Minutes

1. As of Friday, April 12th, there were 18 BLC members signed up. Melissa will not be at Simmons to check-in BLC registrants, but Julie volunteered to do it.
2. Jackie will call Melissa to send out a BLC teleconference reminder on the BLC email list.
3. Jackie will alert Simmons that the BLC can free up their allotted 50 seats?
4. Simmons will have a FAX machine available. Janet will obtain the FAX number for submitting questions to the conference site, and will arrange a speed dialing setup with Simmons.
5. The Task Force will develop some questions to FAX over email, and Janet will make cover sheets with a few questions, just in case no one else FAXes questions.

1. Both UMass, Boston and MBL/WHOI libraries offered to catalog and ILL the videos. MBL/WHOI Library will handle. The videos will be available on ILL to Consortium personnel and Simmons College. A note to that effect will be inserted into the cataloging record. When the videos arrive and are ready for loaning, Jackie will send Melissa a note to put the information out on the BLC email list.

1. Meetings with Barbara, the vendor and Task Force members will be held at 1pm at the BPL. (locations TBA)

1. Friday, May 17th was selected as an additional Task Force meeting. Jim will poll members regarding availability..

1. Questions arose about how the pilot will be funded. Will it be funded entirely through grants? Does BLC have funds? Or, will the pilot libraries share the costs? The Charge does not address the issue. It might be too late to apply for a 2002 grant. Some libraries indicated interest in the pilot with the assumption that it would be grant-funded and free in the initial stages. There was some interest by potential pilot libraries in joining in a year or two. This may be a good setting and timing for submitting a grant proposal.
2. Estimated costs might be clearer after the vendor discussions. Who will be the BLC vendor negotiator ?

1. Checklist for items to be included in our recommendations
2. Julie will write the April progress report for Barbara.

1. Think about sponsoring a BLC Reference Community of Interest Day to inform and provide answers to their questions. This could be structured via email to the COI instead.
2. Think about possible service models/options of how 24/7 will be delivered . Four ideas were sketched out at the meeting. There may be more configurations.

i. BPL MCLS 24/7 option

1. non-profit, really 24/7, some after-hours questions contracted out

ii. Total contracting out

1. No BLC libraries answer questions

iii. CTW option

1. Purchase and own the software and server
2. Hired 2 librarians for after-hours reference.

iv. BLC entirely

1. Handle all ref questions
2. No after hours contracting out-- provide whatever hours you can

1) All taskforce members who were present reported on the information they obtained from potential software vendors and consortiums that are already offering virtual reference services. Handouts of the appropriate charts were provided.

Ann reported that Docutek is still a very young organization and that it may not be ready to handle the demands of a consortium. The first release of the software is very basic (only includes a chat function), and a second, more sophisticated version is just being released. Docutek does not yet have a policy on their response time to technical support issues/ and problems. The installation and purchase of Docutek would cost $1,000.

Ann also reported that the Collaborative Digital Reference Services is currently providing a collaborative email service. CDRS is looking into a chat service, but it looks as though the service would be restricted to chat and not co-browsing.

Janet reported that Umass had decided to purchase LivePerson because their grant money for the software was limited and LivePerson was offering the most reasonable rates. Umass currently has the Pro version of LivePerson. The Pro version offers the librarian and patron the ability to chat and push pages. It lacks a co-browsing feature and the ability to keep statistics. The corporate version of LivePerson includes statistics keeping features and the ability to co-browse,

Janet said LivePerson has been easy to use because of the simplicity of the software's features. However, the software has not proven to be compatible with all browsers. In addition, the vendors of LivePerson do not have a strong knowledge of libraries and have been confused by the authentication problems that the databases can cause. Janet recommends a more sophisticated software for a consortium's use.

The Boston Public Library is offering collaborative, 24/7 virtual reference services with MCLS's network of libraries. Reference staff from the BPL staff the service for the whole network everyday between 10:00am-12:00pm. Patrons have reported that they are pleased with the 24/7 service.

Susan reports that the training and support for the 24/7 software has been excellent. The users are not required to download any software to make use of the service. Patrons who have Macintoshes cannot at this point take advantage of the co-browsing feature. IP authentication is needed for the librarian and patron to co-browse a proprietary database. Overall, Susan says that the BPL has been pleased with MCLS's 24/7 software.

Egain is the company that provides software to LSSI and MCLS. Jackie had an enthusiastic report on egain. She says that egain is a stable, well-established company. The representative that she spoke to said there is no advantage to going through egain instead of using LSSI's or MCLS's products. These two products are much more cost effective than going directly through egain.

