British/U.S. History and Women's Studies Consortia Meeting

Monday, December 13, 2004

UC Davis, Shields Library

Minutes:

Present: Sherri Barnes (chair), Diana King (co-recorder), John Bloomberg-Rissman, Elliot Kanter, Vicki Williamson, Daniel Goldstein (co-recorder), Ellen Broidy, Phoebe Janes, Joan Ariel, Sheila O'Hare, Wendy Parfrey (guest, CDL), Nancy Kushigian (guest, Office of Systemwide Library Planning)

1. Local arrangements: The next meeting will be held June 6-7 at UCLA.

2. Minutes of the previous meeting approved as amended, with the correction that S. O'Hare will be chair in 05/06 followed by D. King in 06/07.

3. Updates on previous action items.

3.a E. Broidy will write a letter to Wendy Parfrey regarding vendor conduct urging that CDL instruct vendors that they may not encourage faculty to write directly to CDL and circumvent their local librarians. Vendors mislead faculty in two main areas: 1) asserting that CDL is about to act and 2) cost.

3.b. D. Goldstein will write a letter supporting the creating of a “browse subject by keyword” function in Melvyl.

4.Microfilm lists: Tabled until the next meeting

5. Discussion of free electronic resources: there were two main topics.

5.a. The movement of free resources into the subscription-only environment. Example: Women and Social Movements.

5.b. How is cataloging of free electronic resources handled on each campus?

UCI a call every three months.

Others more sporadic.

UCLA: The ERDB system means that listed Web sites are sent  automatically to cataloging.

It would be useful to do more information sharing on these items as a

Consortium.

6. Career Recruitment. J. Ariel discussed importance of attracting new people into the profession. One quarter of all MLS holders will be 65 years or older by 2009. LAUC-I has a handout at http://lauci.lib.edu/0304/career . UCSB is offering 2 new credit classes, and LAUC-D is sending representatives to a campus job fair.

DISCUSSION ITEMS:

7. N. Kushigian on Shared Print Collections. Nancy gave a status report and talked about the various models in use or in planning.

7.a Elsevier, and Jstor. Considerable discussion of the process used to pull campus print copies for the Jstor archive. The primary concerns were about the voluntary/mandatory nature of the contributions. There will be a “no return to campus policy” regarding these contributions. A manager will be hired for this project.

7.b Project Muse: this is a prospective project under consideration. NK stated that it is likely to be the next shared print project. But it is more complicated to deal with multiple publishers and will be more difficult to maintain over time than previous projects. N.K. expressed concerns related to workload and capacity at SRLF. Discussion addressed the following topics: Mechanics—who does the ordering? where would titles be held? Should this be a centralized or de-centralized process? Funding—we need to create a funding model for this project, possibly adopting/adapting the cost-share model used for electronic resources.

7.c Other possible future types of shared collections: Monographic collection along the lines of high value/low use titles in specific areas, including possibly, Judaic Studies, Small Press distribution imprints, Specific Wars.

The main points to emerge from discussion were first, the crucial importance of a dedicated, shared funding line to support any shared collections; and second, that such collections are far more complicated and problematic as we explored the details than they sound at first hearing.

8.CDL Updates (Wendy Parfrey)

8.a Nineteenth Century Masterfile (W. Parfrey). Wendy discussed the fixes that Paratext has proposed for this database. D. Goldstein agreed to serve as Resource Liaison on an interim basis.

8.b JSC Workplan (W. Parfrey) The JSC is focusing on three themes this year. Religion and Philosophy. Film Studies. Economics.

8.c. NISC Databases. Currently 7 for all campuses. Discussion of NISC interface improvements (needed). J.A. suggested an ALA focus group on NISC.

9. CDC Report (G. Yokote)

9.a JSC and CDC have been working together to consider the following issues: cost savings from re-evaluating existing resources and content overlap, content gaps in core disciplines, monitoring open access resources and alternative scholarly publishing. There have been changes in scholarly communication models—how do we leverage access with economic feasibility? How can scholars change how they want to publish their research? There is a Scholarly Communication Officers Group with members selected by individual campuses and members of CDC, as well as an appointed Academic Senate Group meant to address some of these issues.

9.b-d. There was discussion of negotiations with Blackwell, Elsevier and Springer.

9.e Duke: Duke pulled a number of journals from Project Muse, and are now asking for additional money from each campus to pay for this e-package. The publisher may now be willing to go with the UC model license, and we should have seamless access for 04/05. It will be important to have a print archive negotiated with this contract.

9.f JSTOR archive: This is happening now. Some campuses still need to say whether they can go forward with the plan or not, and are double-checking holdings.

9.g Question: Is UCD thinking about moving to Yankee as an approval plan? G.Y.: We are looking at virtual profiles and meeting with Yankee soon. We need to look at the costs involved with such a switch, and which subjects would work best with Gobi for a trial.

10. Role of U.C. Bibliographers Groups: Considerable discussion on the growing importance of these groups and their current uneven quality. Major points made: Face-to-face meetings are an essential component to this groups dynamics and are probably key to making other groups more effective. Why is participation in/support of these groups optional?

11. Updates on Electronic Resources.

11.1 RefWorks—This is software, not content. There is no movement on the pricing model being offered. UCI is considering purchase. UCB experience is that faculty prefer Endnote, undergrads use Refworks.

11.2 Defining Gender Online—D. King summary included the following. Problems with printing, organization; has an excellent topic index; good subject based essays. No price yet? S. Barnes mentioned the issue of duplicate content in these packages, especially given current budget constraints.

ACTION: Try to view Defining Gender Online and Empire Online at Spring Meeting.

12. GoBeyond as a Coordinated Collecting tool (J. Ariel). Since all campuses except UCD use Yankee Book Peddler we may be able to use their database to coordinate collecting among campuses. J.A. says there is some promise now and it should be better in future. One drawback is that it is difficult to see what was not purchased by anyone in the UC. N.K. says LitBibs and Consort are under consideration for shared collection pilot projects with one possible area being monographic series. Discussion emphasized the importance of adequate support in terms of staff/resources/workload issues. Much concern about the mechanics of this process and how to ensure that campuses were still able to obtain the items the specifically wanted on individual campuses. It became clear that although appealing in the abstract there were many specific issues that would need to be resolved for such coordinated collecting to be practical.

13. We need to revisit the Last Copy Agreements at the June meeting to clarify how they should work, and what they mean in the new print and electronic environment.