LAC meeting minutes
prepared for the web by Virginia Cherry
LIBRARY
ADVISORY COMMITTEE
CHRISTOPHER
NEWPORT UNIVERSITY
JUNE 7, 2002
MINUTES
Ralph Alberico (James Madison University), Robin
Benke (University of Virginia's College at Wise), Lisabeth Chabot (Mary Baldwin
College), Virginia Cherry (Richard Bland College), Gene Damon (VCCS), Cathy
Doyle (Christopher Newport University), David Hayes (Radford University), Karin
Wittenborg, (University of Virginia), John Jaffe (Sweet Briar College), Jean
Major (Old Dominion University), Frank Moran (Blue Ridge Community College),
Virginia O’Herron (Old Dominion University), Kathy Perry (VIVA), Mattie Roane
(Norfolk State University), Don Samdahl (Virginia Military Institute), Aileen
Schweitzer (Thomas Nelson Community College), LeRoy Strohl, Mary Washington College),
John Ulmschneider (Virginia Commonwealth University), Elsie Weatherington,
(Virginia State University), Nolan Yelich (Library of Virginia), and John
Zenelis (George Mason University).
CALL TO ORDER: The meeting was called to
order at 9:05 A.M by Elsie Weatherington, Chair.
INTRODUCTIONS AND
PRELIMINARY COMMENTS:
Elsie thanked Cathy Doyle for the VIVA and LAC
arrangements at Christopher Newport University.
CNU Provost Richard Summerville welcomed the LAC
members.
LAC thanked Jean Major for her work on behalf of LAC and wished her well as she retires from Old Dominion University in August.
Agenda Items:
The location of the September meeting has been changed to Mary
Washington College.
The minutes of the March 8, 2002, meeting were approved. Cathy Doyle moved and Don Samdahl seconded the motion to approve the minutes.
“VIVA Cancellations Communication Strategy” handout disseminated. This discussion document outlines questions to address in a general message that will be released after decision on cancellations and service reductions are finalized. This cancellation strategy should be a collective effort explaining the “VIVA story”. Elise indicated that it was an excellent idea to send the same message to every institution. Ralph will send out on the listserv.
The Steering Committee based their cancellation decisions on a systematic analysis that took into account data on statistics on use, extensive survey at each campus, database usability studies and input provided by a broad cross section of the library community in Virginia. Five principles guided the Steering Committee in the decision making process: minimize the impact, content over convenience, vendor performance and pricing policies, content over indexing and breadth rather than depth.
Kathy disseminated a draft Communication Matrix-Phase 1 (June-December 2002). Included targeted audience, message to be conveyed, action required, who assumes responsibility for the actions and a timetable. Kathy will prepare a PowerPoint presentation. Kathy and Ralph will present a slide show at GPAC explaining “What is VIVA, how VIVA supports higher education, higher education initiatives, how cuts affect campus interdependency of libraries and interlibrary loan, crisis in scholarly communication, and instability of electronic resources.” The GPAC slide show will be sent to presidents before the meeting in Richmond.
VIVA Director’s Report: Kathy Perry
The Steering Committee endorsed the ICOLC Privacy Guidelines.
The JMU Procurement Office will handle all VIVA invoices for the electronic collections, including all invoices for the private institutions relating to the VIVA contracts. The private schools that are participating in VIVA during the 2002-03 year will provide JMU with additional revenue for these services.
Kathy reported on VIVA publicity events including an article by Tonia Graves at ODU on the Virginia Heritage Project in the Virginia Libraries and her presentations at The University of Washington iSchool, ICOLC session on budget cuts, Southeastern Marine Science Librarians and the Partnership among South Carolina Academic Libraries.
It was decided to fund the VIVA User’s section at VLA Conference, October 16-18th in Williamsburg. Specifically, on October 17th, The VIVA Users Group Meeting will be held. VIVA vendors will be introduced and Ralph and Kathy will present information about VIVA’s cancellations. Jean Major suggested that all library directors attend.
