Maine Shared Collections Strategy Wrap-up Meeting Summary

August 7, 2014

Colby College, Diamond Building, Room 145

10:00 AM – 1:00 PM

Attendees: Clem Guthro, James Jackson Sanborn, Matthew Revitt, Deb Rollins, Sara Amato (on phone), Joan Campbell, Becky Albitz, Peggy O’Kane, Lanny Lumbert, Brian Damien, Patrick Layne, Sarah Campbell, Sharon Fitzgerald, Mary Saunders, Marjorie Hassen, Steve Podgajny, Linda Oliver, Alisia Revitt, Jessica Thomas, Mary Macul, Judy Montgomery, Gene Wiemers, Linda Lord

Absentees: Sharon Saunders, Joyce Rumery, Karl Fattig, David Nutty, Kathleen Spahn

1.    Introduction

Goals of meeting: Matthew Revitt

Matthew had attendees play a game where they had to guess what the numbers he displayed quantified in relation to MSCS.

The primary goal of the meeting was to celebrate the achievements of the project and the end of three plus years of work on MSCS. The subjects in the agenda were activities that MSCS agreed it would carry out in its IMLS grant proposal. Matthew hoped that those participants who only worked on individual parts of the project would find it useful to see the full picture of what the project did and achieved. But, instead of having formal presentations on the subjects with descriptions of what MSCS did step-by-step, the meeting was structured to be more conversational, looking at the successes, failures, and the usefulness of the activity for the libraries going forward. Each subject had assigned individuals who facilitated discussions on it. The resulting conversations would be valuable both for reporting to IMLS and shaping future projects.

2.    Origins of MSCS

How did it all start?: Clem Guthro

Clem went over the origins of MSCS from a hallway conversation at the 2009 Maine Library Association’s Annual Conference to a grant proposal submitted to IMLS in 2010.

Clem and Marilyn Lutz (UMaine) only had a small window of time in which to submit the grant application to IMLS. Clem felt that any delays in submission could have resulted in another shared print project securing the funding. Clem reiterated how important grant funding had been to the success of the project, particularly as it had allowed MSCS to fund the roles of program manager and systems librarian.

Clem went over the goals of the project which were:

o    Create a collection analysis system to analyze collections (a goal that MSCS fairly early on in the project decided was not going to be feasible and Clem commented that thankfully MSCS made the decision to contract with SCS.)
o    Develop a strategy to make retention decisions at scale.
o    Examine the presence of large scale digital collections (HathiTrust and Internet Archive) as a determiner of what to commit to retain in print.
o    Integrate Print-On-Demand and E-book-On-Demand for large scale digital collections.
o    Expose MSCS retention decisions to the world and to Maine libraries.

3.    Collection and use analysis

The saga of the OCLC reclamation: Sara Amato and Sharon Fitzgerald

Sara presented the results of the reclamation which MSCS partner libraries conducted from November 2011 to early 2012 to reconcile holdings in the local catalogs with OCLC, using OCLC’s Batchload Services which included updating over 250,000 OCLC numbers (see here).

Note: Portland Public Library had gone through a recent reclamation at the time of the MSCS project, so didn’t take part.

Sharon commented that although the reclamation was definitely a saga, taking a lot longer to complete than envisaged, it was a long overdue process that the libraries needed to go through in order to clean their records. The process surfaced some long-term cataloging anomalies.

At UMaine, the benefits of the reclamation went beyond MSCS. As holdings information for titles was updated some interesting titles became more discoverable. For Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin (CBB) it was very useful to go through reclamation prior to the implementation of their merged catalog.

Attendees agreed that the reclamation was necessary to accurately compare collection data and that it was the first example of doing the work required at scale. Clem commented that although SCS validates, transforms, and normalizes collection data prior to the analysis; they don’t clean the data in the system, so you are still left with the same problems in the catalogs. Matthew commented that the data clean-up was also needed when it came time to disclose retention commitments in catalogs as the data matching points used for adding commitments were corrected in the reclamation.

Clem observed that although OCLC does not charge a fee for the reclamation, the process required significant staff time on the part of MSCS libraries.

Matthew asked whether anyone felt the reclamation should have been conducted prior to the grant to avoid the delays seen in years one and two of the project. Deb responded that she felt that the grant was the catalyst for the reclamation and that without it, the libraries might have been less willing to undertake the work. Attendees agreed that waiting until the grant period to carry out the reclamation was a good thing because it meant participants knew what work was required and grant funds could be used to employ Sara (as systems librarian) to coordinate the process to ensure it was carried out in a consistent manner across all the partner libraries.

