The Virtual Library of Virginia

Steering Committee Meeting
Thursday, June 5, 1997
Christopher Newport University
MINUTES

ATTENDANCE: Present: Theresa Byrd, Gene Damon, Linda Farynk, Eileen Hitchingham, Charlene Hurt, John Jaffe, Jean Major, Carol Pfeiffer, Dennis Robison, Roy Strohl, and Elsie Stephens Weatherington. Also Present: John Duke (VCU), Laura Ford (SCHEV), John Haskell (W&M), Joyce Ogburn (ODU), and Kathy Perry (VIVA). Absent: Barbara Ford and Nancy Marshall.

I. MINUTES
The minutes of the May 12th meeting were approved.

II. PROJECT UPDATE
A. Kathy reported:
1. The Collections 1996-97 budget had a balance of $186,166 which will be applied to a partial payment for the IAC renewal of the 4 databases (excluding Books in Print). Final payments for all items will be completed by June 13, 1997.

2. The status of the travel and training budget was reviewed.

3. Revised travel regulations go into effect June 1 and copies of sample forms were distributed to all library directors and VIVA committee members.

4. New VIVA services available: GaleNet and STAT-USA.

5. Open Text is not honoring the "upgrade" option in our software contract. The issue has been referred to our purchasing agent at JMU. In the meantime, UVA can continue to use Open Text for the Chadwyck-Healey fulltext resources and VIVA will not have to pay maintenance.

6. The Dow Jones purchase (approved by the Steering Committee on November 8, 1996) had been sent back to the Collections Committee for 2 reasons: for technical review on scripting to share passwords among VIVA members and because funds were tight. It is anticipated that this contract will be approved and that this service will be in place during the summer.

B. Charlene reported that she, Theresa, and Dennis had met with Kip Campbell, Nelson Whorley, and Nolan Yelich of the Library of Virginia. They had agreed to set up a joint subcommittee to discuss possibility of the Library of Virginia becoming a member of VIVA. At this point, it is assumed that the subcommittee would report in December 1997 and that membership would be effective July 1, 1998.

C. Proposal: Dennis distributed the most recent proposal draft and reported that he had discussed several issues with Peter Blake. On the staffing issue, since VIVA was not a state agency, VIVA did not have its own FTE positions to offer. Individual institutions would have to allocate their FTE to VIVA or positions would have to be handled as contractual services when necessary. The Steering Committee discussed the issue of VIVA funds that are considered in the base budget for the 1996-98 biennium, but which have been distributed to the individual institutions and the need to manage most of those funds centrally. Dennis and his committee (Charlene, John, Theresa, and Kathy) will work to have the proposal to Peter by mid-August.

ACTION: The Proposal Committee will revise the proposal based on the meeting’s discussions.

III. Committee Reports
A. Organization Committee:
1. Charlene reported that the Steering Committee will be reconstituted on July 1. John Jaffe reported that he will remain on the Steering Committee for one more year as the representative of the independent schools. There are no changes anticipated for the 2-year schools, and Dennis reported that the comprehensive schools will discuss this issue and report back. The Steering Committee discussed the appropriate sequence for appointing committee chairs and committee members.

ACTION: Dennis will report on the representatives for the comprehensive institutions. Following the appointments to the Steering Committee, Theresa will appoint chairs to the standing committees.

2. The Organization Committee has received an application for the Technical Issues staffing.

ACTION: The Organization Committee will follow up with the applicant for the Technical issues staffing.

B. Special Collections: Joyce Ogburn (reporting for Betsy Pittman):
1. Joyce reported that although the project period was over June 30, not all of the doctoral institutions were finished with their digitizing projects. It was agreed that if an institution had not used all of its 1996-97 funding for the project, they could continue the work. The Special Collections work can be found on their section of the VIVA web site: http://scholar2.lib.vt.edu/spec/viva/viv.htm

2. Joyce presented a proposal to begin work on the 400th anniversary of the founding of Virginia with the special collections 1997-98 project $100,000 funds (currently in the budgets of 5 of the doctorals: GMU, UVA, VCU, VPI, W&M). It was recommended that the Special Collections Committee modify their proposal and seek foundation funding, particularly from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the Special Collections Committee’s project on the 400th anniversary of Virginia’s founding for the 1997-98 fiscal year. Funding for the 1997-98 400th anniversary project is anticipated to be approximately $20,000. This represents project staff work at one institution. It is assumed that sufficient server space can be found at the individual institutions (at least for the first year). The Special Collections Committee will pursue foundation funding for this project, both for the 1997-98 year and for the 1998-2000 biennium. If foundation funding is not available, the Steering Committee agreed that the doctoral institutions will share these costs.

