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VIVA Steering Committee
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA

MINUTES

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

I.         MINUTES

          The March 2, 2006 meeting minutes were reviewed.

          ACTION:  The March 2, 2006 meeting minutes were approved.

II.        PROJECT UPDATE

A. CHAIR’S REPORT (Connie McCarthy)

  1. State Council Meeting:  Connie reported that she and Kathy had made a presentation before the State Council on Tuesday, July 11, in South Boston.  Elaine Day also attended.  Due to the late hour of the meeting, the presentation was somewhat shortened but the Council members were attentive and the presentation was well received.  The Council asked VIVA to look into ways VIVA’s expertise could help our institutions meet the need for instructional materials.  The Steering Committee reiterated that it would be inappropriate and infeasible for the libraries to purchase textbooks for all classes, but that there may be ways the VIVA resources can be promoted and made available to meet some of the instructional material needs of our institutions. 

ACTION:  The Steering Committee added a priority to the list of 2006-07 priorities to support institutional initiatives for provision of instructional materials as we seek to enhance and support teaching and learning. 

  1. Meeting Schedule for 2006-07:  The Steering Committee discussed the need for quarterly meetings to keep the VIVA business moving forward and the timing for the annual retreat next year.  The consensus was that 4 business meetings during the months of September, December, March, and June, with a retreat in July.  The consensus was that the June meeting would be a one-day meeting in the central part of the state so that most members could attend without necessitating an overnight stay.
ACTION:  In order to plan ahead for the year and to keep the committee work moving forward throughout the spring, the Steering Committee approved the following meeting schedule for the 2006-07 year, to be coordinated with the LAC:
  1. September 21 with LAC meeting immediately following.
  2. December 7, 2006 with LAC meeting immediately following.
  3. March TBD, LAC immediately following
  4. Early June TBD (1 day 10A.M. to 2 P.M.) meeting in central location, no LAC meeting)
  5. July TBD – retreat, LAC meeting immediately following.           

B. PROJECT DIRECTOR’S REPORT (Kathy Perry)

  1. 2006-07 VIVA Budget:  Kathy presented the draft budget for fiscal year 2006-07.  The Steering Committee discussed the $766,283 in additional funds provided by the General Assembly for each year of this biennium.  Of that, approximately half will go to support the unavoidable cost increases due to contractual obligations and increased FTE.  The Steering Committee discussed an additional $56,285 for the private, nonprofit colleges and universities to be added to funds currently available for ILL expedited delivery.  This amount would bring the allocation up to the $396,785 in the appropriation and the Steering Committee hoped it would also reflect the high regard the VIVA members have for the private institutions’ participation in the Interlibrary Loan program.

ACTION:  The Steering Committee approved the estimated budget for the 2006-07 year.  In recognition of the interlibrary lending support by the private colleges and universities, and in light of the additional funds provided by the General Assembly this year, the Steering Committee approved an increase of $56,285 for the private colleges’ ILL expedited delivery funds.  This brings their total allocation up to the legislatively mandated $396,785 each year.

  1. ICOLC Statistical Guidelines:  Kathy presented the revised ICOLC Statistical Guidelines with changes reflecting the ICOLC endorsement of NISO’s Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) protocol and reliance on XML as the standard delivery format for usage statistics.

ACTION:  The Steering Committee approved the revised ICOLC Statistical Guidelines.

  1. Committee Memberships:  Kathy reported that the only opening for committee memberships is on the Resource Sharing Committee.  Gene Damon will appoint a member from the VCCS to replace Chris Dixon.
  2. Firefox Scholar:  Kathy reported that the Center for History and New Media has made excellent progress on developing the Firefox Scholar.  VIVA members will be solicited to participate in a beta test of the product. 
  3. New College Institute:  The legislature approved legislation to establish the New College Institute in the area of Martinsville and Henry County, Virginia.  The legislation permits New College to enroll students by the fall semester of 2007 or as soon as practicable.  This new institute will be added to the list of VIVA members as an “Other Research Facility” until such time as it generates its own FTE.
  4. Fees for VIVA Private Nonprofit Members:  John Jaffe reported that the VIVA private colleges have approved a plan to increase their participation fees in VIVA.  The fee will be $3.00/fte or a minimum of $2,500/institution for the 2006-07 year.

III.      COMMITTEES

A.  RESOURCES FOR USERS COMMITTEE (Gene Damon)

  1. Renewals:  The Resources for Users Committee recommended renewing the following VIVA resources:
    1. Annual Reviews
    2. Amigos - BioOne
    3. CSA – Bowker - Books in Print
    4. CSA – EconLit
    5. CSA – PAIS
    6. CSA – Ulrich’s (includes a 6 months contract extension)
    7. EBSCO – CINAHL
    8. EBSCO – PsycINFO
    9. EBSCO – PsycArticles
    10. OCLC/Solinet – FirstSearch Base
    11. OUP – Oxford English Dictionary
    ACTION:  The Steering Committee approved the renewals: 
    1. Annual Reviews
    2. Amigos - BioOne
    3. CSA – Bowker - Books in Print
    4. CSA – EconLit
    5. CSA – PAIS
    6. CSA – Ulrich’s (includes a 6 months contract extension)
    7. EBSCO – CINAHL
    8. EBSCO – PsycINFO
    9. EBSCO – PsycArticles
    10. OCLC/Solinet – FirstSearch Base
    11. OUP – Oxford English Dictionary
  2. Pending Renewals:  Gene informed the Steering Committee that 3 renewals are pending and may require e-votes before the September Steering Committee meeting:
    1. ACM Journals
    2. OVID – 6 nursing journals and the LWW journal collection
    3. Nature Journals (there are serious price issues related to the Nature collection this year)
  3. Regional Training Fairs:  The Training Subcommittee, headed by Pat Van Zandt, will hold four training sessions, July 24-27, throughout the state. 

