Steering Committee Meeting
Thursday, June 5, 2003
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, Virginia
MINUTESATTENDANCE: Present: Ralph Alberico, Eileen Hitchingham, John Jaffe, Connie McCarthy, Frank Moran, Virginia O'Herron, Don Samdahl, John Ulmschneider, and Elsie Stephens Weatherington. Also Present: Elaine Day (Averett U), Craig Gibson (GMU), Doug Hurd (UVA), and Kathy Perry (VIVA). Absent: Robin Benke, Gene Damon, Roy Strohl, Karin Wittenborg, and John Zenelis.
I. Minutes of the March 6, 2003 meeting.
ACTION: The March 6, 2003 meeting minutes were approved.
II. PROJECT UPDATEA. CHAIR'S REPORT (Ralph Alberico)
1. Organization: Eileen Hitchingham reported that the Nominating Committee (Gene Damon, Chairman, Robin Benke, and Eileen) unanimously nominated Ralph Alberico to serve another 2-year term, July 1, 2003- June 30, 2005.
2. Membership: Ralph reported that Elsie Weatherington was elected by the 4-year schools to serve another 3-year term (July 1, 2003 - June 30, 2006) on the Steering Committee.
ACTION: The Steering Committee elected Ralph Alberico by acclamation to serve another 2-year term.
ACTION: The Committee chairs will all review their committee memberships and inform Kathy of any committee openings.3. Retreat Follow-up and Advocacy: Ralph reviewed the action items from the February 4 VIVA Steering Committee retreat. The Content Linking Task Force is addressing Reference Linking. The Resources for Users Committee is addressing the statewide Serials Management and Audit. VIVA sent Melinda Baumann (UVA) to the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage symposium on The Price of digitization: New Cost Models for cultural and Educational Institutions, in New York City on April 8, 2003. Ralph reported that we hope to invite Melinda Baumann to a future Steering Committee to discuss this topic with the committee. The issues of shared automation and storage were deferred.
John Ulmschneider discussed the VIVA case statement in the context of the SCHEV Strategic Plan and distributed a draft case statement for discussion. John briefly reported on Advocacy efforts undertaken in the last quarter, highlighting the meeting with the SCHEV Council staff held on May 9 in Richmond, the July 16 presentation scheduled for the SCHEV Council, and other meetings planned for the summer.
B. DIRECTOR'S REPORT
1. Kathy reported that there have been some problems with VIVA members paying their invoices on time and the committee discussed the advisability of applying late charges to the VIVA invoices.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the addition of late fees to the VIVA invoices beginning July 1, 2003. If invoices are not paid after 90 days, the Director will contact that library's administrative structure (Finance VP or President) to lodge a complaint. Continued late payment problems can cause a VIVA member to be dropped from membership.2. Following the last meeting, Kathy met with ICOLC colleagues at the March ICOLC meeting to discuss continuing problems with the AAAS and the SCIENCE journal. ICOLC authorized a Working Group to meet with the AAAS publisher to discuss issues. This Working Group (Beverlee French (CDL), Ann Okerson (NERL), Kari Stange (BIBSAM) and Kathy Perry (VIVA)) invited the AAAS publisher, Beth Rosner, to a meeting with Ann Okerson and Kathy Perry on June 2 at Georgetown University. Issues covered included the overall context for libraries and the AAAS, price increases, price structure, archives, customer relations, and 2004 and next steps. The Working Group hopes to assist the AAAS in improving customer relations for the 2004 year and beyond.
3. The VIVA central office is currently reporting statistics for 19 VIVA contracts. No statistics are received or reported for ACM, AMS Journals, Factiva (Dow Jones), or the OED. We are now reporting ACS Journals on a monthly basis, CIAO statistics are available on a consortium-wide basis as of January 2003, we have received improved statistics from the Gale Group for full text articles and the statistics for the Oxford University Press Journals are now available. The beta test for the Cambridge University Press statistics is complete and we expect to see those statistics soon. Kathy thanked a small group of VIVA members who continue to provide feedback to her on the VIVA statistics, particularly Jim Self (UVA) for his continuing assistance with the statistics. A draft report of 2001-2002 use of VIVA products was distributed and will be finalized soon.
