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Resources for Users Committee -- Minutes



March 18, 2005 -- 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, Jane Penner, Ann Pettingill (for Pam

Morgan), Jim Rettig, Sylvia Rortvedt, John Walsh,Jim Self, Joh  Tombarge, Pat

Van Zandt,  and Kathy Perry, VIVA Director.



Guests: Amanda Watson (LCIR fellow at UVa) Jeff Clark (Director of Media

Technology at JMU)



1. Announcements -- Amanda Watson is a CLIR postdoc fellow at UVa and has joined

us for this meeting







2. Changes to agenda  -- Made and recorded







3. Approval of Minutes of , 2000 meeting



NMinutes of the January 28, 2005, meeting were approved as submitted.



4. PBS video offer - Jeff Clark, from JMU-



JMU has licensed some products from Films for the Humanities and is holding

discussions with Annenberg and PBS. Doesn't know if Films for the Humanities or

PBS is ready to deal with consortia. JMU has chosen MPEG4 as a standard; this

will allow future migration to new formats. JMU has to encode everything. Not

clear if PBS can provide films in MPEG4. JMU must purchase a second copy if for

second copies of a title if it needs to encode it in another format. JMU has

about 1,100 titles under license from Films for the Humanities. JMU is adding

about 400 more from PBS. The two organizations' licenses are similar. Both offer

permanent access. Jeff distributed a list of currently available PBS titles. JMU

would not like to be a central VIVA-wide server for he PBS videos. OhioLink has

each institution download content to their own servers; encoding is done

centrally. There are opportunities in the future for distributed encoding among

VIVA members. JMU serves to remote users who authenticate; however it works only

if they have a high speed connection. Current PBS offer to VIVA is $320/film;

this is same price U of Maryland has been offered for just its main campus.

There are odd inconsistencies in pricing offers; they haven't yet figured out

this issue. A deal this attractive won't be offered again. Films for the

Humanities plans a product rollout this spring. We need to calculate how much

server space would be required. Can we buy a small lot (e.g., 100 titles) while

we get experience with the technical issues. JMU allows faculty and staff to

download files; students can only view a streaming file. JMU is accommodating

students who need to download a clip.





5. Budget --K. Perry



We can pay Nature next year if we wish. Can prepay some things not due until

next year. VIVA had hoped to get A $400K+ budget increase during the short

session; this didn't happen. Higher ed lobbying focused on the charter

institutions initiative. The legislature affirmed that VIVA serves non-profit

institutions; proprietary schools will try to change this in the future. Sole

source procurement will be exempt from eVA; the effective date for this isn't

certain.







6. Renewals



. Annual Reviews-Three-year deal being offered. Kathy Perry recommended

approval. The committee recommend renewal. . OED renewal-we need someone to take

on negotiations with Oxford-OUP will not renew our five-year deal for the old

edition of the OED. VIVA made a one-time payment of $500 for this! Jane Penner

will investigate this.



7. Training sub-committee-P. Van Zandt Ulrich's training conducted last week an

Blue Ridge Community College and Randolph-Macon College. Participants thought it

was good. Training fair will be August 3 at Radford. May be replicated at

William and Mary. Cambridge Scientific, facvita, BioOne, and Gale are committed.

LexisNexis may be a good one to add.





8. First Search update-J. Walsh February stats not available when John tried to

get turnaway information, etc. However this doesn't matter any longer because a

new OCLC rep has convinced OCLC to adopt a new model of port allocation so that

high-use databases are available and so that excess port capacity on other

databases can be reallocated to WorldCat. WorldCat now has 50 ports; several

other databases (Article 1st, Medline Electronic Books, ECO A&I) have 24 ports;

all others have 10 ports. John will look at February data and compare it to

April data since these represent the last full month of the old system and the

first full month of the new. This went into effect last Thursday, March 10.

Kathy is grappling with how to inform member institutions about this. Have

purchased 100,000 new searches; should get us through summer. Cost per search

goes to $0.90 next year. Total number of searches has been in decline.

Electronic Books database hasn't been announced as part of the base package.

John will work with John Duke on this.





9.  RFP Committee-S. Gasser



RFP issued March 4. It is available one the VIVA Web site. Sharon hasn't had

many questions yet. Responses are due April 7. Trial information should be

available April 8 and good into June. Vendor demo will be May 11 at VCU. Should

we have demos for both databases and full-text collections, or just database?

There could be three vendors for the full-text. Committee meets on May 25;

Steering Committee meets on June 9. RUC can approve committee's recommendation

by conference call on June 7, 11:00 AM. Survey is under construction.





10. Report on Gale Webinar-S. Abramson-



It was an interactive online demo for their e-books collection with focus on

Dictionary of American History. One-time cost, based on FTE. Can pick and choose

titles. Faculty can set up links to particular sections of a book. Updating of

e-books tied to schedule for print counterpart. Has an illustration index. Use

reports available. Compatible with XREF, EndNote, etc. Gale has done a statewide

deal with North Carolina. Pricing is vague; seems tied to cost of print, whether

or not the print is owned, number of e-books owned, and FTE.