B.  RESOURCE SHARING COMMITTEE (Eileen Hitchingham)

  1. The Resource Sharing Committee is exploring the possibility of contracting with a courier service for expedited document delivery.  To that end, the committee recommended sending one delegate to the “Moving Mountains” conference on courier services in September. 

ACTION:  The Steering Committee approved the Resource Sharing Committee’s request to support one committee member’s attendance at “Moving Mountains” conference on courier services http://www.clicweb.org/couriersymposium/ to be held in Denver, September 13-14, 2006.

  1. The ILL Community Forum will be held on Friday, July 21, 2006, at Sweet Briar College.

C. OUTREACH COMMITTEE   (John Ulmschneider)

John reported that the Outreach Committee met on April 14 and will meet again on August 18 to explore further a proposal to create a collection of resources to support training and promotion for VIVA-provided resources. The collection is envisioned as a repository of materials created by VIVA institutions as part of their normal training and publicity work. Such materials could help VIVA institutions boost both the use and utility of VIVA resources, but right now they are not shared or otherwise easily available to others. The repository should prove especially valuable for institutions with insufficient funding and staffing to create them locally. The repository would reside on the VIVA website in way similar to resource repositories such as MERLOT (www.merlot.org). This initiative follows up on previous findings by the Committee that there is great interest among VIVA members in sharing tutorials, training materials, and other resources related to promotion of VIVA resources.

The Outreach Committee proposes to hold a small workshop or conference to kick off the development of the repository. The workshop will invite staff from VIVA institutions who are most involved in training and promotion for VIVA products. It would focus on identifying materials that should be included and on possible ways to implement the repository.

The Steering Committee made several suggestions about the makeup and scope of the workshop and about the contents of the repository. The members endorsed the concept of the workshop and agreed that Outreach should proceed with its planning.

IV.    RETREAT REPORT

  1. COST SHARING:  Gene Damon led the discussion of the cost sharing model for the Blackwell Journals.  The Steering Committee discussed the merits of the plan and requested that the Resources for Users Committee present other models for that package, especially “Roy’s Model”, to increase cost contribution by others and reduce cost to big spenders.  Issues to explore:
    • Can we shift $50k
    • Explore sliding scale of discounts to libraries
    • Explore modified Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art) model (suggested contribution/ pay what you can)?
    • Evaluate cost/benefits of package
    • Shift greater % risk to VIVA
    ACTION: All comments from Steering Committee members and the Library Advisory Council should be submitted to Gene by August 1.
  2. MULTIMEDIA COLLECTIONS:  Ralph Alberico presented the Multimedia Task Force’s strategy for multimedia collections. The Steering Committee approved the Multimedia Task Force’s plan to negotiate contractual terms for VIVA members to join the In Common Federation for the initial purpose of participating in a centrally hosted streaming service to provide access to online video content licensed by VIVA.
  3. VIRGINIA HERITAGE: The Steering Committee extended the charge of the Virginia Heritage Project Task Force to allow the Working Group to continue its work to submit a proposal to the IMLS for the February 2007 deadline. The Steering Committee approved restructuring the Virginia Heritage Project Working Group to be a smaller, more technical group for the proposal writing process. The Steering Committee reiterated that the work is to focus on digitizing the materials in special collections, that “Virginia Heritage” is to be the broader term for all special collections materials in VIVA libraries, and that the project should work toward a larger vision of development of a decentralized Virtual Institutional Repository of Virginia.
    In addition, the Steering Committee will plan to revisit VIVA’s organization chart during 2006-07 and will consider whether or not work with the Virginia Heritage collections should continue.
  4. STEERING COMMITTEE PRIORITIES FOR 2006-07
    The Steering Committee revised the 2006-07 Priorities:

    • Expand access to scholarly journals
    o Support student and faculty scholarship, research, and clinical work
    • Emphasize science, technology, medicine
    o Chief focus on sponsored research enterprise
    o Addressing existing collection deficiencies
    o Support economic development
    • Integrate VIVA with emerging technologies
    o Make it easy and transparent to find and use VIVA materials through Internet search tools
    o Incorporate contemporary authentication and security standards
    • Enhance and support teaching and learning
    o Provide premiere digital video and audio resources via the web
    o Make unique Virginia collections available in digital form
    o Support e-learning initiatives
    o Support institutional initiatives for provision of instructional materials
  5. FUTURE OF OUR COLLECTIONS
    The Steering Committee discussed major themes coming out of the Janus Conference Action Reports http://www.library.cornell.edu/janusconference/januskeys.html
    And the Taiga Forum http://www.taigaforum.org
    ACTION: Kathy will send out the statements to get a snapshot of issues the Steering Committee members find provocative.

V. NEW BUSINESS
Next Meeting: The next VIVA Steering Committee meeting will be held from 1-5 P.M. on September 21, 2006, at Shenandoah University.