4. Kathy reported that the central budget will contribute approximately $28,000 to the collections budget, due to postponed meetings and deferred expenses.
III. COMMITTEESA. RESOURCE SHARING COMMITTEE (John Ulmschneider)
1. Harry Kriz (Va Tech) gave an excellent presentation about interlibrary loan in FY 2002, emphasizing the strong support and interdependence among VIVA libraries. Key points included:
- Borrowing: VIVA libraries borrowed a total of 166, 343 items through OCLC during fiscal 2002 from all sources. The research libraries continue to do the most borrowing; 5 libraries (6% of VIVA libraries) did 50% of all borrowing, and 17 libraries (21% of all VIVA libraries) did 80% of all borrowing.
- VIVA libraries continue to support the vast majority of all items requested for ILL at all levels (public 4-year receive more than 56% (56.6%), public 2-year schools receive approximately 74% (73.6%) of items from VIVA members, and independent schools receive approximately 73% (72.8%) of all items from VIVA members).
- Lending: VIVA libraries loaned 205,550 items during fiscal year 2001-02. 6 libraries (7% of VIVA member libraries) did 53% of all lending, and 30 libraries (37% of libraries) did 90% of all lending. Of the top 30 lenders, all but 6 are net lenders, lending more items than they borrowed.
- Va Tech statistics reveal that it takes a staggering number of libraries worldwide to support their research efforts. During calendar year 2000, Virginia Tech borrowed more than 28,000 books and journal articles from nearly 1,100 libraries. One faculty member alone borrowed 1,046 items obtained from 127 different libraries.
The Steering Committee discussed some of the ramifications of the statistics for the VIVA programs. The Steering Committee members discussed the continuing importance of ILL to the entire VIVA program and thanked Harry for the presentation.
2. John reported that the ILL Subcommittee had reviewed the ILL Guidelines and the Resource Sharing Committee recommended them for approval.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the revised ILL Guidelines as presented.3. John reported that 86 people are currently registered to attend the "ILL-5", the fifth ILL Community Forum meeting, scheduled for July 11, 2003, at the University of Virginia.
4. John and Doug Hurd reported that SoliNET and OCLC have added VIVA as a specific group in the ILL Policies and the Named Group Directory. VIVA's ILL Guidelines will be linked on the policies. The work is nearly complete and a notice will go out on the VIVA and ILL listservs to announce the completion. John thanked Jean Cooper for her work on this project.
B. OUTREACH COMMITTEE (Connie McCarthy)
1. The Outreach Committee met on May 9 in Charlottesville and had conference calls on April 1 and May 19. Priscilla Perkins (Lynchburg College) replaces Ginger Young on the committee.
2. Work is continuing for the 3 regional meetings on the "Fifty-Minute Librarian: Strategies for Effective Library Instruction" to be held at Virginia Tech (Date TBD), Hampton U (August 7), and UVA (August 14).
3. Connie reported progress on planning for the student advocacy letters. The Committee will seek to share information with the Directors in August so they can make arrangements for this work to take place in September. The Committee will provide tip sheets and sample letters and will make clear that this work is to be supported through foundation funds rather than state funds.
C. RESOURCES FOR USERS COMMITTEE (Kathy Perry for Gene Damon)
1. Renewals: Kathy presented the committee's recommendation for the following renewals:
a. LexisNexis Congressional
b. Annual Reviews
c. FirstSearch
d. OVID (CINAHL, PsycINFO, ERIC, LWW, 7 of the 8 Nursing titles)
e. ACM
f. Factiva
g. HarpWeek MaintenanceACTION: The Steering Committee approved renewals for the following VIVA resources: LexisNexis Congressional, Annual Reviews, FirstSearch, OVID (CINAHL, PsycINFO, ERIC, LWW, 7 of the 8 Nursing titles), ACM, Factiva, and HarpWeek Maintenance.
