ERC ST 050127

Electronic Resources Steering Team Teleconference—Minutes (draft)

January 27, 2005

Members attending:

 Tim Jewell (UW), Chair, Heather Whipple (Reed), Greg Doyle (Orbis Cascade), Diane Carroll (OHSU), Emily Miller-Francisco (SOU), Barbara Valentine (Linfield), John Creech (CWU), Susan Hinken (UP)

Meeting minutes from November 5, 2004 meeting:

As a correction to the minutes, Tim outlined his understanding of the upcoming meeting with the Council Executive Committee, that rather than all of ER, ERST only would meet with the Committee.

Steering Team Membership:

Diane, John, and Barbara are cycling off the ERST at the end of June when their terms end. Diane will be replaced on the ERC by Dolores Judkins; John Creech by Anna Creech. The Steering Team is a subset of the committee; members of the ST must be members of the ERC. Questions of how new members were appointed to the ST and what the replacement timetable arose. Greg said directors nominate ERC members to serve on the ST and then Council votes

Action: Greg will follow up with John about the process and timetable

Meeting and Communication Patterns:

Tim recalled that he was to put together a brief survey of ERC members about these issues. Diane suggests that we use a survey service to facilitate the process. Orbis Cascade subscribes to Zoomerang and we can use it. She also hopes that through the survey we would find support for Greg and the work he’s doing. Questions for the survey could include:

• What works
• What does not work
• Did the Steering Team miss opportunities or needed actions
• How are communications between Steering Team and ERC members working
• What type of program are members interested in for the all committee meeting in late spring
• Has hiring someone for the central office proved to be a good idea
• How do members feel this model/process (with someone in the central office) works regarding negotiation, pricing, distribution, and communication
• Are perceptions of the distribution fair
• Are members feeling shut out or included in the process

Space for comments should be included. Discussion also touched on how the survey would be handled since some questions will pertain to Greg’s work. The survey should come from ERST rather than Greg. Perhaps Travis could gather the results or Tim could be given the password to pull them from the site.

Action: ST members will send survey questions to the ERST list within the next couple of days. Tim will develop a draft survey, run it past the ERST and then open to ERC members only. Greg and Tim will work on the logistics of sending the survey and obtaining the results.

Meeting with Council Executive Committee:

This is scheduled for March 11.  Susan has a conflict with the OLA Board meeting but will see if she can skip that meeting. ERST will meet that day in addition to the informal meeting with the Executive Committee. It is an opportunity for the Executive Committee to ask questions and get a perspective on our work. Tim did a brief annual report last fall for Council and will build on that report for this meeting. Topics to discuss with the Executive Committee include:

• Steering Team work
• Greg’s role
• Survey of ERC members
• Annual ERC meeting
•  

Greg will be doing a write up for John Helmer about his work and was asked if this could be shared with the ST. Greg will talk to John. Susan suggested an alternative could be an abstract of the document or an abridged version. It was agreed that Greg’s work and the work of the ST are integral and it would be useful to have the fullest picture for our talk with the Executive Committee. We will need another teleconference in a few weeks to prepare for the March 11th and annual meetings.

Action: Tim will review, further develop the annual report; Greg will talk with John Helmer about releasing his annual write-up or a similar document; Tim will survey ERST about the best time for our next teleconference.

Annual ERC meeting:

The annual ERC meeting is slated for sometime in May. ERST discussed the structure and content of the meeting. Numerous questions and comments arose:

• John Helmer suggests a model like the annual borrowing day would be useful.
• Would ERC meet in addition to a program?
• Would the program be useful to the Collection Development Committee? This is a new committee, are they ready to meet?
• Would the program be useful to the new Catalog Committee?
• Vendors told Greg they would be willing to help sponsor an ERC day, but some might like program time.
• What type of content would be useful to ERC and other staff at member libraries
• A review of our e-journal packages: Springer-Kluwer, ACS, ACM
• Potential new offers: BMJ, Elsevier, Nature, Oxford University Press, Blackwell Synergy, Ovid Total Access
• Talk more broadly about the state of the industry, with the example of Duke pulling from Project Muse
• Awareness of what other groups are offering: BCR, GWLA, OCLC Western
• New initiatives such as Google Scholar and open access
• Who could talk about these issues and what type of advocacy role might speakers take as opposed to a more objective pro-and-con presentation?
• The program should be core to our committee’s work, but it would be most useful if the content appealed to other library staff
• Is there an opportunity with the meeting being open to more than just the ER rep, to come to a consensus on which products have great interest versus casual interest?

Tim synthesized these into two elements:

• Local view: Review of what we have and new opportunities
• Broad view: New initiatives such as Google Scholar and how to manage these resources

Action: Tim will pull some ideas together for ERST to respond to.

Cost sharing:

Greg starts all distributions with the 20/40/40 formula but this does not work for UW. It has, by far, the largest FTE and materials budget; such distributions often mean UW would be charged more than if it went alone. Greg says he often has to replace this distribution with a big/small split. He asked if we could cap the FTE count for UW. This model is sometimes used by vendors.

Action: Greg will provide some examples of how a cap on FTE and/or Materials Budget would affect prices for a group of libraries.

Our hour was up and the meeting was adjourned.

Minutes prepared by Susan Hinken, January 27, 2005