Summary of Collections and Operations Committee Meeting, January 26, 2015

Maine Shared Collections Cooperative Collections and Operations Committee

January 26, 2015

Colby College, Miller Library, Conference Room

10:00 am – 12:00 pm

Attendees: Deb Rollins, Matthew Revitt, Joan Campbell, Peggy O’Kane, Lanny Lumbert, Brian Damien, Patrick Layne, Ana Noriega

Absentees: Becky Albitz

1.    Project updates

a.    IMLS completion date and report submission

Matthew submitted the Year 3 MSCS interim report at the end of December 2014. MSCS’s final IMLS report is due March 31, 2015.

b.    POD back online & HathiTrust record move to URSUS

The MSCS supported print-on-demand service (POD) is back online in MaineCat. Matthew commented that he, Sara Amato, and the University of Maine Printing and Mailing Services had worked hard on making the service as user-friendly as possible, but that it was going to be difficult to compete with commercial vendors like Amazon who can offer the books for a lot cheaper than Printing and Mailing Services. Deb commented that links to such vendors can be found in the Google Books views. Since POD came back online in December there have been zero requests. The Committee agreed with Matthew’s assessment that it’s unlikely that the POD service will see a lot of traffic.

Using remaining IMLS grant funds Sara is beginning to work on moving the HathiTrust records from their current home in Solar to URSUS. There will be additional public domain titles made available by HathiTrust in the reload. Matthew commented that the records being in URSUS might result in an increase in POD requests because some users prefer to search in URSUS. Matthew confirmed for Deb that he’s not sure the method used to add the Google Books links to the MaineCat records, but he will check with Sara to ensure they are included in the reload and that the information is included in her instructions for Maine InfoNet who will take over the process once grant funds have ended.

c.    MSCC Collection analysis services

After working with Edythe L. Dyer Community Library, Matthew has been promoting the collection analysis services of Maine Shared Collections. The collection analysis service consists of Sara extracting bibliographic and item data from local library information systems and comparing that data with holdings in OCLC WorldCat and MaineCat (because better indicator of rare in Maine). Sara compiles this data into spreadsheets which show:

●    Titles held by the library which have received a Maine Shared Collections retention commitment.
●    A subset of committed to retain titles that have Maine Shared Collection retention commitments and have had fewer than two circulations locally since being added to the collection.
●    Titles with zero Maine library holdings in OCLC WorldCat. Also, show MaineCat holding levels for these titles.
●    Titles with 10 or fewer holdings in OCLC WorldCat. Also show MaineCat holding levels for these titles.
●    Metadata errors e.g. incorrect and missing ISBN, OCLC numbers that can be used to clean records.
●    All item level records with circulation and OCLC WorldCat holdings data.

Matthew presented an example of the spreadsheets for UMaine Farmington.

To cover the costs of Sara producing the spreadsheets, the libraries are charged a one-time fee of $350 if their collection size is under 50,000 print monograph holdings (which most are). The fee for those libraries with more than 50,000 holdings is $420. For a group of seven community colleges, Sara extracted the data together, so the $420 fee was split between the libraries. The Committee agreed with Matthew that the prices were extremely reasonable for a service that couldn’t be performed locally or by existing technical support (e.g. Maine InfoNet). However, there will be some smaller libraries that will be priced out of participating even at $350. Peggy recommended that Matthew speaks to Jared Leadbetter (Maine State Library) about using district grant funding to support the inclusion of smaller libraries.

Matthew commented that a by-product of Sara’s work has been identifying numerous metadata errors in the holdings of the libraries. Matthew has been able sell Maine Shared Collections at the consortium level because the cleaning of data locally will benefit all. Brian commented that he often sees multiple MaineCat records for the same title. Matthew has attended Minerva meetings and Steve Norman (Belfast Free Library) the chair of the Minerva Executive Board has sent a message endorsing Maine Shared Collections on the Minerva listserv.

Once the spreadsheets are complete, Matthew meets with the library directors to go over the reports and based on his experiences from the grant he identifies retention candidates. However, just because a library has gone through the collection analysis process doesn’t mean they are obliged to make retention commitments and join Maine Shared Collections. If they do agree to make commitments Matthew ensures the library get the MSCC MOU signed by the head of their board or equivalent level.

