OCLC Canada Advisory Council

Minutes — October 1^st 2019

Meeting in Dublin, Ohio

Present

Debbie Schachter, University Librarian, Capilano University
Pilar Martinez, CEO, Edmonton Public Library
Madeleine Lefebvre, Former Chief Librarian, Ryerson University, OCLC Board of Trustees
Mélanie Dumas, Directrice, Direction de l'accès à la Collection universelle, BAnQ (replacing Danielle Chagnon, Directrice générale de la Grande Bibliothèque, BAnQ)
Diane Beattie, Director, Description Division, Published Heritage Branch, Library and Archives Canada
May Chan, Head Metadata Services, University of Toronto
Alexandra Freeland, Director, Information Management Services Directorate, Knowledge Management, National Research Council
Bruce Crocco, Vice-President, Library Services for the Americas, OCLC
Renee Reaume, Director, Metadata Services, University of Calgary
Meryl Cinnamon, OCLC Member Relations Liaison for the Americas
Guest:  Mary Sauer-Games, Vice President, Global Product Management, OCLC

Absent

Daniel Boivin, Executive Director, OCLC Canada, Latin America & the Caribbean

Submitted Agenda:

1. Opening of the meeting, agenda approval
2. Review the minutes of the March 2019 Meeting (update, questions)
3. OCLC enterprise / Canadian division year in review and update
4. Member Relations Update (Meryl Cinnamon)
5. Brainstorming on the Canadian library’s landscape
6. Review of the OCAC Charter (clauses, number of delegates, terms, etc.) 
   
7. Other business
8. End of the meeting

1. Opening of the meeting and agenda approval

• Agenda is approved as proposed.

2. Review the minutes of the March 20th, 2018 Meeting

• Market Research report on Canadian public libraries – OCAC would like to have report on landscape of Canadian public libraries and maybe academic as well – original report was based on US public libraries. Mr. Crocco has reached out to a colleague at OCLC for this.
• OCAC members would like talking points about members' negativity/perceptions of OCLC – pricing transparency, vendor (but non-profit, member-owned), ownership of records, what's in it for me – put messages on invoices, show up and speak to industry leaders and people who are in the grapevine, we are vendor neutral but people who want open access, name differentiators of benefits, send link to Maple Leaves report, send link to US and Canada Collective Print Book Collection report, collective collections (e.g., gov docs) to free up space and have money to spend on specific subject areas, curating Canadian collections (e.g., using SCS and Green Glass) – Diane Beattie and Library and Archives of Canada defining value to provincial groups of its work. Have Canadian specific – talking points:
  • LAC/OCLC relationship
  • National Union Catalog value proposition
  • BCI
• Send link to Member Directory on the website and list of institutional members in Canada.
• Remind Daniel about:
  • cleaning up the charter for the group
  • how often and when shall we meet (alongside ARC conference or sometime different)
• OCAC members asked if member satisfaction survey was disseminated? Per Mr. Crocco, just redid and sent globally – we don't have the analytics yet.
• Is OCLC starting to investigate AI? Per Mr. Crocco, we are looking at beefing up metadata and machine learning.
• Send link to WebJunction's Crossroads.

3. OCLC enterprise / Canadian division year in review and update

• Delivered by Mr. Crocco.

4. Brainstorming on the Canadian library's future

Ms. Mathenia –

• New to College of the Rockies, which is small and underfunded; amazed at lack of ability to do resource sharing, so Ms. Mathenia is looking into this to see how she can serve constituents.
• Having academic integrity issues with international students who are coming unprepared – looking into establishing an office for this – plagiarizing, cheating (it's cultural and educational oriented).

Ms. Schachter –

• Having policies and procedures in information literacy – looking at a holistic approach.
• Looking at Relais – currently doing ILL manually.
• Had not been part of the Universities Canada but looking into it now – helps with getting funding.
• Now has a research mandate – Ms. Schachter is on the Research Ethics Committee.
• Supplemental instruction to classes being discussed.
• Indigenous issue – "push, pull, stop" experience – difficult to hire people into strategic roles; looking at updating subject headings to indigenous, etc.

Ms. Lefebvre –

• Ryerson's President is pushing for law school, so there will be a law library.
• Climate of government is being challenged, so budget being reduced, and some services are changing or being removed – a lot of people leaving (AV, etc.) – also an opportune time to reorganize.

Ms. Freeman –

• Ended relationship with CCC, so now responsible for own collection – need to rethink how resource sharing is going to take place and print collections.
• A lot of focus is on library research activities (data mining).
• Has a shared catalog and resource sharing across science libraries.
• Kicking off strategic planning – will include thinking about how to work with Library and Archives of Canada.

Ms. Beattie –

• Implemented Aurora (WMS) in 2 phases – ACQ first then cataloging/description.
• She is involved with RVM – looking at how it can be made openly available instead of through a subscription model – looking at new governance structure and funding model – Ms. Beattie will also be chairing technology committee to see how RVM will be distributed/shared, created, and used over time. Will make RVM linked data and open once sustainable funding obtained.
• Looking at Canadian subject heading strategy. She is also chairing that committee as well. They want to engage community to address subject headings – OCAC members should send suggestions of who should be involved to her.

Ms. Martinez –

• Seeing rise in security issues – staff need to be taught how to handle these.
• Human resources – e.g., health discussions.
• Intellectual freedom – questions being asked around fundamental values – Univ of Alberta is only Canadian institution offering courses in this – so lots more training is needed.
• E-content – embargo regarding number of copies that can be borrowed vs. purchased is major concern.
• Edmonton PL did study on collections – physical is more popular that digital (except for audio).

