Maine Shared Collections Strategy Collection Development
January 14, 2014
Colby College, Miller Library, Conference Room
1:00 – 4:00 PM
Attendees: Clem Guthro, Deb Rollins, Matthew Revitt, Joan Campbell, Becky Albitz, Peggy O’Kane, Lanny Lumbert, Brian Damien, Sara Amato (called in), Andy Breeding (called in)
Absentees: Toni Katz
1. Project Updates
a. Disclosing Step One retention commitments – local catalogs, OCLC & MaineCat
Local catalogs
Sara has now completed loading retention commitments for titles in Retention Scenario Step One.
Sara has spoken to Karl Fattig (Bowdoin) about the public display of the MSCC retention statement, and when the new merged Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin catalog goes live (Feb. 6) the ‘MSCC’ link will display using the same mechanism as it does in URSUS. Sara is waiting to hear back from Kathleen Spahn about implementing the display in Portland Public Library’s local catalog.
OCLC
Matthew reported that unfortunately OCLC are not moving head as quickly as MSCS would have hoped on batch loading the retention information into the OCLC Local Holding Records of MSCS Commit To Retain (CTR) titles. It looks likely that it won’t be completed until nearer the 90 day timeframe they reported in their auto-response to Sara’s request. Matthew commented that because of these delay there is an added incentive to ensure the Committee agrees on commitments for titles in Step Two ASAP, so Sara can submit the request to OCLC and get the LHRs get updated within the grant period.
MaineCat
Currently, MSCS are still intending to use Sara’s work-around of using the OCLC API and Javascript to get the 583 retention fields to display and transfer to MaineCat. This is reliant on the retention information being in OCLC first (see above). However, last week James Jackson Sanborn (Maine InfoNet) received a promising message from Tom Jacobson at Innovative Interfaces, Inc. (III) that mentioned that one of their planned enhancements in 2014 for INN-Reach systems is to map local 583 data elements into the institution record within the union catalog, and be visible within the OPAC. Matthew commented that hopefully this will solve the issue of the 583 not flowing locally to MaineCat in the long-term. Clem commented that it is still not clear when in 2014 this enhancement will be released.
b. HathiTrust membership update
UMaine has now installed Shibboleth (used in HathiTrust for authentication purpose), but there have been issues between HathiTrust and UMaine IT regarding what attributes are released. UMaine want it to be for .maine.edu (which sometimes applies to the entire UMaine System), but HathiTrust want it just for UMaine Orono as the partnership is just with them not the whole of the UMaine System. James Jackson Sanborn (Maine InfoNet) is following up on this, so MSCS can ensure the process and payment is completed in the grant period and can be counted towards matching partner library funds.
c. E-book-On-Demand & Print On Demand testing update
Sara has been loading records with links to the HathiTrust and Google Books and Print-On-Demand (POD) request into MaineCat.
Three weeks ago (December 27) MSCS received its first POD request for The Invisible Flag by Peter Bamm (on the subject of the Second World War). The cost of printing is going to be about $20 for a 205 page book, which is cheaper than copies available on Amazon. Yesterday (January 13th) MSCS received its second POD request for the title The Christian’s defence by James Smith which at 700 plus pages is going to be a costly job. All POD requests during the test period will be paid for using allocated grant funds.
Matthew will send out a survey to any POD requestors at end of the month to get feedback on the service.
Sara and Maine InfoNet staff have turned Google Analytics on for tracking outbound link events in records. Sara explained that it is possible to turn on title level tracking (i.e. rather than just number of times a Google Book or HathiTrust or POD link was clicked, to include the actual titles). Matthew asked the Committee their thoughts on whether it would be useful to track at the title level. Except for a comment from Joan saying it could be interesting to see if there were repeat requests for titles, there were no other opinions on whether MSCS should implement title level tracking. Sara confirmed for Matthew that if the bib temp limits gets raised it wouldn’t be too much extra work to track titles.
Matthew agreed to speak with Sara about tracking titles after the meeting.
d. Advisory Board & IMLS reports
Advisory Board
The Advisory Board six month progress report and IMLS annual performance report submitted were due in November and December.
Bob Kieft added a couple of comments in the Advisory Board report which Matthew had discussed with the Project Team, but he asked the Committee for their thoughts on:
● Bob felt it was interesting that MSCS did not include scarcity in Maine in its retention criteria.