The tale of two collection analysis vendors: Deb Rollins

Deb outlined a pattern of persistent communications from Sustainable Collection Services (SCS) going back to a month after MSCS was first formed in November 2010. However, because at that stage SCS’s product was still in development and MSCS libraries had an existing relationship with OCLC and had received promises from them regarding the future development of their analytics tool, MSCS made the decision after a year of the project (November 2011) to subscribe as a group to OCLC WorldCat Collection Analysis. MSCS also had to pay OCLC (on top of the subscription to WCA) for a circulation report. At the time, WCA seemed to be MSCS’s only option, however, it quickly became apparent the product had many shortcomings and could not be used to meet MSCS goals.

In March 2012, MSCS spoke with OCLC regarding the possibility helping them with development of a next-gen analytics product and to work with a program called “User-Driven Accelerated Development” (UDAD). The goal of the program is to provide a mechanism for allowing library-requested development, either to the core product or for “custom” applications. Although this work never took off, it did help MSCS come up with a good list of deliverables. Throughout 2012 MSCS continued to communicate with OCLC regarding the development of their analytics tool and MSCS kept being told it would meet the project’s needs once it was released.

SCS had remained in contact with MSCS and had asked representatives from the project to speak at a shared print pre-conference event they were organizing at the 2012 Charleston Conference; it was at this conference that MSCS representatives first met in-person to discuss the possibility of contracting with them to deliver collection analysis services. Later that month (November 2012) SCS submitted a draft proposal to MSCS and Matthew informed OCLC that MSCS didn’t want to renew its subscription to WCA. After a couple months of negotiations MSCS and SCS signed an agreement to work together in February 2013 and soon after, the Collection Development and Technical Services Committees met with SCS representatives for the first of many meetings. Deb commented that the sole source document UMaine had required MSCS to submit for SCS had been easy to complete because they were able to document the issues MSCS had with WCA, which helped show why SCS were the sole option.

Matthew commented that MSCS were not the only project to experience issues with WCA which is why OCLC had offered a number of projects a refund for their subscription. Group functionality for OCLC’s new analytics tool Collection Evaluation was still not available and Matthew had not heard from OCLC in over six months regarding MSCS’s deferred access to the tool.

Barbara commented that when the project started she had envisaged that MSCS would use subject strengths to assign retention responsibilities and develop collection building opportunities. Matthew responded that MSCS had subject data which could be looked at post-grant, but SCS had reported that adding subject strengths to an already complicated set of retention rules would not have been feasible. Also, collection building responsibilities had been assigned to the Maine State Library for Maine related material and Portland Public for fiction and poetry.

Gene and Clem both commented that MSCS set out with the intention of developing a strategy for managing legacy print collections; instead the partners had actually agreed upon retention commitments and finished the work.

Attendees agreed that at times SCS’s focus on identifying withdrawal candidates had not met MSCS’s needs, but that overall the experience of working with them had been very positive The consensus was that SCS had also benefited from working with MSCS as they can now say they have worked with public libraries and provide services (e.g. comparisons with the Internet Archive) which before MSCS they had not offered.

4.    Retention and preservation of legacy print collections

Developing retention criteria and assigning retention responsibilities: Joan Campbell and Brian Damien

Joan and Brian presented the final figures for MSCS retention commitments and the total numbers and percentage of titles that were included in the MSCS monograph collection analysis that were subsequently committed to retain by MSCS libraries (see here).

Deb felt that in hindsight, the one-circulation rule MSCS used for retention of many titles was perhaps too conservative, as many titles that libraries would have otherwise weeded had been assigned commitments. Deb felt that MSCS should have looked at the bigger picture, more of what a retention commitment means in practical terms i.e. more than just committing to retain a title libraries were also committing to replace it. Attendees agreed that the policies and procedures for making retention commitment reversals helps give libraries the flexibility to make local collection maintenance decisions.

Sarah wondered whether the threshold for retention should have been influenced by the inclusion of public libraries because while one circulation may be enough at academic libraries, the same can’t be said of publics, so perhaps the number of publics involved should dictate how many uses something has before it is committed to retain.

Lanny commented that including in-house stats towards usage at USM had meant that some titles were retained solely on the basis of one in-house use, which was a low bar.

