Draft Minutes for July 20, 2006

USMAI Executive Council
McKeldin Library, Dean's Conference Room
Thursday, July 20, 2006
9:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Present: B. Gontrum (UMLL, Chair), C. Lowry (UM), G. Orr (UMUC), J. Phillips (ITD), C. Rabinowitz (SMCM), C. Ruschoff (UM/ITD), M.J. Tooey (HSHSL), L. Wilt (UMBC), L. Wrubel (ITD, recording)

Topic: Specific discussion items

1. Patron Privacy and SSNs

ITD distributed two documents, Patron Privacy and SSN Retention and Justification for Retaining SSN. Phillips described ITD's investigation so far into use of the SSN in library systems and the technical and policy issues involved in removing the SSN.

CLD tasked ITD to request that Ex Libris restrict visibility of the SSN in the Aleph Circulation Client.

Rabinowitz, Ruschoff, and Phillips will work with RSTG to create an inventory of campus business practices, understand use of passwords on campuses, and request campus bursar data on how often dollar amounts sent to collections and how often accounts get sent to collection. This data will support CLD Exec's work to review policies.

CLD Exec will develop policy recommendations to bring to the larger CLD. CLD will also need to advise RSTG on how far to go back in purging old records and resolving lost items, consulting with RSTG and CPC.

2. Multi-ADM architecture

CLD Exec decided that ITD should put its current efforts into the upgrade to Aleph version 18 and the Oracle upgrade. ITD should continue to investigate the multi-ADM environment and should develop a strategy to migrate to multi-ADM either between versions 18 and 19 or at the same time as version 19.

3. Campus Projects

Ruschoff distributed the USMAI ILS Applications Workplan Report written by Jamie Bush. The report includes where appropriate, campus by campus status for each project, a timeline for implementation, and a list of decisions that need to be made before the project may be started. CLD Exec agreed that the content and the format is what is needed in the USMAI workplan and asked that other projects such as netLibrary record load, authorities, and journal subset revision be added to the plan.

CLD Exec found the workplan very clear and commended Jamie Bush for his work. Phillips acknowledged Ruschoff for her guidance on the format of the plan.

Topic: Planning Process

Ruschoff will call a Campus Contacts meeting to share information on ITD's planning for the next Aleph version upgrade, review responsibilities of campus contacts, and communication. This meeting will include information contacts can carry back to their campuses, such as how ITD will be holding off on PPH improvements until version 18 and PDQ.

Gontrum and Ruschoff will call a meeting of the task group chairs. Agenda items include how to involve the COIs more, reporting on the status of items on the development list, and ideas for topically-driven annual fora. CLD Exec recommended annual fora for consortia-wide discussion of topics of interest. Topics could include non-Aleph centric systems, such as chat reference and institutional repositories.

CLD Exec created a new task group for serials and acquisitions policies, focusing immediately on EDI. Ruschoff will write a charge and Gontrum will send a request for applications.

CLD Exec reviewed the list of "CLD Issues" in the report on USMAI Projects underway for FY2007.

• Patron Privacy and elimination of SSNs: see discussion above.
• Training Needs Assessment: there may be some issues with the Aleph version upgrade. Will be added to a future campus contacts meeting agenda and task groups to identify needs for training.
• Reserves/E-reserves: e-reserves information-sharing completed. Ruschoff will clarify which campuses have requested improvements to reserves and what they are.
• Digital Projects (including Fedora): CLD will maintain awareness of Maryland Digital Library funding and potential projects. There may be benefit from having campuses with current projects share information in a forum or seminar.
• Institutional Repositories: Some campuses experimenting in limited way with repositories. Insitutional repositories and e-archiving are possible future forum topics.
• Investigate PAM services for updating the SFX Knowledgebase, the OPAC, and WorldCat: CLD Exec charged the ERIC II task group to study the available services and recommend whether and which vendors to invite for a presentation. ERIC may need to contact vendors for preliminary presentations as part of their investigation.
• Viability of the current system architecture: see discussion of multi-ADM environment above.
• Collection management reports, i.e., reports of high demand titles: CLD Exec will discuss at a future meeting a strategy for addressing report needs. Which reports would support ACRL, IPEDS, medical school and law school needs?
• Local control: deferred until future version implementations.
• Placement of the Google search box in Research Port: broaden topic to "Google integration" and refer to UITG.