The Steering Committee discussed the request that several of the doctorals wish to continue their work on their Civil War and regional interest projects during 1997-98.

ACTION: The Steering Committee agreed that the remaining 1997-98 funds $80,000 could be used to continue projects begun during the 1996-97 year. Since ODU was not included in the original allotment for the special collections digitizing funds, the Steering Committee agreed that the five doctorals (GMU, UVA, VCU, VPI, W&M) will each transfer $2,667 to ODU so that each doctoral has an equal share of the remaining $80,000 in the 1997-98 budget and work could continue on the VIVA special collections projects at each institution during the 1997-98 year. The Special Collections Committee will report back to the Steering Committee on progress by June 30, 1998.

C. Cataloging and Intellectual Access: Joyce Ogburn reported that the ad hoc task force on Cataloging and Intellectual Access had completed drafting their guidelines (which are available at: http://www.lib.odu.edu/~joyce/recommends.htm). The task force will present the draft guidelines at the VLA Technical Services and Automation Roundtable workshop on cataloging electronic resources on June 6, 1997, and will also present them at the Virginia OCLC Users’ Meeting at Radford on June 12, 1997. The task force recommended that they continue their work either as a standing committee of VIVA or as a subcommittee of the User Services Committee.

ACTION: It was moved and seconded to have the Organization Committee establish a standing committee on Cataloging and Intellectual Access. The motion was not carried. The Steering Committee approved the motion to refer the issue of the appropriate form for continuing the work of the Cataloging and Intellectual Access task force to the Organization Committee which should come up with a plan and address the appropriate membership for the group, including reference librarians.

D. Publicity Committee: Jean presented the Publicity Committee’s proposal to prepare a video on VIVA. The committee proposes seeking outside funding for the video.

ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the motion that the Publicity Committee be authorized to begin production of the video, with the expectation that the cost will be underwritten totally or in large part by VIVA vendors.

E. InterLibrary Loan Enhancements Committee: Dennis presented the ILL guidelines. He drew attention to the commitment to keep the Virginia Union List of Serials up to date and the commitment to meet VIVA ILL within 48 hours.

ACTION: The Steering Committee unanimously approved the ILL guidelines prepared by the ILL Enhancements Committee, including the commitment to keep the Virginia Union List of Serials up to date and the commitment to meet VIVA ILL requests within 48 hours. These guidelines will be presented at the SCHEV Library Advisory Council meeting.

F. User Services Committee: Theresa Byrd reported on that committee’s most recent meetings.

1. The committee offered the idea of producing mousepads with the VIVA logo for use at the reference desks and throughout VIVA libraries.

ACTION: The Steering Committee referred the suggestion of VIVA mousepads to the Publicity Committee.

2. The User Services Committee emphasized the importance of the FirstSearch training database to the bibliographic instruction librarians.

ACTION: Kathy will remind OCLC that the training database is important to VIVA’s bibliographic instruction librarians and OCLC should be urged not to miss the July 1 deadline for completion of this training database.

3. IAC Searchbank information tents have been delivered to the member libraries.

4. The May 30 workshop on Teaching in the Electronic Environment was very successful. There were 96 participants, including 91 from the academic libraries.

5. The committee is working on a Collection Development workshop for fall 1997. The committee received support to continue the planning effort but will return with a proposed budget for review.

6. The committee received outside funding support from IAC for a VIVA Users Group meeting to be held at VLA on October 31.

7. The committee requests that the VIVA posters be made available in an unfolded format.

ACTION: Kathy will distribute flat (unfolded) VIVA posters to VIVA member libraries.