So far, Matthew and Sara have worked with 12 libraries on analyzing their collections with a further seven expressing interest in participating, including the remaining URSUS libraries (UMaine Fort Kent, UMaine Augusta, and UMaine Machias). Matthew and Sara have been mainly working with Minerva and URSUS libraries because using Innovative products makes it easier to compare data. However, a pilot project is underway at the Koha library Northeast Harbor. Sara has found it difficult to match data at Northeast Harbor as ISBN and OCLC number are missing, so she has to rerun the numbers for them.

Matthew has spoken with the John R. Barden, Director, Law and Legislative Reference Library about them self-nominating titles they agree to commit to retain, rather than going through the collection analysis comparison process, which for a specialist library wouldn’t make a lot of sense. A discussion then ensued regarding MSCC members transferring law documents (including those with retention commitments) to the Law and Legislative Library; Matthew will speak to John about their interest in offering this option. The Committee agreed to send Matthew examples of the types of material there were interested in transferring. Patrick commented that at Bangor Public Library they had already transferred 10 boxes of non-committed-to-retain law documents to the Legislative Library. The Committee also discussed a decision made during MSCS to not make commitments on “law documents” which the Law and Legislative Library would retain regardless. Matthew will send the Committee a copy of the discussions he had with John about this.

Matthew presented summary results of the collection analysis. The overlap with Maine Shared Collections has been high particularly at the University of Maine Farmington (62%) and Presque Isle (66%) which has offered libraries significant withdrawal opportunities. The volume of titles that libraries own where there are nine fewer holdings in OCLC has been sufficiently low (ranging from 0-2%) that Matthew and the libraries has been able to carry out title-by-title reviews.

Matthew commented that he is pleased with the numbers of libraries that have gone through the collection analysis process so far.

Peggy wondered whether it was worth having Sara run data comparisons for the approximately 10,000 Maine Books by Mail. However, Deb suggested it probably didn’t make sense for these titles because they are part of a specialized program, and that circulation statistics would probably guide what is retained in the collection. .

d.    New MSCC member libraries – additional commitments made, retention criteria & agree representation on Committee

New MSCC Libraries

Of the 12 libraries Matthew has worked with, 5 have formally joined MSCC: University of Maine Presque Isle, University of Maine Farmington, Witherle Memorial Library in Castine, Edythe L. Community Library, and Eastern Maine Community College.

Additional commitments made

Matthew commented that obviously because he is working with smaller collections than the grant partners and because of the significant retention commitments already made during MSCS the amount of commitments made post-grant is going to be small. So far there have been 150 additional retention commitments made by new libraries. Unlike the grant, the focus for these libraries is on weeding, so it’s part of Matthew’s job to sell why making retention commitments is important to the wider library community.

Another option for libraries who don’t feel able to commit to retain titles locally is to transfer them to another MSCC library for retention. Edythe L. Dyer Community Library took this option with a handful of titles that they transferred to Bangor Public Library and the Maine State Library. UMaine Farmington had also been given this option by Deb for some of the titles on their retention candidate list.

Alisia Revitt (Maine InfoNet) has been working on loading the new retention commitments into URSUS and Minerva. Sharon Fitzgerald (UMaine) has worked with those new member libraries that are also OCLC members to get the commitments recorded and displayed there also (example record) . Although the Community Colleges are OCLC members it appears that some of them don’t have existing holdings information in there, so the shared print titles will be their only holdings added.

Retention Criteria

Most of the titles that Matthew, Deb and local staff have identified as retention candidates are rare in OCLC (nine or fewer OCLC holdings), haven’t got an existing retention commitments (mainly because they were published post-2003, so were out of scope for MSCS), and are on local interest subjects (e.g. skiing).
The decision to retain a title is a local decision, but rather than the ad-hoc way Matthew has been working on identifying retention candidates so far, he wondered if the Committee needed to produce a document on what it is MSCC’s responsibility to retain. The post-grant period provided an opportunity to be a little bit more discerning in what is retained. For example, should the fact that title is both locally written and locally set fiction make it automatically retention-worthy? How widely should MSCC cast its retention net? Is it the responsibility of MSCC to retain rare titles that might be rare, but aren’t particularly relevant to the institution (e.g. rare English literature which might have more scholarly value than Maine titles)?

Peggy discussed the criteria the Maine State Library uses for self-published material and whether MSCC could use the same criteria for retention. MSL would only pay for self-published materials that are memoirs or histories; they do not buy self-published fiction or non-fiction that is not about Maine.  Deb discussed how Maine related material could also be on subjects like skiing and other local industries. Peggy and Brian agreed to share with Matthew their library’s collection development polices, but warned him that the documents were several years old (MSL example).

