SCHEV -- LIBRARY ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Conference Room – McConnell Library
July 14, 2006
9:00 a.m.
MINUTES
Revised 9-18-06
ATTENDANCE:
Ralph Alberico (James Madison University), Tom Camden for Nolan Yelich (Library
of Virginia), Gene Damon (Virginia
Community College System), Elaine Day (Averett University), David Hayes
(Radford University), Craig Herndon (SCHEV), Eileen Hitchingham (Virginia
Tech), John Jaffe (Sweet Briar College), Virginia Kinman for Wendell Barbour
(Longwood University), Connie McCarthy (The College of William and Mary), Virginia O’Herron (Old Dominion University),
Jane Edmister Penner for Karin Wittenborg (University of Virginia), Kathy Perry
(VIVA), Don Samdahl (Virginia Military
Institute), Aileen Schweitzer (Thomas Nelson Community College),
Guest: Henry Kriz (Virginia Tech)
CALL TO ORDER: Don Samdahl, Chair, called the meeting to order at 9:00 A.M.
INTRODUCTIONS AND PRELIMINARY COMMENTS:
Don Samdahl thanked Dave
Hayes for hosting the LAC meeting and dinner.
Dave Hayes welcomed the group to
The minutes of the March 3,
2006 meeting were approved as distributed.
SCHEV Update: Craig
Herndon
1. “The Executive Director of
the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) may appoint an
advisory committee to assist the Council with technology-enriched learning
initiatives. The advisory committee may
assist the Council in (i) developing innovative, cost-effective,
technology-enriched teaching and learning initiatives, including distance and distributed
learning initiatives; (ii) improving cooperation among and between public and
private institutions of higher education in the Commonwealth; (iii) improving
efficiency and expand the availability of technology-enriched courses; and (iv)
facilitating the sharing of research and experience to improve student
learning.” The Executive Director will
be contacting people to serve on the Learning Technology Advisory Council
(LTAC) by September 2006.
2. Craig highlighted major biennial
operating budget initiatives for higher education in the final general fund
budget. SCHEV will continue to pursue
appropriate additional funding for higher education. John Ulmschneider reminded LAC members that
higher education funding is still below where it was in 2002. Colleges need to send a strong message that
while gains are appreciated, the momentum must be continued.
Budget initiatives in
summary:
3. Craig reminded the committee that Alan
Edwards was currently serving in two capacities at SCHEV as the Director of
Policy Studies and the Acting Director of Academic Affairs and Planning.
VIVA RETREAT UPDATE:
Connie McCarthy Chair, Steering Committee, VIVA
1. The VIVA Steering Committee retreat held July
12-13 at Virginia Tech included wide-ranging discussions that generated a
productive focus for 2006-2007:
a. Cost-sharing model
Gene Damon discussed a cost-sharing model developed by the
Resources for Users Committee (RUC) for the Blackwell subscription
proposal. The RUC would like this to be
considered as a model for future vendor proposals since VIVA needs to explore
ways of better leveraging its resources.
Gene stated that VIVA members can predict that $300,000 - $500,000 of
VIVA’s legislative appropriations will be consumed by increased FTE or vendor
cost increases. VIVA members cannot
assume that VIVA can continue to acquire new databases and cover the entire
costs. Gene needs any comments about
this proposal by August 1, 2006. The RUC
and library directors will finalize the proposal before the September LAC
meeting.
b. Strategy for multimedia collections
Ralph Alberico and the Multimedia Task Force are working
on best practices and guidelines, encoding standards, and support for
individual campuses for distributing the PBS collection (and future multimedia
collections.) The Task Force has set a
fall semester deadline for sharing pertinent information with IT staff at each
college; this will also be posted on the Task Force website. In addition, Ralph will revise the Task
Force’s first survey and will distribute it again to obtain more information
about each college’s technical environment.
Ralph touched upon the
complex challenges of distributing multimedia among the many different
technical environments at VIVA institutions.
Authentication, identity management and bandwidth are all major issues
in a collaborative environment. While
the Task Force recognizes the long-range possibilities and cost-effectiveness
of a “Shibboleth” environment, in the short term the Task Force will use a
parallel approach, i.e., UVA will host content in a Shibboleth environment on a
central server, and individual colleges may support local hosting. Ralph noted the Shibboleth project will
require joining the “InCommon” Federation, an organization that uses Shibboleth
authentication and authorization technology to support user access to protected
resources (http://www.incommonfederation.org). The Steering Committee approved
the Task Force’s plan to negotiate contractual terms for VIVA members to join InCommon.
c. Virginia Heritage Project Task Force
Dave Hayes reported that the Steering Committee voted to
restructure this group and to place more emphasis on digitization of historical
collections. A subgroup continues to work
on writing the IMLS grant proposal (due Feb.1, 2007) to digitize and provide
access to
d. VIVA priorities for 2006 – 2007
·
Expand access to
scholarly journals to support student and faculty scholarship, research and
clinical work
·
Emphasize science,
technology and medicine
Ø
Support state
research initiatives
Ø
Support economic
development
Ø
Address existing
collection deficiencies
·
Integrate VIVA
with emerging technologies
Ø
Make it easy and
transparent to find and use VIVA materials through the Internet
Ø
Incorporate
contemporary authentication and security standards
·
Enhance and
support teaching and learning
Ø
Provide premiere
digital, video and audio resources via the web
Ø
Make unique
Ø
Support
e-learning initiatives
Ø
Support
institutional initiatives for alternative instructional materials
VIVA REPORTS:
1. Connie McCarthy and Kathy Perry gave a presentation
about VIVA to SCHEV during SCHEV’s July meeting. Their presentation was well-received and the
Council members responded with good questions and an invitation to return.
