Maine Shared Collections Cooperative Executive Committee
May 3, 2024
9:00 am – 10:00 am
Attendees: Zach Newell, Daisy Singh, Kevin Smith, Ben Treat, Matthew Revitt
Absent: Lori Fisher
1. Approve MSCC program assessment report & next steps
Prior to the meeting Matthew had shared with the Executive Committee (EC) a report on the Program Assessment & Planning Survey. Daisy was part way through reviewing the report and will get back to Matthew with her feedback and edits. Ben had read the report and thought it did a good job summarizing the results of the survey. Kevin had struggled with the report as it appeared to go in different directions. It was unclear to Kevin the extent to which MSCC’s mission is around preservation or ensuring materials are available to use (access versus preservation). Kevin hadn’t seen this conflict in other shared print programs he’d been involved with. Matthew responded that MSCC’s commitments expire ahead of some other shared print program, so discussions around removing commitments are happening in Maine first. Additionally EAST had begun to hear from some of its members about categories of material they would like to remove commitments on.
Ben commented on some survey respondents indicating an unwillingness to retain low use fiction despite the possibility of this sort of material becoming a priority again as trends change. Ben went on that one of the issues MSCC has faced is on communications and messages and that libraries had interpreted policies such as replacing lost or damaged MSCC items in different ways.
The EC discussed how the mixture of academic and public libraries effects MSCC’s retention policy, especially when compared to other shared print programs, like EAST, that only include academic libraries. While there could be scholarly reasons for keeping, for example, some cookbooks asking public libraries to retain material such as celebratory cookbooks is not the best use of their limited collection spaces. Matthew commented on the unfairness of applying the same standards of retaining scholarly works at academic libraries with ephemeral content held only by the publics.
Daisy commented on the difficulties of balancing the aspiration side of wanting to preserve and protect content with the realities libraries face with space and budgetary constraints.
Matthew expressed concern that focussing on the comments in the survey might give a skewed impression of the overall results of the survey when in fact the vast majority of respondents were willing to continue committing material for MSCC.
Action Item: The EC will be asked to add comments and feedback to the report and approve before the end of next week (5/10). This will give Matthew time to circulate it to the wider membership for review in preparation for a member meeting in June.
Action Item: Matthew will arrange a planning meeting with the Executive Committee and Collections & Operations Committee to discuss the identity and mission of MSCC.
2. Approve changes in MSCC retention policy – titles with zero circs, special collections & juvenile non-fiction
Daisy reported on UMaine’s need to deaccession materials at Fogler Library at its Library Annex. At the Library Annex is a collection of around 45,527 Dewey classified items that have not circulated at all. These items are taking up space that could be utilized by Special Collections. Additionally there are 84,841 items in the LC classes Q-Z – stored in compact shelving in Fogler that is failing mechanically and isn’t sustainable to keep. As part of this work Fogler staff will be checking for titles that are rare in OCLC and those that have MSCC commitments. Acquiring additional storage space for these items is not feasible. In response to this issue, the MSCC Collections & Operations Committee had approved a change to MSCC retention policy that titles with zero circulations would no longer need to be retained for MSCC. Matthew commented that the question of zero circulation had come up before, but the Fogler issue had brought it to the fore. Matthew already knew of some MSCC libraries that were looking to withdraw their zero circulation MSCC titles.
The MSCC Collections & Operations Committee had additionally approved the removal of commitments for titles in special collections and juvenile non-fiction. Matthew confirmed for Daisy the library’s representatives on that Committee.
Ben commented on outdated juvenile non-fiction that it’s not feasible for Bangor to keep because of space constraints. Additionally outdated content is not something Ben wants made available to kids for their school work. This type of material also tends to be in poor physical condition. The EC debated whether Maine is the right place for widely-held juvenile material, or if it should be retained by larger research libraries. Matthew commented that he’s not sure how many libraries out there are willing to retain this sort of juvenile material; as an example most libraries in the EAST program chose to not include in their retention scope juvenile material.
The EC discussed the likelihood of ever having a dedicated storage faculty for storing MSCC material that it’s not feasible to store in libraries. Daisy mentioned that the forthcoming Maine Policy Review issue on libraries might be a good avenue for getting the attention of legislators.
Matthew felt the removal of commitments on titles with zero circulations is a fairly radical step for MSCC and that he does have some concerns about the rust in commitments eroding over time. However, it’s clear from member feedback that changes do need to be made to retention policy to ensure members are willing to renew commitments. Kevin felt the existing MSCC Policy on Retention Commitment Changes that allows for a title to have its commitment removed if the “title not in keeping with library collection policy (e.g. outdated health, legal, consumer information)” is already somewhat of an out for libraries when it comes to removing commitments. Matthew commented that MSCC could never actually force a library to keep material it doesn’t want and that the concept of professional discretion was baked into MSCC policies.
Action Item: The EC will vote via email on changing MSCC policy to allow for the removal of commitments on titles with zero circulations, special collections, and juvenile non-fiction. The EC asked to vote on each of these separately. Matthew will arrange a member meeting where any changes to retention policy can be discussed by the wider membership.
3. Meeting with Portland Portland Library scheduled for 7/24
On July 24th, Matthew, Ben, and Lori are scheduled to meet with representatives from Portland Public Library to discuss the potential for PPL to remain a MSCC member. Matthew will report back on the discussions to the full EC.
4. Maine Maritime Academy collection analysis
Maine Maritime Academy is currently going through a deaccessioning project and wanted to make sure they aren’t removing material that isn’t being retained as part of MSCC. Matthew is comparing their holdings with MSCC using an OCLC API. It’s a slow process as you can only run lookups for 500 titles per search; Matthew is about ⅔ though the comparison.
5. Maine Policy Review article
Matthew has submitted an abstract to the editors of the Maine Policy Review for an article on MSCC.
6. Partnership for Shared Book Collections/Rosemont merger
The merger of the Partnership for Shared Book Collections, which MSCC is a member of, and the Rosemont Shared Print Alliance are continuing to plan for the merger of the two organizations.