The Committee felt that because beside the MSCS partner libraries there are so few Maine libraries that are members of OCLC by having the criterion ‘retain if 0-9 holding libraries in OCLC’, MSCS were also essentially saying this title is also rare in Maine. Peggy commented that MSCS libraries are likely to have titles like states histories that other states might not have themselves. Joan also felt that there was less concern about looking at rarity in Maine because having the criterion ‘retain if in local protected category’, MSCS were protecting Maine titles. Clem commented that it would be interesting to see a comparison, looking at the percentage of libraries in each state that are OCLC members, because he thinks Maine is probably unusual in having such a small percentage (approx.10% of Maine libraries) of its libraries being OCLC members.
● The Committee used usage levels to decide how many title-holdings to retain across the group in Step Two. Bob asked why MSCS chose this and not another data element?
The Committee felt that usage was a measure of a title’s value (once the other criteria had been applied) and that the MSCS libraries had reliable usage data going back 20 years.
IMLS
Matthew reported that unfortunately UMaine’s Office of Research & Sponsored Programs (ORSP) had not submitted the annual financial report to IMLS on deadline.
e. Grant extension application approval & national event
IMLS had approved MSCS’s grant extension. IMLS only approve extensions of one year, so the official end date is now May 31, 2015. However, Matthew reported that grant funds will run out before then and so in reality grant activities are likely to end August 31, 2014 which is when his employment on the grant ends.
Having received the extension, Matthew has been able to move ahead with planning the shared print event MSCS are co-organizing with the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) at the 2014 ALA Annual Conference in Las Vegas. Matthew presented a copy of the agenda (which he will send to the Committee) and commented that he thinks the session will be an interesting one with a good mixture of presenters who have presented at shared print events previously with new presenters who haven’t been heard at such events before now. Matthew reported that he had been approaching chosen presenters regarding their availability to present.
2. Retention Scenario Step Two
a. Review estimates for retention allocation
Retention policies
Since it had been two months since the last Committee meeting, Matthew presented a refresher on retention decisions made so far and those that still needed to be agreed. At the previous MSCS Collection Development Committee in November the Committee had been looking at a category of titles in Step Two that met the following criteria.
● Pre-2003
● 3+ Holdings
● No Special Collections
● Circulating Titles only
● No Hathi Public Domain
● US Holdings > 9
● Not Locally Protected
The Committee agreed that low circulation title-sets with an average uses per title-holding of 0-3, MSCS would keep 1 title-holding per title-set. For high circulation title-sets in MSCS the Committee agreed to keep 2 title-holdings per title per title-set. The Committee also made some decisions regarding how retention responsibility should be allocated across the group (see below).
Following the meeting the Committee (via email) also made the decision to be consistent with Step One and where there are title-sets with special collections title-holdings keep all title-holdings in special collections locations and one circulating title-holding. Again, being consistent with Step One, where there are 9 or Fewer US Holdings in OCLC, MSCS will keep all title-holdings per title-set. For local protected titles MSCS will keep 2 title-holding per title-set. Matthew commented that these criterion meant MSCS would (like in Step One) be retaining that titles that has never circulated. Clem responded that looking at it another way MSCS would not be retaining any titles with zero aggregate circulations unless it is in the 9 or Fewer US Holdings in OCLC and local protected categories.
HathiTrust public domain titles were excluded from the biggest categories (low and high circulating title-sets), but they can appear in the special collections, local protected, and 9 or fewer US holdings categories because again MSCS want to protect these titles regardless of other factors. Matthew asked the Committee whether they wanted to apply different rules to HathiTrust public domain titles, or do what was done in Step One, and let the other criteria take precedence and decide CTR status.
Joan asked Matthew if he knew how many Step Two titles were in the HathiTrust public domain. Matthew responded that he didn’t have exact figures, but he didn’t think it was many based on previous numbers supplied by SCS for overlap between MSCS holdings and the HathiTrust for example, only 6% overlap for all public domain titles across all partner collection.
The Committee agreed that no separate rules should be applied to HathiTrust public domain titles, which means that SCS will apply the ‘low’ usage rule of keep 1 title-holdings and ‘high’ usage rule of keep 2 title-holdings to HathiTrust public domain titles. This would mean that like in Step One when a title is not in the rare OCLC, local protected and special collections categories, then usage determines whether the title is retained NOT that it is a HathiTrust public domain title.