Steve felt that the rules MSCS had developed as part of the project were only a starting place and in five years MSCC will come back to review decisions including looking at circulation rates since the commitments were made. Brian suggested that a sampling of what was retained could be included in the review.

Attendees expressed their thanks to CBB, and particularly Colby, for agreeing to a higher proportion of commitments for step two titles (those held by three or more MSCS libraries).

Steve believes that as more public libraries join MSCC, retention requirements for the original MSCS partners may be affected going forward. He noted that MSCS had laid the foundations for good future collection-building opportunities in the future, with the Area Reference and Resource Center (ARRC) libraries taking the lead.

Brian felt that MSCS committee members should have done a better job at communicating with their local staff and the wider library community in Maine what a retention commitment means in practical terms and what the formula was for the agreements. Sarah commented on how quickly patrons had noticed the “MSCC” retention note in catalogs.

Matthew showed how the “MSCC” statement in catalogs links to an explanation of what the commitment means. The note will hopefully ensure other libraries and patrons understand what the retention commitment means (see here). Matthew will add his contact information to the web page for visitors who want to find more information about MSCC, including the process for joining the Cooperative.

Attendees agreed that removing the works of specific publishers from the retention lists had made important inroads on removing materials that didn’t warrant a retention commitment.

Continuing to store committed to retain titles: Barbara McDade and Lanny Lumbert

Barbara and Lanny went over the distributed storage model that MSCS had chosen to implement. Attendees agreed that retention responsibility had been allocated equitably across the group.

Matthew asked whether a centralized storage model would have helped to alleviate local space issues. Lanny responded that one of the goals of MSCS was to ensure committed to retain items were still accessible to patrons, which he felt couldn’t be guaranteed with a central storage facility. Linda L. commented that going forward, having a centralized storage facility would be important for smaller libraries because of their space concerns. However, attendees agreed that for the MSCS partners there was no political will for a centralized facility and they also had concerns about the logistics of establishing such a facility.

Attendees agreed that the 15 year retention period is still appropriate. Steve commented that 15 years signified a serious commitment from institutions, rather than having open ended commitments.

Linda O. commented that as MSCS starts to look at titles published post-2003 it will need to consider the large numbers of self-published titles added to collections since then and whether different retention rules, including higher circulation thresholds should be considered for these titles.

Preserving rare titles: Peggy O’Kane and Patrick Layne

Peggy and Patrick presented the results of their work on using MSCS retention lists to preserve rare titles.

At the Maine State Library (MSL), Peggy had used MSCS data on rare items with circulating copies to identify items that need to be moved to closed stacks. Peggy provided the example of community or local interest cookbooks which MSL does not systematically collect, but has approximately 75 such titles acquired through donation and purchase. All of them have been in MSL’s open stacks. Even single copy titles were available for circulation. Examining them against the information supplied by MSCS has resulted in the majority of them now residing in closed stacks. In contrast, despite their rare status, most items which are of specific interest to genealogists,  including town and family histories, remain in open stacks. These items are used frequently by researchers who bypass the catalog and go immediately to the relevant call number ranges.

In terms of digitization, MSL has recently purchased a KIC Bookeye scanner which has been used to carry out some back scanning. They also have a digital repository based on the bepress Digital Commons software. Given the age and historic significance of so much of MSL’s collection, setting priorities as to what to digitize first has been a challenge. The lists provided by the MSCS project allowed them to identify Maine material that is not digitized in HathiTrust and also is not widely held compared to WorldCat holdings. With this data individual items have been selected to be digitized.

Peggy reported on the exciting news that the MSL had been approved as a digital hub for the Digital Public Library of America.

Patrick highlighted the work he had carried out at Bangor Public Library (BPL). Using a list of 811 titles that were not available in the HathiTrust and were published before 1930, he assigned the items to one of  three categories:

o    Items still under copyright (based on date or Stanford Copyright Renewal Database).
o    Items that Patrick digitized because he felt they were “cool” titles. Digital copies of these titles have and either already been added to Bangor Public Library Digital Commons or are slated for future addition.
o    Items that are a low priority for digitization by Bangor Public Library.

Patrick showed some interesting examples of titles added to BPL’s Digital Commons and how in some cases their availability there had resulted in increased usage rates. For example, one title that had zero circulation for the physical copy had received 129 views in Digital Commons.

