Collections Committee
Preliminary Agenda for meeting of August 28th, 2:00pm
- Collections Management Policy -Digital Preservation, Deacification issues
- Review of Shared Electronic Funds purchases-Cost allocations and formulas
- Public Library of Science & Open Access publications
- E-book offers & Information Alliance prospects-Ebrary; Springer E-books; Sage e-journals
- Career Development resources - in libraries and university Career Center
Please submit other topics as they arise to Bill Hook.
Minutes Collections Committee August 28, 2007
Present: Bill Hook (chair), Janice Adlington (notes), Mary Beth Blalock, Deborah Broadwater, Deborah Brooks, Sue Davis, Lee Ann Lannom, Mary Prince, Carlin Sappenfield, Holling Smith-Borne, Mary Ellen Wilson, Roberta Winjum.
Guest: Rachel Vacek
Absent: Eileen Crawford, Kathy Smith
Housekeeping: Bill asked if the committee would agree to rotating responsibility for taking minutes. With great enthusiasm the proposal was accepted. Janice Adlington volunteered to take minutes at this meeting. We will proceed alphabetically by last name through the membership.
1. Collections Management Policy - Digital Preservation, Deacification issues
An overall policy for collection preservation will be a topic for future discussion by this committee. This item will also be taken up by the DLSC.
Sue Davis has recently completed a white paper on digital preservation: Bill will forward this to all members of the committee.
2. Review of Shared Electronic Funds purchases - Cost allocations and formulas
Bill distributed a spreadsheet listing databases purchased from the shared fund. The formulas used to allocate costs among the libraries currently are precise to fractions of percentages, creating extra work in order services, as invoices can't be paid automatically. Bill proposes to simplify these formulas.
Business Source Premier, paid for on the shared fund, will be upgraded to Business Source Complete; Owen will pick up the cost difference.
3. Public Library of Science & Open Access publications
Open access publications often have page or article charges for the authors. Institutional membership in PLoS would reduce these charges for Vanderbilt faculty. Membership indicates a library's commitment to advocating for open access; it does not commit the library to paying publication fees, nor is there any widespread model for libraries paying publication charges from their materials budgets.
If we do join, this should be the start of a broader conversation on campus about open access, fostered by the library. We would also need to find ways to let faculty know that they will get discounts on the listed charges when publishing in PLoS journals.
Tracy Primich has noted that PLoS is one of several OA organizations: she will research this further for SPC.
Deborah Broadwater mentioned that heavy increases in membership fees for BioMed Central, another open access publishing initiative, had led Eskind to cancel BMC, and that she continues to receive requests from faculty who would like to receive the discounted publishing rates.
4. E-book offers & Information Alliance prospects - Ebrary; Springer E-books; Sage e-journals
a) Ebrary
Ebrary has given the Library access to 17 free ebooks for one year: the titles are accessible from Acorn. The company offers various packages of ebooks for purchase or subscription, including the Cambridge University Press frontlist. Titles can also be purchased individually, with prices for a single user approximating retail, and site-wide access available for retail +50%.
Central has had several trials of Ebrary without committing to purchase. The reader is attractive and functional, but the collections are seen as expensive. We will be hearing more from Ebrary sales.
b) Springer E-Books - trial, Sept 14 through Nov 14
The Information Alliance (UT, UK, and VU) have a proposal from Springer for purchase of the 2008 Springer ebook collection, consisting of 3150 titles. A trial of the 2005-2007 collections will run for two months starting mid-September. It is also possible to purchase or subscribe to subject collections.
c) Sage E-Journals
The Information Alliance has received proposed pricing - with the ASERL discount - for the Sage E-Journal collection, consisting of 452 titles. Vanderbilt currently subscribes to 114 journals from this publisher.
5. Career Development resources - in libraries and university Career Center (Rachel)
The Owen Library subscribes to Vault, limited by ip to Owen patrons only. Separately, the Career Center provides campus-wide access to 'Vault Gold'. There may be other resources which are redundantly provided by more than one campus entity. Rachel asked if other libraries are interested in discussing cooperation with campus centers in providing resources.
Owen shares costs with the Career Center for 'CareerSearch', and with the Technology Transfer Center for one database.
Bill will contact the acting director of the Career Center, Cindy Funk, to pursue cooperation and discuss library support; Jody Combs will represent LITS.
6. Additional items - license procedure (Roberta)
Roberta is creating a license procedure and would like to know the steps that are followed in each library. Deborah Brooks reported that Owen keeps copies of their licenses, but that the specifics of the agreement - access restrictions, simultaneous users, etc. - may only be in external correspondence or the invoice. Mary Beth keeps copies of invoices that come directly to her, so that she can easily track annual price increases. Vendors increasingly require an annual sign-off for renewal. She requests a copy of the license at the time she obtains initial pricing. Orders may be in process while waiting for licenses to clear: this process may proceed in parallel. Bill scans invoices and saves them as .pdfs. He will keep copies in the restricted 'Collections' folder of the g:\ drive. For access by Owen, Law, and Eskind, he can password-protect items accessible from the wiki. Holling received a license procedure from John. He will forward this to Roberta. Mary Beth will update her procedure and forward.