Maine Shared Collections Strategy Project Team
July 10, 2014
Fogler Library Conference Room
1:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Attendees: Clem Guthro, James Jackson Sanborn, Matthew Revitt, Deb Rollins, Sara Amato (on phone)
Absentees: Barbara McDade
1. Project Updates
a. HathiTrust/Google Books & POD
i. URSUS record move
The E-book-On-Demand/Print-On-Demand record move was discussed at last month’s URSUS Directors’ meeting. There was no opposition to the records moving to URSUS, but the directors did have a couple of caveats before they would sign off. One being that before a user goes to the POD form on the UMaine Printing and Mailing Services website they are first routed to an intermediate MaineCat page which will include links for searching in MaineCat and WorldCat for library print copies. Also, the directors did not like the use of the Google icon in the link and the word “purchase” because they felt it seemed too much like an endorsement of Google. They would like to see an example record with these changes made before the records are loaded. Sara presented an example record that took into account these requested changes
Sara confirmed for Deb that using JavaScript, Google Books links only appear when there is a copy of the title in Google Books.
Deb had some changes she wanted made to the wording of the intermediate MaineCat page, including having University of Maine be in full–not just UMaine. Also, making the language “Access via Google Books” and “Still Looking? Find a copy in a library near you using WorldCat”.
The Project Team agreed that wanted to keep the Google Books icon and also add an icon for the UMaine Bookstore. After some debate the Project Team agreed to keep the same order for links (HathiTrust, Google and then UMaine). They also agreed to remove the word purchase from the Google Books link and just make it “Access via Goggle Books”.
Once Sara makes the requested changes and they have been approved by the Project Team, James will present the record again at a future URSUS Directors’ meeting.
James confirmed that July 30th will be when URSUS migrates to Sierra, so the loading of EOD/POD records will have to be after this date (sometime in August). Sara will be available to carry out the load, but confirmed for Deb that she will produce guidance for Maine InfoNet staff to follow for any future record loads/updates required.
Sara asked the Project Team whether they wanted her to investigate having a “Search in this book” in MaineCat. James responded that he felt this would look confusing in search results. The Project Team felt there wasn’t any benefit in having a “Search in this book” in the records as the links in the record will take users directly to a view of the title which they can search in.
The Project Team agreed that Sara should not investigate further “Search in this book” functionality.
ii. Partnership with UMaine Printing Services & Bookstore
UMaine Printing Services are happy with the addition of the intermediary page in MaineCat (see above) and Matthew will share the example link with them. Printing Services have a mockup of their POD order form which they hope will be completed by the end of July.
iii. Submitting partner holdings updates
Sara has published guidance on exporting and submitting holdings information for the HathiTrust.
Sara outlined what she thinks is an easy way to locally track withdrawn/missing title which is to compare OCLC numbers submitted each year, and keep including things that are no longer in the catalog export. Sara has included a list of OCLC numbers in Dropbox folders, and will send a short script to Alisia Revitt (Maine InfoNet) that compares numbers in two files. Alternatively UMaine and Colby can devise their own internal mechanism to track these titles.
Sara confirmed for Deb that the holdings information needs to be submitted in a spreadsheet format that includes the following fields: OCLC number, Bib number, ISSN number and indicates whether a titles is a government document (optional). HathiTrust want separate spreadsheets for monographs and serials. These submissions are required annually.
Matthew confirmed for Clem that the reason why HathiTrust want data for withdrawn/missing titles is to allow the institution to have digital access to these titles under the terms of Section 108 of the Copyright Act. Therefore, it’s a local decision whether this access warrants the work involved in maintaining a list of withdrawn/missing titles.
Clem confirmed for Sara that it was still okay for her use Colby’s OCLC Connexion account to carry out the holdings work.
b. Budget
i. Budget vs. actual spending update
Matthew presented a spreadsheet with the latest spending figures for MSCS. Matthew commented that unlike previous meetings when he had only showed figures for spending that had actually hit the financial system, the spreadsheet he was presenting at today’s meeting also includes costs that he knows have been submitted or will be submitted in the next week or so, so the Project Team can have a more final figure of remaining grant funds.
In spending areas:
● $16,000 remaining to pay for Matthew’s compensation until the end of August. More might be needed for this for any vacation Matthew hasn’t taken by the time he leaves.
● $5,480 remaining for Sara’s work which is about 78 hours of work.
● $789.57 this month and last for staff attendance at MSCS meetings. That leaves $581.85 to pay for travel for remaining in-state MSCS meetings, including the wrap-up. With this meeting being catered MSCS may slightly go over this amount, but not by much.
