VIVA Resource Sharing Committee
Minutes of the January 21, 2000, Meeting
University of Virginia
Revised 2/15/2000

Present:  Don Samdahl, VMI and chair; Doug Hurd, UVA; Reba Leiding, JMU;
Andrew Morton, VCU; and Mary Molineux, W&M.

1.  Call to order:  Chair Don Samdahl called the meeting to order at
10:30 a.m.  He reported that committee members Ruth Kifer from GMU would
be unable to attend today and that Thelma Hutchins of Emory and Henry
has begun a new job at Fairmont State College in West Virginia.  ACTION:
The VIVA private institutions will nominate a replacement for Thelma.

2.   Minutes:  November 19, 1999, meeting minutes were approved.

3.  VIVA Interlibrary Loan Community Forum:  it was agreed that the
January 11, 2000, forum, with 100 participants, was a success, with good
representation from around the state and by our committee, very good
dialog and ideas shared, strong leadership shown by Dennis Robison and
the group leaders, and logistics well-organized and hosted by University
of Virginia staff, especially Doug Hurd and Jean Cooper.
   The committee received copies of Dennis Robison's "VIVA Interlibrary
Loan Forum: Report and Recommendations" and "Transcriptions from Flip
Charts" from the five forum subgroups.  Don noted that the issues
identified at the forum included education, procedures, infrastructure,
politics, technology, and communication.   
   The committee discussed and worked on several of the issues (please
see below).  ACTION:  committee members will also review the report in
detail and continue discussion and work at the next Resource Sharing
Committee meeting.

    Issues covered in this meeting included:  

a. Expanded representation of ILL community on Resource Sharing
Committee:  the committee recommended that a five-member task force be
created to organize the proposed annual ILL meeting, develop regional
training, foster communication and better service, and review the ILL
Guidelines.  ACTIONS:  (1) Andy will send out a VIVA ILL listserv
notice, seeking volunteers for this task force.  (2) The Resource
Sharing Committee will then select the five members, including
representatives from different types and sizes of libraries, areas of
the state, etc.

b.  Statewide delivery service:  the committee discussed options and the
need to disseminate information about statewide courier contracts to
each library.  ACTIONS:  (1) VIVA has received an unsolicited quote from
one delivery company and Don will pursue other
leads; (2) Reba will ask Iris Moubray of JMU about the status of current
state contracts for courier service, with a goal of drafting a basic
report of which courier services currently have state contracts, what
the rates are, how to contact the courier service to take advantage of
the state rates, and what other policies and procedures (where on campus
the courier will deliver, etc.) may affect interlibrary loan deliveries;
(3) Doug will research and report on OCLC's proposed
national/international courier contract.    

c.  ILL listserv/communication:  committee members thanked Andy for
maintaining the listserv and for developing a means to search the
listserv's archives; agreed that the VIVA ILL listserv should be used
for improved communication among libraries; noted that there had already
been an improvement in such use; and discussed ways to develop a
database of all participating institutions.  ACTIONS:  (1) via these
minutes, the committee encourages all ILL staff to subscribe to the
listserv and to alert new staff at their own and at neighboring
institutions about VIVA and the listserv; (2) Doug will ask Jean Cooper
about the feasibility of developing a database that would contain ILL
contacts, Ariel addresses, etc., for each institution and which could be
updated by the individual institution.

d.  ILL Guidelines:  Doug noted that a proposed guideline on the lending
of special formats (e.g., videos, microforms, rare books) had been
drafted and needed review and consideration for adding to the current
VIVA ILL Guidelines.  ACTION:  Don will send to all committee members
the text of the proposed guideline for discussion at our next meeting.

e.  Journal costs/electronic format:  Doug handed out an OCLC list of
the journals loaned to and from VIVA libraries (excluding DocLine)
nineteen or more times from July 1, 1998, through December 31, 1999.
ACTIONS:  (1) Don will route the list to VIVA's Resources for Users
Committee, requesting that they consider pursuing electronic
subscriptions for titles most frequently loaned and asking them to let
our committee review the ILL clauses for any electronic subscriptions.
(2) For any new electronic subscriptions, ILL departments in each
institution need to be alerted to be aware of titles now available and
of ILL lending clauses in the subscription contract.

f.  ILL statistics:  ACTION:  Jean Cooper will post OCLC's quarterly
reports of VIVA libraries lending and borrowing statistics on the VIVA
ILL web page, starting with the last four quarterly reports.

g.  ILL management and patron-initiated ILL software:  the committee
agreed that more information about these software options would help our
committee and the VIVA Steering Committee decide if VIVA should take an
active role in helping libraries acquire and use such software.  ACTION:
Don will ask VIVA Director Kathy Perry and the Steering Committee if
they would like our committee to arrange demonstrations.

h.  ILL staffing statistics:  Mary reported that some workload
statistics are available in Mary E. Jackson's Measuring the Performance
of Interlibrary Loan Operations in North American Research and College
Libraries (Association of Research Libraries, 1998).  An executive
summary of this report is at www.arl.org/access/illdd/execsum.shtml.
However, Jackson notes that comparisons between institutions are
difficult because of the differing duties assigned to ILL staff.

i.  ILL Codes:  For committee members' review, Doug handed out copies of
the Virginia Interlibrary Loan Code (1989) and of the National
Interlibrary Loan Code for the United States (1993). 

j.  Universal borrowers' card:  the pros and cons of library policies
that would allow any patron to borrow from any library were briefly
discussed as a possible future initiative.

4.  Next meeting:  Friday, March 3, 2000, 10:30 a.m. at the University
of Virginia.  

Respectfully submitted, Mary Molineux   1/28/2000; revised 2/15/2000