Peggy discussed the importance of not duplicating digitization efforts; for example, she had looked at the Maine HathiTrust collection to identify what was already available there. Deb commented that there are some Maine items in the HathiTrust which are missing from this collection, so it would be wise to search the entire HathiTrust database when looking to see if an item has already been digitized.

Deb discussed the possibility of Maine libraries offering a Digitize-On-Demand patron-initiated service for public domain materials, rather than just having librarians identifying interesting items to digitize.

Documenting and disclosing retention commitments: Sara Amato and Jessica Thomas

Sara presented her guidance for applying Committed To Retain (CTR) statements in library catalogs (see here).

Jessica and Sharon both reported that the process of adding retention commitments had resulted in them identifying holding records that needed to be cleaned.

Attendees were surprised how soon they had received queries from both staff and patrons regarding “MSCC” appearing in the catalog.

Sara reported on the excellent news that all retention commitments have now been loaded into OCLC. Matthew reported that he and Sara had been contacted by other shared print projects that were also opposed to paying the ILL fee for using the OCLC Shared Print Symbol in ILLiad and wanted to know how MSCS went about adding two symbols on holding records. Matthew felt that if more projects go the same route as MSCS, it might result in OCLC developing a more acceptable solution. Sharon reported that based on her experiences of working in OCLC there now appears to be better connectivity between the regular symbol and the shared print symbol. Deb warned the other libraries that it appears from the recent OCLC holding counts she saw for UMaine, OCLC is, as expected, now including holding counts for a library’s shared print symbol in addition to counts for other, regular symbols, which means library holdings have (falsely) seemed to jump by large amounts.

MSCS are still waiting to see Innovative’s long-term solution for the display of retention information in MaineCat, which should be in their July beta release of Inn-Reach. Understandably, with the URSUS migration to Sierra underway, James turned down the opportunity to be one of the beta projects for testing the display.

Matthew presented guidance on the MSCS website for submitting holding updates to the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) for the Print Archives Preservation Registry (PAPR) (see here).

5.    POD and EOD service delivery

Accessing on-demand titles: Clem Guthro and Matthew Revitt

One of the goals of MSCS was to expand access to existing digital book collections by developing Print-On-Demand (POD) and E-book-On-Demand (EOD) services to complement the physical delivery services already in Maine. The original intention was that MSCS would purchase an Espresso Book Machine which would be housed at Colby College. To go alongside this there would be a cost model for the service including for subscription-based digital titles. However, because of high costs and low usage at other institutions, MSCS decided to go a different route.

Investigations into POD delivery and subsequent delays in joining the HathiTrust meant that MSCS were behind schedule for this activity. Matthew felt that if MSCS had carried out the testing in year 2 of the grant, as originally intended, then perhaps the POD service would be back online now; instead he is still working with the UMaine Bookstore and Printing and Mailing Services on delivery, so although the records with the links loaded have been loaded, MSCS still have some unfinished business here.

Matthew wondered whether having an Espresso Book Machine installed at Colby, complete with a digital database of titles might have affected the impact and use of the POD service. Attendees felt that unless the price of printing books had been significantly cheaper it would not have made a difference. Clem discussed how those institutions with installations had seen low usage rates, but high maintenance costs. Linda L. commented that it would be interesting to hear the experiences of the Portland branch of Books A Million (BAM) who have installed a POD machine. Attendees agreed that the main use of POD machines appears to be for self-publishing.

Matthew wondered whether having additional titles available (i.e. not just from Google and HathiTrust) for POD would have affected usage. Sara responded that her investigations looking at titles available from the Espresso Book Machine had shown that the records from Espresso were not in MARC format which would have made it difficult to load them into library catalogs.

Matthew reported that the feedback he received from individual POD requesters was positive, but they account for only a tiny percentage of library patrons in Maine. Matthew wondered whether the POD and EOD services had benefited Maine libraries and their patrons. Attendees agreed that for a small percentage of library users the service would be great appreciated, but that it would interesting to see how the introduction of fees will affect request rates. Peggy felt for rare titles, rather than have patrons handle the original, a POD copy could be created.

Attendees agreed that it will be difficult for the MaineCat POD service to compete with commercial vendors such as Amazon, both in terms of price and the user experience in ordering books. Matthew confirmed for Sarah that, based on current estimates from UMaine Printing Services, a small book (1-150 pages) will be $29.99 plus tax, medium (151–300 pages) will be $34.99 plus tax, and large books (301-500 pages) will be $39.99 plus tax. Books over 500 pages will be variable. Matthew commented that both the UMaine Bookstore and Printing and Mailing Services understand that POD is about providing a service rather than profiting financially.

