The Virtual Library of Virginia


VIVA Steering Committee
Thursday, June 9, 2005
Virginia State University
Petersburg, VA

MINUTES


Attendance: Present: Ralph Alberico, Robin Benke, Gene Damon, Dave Hayes, John Jaffe, Mary Mayer-Hennelly, Connie McCarthy, Virginia O'Herron, Kathy Perry, John Ulmschneider, Elsie Stephens Weatherington, and John Zenelis. Also Present: Jim Self (UVA). Absent: Eileen Hitchingham and Karin Wittenborg.

I. MINUTES
The March 3, 2005 meeting minutes were reviewed.
ACTION: The March 3, 2005 meeting minutes were approved.

II. PROJECT UPDATE

A. CHAIR'S REPORT (Ralph Alberico)

1. Nominating Committee: Gene Damon reported that the Nominating Committee (Damon, Hitchingham and Benke) recommended Connie McCarthy to serve as Steering Committee Chair for a two-year term.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the Nominations Committee's recommendation and Connie McCarthy will be the Steering Committee Chair for the July 1, 2005 - June 30, 2007 term.

2. Retreat Planning: Ralph led a discussion on the Steering Committee's retreat scheduled for July 14-15, 2005, at Wintergreen. The retreat will include time for brainstorming about future directions. Suggested topics and leaders include: Cost Sharing (Gene Damon), VIVA's role supporting multimedia collections (Ralph Alberico), Storage Facility (Dave Hayes and Connie McCarthy), 2006-08 Biennium Proposal (John Ulmschneider and Eileen Hitchingham), Digitization Project (Karin Wittenborg), and Institutional Repositories (John Zenelis).
ACTION: The discussion leaders will each develop a 2-3 page briefing paper on their topic with some provocative questions and key articles for background. The Executive Committee will work out the retreat agenda.

3. Personnel Committee: John Zenelis reported that the search for the VIVA Associate Director was successful and Eric Rector will begin on July 14, 2005. John thanked the Search Committee (Kathy Perry, Ruth Kifer, and John Walsh). John also alerted the current Personnel Committee that he will begin Kathy Perry's evaluation for the 2004-05 year a little earlier than in the past.


B. PROJECT DIRECTOR'S REPORT (Kathy Perry)

1. Committee membership: Kathy reminded committee chairs to let her know if there are any openings on their committees. At this time, there is only one change to report: Sherle Abramson moved to Michigan and the VCCS has named Frank Moran (BRCC) as the VCCS representative on the Resources for Users Committee.

2. Budget: Kathy reported that the central VIVA budget has $35,000 in unspent funds and those will be applied to the electronic collections payments.

3. IMLS Proposal: Kathy reported that VIVA is included in an IMLS grant proposal submitted by Dr. Roy Rosenzweig for the Center for History and new Media at GMU. The project will develop open source software to help researchers capture information from web pages and to organize the information through the browser. Advisory Board Members will include Wally Grotophorst (AUL for GMU Library Systems), Clifford Lynch (Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information), Matthew MacArthur (Director, New Media Program, National Museum of American History), David Seaman (Executive Director, Digital Library Federation), and Abby Smith (Director of Programs, Council on Library and Information Resources). Recruitment of participating libraries to assist in the beta testing will occur if the grant award is made.

4. Publicity: Two speeches were made during this quarter. Gene Damon co-chaired a session and presented the VIVA report on the Ulrich's Serials Analysis Project at the April 10-13, 2005, ICOLC meeting. Jim Self represented VIVA at the UK Serials Group meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland, April 11-13, 2005, and presented the consortial viewpoint of Project COUNTER.

III. COMMITTEES

A. RESOURCE SHARING COMMITTEE (Kathy Perry for Eileen Hitchingham)

1. ILL Forum: The ILL Community Forum will be held on Friday, July 15, at Sweet Briar. There are currently 76 people registered.
2. Fiche Duplicators: The Committee has investigated the need to replace some of the fiche-to-fiche duplicators purchased by VIVA in 1995 and recommended that VIVA assist the two schools with the largest fiche collections (University of Virginia and the College of William and Mary). The funds will provide partial support to replace the fiche duplicators and the required supplies.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the Resource Sharing Committee's recommendation to provide $5,500 each to the College of William and Mary and to the University of Virginia out of 2005-06 funds towards their replacement of their fiche-to-fiche duplicators and supplies.

B. RESOURCES FOR USERS COMMITTEE (Gene Damon)

1. The Resources for Users Committee recommended the following renewals for the 2005-06 year:

a. Annual Reviews
b. FirstSearch Base Package
c. Bowker Books in Print, Ulrich's, and Serials Analysis
d. Nature Journals
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the following renewals:
a. Annual Reviews
b. FirstSearch Base Package
c. Bowker Books in Print, Ulrich's, and Serials Analysis
d. Nature Journals

2. New Acquisition: The Resources for Users Committee recommended the purchase of the Nature Archives and the annual access fee.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the Resources for Users Committee's recommendation to acquire the Nature Archives (1950 - 1996).

3. RFP: Gene reported that a total of 7 vendors responded to the RFP. Negotiations are ongoing for the core databases CINAHL, PsycINFO, and PsycArticles and significant progress has been made. The Steering Committee will be asked for an email vote on these databases shortly. In addition to the core databases, the RFP requested quotes on several other databases. A great deal of the evaluation work on the other databases will continue in a second phase. Gene commended the members of the RFP Subcommittee under the leadership of Sharon Gasser. The Committee recommended that two databases, PAIS and EconLit be moved to CSA.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the Resources for Users Committee's recommendation to acquire EconLit and PAIS through CSA beginning July 1, 2005.

4. Training Sessions: Two regional training fairs will be held in August: Wednesday, August 3 at The College of William and Mary and Friday, August 5 at Radford.

5. Information:

a. PBS: VIVA is negotiating with PBS for their video titles. It is possible that an email vote will be requested later this month.
b. OED: The current contract for the OED (2nd edition loaded at UVA) concludes in February 2006. VIVA is negotiating with Oxford University Press for a subscription to the OED and it is possible that an email vote will be requested later this month.
c. The second serials analysis project is underway, with final corrections and the data reloaded by June 30, 2005.

C. OUTREACH COMMITTEE (John Ulmschneider)
The Outreach Committee met on April 22 and continued their work on the web site design upgrade. The Committee has reviewed survey comments and implemented many of the suggestions. The Committee agreed on five goals for the Web site:

ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the web site design and the goals. Kathy and Eric Rector will assist the Committee in the actual web design implementation this summer.

D. VIRGINIA HERITAGE PROJECT TASK FORCE (John Jaffe)
The Virginia Heritage Project Task Force met on February 4. The Committee discussed the need to bring the Virginia Heritage Project brochure up to date.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the Virginia Heritage Project Task Force request for funds to print 1,000 copies of a brochure.


IV. NEW BUSINESS
The next VIVA Steering Committee meeting is the retreat scheduled for July 14-15. [Note: The September 15 meeting will be held at the University of Mary Washington and the December 1 meeting will be held at Blue Ridge Community College.]

Steering Committee Minutes

Contact: Kathy Perry, VIVA Director
Last Updated 8/23/2005