Steering Committee Meeting
Thursday, March 11, 1999
Longwood College
Farmville, Virginia
MINUTES
ATTENDANCE: Present: Gene Damon, Linda Farynk, Eileen Hitchingham, Doug Hurd, John Jaffe, Jean Major, Connie McCarthy,
Don Samdahl, Roy Strohl, and John Zenelis. Also Present: Kathy Perry (VIVA) and Sarah Watstein (VCU). Absent:.
Frank Moran, Phyllis Self, Elsie Stephens Weatherington, and Karin Wittenborg.
I. Minutes from the December 3 meeting
were approved as distributed.
II. PROJECT UPDATE
A. Director's Report. (Kathy Perry)
1. Cost Savings and Value Added Survey, 1996-97. Kathy reported that the 1996-97 Cost Savings and Value Added Survey report and Executive Summary were available. Kathy had led a discussion session at the ICOLC meeting the previous week and several consortia were interested in and supportive of our approach.
ACTION: The Cost Savings and Value Added Survey 1996-97 was approved. Kathy will distribute the full report to all VIVA library directors and collections contacts.
2. Speaking Engagements: Members reported on additional speaking engagements on behalf of
VIVA.
a. Roy will speak at the SUNY annual meeting, April 26-28.
b. Eileen has been asked to speak to the Rhode Island Libraries.
c. Kathy will participate in the Science and Technology Information Committee Conference on Consortia in Taiwan,
May 4-5.
3. Electronic Campus of Virginia (E-CVA). VIVA is now a full member of the E-CVA Cooperative Board of Directors.
She has attended 2 meetings and Gene attended the most recent meeting, March 8. Gene added that Virginia Tech was
submitting a FIPSE grant proposal on behalf of E-CVA members.
4. Southern Regional Electronic Campus (SREC). Kathy reported that the SREC Library Advisory Council had appreciated
our recommendation to replace their draft principles with the "ACRL Guidelines for Distance Learning Library Services" (C&RL
News, October 1998, p. 689 - 694).
B. Chair's Report. (Roy Strohl)
1. ICOLC Meeting. Roy reported on the ICOLC meeting held in Phoenix, March 4-6. This session
offered vendor presentations, as well as some informal presentations by consortia, two panels offering an exchange
of viewpoints between the vendors and the consortia members, and an opportunity to hear some progress reports on
several of the ICOLC ad hoc committee efforts.
2. Legislation. Roy reported that the General Assembly has approved $200,000 additional funding for the VIVA. Of
that, $25,000 is stipulated for the independent colleges and universities. He thanked Eileen and Kathy for their
efforts to get the addendum proposal submitted. The Steering Committee will wait to determine the allocation of
the additional funding until they hear further news about the final budget submitted by the Governor.
3. Reorganization Plan. The Committee discussed several comments and suggestions made about the Reorganization Plan. They reaffirmed their interest in having the ad
hoc committees have finite schedules for their work. It was also pointed out that the VIVA structure of standing
committees need not be a mirror image of the typical library organizational structure. They agreed to proceed with
the plan as drafted and to encourage additional special projects as necessary.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the establishment of two ad hoc
committees for the July 1 - December 31, 1999 period. The Cataloging and Intellectual Access ad hoc Committee is encouraged to continue work with their cataloging guidelines and the Special Collections ad hoc Committee will continue to seek grant funding. The Steering Committee will review the need to continue these special projects if necessary after December 31, 1999. In addition, there will be a general call for items to be considered for other ad hoc special projects.
4. Associate Membership. Gene reported that the subcommittee (Gene Damon, John Jaffe, Kathy
Perry, and Roy Strohl) met with the Library of Virginia on February 18. The LVA has accepted the terms of Associate
Membership and Kathy will invoice them for the membership fee.
5. Membership. Roy appointed a Nominating Committee for the VIVA Steering Committee Chair (July 1, 1999 - June
30, 2001). The members are: Eileen Hitchingham (Chair), John Jaffe, and Don Samdahl). Roy also asked the comprehensives
to identify 2 members for the VIVA Steering Committee, terms to begin July 1, 1999.
III. COMMITTEE REPORTS
A. Personnel Committee (John Zenelis)
The Steering Committee went into Executive Session to discuss personnel issues. John summarized the process used
to evaluate the Director's performance. The equity compensation for the Director was addressed.
B. Collections (Gene Damon)
The Collections Committee met on January 15 and 25.
1. STAT-USA Renewal.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved the Collections Committee's recommendation to renew STAT-USA at the reduced price.
2. FirstSearch Block Searches. The Collections Budget has held money in reserve for additional FirstSearch block searches.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved purchasing 115,000 additional FirstSearch block searches during this fiscal year.
