Maine Shared Collections Cooperative Executive Committee
August 24, 2018
10:00 am – 11:00 am
Attendees: Matthew Revitt, Joyce Rumery, Marjorie Hassen, Ben Treat, David Nutty, Jamie Ritter
1. Planning for 2019 group analysis
a. Review project outline & concerns re. excluding categories of material
Project outline:
⦁ 28 libraries participating (9 founding members, five additional UMaine Systems libraries, and 15 Minerva libraries.
⦁ Will be analyzing data across the MSCC group looking at factor such as: holdings overlap, usage, subject, and age with the goal of agreeing on categories of titles your libraries will commit to retain for a 15-year retention period, with a new end date of 2034.
⦁ Contracted to work with the vendor OCLC Sustainable Collection Services to use their online analytics tool GreenGlass.
⦁ The nitty of the analysis will be carried out by the Maine Shared Collections Collections & Operations Committee who will be responsible for using GreenGlass to look at what it tells us about the MSCC collection in terms of age, circulation, and holdings overlap & then based on these factors agreeing rules for which titles will be committed to retained. Staff from SCS will also be on hand to support this work based on their experiences of working with other projects.
⦁ Once the Collections & Operations Committee have a set of rules agreed Matthew will seek feedback from the MSCC representatives at the URSUS and Minerva libraries who are not directly represented on the Committee. The MSCC Executive Committee will have the final sign off on the retention rules.
Scope of the analysis:
⦁ Print monographs published or acquired between 2003 and 2012. These titles were too new to be considered for retention in the original group analysis back in 2013.
⦁ Juvenile titles are in scope, but with caveats (see below).
⦁ Out of scope for the analysis will be:
⦁ Monographs with existing MSCC commitments, so titles already committed to retain won’t be considered in the analysis.
⦁ Serials
⦁ Micro-formats/Fiche
⦁ Government Documents
⦁ Reference Books
⦁ E-Books
⦁ Music scores
⦁ Lost/Damaged/Withdrawn items
⦁ Special collections
⦁ Theses/Dissertations
⦁ Maps
The Collections & Operations Committee agreed at their meeting last month to exclude special collections locations from the analysis because they felt such materials would be retained by libraries regardless of MSCC commitments, the rules for special collections retention had resulted in local issues, and also the material is not lendable to another library. David commented that at USM the fact that the Osher Map Library and Franco collection had been included had resulted in local issues which are still be worked out now.
Matthew presented the original estimated bib totals for the analysis, but commented that the exact numbers are likely to be fewer because of the decision to exclude special collections from the scope.
One of the lessons learned from the original analysis was the value of been able to exclude from retention consideration specific publishers whose works are temporary in nature, such as textbooks and travel guides and as such aren’t appropriate for long-term retention. The Collections & Operations Committee are working on adding to this list, publishers whose works received commitments in our original analysis, but have since been agreed to not be appropriate for retention, many of these are publishers of juvenile fiction and non-fiction.
In addition to these publisher exclusions Matthew had received requests from some of the founding members to exclude specific locations and subjects from the analysis.
⦁ Bates would like to exclude from the analysis holding in their off-site storage facility because they plan on weeding heavily here. They would also like to exclude titles from their Diverse Bookfinder collection which are tied to a grant so they feel unable to place commitments on.
⦁ For Colby, it’s a slightly different situation where they are asking to not be allocated commitments in specific subject areas.
⦁ For Portland Public, the exclusions are going to be additional publishers added to the publishers and Bangor Public will have some similar publishers and locations to exclude for juvenile materials e.g. board books and easy reads that quickly become dated and also physically will not survive a 15-year retention period.
⦁ USM, Franco Collection & Osher Map Library agreed to be excluded (even prior to special collections decision) because of local issues.
Matthew comments that while he has tried to be respectful of local collection needs, especially where MSCC commitments have previously caused issues, some of the MSCC Collections & Operations Committee have personally expressed concerns to him regarding some of these requests.