11. VIVA serials audit project-P. Metz



Recent workshops went well. Paul learned how to help people with loading their

information. JMU will load titles in journal aggregations. Task force has

identified eight publishers and four members each have initiated discussions

with two vendors. SIAM would not talk to Paul; they do consortial deals only

outside the United States. ASM has complicated structure based on number of life

sciences majors and faculty.





12. Review charge for encyclopedia review-



Sylvia reported on that the small number of respondents to a survey expressed a

definite preference for Britannica. She described EB's proposed increases

through 2007-8. Do we want VIVA to offer an encyclopedia? Do we want to review

options? If the latter, do we include Wikkipedia in such a review? If RUC is

considering dropping Britannica, we need to let member institutions know well in

advance. RUC concluded this is sleeping dog and we should let it lie.





13. Possibles





. Nature Archives-P. Van Zandt



Renewal due in August, but we can pay this year. The offer either includes the

archive or it doesn't; we have to choose one. Cannot buy just ten years of the

archive. They will not offer multi-year deals. Originally came to us with 20%

increase; they have backed down to 10%. How valuable is the archive to our

users? Archive is a one-time cost plus annual maintenance. One attraction is

that we could pay for the archive this year; but then we wouldn't have that

money to prepay other things. It was moved to purchase the Nature archive and

renew the Nature subscription. The motion was approved.





. PBS Videos-S. Gasser



Need to discuss with our institutions implications for the infrastructure

support and other needs (including staffing needs) to make this work. Do we buy

now when there is a great deal and figure out the implementation later? Or do we

wait and it turns out to be more? This is the best opportunity to do this as a

consortium. It was moved that RUC recommend purchase of the PBS videos to the

Steering Committee and recommend that the Steering Committee establish a task

force to work out an implementation plan.





. Blackwell-S. Gasser



Blackwell is handling more scholarly societies' journals, including some moving

from OUP. No requirement for individual institutions to retain print

subscriptions. What happens to subscriptions not included in the 211 title

package? Each institution will need to sustain those subscriptions on its own. A

deal is feasible only if there is cost sharing among institutions and a benefit

to them. We need to determine projected 2006 cost among VIVA publics for the 211

titles included in this offer. Blackwell will work with each private institution

and look at its Blackwell subscriptions to generate a price for each of those

institutions.





. IEEE-J. Walsh



Investigation of this began when it appeared that VIVA would have a $400K+

increase from the General Assembly. But that didn't happen! However, it is a

better offer than IEEE offered the previous time. That helps during the next

round of lobbying for VIVA; furthermore IEEE has provided quotes for 2006 and

for 2007.





. Standard & Poors-John Tombarge



John reported that he will continue discussions with them about NetAdvantage.





. University of Chicago



Offers 48 journals. For most currently offer electronic access at no additional

cost to print subscribers. Has not dealt with a consortium before, but has a new

staff member charged with working with consortia. That person is trying to

identify VIVA institutions' subscriptions and total payment. Two-thirds of U of

C titles are super-core titles. VIVA averages fifteen subscriptions per title!





. Royal Society of Chemistry-John Walsh



John reported that RSC offering full text of all journals from 1841-1997.

Archive available to GMU for $36,000. VCU and VaTech have it; not clear if UVa

has it. Why would VIVA pick this over the Nature archive?





. GeoScience World-John Walsh



John described it as an aggregation of peer reviewed journals from six

societies; offered through Highwire. Pat Van Zandt will gather additional

information when he meets with a rep in the near future.





. H.W. Wilson-G. Damon



Wilson came to Gene to talk about a VCCS deal on its new full-text science

database. The regional sales rep said Wilson would like to re-open discussions

with VIVA, especially about the biographical works. Most institutions bought

something from Wilson after it pulled its databases from FirstSearch.





14. RUC authorized that end-of-year funds be used to purchase additional

FirstSearch searches.





15 Ongoing support from member institutions-Gene Damon



Gene said that we need to have something to present to the Steering Committee

for its July 14 retreat. That committee needs a specific proposal to give the

discussion focus. It is a big challenge to convince the General Assembly to

increase the VIVA budget by $400K-$500K annually to cover inflation costs. Time

did not permit serious discussion of this issue on March 19. This will head the

agenda for the next meeting.





16 Project Muse-Jane Penner



Jane discussed a new advisory board for MUSE on which she serves as a library

representative. In a conference call earlier in the week she learned that MUSE

sees itself making all back files available to a uniform date. In response to

Google Scholar MUSE is also looking at pay-per-view models. Most of MUSE's

growth in sales is in Asia. ICOLC recommended curbing cost increases to 6%/year;

MUSE says that will limit their growth rate and the number of new journals they

can manage internally.





17 During the lunch break RUC presented a gift to Sherle Abrahamson and wished

her well as she moves to Michigan and begins married life.





Next meeting May 12, after RFP vendor demos.