Steering Committee Meeting
Thursday, June 4, 1998
Old Dominion University
Norfolk
MINUTES
ATTENDANCE: Present: Theresa Byrd, Gene Damon, Linda Farynk, Eileen Hitchingham, John Jaffe, Jean Major, Connie Kearns McCarthy, and John Walsh. Absent: Barbara Ford, Barbara Miller, Roy Strohl, Elsie Stephens Weatherington, Karin Wittenborg. Also Present: John Duke (VCU), Mary Ann Chappell (JMU), Kathy Perry (VIVA), and Diane Walker (UVA).
I. The draft minutes of the May 5, 1998 meeting were distributed.
ACTION: The Steering Committee agreed to get comments back to Kathy by Wednesday, June 10. The Steering Committee approved changes to the retreat summary and approved posting it to the minutes web page. [see Addendum]
II. PROJECT UPDATE
A. Chair's Report
1. Theresa reported that she had accepted the Library Director's position at Ohio Wesleyan University, and will
need to resign as chair of the VIVA Steering Committee.
ACTION: Theresa announced the Nominations Committee members: Gene Damon, Eileen Hitchingham, Elsie Weatherington, and John Jaffe.
2. Retreat Follow-up: Theresa distributed the summary of the May 4-5 retreat, and thanked Jean Major for her work on the summary. The Steering Committee discussed Peter Blake's letter about VIVA funding and the cover memo for distribution to the library directors at the public colleges and universities.
ACTION: Theresa and Kathy will work to revise the SCHEV letter and the cover memo regarding VIVA funding that is in local institutions' budgets.
3. Organization Committee: Theresa announced that Karin Wittenborg had agreed to serve on the Organization Committee, replacing Barbara Miller, beginning July 1, 1998.
4. Membership: Theresa reported that the comprehensives had chosen Don Samdahl (VMI) to serve a two-year term on the Steering Committee, beginning July 1, 1998.
5. Theresa reported on the SCHEV Distance Education Forum, June 1-2. VIVA was able to have its exhibit there and received extensive good publicity at this forum. Theresa complimented SCHEV and Carol Pfeiffer for their work on the program.
6. Theresa shared information that Raymond J. Jirran (a professor at Thomas Nelson Community College and current President of the Virginia AAUP) had requested more VIVA resources supporting history studies.
B. Project Director's Update (Kathy Perry)
1. Collections Budget has approximately $118,000 remaining.
2. With support from GMU's VIVA funds, Kathy will represent VIVA on an IFLA panel on consortia in Amsterdam in August.
3. Kathy has been asked to serve on the Virtual Library Committee of the Southern Regional Electronic Campus
4. Kathy shared the printout from the VIVA statistics web page, and encouraged all libraries to review their use of VIVA products. She also reported that although the vendors measure different things, we are beginning to have use trends we can track. For example, VIVA's use of Britannica Online has more than quadrupled in the first five months of 1998, as compared to the first six months of 1997.
5. As a result of the SCHEV Distance Education Forum, Del. Kenneth Plum's office had requested that VIVA participate in his television show. The Steering Committee suggested that Roy Strohl represent VIVA in this.
C. Proposal Discussion (Eileen Hitchingham)
The Steering Committee discussed ideas for the proposal addendum to be prepared this summer. The issue of public
institutions lobbying was raised as part of that discussion.
ACTION: The Steering Committee referred the issue of lobbying to the Organization Committee.
III. COMMITTEE REPORTS
A. User Services (Jean Major)
1. Joyce Ogburn presented the Report from the Cataloging and Information Access Subcommittee. Since the Steering
Committee members had not had enough time to review the guidelines, they asked that the vote be delayed.
ACTION: The Steering Committee agreed to review the report of the Cataloging and Intellectual Access Subcommittee of the User Services Committee and vote electronically by Wednesday, June 10. [see Addendum]
2. Jean reported that the User Services Committee has agreed to coordinate another VIVA Users Group meeting on October 15 at the Virginia Library Association in Virginia Beach. Jean requested that as many Steering Committee members and all committee chairs plan to attend
ACTION: The User Services Committee will draft a letter requesting support for the VIVA Users Group meeting at VLA (October 15, 1998) and Kathy will distribute that to our vendors.
