VIVA Steering Committee
Thursday, March 2, 2006
Virginia Community College System
Richmond, VA

MINUTES

Attendance:  Present:  Ralph Alberico, Gene Damon, Alan Edwards (SCHEV), Dave Hayes, Eileen Hitchingham, John Jaffe, Connie McCarthy, Virginia O’Herron, Kathy Perry, Don Samdahl, John Ulmschneider, Elsie Stephens Weatherington, and John Zenelis.  Also Present:  Craig Herndon (SCHEV) and Jane Penner (UVA).  Absent:  Robin Benke, Mary Mayer-Hennelly, and Karin Wittenborg.

I.         MINUTES

          The December 8, 2005 meeting minutes were reviewed.

          ACTION:  The December 8, 2005 meeting minutes were approved.

II.        PROJECT UPDATE

A. CHAIR’S REPORT (Connie McCarthy)

  1. SCHEV:  Connie announced that Alan Edwards has new responsibilities as the SCHEV Director of Policy and Studies and is also serving as the Acting Director of Academic Affairs and Planning.  Connie thanked Alan Edwards for his four years of service to the Steering Committee and welcomed Craig Herndon, SCHEV Associate for Academic Affairs, who will replace Alan as the new SCHEV representative to the VIVA Steering Committee at the end of the legislative session.
  2. 2005 Retreat Follow-up: 
    1. Don Samdahl reported that he and Elaine Day had conferred several times during the quarter.  He had reviewed the work of the 2003 Content Linking Committee.  He had also contacted people at Google to explore the possibility of using the Google appliance to search VIVA databases but had learned that Google does not permit the use of the appliance to search third party databases.  He recommended that no further work be immediately undertaken.  The discussion was tabled until later in the meeting. 
    2. Dave Hayes reported on the survey he and Connie had conducted with VIVA directors.  The response was inconclusive; although several members did anticipate the need for remote storage in the future, the Steering Committee concluded that this discussion related to several other collection development decisions.  The consensus was that VIVA would not pursue the development of a single remote storage unit for VIVA members at this time.
  3. 2006 Retreat:  Connie reminded the members that the Steering Committee retreat will be held Wednesday evening, July 12 and all day Thursday, July 13, at the Virginia Tech Inn, followed by the LAC dinner and the LAC meeting hosted by Radford on Friday, July 14.  The Committee will identify issues to address during the retreat and may hold one or more conference calls for planning purposes.  Connie pointed out that the timing of the retreat provides a good opportunity to allow transition between the representatives of the 4-year schools rotating off the Steering Committee and any new representatives of the 4-year schools beginning their service on July 1.  Elsie Stephens Weatherington and Dave Hayes have terms scheduled to end as of June 30, 2006.  Don Samdahl will conduct the election very soon so as to assist in the retreat planning efforts and the transition for the new members. 

B. PROJECT DIRECTOR’S REPORT (Kathy Perry)

  1. Membership:  Institute for the Psychological Sciences:  This private nonprofit institution has requested membership in VIVA.  It is recognized by SCHEV and has received accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and School http://www.ipsciences.edu/www. 

    ACTION:  The Steering Committee approved the membership of the Institute for the Psychological Sciences as one of VIVA’s nonprofit independent members, beginning immediately. 

  2. Virginia Information Technology Accessibility Standard:  Ralph Alberico reported on the Virginia Information Technology Accessibility Standard (effective November 4, 2005) and JMU’s response to it.  Plans are due on May 4, 2006.  It does not appear that the VIVA databases will be affected by this standard. 
  3. Publicity:  Kathy reported that there have been several general interest meetings during this quarter, including the Solinet Virtual Library Summit both she and Gene Damon attended on February 9, 2006; a meeting with Mary Frances Forcier of the Colonial Academic Alliance; and a meeting with Martha Hopkins and Ellie Howie of the Library of Congress. 

III.      COMMITTEES

A.  RESOURCE SHARING COMMITTEE (Eileen Hitchingham)

  1. The Resource Sharing Committee is exploring the feasibility, pros and cons, of using a dedicated delivery service for the expedited delivery of “returnables”. 
  2. The 8th annual ILL Community Forum is scheduled to be held on Friday, July 21, at Sweet Briar College.  There are already over 50 registrants. 

