ATTENDANCE: Present: Theresa Byrd, Linda Farynk, Eileen Hitchingham, Charlene Hurt, John Jaffe, Jean Major, Nancy Marshall, Carol Pfeiffer, Dennis Robison, Roy Strohl, and Elsie Stephens Weatherington. Also Present: John Duke, Laura Ford and Kathy Perry. Absent: Gene Damon and Barbara Ford.
I. MINUTES
The minutes of the November 8, 1996 meeting were approved.
II. PROJECT UPDATE
A. Charlene reported that the Organization Committee and the Steering Committee
had agreed to increase staffing for the VIVA project and that Kathy Perry
had accepted the full-time position. The Steering Committee had not yet
found a person to handle the half-time technical issues assignment. Carol,
Eileen, and Kathy are the three delegates to the February 2-5 Consortium
of Consortia meeting in St. Louis. The Steering Committee questioned whether
VIVA needs to send a delegation to the other meeting on consortia sponsored
by Solinet.
B. Charlene reported that a GMU faculty member was involved as a Beta site for the JSTOR project, and had requested that she prepare some information about possible ways VIVA and/or GMU could be involved in the JSTOR periodicals project, particularly if a discounted consortial price were available.
C. Kathy distributed the detail sheets on VIVA Travel and Training to each of the Committee Chairs to aid in planning for the remainder of the fiscal year.
D. Kathy reported that an ad hoc group (Jean, Carol, John J. and Kathy) had met just prior to the Steering Committee meeting to discuss the presentation of statistics and the larger assessment questions. The group will assist in reviewing the package and the cover memo for the regular reporting of use statistics to the VIVA library directors.
E. Kathy distributed the revised VIVA Fact Sheet and requested further comments and corrections be sent directly to her.
ACTION: Steering Committee members will get Kathy comments/corrections on the VIVA Fact Sheet and Kathy will put the revised Fact Sheet on the VIVA Home Page.
F. Kathy reported that the GMU Legal Affairs Office would be willing to look into trademark issues of the VIVA logo for VIVA.
ACTION: Kathy will ask the GMU Legal Affairs Office to look into the trademark issues of our VIVA logo and will report back to the VIVA Steering Committee.
III. RETREAT FOLLOW-UP
A. Organization Committee (Nancy Marshall)
1. Nancy distributed the revised Vision Statement.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the Vision Statement (12/5/96) as prepared by the Organization Committee, with the friendly amendment of spelling out the names for "VIVA" and "SCHEV".
ACTION: Kathy will add the Vision Statement to the VIVA web site.
2. The Organization Committee will meet again before the next VIVA Steering Committee meeting to discuss remaining issues, including the committee rotations.
B. Integrated Teaching/Learning (Eileen Hitchingham)
Eileen raised the need to address this priority area, even if the consensus
was to drop the idea of the on-line tutorial. The Steering Committee members
agreed and discussed ways that this goal is being met and ways to improve
our integration of VIVA resources into the teaching and learning parts of
our campuses. Theresa and Roy reported that the User Services Committee
is researching listservs for Virginia faculty groups by subject area and
will work to publicize appropriate VIVA resources to those groups.
ACTION: Each institution is encouraged to gather examples of ways in which VIVA resources are incorporated into the teaching and learning at their campus and send them to Jean Major, VIVA Publicity Chairperson.
It was also noted that VIVA needs to increase its "corporate identity". Since not all schools have a reference to "VIVA" when they list the VIVA resources in their own web site listings, VIVA schools are encouraged to increase the use of the references to VIVA (either the word or the logo) on their individual library's web site.
ACTION: Eileen will work with the TIC representatives for specific databases or services to determine whether a welcome screen for the database/service can note that access is supported as part of the VIVA grant.
ACTION: All VIVA Library Directors should check their local web sites to ensure that the VIVA resources are identified as VIVA resources (either by using the VIVA logo or the word "VIVA").
IV. COMMITTEE REPORTS
A. ILL Enhancements (Dennis Robison)
1. Evaluation of the 24/48 Guideline: The ILL Committee is evaluating VIVA's
success at meeting the 24/48 hour guidelines. A survey instrument has been
drafted but they are rethinking the need to do the survey. They will be
looking at OCLC statistics.
2. The committee is inviting key ILL staff members from the doctoral institutions to the next ILL committee meeting (February 7, 1997) to discuss ways to improve responses by these institutions to requests from other VIVA libraries. It is anticipated that ILL guidelines for VIVA libraries will be discussed and ready for presentation at the March VIVA Steering Committee meeting.
3. Rather than convening regional meetings again this spring or summer, the ILL Enhancements Committee is considering convening a one-day statewide meeting.
4. Dennis reported that the independent schools prefer not to use FedEx.
5. Carol reported that an important issue raised during the Cooperative Collection Management Retreat was that speedy and reliable ILL service is essential for improved statewide cooperative collection management. The Steering Committee discussed the need to evaluate lending patterns, with an eye toward considering commercial document delivery services, before the next biennium proposal is prepared.
