Agenda Items include:

1. Fund levels in ACORN book funds (Julie)
2. Review of our use of electronic fund types – an ongoing challenge
3. Proquest subscriptions for the Tennessean and Wall Street Journal
4. Quote for expanded access to Proquest Dissertations
5. Project Muse – Consider upgrade to Premium package?
6. Pcard collections purchases – data for recording in ACORN
7. Audit of periodicals/serials – progress report and future implications
8. Other items?

The Collections Committee met on August 17, 2009.

Regrets: Jared Ingersoll, Deborah Broadwater, and Holling Smith-Borne. Guest attendee: Bryan Kurowski

1. Fund levels in ACORN book funds Prior to the meeting, Julie had circulated an email with two proposed scenarios for how we could utilize the new fund levels available in Symphony 3.3. They involved the following.
Scenario 1
We would use Level 5 and reserve level 6 for future expansion. Level 5 would contain policies which would correspond with what the CC was originally attempting to identify through the use of the fund name. If we modify the existing funds that have the Level 2 set to “Electronic” to add one of these categories as level 5 then we could run reports that can drill down to capture a certain category of the electronic funds without having to create a new set of funds. For instance, in a canned report, one would select level 5=EJRNL-SUB to get a list of all the e-journal subscriptions that the library has on order. As it is now, it is very difficult to run a report to capture only e-journals or e-books or just databases, one has to capture all electronic funds and then weed the list. With this proposal, one could also select more than one policy in the level 5 selection in a canned report to capture other groupings, such as all one time electronic purchases for a given fiscal year by selecting all the policies that contain OT (for “one-time”) in the policy.

Scenario 2 The alternative is that we would set Level 5 to describe the type of material, such as EBOOK, EBOOKCOLL, EJOURNAL, EJOURNALCOLL, INDEX/ABSTRACTS, INDEX/E-JOURNALS and then use level 6 to indicate whether it is a Subscription or Onetime fund. This scenario basically gives one the same reporting functionality that Scenario 1 provides. The only additional benefit is that from within any wizards that have the option to search by Fund Level one could call up all their funds tagged as Subscription or Onetime OR could call up a list of all funds by type, such as e-book single title funds OR all e-journal collection funds, etc. OR one could combine the two levels. The drawback to this scenario is that we are left without a level to use if we discover a new way that we would like to differentiate funds in the future.

Once the policies are added to WorkFlows, the libraries will edit their funds accordingly. If Technical Services sees any discrepancies, we will bring it to the attention of the library.

The committee was in agreement to use scenario 1 and save level 6 for future development. There was a question about how the -18- funds should be used as they are sometimes used for serials that in print were on 08 and sometimes for access fees. One of the ways we can distinguish is through the use of the Acquisitions Material Type field. Once orders are populated with this information it can be a selection in a report. For now, this field cannot be output in a canned report.

There was also discussion on where libraries are funding electronic serials that were funded on -08- when they were received in print format since there is no one to one fund format as there is with the 06/36 formats. It was decided that there was no reason why we cannot move orders that were on 08 to 36 funds once they are moved to an online format. It was proposed we change the name in the funds from e-journals to e-serials, if there is no real need to distinguish. The 06/08 formats are historical formats that likely had more to do with processing. Per Roberta, this change should not hinder collection of ARL statistics. Libraries will send to the Julie what their plans are for doing away with 08 funds and we will move orders accordingly.

Mary Ellen and Julie will hammer out the final list of acquisitions material types to submit to LITS. If there is a particular type of material that needs to be tracked for statistics and you would like to propose a type, please ask us.

2. Review of our use of electronic fund types – an ongoing challenge. Related to updating funds, Bill reminded everyone to review their funds and fund structures to be sure they adhere to the agreed upon structure for tracking electronic resources.

3. Proquest subscriptions for the Tennessean and Wall Street Journal Bill reported that at the end of the fiscal year we had to quickly set up access to the Tennessean through ProQuest. The rates are quite high. He is working on a proposal for the committee’s review that will permanently fund this resource. He also reported that there is interest in the Wall Street Journal online. In particular, Law is interested in the back file and is willing to fund $10,000 of the cost. If there is interest in the back file and the ongoing subscription, let him know. Management expressed interest. He will also propose funding for the subscription using a new model where each library contributes a portion of the cost to this core resource based on their collection budget. He believes there are other core resources such as this where this model could be used in the future.

4. Quote for expanded access to Proquest Dissertations Lee Ann reported that there was interest in the full-text to all digital dissertations from a faculty member. Currently we have access to all full-text VU thesis and dissertations and an index for the others. The cost would be about significantly more than we pay now. Bill will investigate how much ILL is already spending acquiring full-text for non-VU thesis and dissertations so that figure can be calculated into our overall spend level and get back to the committee.

5. Project Muse – Consider upgrade to Premium package? One of the benefits of Project Muse is that we have permanent archival access. Consideration is now being given to upgrading from the standard to the premium collection. Bill reported that 90% of the titles in this collection would be Central titles. Bill will come up with a proposal. The upgrade would cost an additional $10,000.

6. Pcard collections purchases – data for recording in ACORN Mary Ellen reminded libraries that if they are doing pcard purchases for materials, please send her the transaction ID from Paymentnet and she will have it posted in the requisition field in WorkFlows. These can be looked up using the Display Order wizards using the Requisition index.

7. Audit of periodicals/serials – progress report and future implications Bill received everyone's interim report. The Provost was pleased with what we have done so far. The audit needs to be completed by the end of December. General findings are that there are still serials that are still only in print format. There were also other categories approved to justify keeping print than appeared on the original list such as, images are not adequate, Law routes some print issues to faculty, and some publishers don’t allow online only.

We will probably be asked in the future to consider at what point we should withdraw print back files. Since the Information Alliance was partially formed to address issues such as this, we will explore working more with this group on the back file issue after the audit.

8. Other items? The University of Chicago is offering their titles as a package deal. Bill will look at these and what we are already paying and send out a purchase proposal if it makes sense to do so.

Bill recommends that libraries set aside 5% of their materials budgets in case of a give back request for fiscal year 2009/2010. One has not been requested at this time. Lee Ann asked how other libraries track restricted fund. Bill reported that Divinity calculates what the income will be based on quarterly amounts from previous year. The amount won't exactly match and this generally allows for a positive amount in e-dog in case it is needed.

Julie reminded the group that the deadline for periodical cancellations being reported to the ESMT is August 19.