3. Turning off Sociological Abstracts (Abridged Version) on FirstSearch. The Collections Committee recommended that Sociological Abstracts (Abridged Version) be turned off by all public colleges and universities within two weeks (by April 1) since the full version of Sociological Abstracts is now available to all VIVA public institutions through CSA. The independent institutions are billed by VIVA for their use of the block searches and they are not all subscribing to the Sociological Abstracts contract with CSA, so they can make local decisions on when and if to turn off the FirstSearch access to Sociological Abstracts (abridged version).
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved turning off Sociological Abstracts available on FirstSearch within 2 weeks. Any public VIVA member wishing to continue their access beyond April 1 should alert John Walsh (email: jwalsh@gmu.edu).
4. Gene reviewed the Steering Committee's e-mail vote taken in mid-February in which the Steering Committee approved the following:
ACTIONS:
a. The purchase of the ABC-CLIO services, America: History and Life and Historical Abstracts.
b. The purchase of the CIS Statistical Universe, and
c. The renewal of PCI - Web.
5. The Collections Committee has appointed an RFP subcommittee for Abstracting and Indexing
Services. Gene thanked JMU for allowing Sharon Gasser to serve as chair of this important committee. Other members
are: Dave Beagle (VPI), Jim Campbell (UVA), Ruth Stanton (NVCC), along with Iris Moubray (JMU Purchasing) and Kathy
Perry (VIVA). Databases to be included in this RFP are: CINAHL, PsycINFO, Sociological Abstracts, MLA, and ERIC.
In addition, the RFP will include the option to license additional databases, such as ABI/Inform, INSPEC, and Compendex.
The subcommittee had established a very tight schedule for completion of the RFP process by the end of August 1999.
This should allow those schools wishing to change services before the fall semester to do so.
6. Gene reviewed the list of items currently under consideration, as well as those items not recommended for purchase.
He also reminded members that the Collections Committee has established a new set of web pages detailing some of
their current activities. The web pages can be found off the ABOUT VIVA page and directly at this URL: http://library.cc.va.us/vivacoll/
C. User Services (Jean Major)
1. Jean reported that the Cataloging and Intellectual Access Subcommittee will hold its workshop on the VIVA Cataloging
Guidelines on May 7, 1999 at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville. This will be a hands-on training
session for all interested VIVA members. Registration information is available on the web.
2. The Cataloging and Intellectual Access Subcommittee is continuing to work on refining the authority files for
the Chadwyck-Healey records associated with VIVA's four Chadwyck-Healey Databases. Volunteers are need to help
regenerate the bibliographic files with authorized headings and also provide VIVA libraries with record numbers
for downloading MARC authorities. Interested volunteers should contact Joyce Ogburn (jogburn@odu.edu).
3. Jean raised a question about the division of labor across VIVA schools. The Steering Committee discussed the
issue and suggested that local contributions be reviewed.
ACTION: Jean Major will draft a statement on VIVA's division of labor.
D. ILL Enhancements (Doug Hurd)
1. The ILL Enhancements Committee had discussed doing another RFP for express mail, but decided that local options
were currently adequate.
2. VIVA schools have different policies on charging for-profit entities for ILL. The ILL Enhancements Committee
decided that decentralization and local options in this case are appropriate and there is no need to develop a
VIVA policy about fees for interlibrary lending to for-profit entities.
3. Doug shared a copy of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (U.S.C. Section 108) loaded on the University of
Texas web site (http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/intellectualproperty/108.htm) which highlights changes in the Copyright
Act. The Steering Committee discussed Section 108 (a) (3) on the changed language about copyright notices to be
sent with ILL documents.
4. The ILL Enhancements Committee recommends that in order to be Y2K compliant, VIVA should purchase Ariel 2.2
software.
ACTION: The Steering Committee approved purchasing the Ariel 2.2 software for all public institutions. Kathy will work with John Jaffe to gather information from the private institutions to complete the order.
E. Special Collections (Roy Strohl)
1. The Special Collections Committee held its Encoded Archival Description (EAD) Workshop January 14-15 at UVA.
The purpose of the workshop was to increase their knowledge about electronic finding aids and begin the training
process for creating finding aids. The second workshop for the other comprehensive and independent school coordinators
previously scheduled for spring has been postponed until summer.
2. The Committee Chair sent a letter to the directors and special collections contacts at all of the independent
schools to inform them of the survey on archival collections at their schools. Jim Gwin and Jodi Koste followed
up with the surveys. The committee is working quickly to include these survey results in the grant proposals.
3. The committee is pursuing several grants this spring, but decided to pursue the Mellon Foundation at a later
date so as not to conflict with UVA's proposal to Mellon.
IV. OTHER BUSINESS
A. Library of Virginia LSTA (Connie McCarthy) Connie reported that she was one of four academic
representatives on the LSTA Advisory Board. The other two members from public institutions are Cal Boyer (Longwood)
and Frank Moran (Blue Ridge CC). Lisabeth Chabot (Mary Baldwin College) represents the independent institutions.
B. The next meeting is scheduled to take place on Thursday, June 10, 1999 (1:00 - 5:00 P.M.) at Clinch Valley College
in Wise, Virginia.