3. Jean discussed the offer by the Business CCM to assist with training on business resources. In light of the ad hoc task force meetings on the role of the CCM's, it was decided that although a few of these members might be called upon to help, the CCM need not have training as a major focus.
4. Jean reported that the Publicity subcommittee has been successful at finding several stories for the "VIVA in Action" monthly highlights.
ACTION: Jim Rettig will contact John Duke to work out details of this publicity on the web.
5. The Powerpoint presentation is close to completion. Jean thanked Sarah Watstein for her work on this project.
B. Collections Committee (Connie McCarthy)
1. Connie reported that the committee chairmanship is in transition, and that she, Gene Damon, and Kathy Perry
are meeting to ensure a smooth transition.
2. Connie reported that Chris Millson-Martula and Ruth Stanton were serving on an ad hoc task force to review VIVA's Draft Principles and Selection Criteria.
3. Kathy reported that she and the Business CCM had met with representatives of Dow Jones and UMI and she had been in negotiations with them about our renewal. The Collections Committee recommended renewal of the Dow Jones subscription.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the renewal of the Dow Jones contract, pending successful further negotiations.
4. John Walsh reported that the Collections Committee recommends the purchase of additional FirstSearch block searches at the current fiscal year price with the remaining Collections budget.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the purchase of additional block searches with remaining funds in the 97-98 Collections budget.
5. John also reported that the Collections Committee recommended renewal of the FirstSearch base package, but at 30 ports, rather than at 36 ports.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the renewal of the FirstSearch contract for the Base package at 30 ports for 12 months, july 1, 98 - june 30, 99. The Steering Committee also approved the continued practice of providing the base package to the participating independent schools at no additional charge. If we later determine that additional ports are necessary, we may need to revisit this practice.
6. John presented a favorable proposal for MLA access provided through FirstSearch. The Steering Committee was interested, but aware that other proposals had also been received.
ACTION: The Steering Committee requested that the Collections Committee revisit the subscription to MLA, with an eye to both price and available formats.
C. Technical Issues (Eileen Hitchingham)
Eileen reported that the OCLC trial of the dedicated TCP/IP line is scheduled to begin June 16, 1998. Eileen has
received a pricing proposal from OCLC, as well as a packet of information from Solinet about our current VIVA telecommunications
costs. She will try to present that information in a chart for comparison purposes.
D. ILL Enhancements
Kathy reported that the ILL committee had developed their ILL listserv and was going to contact all VIVA ILL departments
to encourage membership on that listserv. They also have prepared an ILL
web page, which is linked to the About VIVA page.
IV. OTHER BUSINESS
Next meeting: The Steering Committee approved setting 4-6 meetings a year, with 4 meetings scheduled to coincide
with the LAC meetings and other meetings scheduled as necessary. The LAC is working out dates and places for the
September, December, March and June meetings for the 1998-99 year.
The Steering Committee met via e-mail in June and July and approved these actions:
1. May 5, 1998 Minutes : The Steering Committee reviewed the draft minutes.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the revised minutes for the May 5, 1998 meeting. (6/15/98)
2. Steering Committee Chair: The Nominations Committee (Gene Damon, Eileen Hitchingham, Elsie Weatherington,
and
John Jaffe), chaired by Eileen Hitchingham, recommended Roy Strohl as the Steering Committee Chair to fill Theresa
Byrd's remaining one year term.
ACTION: The Steering Committee voted unanimously in support of the Nominations Committee's recommendation to elect LeRoy Strohl, III as the Steering Committee Chair for the July 1, 1998 - June 30, 1999 term. (7/1/98)
3. Cataloging Guidelines: The Steering Committee discussed the Guidelines for Cataloging VIVA Electronic Collections.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the Guidelines for Cataloging VIVA Electronic Collections prepared by the Cataloging and Intellectual Access Subcommittee of the User Services Committee. (7/6/98)
4. Roy Strohl asked the Steering Committee to consider the number of delegates VIVA should send to the International Coalition of Library Consortia meeting, October 1-3, 1998, in Denver.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved sending three delegates (Gene Damon, Kathy Perry, Roy Strohl) to the COC4 in October. (7/16/98)