VIVA Resources for Users Committee

VIVA Resources for Users Committee Minutes of the Meeting of March 18, 2005

Present: Gene Damon (VCCS, presiding), Sherle Abramson (RCC), Karen Cary (VCU), Sharon Gasser (JMU), Louveller Luster (VSU), Paul Metz (VaTech), Jane Penner (UVa), Ann Pettingill (ODU), Jim Rettig (Richmond), Sylvia Rortvedt (NVCC), John Walsh (GMU), Kathy Perry (VIVA), Jim Self (UVa), John Tombarge (W&L), Pat Van Zandt (W&M) Guests: Amanda Watson (CLIR fellow at UVa), Jeff Clark (Director of Media Technology at JMU)

1. Announcements—Amanda Watson is a CLIR postdoc fellow at UVa and has joined us for this meeting 2. Changes/additions to agenda—Changes made and recorded. 3. Minutes of the January 28, 2005, meeting were approved as submitted. 4. PBS video offer – Jeff Clark, from JMU—JMU has licensed some products from Films for the Humanities and is holding discussions with Annenberg and PBS. Doesn’t know if Films for the Humanities or PBS is ready to deal with consortia. JMU has chosen MPEG4 as a standard; this will allow future migration to new formats. JMU has to encode everything. Not clear if PBS can provide films in MPEG4. JMU must purchase a second copy if for second copies of a title if it needs to encode it in another format. JMU has about 1,100 titles under license from Films for the Humanities. JMU is adding about 400 more from PBS. The two organizations’ licenses are similar. Both offer permanent access. Jeff distributed a list of currently available PBS titles. JMU would not like to be a central VIVA-wide server for the PBS videos. OhioLink has each institution download content to their own servers; encoding is done centrally. There are opportunities in the future for distributed encoding among VIVA members. JMU serves to remote users who authenticate; however it works only if they have a high speed connection. Current PBS offer to VIVA is same price U of Maryland has been offered for just its main campus. There are odd inconsistencies in pricing offers; they haven’t yet figured out this issue. A deal this attractive won’t be offered again. Films for the Humanities plans a product rollout this spring. We need to calculate how much server space would be required. Can we buy a small lot (e.g., 100 titles) while we get experience with the technical issues. JMU allows faculty and staff to download files; students can only view a streaming file. JMU is accommodating students who need to download a clip. 5. Budget – K. Perry—We can pay Nature next year if we wish. Can we prepay some things not due until next year. VIVA had hoped to get A $400K+ budget increase during the short session; this didn’t happen. Higher ed lobbying focused on the charter institutions initiative. The legislature affirmed that VIVA serves non-profit institutions; proprietary schools will try to change this in the future. Sole source procurement will be exempt from eVA; the effective date for this isn’t certain.

6. Renewals  Annual Reviews—Three-year deal being offered. Kathy Perry recommended approval. The committee recommend renewal.  OED renewal—we need someone to take on negotiations with Oxford—OUP will not renew our five-year deal for the old edition of the OED. VIVA made a one-time payment of $500 for this! Jane Penner will investigate this. 7. Training sub-committee—P. Van Zandt—Ulrich’s training conducted last week an Blue Ridge Community College and Randolph-Macon College. Participants thought it was good. Training fair will be August 3 at Radford. May be replicated at William and Mary. Cambridge Scientific, facvita, BioOne, and Gale are committed. LexisNexis may be a good one to add. VIVA RUC meeting, 3-19-05. p. 2