Matthew, in response to Ana’s question about speaking to EAST about their retention criteria, commented that MSCC were much further along in the process than EAST, so he didn’t think they would be able to offer much assistance and that, like MSCS during the grant period, EAST would be making retention decisions at scale, so would not have the same sort of issues seen post-grant. However, Matthew will see if any other shared print projects are experiencing similar issues of what to include in their retention criteria.

Matthew confirmed for Lanny that juvenile fiction is included in the scope of titles looked at in the collection analysis.

Agree representation on Committee

Currently the MSCC Collections and Operations Committee is comprised of representatives from the grant partners libraries, but as new libraries join MSCC, Matthew commented that they needed representation which would involve checking in with them about anything they want raised at the meetings.

Deb confirmed for Matthew that she would represent the UMaine system libraries Matthew will pass on contact details and share the meeting minutes.

For the public libraries, Matthew suggested representation could be split geographically using the existing library district divisions (see here) so Bangor Public could represent northern, the State central, and Portland Public southern.

Patrick, Peggy, and Brian agreed to be the representatives for the public libraries.

The Committee agreed that the Community Colleges should have their own representation on the Committee. Cynthia Young (Eastern Maine Community College) had already expressed interest in being the representative.

e.    Documenting retention decisions – PAPR meeting and possible changes to how journal/serial commitments are recorded

During MSCS, the libraries had agreed they would disclose their retention commitments for serials and journals in the Center for Research Libraries’ (CRL) Print Archive and Preservation Registry (PAPR). The request for processing the holdings information got lost in their system, so it’s only been in the past couple of weeks that they have begun to look at MSCC data and in doing so they have identified some commitments recorded that are not in line with OCLC guidance for the MARC 583 field.

Matthew has arranged a phone meeting with the MSCS Technical Services Committee, Amy Wood from CRL and Sara Amato on Feb 5th 9-10am to discuss the issues and develop a consistent approach for MSCC that is in line with the guidance, but also meets MSCS needs as well.

Matthew shared a copy of the examples Amy had provided of issues with the retention statements and asked the Committee for their thoughts. Patrick responded that for Example 2 in the document, he would need more information and that some issues are physically bound together. Overall the Committee felt they needed more time to review Amy’s examples, but from their brief review the suggested solutions seemed okay. Matthew confirmed that any changes agreed for recording commitments in PAPR would also need to be made in OCLC.

f.    MSCC involvement in EAST

The organizers of EAST: Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust are seeking grant support to support their shared print effort and in late December they wanted libraries who have previously shown an interest in participating to make more firm commitments, which involves agreeing to pay annual membership fees and contributing towards the costs of collection analysis with SCS, which because of MSCS’s previous work with SCS would have been at a reduced rate as they already have some of MSCS’s data.

Out of the MSCS libraries, only Colby have expressed an interest in joining as a full member and contributing towards the collection analysis costs. Bowdoin may be interested in becoming a supporting member in the future. However, the MSCS library directors have agreed that the MSCS retention commitments can be used as targets in the EAST collection analysis. Matthew commented that what this in practical terms is still to be decided, but it would likely involve both EAST and MSCS agreeing to each other’s MOUs, including retention periods and procedures for withdrawals.

Matthew will keep the Committee updated on the progress of EAST and also the HathiTrust shared print initiative, for which he and Clem are on the task force for. It’s purpose is to commit to retain print copies of digitized titles in the HathiTrust.

2.    Retention commitment removal and transfer policy & procedures

a.    Removal updates

The Committee members reported on the limited amounts of withdrawals (fewer than 100 at each library) that have taken place for MSCC committed to retain titles. At Bangor Public Library only five books in total have been withdrawn. For some of the withdrawals at UMaine, Deb had replaced with copies from other MSCS libraries.

Deb and Matthew confirmed for Lanny and Patrick that when they make withdrawals of committed to retain items they need to delete the records for them in OCLC and URSUS. Guidance for how to do this can be found on the MSCS website here.

Deb reported on a panel discussion she had been on at Bangor Public Library on January 24th regarding print books and the concerns expressed by some present about libraries making withdrawals, even if a copy of a title is held elsewhere in Maine. A discussion then ensued regarding the responsibility of libraries to keep records of all titles they have ever owned for researchers who might be interested in the history of print collections.

b.    Editions

Clem has asked Deb to raise issues at today’s meeting regarding ensuring the commitments made during the grant are not undone and that only withdrawals in line with MSCC policies are permitted.