Ms. Dumas –

• Patron info/privacy concern.
• Problem with space.
• Dealing with access to titles that they only own.
• Assessing access to e-content (200 databases).

Ms. Reaume –

• Digital preservation – trying to get grant to increase access to and capacity.
• Looking at whatever they can do with AI and automating.
• Have new positions surrounding digitization.
• Enlarged high density facility for storage – acquisitions and metadata units are now working from there because this is where new ingestion of gifts, etc. is centralized.
• University librarian has been there for a year, so reorg now starting.
• Migrated to Alma.
• Waiting for election to take place to see what happens to budget and if there will be a lot of retirements.
• Moved to more self-serve offers – reserves will be included – access now 24/7.
• Looking at more fulfillment opportunities (e.g., using Amazon).
• Looking at chat box.
• Looking at how they are staffing library at different times of day and evening – security.
• Now have mental health and indigenous strategies.
• Took over Glenville Museum archive – sending many titles from archives and book collection to Univ of Calgary to open up space for Museum to be more like a museum.

Ms. Chan –

• Serving as on the CFLA-FCAB Cataloguing and Metadata Committee as their representative on the Joint Cataloging Ethics Steering Committee:
  • Working on best practices – aiming for it to be ready for ALA Midwinter.
  • Involved on Canadian Bibframe Task Force – will be launching nationwide survey on readiness for using Bibframe – LC will be implementing Bibframe in the fall.
• FNIMO and Manitoba Archival Information Network have developed alternative vocabularies that refer to Indigenous peoples more respectively.
• Univ of Toronto –
  • Moving to Alma/Primo/Leganto – going live next summer.
  • Participated in Uniform benchmarking exercise.
  • Paying attention to the open access/publishing landscape.
  • Launched the Discover Archives, an initiative that unifies the archives at U of T.
  • Conducting Downsview offsite storage assessment: Metadata quality for things that go offsite is very important.
  • RDM management – everyone is interested in this.
  • Received funding for a Carpentries institutional membership to support computational and data science skills across campuses
  • Teaching cataloging course to acquisitions staff who are now involved with copy cataloguing workflows.
  • Joined PCC in 2018 to contribute to NACO and other programs – everyone is now using Connexion Not all of the libraries in the university system are connected to OCLC services.
  • Looking at linked data.

Ms. Sauer-Games –

• Interested in thoughts and work regarding indigenous cataloging/authority control/how can OCLC help and WorldCat evolve to help? Canadian librarians will be anxious to talk and share – issue is national, regional, and very local. OCLC should "work with" rather than "start something new" in the discussion in Canada – "you have already done some work, so where can we go from there?"
• Work is being done in CFLA on this.
• Can OCLC provide a place where vocabularies can be published, maintained, accessed, trained? Like a knowledge base – Sandy Littletree at Univ of Washington iSchool – speaks about this.
• The more metadata in a record, the better – don't have to link – reconciliation is a lot of work – encourage catalogers to do this – at some point, linked data and Wikidata can be utilized. Is this a role for AI to eventually handle to keep terms up to date? Because there will be so many local practices, can there really be a group of national best practices?
• May Chan shared websites and papers relating to the subject:
  • Two major initiatives to make subject headings pertaining to indigenous peoples more respectful:
    • Manitoba Archival Information Network (MAIN): https://libguides.lib.umanitoba.ca/c.php?g=455567&p=3278374
    • Red Team-Joint Working Group on Classification and Subject Headings and the National Indigenous Knowledge and Language Alliance (NIKLA) released the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit – Indigenous Ontology (FNMIIO) in June 2019: https://nationalindigenousknowledgeandlanguagealliance.home.blog/2019/06/21/first-nations-metis-and-inuit-indigenous-ontologies-fnmiio/
  • Links to other national initiatives that may be of interest to OCAC and OCLC:
    • Canadian BIBFRAME Readiness Task Force: http://cfla-fcab.ca/en/about/committees/cms-committee/canadian-bibframe-readiness-task-force/
    • Cataloging Ethics Steering Committee: https://sites.google.com/view/cataloging-ethics
• Staffing and expertise are often limited in libraries – creating learning resources and training would help.
• Is AI subjective or neutral? – need to develop policy first, which then creates transparency first and then technology second.
• Is there interest in converting everything to OA, and if so, who is paying for it? – if funded, policy is to create OA – tenure staff in academia might affect who gets funding, where OA is housed could be different (library rather than institutional repository).
• Watch for Discovery + Fulfillment survey – report on OA survey now available.

5. Review of the OCAC Charter

• Nothing to be reviewed at this time.

6. Member Relations Update

• GC theme each year – now under the umbrella of Library Futures – EMEARC and APRC have had conferences for several years; this is ARC's 3^rd conference:
  • I am a Smarter Library – Baltimore
  • Game Changers – Chicago
  • Community Catalysts – Phoenix
• GC topic of focus each year:
  • Oc.lc/oa
  • Oc.lc/discoveryarc
• Member Engagement Toolkit – slide decks available to all OCAC members to show benefits of membership and what GC and members do, member stories, member conferences, research and WJ, themes/focus topics, similar and different setups with other countries and types of libraries to reinforce global aspect, indigenous cataloging activity to represent all, list of Canadian partners, working with BCI for bilingual searching (first group to test this!).
• Growing Canadian participation/representation in OCLC, so maybe ARC meeting in Canada? Bring to the attention of GC.

7. Other business

• None

8. End of the meeting

• At 12h