ACTION: The ILL Enhancements Committee will evaluate lending patterns of VIVA institutions before the next proposal is prepared.
B. Publicity (Jean Major)
1. Jean reported that the Publicity Committee has prepared a presentation
for the next day's LAC meeting.
2. The Steering Committee discussed the restructuring reports their institutions prepared in the fall. Laura Ford gave a brief summary of the reports and suggested that VIVA may wish to make a separate report to SCHEV. The Steering Committee discussed the value of an annual report, especially if it were of interest to SCHEV.
ACTION: VIVA will be willing to prepare an annual report if asked for one.
C. Collections (Carol Pfeiffer)
1. Project Muse: The Steering Committee discussed the Collections Committee's
recommendation to renew the Project Muse subscription. Currently, 31 journals
are available and JHU anticipates having 40 available by the end of December
1996 and all 44 available by December 1997.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the renewal of Project Muse.
2. Chadwyck-Healey's Periodical Contents Index (PCI Web): The Steering Committee reviewed the proposal to purchase PCI Web, an index of 1,600 historical journals, covering 1770-1991. A few technical questions remained.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the purchase of Chadwyck-Healey's Periodicals Contents Index (PCI), subject to review by the Technical Issues Committee representative and further negotiations with Chadwyck-Healey about price.
3. Carol reported on the second Cooperative Collection Workshop held
November 21-22, 1996 in Charlottesville, facilitated by George Soete, and
the resulting 4 pilot projects:
a. "Project Confidence": will facilitate the review of local journal
subscriptions in VIVA libraries by identifying core electronic collections
that VIVA will provide for at least 3 years (to the year 2000), either through
IAC or another vendor, using VIVA funds or locally pooled funds.
b. Business Subcommittee: generate and evaluate a rank-ordered list of economic journals priced over $200 each. Identify candidates for cooperative collection management decisions.
c. Nursing & Allied Health Subcommittee: develop a statewide collection of allied health/nursing journal literature as contained within the CINAHL core list.
d. Science & Technology Subcommittee: will evaluate the Academic Press pricing structure and recommend the appropriate strategy for VIVA. This group will also work on a second project.
4. The Cost Savings and Value Added Survey: The Collections Committee will review the redraft of the summary at their January meeting.
5. Commercial Document Delivery: Collections Committee recommended that an ad hoc committee with representation from various VIVA committees investigate the costs and benefits of a commerical document delivery service to see whether such a service might be included in the VIVA funding proposal for 1998-2000.
ACTION: The ILL Enhancements Committee will take the lead on evaluating the commercial document delivery service. Dennis will gather a committee to include representatives from the Collections, Technical Issues, and User Services Committees, and others as appropriate.
6. List of "Products Under Consideration": The Steering Committee agreed that a list of products currently under consideration should be available on the web, but perhaps in a restricted area.
ACTION: Kathy and Carol will work on designing a page for the VIVA web site to include information about purchases being considered for VIVA.
D. User Services Committee (Theresa Byrd)
1. The Steering Committee approved the purchase of additional FirstSearch
notebooks for interested public institutions. The Steering Committee agreed
that it would be valuable to ask each school how many they would use before
ordering any additional notebooks.
ACTION: Theresa and the User Services Committee will research the cost of additional FirstSearch notebooks and survey the schools to find out how many additional booklets, if any, each school would like to order.
2. The Chadwyck-Healey Workshop scheduled for December 11 was so popular that a second session was scheduled for December 10. Both sessions are to be held from 1-4pm at the University of Virginia. Professional librarians and faculty members from all VIVA institutions are invited.
3. The Teaching Techniques Workshop, co-sponsored by VLA, is scheduled for May 30, at George Mason University.
4. There has been an interest in convening additional workshops on using the IAC databases via the Web, and there are 3 sessions (Christopher Newport University, Radford, and one at a central VCCS site) tentatively scheduled for mid-February.
5. Theresa is working with Kathy on preparing the inserts for the VIVA poster announcing all VIVA products.
6. User Services Committee is researching contact names for academic
groups within Virginia.
7. The User Services Committee members expressed some dissatisfaction with
the search coupons for training programs made available by Solinet.
ACTION: Kathy will call Solinet to ask about procedures for acquiring group access during training sessions and let them know that several VIVA members have experienced problems with the system.
E. Special Collections (Nancy Marshall)
Nancy reported that the Special Collections projects will each produce a
detailed progress report and accounting for their $20,000 by the end of
the fiscal year. The Steering Committee reiterated the need for these projects
to be visible, viable, and workable and that VIVA's funding for their work
should be acknowledged clearly. The Steering Committee discussed the need
for a broader project for the 1997-98 fiscal year, that the allocation to
the 6 schools was not a long-term commitment for special collections funding
restricted to the doctoral schools.
V. OTHER BUSINESS
A. The next VIVA Steering Committee will be held 10 am - 1:45pm on Thursday,
January 30, 1997. Kathy will identify a meeting place in the Richmond area.
Addendum: At the LAC meeting the next day, Charlene noted that she will be appointing a committee on database strategies.