GENERAL SELECTORS MEETING

23 September 1999

RWA Notes

1. NY State Project. The Preservation administrators of the NY Big Eleven libraries are talking about the possibility of applying for funding to undertake a joint photocopy project of reference materials. Selectors who feel they would like to recommend materials for such a project should contact John Dean before 3 October; a list of specific materials will not be needed by that date, but John will need to have some idea by then about the type and approximate number of materials that we might want to target for such a project.

2. LMS. John Saylor reported on the work of the LMS Implementation Management Team. The Team is orienting itself by planning for its training, which will start early next month. The Team has organized itself into eight working groups: Data Migration (chair: Diane Hillmann), Voyager Security (chair: Bill Kara), System Installation (chair: Surinder Ghangas), OPAC/Gateway Customization (chair: Ed Weissman), Reserve (chair: Susan Currie), Reporting (chair: Karen Calhoun), Voyager/GFA Interface (chair: Pat Schafer), Media Scheduling (chair: Susan Currie). John urged any staff who have questions or concerns about any of these areas to contact the appropriate chair.

3. Budget Update. The 1998/99 budget finished the year in good condition. The endowed units completed the year with 98% of appropriated funds spent, and 101% spent plus encumbered. Only 70% of endowment funds were spent, however, so that we carried over ca. half a million dollars in endowment earnings. While we certainly do need to take the wishes of the donors into account when using endowment funding, the clear message we received from Day Hall in the 1998/99 allocation was that endowment earnings are now to be used for the purchase of standard materials. The budget for 1999/00 seems generally on track, although it is still very early. Payment for the Ideal invoice will place extra pressures this year on f 519, so we will need to be careful to fund that correctly for 2000/01. The approval plan line, f 521, was increased by 10%, and so far is right on budget, with 19% spent at 19% through the year. The postage line, f 999, is also right on track. Rather than use endowment funding to bring down the deficit in f 521, I have transferred funding from the new one-time funding line, f 523, into the approval plan line; I will then use the endowment earnings to fund the remainder of the one-time purchases.

4. CPCR Update. There are several CPCR issues remaining that need to be resolved. This work will be completed this semester. Some of them are straight forward. Some others will require bringing a number of selectors together in order to increase the granularity of some of the assignments. I will try to get those discussions moving as soon as possible.

   Selectors should now also please review their collection policy statements on the StaffWeb site, which have been in place for several years. It is time for selectors to update those statements to reflect, if appropriate, CPCR decisions or other changes. Updated statements should be sent to David Block, who will substitute them for the old ones.

5. DRC. Yoram reported that DRC has adjusted its workflow so that it now would welcome recommendations for central (f 519) budgeting at any time in the year. Selectors should send to DRC as much information about the recommended database as possible, including opinions as to its potential utility and its relation to other databases that we already have access to. DRC will use the evaluation instrument it has developed to assess the database, and then will revisit the database when the time comes to make final budget decisions. Databases recommended do not necessarily need to be new: selectors can fund a database one year, and then apply for central funding the next. Yoram noted that the databases suggested by selectors for Sarah's building blocks list will not be considered as recommendations to DRC. If selectors want to recommend any of those databases, they should send their recommendations specifically to DRC, along with all other information, including price. Yoram also said that DRC will be working this year on guidelines, which will define the qualities of databases that would render them suitable for central funding.

6. E-books. Depending upon a final reading of the site license, we will now in all likelihood enter into an agreement with Columbia, Dartmouth and Middlebury to purchase online books from netLibrary.com. Each institution will contribute $15,000, for a total of $60,000. netLibrary is requiring that we pay the full access fee (50% of the price of the paper copy, for a total price of 150%) up front, because it would be too difficult to administer the sliding scale after the dissolution of this mini-consortium. That is a reasonable requirement. Assuming an average of $40 per volume, with a $20 access fee, we should end up with ca. 1,000 e-books, which we will in theory have access to forever. All four institutions will own, in effect, one simultaneous use for each item. Much remains to be done as to how we select and process these materials. Selection will need to be coordinated among the four institutions, although we could presumably purchase a duplicate "copy" (i.e., a second simultaneous use) if we wanted. There are many reasons for participating in this experiment, but one reason is simply for selectors to see what such e-books are like and to consider whether there is any prospect that we might at some point want to replace paper with electronic in some situations. We might recall the CONOCO study from many years ago, in which RLG showed that selectors were willing not to select a significant portion of what they would normally select, if they knew that such materials would be accessible in 24 hours through ILL. This situation is somewhat similar: might there be books we would not feel obliged to select, if we knew we had purchased perpetual access to a networked copy, in a consortium with a number of other institutions (especially if the shared networked copy would cost us, say, one-third of what the paper would cost)? This experiment will, I hope, be an opportunity for us to consider such questions. John Saylor noted that the Science Team has recommended that we should consider designating one selector as e-book project manager for the duration of the experiment.

