June 2004

Guests: Rhonda Neugebauer (UCR) (6/3), Eileen Lawrence ( Alexander Street Press) (6/4)

ACTION ITEMS:

Project Muse Document: Dan and Ellen will integrate the comments made by the group into Dan’s existing document, then he will pass it on to CDC and to Nancy Kushigian, Shared Print Archive Director.

CDC Response to Our Memo of 9/03: Two sentences will be crafted by Vicki and sent to Cindy—to acknowledge and thank her for receipt of the CDC letter. Sherri will carry through on the other items on the list in Cindy’s letter.

Vendor Relations: Ellen will write a letter to Wendy regarding the necessity of CDL informing faculty who contact them (Wendy or Bev) directly with acquisition requests that they need to redirect their comments through their campus librarian. Vendors are apparently informing faculty to contact CDL with no mention of the librarian. A form letter needs to be sent to faculty from Bev or Wendy on these occasions, which are becoming more and more frequent. Librarians are being ignored and side-stepped in the process and sometimes are not being notified that direct faculty communication has transpired with Bev and Wendy.

MELVYL-Dan will write to CDL about the need for a well developed and fully operational Browse Subject command.

Last Copy Projects: September 1 st is the deadline for sending title changes to Ellen, Joan, and Phoebe.

UC History Micro List: Elliot will begin this massive project this summer. He will start by synthesizing the title lists he has already received.

MINUTES

JUNE 3 MEETING

Administrative: New member, Loes Knutson, women's studies selector at UCR, was welcomed to the group.

Minutes from the December 8, 2003 meeting were reviewed and corrected. A status check on Action Items was done to see if any follow-up was needed. It was recommended that Action Items be listed first in the minutes to facilitate quick review. Elliot will post corrected minutes to the consortia website.

The Winter Meeting will be held at UC Davis on Monday December 13, 2004.

Sherri will be the new Consortia Chair for 2004/05; Sheila will follow in 2005/06; Diana King will take over in 2006/07.

Campus reports: Merger mania seems to be taking place on campuses. More librarians now have combined responsibilities for instruction, reference and collection development. The value of a subject selector in building a collection seems to be diminishing. Perhaps we haven’t done a very good job of educating our administrators what we do. Sherri mentioned that UCSB has a Collection Managers Manual

(http://www.library.ucsb.edu/collman/index.html) used to train new cd managers.

Consortia web page: Elliot distributed copies of the current consortia web page and a draft of a new reorganized, streamlined version with pull-down menus. He asked for comments and suggestions of categories and their order. The following were recommended in this arrangement: History, purpose, goals; Roster; Minutes; Annual reports; Journal projects and last copy agreements; Microform collections inventories; California feminist presses project; Serials/Format reviews; Guidelines & procedures; Collection development toolkit; and Other Consortial projects.

Project Muse:

Dan outlined and reviewed the ideas he presented in a draft document (distributed prior to the meeting) on a UC Libraries Archive for Project Muse Titles. The whole structure of mounting of e-journals is changing and we now have new publishing models: pay per view, publisher packages- Ingenta select model, etc. Cancellation of the print titles that are in Muse is increasing since subscription to the online Muse titles is independent of individual print title subscriptions. The print editions are frequently tied to memberships in learned societies who depend on these subscriptions/memberships for their major source of revenue. Unfortunately, widespread cancellations are pushing publishers of Muse titles to sell or cease publication. Some reasons why a PM print archive would be important to establish include: the electronic version may not be the equivalent of the print edition; some titles are heavily illustrated but the electronic versions of the images are of uneven quality or unavailable; journals may terminate their relationship with PM at anytime.

The group agreed that the UC libraries should develop a print archive for journals included in Project Muse that would take into account the differences between Project Muse and Elsevier in terms of their content and use. It was agreed that, following the model of the California Feminist Presses Project, the system should hold two copies of Project Muse titles, one an archival copy, the other a circulating copy which would be made readily available to other campuses. Participants emphasized that the creation of an archive-with-shared-circulating copies should not be taken to imply that campuses ought to cancel any individual subscriptions to Muse titles. Other issues discussed included: exploration of the possibility of acquiring archival datafiles from Project Muse (available at no cost though there may be tax implications); development of a retrospective print archive of Muse titles (an idea for future consideration); and how to archive titles that are published only in electronic form.

ACTION ITEM:

Project Muse Document: Dan and Ellen will integrate the comments made by the group into Dan’s existing document, then he will pass it on to CDC and to Nancy Kushigian, Shared Print Archive Director. D. King agreed to raise the issue of a Muse Archive at the UC Literature Bibliographers Group meeting.

CDL Update: Beth distributed handouts and reported briefly on the "Digital Library Services for UC's Libraries" all day session sponsored by CDL held May 20 and 21 in Oakland (with similar sessions in the south June 3 and 4). Director Dan Greenstein gave the introduction and discussed the new UC Library Strategic Plan about to be unveiled. He emphasized that CDL can build out collections and services so far and that CDL will be focussing more on providing toolkits for campuses to do the rest. The day was largely a show and tell session with demos of various projects including the Metasearch Infrastructure Project, which will allow users to search more than one information resource at time. CDL has purchased ExLibris MetaLib and will be building a prototype portal, creating tools, templates, and documentation for campus staff. CDL is also developing a digital object repository to support the collections it manages which currently contain over 150,000 images, texts, and other materials.

