Maine Shared Collections Cooperative Executive Committee
February 14, 2023
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Attendees: Lori Fisher, Marjorie Hassen, Zach Newell, Daisy Singh, Ben Treat, Matthew Revitt
1.Introductions & role on EC
The Executive Committee is composed of 5 members of the Maine InfoNet Board with each member representing constituencies that are participants in the Cooperative.
The Executive Committee meets on an ad-hoc basis, rather than having standing meetings. Typically, 3-4 times a year. Matthew takes notes of what’s discussed at meetings that after EC review, are then posted to the MSCC website.
2. Response to Witherle withdrawal request
Matthew had received an email from Nick Berry, the director of Witherle Library, (Castine) asking to withdraw from MSCC. In the email Nick had emphasized his support for MSCC but he felt unable to continue committing the approximately 500 titles they were being asked to retain. For Matthew, a couple of lessons learned from Witherle’s request were: That there should have been a closer review of retention proposals from the outset. Additionally, some public libraries probably shouldn’t have participated in the group analysis and taken on additional commitments beyond the initial local interest titles they’d be asked to keep.
The EC discussed whether other libraries will likely share similar frustrations locally with MSCC commitments.
Matthew is working on a list of Witherle’s committed titles to see where it might make sense to transfer a commitment to another library.
Marjorie wondered whether for small libraries the number of titles being committed should have been capped at, for example,100 titles. Marjorie asked Matthew to see if Witherle would be willing to only keep their local interest titles, so they remain in the program, but their retention burden is lessened.
Action Item: Matthew will check with Witherle to see if they would be willing to stay in MSCC, but only retain those local interest titles they’d be asked to keep originally.
Action Item: If Witherle still intends to withdraw, the Executive Committee agreed to waive the one-year term for notifying the Executive Committee of Witherle’s intention to withdraw from MSCC.
Action Item: Ben agreed to adapt the letter previously sent to Thomas Memorial Library to send to Witherle.
3.Partnership for Shared Book Collections Membership Renewal
Back in 2020, the founding 8 members of MSCC agreed to collectively cover the costs of MSCC joining the Partnership for Shared Book Collections, a federation of shared print programs in North America. The annual membership fee is $3,000, which split equally among the 8 libraries is $375 per year for each library. The fee is used to employ a part-time program manager to coordinate the work of the Partnership.
MSCC made an initial 3-year annual membership commitment; that commitment is due to expire this year. Matthew asked the Executive Committee to decide if it wants to continue MSCC’s membership beyond that.
Matthew had shared ahead of time the Partnership’s list of accomplishments over the past 3 years. Ben, who has been involved in a Partnership working group, felt it was a positive thing for MSCC to remain a member so that MSCC has a voice at the table, but that the content produced didn’t always consider the needs of public libraries, particularly on ROI.
Matthew felt that there is work, like the guidance on having conversations around weeding, that he’d shared with MSCC libraries that could benefit MSCC members. MSCC also benefits from access to experts in fields such as library marketing that the Partnership provides which MSCC members. Additionally, the Partnership’s advocacy work with OCLC assisted when MSCC was recording commitments in OCLC.
Going forward, some of the best practice documents and the associated assessment tool might help with MSCC’s program assessment work. Also, more work is being done on open retention data that hopefully one day will allow MSCC to compare our MSCC commitments within MSCC and more easily with other shared print programs. Matthew felt it was the right thing to do for MSCC to remain a member and that their absence would be noted.
Action Item: The EC agreed to MSCC continuing its membership in the Partnership and that their respective institutions would each pay their share ($375) of the $3,000 fee. Matthew will confirm with Portland Public Library, Colby, and Bates they are also willing to contribute to the membership fee.
Action Item: Matthew will speak with Daisy and Susan Clement about billing for the 2024 Partnership membership invoice which in the past Fogler had paid on behalf of the group and then invoiced the other libraries.
4. Program Assessment
MSCC is five years away from the initial expiration of MSCC commitments in 2028. In anticipation of this date, the Collections & Operations Committee has begun discussing ways to assess the impact of MSCC. Matthew is planning on sending a survey to members to get their feedback on the program and continuation of commitments. The results of the survey will feed into the review of commitments and can be shared with other shared print programs.
Ben and Marjorie recommended that the survey should include questions around:
- Categories of collections where commitments should be revisited e.g., juvenile fiction and non-fiction. And titles that haven’t circulated.
- Members’ willingness to make additional commitments to newer acquisitions and whether the criteria should be different than was previously used.
- The number of copies being retained and whether reducing the number of titles committed might mitigate the potential loss of members. Ben recommended including statements on what the current policy is to remind respondents.
Marjorie suggested that Matthew speaks to an expert in survey design when crafting the survey. Matthew will also look at surveys put out by other shared print programs as examples.
The Collections & Operations Committee have also discussed getting quantitative data from ILSs: e.g.: on how many commitments remain now compared to when they were first agreed. How many MSCC titles have circulated? How many titles have multiple copies of MSCC commitments? This work will also support the review of the MSCC commitments and whether there are categories of materials MSCC collectively agrees no longer need to be retained for example, in particular subject areas.
Matthew reported that at the recent Collections & Operations Committee meeting there was broad support for the idea of extending MSCC commitments, but only if MSCC reconsiders its retention criteria. However, there was also some hesitancy from one member of the Committee regarding whether in the long-term MSCC was the best strategy for managing print collections.
Marjorie discussed the fact that she is a proponent of print and its retention and that anecdotally she’d used titles with MSCC commitments both locally and from other libraries in a research project. Following the meeting, Marjorie confirmed that of the 144 CBB books she had checked out right now, 57 (39.5%) are MSCC titles. An additional 3 are EAST titles.
Finally, Matthew recommended that MSCC consider using a collection analysis tool to support the work required to wrangle the collection data and compare against external data sources like the HathiTrust & OCLC. Matthew suggested that the Gold Rush tool from the Colorado Academic Alliance of Libraries might be an affordable option to support the work.
Action Item: The EC agreed that there should be one survey response per library.
Action Item: Matthew will share the draft survey with the EC for feedback and approval.
Action Item: Matthew will schedule a demo of the Gold Rush tool for the EC and Collections & Operations Committee.
5. Membership meeting
For the past 2 years MSCC has held an annual membership meeting in February/March time. But Matthew suggested that for 2023 it might make sense to hold it later in the year so he can report on the results of the program survey. The EC agreed with Matthew’s suggestion.
Action Item: Matthew will schedule the MSCC annual meeting for later in the year.