The Virginia Heritage Project Task Force has been very successful, exceeding the goals and objectives set for the NEH grant. All participants in the project plan to make Encoded Archival Description (EAD) a standard operating procedure for their collections. The NEH funding is completed on December 31, 2002 band they presented the VHP proposal to the VIVA Steering Committee. The Steering Committee approved partial funding for the Virginia Heritage Project of $3,500 in 2002-03 and $7,000 in 2003-04 for the continued publication of the XML documents during the next biennium. EAD funding aids. Ralph will send a letter commending the committee for work on the VHP. Elsie Weatherington thanked VIVA for its support of the project.
The VIVA retreat has been deferred until September.
Roy Strohl suggested that Public Library Directors be updated on VIVA. Nolan indicated that each autumn, the library directors meet at the Library of Virginia. This year, they will meet September 18-19th and Nelson Worley will coordinate this effort.
VIVA Resources for Users
Committee:
Gene Damon, Chair
Report disseminated. The Steering Committee approved renewals for Books in Print
and Annual Reviews. Recommended
renewal of Congressional Universe subscription, Dow Jones/Factiva
package, Ovid Technology subscription and Sociological Abstracts. Recommended cancellation of five Highwire
titles at the end of the current subscription year: Academic Psychiatry,
Biophysical Journal, Clinical Chemistry, Journal of General Physiology
and Journal of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry. The Committee recommended blocking some FirstSearch
databases (ArticleFirst; Book Review Digest; Business and Industry;
Business Organizations, Agencies, and Publications Directory; Business and
Management Practices; Data Times; Disclosure Corporate Snapshots; Education
Index; EventLine; FactSearch; General Science Index; Humanities Index;
Newspaper Abstracts; Readers’ Guide Abstracts and Social Science Index.) The number of ports will be reduced. The Committee reported that it will have a
balanced budget for 2002/2003 with the recommended cancellations.
The Statistics workshop at the University of
Virginia on May 14th was very successful and the Committee thanked
Jim Self for providing an excellent program as well at to the Training
Subcommittee (Pat Hausman, Jane Penner, and Jacque Dessino) for their work in
providing a superb program.
Report disseminated. Press releases were issued for American Mathematical Society
and Britannica Online. The
committee links to Virginia Libraries articles on Virginia Heritage
Project, link to Kathy’s PowerPoint presentation at University of Washington
graduate school. New initiatives
include the design of the VIVA web page with the goal of providing gateway with
access points to different VIVA audience and to aim for currency and
consistency across the pages. The
Outreach Committee will work on VIVA pages for consistency and currency of
information, format, usefulness for different audiences; will work with others
in VIVA to develop protocols for making changes to the web and VIVA will
discontinue the paper directory and list that information on the website as
both html and pdf. The committee will
continue to review regional information literacy workshop proposal for 2002-03
budget and create web gateway for information literacy.
Harry Kriz (Virginia Tech) is analyzing the ILL data and should have
information for the Steering Committee as early as September. The ILL bookmark is being redesigned. The committee plans to distribute the
bookmarks to all ILL patrons during one week in the fall, spring, and next
summer.
John reminded institutions
to follow the recommended VIVA guidelines for ILL and that VIVA institutions
not charge for ILL.
The annual ILL Forum at
UVA will provide more time this year for networking among the ILL members. This was a suggestion from last year’s ILL
forum attendees.
Andy Morton has resigned
as Chair of the ILL Subcommittee. If
any openings in VIVA committees occur, the Committee should fill them.
Please let Kathy know of
any new projects such as peer-to-peer lending, virtual reference, etc.
The ILL Subcommittee is
exploring electronic delivery of ILL materials (via Ariel and ILLiad).
Report disseminated. The Task Group members agreed to two actions to help restore the
budget reductions in the VIVA budget.
They are: (1) developing and disseminating to VIVA directors a statement
about the possible reduction proposed by the Senate and its impact and to ask the
directors to bring the situation to the attention of their campus government
liaison staff and to ask those liaisons to promote the House version for VIVA
funding, and (2) Send letters directly
to conferees from the Chair of VIVA, describing the impact of the cuts and
asking for implementation of the House version of VIVA funding. Kathy Perry and Ralph Alberico wrote the
letter that was sent on March 2nd.
It was decided after the Senate proposed reduction of $213,000 was
retained that no further action be taken.
