Serials Committee
2009 Annual Meeting Minutes
July 28, 2009 — Washington, D.C.
Minutes compiled by Lisa J. Arm (Boston University).
Shyama Agrawal (Duke University) is the new incoming chair of the Serials Committee. Carol Avery Nicholson (University of North Carolina) will be chair of the Education Committee. Members thanked her for her years of steering the Serials Committee so successfully.
Serials AALL Programs
Carol announced this meeting's SIS sponsored programs and commended Ann Kolodzey's (Widener University, Delaware) program "Here Today, Gone Tomorrow? The Future of Print Periodicals in Law Libraries." Attendees praised the program. The full-day program on "Managing from the Middle: Techniques for Success in Technical Services," coordinated by Carol with Karen Douglas, was also found to be most relevant and highly useful.
Carol, in her role of TS Education Committee Chair, asked for ideas for more serials programs for AALL in Denver. If you want to suggest or coordinate a program, send your suggestion to Carol by August 10 via SHARE. Do not send directly to the Annual Meeting Program Committee (AMPC). The deadline for final submission is August 23. The Education Committee is experienced with helping flesh out your program and polishing it before sending it to AMPC.
Exchange of Duplicates
The exchange of duplicates coordinated by Michelle Pope (Loyola, New Orleans) had 36 participants who paid $30 for a spring and fall exchange. The fall exchange will take place on December 3. More than 19,000 issues and 1,400 titles were offered in the spring exchange. The technical person who created the list is paid $10 out of each $30. He's paid $50/hour if he has to make major changes. The SIS has not been invoiced. An option to use a credit card for payment was instituted. The authority list was updated with more titles added. There was discussion on whether statistics of fill rate would be useful.
Discussion on whether the program should continue ensued with the question on whether libraries continue to bind print periodicals. The money does go to TS-SIS and the cost is low so folks wanted to continue for the time being. Committee will continue to evaluate usefulness of program if more folks drop out as libraries discontinue binding. The program made a $720 profit for the SIS from one exchange this year.
Libraries should offer to reimburse for half the postage if requesting a large number of journals (say 25). Some libraries have absorbed the cost of postage.
Librarians not in the program now would like to have the option to view the list before committing to joining. Currently there is not a facility for this. The suggestion was made to join for a year since the cost is so low. Members did not wish to offer the pre-view option.
Project Counter
Lorna Tang (University of Chicago) reported on Project Counter. A sample letter was created to have vendors comply with Counter Compliant statistics reporting. There is a link on the Project COUNTER Task Group webpage for Counter compliant statistics. Hein has contacted Shyama to see how they can comply with COUNTER. SUSHI and COUNTER work together. Work was begun to ask companies where they get usage statistics (all vendors, not just law). Companies have very different statistics access models. At LLMC, they are available on their website. At CCH, someone has to write to them and they will be posted at the Counter Compliant webpage. Someone has to let them know what to post.
There were suggestions on how to get vendors to get statistics to libraries. Contacting vendor representatives can be useful. BNA-All is planning to have usage statistics available in the next 6 months. Following up with BNA is important so we let them know what our libraries need.
There was discussion about cancelling LLMC due to its poor search engine. Staying in contact with representatives to ask to try and improve the product is important.
Just providing statistics is not the only issue. Some stats aren't useful if they're not COUNTER compliant. We want stats that can be compared across platforms. Some stats count minutes used while other count searches so we're comparing apples to oranges. It's up to us to stay in contact with vendors to tell them what WE need, not just what they want to provide. It's been difficult for librarians who have to call multiple vendors to get statistics. Some vendors only run stats twice a year when we need more frequent stats.
What's on your plate?
Some libraries have cancelled Halsbury's in print.
As libraries cut more and more print products, they wanted to have more coordination with who cuts what making sure there is at least one library retaining a print copy of titles being cut making sure there are regional depositories to store a master copy. LIPA (Legal Information Preservation Alliance) was created to preserve legal information including print titles. Libraries should ask their library directors to join. The page is hosted on AALL at: http://www.aallnet.org/committee/lipa/. Margie Maes, the executive director of LIPA may be willing to co-sponsor a program.
The stability of companies relying on revenue from print purchasing was noted as more libraries cut their print collections.
The issue of what to cut when there's nothing left to cut was mentioned as some libraries have had devastating budget reductions due to the financial climate.
One option, instead of cancelling a title entirely, is asking whether libraries can "pay per view" since many general providers have this option. Direct negotiation with vendors is vital when there are large price increases. One librarian succeeded in paying a lower price when she said her library would have to cancel the title entirely. The vendor reduced the price to the previous year's level.
Ann K. suggested a program on pricing models for electronic sources: what are the current models and what the future holds. Vendors need to know what libraries are thinking. Libraries need to be part of the initial discussion if we are to remain active participants in controlling electronic sources pricing.
Another program on best practices for withdrawing material was mentioned.
Durham's statement on open access with law reviews available only online brings up issues on how stable the electronic platform is. How do law school deans feel about this policy?
Space is a huge issue. Deans want more space at the same time libraries are reducing their print collections.
What to do with discarded print products since there is a reduced market for these. Folks suggested that China is looking for this material. Contact Better World Books, who takes monographs only, no serials. They will send boxes, but at least eight boxes need to be sent at once.
For foreign journals going to electronic only, are folks checking to be sure the "electronic access" is actually available? There have been some problems with this.
With link checking reports, only the main link is checked not individual journal records so it's possible a link may no longer work.
Question asked: Does anyone check in electronic issues? One library did. Others deemed it counter-productive since libraries are paying for access so the current electronic issue should be there.