Minutes of August 18, 2011 Meeting

Present:

Karen Hartman (co-Chair), Qian Hu (for Laura Mullen), Tom Izbicki, Michael Joseph, Elizabeth Leister (for Mary Beth Weber), Kevin Mulcahy, Vincent Pelote (remote), Gracemary Smulewitz, Julie Still (remote), Tao Yang (recorder)

Excused:

Barry Lipinski, Laura Mullen, Gene Springs, Ann Watkins, Janice Pilch, Mary Beth Weber

Approval of agenda

The agenda was approved.

Approval of July Minutes

The July minutes were approved with one change, which was the removal of the dollar figure for the new Patron Driven Acquisitions program.

Chair's Report - Karen Hartman

Janice Pilch will join LRC as the representative of the Committee on Scholarly Communication - she will attend the next meeting on September 15.

AUL Report - Grace Agnew

Agnew was unable to attend the meeting.

AUL Report - Tom Izbicki

Izbicki was still waiting for budget figures. The decision of the Board of Governors to cut the tuition increase by half might affect library budget. Because of the ongoing fluctuations in the financial market, the payout of endowments could be uncertain.

The collection development training program will start on August 30th in Alexander and 31st in LSM. The training will cover budget calendar, fund codes, monograph order issues, and procedures to set up vendors. The program may travel to Newark and Camden. Izbicki hopes this will develop a shared understanding in collection development areas. Hartman suggested putting the handouts on the selectors' Sakai site.

Consolidation and Retention Policy for Print Indexes and Abstracts at RUL (revised) - Karen Hartman

The policy had been revised by Hartman and Mullen and distributed to members before the meeting. The major change was based on Still's comment at the previous meeting about giving branch libraries more flexibility of keeping the print indexes. The policy was then approved unanimously.

2012 Goals Discussion - Tom Izbicki

Izbicki reminded everyone that this is the last year of the multi-year strategic plan and LRC needs to consider what have been completed and what must carry over. He then led a review of the activities in the RUL Strategic Plan Goals (the "grid") in collection development areas.

• "Seek ways to maximize dollars by strategic negotiations with vendors" is an activity that will be carried over. There is a question about whether this is a goal or an ongoing activity.
• Hartman suggested the activity related to e-books have the third indicator - integrating the free e-books into the catalog.
• "Donations and grants" activity will be carried over as well - there is little movement in creating a new endowment for approval plan, but seeking grants for collection funding is in progress.
• The Collection Analysis Group will work on projecting the resource needs.
• There is some progress on updating collection development policies: the discussion about the print indexes just concluded and there is a need to work further on the policy of consolidating print journal holdings. Smuelwitz suggested that the experience from the consolidation project at Camden offered some insights, such as the need to have an actual inventory before the start of the weeding process.
• TAS is developing tools to collect comprehensive usage statistics, which will cover both e-books and e-journals.
• The "collection evaluation and weeding" activity is ongoing.
• Izbicki will meet with Fariedeh Terahni to discuss a system-wide preservation program. Still suggested to sponsor training sessions on preservation, which could be conducted in collaboration with Access Services and Training and Learning Advisory Committee.
• Progress has been achieved in communicating available resources to teaching faculty: transition to LibGuides is completed; digital exhibition program is moving forward. Joseph reported that the Special Collections has been doing exhibitions to communicate unique resources to teaching faculty all along.
• Data and streaming media issue will be examined further. Joseph commented that the "new research methodologies" in the document are not necessarily limited to digital research methods.

Izbicki felt that no activity on the old list could be readily dropped. Members then discussed other ideas for next year's goals:

• LRC should take on the issue of digitizing unique collections.
• Understanding the relation of discovery layer service and e-books acquisitions could be an indicator under e-book related activity.
• A few licensed resources currently have deliberately limited audience. Do we need a policy on whether or how to publicize them? What are the implications for the principle of providing University-wide access? Izbicki thought that this depends on if the resource is practice-based and how quickly we want to work on re-negotiating the license. This issue will not be on the goals list, but will be relevant to the possible merger with Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

To conclude, Izbicki stated that the next step is to develop a fresh version of the activities and indicators and the final discussion will take place at the next meeting.

Update Distributed Technical Services - Gracemary Smulewitz

Regarding the EBSCO takeover of Wilson, Smulewitz recently met both the Wilson representative and the EBSCO representative separately. The Wilson representative informed Smuelwitz that until Jan 2012 dual access through both Wilson and EBSCO platforms will be maintained; the intent of the EBSCO takeover is to get the Wilson discovery tool (Web discovery) and link resolver; the Wilson Retrospective Collections, if purchased with limited user access right now, will have unlimited access after the merger; Wilson OmniFile and EBSCO will become a super database in January; there is no need for the libraries to do anything. However, the EBSCO representative in a subsequent meeting said that EBSCO will announce its plan shortly.

RUL will move back to Academic Search Premier from Academic Search Complete, which means the loss of access to Film & Televsion Literature Index with Full Text and International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance with Full Text (an announcement to rul-everyone was made after the meeting). TAS staff is testing EBSCO Counter product, which is compliant with SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative). Smulewitz will ask to have a complete payment of serials by December in her meeting with the staff of EBSCO Financing Department.

Update Central Technical Services - Mary Beth Weber

Mary Beth Weber was unable to attend the meeting and Elizabeth Leister read Weber's update:

• Weber would be on vacation from August 22 to 26 and can answer questions via email.
• Orders were picking up, particularly orders for reserve items;
• Weber expected to fill a Library Associate II position soon; there will be another retirement in CTS in December.
• John Brennan will announce to rul_everyone the upcoming construction on the TAS entrance; staff and visitors would have to use the back door to enter the building during the construction.
• Jane Otto organized a productive retreat for the Media Team to discuss workflow and procedures for streaming videos (including resources from the vendors and in RUcore); both Smulewitz and Weber attended, along with other Media Team members.

Announcements

Tom Izbicki will be on vacation for a few days in early September to do research. Kevin Mulcahy asked about the possibility of joining HathiTrust, which will be discussed at future meetings.