ERC ST 050311Electronic Resources Steering Team Meeting March 11, 2005 Washington State University–Vancouver
Members attending in person: Tim Jewell, Diane Carroll, John Creech, Susan Hinken, Barbara Valentine, Heather Whipple, Emily Miller-Francisco and Greg Doyle
Improving Communication: We discussed ways that we could improve communication with the larger Electronic Resources Committee. This was an issue in our recent survey of the committee. One suggested solution was to select steering team members by expertise (e.g. e-journals, e-books, databases, etc.). This would help committee members know who to approach about various issues. We thought this was an interesting idea, but it was cautioned that we wouldn’t want to try to choose a steering team of “experts”—especially since expertise can shift so quickly. We also want to be careful about creating an unfair division of labor. Our preference would be to divide up by interest so that various steering team members could lead interest groups on different topics or issues. Primarily we would be interested in getting the other members from the ERC to join these groups, but it may sometimes be useful to include interested others from other committees. We would just need to be sure that any final decisions were made through the appropriate ER representative(s).
John also suggested that it would be nice to know more about the other representatives, especially those on the steering committee. There’ll be some change over in July and this might be a good time to have the steering team put out a brief description of who each of us are and what we do.
Plans for Meeting with the Executive Committee: We met with the Executive Committee from 10:30 to 11:00. So we devoted a portion of our meeting before that point deciding what to say. We wanted to cover our accomplishments such as the May meeting last year, the Springer/Kluwer deal, and figuring out pricing for MathSciNet that was amenable to both the Oregon and Washington people. We wanted to say how helpful Greg and Debi have been to the committee. We also wanted to tell them about the survey we recently took and its results. We particularly wanted to talk about the communication issues and how we hope to resolve them. Please see the Executive Committee minutes for coverage of their meeting.
May Meeting: We spent most of the afternoon discussing the upcoming May meeting with the larger ER committee. We hope to spend about 2 hours in a “business” meeting. During this segment, we’ll discuss the results of the survey—particularly the communication issues and some ideas we have for resolving them. One idea we have is to encourage interest groups to form with the help of a steering team member. These groups could investigate a topic or research a deal. Then they could bring back what they’d learned to the wider group. Tim mentioned that he had asked John Helmer whether the Alliance could support additional conference calls that might be held by such interest groups, and he said that it could, providing that the groups were officially tied or “reported to” the ERST. We also would like to talk about a possible fall meeting that may be opened up to a broader audience (e.g. the Collection Development and Management Committee).
The rest of the day will be focused on particular topics:
1. E-journal packages. We will cover the Springer/Kluwer deal, ACS, and possibly another. There may be a proposal from Elsevier and if Greg has it on time, we might discuss it. We hope to do a Q&A and address questions such as: Is this for me? What are the options? What other e-journal packages should we consider? Tim will send out a query beforehand to gauge the interest of committee members in various packages. Diane and Greg will do the planning for this segment. We may invite some vendors to explain their package deals.
2. E-books. Barbara will ask attendees to bring their e-book statistics and possibly some other information. She will also send out a query to see what members' experience of e-books has been. Greg will send Barbara any e-book statistics that he has. John is going to do a literature review on the current status of e-books. We hope that these two topics will start interest groups (made up of at least one steering team member and then members of the broader committee) that can pursue the topics further and then bring them back to the ERC.
Action Items: · Tim will send out a query to gauge the interest of committee members in various e-journal packages. · Diane and Greg will organize and conduct the e-journal segment. · Barbara will ask attendees to bring their e-book statistics and possibly some other information. She will also send out a query to see what members’ experience of e-books has been. · Greg will send Barbara any e-book statistics that he has. · John is going to do a literature review on the current status of e-books.
There are two other topics that we just want to introduce, but hope that interest groups will form around them. The first is Open URL implementation and electronic resources management. The second is open access and scholarly communication (e.g. the direction this is taking, what the various models are, the costs of managing it, etc.). Heather will be sending out a query to see if there are other topics that a group could form around.
Action Item: · Heather will be sending out a query to see if there are other topics that a group could form around.
New Steering Team Appointments: We want to reaffirm that we think that it's good to have a mix of people from a variety of schools types (big/medium/small, public/private, etc.). We also think that people shouldn't be reappointed to the Steering Team immediately after they have served a term on it. One exception to this would be the chair. We think the chair should be appointed from current or recent members. We also think that leadership skills should be an important part of that decision.
Miscellaneous Announcements: Greg will be going on vacation for 3 weeks (from 3/15-4/5); preparations for the May 13th ERC meeting should continue while he is away.
Emily will be going on maternity leave at the beginning of May. She’ll return in the fall.
Next ERST Conference Call: April 11th, 2:30-3:30
Minutes prepared by Emily Miller-Francisco, March 14, 2005. They were amended on March 29 and April 4. |