ERC ST 040227Orbis Cascade Alliance Electronic Resources Steering Team Meeting February 27, 2004, 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM Reed College – Gray Campus Center
Members attending in person: John Creech (CWU), Barbara Valentine (Linfield), Diane Carroll (OHSU), Debi Baker, Greg Doyle, and John Helmer (Orbis Cascade Alliance), Heather Whipple (Reed College), Emily Miller-Francisco (SOU), Susan Hinken (UP), and Tim Jewell, Chair (UW). List of members of Electronic Resources Committee (Alliance-ER) and Steering Team: http://libweb.uoregon.edu/orbis/staffhome/ERC-members.html. Getting organizedIt was agreed that members of the Steering Team would take minutes in alphabetical order by last name. Orientation (History and current status of Orbis and CLP e-resources work)Washington State Cooperative Library Project (CLP) membership includes Central Washington University, Eastern Washington University, Evergreen State College, the University of Washington, Washington State University and Western Washington University. The CLP now share access to a package of databases provided by Proquest, which is paid for via funds allocated by the Washington State Legislature to the CLP for shared database acquisition. The package includes ABI/INFORM Global, ABI/INFORM Trade & Industry, Business Dateline, Research Library, Washington Newsstand and Oregonian, National Newspapers (9 paper edition), and Proquest Medical Library. They also subscribe to ACS Web Editions e-journal database (not archives) using a combination of state allocated and local funds, and to MathSciNet and to ISI’s Web of Science using local funds · The $350,000 funding is now part of UW budget but supports all 6 institutions. · Science content is not well covered. Tim has not seen the CLP as expanding greatly into e-resources because of many of differences among the schools. · CLP has not tried to equalize the payments as Orbis has done. · CLP is coming to the end of a second year of a 2-year agreement with Proquest. They may extend for a third year and then do an RFP process and compare with EBSCO or other potential vendors. · Six CLP institutions plus OHSU, OSU and UO use local funds to purchase ISI Web of Science. Fiscal responsibility may migrate to Alliance next year. · Other potential deals include Elsevier ScienceDirect. Currently UW and WSU are partners with Children’s Hospital and Fred Hutchinson’s. There is title sharing among the members. UW commitment for 2005 is about $1.4 million. Maintenance of this contract beyond 2005 may not be sustainable.
Discussion: CLP may continue independently and continue to get money. CLP is like PORTALS and may want to work with the Alliance or not, on any given product. Deals in the Oregon University System (OUS) may move in and out of the groups. The Orbis Cascade Alliance is a new entity and not a merger. Orbis Committee on Electronic Resources (Orbis-cer) started and continues with no central funding. Susan Hinken and Barbara Valentine attended the first Task Force on ER (TFER) meeting where migration from CD ROM to Web based resources was discussed. Members of the committee volunteered to shepherd a resource through the purchasing process, beginning with a trial and ending with development and adoption of a cost-sharing model. As the workload increased, Debi Baker from the Orbis staff began to work with the committee. She has developed the Website with input from the committee and handles all aspects of renewals. A list of electronic resource offered can be located at http://libweb.uoregon.edu/orbis/licensing/eresources-LIST. · Orbis-cer created policies and procedures for consortial purchasing and had some centralized licenses and a licensing model. · Members could opt in or opt out at renewals or if costs become more than they can afford as the deal was put together. · The original cost share distribution model evolved when new members from PORTALS and Orbis were included. · The savings to institutions from the list price needs to be great enough to make it worth the effort to make a purchase. · Some costs are redistributed differently from the vendor offer. For example, the vendor would recommend the first institution to pay $3,000 and the next institution would receive lower costs. Orbis would redistribute the costs. · In the early years, many libraries participated in each purchase; as products have become more specialized in recent years, fewer institutions are participating on each purchase.
Discussion: Has Orbis gone through the exercise of quantifying savings? John Helmer noted that true savings are unusual, and that a better term might be “cost aversion; former members of the committee indicated this information had been compiled in the past. PORTALS (Portland Area Library System) have supported consortial purchases of electronic resources and in the past have centrally mounted the products. Portland State University and membership fees support this program. Those products have migrated to Orbis since it did not make sense to duplicate effort. Information on PORTALS can be found at their web site at http://www.portals.org/. · PORTALS members pay some administrative cost but all libraries can participate in purchase of electronic products. · BIOSIS is the last product available via PORTALS. It will be transferred to the Alliance in 2005. · PORTALS has decreased staff as resources to support the program have decreased. A new person has just been hired full time to manage the CE component of the program. · Four PORTALS members are not members of Orbis Cascade Alliance: Clark College, Mr. Hood Community College, Multnomah County Library and Oregon Historical Society.
