Minutes

Susan reported on her attempt to obtain information from peer consortia. She was able to see statistical information at two sites based on information sent from the various consortia contacted. Many sites were passworded. She'll see if she can at least get blank instruments from the other peer sites.

Ed will send out results of his literature searches over the next week.

Janet reviewed the various instruments that she has obtained to date, ALS, ARL, ACRL & RLG. She reported on a discussion with Ann Devenish from NELINET who indicated that they do not request any additional statistics from member libraries. They are able to obtain statistics from OCLC, most of which are based on the "produces" generated by each library and from the billing history based on billable services. Neither the ICOLC nor the IFLA site have any instruments or actual statistics that could be found though she's willing to continue looking.

Discussion the followed regarding the ALS instrument and what it will include and what other data we might want to recommend be gathered. Some of the points from this discussion:

* We will need to get walk-in circulations from BLC cards
* We need to produce clear instructions/definitions for what we expect to collect in this(the BLC/ALS instrument) document (this after a discussion regarding how easy it was to misinterpret the instructions for the ARL instrument.)

We then discussed what we would include in the preliminary report due March 1. What we've done:

* preliminary reactions to existing instrument and some early critique (need to still poll the membership for what they'd like to have and what they can actually provide
* what's ideal and what's the least that should be done

Expectation/direction:

* we would recommend what needs to be added to the existing/planned instrument: missing-virtual catalog request-mediated & unmediated, walk-in traffic
* augment existing instruction to be sure data is gathered consistently
* discuss both services and physical circulations in terms of what is gathered

What's next:

* continue to survey other sites for what they are doing-particularly sites that have virtual catalogs
* poll our own membership for ideal & least data mentioned above-need to create a questionnaire
* get some information about how past data has been gathered and reported; roll of branches and handling walking traffic

Who's doing what:

Janet will draft the report (Finished report will be e-mailed to Joan to distribute)
Susan & Ed will work on the questionnaire
Members will poll sites based on agreed upon division:
Sue: Brandeis, BC, BC Law, Umass Boston & Lowell & Dartmouth, Wellesley, Brown Janet: NEU, NEB, BPL, MBL/WHOI, State Library & Umass Amherst Ed: Tufts libraries, BU, BU Med, BU Law, MIT & Umass Worcester

After discussion we decided to e-mail the questionnaire to the deans/directors. We would ask them to have it filled out by the person who should be the primary contact for resource sharing at their institution. If that person will not be filling out the questionnaire, the deans/directors will be asked to identify who should be the primary contact. In this way, Joan can develop a contact list for the BLC.

They further indicated that they were interested in identification of where the activity is and what's really happening. Can we try to use the same sorts of data s already collected for other instruments? (We pretty much decided that doing this would not answer their needs.) What impact is the virtual catalog having on other BLC services over time?

Final issues to be addressed include discrepancies between what we're gathering now in terms of time frames, for instance ALS cycle on fiscal year rather than calendar etc. OCLC data reported from sites is on a calendar year.

The meeting began at 100 at the BPL. Sue Swanson, Janet Belanger, Joan Thompson and Ed Oberholtzer were present. Joan had a copy of the BLC goals as well as the ILL statistics. Goal 4 "Resource Sharing and Timely Delivery of Materials" supports the Task Force's narrow interpretation of its charge as being restricted to the process of the gathering of statistics to examine the impact of the virtual catalog upon ILL and walk-in traffic at the member libraries. Until we hear otherwise, we will proceed with the narrower charge.

We will contact the ILL people at the various libraries in order to find out how they report statistics now. Joan pointed out that the contact names are on the web through Friday, and that the ILL Listserv will be available through January 30th.