Institutional Repository Investigative Task Force Meeting: April 10, 2018

Conference call

Members Present: Cheri Cameron (Parkland College); Stephanie Davis-Kahl (Illinois Wesleyan University); John Dorr, Chair (Northwestern University); Kyle Rimkus (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign); Laurie Sauer (Knox College)

Members Absent: Jonathon Nabe (Southern Illinois University Carbondale); Ken Orenic (College of DuPage)

CARLI Staff Attending: Elizabeth Clarage, Amy Maroso

Decisions

• Minutes of February 14 meeting approved.

Task Assigned

• Cheri Cameron agreed to take minutes.
• Move pieces preliminary report to final report. (Kyle, others)
• Draft email for follow-up to select survey respondents to get a sense of what respondents with IRs are currently spending. (John)
• Set up meeting for mid-May for options. (Amy)

Discussion

• Follow Up CARLI Board meeting:
• Elizabeth reported that the survey was well received. There were some questions that we may want to address in final report.
  • If an institution currently has an IR, what would be the local benefit for staff time, support or money, to join a consortial implementation?
  • What are the efficiencies with consortial implementation?
  • Are there local currently operated installations that might be open to opening up their repository to others? LIBRIS? Others?
  • Kyle spoke of the possibility of University of Illinois developing a replacement for DSpace, which may be able to be opened to other institutions. Hasn’t mentioned it because it’s still in development.
  • Elizabeth suggested that possible future developments that may address questions that are brought up in the March board meeting.
• Discuss the follow-up survey
• Group discussed possibility of a follow up survey. What would be the focus would be in a follow-up survey. There were an estimated 65 respondents to our original survey that gave permission to follow up, 35 of those indicated that they would be open to cost sharing, 21 answered “don’t know.” Twelve respondents with IRs indicated an interest in a CARLI solution. We might use this smaller group to help determine what benefits there might be for joining a consortial IR. Those who already have an IR might have more information on money, staffing, etc.
• A question was asked for clarification about what exactly we would be trying to find out and reminded that the majority of our group thought a recommendation should be to wait a couple of years for technology to mature, while a few thought the time to do it is now. “I guess we’re trying to figure out how to make this work?”
• The final report needs to address are the talking points -- the possible recommendation that were given in the charge, which could be done without a follow-up survey. If one of the recommendations was going to be “yes,” but with further input from the group, then an additional survey would be warranted.
• Some task force members stated that they were comfortable with recommendations in final report without survey, but there was still interest in surveying members with current IRs, which would give us a benchmark for where to begin with costs – that might be a task for a future team. There might be a way to incorporate the “go ahead” but, guarded, with a range of cost. Current CARLI members with IRs can share information on current costs.
• One suggestion was to compile mock-up scenarios of what large institutions are paying and smaller institutions are paying.  
• There is a diverse set of institutions to survey for follow up information, talked briefly about a time frame for survey. Asked if we should return to the  initial consensus of waiting to see how market matures in the next few years, going forward with the not at this time recommendation.
• Kyle volunteered to address waiting for market to mature in the in the final report.
• There was an expression of feeling handicapped in task force charge with determining cost in building and maintaining IR and then determining what the structure might be. Those are two important parts of the charge but we can’t address them. “Couple that with the initial statement that this shouldn’t cost CARLI any money. We went into this thing handicapped. If all of that were gone, we could determine costs and structure. If additional resources weren’t so much a burden, I would vote for going ahead. I think from the outset we had a “monkey wrench” I’m not sure we could come to any different conclusion.” One person cautioned against making a recommendation to go forward with the project.
• There was agreement with this statement. Another added that we don’t have a handle on what bepress is going to look like in the near future.
• There was the suggestion about including the idea of surveying existing IR institutions in the final report, but believes that it’s not something we need to do at this point.
• There are discussions about consortial IR solutions and pricing models are beginning to happen at bepress. Pam Zitu was mentioned as a contact.
• The group reviewed the final paragraph of the March preliminary report indicating that the final paragraphs indicated that we would further address the degree of interest in participating institutions in the final report. Suggested, rather than survey, an email of one or two questions to get an idea of how much interested members would contribute to consortial IR, as a way of informing the situation going forward. Suggests “this is what people are willing to put into a product,” which would inform a task force who would come up with recommendations for products to purchase.
• There was the question that would this approach create turmoil, set up expectations and suggested that there might be a more “theoretical” approach to collecting this information.
• There was the suggestion that the task force ask current IR members (bepress, LIBRIS, DSpace) what they’re currently paying know. Since we have their classification, we can just group them by type of institution with what they’re paying. Suggested an email to about 10 institutions to get the information.
• All agreed.
• John will draft email, try to get that out quickly, just to get a sense of what people are currently spending.
• The next CARLI board meeting is June 16. John suggested one more call to discuss email responses. Amy will send Doodle poll
• Amy created an online document to draft the final report and shared the link with all.
• The task force recommendations are included so that responses can be written for each of them.  Portions of the preliminary report can be cleaned up and copied into the final report.
• The meeting concluded with a brief discussion about LIBRIS users. A question was asked if anyone using LIBRIS knew if the group would be open to the idea of opening it up, if there were to be a consortial IR, if the group wants to address that question? John suggested separate emails for LIBRIS users.

Next Meeting

To be determined.