OCLC Canada Advisory Council: Conference Call, February 10^th, 2006

Present:

Daniel Boivin, Director, OCLC Canada

Bill Maes, University Librarian, Dalhousie University

Bernard Dumouchel, Director General, CISTI

Ingrid Parent, Assistant Deputy Minister, Library and Archives Canada, Documentary Heritage Collection Sector

Brian Campbell, Director Systems and Technical Services, Vancouver Public Library

Ernie Ingles, Vice-Provost, University of Alberta

Bruce Crocco, Director, Global & Segment Marketing, OCLC

Absents :

John Teskey, Director of Libraries, University of New Brunswick

Hélène Roussel, directrice générale, Direction générale de la diffusion, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec

Cathy De Rosa, V.P. Marketing & Library Services, OCLC

Topics discussed:

1. Introduction of the new delegates.
2. Review the minutes of the September 16th, 2005, meeting (update, questions)
3. Update on the Virtual Storage project and possible need for Canada (Chip Nilges, VP New Services)
4. Review of Members Council agenda for the February 10-12 meeting
5. OCLC Canada upcoming Conferences – OCAC Delegates participation
6. Members Council listserv
7. Meeting dates for 2006 and Location for the September 2006 meeting
8. Other business
9. End of the meeting

Note: The following minutes capture the essential components of the meeting. Action items are listed at the end of the minutes.

1.   Introduction of the new delegates

The two new delegates were introduced by Bernard Dumouchel:

Bill Maes, University Librarian, Dalhousie University

Hélène Roussel, directrice générale, Direction générale de la diffusion, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.

2   Review the minutes and action items of the September meeting

• Ernie Ingles' title is "Vice-Provost".
• Page 2, 3, last paragraph should read: "Note from LAC: In 2007, eContent will be part of legal deposit. Depending on access conditions, some e-documents will only be available on site."
• Cooperative purchasing. The OCLC Canada Web site for this initiative is up: Cooperative purchasing. It still needs some improvements, like allowing placing orders from the site.
• A listserv announcement should follow shortly.
• Can the Openly Informatics acquisition conflicts with this initiative since it might compete with Serials Solution? Answer is no. This is treated and considered as a separate program. We become a marketing arm for these organizations and the fact that we have close to 1,000 libraries using one or multiple of our services is attractive for them. We also take care of invoicing in Canada. This is why they can provide discounts to Canadian libraries through OCLC Canada. For OCLC Canada, this is a prefect opportunity to support a cooperative initiative that will benefit numerous Canadian libraries in the future. It expands the services we provide.
• Open WorldCat. Nearly 4 million records (represents 75% of holdings based on FRBR) are in WorldCat, Yahoo and soon AskJeeves. Google Scholar has 5 – 6 million book records. All of the records are at these organizations. Ingesting the records is taking time. Main issue that remains is the ranking algorithm as the remaining records are higher up in ranking and this need to be improved.

3.   Update on the Virtual Storage project and possible need for Canada (Chip Nilges, VP New Services)

• Paul Gerhman, University Librarian, from Vanderbelt started the project. A group of ACRL joined Vanderbelt to start the project.
• Off site storage space is a growing demand and they wanted to find out if cooperation could be a solution to be even more efficient.
• He contracted WorldCat Collection Analysis to get the "intelligence" needed to identify what could be accomplished.
• They identified who owned what in the group so that they could decide who was to keep what in the group. This simply summarizes is the virtual storage project.
• The OCLC Office of Research drafted a white paper with them called "Optimized management of print resources". Essentially, the paper has Three (3) levels:

1. Characterization:


• Share information on local print and made available to all.
  
• Light weight and limited benefits.
  
2. Coordination of local action.


• Include no. 1 and is a deeper form of virtual collaboration.
  
• Common sets of policies: responsibility & commitments (Ex.: preserve last copies, ILL, etc.).
  
• Increased benefits but more commitments for the libraries.
  
3. Federated collection management.
   
   • Most dramatic/demanding solution of the three (3).
     
   • Institution seed local aspect of all management.
     
   • Imprimés et archives distribués.
     
   • Benefits more rationalization + greater economy.
     
   • Operational challenges.

Bill and Ernie have some experience with such an approach. They describe such a project has having often political "internal" issues (access, browsing stacks not available, etc.). The BARD at University of Alberta is an example and indicating that this is not much of an issue after all. BARD became a reading room and the browsability issue is gone. The political issue in Canadian institutions is normally a proprietary issue.

Another example is Waterloo, Laurier and Guelph. Carleton and Ottawa Universities have attempt something but they went on their own for various reasons. CISTI and LAC are investigating for them and other federal libraries. In BC, Vancouver Public Library and Simon Fraser Univ. are in discussion.

All of the participants showed an interest in getting a copy of the white paper this group has produced. The delegates committed to give Paul Gherman the "Northern" perspective and proper input.

Can something like this project be undertaken in Canada?
Delegates raised possible issues such as "rankings" with ARL and McLean. If a library weeds books or store books, this means that there are fewer titles in the existing collection. This means a lower ranking.

4.   Review of Members Council (MC) agenda for the February 10-12 meeting

• One key topic might be the proposed new algorithm to allocate Members Council delegate. It is recommended to base it on 2/3 on membership contribution (cataloguing and ILL on WorldCat) and 1/3 on revenues per region.
• Ernie Ingles suggested considering adding the Amicus file to help grow the Canadian content in WorldCat and the "counted contribution" to Members Council. Ingrid Parent indicated that LAC was investigating directly with Google to get Amicus loaded.
• Out of Dublin experience: Canada or Mexico (on hold). Vote for the experience and the suggested country.

5.   OCLC Canada upcoming Conferences – OCAC Delegates participation

The purpose was to survey the group to find out if they could be interested in participating at the booth when present at a provincial or national conference like Members Council delegates often do. All the delegates agreed to spend time doing so in the coming spring conferences. A list of all the conferences will be sent. The OCAC brochure may need to be updated.

6.   Members Council Listserv

Daniel reminded all the delegates that their name had been added to this listserv so that they could follow more closely the various issues and discussions brought up on Members Council. Everybody was in agreement.

7.   Dates for 2006 and Location for the September 2006 meeting

• Asked to aim at the week of May 1^st.
• Daniel will survey the group for date in May and September.
• Agreed to have the September meeting in Montreal to see the OCLC Canada facility and possibly the "Grande bibliothèque" now that Hélène is a delegate.

8.   Other business

• Bill Maes reported that at his institution, they have been required to not acquire or subscribe to content and products that did not have a facility in Canada and possibly having the content residing in Canada. Apparently, similar demand has been seen in BC as well. Bill will share the announcement as this is important and might have huge impacts for all "publishers" in US.
• For the first time, a milestone WorldCat record was entered by a Canadian library. The 63rd million record was entered by the Toronto Public Library.
• Advocacy in Canada. Ernie and Daniel are convinced that there is a story about a baseball bat company that succeeded because of their use of a library, possibly even CISTI. Ernie recommended contacting Air Canada or WestJet public relations for information. This is an Ottawa based company.

9.   Meeting adjourned.