Oregon Statewide Database Licensing Group has a contract with EBSCO and Newsbank (the Oregonian) for libraries in Oregon. Orbis managed the payment and billing of more than $600,000 for over 200 libraries. The Oregon State Library is taking on more responsibility for managing this contract. The Web site for this group is at http://www.osl.state.or.us/home/libdev/osdlg/osdlg.htm. Washington State Library and Orbis also have worked together in the past. WSL organized trials and purchase of CINAHL by Orbis was a result of that effort. Washington State Library and CLP are loosely coupled. The Washington State Library also chose Proquest and lined up contracts for same time periods. UMI (ProQuest) decided to include CLP FTE when pricing the state contract; therefore CLP did not get any discount when the state library purchased Proquest. The ability of students to learn one platform in school and be able to use it later when they leave school was seen as a benefit of choosing the same platform. Washington State Library is trying to figure out their future role. Participants in a WSL survey of academic institutions frequently stated their desire to work with the Alliance. From the UW perspective, trials set up by the Washington State Library are often not helpful because of the timing – which often conflict with trials under way at UW. Discussion: The intent of Alliance-ER is to run a good licensing purchasing program and not be overly concerned about other organizations. Greg Doyle will be the contact with other programs. Thus far, the Orbis Cascade Alliance merger has been work on the catalog and organization. We are just starting to look at merger of electronic resources. Communications - Membership and Meetings/Steering Team Background: Orbis-cer had one representative from each organization. As the organization grew, a membership of 20 was getting expensive and inefficient. The Task Force on Committees adopted a new model for committee meeting structure. The original recommendations are for Standing Committees with Steering Teams, Task Forces, and Interest Groups. See recommendations to Council at http://libweb.uoregon.edu/orbis/staffhome/TFCindex.html. See details on the structure and charge of the Electronic Resources Committee at http://libweb.uoregon.edu/orbis/staffhome/ERC-charge-cover.html Steering Team for Electronic Resources consists of seven members who will do the work of the committee. Steering Team members are informed on local issues, but do not represent their institution on this committee; rather they work for the good of the all. Guests to the Steering Team meetings are welcome, but allowing their participation in the discussions would be unfair to other Alliance-ER members who are not present. Discussion: The Steering Team can set up its own meeting schedule and one annual meeting of the whole committee. Attendance is very important and meetings will be arranged so all can attend. This should be high priority. Different methods of communicating including teleconference, videoconferencing and meetings were discussed. Some frustration with videoconferencing during the interviews was expressed. The need to be as transparent and to err on the side of shedding light on all activities/discussion was emphasized. There is an urgency to have a meeting of the whole because people have been in limbo for a long time. The question of whether a meeting could be tied to other events was discussed. Decisions: The Steering Team will meet quarterly with one-hour monthly conference calls in between meetings. The Alliance office can set up to six individuals on a conference call. One of the quarterly meetings will be of the whole committee, which should meet as soon as possible. Action Item:· John Helmer will explore video conferencing capabilities. · The first conference call for the Steering Team will be 2:00 PM on March 29. · Second conference call April 26th at 10:00 AM. Communications - Membership and Meetings/Electronic Resources Committee Electronic Resources Committee has a representative from each member institution. Committee members represent their institution and have the ability to commit funds. The committee of the whole will meet once a year; a proxy should attend if the committee member cannot. Members of the committee may observe Steering Team meetings as a guest if the request is made prior to the meeting; non-Steering Team Alliance-ER members may not participate in the meeting. Discussion: Committee members want to meet for both personal and professional development. Orbis used to have an annual meeting where all committees met (Summer Annual Meeting), however it was hard to schedule both committee work and plenary sessions. Decisions: May would be the best month to call the first meeting of the whole group. This will allow time to discuss packages that may affect journal subscription renewals this summer. Ideas for the agenda of first annual meeting follow. 1. Brain storming the role of the committee and Steering Team can be broadly discussed. 2. A mix of discussion and talks on electronic journals. Results of the 2003 survey of Orbis-CD members about a “Consortial purchasing of electronic Journal workshop” were passed around.
