Coordinating Committees

Minutes
User Services Coordinating Committee

Teleconference Meeting
Oct. 9, 2009, 10:00 a.m.

Committee members present:  Kimberly Bartosz  (Parkside), Barbara Bren  (Whitewater ),  Ella Cross  (Superior), Steve Frye (Madison ), Lisa Jewell  (UWSA ex-officio), Valerie Malzacher  (CUWL--ex-officio),  Jill Markgraf (Eau Claire, Chair), Colleen McFarland  (Eau Claire), Cris Prucha (La Crosse) 

Guest: John Pollitz (CUWL chair)

Committee members absent: Dave Dettman (Colleges),  Kris Midthun  (Milwaukee)

1. Announcements:

a. Jill thanked all who volunteered for working groups (Barbara Bren: UB work group, Hans Kishel: ACS work group, Ella Cross: Emerald work group, Rebecca Payne, UW-Madison: CUWL Conference Planning Committee).

b. The group was reminded of the Pandemic Planning for User Services USCC phone conference on Thurs., Oct. 15, noon –1 p.m. Discussion will be facilitated by Nancy McClements (UW-Madison), Vanaja Menon (UW-Parkside), and Myrna McCallister (UW-Whitewater).

2. Updates from work groups/task forces:

a. UB renewals & patron information retention (Barbara): The group’s recommendations (to increase UB student patron group renewals from one to two, to make no changes in renewals for the UB faculty patron group, and to retain one transaction) were shared with the group previously. Jill reported that at the CUWL meeting on Oct. 8 the student renewal recommendation was approved. The recommendation for retention of one transaction will be reviewed and possibly voted upon at the Nov. CUWL meeting.

b. Emerald (Ella): The group has been discussing the renewal package for Emerald that was negotiated by John Jax. Ella will share the deal being offered with the group, which basically applies a $6,368 credit (for cancellations of print and electronic subscriptions on individual campuses) toward System-wide access to the “EMX 120” package that will cost $29,500.

c. ACS: no meeting yet

3. Resource discovery work group

a. Update (Steve): After a hiatus, the Resource Discovery Exploratory Task Force met recently to discuss the relevant portion of the CUWL “Next Steps” planning document created in August. Steve has suggested that the group be renamed Resource Discovery Experimentation Task Force to reflect the focus of its next phase. A draft charge is on the CUWL wiki (http://cuwlwiki.wetpaint.com/page/Resource+Discovery+Experimentation+Task+Force) which has two parts: (1) communicate and educate UWS staff about resource discovery, and (2) experiment with appropriate resource discovery options. The first part of the charge addresses the sense that some staff in the System may not be clear about what “resource discovery” means and why it matters to them. Steve put it this way: “It’s how users discover resources we’ve made available,” e.g., resources we’ve traditionally made identifiable through the OPAC, MINDS content, articles and other content in subscription resources, etc. The goal is to move beyond a federated search tool toward searching of pre-harvested data, with the ideal  being a single search interface that finds all of our resources. But more realistically, in the short-term it will probably be a reduction in the number of interfaces and data silos patrons must use to get to our content. There are two parts to resource discovery: the search interface and the data silos. Google is both an interface as well as a silo of web content. The Forward project is both things as well, providing a search interface and a silo of pre-indexed content (having ingested all of our catalog content). The Summon product also offers both a resource discovery layer (interface) and a silo of licensed article data. The two parts are separate; you could buy Summon and still use Forward to provide the catalog content silo. There are products being developed now, such as Serials Solutions’ Summon. Jill expects that USCC will have significant involvement with resource discovery this year, as the next steps include assessing the tools that may be appropriate. It is very important, therefore, that USCC members become familiar with resource discovery issues. Steve suggested it also is important to understand how the tools we have already (like MetaLib) work as well. There are plans to address the first part of the group’s charge, starting with directors referring their staffs to a CUWL wiki page (http://cuwlwiki.wetpaint.com/page/Resource+Discovery) that has links to prepare UW System staff for informed discussions on their local campuses and System-wide. John Pollitz said that CUWL will form a work group to request funding from the Common System group in December for experimentation with different resource discovery tools.

b. Nov. 19 USCC phone conference/webinar: Staff across the System will be able to discuss resource discovery. It is hoped that all will have prepared by reading the materials linked from the wiki (mentioned above).

4. Net steps document from CUWL:

a. USCC to assess Forward and commercial tools for user perspective/reaction (report due spring 2010)

b. USCC to form work group with LTCC to examine unmediated UW system borrowing: Jill is not calling for USCC volunteers yet. She will look into the existing UB group first.

The meeting ended at 10:56 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,
Barbara Bren