The Executive Committee expressed concern regarding some of the exclusion request and that they might be too broad in nature. The Committee went on to discuss that it might be revisiting for individuals who are still relatively new to MSCC the origins and reiterating the purpose of such as cooperative where compromises are made on local collection needs to further the overall mission of protecting material in the state. Joyce and Marjorie suggested that Matthew attend the November 30th Larger Libraries Directors meeting at Bowdoin to present on MSCC and lead a discussion on the scope of the analysis.
Analysis activities & timeline:
January/February 2019
Libraries completing a questionnaire regarding collections data, including total monograph holdings & what MARC fields you use to record certain key data points. While the questionnaires will be sent to the Collections & Operations Committee they will need to work with colleagues in technical services/systems and possibly MIN on this.
Libraries will provide the ILS data to SCS for the analysis. Matthew commented that as all the libraries are on Sierra it should be a relatively straightforward process and that he, MIN, and possibly Sara (if funds available) could provide support if needed. SCS then carries out data validation and holdings lookups in OCLC & other places. The data will then be compiled into a summary report for each of your libraries to validate. To ensure this data remains as accurate Matthew will be asking libraries to put on hold any weeding in 2019 until the late fall once commitments have been agreed and recorded. The Executive Committee didn’t feel the weeding embargo would be an issue.
May-July 2019
The data will then be compiled into GreenGlass and the Collections & Operations Committee will begin exploring the collective MSCC data and experimenting with different retention rules.
Once a set of rules have been agreed they will be shared with libraries for feedback. Once there’s consensus approval Matthew will present the rules to the Executive Committee for final signoff.
August-September 2019
SCS will allocate retention commitments across the group and GreenGlass will loaded with downloadable list of commitments. Collections staff will then have the opportunity for reviewing the list of titles their library has been allocated as a final check to ensure there’s no issues. With the number of titles involved it won’t be possible for libraries to carry out a title-title by review, but they can spot check errors like out of scope material being mistakenly included. Matthew hoped that checks in the data extract would mitigate the risk of such errors at this late stage.
Fall 2019
GreenGlass will be reloaded with final retention commitments that can be downloaded and used to load commitments into local catalogs and OCLC WorldCat. Matthew confirmed for David that while SCS (which is part of OCLC) plan to introduce functionality that would allow commitment data to directly flow from GreenGlass to WorldCat this service is not currently available and he was unsure of whether it would be released in time for MSCC to record its commitments.
Next steps:
⦁ Draft a contract between UMaine and Sara Amato for the work she will be carrying out for Minerva libraries.
⦁ Contacting libraries again in January with the cataloguing and ILS questions.
⦁ Sending Minerva libraries invoices for their allocation of the analysis costs, which covers their contribution to contracting with both SCS & Sara.
b. Reimbursing UMaine for costs
In early August, Matthew sent out the invoices for the analysis costs with payment due on September 28th. So far UMaine had received payments from the UMaine system libraries, Bates College, and Bangor and Portland public libraries.
c. Minerva webinar
Matthew held the first of two webinars earlier that week for Minerva libraries reviewing the analysis project outline, so they understand what work to expect of them.
d. URSUS webinar
The Executive Committee agreed that Matthew should attend a future URSUS Directors meeting to deliver a half an hour presentation on the analysis process. Ben will contact Matthew with schedule of meetings.
e. Promoting Work
Matthew has been in contact with OCLC about them releasing a press release regarding MSCC contracting with them to use GreenGlass. Matthew felt there would be a lot of interest in MSCC’s project both as a return SCS customer and because Maine remains unique in being the only shared print project SCS have worked with that includes public libraries.
The Executive Committee discussed the need to highlight that in order for shared print programs to protect the widest range of titles possible there needs to be more than just academic libraries participating. Having first discussed presentations at state library events like the MLA Conference, Joyce suggested that PLA might be a good nationwide venue for Matthew to communicate with public libraries that shared print is something they should consider. Matthew agreed and felt it would be good for him to partner with a public library director who could discuss why they had participated in MSCC and what they had gotten out of it. David suggested a presentation title “Why should public libraries care about shared collection strategies?”. Ben confirmed that the next PLA conference is in 2020 by which point MSCC will have completed its analysis work. The PLA also have news articles that might be a good fit for promoting MSCC.
