Presentation slides from the MSCS Advisory Board (Bob Kieft, Constance Malpas & Lizanne Payne) and visitor Jeremy York (HathiTrust) are now available. The presentations were delivered during the May 23, 2013 Advisory Board Visit to Maine. The Board met with MSCS representatives and commented on project progress (Colby College, Waterville, ME).

On Friday, February 15th, 2013 the MSCS Project Team, Collections Development Committee, and Technical Services Committee met with Rick Lugg and Andy Breeding from Sustainable Collection Service (SCS) at Colby College. The meeting was used as a chance to review project objectives, learn more about SCS, and to discuss data extracts, mappings, anomalies, define peers, and title protection rules.

Bates College and Portland Public Library representatives reported that they are currently in the process of weeding material. Also, Colby College are transferring some items to off-site storage. Rick felt that because wedding and transfers only affect a relatively small percentage of items – it would not have a major impact on our ability to analyze the collections. However, Rick requested that partner libraries keep SCS updated on plans to move materials.

MSCS participants agreed that we should analyze the subjects of items to identify partner library subject strengths. Although it is not grant objective, we do expect that, based on library subject strengths identified during the collection analysis, a relatively small number of titles will be transferred to other MSCS participating libraries. Clem used the following example of where subject might be used:  Bates College might have a Italian language class on its curriculum, whilst Colby College Library does not and has not for the last 20 years – but they do have titles on this subject which have not circulated in the last 10 years. In this case the items could be transferred to Bates College, with patrons of Colby College Library still able to access the items through the robust Maine Interlibrary Loan system.

MSCS participants agreed that it is not in the interest of the grant to have SCS provide us with aggregate peer comparison with peer libraries/groups.

Discussions also ensued regarding whether circulation data could be used to guesstimate the condition of items. For example, would a copy that has circulated 10 times be in better physical condition than an item which had only circulated 2 times? Would we prefer to retain the copy in better physical condition, or the one which has circulated more? The difficulty with this is the scale of items MSCS is concerned with as we could not check on the condition of millions of items! Sarah Campbell from Portland Public Library reported that public library’s fiction circulation rates are high which leaves items in poor physical condition. Sarah requested that if the academic libraries decide to weed fiction on account of another MSCS library’s commitment to retain the item that they consider transferring the item to Portland.

SCS need the data questionnaires returned to them by Friday, February 22nd and a final set of local interest rules by March 15th, in order to apply those in the MSCS “roll-up” that in turn will enable production of a Collection Summary by March 31st. The Project Team and Collections Development Committee will meet again with SCS in early April to use the data to develop preliminary retention, preservation, & withdrawal criteria.

The meeting went very well and it was widely agreed that SCS can help MSCS make real progress on analyzing their print collections. Presentation slides from Matthew, Rick and Andy are now available.