SFX Systems Committee Meeting January 13, 2016

Minutes

Attendance:

Present: Mary Burkee, Denise Green, Lauren Jackson-Beck (minutes), Andrew Meyer, Steve Oberg, Peter Tubbs, Jeff Matlak, Max King, Cindy Scott.  Meeting chaired by Steve Oberg.

1.    Comments on meeting minutes from December 9, 2015.

The meeting minutes were approved.  Everyone was sad that Paige Weston will not be at CARLI anymore, but all are happy for her retirement! She will be greatly missed.

2.    CARLI update

Steve asked who will be our formal CARLI liaison to our committee going forward. Denise will take over this role. Denise explained that CARLI implemented a small software update on December 27th. The next update will include a University of Chicago Press target. Mary had nothing else to add. A general discussion began with Steve asking about how CARLI is doing without a budget? Denise responded that to her knowledge, any announcements concerning the budget issues would be shared through the CARLI board and administration. CARLI has fee and assessment revenues that are helping in this situation.  CARLI is currently waiting to hear about the search for a director.

Steve inquired about the status of the I-Share Next RFP. We learned that the University of Illinois purchasing office is looking at it, but this process can take many months.

Discussion turned to how our schools are weathering the lack of funding and lack of MAP grant monies. One school has had a voluntary separation program; others are “seeing budget discipline.” Some private schools are ok.
Steve stressed that in a difficult time such as we are all experiencing now, it is more important than ever to have CARLI for support and a place to turn to for help. At this point there are no plans to replace Paige. At the University of Illinois, there is a budget freeze on all administrative positions. CARLI falls under the category of administration.

3.    Updates on webinars

Denise has not received any updates concerning webinars. Steve reminded the committee that Andrea Imre has agreed to volunteer to create a webinar for Elsevier, but this may not be ready for a long time.

4.    Discuss any progress on FY16 deliverable (considerations for SFX integration with other systems/tools).

Discussion focused on creating date targets for submitting the deliverable documents. Do these dates sound reasonable?  Denise confirmed that the due date for deliverables is May 31st. Steve would like everything done by May 15th. Cindy commented that this sounds good.

Questions were then raised concerning the work flow and final product format. When we are working on a draft, how do we present to the group? Do we upload to CARLI or send emails to all of the group committee members? It was decided that members would talk and share information through emails and upcoming meetings.
A draft timeline was established for finishing our product:
March 15th: Rough drafts due
April 15th: Final versions due
May 16th: Final product put into deliverable format

For the final product, Steve thought we’d link the .pdf documents on the CARLI website, but should we organize the product in a different way? Max assumed that Paige might have thought that the information would be shared in a spreadsheet format. Could the committee do both, with links between spreadsheet data and longer .pdf documents provided? Steve would like our individual parts to be .pdf documents, but then work collaboratively on a single document. Mary suggested that we think about what would be useful to outsiders, perhaps people not as familiar with SFX. A suggestion was made to provide a summary page to the board with the pros and cons of each subject. Steve suggested that we should see what we get as we go along. We are aiming to have a rough draft in place by March. Then we will evaluate better the format of the final product. Cindy seconded this idea. It may be that a spreadsheet with some appropriate categories emerges as we see the information on the documents. At this point, we cannot see the natural categories. Steve suggested that we see what we get in mid-March before we decide how to present the information in the final form.

The committee discussed finalizing dates and moving forward with a timeline for research and drafts. Denise suggested that we may want to move the March meeting up. Denise and Steve will look at dates in March and Denise will send out an invitation