§ SAALCK Directors' Council Meeting
12:00 noon, April 11, 2003
Western Kentucky University
Bowling Green, KY
- Present:
- Arne Almquist, NKU; Mike Binder, WKU; Janet Brewer, Murray; Margaret Foote, EKU; Clara Keyes, Morehead
- Absent:
- Karen McDaniel, KSU; Hannelore Rader, U of L; Larry Rees, KCTCS
Pre-meeting activities included a walking tour of the central WKU campus. Attendees saw the various previous venues of the WKU Libraries and the cupola that was the inspiration for WKU's seal. Lunch was served in a reception room in the WKU Student Union (hosted by WKU). A brief tour of the Library was given as the group traveled to the meeting room.
- Minutes of the March 11th Meeting:
- Accepted.
- Report on the HarpWeek Presentation at Gheens Foundation:
- Almquist reported that the meeting was postponed at the request of James Davis, Executive Director of the Gheens Foundation. Davis will be calling late this week or early next week to reschedule. The delegation at this point consists of Almquist, Molinaro, Susan Brown of Transylvania, Laura Sullivan, NKU Steely Library Grants Coordinator (Sullivan is preparing the grant application and has been coordinating the Gheens meeting), and Susan Severtson of HarpWeek (Severtson will demonstrate the product for Davis). Almquist mentioned that he plans to send an update to the non-SAALCK supporters of the proposal to keep them abreast of developments as the request process unfolds.
- In response to questions from the last meeting, Almquist noted that certain information resources are appropriate candidates for fundraising efforts--others are not. Appropriate products would be those purchased with a one time fee, with perhaps a small ongoing "maintenance" fee. The products would also be important resources, but definitely not core resources (fundraising concentrates on enrichment, not replacing purchases that are a part of normal operating costs). HarpWeek is one example of such a resource. Other examples could include ABI/Inform Archive (available with a one time cost of $15,000 with an ongoing fee of a few hundred dollars per year), or the Garretson collection of materials on Women's Issues (circa $23,000 plus a small yearly fee).
- Brief Updates:
- CD Settlement: The group handling the settlement for Kentucky has received our information regarding institution size and will soon determine the number of CDs to be distributed to each institution. A title list was distributed by Van Orsdel via e-mail and there is a wide variety of titles available. We will be able to specify a general area of interest (e.g., classical, pop, etc.), but will not be able to select individual titles.
- Public Health Administration Project (Coll. Dev. Committee): Binder asked if the respective provosts have asked about the status of this project. Molinaro responded that the entire program is currently delayed due to a host of problems. Our issue has probably not yet been considered. Brewer commented that she thought that the Collection Development Committee had held one face-to-face meeting and had also discussed the issue via e-mail.
- New Charge RE: Database Licenses (Coll. Dev. Committee): The group discussed both Collection Development issues. It was agreed that Committee Chair James Burgett should be invited to the next two SAALCK meetings to discuss the issues in more depth. Since the Public Health Administration project is complete, it was suggested that Burgett discuss that issue at the May 9th meeting. It was felt that the Collection Development Committee should have the database licensing project well underway by the end of May and it was suggested that Burgett discuss that issue at the June meeting.
Almquist pointed out that we need to set up our relationship with the external fiscal agent before we can actually test their ability to support us in consortial purchasing. Additionally, we need to either establish 501c(3) status or have the ability to use our agent's status to do further grant work. It was suggested that we set up an agreement for an initial 12 month period with the proposed external agent, GCLC. Binder suggested that we invite Michael McCoy, the Executive Director of GCLC, to visit our next meeting to discuss the possibilities for fiscal agency.
- Future Discussion Items:
- The group discussed the status of UK's remote storage project. Molinaro mentioned that the UK librarian dealing with the issue, Mary McLaren, will be on sabbatical this summer. She is going to UNLV to do research and will create a thorough report dealing with the costs, concerns, etc. She is currently researching potential locations that could be purchased to site a building. The model that she will be building will be one that emphasizes UK's needs but also takes into account the needs of the other SAALCK institutions. Molinaro was asked make a joint presentation with McLaren at the October meeting.
- Another related issue that was discussed was electronic filing of theses and dissertations. UK's Beth Kraemer is currently taking the lead on this. Many questions are arising at UK including appropriate file format. Almquist asked if we should possibly look at a consortial deal with UMI to use their service on a statewide basis. Molinaro indicated that she had heard that there were some concerns with that service. The group agreed that it would be a good idea to ask Kraemer to make a presentation to the group at the October meeting. Molinaro mentioned that UK will host the 2004 International ETD Conference.
- Almquist mentioned that there were many products and projects that could be candidates for statewide cooperation. We could potentially see cost savings with the initial purchase but could also see other synergies with successful projects. One example that he mentioned was adoption of a single vendor for RFID technology. This would provide the ability to obtain very low pricing per label (the largest cost, besides labor, in implementing such a system) while providing the additional benefit of streamlining our sharing of materials. There would be need for compromise, but successful compromise would pay off in many ways.
- Brewer mentioned that Murray is looking at ILLiad software. Almquist suggested that this could be a wonderful candidate for a group purchase (3 of the institutions present were either using it or were looking at it). It was further suggested that we might want to look at implementing it among all of our libraries to allow sharing of servers.
- Binder suggested that SAALCK begin setting up task forces to deal with some of the discussion items since they had been mentioned a number of times and would remain "topics for future discussion" until we actually began moving on them.
- Adjournment and Tour of Kentucky Building: At this point, the group officially adjourned and made its way to the Kentucky Building for a tour of WKU's Special Collections.
- May Meeting: We will meet on Friday, May 9th at the University Club, University of Louisville (UK will host).
Respectfully submitted by Arne J. Almquist