The Resource Sharing Priority Committee recently finished writing a Print Monograph Retention Policy, or Best Practices for Monograph De-Selection.  The draft will be reviewed, discussed and possibly approved at the September Board of Directors meeting.  The text of the draft can be found below, and attached as a file to this post.


BLC Resource Sharing Strategic Priority: Best Practices for Monograph De-selection

Members: Sherry Keen (Brandeis), Tom Casserly (BU), Steve Smith (Wellesley)

Problem (or Purpose) Statement

The libraries in the BLC maintain redundant collections. For any given title, there may be only a single copy within the consortium, or there may be ten or more; for most, that number will probably be somewhere in between. In part this is a reflection of each institution’s long history of growth and the concomitant need to build collections to meet the requirements of the local community. Over the past decade, the BLC libraries have attempted to reduce the redundancy in collections:

• For current acquisitions, using cooperative collection development, and
• For retention of older materials, specifically reference materials and print journal backfiles.

The benefits of these strategies are twofold: They allow libraries to reduce their expenditures on duplicative materials, and they increase the overall availability of materials within the BLC. In addition, they give libraries a tool for handling increasing pressures on space in a sensible and deliberate way.

Extending such efforts, the Resource Sharing committee is investigating guidelines for monographs held by consortium members. In doing so, we face a number of challenges:

• Unlike journals, an electronic version may not be available for most monographic titles,
• Unlike consortium such as the Five Colleges or TRLN, the BLC does not have a shared repository, and
• Unlike our efforts in cooperative collection development or print journal retention, in order to gain wide acceptance from the BLC members, the successful policy should not require formal agreements such as memorandums of understanding.

We must also recognize that while the aim is to ensure diversity of holdings with a low amount of duplication, every library makes their collections available for interlibrary loan not just to the BLC but to libraries across the country, and even around the world, just as we all rely on libraries both within and beyond the BLC to satisfy our borrowing needs.

Proposed Policy

No library will discard/withdraw the last copy of a monograph edition in serviceable condition, and deemed to have intellectual or research value, held within the consortium unless there are more than 50 holdings reflected in OCLC.

No library will discard/withdraw a copy of a monograph edition in serviceable condition, and deemed to have intellectual or research value, held by only one other BLC member (i.e., a total of 2 copies within the BLC), unless there are more than 30 holdings reflected in OCLC

For all monographs with less than 30 holdings reflected in OCLC, it is recommended that at least three copies be retained within the BLC.

Retention copies shall continue to circulate locally and via ILL as allowed by the owning library.

This policy shall stay in effect for 10 years, and will be reviewed after 5 years.

This policy should in no way restrict any individual institution or library in meeting the needs of its own campus or user community or fulfilling its mission.

Recordings from the Boston Library Consortium's Ebook Symposium are currently available through Brandeis University's Vimeo site.  Links are provided below.  The recordings can also be borrowed from the BLC office.  Please contact Amanda Schmidt at aschmidt at blc dot org if you would like to borrow the DVD or data file.

Part 1: http://vimeo.com/25765451

Part 2: http://vimeo.com/25765621

Will there be Interlibrary loan in a world of EBOOKS?  A Symposium organized by the Strategic Priority Committee on Resource Sharing

Tuesday May 24^th 9:30am -12:30pm at Brandeis University, Goldfarb (Main) Library, Treasure Hall

Join your colleagues from the BLC as we discuss the future of interlibrary loan in the ebook environment. Panelists include:

• Bruce Heterick, VP Outreach and Participation Services at JSTOR
• Jennifer Kemp,  E-Product Manager at Springer USA
• Rebecca Seger, Institutional Sales Director Americas, Oxford University Press
• Dean Smith, Director of Project Muse : The University Press Content Consortium  (UPCC)

The discussion will be moderated by Tom Sanville, Director of Licensing and Special Projects for Lyrasis.

Breakfast will be available at 9:00 am.

To register, please see http://bit.ly/jn6v1M

The last day to register is Thursday, May 19th.

For campus maps and directions, please see http://www.brandeis.edu/about/visiting/directions.html

The Commuter Rail will take you directly to campus. From North Station or Porter Station, take the Fitchburg/South Acton line to the Brandeis/Roberts stop. A full train schedule can be found at http://tinyurl.com/2a4tgv

If you arrive by car, visitor parking permits are available at the campus gate on South Street. For more information on parking, call (781) 736-4250.

To view the full invitation please visit http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=b04cb48218979f3275aaa6820&id=65073093e2&e=6218421175

Notes from Resource Sharing Priority Implementation Committee Meeting, Dec. 14, 2010

Committee members suggested a number of possible areas of interest for the committee’s project

• Sharing resources
• Sharing staff expertise
• Last copies
• Broadening licensing on ebook and electronic products, for example theses and dissertations online cannot be loaned. Intellectual property cannot be shared.
• E-journals present problems in WorldCat
• Some ebook consortial agreements have incorporated patron-driven acquisitions successfully.
• Several problems with ebooks were mentioned:
• What happens over time with resources? Over time ebooks are dropped from publishers/aggregators. How can libraries maintain titles in ebook formats?
• How do libraries address the ILL need with ebooks?