● Matthew has been informed by UMaine Printing and Mailing Services and purchasing staff that all bills for POD have now been processed, so MSCS were only $11 over budget. Matthew commented that he found this surprising because the number of books MSCS were billed for did not match his number for POD requests received.
● For ALA conference costs:
o $2.232.55 has come out for travel claims for Deb, Matthew, Sara, James, and Barbara.
o Emily has informed Matthew that she cannot accept a stipend for being the keynote speaker, so the funds allocated for this will remain unspent.
o The room and AV equipment hire haven’t come out yet, but Matthew based the $1,395 figure included in the spreadsheet on the amount he was quoted by ALA and Freeman Audio Visual. CRL didn’t charge MSCS for the catering which he had originally budged for.
o $271.50 will come out for Matthew’s attendance at next week’s EAST meeting at UMass Amherst.
o MSCS will be under budget for out of state travel by $2,909.95.
MSCS currently have $8,875.66 remaining in unallocated funds, but with Matthew’s vacation time, F&A fees and extra costs for instate travel this amount might be reduced by a few hundred dollars. Matthew proposed that MSCS use any remaining funds to pay Sara for hours she works on top of her allocated funds, particularly for work with new members. Although Sara is going to take the end of August off there is nothing stopping MSCS paying her for work beyond this as she wiling to be on call for any issues that might arise between then and when the grant officially ends in May 2015. Clem commented that working with new members is part of what MSCS said it would do in its grant application, to ensure the project is sustainable beyond the original grant partners, so he felt Sara’s work in this area would be a good use of grant funds.
The Project Team agreed to use any remaining unspent grant funds to pay Sara Amato for her work as MSCS Systems Librarian.
ii. Funding SA work
Matthew asked James whether when MSCC hopefully get paying members, it made sense for Maine InfoNet to act as the “middle man”, so Sara would invoice MIN for hours spent working on a library’s MSCC project and then Maine InfoNet would invoice the library. The library would have already been given an estimate prior to the work. This estimate will be based on MSCS’s experiences of working with Edythe L. Dyer.
James agreed that it made sense for Maine InfoNet to be assigned the role as fiscal administrator in MSCC.
c. MSCC sustainability planning
i. Discussions with Edythe L. Dyer Community Library
Sara and Matthew met with Debbie Lozito, Director of Edythe L. Dyer Community Library last month to discuss the possibility of the Library being a test case for MSCC. Debbie was very enthusiast about being involved and was interested in seeing both withdrawal and retention candidates. Sara is going to run some data comparisons between their collection and: MSCS CTR titles, OCLC to identify where they hold something where there are 9 or fewer holding libraries in OCLC, and also identify overlap with Maine libraries in OCLC.
Once Matthew has the data, he can then work with Debbie to look at how it can be used by them and hopefully develop a retention and withdrawal criteria that MSCC can use and adapt for smaller libraries going forward. With a collection size of 20,000 volumes, limited space, and a regular weeding program, the amount of titles they will commit to retain is probably going to be small, but it would still be a good step in extending the Cooperative. Matthew will keep the Project Team updated on this work.
Matthew confirmed for Deb that MSCS would be using grant funds to cover the costs of data wrangling and collection analysis, so Edythe P. Dyer, as a test case would, not be charged a fee for this work.
One service Debbie did mention that she would find of benefit is prospective collection development, so libraries agree to be collectors in certain subject areas. Matthew asked the Project Team their thoughts on looking at this big issue as part of MSCC. James responded that he knew this was something Barbara had hoped would come out of MSCS. Clem suggested that this is something that could be discussed at the Maine InfoNet Retreat with Maine InfoNet taking the lead on this.
ii. Teaching Document – published version
Matthew has published the MSCS teaching document on the MSCS website.
iii. Policies, procedures & guidance documents
Matthew has added the Policy on Retention Commitment Changes and Procedure for the External Transfer of Retention Commitments to the MSCS website. Sara has been adding to her documentation as well.
Matthew met with Sharon Fitzgerald (UMaine) earlier this week to discuss making the MSCS website more intuitive. Based on feedback from Sharon, Matthew rearranged the links of the progress page putting project outcomes at the top, so they are the most visible. Matthew also had RainStorm change the dropdown menu so instead of just “Progress’ it is now “Progress & Project Outcomes. Although ideally the URLS for some of MSCS’s documentation pages could be shorter, changing them at this stage would not be appropriate because of the many pages and documents that already link to them. Also, most visitors will use the search functionality or bookmark the pages they want, not type in the URL. Alternatively one can simply shorten the URL using something like Google URL shortener.
iv. Appointment of MSCC committees
At the time of the meeting, Clem had not yet asked MSCC library directors to nominate members to the MSCC Collections & Operations Committee.