Matthew reported that based on the MSCS project evaluation survey results, it appeared that POD and EOD had the least impact on MSCS libraries; Matthew asked attendees why they thought this was. Deb responded that it was hard to quantify how much usage the services had seen at UMaine, but based on statistics that Matthew had previously presented, users were accessing the electronic copies more than they were requesting POD copies.

Steve commented that he couldn’t see the harm in continuing to have the POD and EOD records in the catalogs for those patrons who want to use the services. James responded it would be good to review the use of the services periodically, as there may be costs for Maine InfoNet staff time spent on reloading records and ensuring links are working correctly.

Matthew asked attendees who had sat on the MSCS Collection Development Committee whether, now that two MSCS libraries are HathiTrust partners and they have seen the EOD and POD services in action, they would still want to make commitments to public domain titles that are available in the HathiTrust. Sarah responded that because users will have to pay for POD copies, Portland Public would still want to keep hard copies. Peggy commented that currently the majority of users still want access to print copies, even if electronic versions are available, so they would also still want to keep a print copy. The overlap between HathiTrust public domain titles and MSCC libraries holdings was also so small (6%) that the number of titles (175,123) involved would not have made a significant difference to the overall level of commitments made. Matthew commented that it was also interesting to see that in forming their Shared Print Monograph Task Force, HathiTrust were concerned with ensuring there are print equivalents of digital copies still available. Matthew confirmed for Sarah that POD requests will be restricted to Maine residents only.

Matthew asked UMaine and Colby representatives whether their institutions had benefited from becoming HathiTrust partners. Deb and Clem both responded that it was hard to tell at this stage what the benefits have been; some librarians had reported on their own and faculty usage, but neither Deb nor Clem had looked at usage statistics yet. Matthew commented that he knew that staff at Fogler Library’s Special Collections had been making staff aware of the Maine HathiTrust collection. Clem commented that for Colby, which is relatively geographically isolated, it’s important to be able to show prospective students and faculty they can access a wide range of material at Colby, including from the HathiTrust.

Attendees hoped the loading of EOD and POD records into URSUS (for contribution to MaineCat instead of SOLAR as the source) will increase discoverability of the titles. Peggy reported that there are going to be discussions around adding the Maine HathiTrust to the list of resources in the Maine Virtual Library, Marvel.

6.    Project management

Managing project operations: Matthew Revitt and Deb Rollins

These discussions centered around attendee’s opinions on how they felt the MSCS project was managed.

Joan commented that at least for early project meetings it was helpful to revisit grant documents to get a better understanding of the project goals. MSCS benefited from Matthew’s organization which meant the project was kept on track. Clem commented that the goals and committee charges might not have been as fully explained as they could have been because, other than the broad goals in the grant proposal, the Project Team were not sure what direction the project would take. It was only when MSCS started to have data to actually analyze that the direction became clearer.

Attendees agreed that MSCS benefited from the following: a familiarity and existing working relationships among the participating libraries, a shared infrastructure (MaineCat), and the same ILS, which meant, for example, that circulation records were comparable across institutions.

Attendees felt they wouldn’t have changed anything in the project timeline. Though the reclamation work had not been planned for, it was helpful to have it take place within the grant period because it meant Sara could coordinate the process.

The directors felt that MSCS had provided value for money, both the direct costs to pay OCLC and SCS, and indirect costs of staff time. Working with SCS had meant that MSCS had been able to exceed project expectations. MSCS was a good starting place for further collobation between the partner libraries.

Clem commented that as a result of MSCS, Maine libraries had built up a huge reputation at a national level. For example, large academic institutions are actually coming to MSCS for advice on shared print.

Sarah asked what value the Advisory Board had provided for MSCS. Matthew responded that for him the most important impact they had made was the fact that they had raised the profile of MSCS by using it as an example whenever they discussed the subject of shared print. Clem commented that Lizanne had been very helpful in the development of the MSCC Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU). Sara had also worked closely with both Lizanne and Constance on the display of shared print retention commitments, particularly in OCLC. Matthew commented that Bob had produced helpful feedback on update reports and for the teaching document and had also provided Matthew the opportunity to write an article for Against the Grain. Clem confirmed for Sarah that the Advisory Board member’s selection was based on their credentials as experts on the subject of shared print.