CLD Exec reviewed the list of projects in the plan that require research:

• Campus interface for invoicing: CLD Exec charged the new Serials/Acquisitions Task Group to investigate.
• Duplicate record clean-up: needs to be explored with Ex Libris.
• ALEPH client accessibility overseas: Phillips to explore with UMUC in August.
• Multi-ADM architecture

Ruschoff will update the first page of report with progress in more areas, including Authorities, and will distribute it to campus contacts (copying CLD).

Topic: External trends

Ruschoff highlighted several trends that will affect our environment, such as:

• The sources of bibliographic data and holdings information is expanding. New standards under development give us opportunities to pass data through from its origin (e.g the publishers) to the catalog or knowledge base. The ONIX standards for distributing subscription information holdings for online resources and the serials release notification will be released over the next year. Serials publishers and agents have already begun to employ these standards to provide libraries (and others) with a standard source of information which may be used for acquisitions, cataloging, the knowledge base, and even serial A-Z lists. Publication Access Management Services (PAMS), which already distribute bibliographic and holding data for both print and electronic resources are poised to maximize their services.
• The content of the bibliographic record is also changing, providing for new opportunities. The Library of Congress has announced that it will be streamlining its practices, creating a much leaner record. Examples of these changes include the recent decision to stop creating series authority records and series headings, the establishment of the "access level record" for non serial titles in electronic form, and the ongoing work in "access level" records for serials. Deanna Marcum announced at ALA that LC will be looking at the practices for creating precoordinated subject headings and changes are likely to ensue. The trend toward leaner records for e-resources along with the new standards electronic distribution of records allow for a more automated mechanism for creating and maintaining bibliographic records.
• The ILS. There is a growing dissatisfaction with the complexity and inflexibility of existing commerical ILS systems. They are not nimble, they require a great deal of resources (both human and monetary) to keep running, and they contain information that is redundant. The data stored in the ILS is also stored and searchable in other domains and studies show that people are starting their searchs in Google or Yahoo rather than library catalogs. These other domains support far powerful search engines which can point back to a Library's catalog for holding information. Questions about whether every library in the country should store the same bibliographic records and support separate search engines have been raised. There is also a lot of talk about the the "open source ILS" which is more flexible and far less complex, however, there is more talk than action. The PINES system in Georgia is one of the few open source systems under development and many are watching to see how it develops. Over the next few years, the rising costs, the complexity, and the lack of agility of the ILS is likely to force libraries into facing the hard realities of the OPAC as we know it.
• Changes in search engines which integrate resources and offer social networking are emerging (e.g., Primo). These search engines are based on the concept that people want to search across disperate databases, either within an institution or across institutions. However, there is a real tension developing between the single "umbrella" engine (Primo) and the specific domain (e.g. medical literature). Single, domain specific arenas are beginning to proliferate. Even Google has been breaking its domain down into more specific categories.
• Over the next few years as we sort out our prioirities, we need to keep these issues in mind. While it is very difficult to predict the future, we can get a sense about our direction from the current trends. different information-seeking behavior of Millenials, who do not start with the catalog, impacts how we develop our services.

Wilt highlighted four external trends:

• Automation of bibliographic data creation
• Exponential growth of quality free information on the web
• Millenial work patterns
• The consequences of "the Long Tail" in information demand:
  • document delivery demand increase
  • decline in adequacy of subscriptions to meet information needs
  • possible revenue from low priced sales of low demand information.

Phillips shared a handout on LASSI with CLD Exec. LASSSI (Large Scale Shared Systems Initiative) group includes large consortia such as SUNY, CDL, CCLA, FCLA and others. The group has been meeting regularly and wants to work with Ex Libris to address their issues. LASSI has been a venue to learn about common problems and issues, and is expanding to discuss MetaLib, SFX, and Verde issues.

Upcoming meetings:

CLD requested UITG present on usability testing at a future CLD meeting.

No CLD meeting in August. Plan for CLD 10:00-12:00 noon and CLD Exec to have lunch and meet afterwards on September 21st.

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