Resources for Users Committee -- Minutes February 20 , 2004 -- 10:00 AM Alderman Library, University of Virginia DRAFT Gene Damon, Presiding Present: Gene Damon, Sherle Abramson, Karen Cary, Sharon Gasser, Louveller Luster, Paul Metz, Pamela Morgan, Jane Penner, Jim Rettig, Sylvia Rortvedt, Jim Self, John Tombarge, Pat Van Zandt, John Walsh, and Kathy Perry, VIVA Director. 1. Announcements -- None 2. Changes to agenda -- None 3. Approval of Minutes of Sept. & Nov. 2003 meeting No changes --Minutes approved by consensus. 4. Budget -- K. Perry Kathy reported on the budget balance and on the VIVA funding as submitted in the governor's budget. 5. Training sub-committee -- P. Van Zandt We have training scheduled for the Ulrichs Serials Analysis System on March 16 at JMU and March 17 at ODU. Yvette Diven of Bowker will conduct the training. The decision was made to publicize the training through the listserv and through VIVA technical services contacts. There was some discussion of the location’s convenience for SW Virginia. Paul & Sharon will discuss who should be targeted to attend and let Gene know. 6. ABC-CLIO Confirmed electronic vote, which was also approved by the Steering Committee. 7. Stat-USA -– S. Rortvedt Confirmed Renewal. 8. Renewals i. Annual Reviews – P. Morgan – locked in price; approved ii. Encyclopedia Britannica – S. Rortvedt; price increase based only on increase in FTE; approved iii. MLA – J. Rettig -- fixed price; discussion of considering Literature Resource Center. VCCS bought archives for this product last year, so if VIVA acts within a year, we will get credit for that purchase; VIVA would only pay access charges for each year’s addition to the archives iv. Gale Infotrac – J. Rettig – nothing yet; will find price for Gale Resource Center v. Nature – P. Van Zandt –fixed price; approved 9. Review of new offers – P. Van Zandt a. BioOne – Will send chart out to group; the initial offer is for the publics; they are agreeable to having a price cap. Pat will find out their policy on pricing for new journals added to the collection b. Sage – no information yet c. Nature Reviews Microbiology Pat recommended purchase, Sharon seconded; approved; Pat will get private prices d. Nature archives – Could this be a VIVA purchase or a possible pooled funds deal? Pat will ask the vendor if this is a purchase or a perpetual license. We will reconsider after April when we have more information on the budget. (We might meet in April to consider cancellations, because if the budget is flat, we’ll have to cut 7-8%. We will wait to make any kind of decision till after this. ) 10. OCLC Update -- J.Walsh January is the first month since we dropped the Wilson databases (although not a full month), but overall from January 2003-January 2004, all searching is down 15%, and block searches are down 19%. Our turnaway rate is almost nothing, 3% overall, 4% for Worldcat. (No February data yet; we won’t know if we have enough ports for a couple of weeks.) We have more searches than we need till the end of the fiscal year. We shouldn’t need to add more searches for this year, but we still have $35,000 set aside for that (probably not needed); we could use some of that money for ports if needed. We could also purchase searches at this year’s price and save for next year. The group discussed First Search in general: We now have 40 blocked databases, with 20 available. We don’t use much! 11 of the 20 are subscription-based, 9 are per-search (Arts & Humanities Search , Alternative Press Index & archive, Contemporary Women’s issues, Dissertations, Econlit, Geobase, Media Review Digest, PAIS, Worldscope). So there are lots of administrative costs and management issues for a few not-so-used databases. John will have costs for these next time to review. Discussion—is it cost effective to have one centralized place dealing with this, or should it be every school for itself when it comes to the per search databases? We can’t get any new pricing info from OCLC till their pricing committee meets in mid-March. Gene: many consortia are backing out of First Search completely, even Galileo. Jim R.: what kind of agreements does OCLC have with the database providers? Can we expect more defections as in Wilson? Gene: we should take a hard look at First Search over the next year. Kathy: should this be part of Wilson review? John: not necessarily. Gene: they’re different—Wilson is a block of content & do we need to regain it and where? 11. Wilson databases a. The RUC confirmed the electronic vote decision not to purchase. b. Kathy presented a chart on the number of institutions that purchased Wilson databases after VIVA’s cancellation. Art Index or Art Abstracts was the most purchased. Not all the private school information is available on this chart; privates are making a separate deal with Wilson. Price increase next year for Wilson in the range of 5%. c. Gene: the RUC needs to establish a review group on how to cover the content lost by Wilson cancellation – we need to identify the content we lost, determine if we need to replace the content or part of it, and figure out how to do that. The group will have to survey the market to see what’s out there. The RUC will expect a report in September, which could also be the beginning of an RFP. Send Gene suggestions within the week on candidates for this review group from your institution. We will need to have a liaison from the RUC to the review group. Most crucial databases are Art index, Applied science & technology index, Essay and general literature index, Index to legal periodicals, and Library literature; we also have a critical need in education, especially with the coming demise of ERIC. We should also look at other Wilson databases that have been dropped. And should we be looking at full text, or product that links to full text? 12. Factiva review – J. Tombarge – The first meeting of the group is next week. Members are Charlotte Brown, Kathy Clarke, Warner Grinade, Michael Killian, Karen King, Ellen Krupar, Lit Maxwell, Connie Shewmake, Paul Showalter, John Tombarge, and Frank Wilmot. Factiva will be renewed for the next year, so the group can take some time. This is another rfp possibility. The RUC wants a good solid recommendation from the committee, hopefully by early fall for an rfp next spring. Positive Factiva changes: more customization (create source lists on campus or VIVA basis); the next release will be in March (with, finally, no possibility for users to change statewide preferences). 13. MLA study – J. Self – (with Jim Rettig) – also Virginia Kinman (Longwood), Janet Holly (VMI). Jim tried out the survey instrument with the task force. This is not to drop MLA but to find what Gale needs to improve. The survey is being revised and will be sent in next couple of weeks to the committee again. If the survey looks ok, it will be distributed to VIVA user services contacts, not the VIVA listserv. 14. VIVA serials audit project (SAPS) – S. Gasser The charge of the committee is to identify current subscriptions held by VIVA institutions and identify common titles as candidates for electronic purchase by VIVA. Several problems have come up with schools loading their data. Bowker’s Margot Cronin, project manager, & Randy Boecker, sales rep, are here today and will train the committee afterwards on the consortium module. We will have local loads by March 5. Then we will do cleanups of files by individual institutions. The information will be complete (we hope) by early April. The committee will analyze the data set (JMU will enter consortium data) and have a preliminary report at the June directors meeting, a complete report by September. Renewal for one year is a possibility since most schools haven’t had a chance to look at their data. JMU has already done the load for Science Direct, so locally only add your subscriptions if you want—or don’t want! This depends on how each school wants to use the data. Holdings can also be analyzed by subject. A school could load different branch holdings. We only want current subscriptions, not holdings. (Therefore not JSTOR, for example.) We don’t care about formats or number/types of subscriptions. The committee will review individual school’s loads and ask for corrections if necessary. 15. Other business – a. Jane Penner – RILM consortium: NISC has a new product called Index to Printed Music. Vendor rep will contact Jane. Product not quite ready yet. b. Jane – Refworks If anyone wants to add in to UVA’s subscription, there is a discount for 2-9 institutions. They provide 2/x year training. UVA is splitting the cost between the library and IT. Jane will send message to collections contacts. Potential VIVA product. Next meeting Next meeting date – Monday, April 26 -- (changed to May 13.)