matthew has coordinated with Clem the room requirements. The only item that still needed addressing was lunch for attendees and presenters and whether Colby or the grant would pay. Box lunches would be $12 per person. Matthew confirmed that the grant should pay for lunches and he will check (as Barbara suggested) that federal funds can be used to pay for food.
Arrangements need to be made for transportation from Orono to Waterville for the meetings on May 23rd. Matthew will also send out a poll nearer the time for times of a meal with the Advisory Board and Jeremy on Thursday May 23rd in Bangor.
c. Planned MSCS conference presentations
i. ALA Annual ALCTS Pre-conference, Chicago, June 27th, 2013
Matthew, Sara and Clem will speak with Rick Lugg in late May/early June regarding their subjects for the American Library Association’s (ALA) Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS) Pre-conference event. Clem will be covering “Origins of a Shared Print Project”, Matthew will be covering “Communication, Project Management & Decision-Making” and Sara will be covering “Data Wrangling for Shared Print Monographs”.
ii. 2013 IFLA Conference, Singapore, 17 – 23 August, 2013 – MSCS paper progress
Matthew reported that he had been working on the MSCS paper titled: “Together we are stronger: A cooperative approach to managing print collections” for the IFLA Conference to be held in Singapore in August, 2013. Matthew and Clem will meet after the Project Team meeting to review the latest draft version. Matthew commented that the most difficult part for him had been to keep the paper under the 3,000 word limit and he had also been adding sections based on Monday’s meeting with SCS. Clem commented that in that case he will attempt to reduce the paper’s length.
Matthew will submit the paper to IFLA before he leaves for vacation, at the latest April 22nd. This is to ensure they meet the May 1st translation deadline.
iii. NELA presentation, Portland, Monday, October 21, 2013 – Submitted session plan
Matthew reported that he had submitted his and Deb’s session plan to NELA.
3. Upcoming meetings
a. May 15, Project Team Meeting, Fogler Library
b. May 18 – 21,Timberline Conference, Mt. Hood, Portland Oregon
c. May 23, MSCS Advisory Board Visit Meetings & Presentations, Colby College, Robbins Room, Roberts Union
d. May 24, Maine InfoNet E-Collections Summit, University Maine, Wells Conference Center