Deb confirmed for Joan that under the MSCC Policy on Retention Commitment Changes (see here) it’s permissible to transfer commitments to newer editions of committed to retain titles, but that at UMaine they were often leaving the CTR on the superseded edition. During the grant the MSCS libraries had also agreed that libraries could choose to proactively make retention commitments on new acquisitions using MSCS guidance (see here). Patrick reported that Bangor Public Library had made some proactive retention commitments. Deb commented that at UMaine there had been an important public domain title on New Brunswick history which hadn’t been assigned a retention commitment that she had transferred to special collections from open stacks. UMaine scanned all the maps including fold-out maps in the book and made them available via OCLC, because the Google and Hathi versions did not include the maps.

c.    Large reference sets

The Committee debated the retention of large reference sets, many of which hadn’t received retention commitments because they were in the list of publishers whose work MSCS agreed not to retain. During the grant period, Barbara McDade had wanted to explore whether reference sets should be retained and stored in one place in the state. The Committee felt the discussions shouldn’t be restricted to just the public libraries and the Maine State Library, but should also include Colby, Bates and Bowdoin (CBB). Peggy will raise the question of retaining, withdrawing and transferring reference sets at the next URSUS Reference meeting. Joan reported that CBB has an existing retention agreement for reference sets that she will discuss with Ana and Becky. The results of these different group discussions will be reported on at the next Committee meeting, but Deb asked if any retention commitments are made the Committee be informed ASAP.

The Committee agreed that having Sara run some data comparisons to identify overlap might be useful, but that any work would have to wait until the URSUS and CBB committees have met first and had chance to make retention decisions. Matthew reminded the Committee that Sara’s time would no longer be covered by grant funds.

d.    Number of items to keep per bib/title commitment

Deb and Matthew reminded the Committee that although for ease of implementation retention statements were added in local catalogs to all copies of a committed to retain title (as long as the library was allocated retention responsibility) the libraries are free to remove retention commitments on surplus copies as long at least one copy is retained (two copies for special collections titles to include circulating copy). Joan commented that she and Becky didn’t like the language used in the special collections retention statement; she will send Matthew a link with the language so he can review and make changes if required.

Matthew reported that some of the newer member libraries, while checking that the titles they have agreed to retain are actually on the shelf have marked the item to indicate it has a retention commitment to ensure it doesn’t get selected as a weeding candidate. Joan reported that she had been doing something similar at Bowdoin, highlighting the barcodes in books, so while reviewing the shelves she doesn’t keep selecting the same titles as potential withdrawal candidates.

e.    Transfer of collections protocol (one or a large group of titles)

Deb reported that she had found the MSCC external transfer spreadsheet required too much cut and paste hassle for each field, and that it had been far easier to simply put the information of titles she wanted transferred in an email.

The Committee agreed that for small numbers of external transfer candidates a list of titles in an email will suffice, but for larger groups of titles, instead of using the existing spreadsheet they will create their own spreadsheets in Google Documents and send it to the MSCC Google Group with a cover message (Matthew will send invites again including to new members). Matthew will change the procedures (see here).

f.    Prioritized transfer for MSCC members & collection building opportunities

Matthew reported that, based on conversations with some of the smaller libraries who have joined MSCC, another selling point of MSCC might be having first refusal on titles that larger MSCC libraries are withdrawing particularly local interest titles (before they go on e.g. MELIBS). Many of the libraries are already notifying other libraries when they are making withdrawals. Peggy reported that MSL would still always get first refusal on local interest titles, but following this they could be made available to other MSCC libraries using the transfer procedures.

Some of the public libraries also liked Barbara’s concept of prospective collection development which the Committee can investigate further.

3.    Future analysis & review of commitments

Although still four years away, Matthew commented that the Committee will need to start to think about how MSCC intends to approach the next round of collection analysis which might be impacted by the work of regional approaches like EAST. Matthew confirmed for Deb that he expects this analysis to be for titles published post-2003 which were out of scope for MSCS. However, there might still need to be an evaluation of the existing commitments if MSCC libraries find there larger than anticipated withdrawals and/or a disaster at one or more of the libraries which affects their ability to retain titles.

Another question Matthew has been asked a lot by new libraries is what happens after the 15-year retention period ends. This will be another subject the Committee will need to look at over the course of its tenure.

4.    Next meeting date

Matthew expects the Committee will only need to meet twice annually in-person; he will schedule the next meeting to be held in July 2015.