Present: Pam Baxter, Michael Cook (recorder), Phil Dankert, Sarah How, Greg Lawrence, Don Schnedeker.

Agenda items:

1. Greg Lawrence described the ISI Table of Contents (TOC) proposal. Their table of contents service includes 8,500 titles, has much of the same core bibliographic information, and adds abstracting and links to the electronic copy of items. It is not clear at this time if ISI will link directly to individual electronic issues.

   Over the next 6 weeks we will be adding more titles; currently we have 350 titles but the contract allows us to scale up to 500 titles. We will step back and evaluate this service in two years.

   Vet and Engineering have shown interest in adding titles. Greg said others are welcome if interested in adding titles and he can list 15 or so titles for viewing. Greg will send out the URL.

   He explained that the target date is February of next year to roll the system out, and it will follow a three step phase-in:

   1. We will swap one TOC vendor for another. Instead of TOC from CARL it would instead come from ISI.

   2. Take care of embedded URL's - make sure they link to the electronic copy.

   3. There will be a new user interface - we serve as a sign-up point, but the TOC is sent from ISI and worded with contact info to CUL reference, etc. in the header or footer of each document.

   Don Schnedeker asked if we pay $12/title and 100 people use it, is it still $12/title? Greg said yes, the cost would still be the same. Another question Don brought forward is whether or not individual libraries would be responsible for document delivery, which he indicated JGSM is not prepared to take on, to which Greg responded that this would have to be discussed across campus. Don stated that in the past the idea of a combined TOC/document delivery has been a "let's wait and talk about it" situation, but everyone agrees that such a service needs to be achieved.

   Pam Baxter observed that ubiquitous returns will probably push the idea of TOC/document delivery.

   Phil Dankert and Don Schnedeker both expressed interest in the ISI TOC service.

2. Greg explained that the Depository Library Council (DLC) is wrestling with the idea that the depository library program will not be the same program within two years, as there is the possibility that it could go totally electronic. According to Greg the House of Representatives proposed a reduction in the program of 65%, a cut from $30 million to $12 million, with most of the money slated for metadata of electronic items. However, most of the money was restored but there was still a loss of $3 million, or 10% of their budget. The Public Printer is set to retire and no one knows who will be there next.

   There is concern among librarians about this move to electronic; specifically, what do we mean by "permanent public access?" The movement away from paper may not be total; there are exceptions such as items with significant reference value, those that are incomplete in electronic form, those that are aimed at a specific population (such as those printed in Braille); in addition, there is the factor of possible high costs in sustaining an electronic version. Currently, bibliographic records are available ($600/year) for electronic-only resources.

   Greg mentioned that the U.S. Census Bureau is moving to DVD as a format to distribute data.

3. Sarah How had four items to present to the meeting:
   1. The expanded version of Project MUSE. This project, started at John Hopkins University Press, provides access to the full text of over 100 scholarly journals. The quality of coverage is very good and they recently released a new search engine. They will have 167 journal titles in the collection next year, with a wide range from academic presses.

      CUL subscribes to their original product; the Humanities team decided against subscribing to the expanded version in the past. Sarah has received 4 requests in the last few months for some of the journals included in the expanded version, and she has asked DRC for funding. Old issues of some of these journals are in JSTOR and some are in ProQuest; hence duplication is a topic to consider.

      The cost is $12,000/year for the 167 titles. The New York State consortium price is below $10,000. The URL for Project MUSE is http://muse.jhu.edu.

   2. American Periodicals Series Online from Bell & Howell. This is a digitized version of a microfilm series featuring periodicals from 1741 to 1900, of which CUL owns the microfilm version. (More info at http://www.umi.com/cgi-bin/ShowItem?PID=P0097&market=cu)

   3. Victorian Periodicals Index Sarah said this product is on CD-ROM but Olin intends to network it. Pam Baxter asked who would network it; Sarah replied that she thought Michael Engle probably would.

   4. Charleston Advisor (www.charlestonco.com) Martha Hsu will fund this from the bibliographer’s fund. Sarah finds this resource very useful, it costs $300/year and includes reviews of resources. The latest issue included a press release from Questia that was not on the Questia web site.

4. Don Schnedeker demonstrated Conference Board's BoardView and EIU’s Country Data.
   1. Conference Board products: BoardView and Business Cycle Indicators Don said that Conference Board is now the de facto Department of Economic Analysis. He demonstrated BoardView (http://www.conference-board.org/products/vboard.cfm), a program for data retrieval and analysis that seems to have been designed for individual users, though site licenses are also available. Although it is a useful tool, Don noted that this product may not be easily networked for the whole campus and that perhaps CISER may want to acquire it. In his handout for Conference Board he included Business Cycle Indicators (http://www.tcb-indicators.org).

   2. EIU CountryData (available on Gateway): This resource contains IMF and OECD data that can be searched, displayed and exported in a variety of configurations. The description on the Gateway reads: “Covering 115 countries, EIU CountryData is a comprehensive source of economic indicators and forecasts available. It is fast and easy to use, and a powerful databases of macroeconomic on the market. EIU CountryData gives you access to 272 economic series - more than 700,000 individual data points - with data going back to 1980 and forecasts to 2003.” Don emphasized that reference staff should be aware of this product.

   Don also explained that he is on the e-Books working group which has been working with NetLibrary. There are 600+ records for e-books in the NetLibrary catalog; they have identified business e-books and made a course reserve list. This list can be accessed by going to the public catalog, clicking on Course Reserves, then scrolling to JGSM: E-Books under the Department section of the Course Reserves page. He added that a list of entrepreneurship e-books can also be generated.

Next meeting:

The next meeting of the Social Science Team will be December 18th, Mann Library (exact location TBA)

Minutes prepared by Michael Cook

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11/28/00, jwg