Maine Shared Collections Cooperative Collections and Operations Committee

August 4, 2022

9:00 am – 10:00 am

Attendees: Sarah Campbell, Jeff Eastman, Meg Gray, Sarah Kennedy, Patrick Layne, Shiloh Parker, Matthew Revitt, Deb Rollins, Krystie Wilfong

Absentees: Ana Noriega 

1.Introductions

The Committee started with a series of introductions. Sarah Campbell reported that she will be leaving her post at Portland Public Library at the end of August. Sarah Kennedy reported that she will also be leaving her position at Bowdoin College in September.

2. Updates

a. Searching MSCC commitments in bulk

A search engine for looking up individual titles to check whether they have a MSCC commitment is available on the MSCC website: http://www.maineinfonet.org/mscs/search-for-mscc-retained-titles/.

Sara Amato has also developed a Google sheet lookup up that allows for bulk searches of retention status, again searching on OCLC number. Matthew showed a demo of the tool in action. Matthew commented that the tool might be useful when working with new member libraries to identify any unique titles they hold that aren’t currently committed to MSCC. 

The tool can also be used to compare overlap with other shared print programs that have registered their monograph commitments in OCLC (HathiTrust, SCELC & EAST). The consensus of the group was that it was fine that there wasn’t an option to look up “ALL Retentions”. 

The Committee were very impressed with Sara’s work on building the tool and the support it could provide libraries with weeding projects. 

Matthew confirmed for the Committee that this tool will eventually be made available to libraries to use, but he was unsure in what format. 

Action Item: Matthew will confirm with Sara what the limit is for searching. Matthew will also check with Sara regarding how the tool will be rolled out. 

b. Guidance on adding commitments in OCLC

Recent testing of the search engine revealed that unless the SP flag is also added to the Local Holding Record, along with the MARC 583 retention information, then the commitment won’t be picked up by the API and appear in the search engine. 

Staff at UMaine have updated the MSCC guidance (http://www.maineinfonet.org/mscs/wp-content/uploads/Adding-MSCC-and-SH-to-OCLC.pdf) to add this additional step, but a couple of libraries are still having issues with identifying whether they have logins to Worldshare manager/metadata services. Jeff confirmed that staff at the Maine State Library were having similar difficulties. 

Action Item: Matthew will check with cataloging staff at UMaine and/or OCLC to see whether a WorldShare cataloging module is required for adding the SP flag. Or whether this work can be done in Connexion or other products that staff already have access to. 

c. Reminder re. JRNL pilot

Matthew had forwarded on a message regarding an JRNL gap filling tool pilot project that he felt would be a good opportunity for any library with weeding plans to take advantage of. Deb confirmed that she had applied for UMaine to participate. Meg commented that Bangor Public might also be interested in participating to support a project they had started with PPL and MSL on deduplicating journal and serial titles. 

Action Item: Matthew will follow up with Jeff and Meg regarding the project. Any interested libraries should apply using this form: https://forms.gle/UWNF7XSKRTSosjL28. by August 19, 2022 

d. Collection analysis needs

After being contacted by a couple of MSCC libraries regarding using GreenGlass for analysis projects Matthew spoke with the MSCC Executive Committee about organizing demos of different collection analysis tools. The EC were in favor of this but felt that any demos should be put on hold until new library administrators are in place. 

Sarah K. reported that Bowdoin had been investigating different collection analysis options for a local project. 

 e. Onboarding new staff 

Matthew has delivered a handful of onboarding sessions for new directors and member contacts over the past few 12 months. There was positive feedback on the importance of MSCC from those Matthew met with.

Over the next 12 months Matthew will be arranging onboarding sessions with new library deans and directors at founding MSCC libraries. Matthew also asked the Committee to put him in contact with any other new staff at their libraries who would benefit from learning more about MSCC.

3. Review MSCC retention commitments

a. Reviewing MSCC commitments in the short-term

Matthew shared a list of publishers in the agenda that came from the EAST project’s recent collection analysis project. The libraries flagged the publisher’s as mostly reference, tech books, test prep, or in the case of University Microfilms non-print format they felt didn’t need to be kept long-term. There were also several publishers with reprint in their name. 