Clem commented that the fact that MSCS libraries considered relying on digital backups in the HathiTrust will make for some interesting reporting to IMLS. Clem went on that unlike other shared print projects who had asked SCS for data on HathiTrust overlap, MSCS had actually used the data in its decision-making process. Matthew responded that many of these projects had been looking at de-accessioning, so were perhaps more conservative in their willingness to rely on digital surrogates.
The Committee approved all of the above retention policies.
MSCS will not be committing to retain title-sets where there are:
● Pre-2003
● 3+ Holdings
● No Special Collections
● Circulating Titles only
● US Holdings > 9
● Not Locally Protected
● Zero aggregate uses across title-set
Matthew asked the Committee whether they wanted to be provided with a list of titles that were considered as part of MSCS analysis, but did not receive a CTR. Or would they rely on the fact that it hadn’t received a retention statement in the catalog, which is the same logic the Committee used against having a ‘not committed to retain’ note.
The Committee agreed that they did not require lists of titles that were considered in MSCS analysis, but that didn’t receive a CTR.
Retention allocation rules
The Committee had agreed to ask SCS to use the following allocation rules to assign retention responsibility for titles in the low circulation category (see above):
RULE 1.
If Colby holds a title, it will be marked Commit-to-Retain (CTR).
RULE 2.
If a title is held by any of the “CBB” Libraries then at least one of these libraries must have their holding marked Commit-to-Retain (CTR). If Colby holds and is marked CTR per rule 1 then this rule will be satisfied
RULE 3.
Given that Rules 1 & 2 are satisfied, the remaining Commit-to-Retain (CTR) allocations will be done in an “equitable” fashion, where equity is defined as maintaining a constant ratio of CTR allocations to NFE allocations among libraries (which is equivalent to a constant ratio of retention commitments to in-scope titles).
RULE 4.
ALL Maine State Library local protected title-holdings are marked CTR.
Matthew had asked Andy to apply these to all titles MSCS have made a retention decision on. Matthew presented the allocation figures to the Committee and reminded them that they are just estimates. However, Andy reported that there should only be 5-10% difference once the rules (which are fairly complicated) are applied for real. Matthew commented that unsurprisingly (given the agreed rules) Colby have the biggest share of retention commitments with 134,037 CTR title-holdings, plus 1,278 title-holdings for Bangor Theological Seminary which Colby are now storing. Followed by Bates with 51,981 and Bowdoin with 51,725 CTR title-holdings. Matthew went on that the other partners have a fairly low share of retention commitments with: Bangor Public Library retaining 18,613 title-holdings, Maine State Library retaining 20,230 title-holdings, Portland Public retaining 22,178 title-holdings, UMaine retaining 44,534 title-holdings, and USM retaining 24,344 title-holdings.
Matthew asked Clem whether Colby were happy with being assigned such a substantial retention allocation. Clem responded that Colby are OK with the numbers because with the additional storage space they would not have a problem with continuing to store these titles for at least the 15 year retention period. Another reason why Clem felt comfortable with the figures is that (at least in the short-medium term) he didn’t expect the other MSCS libraries to be massively weeding titles they haven’t been allocated retention responsibility, but even if the titles are weeded with the robust Maine library delivery service it shouldn’t be a problem for other libraries to borrow the titles from Colby.
Matthew asked the Committee whether they approved using these allocation rules, or whether there were any additional rules they would like applied for example, using strengths bearing in mind that Andy had commented that the existing rules were already fairly complicated.
Brian replied that Portland Public Library would be willing to be assigned fiction titles (using OCLC numbers) once the Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin rules have been applied. Andy asked what would be the intent of applying this rule. Deb proposed that rather than using subject data to assign retention responsibility which would only affect a few titles (once the CBB rules have been applied) subject strengths could be used to develop collection building opportunities. Matthew commented that this made more sense than just having an on-off rule for Portland Public Library. Clem commented that the Maine Shared Collections Cooperative (MSCC) Collections and Operations Committee (to be formed) could look at libraries transferring CTRs and looking at issues around weeding titles. A discussion then ensued regarding fiction being a broad and possibly grey description.
The Committee agreed to leave the existing four retention allocations as they are (see above) and not add any addition rules.
Andy reported that with HathiTrust public domain titles going back into the first category of titles looked at (low and high circulation titles) is not a big issue and the numbers for allocation will vary slightly, but only by only thousands. Before Andy has his colleague at SCS, Eric Redman, run the allocation numbers he will check back with Matthew to confirm exactly what MSCS want doing, but after this it should only take a couple of weeks to get the CTR lists back to MSCS. Sara confirmed for Andy that in order for her to complete her CTR reversals for titles in the publishers list developed for Step One, she would like separate CTR lists sent for each MSCS library.