Attendees agreed that they had felt sufficiently updated on the progress of the project. Deb commented that it was reassuring to know that project documentation was accessible on the MSCS website should she need to refer back to it. The consensus was that participants had been given sufficient information on the bigger picture of the project activities, not just their own parts of it.

Attendees agreed that the first meeting with SCS in February 2012 had kick-started the project after the delays experienced with the reclamation and with WCA. That meeting had been the first time the Collection Development Committee had met in a while. Peggy commented that until MSCS had started working with SCS, the Collection Development Committee had met too often without having anything new discuss, as they didn’t have data to look at. Clem commented that he was pleased that most MSCS meetings had been in-person because he felt they worked better than virtual meeting. Although the Technical Services Committee had fewer in-person meetings than the other MSCS committees, they still felt sufficiently updated on the project and liked the email updates that Matthew and Sara sent out. Attendees agreed that they appreciated the chance to review documents prior to meetings.

The attendees’ advice to other libraries considering carrying out similar work would be: clean up data prior to analysis, hire a program manager and systems librarian; and have pre-existing working relationships among partner libraries, if possible.

7.    Impact on library community

MSCS as an example to other projects: Matthew Revitt

One of the outcomes MSCS will be evaluated on is the impact the project has had on the library community; including projects that have built upon MSCS work, libraries that want to join the project, website hits, number of presentations delivered, and feedback.

Matthew had received a lot of inquires about MSCS from those involved in similar efforts, and from publications like the Library Journal that have found the project interesting enough to publish articles on it. The number of presentations MSCS representatives have been asked to deliver on the project is further evidence of interest. Matthew felt that MSCS had done a good job of promoting the work of the project; evidence of this is the approximately 10,000 sessions on the MSCS website, the 10,000 views of MSCS presentations on SlideShare, and MSCS’s 258 followers on Twitter.

Attendees agreed that MSCS had made a big impact on the library community. Matthew wondered whether MSCS had made more of an impact at the national level than locally. Attendees felt that once MSCC has a process in place (including requirements) for recruiting new members, it can make more of impact locally as libraries realize they can join the effort. Presenting at events like the Maine Library Association’s Annual Conference will also help promote MSCC to other libraries. Clem commented that MSCC could be included as part of the Maine InfoNet package of services. Barbara felt having the ARRC libraries being involved and identified as collection builders would be areas MSCC needs to work on to attract new members.

8.    Sustainable business model

Looking to the future of MSCC: Matthew Revitt and Clem Guthro

Matthew gave an update on plans for MSCC:

MSCC governance structure

The board of directors for the Cooperative has been appointed with Clem as Chair, Linda L, Barbara, David, and Joyce representing the different library constituencies. Clem has sent a request around asking MSCC library directors to nominate a staff member to serve on the MSCC Collections & Operations Committee.

MSCC staffing

There are a few thousand dollars of grant funds left to pay Sara for any additional work that may be needed between now and May 2015 when the grant funds officially end. Sara has agreed to be on call for this work and any work with new members on extracting and cleaning data for analysis. Sara will remain contactable via email.

Matthew was pleased to be able to report that he had signed his acceptance letter on Tuesday to start a new position at UMaine in September that will include managing MSCC as part of its responsibilities.

Documentation

One of the activities that MSCS’s sustainability will be measured on is having project documentation on its website that other libraries can learn from. Matthew commented that MSCS has gone above and beyond meeting this goal with the volume of documentation on the site. He showed how the MSCS website now includes a number of policies and procedures both for other projects to learn from and for staff at MSCC libraries to follow (see here).

Attracting new libraries

Debbie Lozito, the director of Edythe. L. Dyer Community Library in Hampden, has agreed to partner with MSCC and use her library as a test case to show how MSCC can benefit other libraries in Maine. Debbie and Matthew will be presenting their findings at the Maine InfoNet Collection Summit in October.

Debbie was interested in working with MSCC to identify items in her collection that she can safely withdraw and also for opportunities to work with the ARRC libraries on collection building and prospective collection development opportunities.

Matthew reported that at Edythe L. Dyer, approximately a quarter (5,000) of their print monograph collection (20,000) had a MSCC retention commitment. Debbie is currently analyzing the data to see what additional factors should be considered for withdrawing items.

