USMAI Council of Library Directors, Executive Council
October 18 2007
UMBC, Room 767
Draft Outcomes

Attending: Celia Rabinowitz, Chair (St. Mary’s), Alice Bahr (Salisbury), David Gillespie (Frostburg), Deborah Nolan (Towson), Carlen Ruschoff (ITD), Larry Wilt (UMBC), Stephen Miller (UC)
Guest: Jamie Bush (ITD)

TOPIC 1: Call to Order
Outcome: Rabinowitz convened the meeting. No changes were made to the agenda.

TOPIC 2: Task Group & Campus Contact Meeting Reports
Time: 30 minutes
http://usmai.umd.edu/tg_chairs_meeting_07.html Rabinowitz summarized the outcome of the Task Group Chairs meeting and the Campus Contacts meeting. http://usmai.umd.edu/tg_chairs_meeting_07.html In her report, Rabinowitz made the following points: USMAI will not reimburse staff for routine travel, but task group and other committee members should consult with their home libraries about travel reimbursement. Requests for funding for consortial activities (travel, refreshments, etc.) should be submitted to the chair of the CLD in advance and include a justification and estimate of costs. The CLD will be asking all task groups to submit annual work plans and reports on activities. Ruschoff, Bush, and Rabinowitz are working on templates that can be used. This will be submitted in January. Group membership rotation will also occur in January. Celia clarified that guests are welcome at task group meetings and should contact the task group chair prior to attending a meeting.

Actions:

• These provisions will be incorporated in the “USMAI Organization and Procedures Manual.”
• Ruschoff, Bush, and Rabinowitz will create work plan and annual report templates.

Rabinowitz also reported on the topics discussed at the Fall Campus Contacts meeting. Contacts were updated on: The changes in the College Park ITD organization and positions that have been approved to be filled, the work going on to support the migration to MetaLib4, (scheduled for completion in January 2008), the status of Verde, progress on clearing the Rx backlog, and brief discussion of the work plan activities and strategic priorities, (MetaLib4, patron privacy, and reporting). A suggestion was made that a drop down box for common Rx’s be put up on the web to simply procedures and to ensure the needed information is included. Theresa Knott presented a progress report on the work of the Statistics Study Group. She distributed a chart showing the specific statistics that are required for standard survey forms such as ARL, ACRL, and NCES.

Actions:

• Rabinowitz will distribute the statistics spreadsheet presented at the Campus Contacts Meeting by the Statistics Study Group to CLD, after checking with Theresa.

TOPIC 3: Inventory and Priorities
The initial question that began this discussion is whether there should be a call to the campuses for another round of priorities. It was noted that due to the migration to version 18, many of last year’s priorities have not been addressed. There are also new features in version 18 that need to be investigated and a decision to implement must be made. The Executive Committee members expressed some interest in creating a consensus around strategic developments for the system. It was observed that the landscape is changing rapidly and some of the developments in technology and user behavior may affect how USMAI Libraries think about the priorities for the future development of ALEPH. ITD staff have seen a number of changes in the way work is done on campuses, yet no one has gone back to evaluate whether we really need some of the developments that have been requested. An interest in developing a decision structure that allows USMAI to be more agile in choosing next steps was expressed. At the same time, we need to determine what work we will not do anymore. Consensus crystallized around a recommendation to review current priorities. Furthermore, it was suggested that it might be useful to have campuses consider a larger picture for the overall strategic directions for the consortium. It was suggested that ITD provide more information about the resources needed to implement the priorities on the work plan as well as those that have come along with version 18. In particular, more information on scheduling of tasks should be made available, and in a format that facilitates analysis of the time and effort needed for all projected projects, together in one presentation. Perhaps a Gantt chart could meet this need. UMBC Management Advisory Services staff has required that its library perform regular collection inventory per BOR policy and requested an assessment of the ITD level of effort that would be required to implement the ALEPH inventory feature. Other Directors indicated that the BOR policy is not interpreted to require a full, “hands on” inventory on their campuses.

Actions:

• Bush will create a list of new version 18 features, define the functionality of each, summarize the implementation needs, (e.g. specification needs) and estimate the time needed to implement. Campuses will be asked to indicate which of these should be implemented and prioritize the selected tasks.
• Campus Contacts will be asked to work with their respective campus groups to review their outstanding priorities and decide what can come off the work plan, what might shift in ranking, etc.
• The Executive Committee recommends that directors have discussions on their campuses about both the overall strategic directions of the consortium and the ways in which existing consortial and campus priorities may fit into those priorities.
• Bush will look at the collection inventory feature in ALEPH, define the functionality and estimate the resources needed to implement and report back to CLD.

TOPIC 4: ITD Update
Ruschoff reported that ITD is scheduling campus visits. Ruschoff and Bush have been to HHSL, UMBC and plans to go to UB on October 26 and Frostburg on November 29. A survey instrument has been developed to help determine the support needs for electronic resource management. The ERM Task group has been asked to pilot the survey and provide feedback. Ruschoff has begun to evaluate the ExLibris contract and the invoices to find a correspondence between what we use and what we pay for. There may be some cost savings to be garnered. Bush is identifying tasks on the work plan that support patron privacy and reporting so that work delegation and scheduling can be done. For example, developing patron loaders is a key building block for putting other elements that support patron privacy into place. Currently approximately 7 campuses do not have a patron loader, therefore this task is a high priority. For other initiatives on the work plan, ITD will need the assistance of the Task Groups in fleshing out strategies and developing the specifications. Ruschoff announced that the work with UITG on authorities in the OPAC has been put into hiatus. Bush pointed out that work on authorities is going on in “background.” The authorities test site is being set-up in November-December. The ALEPH enhancement voting decisions, based on input from the campuses and ITD was submitted to ELUNA and distributed to the Campus Contacts and CLD.

Action

• Rabinowitz and Ruschoff will charge ERM TG to evaluate the ERM survey instrument and review the results of the survey.

TOPIC 5: Announcements, New Business
RSTG has casually discussed the idea of having a uniform system/process for assessment. A question was raised about whether CLD had previously considered assessment for libraries. There was discussion of assessment in libraries and whether USMAI should take a position on what assessment measures to use and the idea of an assessment task group was raised. TU is using the Balanced Scorecard. It was noted that LibQual has been criticized as being a flawed instrument. One issue raised is that it is more valuable to compare libraries to other like libraries, rather than just between those within the consortium. No consensus was reached on assessment measures or a uniform approach to assessment.

Actions

• Rabinowitz will contact Tooey, Lowry, and Spicer to ensure that USMAI gets on the USMAI Provost agenda. Journal subscriptions will be an important topic to be prepared to address.
• Ruschoff will invite USMAI staff to attend Secrets of Meeting Management to be held at College Park on Thursday, November 8, 2:00 - 4:00, MCK 7121
• Stephen Miller will set-up meeting with Carlen to discuss creating a Blog for USMAI News.

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