8. First Search update—J. Walsh—February stats not available when John tried to get turnaway information, etc. However this doesn’t matter any longer because a new OCLC rep has convinced OCLC to adopt a new model of port allocation so that high-use databases are available and so that excess port capacity on other databases can be reallocated to WorldCat. WorldCat now has 50 ports; several other databases (Article 1st, Medline Electronic Books, ECO A&I) have 24 ports; all others have 10 ports. John will look at February data and compare it to April data since these represent the last full month of the old system and the first full month of the new. This went into effect last Thursday, March 10. Kathy is grappling with how to inform member institutions about this. Have purchased 100,000 new searches; should get us through summer. Cost per search goes to $0.90 next year. Total number of searches has been in decline. Electronic Books database hasn’t been announced as part of the base package. John will work with John Duke on this. 9. RFP Committee—S. Gasser—RFP issued March 4. It is available one the VIVA Web site. Sharon hasn’t had many questions yet. Responses are due April 7. Trial information should be available April 8 and good into June. Vendor demo will be May 11 at VCU. Should we have demos for both databases and full-text collections, or just database? There could be three vendors for the full-text. Committee meets on May 25; Steering Committee meets on June 9. RUC can approve committee’s recommendation by conference call on June 7, 11:00 AM. Survey is under construction. 10. Report on Gale Webinar—S. Abramson—It was an interactive online demo for their e-books collection with focus on Dictionary of American History. The One-time cost is based on FTE. We can pick and choose titles. Faculty can set up links to particular sections of a book. Updating of e-books tied to schedule for print counterpart. Has an illustration index. Use reports available. The service is compatible with XREF, EndNote, etc. Gale has done a statewide deal with North Carolina. Pricing is vague; seems tied to cost of print, whether or not the print is owned, number of e-books owned, and FTE. 11. VIVA serials audit project—P. Metz—Recent workshops went well. Paul learned how to help people with loading their information. JMU will load titles in journal aggregations. Task force has identified eight publishers and four members each have initiated discussions with two vendors. SIAM would not talk to Paul; they do consortial deals only outside the United States. ASM has complicated structure based on number of life sciences majors and faculty. 12. Review charge for encyclopedia review—Sylvia reported on that the small number of respondents to a survey expressed a definite preference for Britannica. She described EB’s proposed increases through 2007-8. Do we want VIVA to offer an encyclopedia? Do we want to review options? If the latter, do we include Wikkipedia in such a review? If RUC is considering dropping Britannica, we need to let member institutions know well in advance. RUC concluded this is sleeping dog and we should let it lie. 13. Possibles  Nature Archives—P. Van Zandt—Renewal due in August, but we can pay this year. The offer either includes the archive or it doesn’t; we have to choose one. Cannot buy just ten years of the archive. They will not offer multi-year deals. Originally came to us with 20% increase; they have backed down to 10%. How valuable is the archive to our users? Archive is a one-time cost plus annual maintenance. One attraction is that we could pay for the archive this year; but then we wouldn’t have that money to prepay other things. It was moved to purchase the Nature archive and renew the Nature subscription. The motion was approved.  PBS Videos—S. Gasser—Need to discuss with our institutions implications for the infrastructure support and other needs (including staffing needs) to make this work. Do we buy now when there is a great deal and figure out the implementation later? Or do we wait and it turns out to be more? This is the best opportunity to do this as a VIVA RUC meeting, 3-19-05. p. 3

consortium. It was moved that RUC recommend purchase of the PBS videos to the Steering Committee and recommend that the Steering Committee establish a task force to work out an implementation plan.  Blackwell—S. Gasser—Blackwell is handling more scholarly societies’ journals, including some moving from OUP. No requirement for individual institutions to retain print subscriptions. What happens to subscriptions not included in the 211 title package? Each institution will need to sustain those subscriptions on its own. A deal is feasible only if there is cost sharing among institutions and a benefit to them. We need to determine projected 2006 cost among VIVA publics for the 211 titles included in this offer. Blackwell will work with each private institution and look at its Blackwell subscriptions to generate a price for each of those institutions.  IEEE—J. Walsh—Investigation of this began when it appeared that VIVA would have a $400K+ increase from the General Assembly. But that didn’t happen! However, it is a better offer than IEEE offered the previous time. That helps during the next round of lobbying for VIVA; furthermore IEEE has provided quotes for 2006 and for 2007..  Standard & Poors—John Tombarge reported that he will continue discussions with them about NetAdvantage.  University of Chicago—Offers 48 journals. For most currently offer electronic access at no additional cost to print subscribers. Has not dealt with a consortium before, but has a new staff member charged with working with consortia. That person is trying to identify VIVA institutions’ subscriptions and total payment. Two-thirds of U of C titles are super-core titles. VIVA averages fifteen subscriptions per title!  Royal Society of Chemistry—John Walsh reported that RSC offering full text of all journals from 1841-1997. VCU and VaTech have it; not clear if UVa has it. Why would VIVA pick this over the Nature archive?  GeoScience World—John Walsh described it as an aggregation of peer reviewed journals from six societies; offered through Highwire. Pat Van Zandt will gather additional information when he meets with a rep in the near future.  H.W. Wilson—G. Damon—Wilson came to Gene to talk about a VCCS deal on its new full-text science database. The regional sales rep said Wilson would like to re- open discussions with VIVA, especially about the biographical works. Most institutions bought something from Wilson after it pulled its databases from FirstSearch. 14. RUC authorized that end-of-year funds be used to purchase additional FirstSearch searches.

15 Ongoing support from member institutions—Gene Damon said that we need to have something to present to the Steering Committee for its July 14 retreat. That committee needs a specific proposal to give the discussion focus. It is a big challenge to convince the General Assembly to increase the VIVA budget by $400K-$500K annually to cover inflation costs. Time did not permit serious discussion of this issue on March 19. This will head the agenda for the next meeting.

16 Project Muse—Jane Penner discussed a new advisory board for MUSE on which she serves as a library representative. In a conference call earlier in the week she learned that MUSE sees itself making all back files available to a uniform date. In response to Google Scholar MUSE is also looking at pay-per-view models. Most of MUSE’s growth in sales is in Asia. ICOLC recommended curbing cost increases to 6%/year; MUSE says that will limit their growth rate and the number of new journals they can manage internally.

17 During the lunch break RUC presented a gift to Sherle Abrahamson and wished her well as she moves to Michigan and begins married life. VIVA RUC meeting, 3-19-05. p. 4

18 Next meeting date—Thursday, May 12. Jane will check on meeting space.