Collection Management Committee Meeting: June 1, 2017

CONFERENCE CALL / ADOBE CONNECT

Members attending: Deb Blecic, co-chair (University of Illinois at Chicago), Niamh McGuigan (Loyola University Chicago), Stephen McMinn (University of Illinois at Springfield); Michelle Oh (Northeastern Illinois University), Gretchen Schneider (Oakton Community College)

Members absent: Teri Embrey (Pritzker Military Museum and Library), Connie James-Jenkin (Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy), Kimberly Shotick, co-chair (Illinois Institute of Technology)

Staff attending: Elizabeth Clarage, Jen Masciadrelli

Tasks Assigned

• Stephen McMinn took minutes.
• Minutes from the May 2017 meeting were approved with some grammatical corrections.

Decisions

• Gretchen Schneider and Deborah Blecic were selected as co-chairs for the 2017-2018 committee.

Announcements

• Dan Blewett was welcomed to the committee.
• CARLI Update
  • No state of Illinois budget is putting the same financial pressure on CARLI as it is the rest of the public university system and will be one of the topics at the July 16th Board meeting. There was a follow-up question about the budget which is made up of membership fees and an allotment from the state.  CARLI has received the same percentages from the state as the University of Illinois system, specifically 38% and 54% of FY15’s allotment so less than a full year’s budget over the last 2 years and with no information on a FY18 budget.  
  • The strategic planning retreat and resulting planning will be presented at the Annual Meeting in November.  If the meeting is not held in person, it may be held virtually or the results of the strategic planning will be distributed through the committees and the organizations website.  
  • CARLI will be joining the Open Textbook Network which is based at the University of Minnesota.
  • The I-Share RFP is moving forward through the university procurement process.
  • The May newsletter has information on weeding and the CARLI Last Copy Program which is to preserve the last copy of a title in the state as many libraries seem to be involved in weeding projects of some sort.
  • A brief background and update on the Purchase Two eBooks Project were provided.  Issues that were noted with the purchases included that many of the titles suggested were either from publishers not available via our contract with the vendor, the title did not allow for non-linear lending, or came in too late to order and bill prior to the end of the fiscal year. Preliminary statistics include that 46% of requested titles could not be ordered due to unavailability or timing. Some requests will be held and ordered after July 1. It was recommended that the list of unavailable items be checked again in the fall or next spring as sometimes the print is available prior to the electronic version, so these may be available in the future.  
  • The ProQuest transition to the Ebook Central platform is scheduled for June 13th and June 14th with EBL on the 13th and Ebrary on the 14th.  The EZProxy message that went out may need to be updated with additional information. ProQuest will start the transition late on these days and have support staff available if there are issues. Other items of note are:
    • The transition is anticipated to be completed on a library by library basis and if there is problems please use the ProQuest Ebook Support ticketing system.
    • There is a webinar today concerning the transition.
    • Any books on loan will be broken which raises an issue that the consortium losing a loan due to this transition.  
    • The most concerning thing is the order of checkout of order for books where a library has purchased a copy that is also owned by the consortium.  The first checkout comes from the consortium’s owned book not the patron’s home library.  Thereby, if a book the consortium owns is used for a course at an institution who also has a copy of the work for this need, the first loans come from the consortium rather than the home institution.  
• Member announcements
  • Most of the URLs on Oakton Community College’s website have changed.  If you link to their institution, you may need to find the new URL.
  • College of DuPage’s administration is reorganizing, and they have a new Associate Dean.  The Library is part of the Social and Behavioral Science Division.
  • Northeastern Illinois University is having layoffs as announced in the news, again due to the state budget crisis, but it has not impacted the library yet.  They also have an Interim Dean, Dave Green, due to the recent retirement of their previous dean.  There was a question about layoffs and union positions related to bumping. This hasn’t impacted the library due to the classifications of their staff, but is happening in other units.
  • The Loyola University Chicago Library is closed for renovations over the summer.  They have a number of open positions but searches won’t start until a new administrative team is in place.

Discussion

• Collaborative Collection Development Updates
  • There was an update provided on making collaborative purchases and most were from UIC as a result of commitment to the project.  
  • There will be a call going out for more participation with an emphasis on getting help in identifying items in the various disciplines, i.e. creating wish lists of title for collaborative purchase.  It seems that the creating of proposed titles has boosted participation in the program as people can just support a number of titles.  It will also allow people/libraries who don’t have funds to commit to still let their needs be know and provide support for the program by contributing their expertise rather than funding.  
  • An e-mail will be going out calling for volunteers or participants in the program with these enhancements.
• White Paper and Annual Report
  • These have been submitted and are available in the committee’s box folder.  Thanks to everyone who helped pull these together with all the changes in committee members this past year.  
• Review of the e-book survey responses
  • A brief overview of the survey as provided and the resulting survey responses were presented.  Several suggestions were made in the area of how to best summarize and present the data especially in terms of the graphs and figures.  It was also suggested that a brief executive summary be created at the beginning of the document to summarize the highlights and draw readers into the section or sections that they would be interested in.  It was also suggested that the results need not be presented in the same order as the questionnaire as the most interesting results should be presented first.  The survey instrument should be provided in the appendix for reference.
• Collaborative Collection Development Assessment Discussion
  • This was seen as one of the items to be undertaken by next year’s committee.
• Next steps
  • Besides the assessment discussion the committee will need to review the Scholarly Communications web pages each year as always.  These are the only  continuing items from this year’s committee and the next years’ new and continuing members will need to set the goals for the committee at the initial meeting in the fall.