Coordinating Committees

Minutes
CUWL CRS Conference Call

Thursday August 27, 2009
crs@maillist.uwsa.edu

Committee Members Present:  Ewa Barczyk (Milwaukee, CUWL Rep), Janice Bogstad (Eau Claire), Erin Czech (Oshkosh), Michele McKnelly (River Falls), Richard Reeb (Madison), Tom Reich (Stevens Point), Mary Rieder (Colleges, Chair), Joan Robb (Green Bay), Kathy Schneider (WiLS), Judy Wurtzler (Platteville, CDC Chair)

Committee Members Absent:  Karen Jander (Milwaukee), Lisa Jewell (UWSA), Lee Konrad (Madison),

Chair Mary Rieder convened the conference call through FreeConferenc.com utility at 1:03 p.m.

1. CUWL CRS Coordinating Committee members introduced themselves (see above).

2. Minutes taking will rotate alphabetically, starting with Janice Bogstad, secretary for this meeting.

3. Update on Library Dynamics Collection Analysis (Joan Robb).  There will be a new version of Library Dynamics, but Joan was able to verify that old library data will not be lost.  We will receive an email of the analysis presented at the CUWL conference held earlier this summer.  CUWL would like a final report and recommendation on number of copies of any title to purchase System-wide for their November meeting.

4. Issues concerning the Shared Electronic Collection –

a. Review of current SEC budget.

i. We are looking at deficit of $27,138 if we keep no more than a 5% budget increase.
ii. Reeb is confident that our price increases will stay below 5% overall. 
iii. For example we know that the archive for American Chemical Society will stay at $1000 and the price increase for ACS overall is 4.5% not 5%.
iv. It is unclear whether we have direct access to carryover funds between years, but it appears that an equivalent amount to our carryover was added to the budget last year.
v. We may need to revisit the method for allocating the campus cost-sharing model.  To date it has been based on weighted credit hours and allocations have not been reviewed for several years.

b. Update on evaluation and comparison of Ebsco’s Business Source Complete vs. ProQuest’s AbI/Inform (Janice Bogstad).

i. Bogstad reported that the sub-committee convened two conference calls this summer and has done several comparison studies of ABI Inform and BSC journals content. 
ii. She described the ProQuest demonstration done for the committee via webinar and sent copies of the information to the members.  She noted that a price quote was not solicited as we are current subscribers.
iii. She noted additional content and a new interface, as well as a free upgrade from Global to Complete were offered.  The committee’s observations on the webinar are included in her report forwarded to the CUWL CRS Committee along with webinar slides from ProQuest.
iv. The Ebsco demonstration used a different set of evaluative tools, Eigenfactors.org, to explain the superiority of their content.
v. The subcommittee is preparing a list of relevant features for the combined CDC CRS meeting in September.
vi. Reeb reported on his meeting with Mike Peters and Kendall Bartsch.  The price quote he was originally given for Ethnic NewsWatch and a newspaper package were incorrect.  This was not to our benefit.  They were not able to conform to the lower price. ProQuest newspapers are going up significantly in price.
vii. Peters and Bartsch requested more information on the work of the subcommittee evaluating ABI Inform and Ebsco Business Source Complete.  Enyart, who is also on that subcommittee attended.  Enyart was able to satisfy their informational request.  ProQuest will give us a quote for Factiva, a trial of Factiva, and a list a price quote for other databases they want us to consider. They are asking us to look at a number of products.  ProQuest Central as a competitor to Lexis/Nexis.  We have ABI until the end of this calendar year.  They promise us better individual pricing if we expand our proQuest products.  Our subscription to Lexis Nexis goes until June 30, 2010.
viii. We need to consider Open URL Compatibility- Has Lexis Nexis improved their access?  Their linking is spotty too. 
ix. We may want to get information on the items available through ProQuest Central.  McKnelly will pull up newspaper list from Factiva and will run a comparison of Factiva and ProQuest Newspapers Packages.