In short, how do we meet our users’ needs as budgets are cut?

The committee discussed interlibrary loan of ebooks as a possible project:

• How would vendors cooperate for ILL
• Could e-journals provide the model of “owning” some titles?
• We should investigate whether any publishers/aggregators offer interlibrary loan of ebooks. Springer does lend.
• Joint ebook purchases do not suffice
• The group noted that without being able to share electronic resources, collaboration on resource-sharing and interlibrary loan effectively end.
• There was a proposal to ask large publishers to come to the Committee to talk about sharing ebooks.
• In terms of viability as a project, electronic collections are not being looked at by the Scholarly Research Priority Committee.
• This committee could monitor discovery tools (WorldCatLocal, Viewfind, etc.)

The discussion turned to WorldCatLocal & resource sharing. How does WorldCatLocal affect resource sharing. It was noted that local decisions affect the utility of WorldCatLocal? How could the BLC make WCL the “discovery tool” of moment? -- make it a priority to put items in. What items go in—all items—use for local tool. Because of WorldCat’s deficiencies in identifying records, it creates hidden collections. Successfully pulling up records in WorldCatLocal depends upon having an OCLC # in the MARC record; many records do not.

The current situation with WCNavigator was summarized. The Board will evaluate the WCNavigator situation at its March meeting. Three Aleph libraries are still not up. After they are in production, the decision on paying OCLC will be made. A consultant may be hired to do an evaluation of WCNavigator’s effectiveness and where we should go next.

Proposal: The WorldCatLocal Implementation is a case study in how BLC could share staff expertise. Reviewing how this was handled could suggest how the BLC might share staff expertise in the future. There must be a structure in place for sharing. Staff development could be part of staff sharing. There must be buy-in at the top level for staff sharing. People must get together at the challenge level rather than the solution-level.

Proposal: A survey on staff expertise: Ask each director to name three things for which your library needs expertise shared with it and three things to share in the BLC. A brief, direct survey would change mindsets. BLC must loosen things in order to share. Ongoing vs project challenges. Survey is a good instrument for getting initial feedback. How do we collectively identify needs?

The committee discussed the staff expertise exchange:

• Craigslist for BLC – what does your library need?
• Share staff expertise if Board can support this initiative
• Northeastern developing a skill sets inventory to draw on staff
• A survey to address this topic was discussed
• Survey – should the group analyze information that the BLC has already gathered? Survey could get at more details.
• Should communication team members attend other committee meetings about surveys?
• Survey would need people to indicate what the library is examining--what it wants to do next, what it needs to do
• Value of survey is sharing ignorance
• Make survey short – prioritize a few things
• Thinking and communicating (maybe with Comm Comm)
• What can you do for BLC? What can it do for you?
• Staff are encouraged – can it be ongoing?
• Need easy to use shared documents that can be constantly updated

Procedural issue: Communication Committee – is Communication Committee interested in focusing on this project? Bring idea to other team to consider. Brian will attend Jan 4 meeting; asked committee members to talk to reps from their institutions. After 4th contact other members not represented.

Proposal to draft policy on last copy

• Writing the draft could be done quickly
• Chemistry has done one.
• Build in a buffer so if someone drops out still coverage.
• Tie in with national projects like WEST, Hathi Trust.
• Could survey be informal?

Proposal to develop a monograph retention policy for the BLC project adopted.
Action item: Steve, Sherry, and Tom volunteered to draft a monograph retention policy for the BLC. Committee’s work completed by end of March.

The committee returned to discussing a project focusing on Ebooks:

• Write a problem statement
• What are publishers doing?
• Springer allows sharing, but loans are chapter by chapter.
• Find out the motivation of publishers not to share
• Ebrary doesn’t want marketable ones (like textbooks) ILL’d. May be able to distinguish. Find out what can be done.
• There’s a technological aspect. Most important is willingness to do so.

Action Item: Develop an ebook symposium, featuring publishers, on the topic of ebook sharing for late spring (late May, early June)

Action item: Project plan: mid-February.

Subcommitee: Laura, Janet, Steve (Chair), Kathy, and Judy.

The committee discussed the meeting--an Ebook symposium on Ebook Sharing

• Get group of publishers in the room together. Ask them to address under what circumstances would they loan stuff.
• Purpose is to approach publishers with ideas to solve this problem. What is best way to talk with them?
• Lyrasis could help with discussion.
• Check on interest from publishers, see if they want to talk about it.
• Project MUSE getting feet wet with ebooks; therefore, might be interested.
• Open meeting up to heads of resource sharing at libraries & directors
• What kinds of publishers should be invited? ECO? & EEBO? Archive collections?
• Stick with vendors to university presses and current book content
• Potential national problem with ebook sharing.
• Could other consortia be interested?
• Conn, Trinity, Wesleyan – Mellon funded joint ebook project
• Foundation funding possible

Pricing models – Desirable model may be one in which every library pays the same price for ebook ; not based on fte. Cooperative deals mean charge more per copy.

Co-chairs: Janet Stewart; Sherry Keen

Discussion of communication infrastructure for project: Basecamp; Google Site; or Zoho. Decision for Google Site

MT

1/14/11