Maine Shared Collections Strategy (MSCS) is the first story in the March 25th edition of the Library Journal publication Library Hotline, breaking news for library and information decision makers.
MSCS features in Library Journal Hotline
Reply
Project Updates
MSCS features in Digital Public Library of America Digest
The March 21st Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) Digest features an extract from the Library Journal article published on MSCS.
MSCS features in Collaborative Librarianship News
Those of who you who subscribe to Collaborative Librarianship News may have seen their post on successful collaboration in collections development which included a link to the Library Journal article on MSCS.
MSCS features in American Libraries ALA news
American Libraries have announced in their ALA news that MSCS representatives Matthew Revitt, Clem Guthro and Sara Amato will be presenting on June 27th in Chicago at the ALA ALCTS pre-conference event titled “Shared Print Monographs: Making It Work”.
MSCS Project Team March 13th meeting summary now available
MSCS Project Team March 13th Meeting Summary published.
Library Journal publishes article on MSCS
MSCS are delighted to report that the Library Journal have published an article about MSCS on their website.
MSCS WebWise Lightning Lunch presentation slides now avaliable
The slides are now available for the MSCS Program Manager Matthew Revitt’s Lightning Lunch presentation at the IMLS WebWise Conference in Baltimore, MD. Each presenter delivered 3 slides in 3 minutes on their project. Matthew covered MSCS objectives and current activities and he managed to do it in the time allocated!
MSCS paper accepted for IFLA 2013 Conference in Singapore
We are delighted to announce that MSCS Program Manager Matthew Revitt and PI Clem Guthro’s presentation paper “Together we are stronger: A cooperative approach to managing print collections.” has been accepted by the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Acquisitions & Collection Development Section jury. The paper will be presented at the 2013 IFLA Conference Open Session to be held in August in Singapore.
Sustainable Collections Services update on their work with MSCS
Thanks to Rick Lugg from Sustainable Collections Services (SCS) who published this interesting update concerning their work with MSCS on their website.
SCS Planning Session presentation slides now avaliable
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.
All the MSCS participants agreed that they wanted to make real progress on analyzing their collections and hoped SCS could help facilitate the process. SCS wanted to use the session as a chance to ensure that decision factors are represented in the data before we begin the analysis.
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 is the first multi-type library group SCS have worked with. SCS’s collection summaries which include an overview of the libraries’ data set have usually been in LC, but for MSCS they need to be in both LC & DDC – to allow the libraries to analyze subject strengths in the classification scheme used for their materials. There also needs to be an augmented version of the summaries to make group comparisons across both LC & DDC.
We also discussed the use of title interest rules for categories of materials which will likely be retained at group or individual library level, regardless of circulation and usage. For example: Maine, Baxter State Park.
We also agreed that SCS should at least attempt to determine the extent to which the MSCS’s combined holdings are represented in the Internet Archive (IA). This will enable MSCS to at least report back on lessons learned.
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.