Librarians from Q & A have been pleased with both their service and the LSSI software. The Q & A consortium currently has four seats (meaning that four librarians can be monitoring the service at once) for the 26 libraries and gets approximately 1,000 questions per week. The librarians feel that the public/academic library consortium works well.

Kate reported that she is unsure about how to evaluate Convey Systems as a potential software provider. It is a sophisticated product that includes chat, co-browsing, statistics, voice, and video. It is also relatively cost effective. However, Kate expressed concerns about the fact that Convey's software requires patrons to download a plug-in before using the service for the first time. Convey also provides libraries with a Firewall Conference Manager Server, and this takes care of problems accessing proprietary databases. Present members of the task force wondered if our systems departments would not be comfortable with this sort of server. Kate said that she has had prior experience with the main sales representative from Convey and has found him to be less than professional.

Kate also spoke with Lonna Beers, the coordinator for the University Center Library. The University Center Library is a central library that serves offsite students affiliated with six Texas Universities. Lonna is the only librarian who staffs LivePerson, the virtual reference service provided by the University Center Library. Lonna reports that she uses the most basic version of LivePerson, and it consequently only has a chat feature. The software converts itself into an a-mail service when she is not available to staff the chat service. Because of the simplicity of the software, no training was required and Lonna has not encountered any significant technical problems.

• Julie will contact Daphne Harrington to ask when the food will be available (11:30 or noon or ?) and to confirm how they are handling the registration of the Simmons attendees.
   
  
• Jackie will contact DuPage regarding availability of a videotape of the program(s).
   

Questions to vendors about software (created by Julie in .doc format) Answer summary charts for Consortiums and BLC libraries (created by Jackie in .xls format) Detailed questions to ask of Consortiums and BLC libraries (created by Kate in .doc format)

• Julie and Jackie will revise their charts with the additions.  

• Jackie will email Kate about the addition to her questions.  

• Jackie, Julie and Kate will send out the revised lists to our listserv  

• Every notetaker will upload notes from each meeting after approval by members (Janet will start by uploading notes from the last two meetings)  

• Ann will upload a .doc file with the teleconference invitation and information.  

• Janet will upload our meeting schedule with respective Convener/Notetaker.  

• Janet will send out a note to the BLC from 24/7 encouraging the creation of a CoI for Reference, and asking for interested members, and someone to volunteer to convene this CoI.  

• Susan will write up what she delivered at the BLC Celebration to which we can add our February activities for the progress report due March 1st.  

We then looked at the draft of questions that Kate submitted to be asked of each consortium regarding their chat reference service. We agreed with all of the questions and asked that the following one be added:

1) Ask what kind of reports can be generated from the software package
2) Ask how much money did they spend in establishing their chat service and how was this funded (grants? a budget allocation?)
3) Ask how they provide access to different databases at different institutions?

• 24/7 (modifies e-gain) Susan
  

• eGain (live and voice ) Jackie

• Netagent (eshare) Jim

• LivePerson janet

• Docutek Ann

• Covey kate

• LSSI(modifies e-gain) Julie

• Meetings will start on time.
   
  
• We as taskforce members represent the BLC not our home institutions.
   
  
• Give every member a chance to speak.  
  

• We brainstormed to identify tasks that we needed to accomplish in order to complete the charge given to us and came up with the following ideas and assignments:

We initially had a number of questions regarding our charge. However it was explained to us that a lot of the ambiguity in our charge was up to us to resolve. For example what was meant by "meeting the needs of the BLC's primary constituency groups and/or the wider scholarly community." We have made the assumption that the BLC primary constituency groups will have primary consideration in our planning. We question whether the timeline is realistic, but we will learn that as we progress. Clearly we are being asked to progress as quickly as possible. We wondered what was in the minds of the board with "develop a means of managing information resources in a shared environment" We could provide the definition of that as our work progressed.

We eventually agreed that the above concerns need not be presented to the BLC management council on January 15th. We would work them out amongst ourselves and keep the board informed.

We were very concerned however that the reference community in the BLC be aware of what we were doing and thinking as we went along. Since this was not mentioned in our charge it was agreed that we would send a request to the management council to alert them to our concerns. Janet agreed to draft a memo of our concerns to the management council which would be distributed to task force members on the listserve for any editing. It would then be forwarded to Barbara and Bessie for consideration at the next Management Council meeting on the 15th.