Note: Since the meeting Clem has sent the request to the relevant library directors.
v. MSCC working areas & data storage – SCS database
Albie Dunn (Maine InfoNet) has set up a Google account for MSCC. Matthew has added the CTR transfer candidate spreadsheet to the drive and shared it with the current MSCS groups. As soon as the MSCC Committee has been appointed he will send out an invitation for members to join a Google Group he will associate with the MSCC Google Account.
Deb commented that she has some transfer candidates that she intends to add to the spreadsheet.
Matthew asked James whether, once ownership of the MSCS DropBox account is transferred from MSCS to Maine InfoNet, they will need all five licenses. James wasn’t sure at this stage, but he could purchase extra licenses should Sara and/or Matthew need to continue to use the account. Sara commented that she doesn’t necessarily think she will still need access, as long as someone send sends her links to any files she might need in there. Deb commented that Sara might still need direct access to files for MSCC. James and Matthew agreed to monitor the situation once ownership is transferred in October.
MSCS have a text file of outputted collection data from the SCS database. The data is from the original data submission to SCS in February 2013, so it’s pre-retention commitments. Sara can create a user interface for it, but before she starts the work, Matthew asked the Project Team to consider want the data could be used for, so Sara can reflect this in the design of the database. Alternately if no uses can be identified she could take it off her ‘to do list’.
Deb suggested one possible use for the data is to look for a small study of 19th century titles as suggested by Andrews Stauffer (University of Virginia) at MSCS’s ALA event. Clem commented that the data from SCS has been superseded as it doesn’t reflect the retention commitments MSCS made, so he can’t see it having any future use. For example, if EAST wanted to ask for data comparisons with MSCS they would want to use post-commitment data which can be output from catalogs.
The Project Team agreed that although they want to retain the data and can run searchers in it, they will not require Sara to spend time creating a database for it at this time.
d. Loading & display of retention information in catalogs
i. Local Catalog
Sara presented the latest status figures for MSCS retention commitments being loaded in catalogs. All commitments have now been loaded into local catalogs.
Sara reported that Portland Public Library only committed to retaining only a small volume of serial titles and decided to record the commitment in the item rather than checkin record. So, staff will need to check OCLC for holdings information for commitments.
Now that CBB have gone live with Sierra, the display of retention commitment for series titles (from the checkin record) will be displayed in their OPAC.
ii. OCLC WorldCat
Sara reported that the only commitments still remaining to be loaded into OCLC are 100 titles from Bowdoin series (and analyzed monographs) lists. Sara submitted the batch loading request for these titles on July 5th, so these should processed soon because OCLC have been turning around the requests in 1-2 weeks.
iii. MaineCat
All commitments have now been loaded into MaineCat.
iv. PAPR
Sara has submitted to Amy Wood (CRL) holdings data for the remaining MSCS committed to retain journals and serials. Sara commented that the data will definitely need formatting before it can be loaded into the Print Archives Preservation Registry (PAPR). CRL will be able to do some of the formatting, but not all and so they may send questions back to Sara and Matthew to investigate.
Sara and Matthew will add guidance about submitting holdings information to PAPR on the MSCS website. Matthew commented that the MSCC Collections & Operations Committee will need to agree on how frequently MSCC submits holdings updates to PAPR for CTR titles. CRL would like MSCC as a program to have a regularly scheduled update (possibly annually). Matthew commented that there probably wouldn’t be too many updates on an annual basis; some libraries might just decide that they want the commitment extended to the next year of issues.
2. Conferences, Articles, Events & Meetings
a. MSCS/CRL ALA session, Las Vegas, LV, June 27, 2014 – feedback
The Project Team agreed that the MSCS session at the 2014 ALA Annual Conference went very well. Matthew thanked Clem for being able to impressively keep to his time allocations. Matthew reported that he had received a lot of positive feedback on the day and since in the survey he had sent out to attendees, with all responders describing it as excellent or good. One responder had gone as far as saying that the session was “One of the best day-long events I have ever attended as a library professional”! Many responders were pleased to hear the practical experiences of projects actually involved in shared print projects.