G. Collections Committee: Carol Pfeiffer reported for the committee.

1. The committee recommended that the FirstSearch renewal be considered at the same time as consideration of the Ovid proposal. There was extensive discussion on the recommendation presented by the Collections Committee, which included renewing the base package with OCLC FirstSearch, removing Medline from the base package, discontinuing the FS subscriptions to ABII and MLA because of high price and low use (but include an extension of service through August 1997 to allow local libraries to make other decisions), initiate MLA service through Ovid, subscribe to MEDLINE, CINAHL, Bioethicsline, and MLA through Ovid, using VIVA collections budget to pay the Ovid user access fee and part of the license fees for public institutions, and cost sharing by the public institutions for some of the license fees, discontinue Agricola through FS and establish subscription through Ovid or CSA.

ACTION: The Steering Committee did not approve the motion to purchase any OVID databases for the 1997-98 fiscal year. By default, this action approved the renewal of the FirstSearch contract, subject to several revisions.

2. The Steering Committee reviewed the proposal relating to the MLA proposal through FirstSearch. Carol pointed out that the MLA price has doubled for two years in a row, and that many schools continue to offer MLA through other local resources.

ACTION: The Steering Committee approved discontinuing the subscription to FirstSearch MLA, after a small extension of the service through August 1997. This should provide time for VIVA libraries to make other arrangements, if they wish to continue the subscription with local funds.

3. The Steering Committee discussed the ABI proposal through FirstSearch. Carol reported that there had been low use of this database and that there is currently similar coverage in other VIVA resources.

ACTION: The Steering Committee approved discontinuing the subscription to FirstSearch ABI, after a small extension of the service through August 1997. This should provide time for VIVA libraries to make other arrangements, if they wish to continue the subscription with local funds.

4. Carol proposed that the Collections Committee re-examine the list of FirstSearch databases it recommends for discontinuation.

ACTION: The Collections Committee will review the list of FirstSearch databases recommended for discontinuation.

5. The Steering Committee reviewed the request for funding to send one VIVA representative to the ALCTS/RUSA workshop in Chicago, October 23-25, 1997.

ACTION: The Steering Committee approved funding at the membership rate for one person to attend the ALCTS/RUSA Workshop in Chicago, October 23-25, 1997. The attendee is expected to report back to VIVA on what was learned.

H. Database Strategies Task Force: Gene Damon gave a very brief summary of the report and Steering Committee members were urged to get their comments to him immediately.

ACTION: The Steering Committee agreed to read the Database Strategies Task Force draft report and notify Gene immediately of any suggestions or comments on it.

IV. OTHER BUSINESS

A. The next Steering Committee will be July 17 in Richmond, 10A.M. to 2 P.M.

B. Following the regular Steering Committee meeting, the Steering Committee recognized and thanked three Steering Committee members: Carol Pfeiffer for her 3 years as Chair of the Collections Committee, Dennis Robison for his 3 years as Chair of the ILL Enhancements Committee, and Charlene Hurt, for her 3 years as Steering Committee Chairperson.

Attachment A

2. In coordination with Project Director serves as technical liaison to VIVA vendors to:

· know what the vendors are doing and communicate relevant information to VIVA sites
· collect and analyze problems VIVA sites have in using vendor products and communicate these to the vendors
· determine what each vendor can do to support authentication of VIVA users from non-listed IP addresses
· resolve technical issues related to enhancement of functionality of various databases (ex. - hook to holdings)
· provide technical expertise to the process of collecting statistics for VIVA and local sites

3. Provides technical assistance to VIVA institutions, including:

· assistance in preparing specifications/requests for appropriate equipment
· augmenting/simplifying vendor manuals to make them more helpful to VIVA sites
· diagnosing/evaluating/solving technical difficulties that could be local, network, vendor, or a combination of these.
4. Monitors vendor listservs for relevant information to condense, clarify, and communicate to VIVA sites.

5. Assists VIVA Project Director in supervising any technical consulting or outsourcing contracts.

6. Evaluates new technical capabilities VIVA should pursue, including better telecommunications links, and improved methods of authentication of VIVA users.

7. Works closely with Technical Issues Committee, in coordination with Project Director and TIC Chair, to see that tasks are appropriately distributed and completed.

8. Provides technical assistance as requested to Webmaster for VIVA Home Page and related pages.