USMAI Council of Library Directors, Executive Committee
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Minutes
(corrected 10-30-08)

Attending: Celia Rabinowitz, Charles Lowry, Deborah Nolan, Alice Bahr, David Gillespie, MJ Tooey, Stephen Miller, Larry Wilt

Rabinowitz called the meeting to order. Updates from the Shady Grove Study Group and RSTG were added to the agenda.

TOPIC: Provosts’ Meeting
Leader: Tooey

It was agreed that a meeting with the Provosts should be an annual event. The focus will be to inform the Provosts of the state of the libraries and will not be linked to directly to budget issues.

Action: Tooey will suggest to Spicer that the Libraries be put on the Provost’s agenda March-April of 2008.

TOPIC: ERM Survey Report
Leader: Ruschoff

The results of the ERM survey were discussed. Ruschoff indicated that there are some steps that can be taken now to provide more information to USMAI Libraries.

Action: The CLD endorsed the exploration of options for providing greater information regarding electronic resources that would maximum amount of transparency to all end users through SFX, ALEPH and Web pages.

TOPIC: WorldCat Local Update
Time: 20 minutes
Leader: Ruschoff

Ruschoff reported on discussions that ITD staff have had with the developers at OCLC on the implementation of WCL. Two concerns were of the most interest: authentication between WorldCat and ALEPH and the support of PPH. OCLC developers indicated that these issues could be addressed. Ruschoff speculated that she was not certain whether OCLC has a full understanding of some of the challenges in working with ALEPH and may underestimate the ease in which communications between systems may be resolved. The only way we can know for certain is to proceed. There will be resource commitment on USMAI’s end if we proceed. Interest in other discovery options was expressed. VuFind was named as another alternative. There is a sense that some libraries may want to present other open source discovery tools to their clientele.

Actions:

• Ruschoff will contact OCLC to get USMAI into the WCL queue. If there is an immediate financial commitment to enter the queue, Ruschoff will report to CLD Exec before moving forward.
• Ruschoff will estimate the time commitment for ITD in early set-up phase.
• Ruschoff will draft a summary statement of the benefit of the network level catalog & the functionality and services it provides. It is important to include in such a statement that WCL will NOT replace access to the ALEPH OPAC catalog. This statement will be sent to the CLD and also to Campus Contacts for the broadest dissemination.

TOPIC: Web Presence Update
Leader: Rabinowitz

The Web Presence interim report was not available to the Executive Committee. However, Rabinowitz has seen an early draft and summarized the content of the report. The Web Presence Study Group approached their task from the perspective of what is needed in a discovery tool. The report will outline those needs.

TOPIC: Statistics Task Group Report
Leaders: Ruschoff, Rabinowitz

The report from the Statistics Task Group was discussed. The report was deemed very thorough and complete. The Executive Committee agreed that the accuracy of the reports listed in the task group’s report will depend upon the depth and precision of the coding done by each library. Without knowing whether every library codes their materials, it is difficult to know if developing reports recommended in the document will meet each library’s needs.

Action: The CLD Exec recommends that, when completing statistical reports to external groups over the next year, each library should refer to the list of categories cited in the report of the Statistics Task Group and determine where it is best to obtain the information. This recommendation will be included in the note to CLD on WCL.

TOPIC: Update from other Groups
Leader: Rabinowitz
Shady Grove: Rabinowitz reported that the Shady Grove Study Group has requested an extension. The report is due Feb. 22. A focused report has been requested from the group.

RSTG: The RSTG has been asked to assist ITD with decisions that support the Patron Privacy strategic direction. RSTG members expressed concern about balancing this work with ongoing projects, and about the relationship between ITD and the Task Group. However, Rabinowitz explained that the request is expected to increase collaboration between ITD and the Task Group. Rabinowitz will meet with the RSTG leadership in January to clarify concerns and expectations.

TOPIC: DSpace Pilot – UMBC
Leaders: Wilt, Ruschoff, Rabinowitz

History: The Council agreed that DSpace be used as USMAI library institutional repository. Interest in developing a second institution on DSpace. Advantage of offering access to electronic ETDs outside of ProQuest is that researchers from other institutions have free access to a library’s theses and dissertations. The consortium is looking for other opportunities to offer consortium wide applications and investigating whether there is a platform consortium wide for IR. A request has been made that ITD explore what it would take to create a hosted DSpace instance for the USMAI libraries for separate institutional respositories and determine the resources and costs required to support such a service. The consensus of the group was that more information is needed from the libraries to articulate the question for a fuller discussion.

Action: Rabinowitz and Ruschoff will survey the members to find out 1) how many libraries have already started an institutional repository and, if so, what software they are using; and 2) how many would be interested in a consortial service, and if interested, would they be interested in paying additional money to support it. The topic will return to the agenda in February.

TOPIC: New Business, Announcements
Tooey:

• PALINET's Sloan appropriation for a digitization project of $1 million. PALINET will probably be searching for additional participants in the program.
• Food for Fines at the HS/HSL went well. Could we replicate next year across USMAI? Not all libraries could participate but if they could would they?
• Disaster preparedness:
  • what is the backup plan for the proxy?
  • should USMAI be discussing? Can we back each other up? Rabinowitz said she thought it would be a good task group.
    
    

Nolan:

• Mary Gilbert, Head of Technical Services at Towson University, has been promoted to Assistant University Librarian for Content Management. Mary's responsibilities now include technical services, collection development, and copyright compliance.
• Nadia Nasr, formerly Digitization Supervisor and Program Coordinator for the Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage Program, is now University Archivist and Digital Collections Librarian at Towson.
• Linda Kleback is Towson's new Coordinator of Interlibrary Loan. Linda has 27 years of experience in public service departments at the Bay County Public Library in Panama City, Florida.

Lowry: College Park’s implementation of Fedora has been getting a good deal of positive attention. Susan Schreibman and David Kennedy presented a session at CNI and an article on the topic will be included in the June issue of D-Lib.

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