Collections Working Group Meeting: May 3, 2012

Erikson Institute, Chicago, Illinois

Members attending: Chad Buckley, Illinois State University; Kim Fournier, William Rainey Harper College; David Green, Northeastern Illinois University; Karen Janke, Erikson Institute; Harriet Lightman, Northwestern University; Lydia Morrow Ruetten (Chair), Governors State University; Todd Spires, Bradley University

Phoned In: Jim Millhorn, Northern Illinois University

Members absent: Fred Barnhart, Loyola University; Bill Thompson, Western Illinois University

Staff attending: Elizabeth Clarage, CARLI

Welcome / Ice-Breaker – Favorite day trip in Illinois

Minutes: Chad Buckley

Announcements

Kim shared her experience using a Voyager in-transit report to identify items having an “in-transit” status for more than 30 days. This was used to find items still on the shelves and clear the inappropriate status.
Harper College is also going to try out about 40 bookstore-style subject signs to help patrons find materials. They may also try using QR codes in the stacks.

They are also considering interfiling non-fiction DVDs in the stacks and creating a documentary corner with a looping video showing.
Kim also noted that public librarians are hearing that audio books will no longer be published on CD in the next five years. Future options will include services like OverDrive and One-Click Digital.

Harper College I.T. department has purchased a video server for the library. The library purchased the streaming rights to a video (Tough Guise), but it has been slow-going in creating stable access to that video through the catalog.

Lydia noted that Governors State is looking for Health Sciences and Reference help.
Todd noted that Bradley was getting new computers.

Chad noted that Dean Sohair Wastawy was on administrative leave at Illinois State and Dane Ward is Acting Dean.
Dave discussed impending retirements and pension issues.

Elizabeth noted that the Illinois Collections Preservation Network (ICPN) would be hosting webinars on the coming months about care of natural history collections and photographs. They received grants for programming, and CARLI is helping to publicize the webinars.

Regarding e-books, CARLI has approved funding for a RFI in the fall with an early 2013 target date for getting something in place.
The CARLI print PDA project continues and has seen 139 books purchased (63 had 2011 publication dates, and 76 were published in 2012). Books have been requested by 41 libraries, and 3 books have circulated twice. Analysis showed that 59 of the titles were also available as e-books, while 80 were not available in electronic format. There are currently about 2,400 print PDA titles loaded in I-Share.

Harriett said Northwestern is searching for a data/geospatial librarian to head a new unit dealing with social sciences data services, geospatial data, and government documents.

Karen noted that recognized child development expert T. Berry Brazelton would be attending Erikson’s graduation.
Jim noted that Northern has lots of retirements on the way.

The question was raised on preparing the group’s annual report. This would be due at the end of the month. It was suggested that we could use last year’s report as a template. Lydia will draft an annual report with Elizabeth’s help and share this with the group for comments.

Review Minutes

Everyone was reminded to review minutes from the most recent meeting. It was also noted that the October meeting minutes only have three approvals, so those should also be reviewed and approved by anyone who was in attendance.

Book Digitization Initiative

Both proposals reviewed recently had average scores greater than 4.0 so no conference call was needed.
There is one proposal currently awaiting review.
Kim shared a question about books being withdrawn from collections regardless of whether they relate to Illinois culture/history. Should these be checked for online availability in HathiTrust or Internet Archive?
We need a volunteer to select the July Book of the Month. Elizabeth volunteered to do so.

Special Collections Survey

Lydia, Chad, Todd, and Elizabeth have been working on this.

A prototype has been created on Google Docs using Google Forms to populate the data.

Fields on the form were discussed and whether there were any limits on the number of characters per field.
It was suggested to begin by self-populating using institutions represented in the Collections Working Group to test the input process.

Todd volunteered to oversee editing/formatting of the spreadsheet since he is quite familiar with Excel.
The question was raised whether we want to populate the spreadsheet with data from the previous survey.
It was also questioned whether we could put up a sortable spreadsheet or if it would be easier to just create two pre-sorted spreadsheets (by institution and by collection).

This information could be useful for identifying potential partners for grants to catalog hidden collections.

Joint Program on Faculty Education

The joint program is scheduled for July 12, 2012 at Joliet Junior College.
An overview of the potential schedule was presented. Discussion about a possible closing activity ensued.
Transportation needs were discussed. It was suggested that on the registration form, we could ask if attendees were interested in carpooling to facilitate setting this up if desired.

It was questioned whether the lunch setting should be open mingling or have more focused discussion tables.

Other Continuing Education

The question was raised whether we want to have a fall forum or have one possibly next spring. Spring was felt to be a better time. Suggested topics included weeding, last copy, gifts, HathiTrust, Better World Books, and collection maintenance (including lost, missing, and in-transit books, etc.). Best practices for dealing with these issues could be useful.

We could possibly also do another joint program with whatever CARLI group does reports/maintenance. A panel that discusses holistic needs for libraries would be informative. We could have two tracks, one for selectors and one for technical folks.
Marketing collections and making collections more useable was also suggested as a topic.

Possible titles for a forum included: “What is a collection?” or “What is a quality collection: How do you prove it?”
Weeding e-books was also suggested as a topic. Can we weed these and how do we do it?

The role of the I-Share collection was also discussed. Should it primarily consist of titles peripheral to what individual institutions need or core titles that everyone needs?

Possible additional webinars were also discussed. It was suggested that Kim create a webinar on possible Voyager reports which can be useful in managing collections.

Collections Clearinghouse

Kim had reviewed the clearinghouse and made several recommendations for changes related to renaming sections, editing of entries, updating links, and removal of some sections. These were reviewed by the group and accepted with some minor modifications.

Filling gaps in the clearinghouse was also discussed. We could direct users to other CARLI groups’ web sites when appropriate.

Future Meetings

The official chair’s pencil was passed from Lydia to Todd.
New members should be selected by the end of June.

The last full week in July was suggested for the first regular meeting of the new year.

Thanks were offered to Karen for hosting at Erikson this year, to Lydia for chairing, and to outgoing members for their contributions.

Meeting adjourned at 2:10 p.m.