CDL has received a grant to build a virtual collection about the American West (focussing on social and ecological diversity). Content providers include CDL, Harvard, Indiana, LC, Univ of Michigan, Univ of Washington among others. Robin Chandler gave an OAC/MOAC Update and showed some of the images from various museum collections. UC-elinks and e-scholarship were also covered in the session.

JSTOR-dim/dark archive: Beth reported that UCB selectors have been discussing CDL document:(Draft) Behaviors of JSTOR dim archive-UC Libraries (4/23/04) which proposes policies/procedures for setting up a JSTOR/UC dim archive at one of the RLFs. CDL will be looking at various scenarios based on holdings at NRLF and SRLF. Journal volumes would be accessed physically by scholars only as a last resort at the RLF or in a UC Library. All requests to access the archival copies would be mediated by library staff on a campus and/or at the RLF. The document also lists "conditions of use"-items sent to a UC Library would be for "library use only". Upon for return to the RLF items would be examined for damage or loss and replacements if needed would be made. Berkeley selectors raised concerns about having only one dim archive; they recommended that both NRLF and SRLF establish dim archives. They also discussed "title to title election," low use vs. high use and the possibility of UCB refusing to send certain titles to the dim archive. In conjunction with this and other CDL discussions of UC shared collections Berkeley has issued a document: "Building Shared Collections: the Berkeley Perspective" which states that though Berkeley supports the co-investment model for shared collections, it "will not participate in funding models that permanently move local funds to a central control" nor can it "accept shared governance proposals nor shared collections policies and procedures that impose central authority over local campus autonomy and decision-making." Other consortial members reported that they had not yet seen this CDL document on a JSTOR dim archive.

CDC/JSC Update: Rhonda gave a report from the latest CDC and JSC meetings: JSC input call went to bib groups in early June. This year JSC requests that bib groups 1) identify databases and e-journal packages that are core disciplinary databases not yet systemwide which CDL might license (list is due August 15 th); 2) recommend open access material that needs shared cataloging; 3) review and assess current subscriptions to see if any need to be replaced with better products or cancelled due to low use or overlap with other shared resources; 4) identify new databases that CDL might assist with in licensing. She stated that at present historical collections like Readex’s Americana collection and Gale’s 18 th century (ECCO) are priorities for consideration; negotiations are starting on several recommendations. Proquest’s ABI Inform Global may be swapped for EBSCO’s Business Source Premier. Licensing of Sage journals continues to be problematic and CDL waiting for a revised proposal. There was a discussion with Rhonda about the trend we see towards devaluing collection development She suggested a full day seminar for all UC bibliographers groups. The composition and committee appointment process of JSC was also discussed.

JSC Annual Communication to Bib Groups: The group mentioned core resources for systemwide licensing: Heritage Quest, Women and Social Movements, Heinonline, RefWorks, Design and Applied Arts Index, ATLA, TLG, Empire Online, Bibliography of North American Indians, Vanderbilt TV Archives.

CDC Response to Our Memo of Sept 2003:

ACTION ITEM:

Two sentences will be crafted by Vicki and sent to Cindy—to acknowledge receipt of the CDC letter of 4/21/04, and to thank her for it. Sherri will carry through on the other items on the list in Cindy’s letter.

NISC Gender Studies Database: Diana reported that NISC is now offering Gender Studies Database that combines all three of NISC's gender-related titles (Women's Studies International, Sexual Diversity Studies and Men's Studies) into one searchable database. Diana will check the price and whether you can search each database separately.

Vendor Relations:

Several of us have experienced problems from vendors that threaten or could threaten our faculty relations. We want CDL to develop a vendor relationship policy.

ACTION ITEM: Ellen will write a letter to Wendy regarding the necessity of CDL informing faculty who contact them (Wendy or Bev) directly with acquisition requests that they need to redirect their comments through their campus librarian. Vendors are apparently informing faculty to contact CDL with no mention of the campus librarian. We would like to see a form letter sent to faculty from Bev or Wendy on these occasions, which are becoming more and more frequent. Librarians are being ignored and side-stepped in the process and sometimes are not being notified that direct faculty communication has transpired with Bev and Wendy.

Socialization with Vendors Who Are Invited to Our Meetings: We had a spirited discussion on the issue of inviting vendors to our consortia dinners when they have been invited to our meetings to make presentations. Our group dinners are social gatherings, not business oriented. This issue has come up before and we wanted to get all our cards on the table about it before it resurfaces. Although there was no consensus, we agreed that our future general guideline will be to not invite non-consortia members to our dinners. This includes former consortia members, CDL folks, and vendors.

Old MELVYL features: Browse by keyword in subject is not available in the new Melvyl. There was a discussion of some of the favorite features we miss from the new Melvyl. Dan showed us how to use Worldcat to find the information that was not possible to retrieve from the present MELVYL.