7. CORC. Karen Calhoun provided a briefing on Cornell's participation in the OCLC Cooperative Online Resource Catalog project. Karen encouraged everyone to look at the CUL CORC page, and to go through the demonstration, at http://campusgw.library.cornell .edu/corc/ . There are some one hundred libraries now participating in the project. CORC provides a method to create records of Web resources by using either MARC or Dublin Core. This means that non-catalogers, such as selectors, can take the first steps in record creation by using Dublin Core to describe the sources they have selected. The cataloging work can then be completed by a cataloger. The project also provides software for harvesting information from the resource to help fill out the Web form; it also has software to assist assigning classification numbers and subject headings. There are, Karen explained, two CORC databases. One database consists of records for Web resources, and it is remarkably rich at this point. When we want to add a resource to the Gateway (and the decision was made at the outset of the project that we would select nothing for the CORC database that we would not want to mount on the Gateway), we often find that it is already in the CORC database--so that we need only to copy and adjust it for our purposes. The second database consists of pathfinders (a.k.a. subject guides or Webliographies), created by librarians, which provide selected links to Web resources on particular subject areas. This should save much time, because it will mean that institutions can use (copy, adopt, adjust, link to) each other's pathfinders. As part of the CORC project, we have been adding items from two important databases in CUL, the Business Internet Index and the Internet Connections for Engineering database. Yoram asked why we would want to use such a database as CORC when we could simply use one of the utilities. Karen said that there are many more records for Web resources in CORC than are now in the utilities. Yoram asked why we would want others to be able to do the cataloging, using Dublin Core: shouldn't cataloging be left to catalogers? One answer is that preliminary cataloging by selectors should help workflow--having the selector, in effect, begin the cataloging process. Also, as Don, Martha, and Bill Walters (all of whom are on the CORC committee) explained from different perspectives, this allows the selector to have some input into the cataloging process, by adding descriptive information: it provides an opportunity for the selector to pass on to the user through the record some of the rationale for the selection. Karen noted that it might also provide Web page authors with the same opportunity--which might bring us a step closer to writer-initiated cataloging. Bill Walters said that he finds the ability to adopt records created elsewhere and the ability for the selector to add information to be very positive; on the negative side of the CORC project, he has found that the system sometimes works very slowly, and that some of the records are poor enough that one must occasionally start a new record from scratch. John Saylor wondered whether it might be possible to connect the evaluation form that DRC has created with the CORC selection form. Karen said that the CUL CORC Committee will write a report at the end of the project, and that the future of the project will be discussed at the February Academic Assembly.

8. Fund Structure. The advent of the new LMS provides us with an opportunity to review how we structure our funding in the materials budget. Both Scott Wicks and Linda Westlake have stressed that we must concentrate on information needed by selectors, which is always the basic purpose of a budget: what budget data do selectors need to make the best use of that budget? In discussing this briefly, it was clear that different selectors need very different information. Lenore noted that we need to distinguish between the information selectors will receive routinely and the information they should be able to generate through reports. Another driver of this budget information will be the requirements the Library will have for national reporting. Linda Westlake explained that the fund structure for Voyager is hierarchical--but it is also clear that we do not yet know enough about that structure to lay out our options. We should know much more, she said, after the IMT receives training in early October. We will probably then need to make our decisions on the fund structure by December. CDExec will work on a process for selectors to pass recommendations on budget information needs to the IMT.

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9/24/99, mc