Matthew confirmed for the Committee that collection analysis work for monographs had now been completed. Peggy responded that it was impressive that in the last year MSCS have gone from having no retention commitments made to having them all agreed!
3. Transferring retention statements to replacement editions – review DR example and need for procedures
Deb has identified some titles at UMaine which had CTRs, but are missing, which she was going to replace. However, to replace them with an exact edition would be in some cases impossible and in others too expensive, so Deb was instead going to purchase a different edition of the title. Deb asked the Committee for their thoughts on whether in situations like this MSCS libraries should be allowed to replace an edition and transfer the CTR to the new publication.
Peggy responded that in most cases this would be fine, but some editions may have unique features. Matthew commented that these decisions could be taken on a case-by -case basis. Deb commented that the Committee members have sufficient trust in each other’s professional judgment to decide when it’s appropriate to transfer a CTR to another edition. Becky asked Deb when deciding whether to replace the title she had considered the availability of other titles in the state. Deb responded that she had taken this into account.
Clem commented that he agreed that libraries should be able to replace editions and transfer CTR’s, but that it needs to be formalized as a process by the (MSCC) Collections and Operations Committee (to be formed).
A discussion then ensued regarding the practicalities of adding and reversing retention commitments. Sara commented that because the batch processes have not yet been completed by OCLC, if retention commitments need to be changed, for example a replacement copy is purchased and cataloged on a record with a different OCLC number than the original, the Committee members should alert her to both the old and new OCLC number. The number would need to be added to both the regular and shared print symbols.
Deb agreed to share with the Committee guidance she will produce for transferring retention responsibility. The Committee agreed to send Sara any titles they want to transfer CTRs.
4. Journals/series/serials analysis
a. Implications of manually adding retention on CTR lists
Matthew commented that before the Committee debated the retention of journals/series/serials titles he wanted Deb to discuss the process of manually adding retention on CTR lists because it might affect how many commitments MSCS libraries are willing to make.
Deb and Sara explained how adding commitments in local catalogs will be a manual process with holdings for serials needing to be individually encoded to make corrections for those titles that do not already have closed holdings in the record, so it will be more labor intensive process than it was for monographs. Sara commented that for monograph series it will be a more automated process.
b. Compared with vendor sets title lists – review Deb’s analysis
Deb reviewed a list of 129 titles in the “not vendor set” category which are held by 2 or more MSCS libraries with the goal of identifying opportunities for making group retention decisions. However, unlike the “local protected” titles (see below) this list had not been filtered to only include CTR titles as it was produced before those lists were submitted. Matthew commented that therefore some titles in this list would not have been selected for retention by the Committee members when conducting their own analysis.
Deb explained that she based her retention decisions on a number of factors including: online availability, missing/incomplete holdings information, and works that have been superseded which either didn’t have historical value or were on subjects that had low institutional value. Where Deb flagged a title as needing a CTR she also marked which MSCS library she thought should be assigned retention responsibility. Deb came to her decisions by comparing holdings information and identifying which library had the more complete collection. Also, libraries who stored a title in offsite storage were generally assigned the retention responsibility–if Deb thought it was a title that should receive a CTR.
Matthew asked the Committee whether they agreed with Deb’s decisions, which may reverse some of the decisions they made in their own reviews.
Peggy responded that for some titles they might need to be some horse trading to decide which library gets a CTR. Matthew commented that there might be some collection building opportunities for libraries to transfer holdings to another library to create a more complete collection. Deb responded that neither horse trading nor collection transfers would be necessary because if she decided a title should be retained and the holdings were split between two or more libraries then each library was assigned a CTR for that title to ensure no holdings were lost from the MSCS group.
Joan commented that she noticed one title on Deb’s list that there is a complete run of in the British Periodical (which Deb doesn’t have access to) which she doesn’t necessarily think needs to be assigned a CTR.
The Committee agreed to review the list and send Matthew any requested changes by the end of January.
c. Local protected category title lists – review CTR combined list, collection building opportunities & digitization
Matthew thanked the Committee for submitting the filtered local protection retention lists to include titles they felt their institution should CTR.