ACTION ITEM: Dan will write to CDL about the need for a well developed and fully operational Browse Subject command. The current version is not acceptable.

JUNE 4 MEETING

Alexander Street Press:

Eileen Lawrence, Alexander Street Press, made an impressive two-hour presentation outlining the history of ASP, highlighting some new products, and articulating the philosophical underpinnings of the organization. Her presentation focused on the questions that were given to her in advance by Vicki. She gave an overview of the publication process from the conceptualization of a possible product to distribution. Other topics covered included: semantic indexing, how conductor databases work, usage stats, and ideas for promoting ASP products to faculty and students.

She demonstrated Oral History Online, a new database that will serve as a gateway to oral history collections all over the world. The aim is to index all the important oral histories available either on the web or in archives, in English, from around the world. At present there are 2000 collections and many are linked to full text including audio and video files. Through semantic indexing, scholars will be able to search by interviewers name; occupation, and other details; by interviewer; by location; by date of interview and through a subject thesaurus. As a "conductor database," users will be able to search across all available resources including freely available oral histories as well as proprietary databases. If a library licenses other ASP oral history databases, OHO will point to these products. The annual cost is $1,796 a year and will be updated quarterly. The Oral History Directory portion of the database will be free. It currently lists 1900 collections from 570 repositories. One of its features is Oral History Top 100 which ranks the most popular collections.

Coming this Fall is North American Theatre Online which will provide detailed info on every author, play, theatre, major production, and production company from Colonial Times to the present in Canada and the US. It will include playbills, posters, photos, and related theatrical ephemera and all NYT theater reviews. It will be another "conductor" database as will be the forthcoming Women’s Studies Conductor and a Black Studies Conductor.

A suggestion was made that it would be very useful if one could directly export references from ASP databases to a bibliographic management software package like EndNote or RefWorks. Eileen will investigate.

UCB Library/Faculty Fellows Mellon Project:

UCB Library has a $700,000 three-year grant from the Mellon Foundation to encourage and facilitate faculty collaboration with library and other campus partners like educational Technology Services, GSI Teaching and Resource Center, Student Learning Center and others. Twelve large enrollment (one class has 1,200 students!) undergraduate courses in humanities, social sciences and sciences have been selected for 2004/05. Some of the objectives include: building undergraduate knowledge of information sources, enhancing student research and information competencies, creating a scaleable and sustainable model for promoting changes in courses and curricula, assessing impact of student research assignments on student learning, strengthening faculty commitment to providing student research opportunities in their courses, and increasing awareness, appreciation, and use of campus libraries by faculty fellows and students.

This June Faculty Fellows are participating in 18 sessions of training and discussion focused on creating new research assignments for their courses which they will be teaching in the next academic year. Library partners (librarians) who have also received training in learning outcomes, assessment, interactive learning techniques, etc. will work with the Fellows (faculty) over the summer in helping to redesign student research projects for the Mellon courses.

A description and assessment of last year's Mellon pilot project is available at:

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/Staff/MellonProject/

Last Copy Journal Projects:

History, British History, Women’s Studies need updated information by Sept. 1 st.

Women’s Studies Journals: Joan distributed a revised list of women’s studies journals and a list of questions/issues related to the titles. She added titles from Lexis/Nexis-some campuses have catalogued the L/N URLs while others have not. The group discussed issues related to titles that cease that are not under agreement and how to assure a print archive, the archiving of e-only journals, new titles online but not yet on the list, and the cataloging of titles via electronic packages and databases. The group confirmed that they want to keep a single alpha list of titles and not have it divided by formats. She asked that the list be reviewed and any revisions, corrections be sent to her by September 1.

US History Journals: Ellen distributed a revised list of US history journals. She pointed out the titles that are newly endangered due to recent serials cancellations and asked for campus commitments. UCSB agreed to commit to the Journal of Unitarian Universalist History and Quaker Historian. Hawaiian Journal of History is new to the list. Again updates and corrections need to be forwarded to her by September 1.

British History Journals List: Phoebe distributed a list of titles and reported that there were no changes.

WS Microfilm: Desiderata and collective list for Women’s Studies: Sherri distributed copies to members and asked for updates. UCSD and UCB have recently ordered Sex and Sexuality: parts 3-4 from Adam Matthew.

History Microfilm: Elliot will begin the task of compiling the statewide US history micro title list this summer. It was recommended that he keep it simple so as not to get overwhelmed. The Women’s Studies list should not be his model as it contains more information than is really needed for a History list. He has already received title lists from several campuses and could start to synthesize those lists and add other campus holdings incrementally.

California Feminist Presses Project: Beth circulated a binder of printouts of the text and photos from a display on the California Feminist Collections from Bancroft in Doe Library from January through March, 2004. Along with the history of each press there were photos of the authors and/ or press staff along with selected volumes. As a summer project Beth will try to get the exhibit text mounted on a Berkeley site that then could be linked to the consortia website. There has not been much progress to report regarding acquiring more press archives. Bancroft staff has been very busy with renovation plans. All Bancroft staff offices and collections must be moved in 2005 in order for the seismic work to begin.