2. Connie proposed the following meetings
schedules for the VIVA Steering Committee (March, June, July, September,
December) and for the Library Advisory Committee (March, July, September,
December).
1. The Steering Committee
approved an increase of $56,285 to support interlibrary loan delivery funds for
the participating VIVA private nonprofit colleges and universities, recognizing
these institutions’ contribution to VIVA interlibrary loan activity.
2. The
3. eVA,
4. The private colleges and universities have
elected to raise their VIVA fees and to pool the funds to cover a core set of
resources.
VIVA Resources for Users Committee: Gene Damon, Chair
Gene Damon disseminated the
“VIVA Resources for Users Committee Report to the Steering Committee, July 13,
2006,” summarized the Committee’s recommendations for renewals and reported the
Steering Committee’s actions on other matters:
1. The VIVA Steering Committee approved these renewals: a. Annual
Reviews; b. Amigos BioOne; c. CSA
Books In Print; d. CSA EconLit; e. CSA PAIS; f. CSA Ulrich’s; g.
EBSCO CINAHL; h. EBSCO PsycINFO; i. EBSCO PsycArticles; j. OCLC FirstSearch
Base; k. OUP Oxford English
Dictionary.
2. The Committee is working on renewals for ACM
journals, OVID nursing journals and Nature.
3. The RUC training subcommittee will hold four
training sessions July 24 - 27 at various locations across the state.
Resource Sharing Committee: Eileen Hitchingham, Chair
1. Eileen reported that the Committee is looking
at ways to improve ILL courier service while also analyzing strategies to cut interlibrary
loan costs without compromising service.
2. The Steering Committee approved the Resource
Sharing Committee’s request to fund one committee member’s attendance at the “
John outlined progress on
the Outreach Committee’s initiative to create a clearinghouse of VIVA training
and support materials, especially those resources developed locally. The
clearinghouse would be modeled on Merlot (http://www.merlot.org). A planning meeting is scheduled for October
that will include such issues as quality control and best practices.
CURRENT TRENDS IN ILL, 1999 – 2005: Harry Kriz, Director of Interlibrary
Services, Virginia Tech
Harry provided an overview of
interlibrary loan activity for the years 1998 – 2005, using interlibrary loan
data from Virginia Tech and other VIVA libraries, and shared information from
three reports that he had compiled: (1) More People Need More Lending Libraries More
Than Ever, May 9, 2006; (2) Virtual
Library of Virginia Detailed Interlibrary Loan Report from OCLC Data, Fiscal
2005, July 27, 2005; (3) VIVA OCLC
ILL Borrowing and Lending Data FY 1999 – FY 2005, December 29, 2005. In his analysis of this statistical
information Harry concluded that overall interlibrary loan activity has
remained fairly stable while VIVA lending has increased after a period of
decline. Copy lending is still lower
than in 1999, perhaps reflecting the availability of full-text electronic
journals. Looking only at ILL data from
Virginia Tech, Harry noted that the number of Virginia Tech borrowers increased
by 24% between 1998–2005 while the number of libraries needed to supply those
items increased by 19%, even though total enrollment at Virginia Tech remained
almost unchanged during those years.
This increase in borrowing books and journals occurred despite the
growth of the Internet. Harry suggested
that it would be helpful to see similar data from other institutions. Harry also cautioned against drawing any
conclusions based on this initial data and emphasized the unique and changing
conditions at individual libraries that affect interlibrary loan activity. Considerable discussion followed about local
factors that may impact interlibrary loans, e.g., collection budgets, enrollment,
faculty research projects, number of unique library titles, and participation
in consortia. The directors agreed that a serious regression analysis would be
helpful, perhaps as a research project.
Harry concluded his presentation by urging more ILLiad libraries to do
similar analysis as that done by Virginia Tech.
Library of Virginia Update: Tom Camden for Nolan
Yelich
Tom highlighted recent
accomplishments and activities of the Library of Virginia:
1. The LVA budget outlook is currently very healthy;
$300,000 in additional funds has been earmarked
for collection development and conservation
2. The Library is seeking to fill a number of
new staff positions; full time equivalent positions stand at 204
3. The digital library program will be revived
in an entirely new format; discussions are underway to fine tune the program’s
focus and priorities, however, emphasis will be placed on documents in the
Library of Virginia collection
4. Dictionary
of Virginia Biography, vol. 3, was recently released; the two-volume Hornbook of Virginia History will be
reissued in 2007
5. The 9th Annual Library of Virginia
Literary Awards celebration will be held Saturday, October 21, 2006, at The Library of Virginia. Awards will be presented in three
categories: fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
LAC members suggested
that the topic of records management retention and regulation be presented at a
future LAC meeting.
For the Good of the Order
Jane Edmister Penner announced that UVA will
be hosting a scanning conference (vendor fair, best practices, standards) in
September or October 2006.
Future LAC Meetings with VIVA Steering Committee the
preceding day:
September 21-22, 2006
December 7-8
The meeting was adjourned at
11:50 a.m.
Aileen Schweitzer, Secretary