Present: Elaine Day (Averett, Chair), Rae Best (GMU), Mary Ann Chappell (JMU), Deanna Chavez (RMU), Susan Deaton (Longwood), Liz Linton (Sweet Briar), Katherine McKenzie (W&M), Leslie O'Brien (VT), Jamie Redwine (Hollins), Gary Stottlemyer (UVA).
1) E-serials survey. There was further discussion about questions on the survey. Jim Self (UVa) reviewed a previous version and made helpful suggestions. Question 8 (number of titles licensed at institution) will be removed as requiring too much analysis by each institution. Related data will be obtained from other sources. Question 6 ("does your institution currently host an e-serials management system") will be expanded to find out what the institution's preference or capabilities are for hosting a system. We will shoot for sending out the survey by the end of September and getting results by Thanksgiving. There was discussion about the next two surveys planned. Elaine suggested combining them into one for efficiency. We need to determine what information we want from VIVA libraries on reference linking and access integration. Jamie and Mary Ann will draft criteria and questions.
2) Elaine reported that our committee will continue through next March 2003 in order to have enough time to present an educational program in the spring. Our reporting focus can be an overview of concepts and standards, not necessarily an exhaustive inventory of vendors and products. Descriptions of products and open source applications will be used for illustration. We should also advise VIVA on what it can do to leverage content linking and compliance with open standards. Our plan for the educational program is to give an environmental overview from barebones to state-of-the-art: delineate problems, standards, complexities of the issue. The program should be relevant to VIVA steering committee members and to the greater membership.
3) Discussion turned to broader issues: Scholars' Portal, broadcast searching, open source applications.
4) Elaine distributed a draft of the environmental scan, which Gary, Mary Ann, and Elaine have been working on. It was agreed that the draft is a good start and represents the issues we want to address, though Gary suggested that we include the Semantic Web. Assignments were made to fill in sections of the document. Collaboration can be done using Blackboard to keep versions of the sections distinct.
Specific products:
Jamie - SerialsSolutions, SFX, Metalib
Leslie - TDNet
MaryAnn - LinkFinderPlus, Encompass
Gary - Fretwell-Downing, iBistro/iLink, Semantic web
Elaine - zPortal, WebFeat, MuseGlobal, OCLC outlinking, ECO & SiteSearch
Liz - Ebsco Online
Sections of the Report:
Gary, Elaine, Mary Ann - Introduction/Overview
Liz, Jamie, Leslie - E-serials management
Mary Ann, Jamie - Content linking
Gary, Elaine - Access integration
Our next meeting will be in Charlottesville in late October or early November.
Action items:
Leslie O'Brien
Virginia Tech