§ SAALCK Directors' Council Meeting
January 24, 2002
University Club, University of Louisville
Louisville, KY
- Present:
- Diane Nichols, Hannelore Rader, James Burgett (for Paul Willis), Larry Reese, Mike Binder, Carol Nutter (for Larry Besant), Arne Almquist, and Lee Van Orsdel
- Absent:
- Karen McDaniel, Coy Harmon
- Mike Binder, chair of SAALCK, convened the meeting over a wonderful lunch provided compliments of Western Kentucky University Library. Following introductions, Binder announced that Miko Pattie had just been promoted to CIO of the Council on Postsecondary Education, a promotion that promises good visibility for librarians in the CPE. Other news included an announcement that Rader has been appointed to the ACRL/ARL Joint Task Force for Recruitment of Academic and Research Librarians.
- Binder reported that the KYVL had run the numbers for the deficit in next year's fiscal year, using the criteria SAALCK supplied (copy attached). The group approved the revised contributions per the attachment. The understanding is that KYVL will bill for the contributions after July 1, 2002.
- Binder appointed an ad hoc group to look for roles for SAALCK, with the charge to look particularly at the issues surrounding shared database licensing. Committee members are Willis, Almquist and Besant. Almquist has already begun to study the overlap in database holdings and he had a preliminary report showing everything currently held by 3 to 7 libraries in the consortium, other than KYVL databases. Willis agreed to look into the question of a fiscal agent for future transactions.
- In response to a question about the relationship between SAALCK and the work of SAALCK's still-existent Collection Development Committee, Burgett reported that the committee is looking at the issue from a different viewpoint. The Collection Development Committee, on which each institution has a representative, has focused on looking for better pricing on databases that are not in the KYVL core. They've looked at Muse, PsychInfo, MLA and GeoRef. They are a bit stuck right now because they haven't found any major cost savings. In the discussion, strong consensus emerged around the necessity of getting KYVL to negotiate the cost of additional products that could be picked up by individual institutions when they negotiate the big deal for the shared databases. It appears to the members of the group that the state has balked so far on expanding the mission to do this.
- There was agreement that we needed to meet with Pattie to urge expansion of KYVL's role in getting consortial pricing for an expanded list of databases. Binder will work on arranging a meeting between SAALCK and Pattie. Almquist will prepare a report for her (and us) on his experience with the TechShare model in Texas.
- Almquist suggested that SAALCK investigate a deal being offered by HarpWeek, the online backfiles of Harper's Weekly. His suggestion was supported, and he agreed to follow-up.
- Rader reported that Louisville has appointed their first occupant of the Evelyn Schneider Endowed Chair for Scholarly Communication, Dwayne Butler, an attorney. He came to Louisville from the Indiana Copyright Center. Rader will invite him to the next SAALCK meeting.
- Van Orsdel commented on the difficulties in negotiating a deal for cross-access with Elsevier, reporting that Elsevier intends to remove all such deals at the end of 2003 and go to a subject-based bundling system.
- VLAC meets tomorrow. Only one question from the pre-circulated agenda arose-concerning the meaning of "hardship" in the KYVL membership application of Shriner's Children's Hospital. Rader and Binder promised to get clarification before approving the application.
Recorder: Lee Van Orsdel, Vice-Chair, SAALCK