Collection Management Committee Meeting: March 17, 2021

Zoom / Conference Call

Members present: David Bell, co-chair, (Eastern Illinois University), Dan Blewett, co-chair, (College of DuPage), Chad Buckley (Illinois State University), Keith Eiten (Wheaton College), Kelli Getz (DePaul University), Paolo Gujilde (Northwestern University), Lorene Kennard (University of St. Francis), Niamh McGuigan (Loyola University Chicago) (left at 10:00), Scott Thomson (Rush University)

Board Liaison present: Taran Ley (Southern Illinois University School of Medicine) (left at 10:00am)

CARLI Staff present: Elizabeth Clarage (left at 10:00am), Jennifer Masciadrelli, Jennifer Taylor

Tasks Assigned

• Lorene Kennard will take minutes at the April meeting.
• CARLI staff will update the CARLI website with the new version of the Open Access Collection Criteria.
• David will review comments from the last collection development chat session to identify potential future topics and gauge interest for continuation of the series.
• Jen will send out a meeting invite to discuss the eBook weeding project.

Decisions

• January Meeting Minutes will be approved via email.
• Collection Management Committee moved to accept the revised wording of the Open Access Collection criteria. The revision brings together in one document the Collection Management Committee and the former CARLI SFX Committees criteria for selecting materials for inclusion in the shared catalog.
• Reference collections and how they have changed and how the roles of reference librarians have changed as a result was selected as the topic for our April 14 informal chat session. The committee will reassess after the last session to decide if we want to offer more sessions.
• Open access ebooks topic and analytics subcommittee updates were tabled due to time.

Announcements

• CARLI update:
  • Data Storytelling Toolkit – The CARLI Board has voted to write a letter of support for this initiative. The committee need take no action.
  • Creative Content Committee is documenting the process to integrate external resources into ALMA, for example, digital collections.
  • On April 20th the Preservation Committee will be offering a presentation on accepting collections. The presentation will not be recorded.
  • Elizabeth asked if there were any questions about the CARLI eBook Crowdfunding Project.
    • Dan asked about the timeframe for contribution. Jen reported that commitment is needed by the end of the month. Payment can be spread over multiple fiscal years if desired.
• Member announcements:
  • Dan asked if the libraries of any member libraries were open yet. Members shared their status. Most libraries seem to be open in some limited capacity. No one mentioned being totally closed.

Discussion

• Revision of Open Access Collection Criteria
  • There had been two CARLI open access collection criteria developed for selecting materials. One was developed by the Collection Management Committee for ebooks and one was developed by the SFX Committee (now discharged) for continuing materials.
  • These two criteria were very similar except for material type.
  • CARLI staff brought to the committee a revised version of the CMC criteria that includes wording for continuing materials.
  • The committee decided to accept the new wording for the Open Access Collection Criteria.
• Review of March 12th Zoom Chat on eBooks
  • David thought it went well as moderator. It went quickly, and it’s hard to get a handle on how useful the content is for attendees, but the flow went well.
  • Paolo said it was good. It’s a huge topic that can be broken down.
  • Dan said he liked the informal air of the session. Others agreed, and this spawned further comments.
  • Kelli thought the session went well. She said she enjoyed the discussion.
  • Jen mentioned that the chat is a good option for those who don’t feel comfortable speaking live. The textual chat is saved, which is nice. This seems to be consistent with other CARLI events as well.
  • Jennifer mentioned that it’s also nice that there is no pressure to turn your camera on.
  • CATS! ;)
  • The committee will host one more session in April. We’ll reassess afterward and decide if we want to host more.
    • David mentioned going through the comments to see if there are new topic suggestions.
    • Jen mentioned Elizabeth’s format idea involving a poll and speed topics. We could do this as a way to solicit topics for future meetings.
    • Jen mentioned receiving nice feedback that was sent to her personally. People seem to enjoy these and would likely want them to continue.
  • David asked if anyone had any topic ideas for April.
    • Jen recalled an idea to discuss percentages of purchases being done by libraries in electronic format instead of print.
    • David shared a slide from a previous meeting with topic ideas.
    • There was a discussion around whether or not we should share the topics in advance.
      • The Committee agreed that we should. The thought is that people have limited time and appreciate knowing the topics in advance so they can decide whether or not they want to attend.
    • The committee elected to look through the chat comments from the last meeting to see if there was any emerging consensus for April topics.
      • The topic of how have reference collections changed emerging as a potentially good candidate.  
        • Subtopics ideas include:
          • How to highlight the importance of reference sources.
          • Dealing with push-back from faculty re: sources. Faculty don’t always want students to use reference sources, even though they are often more appropriate than journal articles for a given assignment.
    • Paolo suggested usage statistics, popular collections, and outreach with collections as possible topics.
      • Jen mentioned that we have some comments/interest re: popular collections in academia; how it helps your public user community, is it part of your mission, etc.
      • Subtopics include how we pull and use usage statistics data. How we use that data with collections; informing cancellation decisions.
    • Outreach – how are we engaging our faculty with ebooks; questions about licenses, etc.
    • Dan suggested that we could discuss how libraries are refocusing new smaller subjects/collections due to changing demand and use.
    • Alma integration and implementation was suggested as a topic.
      • There was some concern that we don’t want that meeting to turn into a technical services discussion, but we could discuss how Alma is relevant to collections.
    • Keith suggested we approach the reference collection suggestion as a broad topic: how has the shift to electronic has changed how you develop and use your reference collection.
    • Paolo suggested the creation of an analytics series specifically for collections.
      • Jen said that it could be a good way to offer continuity on this topic. We could show people how to set up SUSHI, etc.
      • The fall could be good timing for this.
• The crowdfunding project proposal was discussed.
  • Dan mentioned a comment he saw about how some libraries don’t want to pay for things they’re not going to use; however, that’s one of the aspects of being in a consortium.
• Dan brought up his project idea for discussion: creating a spreadsheet to track what has been cancelled among CARLI members. Would this be useful? How much work would this be? Would it have a point?
  • Lorene mentioned that some libraries and administrators might not want this type of information shared. It might be seen as “talking out of school.”
  • Jenny mentioned that CARLI hasn’t noticed any trends so far, but this may change this cycle.
  • It would be interesting to know what other consortia are doing, etc.
  • Keith mentioned that this topic is interesting, but the knowledge many not have any practical application.
  • David mentioned that the lack of practical application plus the previously-stated privacy concerns may make this a non-starter, useful as this information could potentially be if it were available at a granular level.
  • Jen suggested maybe looking at collection budgets more broadly as a topic. Or perhaps talk about budgets (with the reminder that these chats aren’t recorded).
    • Don’t discuss actual numbers – just percentages.
    • Jenny: This information would help a lot with vendor negotiations, i.e. it would be helpful for CARLI to know that x percentage of libraries are facing budget cuts above x%.
    • May was suggested as a potential timeline for offering this session/discussion.
• The RAILS Online Databases for all Illinois Libraries and Residents proposal was discussed.
  • Dan felt this would be interesting to know about. Some aspects of this project might be relevant to academic libraries, particularly ones that serve the public.
  • Should this be brought to the attention of the CARLI board for participation?
    • This was tabled for further discussion for next meeting. It probably won’t have a lot of overlap with CARLI initiatives, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.

Next Meeting and Deadlines

Next meeting will be Wednesday, April 21 from 9:30 – 11:00am.

Future Meetings:

• May 19, 2021
• June 16, 2021

Informal Chat with the CARLI Collection Management Committee: Looking Back to Move Forward: Reflecting on a Challenging Year in Collection Management

• April 14, 3:00pm