B.  RESOURCES FOR USERS COMMITTEE (Gene Damon)

  1. Renewals:  The Resources for Users Committee recommended renewing the following VIVA resources:
    1. Duke University Press Journals
    2. Gale InfoTrac
    3. Gale MLA
    4. AP Archive Access Fee
    5. IOP Archives Access Fee

ACTION:  The Steering Committee approved the following renewals:

  1. Duke University Press Journals
  2. Gale InfoTrac
  3. Gale MLA
  4. AP Archive Access Fee
  5. IOP Archives Access Fee
  1. Stat-USA:  Gene reviewed the history of negotiations with Stat-USA going back to September.  Further negotiations led to a reduced price, but one which still didn’t meet the approval.  In December the Steering Committee approved a reduced price subject to continued negotiations.  Further negotiations were successfully conducted by Sylvia Rortvedt and Kathy Perry and brought the costs down further.   In addition, the pricing model and the cost/FTE will be constant for three years.  No further action by the Steering Committee was required at this meeting.    The Resources for Users Committee will review the use of Stat-USA over the next year to ensure its value to the community. 
  2. Training:  The Training Subcommittee is working on plans to convene regional training sessions for the VIVA reference an instructional librarians.  The subcommittee is accepting recommendations for databases to be included in this training.  Although final plans are not yet confirmed, the committee requested approval for the training sessions.

ACTION:  The Steering Committee approved funds for regional training sessions on VIVA databases to be held this summer.

  1. Cost Sharing Proposal:  The Resources for Users Committee is continuing to work on a cost sharing proposal and is reviewing a detailed proposal for the Blackwell journal collection.  The Steering Committee discussed various options and opportunities. 

C. OUTREACH COMMITTEE (John Ulmschneider)

The Outreach Committee met on February 17. 

  1. The new web site was brought online the first week of January.  John thanked Eric Rector (VIVA) and John Duke (VCU) for their exemplary work on this project.  Some cleanup work is still underway and Eric is working with custodians for all of the committee pages.
  2. There are still technical problems with the branding project but the Outreach Committee will focus on the 5-10 resources that are most appropriate for VIVA branding and are most flexible in their options.  The Committee agreed to ensure that the clearinghouse of appropriately-sized and formatted logos is kept up to date. 
  3. The Committee discussed possible actions for the next year, including sharing training and support materials for access to VIVA resources.   Ideas discussed included creating a clearinghouse of resources on training related to VIVA resources, convening a workshop on training, developing community information exchange tools for VIVA, and improving information available on VIVA subscriptions and related information.  This discussion picked up the Access issue raised during the 2005 Retreat and the consensus was that the communication mechanisms could be used effectively to share information on the Access issue as well as other issues.  The Steering Committee voiced support for these ideas, particularly for the immediate development of improved community information exchange tools, such as a blog with an RSS feed. 

D.  VIRGINIA HERITAGE PROJECT TASK FORCE (Dave Hayes)

  1. Due to technical issues and upgrades at UVA, the Virginia Heritage Project Task Force needs to convene a training session for staff entering finding aids.  The training session will be held at VCU on March 21.  The Task Force requested meeting funds for the working session and to reimburse the members of the public colleges and universities for their travel to and from the training. 

ACTION:  The Steering Committee approved funds for the VHP Training session scheduled to be held on March 21, 2006. 

  1. Dave reported that although he had previously voiced confidence that the VHP would be able to make the February 1 IMLS proposal deadline for the “Struggle for Freedom” digitalization project, it became clear immediately after the December Steering Committee that this was not the case.  He has convened a subgroup of the Virginia Heritage Project Task Force to discuss the proposal.  That group has worked diligently, discussing the project in a conference call as well as meeting 3 times during this quarter, and is making good progress in hammering out structural details relating to the project proposal.  Dave reported that Virginia Tech has generously offered to house the digitized documents in archival form (TIFFs).  Access will be through the interface of the EAD Finding Aids housed at UVA.  The Steering Committee discussed the relative merits of centralized vs. a decentralized location for the digitized documents to be served to the users.  There was consensus that decentralized system with links to persistent URLs imbedded into the Finding Aids would meet the needs of those schools already able to serve digital objects, but that some schools might need to make arrangements to have their digital objects served from another site.  The Steering Committee reviewed the draft Memorandum of Understanding for the participating members and made several suggestions.  The issue of agreeing to any cost-share contributions prompted the reassurance that the draft budget and cost-share obligations would be shared with the members prior to submitting the proposal.

E.   MULTIMEDIA TASK FORCE (Ralph Alberico)

Ralph reported that JMU has received the PBS films and staff is beginning to work with them.  The Multimedia Task Force is scheduled to meet on March 20 and will be discussing how best to communicate with the wider community, including IT staff beyond the libraries, milestones, methods to distributed the video content, and more.   He plans to distribute a survey to library directors and he shared a draft the survey for review and discussion. 

IV.       NEW BUSINESS

A.  Archiving Electronic Journals:  Kathy requested a brief discussion on archiving electronic journals, including approaches such as CLOCKSS and Portico.  Several schools are now, or are considering, participating in one or the other of these programs.  The discussion centered on what the business models were, whether VIVA might have a role in this area for the VIVA members, and the perceived pros and cons of the current alternatives. 

B.  Next Meeting:  The next VIVA Steering Committee meeting will be held in conjunction with the VIVA retreat on July 12-13, 2006 at the Virginia Tech Inn.