Sara combined CTRs for the local protection titles and created a merged CTR spreadsheet list to be used to identify whether there are possibilities for making group retention decisions like those made for monographs. However, after reviewing the list Sara, Deb, and Matthew felt that the libraries are going to want to continue to CTR everything on there especially as a lot of the material is in special collections. Also, it would be a lengthy process to compare holdings for 383 titles (based on Deb’s analysis of 129 titles above).
Mathew asked the Committee whether they agreed to stick with the retention decisions they already made, or whether they wanted to compare holdings and look at making group decisions.
The Committee agreed that there might be collection building opportunities in the future which the Maine Shared Collections Cooperative (MSCC) Collections and Operations Committee (to be formed) could look into, but that for now MSCS will agree to CTR those titles in the lists already submitted to Matthew and Sara.
d. URSUS & PPL title list omissions
Sara reported that she has identified some titles that were mistakenly excluded from the URSUS lists the Committee reviewed first time around. The cause of these omissions was that when Sara started looking at locations in the 945s to get item/checkin level locations rather than the 998s, which had only branch level locations. The intent was to get microfilm out and identify special collections. However, Sara’s login was for Orono, and checkins in other accounting units were not outputting 945s (only 998 info.) Sara had sent lists of these titles to Peggy (Maine State Library), Lanny (University of Southern Maine), and Christy Coombs (Bangor Public). Sara had not been aware that Christy had retired, so wondered who should receive the list instead. Matthew responded that Christy had mentioned before she retired that she would be willing to look at MSCS work, but that he didn’t know how this would work in practice. Matthew will contact Barbara McDade to see if she would be willing to review the list, or if not whether there was anyone else at Bangor Public Library who could review it.
Sara has also sent Brian (Portland Public Library) a list of more titles to review that weren’t on their original list because in dumping the marc records for the series lists, Sara was limiting to ‘material type’ = ‘a’ , usually mapped from marc 006 position 6 – form of item. However, it turned out that this is not the same as the ‘material type’ fixed field in the PPL catalog, so Sara only got things with the ‘material type’ = a – printed, and missed things that were ‘w’ – magazine or ‘n’ newspaper’.
Those Committee members with additional titles to review agreed to submit to Matthew and Sara their filtered lists to only included titles they want to CTR before the end of January.
Matthew presented a summary of serials titles committed to retain that Sara had added to the MSCS website. The numbers are based on the filtered lists submitted by the Committee, so will be updated based on decisions made at the meeting (see above).
The Committee were surprised to see such high figures for Bowdoin’s local protected commitments (1,094). Joan commented that this relatively large figure could be a result of Bowdoin having a lot of serial titles in special collections. After reviewing both the filtered and original lists Sara and Joan couldn’t identify any obvious issues, but Joan will review the lists again in case there were any issues. Matthew commented that the high number of commitments was not necessarily a problem, but just a result of Joan being more conservative than some of the other Committee members.
5. Date of next meeting
Matthew will send around a Doodle Poll for the Committee to agree on the date and time of their next meeting. Matthew commented that with so many of the current MSCS activities coming to an end, he thinks that the Committee will have the time to look at some of the tasks that had been seen as post-grant activities.
6. AOB
Clem reported that OCLC and CIC are co-organizing a two day shared print event on March 27 – 28 in Dublin, OH and partly because of the success of MSCS he has been invited to be on a panel discussing regional shared print efforts.
Sara reported that she will be attending a weeklong OCLC Developer House in Dublin, OH from February 3 – 7, 2014. Sara commented that whilst there she will look further into the possibilities of using their new metadata API to add retention statements into local holdings records, which would mean she wouldn’t have to go through the lengthy batch loading process. Sara also hoped the API could be used for collections analysis information.
Matthew reported that the Northeast Regional Print Management Project Monograph Working Group (which Clem is a member of) have based a number of their initial recommendations on MSCS experiences including a retention period of 15 years. The Journals & Serials Working Group report (which Mathew is a member of) recommendations are heavily based on the WEST model, but there are also some similarities to the MSCC business model including that holding libraries will retain ownership of the CTR materials. But unlike the Monograph Working Group (and MSCS) the Journals & Serials Working Group recommended a retention period of 25 years.
Matthew reported that he had received a phone call from a community college library in Tennessee with the initials MSCC who wondered whether a book they had with MSCC in the front belonged to the Maine Shared Collections Cooperative (MSCC). Matthew explained to them that MSCC is not a physical library with its own collection. However, Matthew commented that he was pleased that Maine Shared Collections Cooperative had come up first in the search results when the library had searched for MSCC.