· Topics of greatest interest were: Pricing models used by ejournal providers Cost benefit of consortial electronic journal purchases Examples of communication models used by other consortia Pros and cons of the “big deal” · Topics of mild interest were: The big picture on licensing Pros and Cons of multiple year contracts Advantages and Disadvantages of ownership versus access Effects of publisher mergers on electronic journal purchases
May 14th and May 21st were identified as possible dates. Members will be sent a survey about the feasibility of these dates and topics that would like to discuss at the meeting. Communications - CouncilBackground: The Council is the governing body of the organization and has one representative for each institution. Library Directors meet quarterly and all 28 members usually attend. They meet in the Portland/Vancouver area but may travel to a new library or may desire a retreat setting. Question: What decisions and policies need to go to Council?Answer: The council does not wish to micro-manage e-resources or the Alliance-ER. If you have issues you want their opinion on, ask them. If there is a policy change, then the Council’s approval is needed. Communications - Alliance-ER WebsiteBackground: The Alliance-ER information is linked from two places on the Orbis Cascade Alliance staff home page at http://libweb.uoregon.edu/orbis/staffhome/ . Information on the Alliance-ER committee membership, charge, new offerings and minutes are at http://libweb.uoregon.edu/orbis/staffhome/ERCindex.html . Administration information on current offerings, licensing, budget, FTE, cost-distribution formula, archives for the listserv and the renewal calendar are at http://libweb.uoregon.edu/orbis/staffhome/ER_admin_info.html . Discussion: Information for the ER committee needs to be at one link instead of two. Action item: Recommend the Alliance staff redesign the home page to have one link to the all Electronic Resources Committee information. Discussion: It is difficult to find information in the archives about products such as what decision was made, ILL rights, SU, what pricing model was used, who is part of the agreement, and other licensing information. A template with this information summarized was suggested. Concern about accuracy of information, time/labor required to update and confidentiality of the information was expressed. More discussion: This idea has been on the long-term list of things to do. The California Digital Library has all of their licenses open on the Web (excluding prices) at http://alfalfa.ucsd.edu/cdl/index.jsp and this may be something that can be done in the future. Debi has other commitments and the committee cannot count on her to be involved in this. Decision: The committee should be aware of evolving standards on licensing and electronic resources and new products (Innovative ERM, Gold Rush) and entertain posting this data in the future. Communications - E-mail/list message paths, traffic volumesBackground: The Orbis-cer had a listserv that was open to all Orbis members. The archives of the listserv are password protected. There is a culture of doing everything on the list. Discussion: The Steering Team needs the ability to have smooth communication among themselves and attached documents to the e-mails. An archive is needed that all ER committee members can access. Decision: The Steering Team will have a separate listserv from the Alliance-ER committee called alliance-erst. It will be archived and messages will be available to all ER Committee members along with messages from the general ER list. These will be at the same website and using the same login information. To distinguish these messages from the others, they will have a subject line that begins [ERST]. Action item:· Request a new list for Steering team (Debi) · Find out if a larger list at UO is possible to allow attachments. (John)
More Discussion: There is a lot of traffic on the alliance-er listserv. Debi asked if it was appropriate to send vendor information out on the listserv. All thought the information important but most received from two or three sources. Action Item: Debi Baker will create a new list called alliance-ernews that will be just for vendor/publisher announcements. It will include any information from vendors including updates to service, down time, added/deleted content, new resources, etc. Initially all members of the alliance-er list will be subscribed and given the opportunity to remove themselves if they wish. This list will not be archived. Discussion: There is a lot of traffic on the alliance-er listserv during the renewal of products. Comments about the difficulty of finding information on products in the archives because of the large volume of e-mails were discussed. No one has ever advised ER members of doing anything but responding to the list, so if the desire is to change from this current process, the members need to be informed. Liblicense listserv allows you to subscribe in digest form and this might be an option. Greg is already helping with getting commitments with face-to-face meetings and phone calls. His abilities as negotiator will help focus the group and facilitate complicated negotiations and communications. Decision: Renewals will continue to be announced and handled via the standard alliance-er list, but it is preferable to send “please renew” messages directly to Debi Baker, and ask that just those dropping respond to the list. Action Item: Tim Jewell will send out a message to all members of the Alliance-ER group that will summarize the meeting, list names of members of the Steering Team, and advise of this change in renewal procedure. More Discussion: General need for communication was discussed. Members will be encouraged to contact anyone on the Steering Team. The Steering Team will want to make use of Zoomerang for polling. There may be a need for committee-to-committee communications. Immediate IssuesRenewals (especially how to integrate member renewals) Background: Alliance has many electronic resources that are renewed throughout the year. It would be helpful to the renewal process and the integration of new members if the interest level of these products were known in advance of the renewal period. All products listed by renewal dates can be viewed at http://libweb.uoregon.edu/orbis/licensing/ER-Renewal_Calendar.DOC Discussion: One way to stimulate interest and to educate new members would be a survey. Members could look over the renewal list and integrate their purchasing plans with Alliance purchases if appropriate. Debi commented she has been successful at bringing members into an ongoing agreement by prorating costs. What information is needed to allow members to have enough