Sarah C. reported on feedback from colleagues about distinguishing between the trade and academic divisions of a publisher e.g., with Scholastic. Matthew responded that if the name of publishers had been recorded in the ILS record then it would be possible to identify items published by them using Sierra lists. The same strategy could be used to identify variant spellings of publishers that might have been missed by OCLC’s narrow application of the publisher flag during the collection analysis. Matthew reminded the group that he’d previously shared lists of titles that had been subsequently flagged as being works of out-of-scope publishers using more expanded searches for the publishers by OCLC. 

Deb commented that UMaine might well hold on to some travel books if Maine related. 

Action Items: Deb will share a search strategy with the Committee to use in Sierra for searching for works of publishers of out-of-scope material that also have MSCC commitments. 

Matthew will add the publishers from the EAST list to the MSCC list of out-of-scope publishers (removing ones already on the list that Krystie flagged).

b. Suggestion from Deb for National union catalog, pre-1956 imprints

Deb presented a list of titles that, when UMaine had been moving material from the Last Copy Center in Bangor, were not found, and assumed discarded. The list included some MSCC titles. 

UMaine also has 754 volumes of the National Union Catalog (https://ursus.maine.edu/record=b2570191~S1 ) on the stacks at Fogler Library that Deb would like the flexibility to withdraw in the future. Deb asked if anyone on the Committee had an issue with these volumes being withdrawn. While Deb commented on the significance of this title for research into library collections there did appear to be copies of the National Union Catalog at other MSCC libraries, including another commitment at Bowdoin, and copies at Colby’s offsite facility, so unlikely to be weeded. There were also digitized copies available from the HathiTrust (https://ursus.maine.edu/record=b9300757~S1). Meg commented that Bangor Public would find a way to provide access to this content should a patron ever be interested. 

Matthew commented that he understands the concerns expressed by some libraries at seeing multiple MSCC commitments on the same title, especially because one of the original goals of MSCC was to provide libraries with the flexibility to consider withdrawing copies of titles they own that are being retained at other libraries. Deb commented that one of the goals was also to ensure content is protected and not lost. 

No Committee members expressed concern that these titles would be weeded in the future, nor would they want the volumes for their own local collections. 

c. Reviewing MSCC commitments in the long-term (prior to June 30, 2028 expiration)

The Committee moved on to discussing more of a long-term and comprehensive review of commitments, in preparation for the initial expiration of MSCC commitments in 6 years’ time.

Matthew commented that while the work of removing commitments by out of scope publishers can be helpful in identifying small numbers of titles, he wanted the Committee to start to think of ways at scale to remove commitments on material it was long appropriate to retain, without undermining the confidence libraries have in MSCC commitments. 

Matthew reported that in talking to the Executive Committee about this they felt there needed to be clear policies regarding what categories of material can be withdrawn and greater flexibility, to at least consider withdrawing content that the current level of MSCC commitments doesn’t allow. One suggestion put forward was to look at manageable chunks of the corpus of retention commitments to identify titles that no longer need to be kept.

Matthew had added the following suggestions to the agenda for categories of material to consider: 

• Titles in particular subject areas (e.g., juvenile fiction) that typically have large numbers of material not appropriate to retain.
• Multi-volume sets that take up a lot of real estate.
• Titles that haven’t circulated since they were committed (Deb also suggested this).
• Titles that have multiple MSCC commitments.
• Titles committed by other shared print programs.
• Titles available from the HathiTrust or Internet Archive.
• Items in special collections (suggested by Krystie)
• Items not owned (lost, paid, or missing). Sarah C. commented that at PPL 1/3 of their collection had MSCC commitments and many of these commitments were for items that were not on their shelf (even at the time of the commitment). Bates had also experienced similar issues with commitments on open stacks and the pressure to replace copies. Matthew had seen with the transfer process a reluctance from libraries to purchase replacement copies locally which indicates these are titles that no longer meet local collection needs. 

The Committee agreed that it made sense to start discussing plans for reviewing MSCC commitments. 

Meg asked about whether there are any plans, following the last analysis in 2019, to seek additional MSCC commitments. Matthew commented that he had been hesitant to seek new commitments with libraries still grappling with space issues, staffing changes, and the pandemic. Also, the years following the previous 2012 cutoff for titles would have seen a lot fewer print items added to collections. Krystie commented that she would want to see a sustainability plan for what happens with the expiration of MSCC commitments before thinking about adding new commitments. 

Action Item: Matthew will schedule quarterly MSCC meetings and use the next meeting as a chance for the Committee to brainstorm ideas for reviewing the commitments. As part of these discussions Matthew will report on the national picture of what other programs are doing.