Maine Shared Collections Cooperative Executive Committee
June 10, 2022
2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Attendees: Matthew Revitt, Joyce Rumery, Marjorie Hassen, Ben Treat, Jamie Ritter, David Nutty
- Collection Analysis Needs
Matthew had been contacted independently by David and Jamie who were looking for support with different collection analysis projects. USM were looking at freeing up space by weeding some of their older non-MSCC materials which unfortunately GreenGlass was unable to provide support for because it had only included holdings information for newer titles. MSL is looking at identifying collection strengths and gaps. Matthew reported on some of the current collection analysis options on the market, which vary greatly in terms of pricing and functionality, including: GreenGlass, OCLC’s Collection Analytics Tool, Gold Rush, and ALMA Analytics.
Matthew confirmed for Marjorie that other than MSL & USM he hadn’t heard from any other MSCC libraries interested in analysis tools.
Ben wondered whether the Minerva libraries might be interested in collection analysis, looking at overlap and gaps in their collections. Matthew felt that the OCLC’s Collection Analytics Tool wouldn’t be a good fit for this because of its reliance on OCLC holdings data which is less useful for publics.
Action Item: Matthew will organize a demo of OCLC’s Collection Analytics Tool, Gold Rush, and ALMA Analytics for any MSCC libraries interested.
- Onboarding New Staff
Matthew has completed a handful of onboarding sessions for new directors and member contacts. The feedback from new staff had been positive towards MSCC and its importance to libraries. Matthew finds about staff changes through a mixture of word of mouth and checking MELIBS. Soon Matthew will begin onboarding new directors at PPL, Colby, and USM, the new dean at UMaine, and head of collections at Bowdoin.
- Partnership invoices & activities
Matthew has sent out the FY 2022 invoices to the founding MSCC libraries for the program’s membership in the Partnership for Shared Book Collections. This is year 3 of the three years MSCC initially committed to joining and paying membership fees for, so next year the libraries will need to decide if MSCC continues its membership.
Matthew went over what he felt are some of the benefits of MSCC being members of the Partnership including:
- Advocacy work with OCLC on registering retention commitments & supporting documentation.
- Raising awareness with vendors of the importance to include 583 retention information in their products.
- The many best practices developed by the Partnership which will soon include an assessment piece that MSCC can use to assess how it is doing in specific areas related to shared print.
Also, in the pipeline are:
- Communications on shared print for non-librarians.
- Guidance on having difficult conversations around weeding.
- A ROI tool for libraries to use to estimate the cost of shared print participation currently and over time.
- A risk assessment tool that will hopefully help shared print programs make more informed decisions about how many copies of a title need to be kept, considering factors such as age and where the material is stored.
- An open retention database that would allow MSCC to analyze titles across shared print programs.
- Ongoing research into issues like Controlled Digital Lending.
The Partnership is also investigating a merger with the Rosemont Shared Print Alliance, a federation of serials and journals shared print programs.
The consensus of the Executive Committee was that MSCC should continue its membership in the Partnership. Ben reported on his own positive experiences of being on the ROI task force and for the need to recruit more public and special library representation.
- Migrating commitment information
Matthew reminded the EC to include plans for migrating the 583-retention information in any conversations they and colleagues might have regarding ILS migrations.
- Retention commitment expirations, June 30, 2028
MSCC is 6 years out from the expiration of the initial MSCC commitment of 15 years. Matthew asked that the EC starts to think about the sorts of conversations needed to plan for that date. The consensus of the EC was that planning early is a good idea and that it was already clear that some libraries (both academics and publics) would be unwilling to renew their commitments.
David felt that there needed to be clearer policies regarding what categories of material can be withdrawn. And that the intention of MSCC was to be a positive for libraries, not require them to need additional storage space to store retained titles. Ben wondered whether MSCC should consider questions regarding access and make some copies not requestable. Ben also discussed the idea of having a shared physical storage facility for MSCC members to store items. Marjorie reported on work at Bowdoin where they had used the MSCC status to identify material that could be transferred from library shelving to offsite.
Ben and Jamie felt that it was important for libraries to feel they have greater flexibility, to at least, consider withdrawing content that the current level of MSCC commitments doesn’t allow. Ben suggested that between now and when the commitments expire MSCC looks at manageable chunks of the corpus of retention commitments to identify titles that no longer need to be retained. Matthew commented that the sheer volume of commitments makes it unfeasible to carry out title level reviews, but that it might be possible to instead apply broad criteria e.g., tiles that haven’t circulated since they committed and consider whether those titles still need to be retained. Joyce suggested that there could be different retention scenarios for juvenile fiction which quickly gets dates and more likely to be in poor physical condition. A note of caution from Joyce was that with high staff turnover likely between now and 2028 some of the final decision makers regarding extending commitments might not be current staff.
Action Item: Matthew will speak with Jamie regarding the possibility of having a session at MLA MIN Pre-Conference regarding the future of MSCC commitments.
- Thank You
Joyce and David were thanked for their many contributions to MSCC, since the early planning stages of the IMLS grant. Matthew will reach out to their replacements to discuss MSCC and their membership on the EC.