2. Cancellation: The Resources for Users Committee recommended that, Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, one of the OVID nursing titles, not be renewed due to the combination of high price increases and low use.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the cancellation of the Ovid journal, "Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics".
3. New Acquisitions: The Resources for Users Committee recommended the acquisition of 2 new products.
a. Nature, the Nature Research and Review Journals. The Resources for Users Committee had recommended the acquisition of Nature out of the end of the year funds but had recommended that the Research and Review Journals be acquired through a cost sharing plan, to be determined. The Steering Committee discussion centered on the research importance of all of the these journals and the need to review all VIVA resources again to see if further cancellations were possible.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved licensing nature, the nature Research Journals, and the nature Review Journals for 2003-04 and 2004-05. The Resources for Users Committee will review all of VIVA's current offerings to determine cancellations to accommodate these new journals.
b. Serials Audit Project. In its February 4, 2003 retreat, the Steering Committee asked the Resources for Users Committee to review the collective serials holdings in order to assist with management decisions. This project has as an initial set of goals to identify current holdings for VIVA institutions, to identify commonly held titles that may be candidates for electronic acquisitions, and to develop a method to identify the "last copy" of key titles within VIVA. As part of this project, the committee recommends a one-year license to the Bowker Serials Analysis service.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the acquisition of the CSA - Bowker Serials Analysis package.
D. VIRGINIA HERITAGE PROJECT TASK FORCE (John Jaffe)
1. John reported that Solinet presented the SOLINET Outstanding Library Program Award to the VIVA Virginia Heritage Project at the SOLINET ANNUAL meeting in May. Elsie Weatherington received the award on behalf of VIVA and Susan Riggs presented a poster session. The Task Force will investigate ways to publicize the SOLPA Award.
2. Susan Riggs and Jodi Koste made a presentation about the VHP at the Solinet Virginia Users Group, May 16 at Longwood University.
3. The Best Practices Committee has prepared Guidelines on the administrative web site for grant participants.
4. The Technology Assessment Committee researched the technology standards and resources for digitization of material.
5. The VHPTF will begin usability testing of the VHP web site with the help of the UVA Usability Testing Committee.
6. The VHPTF is investigating grant opportunities for digitization projects.
7. The VHPTF is soliciting additional finding aids appropriate for inclusion in the VHP.
E. CONTENT LINKING TASK FORCE (Elaine Day)
Elaine Day reported that the Content Linking Workshop was held on May 22, at Sweet Briar College, with 76 attendees. She presented the Content Linking Task Force's final report and recommendations for the Steering Committee's consideration. The committee's recommendations include:
1. Prefer VIVA vendors who implement OpenURL, DOI's, and related protocols to enable reference lining at the article level.
2. Monitor cross domain searching technologies and development initiatives, and encourage VIVA database vendors to offer capabilities for cross domain searching.
3. Negotiate VIVA discounts for one or more e-serials management services, selected to meet a diversity of institutional approaches to resources management and end user access.
4. Investigate options for a union list of VIVA serials that will service as both a public database and administrative tool for resource sharing.
5. Encourage VIVA database vendors to work cooperatively with serials management services in maintaining title lists and supporting emerging standards for serials subscription information exchange.
6. Investigate potential economies of scale and end user benefits from consortium wide implementation of reference linking.
7. Develop a community of VIVA library staff to provide training and shared consultation services in serials management, XML and metadata encoding, content linking implementation, authentication, and related technical issues.
8. Keep VIVA libraries informed about the changing landscape of user authentication.
9. Investigate benefits and risks of development partnerships for access integration.
10. Monitor the impacts of online courseware and campus portals.ACTION: The Steering Committee accepted the final report of the Content Linking Task Force and thanked the Task Force members for their excellent work. The Task Force and the Steering Committee will give further thought to the appropriate next steps to further the discussion and assistance provided in this area.
IV. OTHER BUSINESS: The next VIVA Steering Committee meeting will be held on Thursday, September 11, 2003, at Rappahannock Community College.
Contact: Kathy Perry (George Mason University), VIVA Director.
Last updated: 7/3/2003