information to be able to indicate an interest? There is a lot of information on the Website and in the archives. Some elements considered for a survey were the number of current participants; range of prices; limited by SU or unlimited; last years prices; and lots of disclaimers. Participants would be asked their level of interest in each product. The survey would go to all members of the committee, not just new members. Action item: Plan to use web survey to query members about their database renewal plans and interests. (Greg) New Products – How are products identified?Information about new products comes from members and vendors. Greg distributed a list of new products that he had identified that may be of interest to member libraries. New Products – Who gathers product information, sets up trials, gets pricing, etc?Background: When Orbis-cer had quarterly meetings, members brought product information to the table, interest was polled and the person that brought it to the table set up the trial. If there was not a critical mass of interest, the product was dropped. More recently, the listserv has replaced quarterly meeting and has been instrumental in identifying new products and compiling member interests. Discussion: Often products get discussed on the list and then there is no closure. A follow-up and monitoring of products is needed. A quarterly survey on products under review or new products may help this problem (quarterly reality check). As a result of the monitoring, a list of products status on the Web can be a place for people to review offering pending. This information is already on the web; the survey may help to keep it more up-to-date. More discussion: The best time to run trials is Oct, Nov, Jan, or March; maybe batch the trials? There was a difference in opinion about whether trials should be open to all IP or just those indicating interest during the initial review. Debi’s experience is that people get interested after the trial has been set up and it is easier to set everyone up at once. Other commented that trials may show up on their EBSCO or Proquest platform and they would rather not be included. The processes in place have worked very well for databases and e-books. The complexity of electronic journals in terms of the pricing, licenses, timing, etc, may need a different approach. There was not time to discuss this part of the agenda at the meeting, but it will be part of the May meeting with all members of the committee. Action Item: Develop a quarterly survey on newly identified products, which have not been suggested by members to see if there is interest. Query whether product is already being purchased locally and if there is interest in joining a consortial agreement. New Products – Define and specify the role of Alliance staff. Debi Baker will continue to work with Alliance-ER but to a lesser extent. Greg Doyle will be our Whip Cracker. He will facilitate communication and negotiations internally and externally. He will bring products to the committee’s attention on the listserv and survey the group for interest. Alliance-er members will be the driving force for new products as in the past. The Alliance staff will provide more support, but will not attempt to replace what has made this committee so successful in the past – member participation, energy and drive. New Products – How is evaluation of potential products done and communicated? At the end of the trial, whoever expressed interest in the trial will be encourage to send feedback to the list. Greg would facilitate this communication. Cost Distribution Model(s) Background: In 1998, Orbis Directors approved a “Cost Distribution for Electronic Resources” policy. Members of the Orbis-cer have been more flexible and creative in developing cost sharing agreements than the policy would suggest. What has not wavered is the adherence to two established principles: every library should benefit, and each product should be priced to be as affordable as possible to all interested libraries. Discussion: UW is anxious about coming into a deal that may cause significant increases for other participants. Worse case scenario: UW pays less than a fair share and we distribute cost to others to pay for UW access. Using a formula based on cost equally distributed: FTE: Materials budget of 20:40:40 or 30:30:40, sometimes results in this situation. Emily said the Alliance is looking at these products as renewals, but they are new product for Washington Libraries. Adding large universities can really hurt other renewing large schools. A lot of compromising occurred on a recent product renewal and PSU costs went up a lot. It was painful for everyone. Should an existing deal suffer to bring new large libraries in? More discussion: How much accommodation in pricing should be made for individual libraries? It is okay to change the whole pricing model or formula to present options for the group to review, but the formula should not be changed to accommodate a specific library. Each member needs to assess the limit of where they need to opt out if they cannot afford the product. Participating library committee members will continue to be directly involved with cost sharing agreements for individual products. A new cost-sharing document is needed that reflects the goals of cost sharing but does not dictate a formula. Action item: Greg will revise the current cost sharing document and distribute to the Steering Team for review. The whole committee at the May meeting will discuss the revised draft. A final policy will be sent to the Council for approval. Partnering with other consortia purchases Background: Information on Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) is available at http://www.gwla.org/ . Four Alliance members are also GWLA members (OSU, UO, UW and WSU) and can extend offers to other libraries. Discussion: Greg will take the lead in working with GWLA on behalf of Alliance members. We will present information at the level acceptable to GWLA and then keep the communication flowing if there is interest by any library. It is hoped that relations with GWLA will continue to grow and then more detailed information can be provided about initial offerings in the future. State Initiatives (Washington SDL and Oregon SDLAC) were covered at the beginning of the meeting COUNTERAlliance membership – support of the membership. Outcome of Counter will be very positive. We are on record unanimously voting to support COUNTER recommendation. http://www.projectcounter.org/ There was a question about whether the fee was annual or one time.
Minutes prepared by Diane Carroll, March 5, 2004Approved (to be completed by Chair/Alliance staff)
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