The Advocacy Group continues to work with SCHEV to
keep VIVA on the SCHEV agenda. In
response to the Group’s meeting with Nancy Cooley in January, VIVA was offered
the opportunity to be part of the May meeting agenda of the Council. The group declined because of lack of
notification in time to prepare and all members were already committed to
academic year-end events that could not be rescheduled or changed. Nancy Cooley did promise to provide another
opportunity to VIVA later this year.
The Task Group has been given the opportunity for
VIVA (Ralph Alberico) to present to the
SCHEV GPAC (President’s group). The
committee discussed how this should be structured. The PowerPoint presentation to SCHEV GPAC on June 25th,
“VIVA’s Balancing Act, An Executive Briefing” will be posted on the VIVA
website.
At least two Advocacy Group members contacted SCHEV
about the recently released report on research enterprise at universities in
the Commonwealth. SCHEV Quarterly-
Spring 2002 “SCHEV Finds Virginia Not Keeping Pace with Top Research”. They noted that the report, and SCHEV, must
highlight the need to support research infrastructure if there is an
expectation that research enterprise will grow in the university systems. Prominent in those infrastructure needs is
strengthened research libraries, which are key to pre-grant discovery, protocol
development, and grant writing.
Legislative lunches continue with one following our
meeting today to be held at Christopher Newport. Those legislators attending are Phillip A. Hamilton, District 93
and Flora Davis Crittenden, District 95.
The librarians (Ralph Alberico, Lisabeth Chabot, Kathy Perry, Aileen
Schweitzer, Cathy Doyle Elsie Weatherington and John Ulmschneider) will follow
a script that has been developed over the past few legislative luncheons and
each delegate will receive a packed of information about VIVA and academic
libraries. Cathy Doyle was thanked for
making the local arrangements for this luncheon.
Elsie discussed an email
on the SCHEV Work Groups she had sent to LAC members on June 4th. She asked for participating in the
development of the 2003 Strategic Plan.
At the March LAC meeting, the group decided to participate especially to
raise awareness of VIVA and how it enriches instruction, research, and life
long learning. Elsie included the five
goals approved by Council:
(1) Promote the quality of life in Virginia by ensuring access to an affordable system of higher education that embodies the principles of academic excellence, diversity, and accountability.
(2)
Enhance Virginia’s leadership position in the new economy by increasing the
level of research and development in Virginia’s institutions of higher
education.
(3)
Build a better tomorrow by providing leadership in the integration of
technology in learning and research.
(4)
Enhance economic prosperity by incorporating all segments of the educational
continuum as full strategic partners in the Commonwealth’s economic future.
(5)
Increase the efficient and effective uses of resources through collaborations,
decentralization, streamlining the regulatory process, and strategic
planning.
Elsie
encouraged members to participate and to sign up by accessing the SCHEV web
site (www.schev.edu). John Ulmschneider has signed up for Goal
#2. Cathy Doyle and Ralph Alberico have
signed up for Goal #3 and Goal #5.
Elsie
would like the minutes of LAC meetings posted on SCHEV. She will contact SCHEV about this
procedure.
Other Information and For
the Good of the Order:
In response to the ACRL survey concerning external
expenditures for electronic collection, Kathy will send out a formula and
background information.
Nolan Yelich encouraged everyone to attend
Legislative Day.
Nolan reported the death of Dr. Christie D. Vernon,
a long-time advocate for Virginia consumers.
Nolan provided everyone with a copy of her obituary, which highlighted
her advocacy efforts. From the
obituary:
Dr. Vernon was director of
the library at Thomas Nelson Community College from 1970 to 1986 and served as
president of the Virginia Library Association and chair of the American Library
Association’s Committee on Legislation.
She advocated greater government support of libraries while working to
ensure the public’s access to information.
This included combating efforts to restrict the “fair-use” doctrine in
copyright laws.
The meeting was adjourned at 10:45A.M.
Future
LAC Meetings with VIVA Steering Committee the preceding day:
September
12-13, 2002: Mary Washington College
December
5-7, 2002: Virginia Commonwealth
University
March
2003: Sweet Briar
June
2003: Eileen Hitchingham
Virginia
Cherry, Secretary
LAC meeting minutes hosted by SCHEV