Clem was pleased the session had served its purpose to further the shared print conversation.
b. SCS program managers meeting – MR feedback
While at ALA, Matthew attended a meeting SCS organized for their staff and program managers from projects they have worked with: The Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA), Central Iowa-Collaborative Collection Initiative (CI-CCI), and Academic Libraries of Virginia. Attendees discussed what it took to manage to a shared print project and also a few lessons learned about how the projects could have gone about things differently both from the projects’ perspectives and SCS’s. Attendees also discussed the different uses of collection data, for example, at VIVA they used collection data to identify low circulating publishers. CI-CCI is also using the data to identify opportunities for developing a joint collection development plan.
Attendees also wanted to hear about MSCS’s experiences because the project is so different to other shared print projects. Of particular interest to attendees were MSCS’s experiences disclosing retention commitments for monographs in union and local catalogs. The CI-CCI attendee was interested in MSCS’s work around the OCLC Shared Print Symbol and has followed up this interest since the meeting.
c. National Shared Print meeting – CG feedback
While at ALA, Clem attended a meeting organized by Bob Kieft and Constance Malpas to discuss at a high level what sort of infrastructure there needs to be for shared print to be at a national scale. Also, under discussion was the role OCLC might play in this infrastructure.
d. HathiTrust Shared Print Project – CG update
Clem attended the first in-person HathiTrust Shared Print Task Force meeting while at ALA. The goal of this project is to create a print archive of corresponding physical volumes represented within HathiTrust. Matthew has since been appointed to the Task Force.
e. ARL Shared Print Program survey
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) have sent a survey to the program managers of current shared print projects with questions about project details such as: participant details, volumes of retention commitments, storage and loan rules, terms of retention agreements, business model details, MOUs and disclosing retention decisions. Matthew has submitted his response last month and will follow up with links to MSCS procedures once they are complete.
f. MSCS wrap-up meeting – agree on content & presenters
Matthew intends to produce a project feedback survey next week and send it out to MSCS participants. The results might influence the content of the wrap-up day, but will definitely be of use in MSCS’s final IMLS reports.
The goal of the wrap-up meeting will be to bring together all the different activities of the project to show participants the full picture of what the project did and achieved, rather than just the individual parts they might have worked on.
Matthew was thinking of taking the project goals and activities and coming up with subject areas for discussion. Using the grant proposal as his guide he thought the overarching subject areas could be:
● Collection and use analysis
● Retention and preservation of legacy print collections
● POD and EOD service delivery
● Documenting the project
● Project management
● Impact on library community
● Sustainable business model
For each subject, different MSCS representatives will briefly discuss what MSCS set out to achieve and then describe the results. Then the other project participants will be given plenty of time to debate lessons learned, etc.
Matthew will circulate to the Project Team ideas for subject breakdowns and possible speakers.
g. Against The Grain article
Matthew has submitted to Bob Kieft the article he asked Matthew to write for Against the Grain. Bob submitted it to the editors and so far Matthew hasn’t heard they want any changes made, so it should be all set for publication in the September issue, which will be Bob’s first column as editor of “Curating Collective Collections”.
h. MLA to Z article
Matthew has written a short article on MSCS for the Maine Library Association’s publication MLA to Z. Matthew has used the MSCS event at ALA to lead into a more general description of project achievements and a chance to promote MSCS and make it known that the project wants to attract new members. The deadline for the article is Friday July 11th.
i. ALCTS Monographs Series shared print chapter to feat. MSCS
The ALCTS Monograph Series Editorial Board met at ALA to discuss the monograph on shared print which Matthew has been asked to contribute to, so he is just waiting to hear what they want for content. Dawn Hale who asked Matthew to contribute to the publication was at MSCS’s ALA session and commented what an interesting session it had been and thanked MSCS for organizing the event.
Matthew confirmed for Deb that the monograph won’t be pushed until sometime next year.
j. EAST Project – MR & CG updates
Matthew, Clem and Marjorie Hassen (Bowdoin College) will be attending the EAST meeting on July 17th at UMass Amherst. The meeting is for libraries interested in becoming members of the group to discuss the plans the working groups developed. Clem was not sure if any other MSCS libraries were going to send representatives to the meeting. Matthew commented that David Nutty (University of Southern Maine) was unable to attend, but he had asked Mathew to send him a summary of the event.
3. Upcoming meetings
a. August 7, MSCS Project Wrap-Up Meeting, Colby College, Diamond Building Room 145
Clem will investigate the seating layout in the room and report back to Matthew.
b. August 13, Project Team Meeting, Fogler Library conference room