From MSCC’s standpoint, Matthew also wanted to work with Debbie to identify titles that the library will commit to retain as part of the collaborative approach to managing print collections. Matthew and Debbie have looked at what is rare in the collection and 87 titles have been identified with no OCLC frbr holdings in Maine and only one other MaineCat holding. There are some caveats to the data (like some titles having multiple MaineCat records), but it’s such a small list that title-by-title reviews are possible. There are also possible retention candidates from a list of approximate 60 titles that there are Under 10 OCLC holdings for in the US. Debbie is currently reviewing this data, and Matthew will be meeting with her to discuss the findings next week.

Matthew commented that working with Edythe Dyer has shown that another service MSCC can provide is cleaning and correcting MARC records. Alisia discussed the possibility of Minerva libraries coming into MSCC in small groups for data cleaning and collection analysis, which would further reduce the costs for libraries.

Attendees felt the $350 it would have cost Edythe Dyer for Sara’s work on compiling the data reports for analysis was good value for money. Sara confirmed that even working with larger collections, the costs for her time shouldn’t be much higher; the only complication being the 50,000 record limit that OCLC sets for using their API. Matthew commented that on top of this will be the costs libraries will be expected to absorb themselves for staff time spent reviewing data reports. The University of Maine will be covering the costs of Matthew’s time working with the libraries, so the only costs will be for Sara’s work. Alisia commented that costs might be higher for those libraries whose records were not as clean. Alisia also felt it might make sense for MSCC to have contingency funds which will be generated from the collection analysis fees.

Debbie commented that there will be some smaller libraries that couldn’t afford $350 as this might be their annual book budget; also many of these libraries would not have the storage space to commit to retain items for 15 years. Matthew responded that MSCC will likely have to accept that will always be some libraries who could not afford to join MSCC, but there are enough public libraries that are the same size as or larger than Edythe Dyer, along with academic institutions (e.g. other parts of the UMaine system), that can join. Matthew commented that it was clear from the results of the statewide cooperative collection management survey that some libraries don’t have the resources to join MSCC. It will be also difficult for libraries that don’t use Innovative systems to join because the structure of their records will make it difficult to extract and analyze.

Matthew will add information on the MSCS website for libraries interested in joining MSCC.

Sustaining MSCC

Attendees discussed whether, having made the agreed-upon retention commitments and establishing a governance structure described in the MOU, MSCS had achieved sustainability. Or, whether MSCS could only be considered truly sustainable with the addition of new member libraries. Attendees felt that although MSCS had made important steps towards sustainability, it still needed to attract new members. Attendees discussed the next round of collection analysis which is projected to be in five years’ time; the founding members of MSCC may be joined in this analysis by newer members, so there is a more of critical mass of collections being analyzed.

Matthew discussed how the business model for MSCC is very simple, with new members only required to pay the upfront costs of compiling the collection data required for analysis, so there will be no ongoing membership fees to support MSCC. Attendees agreed that it was not appropriate to ask for membership fees when it was unclear what ongoing services members would get in return, and also that MSCC is  much more likely to attract new members when the only costs are for data wrangling services.

Matthew commented that although no one could fault MSCS for contracting with SCS as the results speak for themselves, whether a more sustainable option might have been to start earlier in the project working with Sara on an in-house solution that MSCS could use in future analysis. Attendees felt that the participants didn’t know enough about what was required for collection analysis to do the work themselves; MSCS needed SCS’s experience of working with similar projects, and it’s only now, albeit at a much smaller scale, that in-house work collection analysis work is possible.

Attendees reported that although the libraries have made significant storage commitments, they will also be able over time to make cost savings by weeding and freeing up storage space for items that other MSCS libraries have committed to retain them. Those MSCS libraries currently weeding reported that the commitments had saved them time in the process as they knew a “MSCC” in the record meant they had to retain a least one copy.

Matthew asked attendees whether there were other things they had hoped to get out of MSCS that they didn’t. Judy responded that she wished MSCS had been able to join the HathiTrust as a collaborative. Deb responded that she would have liked MSCC to look at Digitization-On-Demand. Barbara would have liked to have come away with a plan for prospective collection development based on subject strengths. Matthew commented that MSCS still have data on subject strengths from SCS that could be used in the future. Joan warned that when CBB were developing its shared collection development plan they had attempted to use subject strengths to allocate purchasing responsibilities, but this had proven too difficult.

Steve commented that MSCS had been good for starting conversations between the partners and through MSCC there will be an ongoing forum for these conversations.

Matthew closed by thanking everyone for their work on MSCS over the last three plus years of the project.