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6 Key Challenges at ALA

John Saylor

I represented CUL at the Chief Collection Development Officers (CCDO) of Large Research Libraries Discussion Group at the ALA midwinter meeting in San Antonio on Saturday, January 21, 2006.  Kizer Walker, Sarah How, Jean Poland, and Sarah Thomas were also there.  The meeting was overflowing with “visitors,” resulting in the largest turnout ever recorded for the CCDO, because the entire agenda was devoted to the discussion of the 6 Key Challenges in Collection Development that came out of the Janus Conference at Cornell in October 2005.

The purpose of the meeting at ALA was to (1) broaden the input from the audience, (2) identify any further revisions to the challenges, (3) identify some concrete steps in terms of what to pursue, (4) determine who and what groups will be involved and who will be at the head of each challenge, (5) determine what coalitions CCDO needs to make to bring these challenges forward, and, finally, (6) create timelines and dates.  CCDO also agreed to develop research strategies at some point to gather additional data and information.  After Cindy Shelton, of UCLA, gave a brief summary of the Janus Conference, I noted that Ross Atkinson believed the Janus Conference was just a beginning and hoped that CCDO would take ownership of future actions.

A discussion of each of the 6 Key Challenges was then moderated by the volunteer leader of that particular challenge.

Challenge 1: RECON Converting the scholarly record
Edward Shreeves (Iowa)
Challenge 2: PROCON Ensure objects published in the future are available in digital form
Stephen Bosch (Arizona)
Challenge 3: Core Collection
Thomas Izbicki (Johns Hopkins)
Challenge 4: Licensing Principles (formerly Publisher Relations)
Cindy Shelton (UCLA) moderated in the absence of Diane McCutcheon (National Library of Medicine).
Challenge 5: Archiving
Karen Schmidt (Illinois) moderated.
Challenge 6: Alternative Channels of Scholarly Communication
Margaret Landesman (Utah) moderated.

After the discussion, members from CCDO and the audience joined to provide further input into the challenges.  People self-selected a challenge to discuss and help advance.  Each group designated a recorder who is posting its report to the Janus blog.

The action items that came out of this 4.5-hour meeting were that CCDO will put out a call to its membership for

  • a steering committee to take the initiatives forward
  • institutions to put resources into the challenges they are interested in working on

The action items for the individual challenges were

Challenge 1. RECON  Will call a meeting of appropriate organizations and institutions (LC, ARL, CRL, CLIR, DLF, etc.) to create and manage a collaborative to accomplish this goal.  It will be closely tied to challenge #5.
Challenge 2. PROCON  Committed to an e-only shift by 2008.  This date was deemed possible for a number of disciplines.
Challenge 3. Core Collection  Will continue to discus further.  There was not wide support for this.
Challenge 4. Licensing Principles  Will consider rebroadening its scope to Publisher Relations and will look into producing an RFP for a national site license to a digital resource as a pilot to push the concept.
Challenge 5. Archiving  Invite a group of organizations (LC, ARL, CRL, CLIR, DLF, etc.) and interested libraries to work together.
Challenge 6. Alternative Channels  Will continue to work on identifying tasks.  General agreement on central fund of $50K from each institution to be used as venture capital, perhaps in conjunction with SPARC.

Six CCDO members volunteered to serve on a steering committee for the Janus Challenges (I am one of them).  This steering committee, which is being extended to ten members, will lead, foster, and facilitate the planning and implementation of the strategies to meet the challenges.  The next major in-person discussion will take place at the ALA meeting this summer in New Orleans.

At the close of the CCDO session, Cindy Shelton (UCLA) acknowledged Ross Atkinson for his leadership and for getting CCDO to this point.  She noted that this meeting had the largest turnout ever observed, which is illustrative of the importance of the work Ross has started.  Cindy commented that the important characteristics of his leadership are visionary, provocative, intellectual, exhortative, and dedicated to the cause.  CCDO will need this kind of leadership to move forward.

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