MSCS Collection Development Subcommittee
June 11, 2012
Colby College, Miller Library Conference Room
10:10-12
Attending: Joan Campbell, Christy Coombs, Valerie Glenn, Clem Guthro, Toni Katz, Lanny Lumbert, Susan MacArthur, Peggy O’Kane, Deb Rollins
The meeting began with a poll gauging the group’s reaction to the Advisory Board visit and meeting. Overall, the group found it to be very helpful. It was mentioned that we need to begin defining the decisions that need to be made; the question was raised as to how we will incorporate their recommendations into our strategy. This led into a discussion of the specific recommendations, and how we might address them.
Collection analysis approaches: HathiTrust
Prior to the Advisory Board visit, Constance Malpas ran a comparison of the group’s OCLC holdings with the HathiTrust public domain corpus. Each of the libraries has a list of their titles that overlap. We have verified that any library that is a HathiTrust member may lend the public domain files.
There were questions about the library data in the report; some reviews of individual library titles showed items that had been withdrawn (particularly US government documents). Valerie will check with Constance to verify the date, and ask if the report can be re-run (including in-copyright works this time).
It was noted that Bates has begun to withdraw some items based on their availability in HathiTrust. This was done after reviewing usage statistics for the print volume. They are not including links to the HathiTrust volume in their public catalog at this time.
Other libraries were hesitant to withdraw volumes that overlapped with HathiTrust before viewing usage statistics. Valerie mentioned that Sara had already been tasked with retrieving usage stats for URSUS volumes; Valerie is hesitant to ask the non-URSUS libraries because it’s yet another report that they would need to run.
This led to speculation as to whether or not we could export item level data from each system and send to Sara to help with future report requests. Valerie will ask; she will also contact OCLC to see when we will need to export data for that report.
Process to follow with HathiTrust public domain items:
1. Refresh report data.
2. Compare to total circulations for each title, by institution.
3. Determine a recommendation for handling this category of items, with rationale.
4. Submit to Directors Council for approval.
Collection analysis approaches: “unique” items
In this context, “unique” is defined as being unique in WorldCat. (ie, items in WorldCat that are only held by one or more partners). According to the latest WCA snapshot data, there are 58,561 “unique” records. All but 932 of these are held by 1 library.
It was mentioned that it would be interesting to see which, if any, “unique” items overlapped with HathiTrust content (note: given our definition of unique, there should be zero overlap).
Collection analysis approaches: zero-circ items
Note: the working definition of zero-circ items is an item that has zero circulations for all partner holdings.
The group decided to set parameters around the analysis, based on acquisition date. Items acquired prior to 2005 (ie, with an item record creation date of 12-31-2004 or earlier) will be included in the analysis.
Access vs. preservation
The goal of the project is retention, not deselection; and access over preservation. Access to retained copies will be subject to the lending policies of the home institution. After it was mentioned that special collections material is included in our collection analysis, a discussion about “what we mean by access” ensued. Some considered access to equal circulation; Valerie had been operating under the assumption that access equalled “ability for the public to view.” This led to some discussion about how we can determine the overlap between special collections and circulating copies, and whether or not we should have a circulating copy in addition to a special collections copy. [Note: nothing was decided regarding this; we will begin to investigate what we can do with item-level data.]
The role of geography when making retention decisions:
The group was unanimous in deciding that geography does not/should not play a role when making retention decisions. The state delivery system is working; retention decisions should be based on usage and not on geography (ie, a library should not be required to retain a title only because of the library’s location.)