Joyce wondered whether the Library Journal might consider featuring an article on MSCC’s work which could document the benefits of work. Matthew commented that the Library Journal had wrote an article on MSCC’s original analysis in 2013, so he could contact them again regarding a follow article.
Matthew reported that one of the comparator groups the HathiTrust are using in their analysis (see below) is commitments from other shared print programs which includes MSCC and its commitments from public libraries, which is a positive sign that some academic groups would at least consider relying on public libraries for access.
2. Project updates
a. MSCC collection analysis & new member update
Matthew reported that it has been quiet on the individual collection analysis front, which was not surprising as there are now relatively few eligible libraries who haven’t already gone through the process.
Over the last six months Matthew has communicated directly with six libraries (Boothbay, Lewiston, Brunswick publics, Maine Historical Society, Penobscot Marine Museum, and the College of the Atlantic) about participating in MSCC. In the case of the public libraries and College of Atlantic there were funding and staffing issues which prevented them from participating at that time, but they hope to in the future. There still remain some of the larger Minerva libraries who don’t appear to be respective about joining.
In the cases of the Maine Historical Society and Maine Maritime Museum in Bath the Collections & Operations were not in favor of the two libraries participating because their collections are non-circulating and they charge a fee to access materials on site.
b. MSCC involvement in EAST
Matthew reported that the Eastern Academic Scholars’ Trust (EAST) Executive Committee met last month and formed a working group to look at different membership models and one of the options it will look at is consortial membership. The Executive Committee discussed interest in EAST membership with the consensus being that now that EAST has moved on from being just a regional effort, membership fees, and with MSCC moving ahead with its own analysis there was little interest at this time in exploring EAST membership.
Having completed two phases of making monograph retention commitments to 9.2 million titles, EAST is currently working on a serials and journals retention project. The Mellon funding for EAST is now coming to end, so as with all grant funded projects they are planning for sustainability.
c. HathiTrust shared print update
The HathiTrust’s shared print program is now into Phase 2, working with SCS on analyzing approximately 2 million titles that there are digital surrogates of in their online catalog, but which didn’t receive a retention commitment in their Phase 1 work (where libraries were asked to self-nominate titles they were willing to retain). Lizanne Payne who was on the MSCS Advisory Group during the grant project will be retiring from her role as the HathiTrust Shared Program Officer early next year.
d. OCLC retention commitment registration service released
The OCLC Shared Print Registration Service is finally live after much delay. This service is a mechanism for libraries to register in bulk their shared print commitments to their LHRs and it replaces the old model MSCC uses of the second shared print symbol. There’s no date yet to retrofit existing commitments into the new model and until some of the kinks have been worked Matthew will not be recommending libraries switch. However, when it comes to register the 2019 commitments MSCC can revisit.
e. Shared Print Summit
EAST hosted a summit on shared print in April which Matthew represented MSCC at. There were representatives from all of the major shared print programs in North America. Attendees discussed opportunities for collaboration across programs and agreed on priority areas for further work, including:
⦁ Making retention data and accessible which could benefit MSCC as it would facilitate more easy comparisons across MSCC commitments and more widely with other group’s commitments.
⦁ Communicating a positive message to faculty and scholars regarding the work of shared print
⦁ Developing shared print community standards
⦁ Linking more retention with resource sharing
⦁ Research on what material is at risk and why
⦁ Developing some kind of federated organization structure and communicate best practices, standards, priorities, and documentation across programs.
Each of these priority areas has a working group assigned to it and there will be a follow-up summit in December.
3. Next Meeting Date
The Committee’s next meeting will be in February; Matthew will send a Doodle Poll closer to.