c. ACS Negotiations:  The Journal of Chemical Education is not included in the package of journals offered. Jewell has sent the price quote back to ACS to generate an invoice and will pay it as a lump sum.  Then each campus will be billed according to our previous arrangements.

i. Reeb suggested that we have a committee to look specifically into this problem.  Minitex is having similar problems with ACS.  Ruth Ginzberg from UW System office of procurement has also been pulled into this and someone in her office has signed off on the price quote and she should continue to be involved.  Perhaps we can assemble a group with CARLI and Minitex to help us negotiate.  They currently get better pricing because they have a larger pool of buyers than our system.  Chemistry faculty who have been contacted at Madison inform us that, while they are members, ACS is run by a private company who is not interested in their concerns.
ii. ACS Committee will include Ginzberg, Reeb, someone from the Chemistry faculty, Wurtzler.  McKnelly will identify a Chemistry faculty member.  Jill Markgraf will be asked to help identify someone from User Services committee to also participate.  Reeb also recommended including Madison’s Chemistry librarian, Sharon Mulvey, as a member.

d. Emerald Negotiations – Another working group needs to be established for these negotiations.  In the past it was John Jax, Reeb, Sharon Knight, Jewell, and now Ginzberg.  This issue is more urgent than ACS as we have not yet finalized this year’s contract.  We’ve already paid the invoice but don’t want to get to November or December of this year without a resolution of our long-term relationship with Emerald.  The working group should include someone from CDC – Wurtzler will contact Knight to help to identify that person. – Reeb will not chair both committees.  Paring down the titles with them won’t give us much savings. Licenses now are all electronic access – they aren’t requiring us to keep the print at Emerald – they wanted everyone to drop the print and that’s an industry standard. 

e. Local database subscriptions:  Rieder distributed a spreadsheet created by Cheryl Bradley of WiLS last winter for tracking all of the e-resources licensed through WiLS by the UWs and private colleges.  Rieder would like to modify this and expand the UW listings to include all of our existing licenses in order to look for databases which it might be more cost-efficient to license through the SEC.

f. Price sharing project:  La Crosse has put together a price sharing database and Oshkosh, River Falls, La Crosse, Platteville, and Colleges have all entered some data (although not everyone’s is current).  Anyone else who wants to participate should email Bill Doering to get the password information for the shared list.  Current pricing information should be listed.  Ask Doering if you need additional product names on the list.     

5. All members of CRS and CDC have read/write access to the restricted access document server linked from the CRS wiki page, but McKnelly and Czech may still need it.  Rieder will check with them on what access they have.

6. Ethnic News Watch group license. We aren’t going to get everyone in system which is the only way we could get a significant discount.  Currently it is purchased by Madison, Eau Claire, Green Bay and Colleges, but not everyone.

7. Addressing with DPI and Ebsco the changes made to the Ebsco interface:  The BadgerLink interfaces which Ebsco and DPI put in place in July wiped out all local UWs’ customizations and added some links which don’t make sense in a UW library environment.  Rieder will contact Lysa Burns at Ebsco to consider how to preserve campus defaults in the future and ask that users be forewarned of such changes if they are ever necessary again.

8. UB Issues raised at CUWL Summer Conference:  Electronic discussion has not been sufficient to resolve the issues regarding allowing two renewals for UB materials and retaining circulation history.  Rieder will contact Jill Markgraf and Jon Mark Bolthouse about creating a small group to study the issues and make a recommendation to CUWL.  If we decided to keep one or more patron transactions back in circulation history, this will affect the UB patron purges which would have to be run less frequently so that patron names aren’t deleted too soon.

9. There will be a joint CUWL-CRS/CDC meeting next month. Wurtzler and Rieder will poll both committees for dates and location.  Stevens Point was suggested.

10. CRS will have regular monthly conference calls at 1 PM on the second Wednesday of each month, usually one hour in duration, starting in October (there will be a face to face in September).  The conference call was adjourned at 2:50 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Janice Bogstad, Secretary for the meeting