Serials Standing Committee
2012 Annual Meeting Minutes
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
7:15 a.m.-8:15 a.m.
Sheraton-Independence Ballroom West
Boston, Massachusetts

  1. Introductions: Wendy Moore opened the meeting and led in introductions of all participants. There were a total of 18 people in attendance.
  2. Approved the minutes from the July 26, 2011 meeting in Philadelphia
    http://www.aallnet.org/sis/tssis/committees/serials/minutes/2011.htm
  3. Old business
    1. Exchange of Duplicates program
      • Wendy Moore reported that 27 libraries participated in the program this past year. Will try to publicize the sign up for it more this year.
    2. Project Counter Task Group
      • Lorna Tang, Project Counter Task Force leader, reported that the task group has mainly wrapped up their work. She noted that the Bibliography of Project COUNTER Resources that the task group maintains has been updated as of July 2012 by Pat Sayre-McCoy and is available on the Project Counter Task Group page of the TS-SIS website.
      • She also gave a brief update on Project COUNTER status
        • A new release was issued earlier this year
        • Combined stats for books and databases right now
        • Lack of legal information database providers participating makes it not as useful for law libraries
        • Our vendors seem to want to hear an outcry demanding Project COUNTER from all of their library users, versus a single request by the task group. Actions you can take are:
          • If you are so inclined, there is a sample letter on the task group's page.
          • Contact CRIV and Margie Maes, the AALL Vendor Liaison to express that this is something that needs to be addressed with our vendors.
  4. New Business
    1. Call for program ideas for AALL 2013
      • Jim Mumm outlined the changes in the program planning and selection process for the upcoming year. He stressed that everyone should be certain to fill out the AMPC survey that runs through August 10. The AMPC will use the results of that survey to guide their decision making about programs. The results will be shared with members before the call for programs goes out in September. The TS-SIS Education Committee will be happy to work with anyone to improve their program proposals prior to submission or to help put together a program proposal based on an idea they have. It is up to all of us to come up with programs of interest to TS-SIS, as well as the broader AALL membership. Program submission deadline won't be until October 15.
      • Some brainstormed program ideas:
        • Collaborative collection programs (consortia agreement for collecting of serials, like agreement with Duke and University of Virginia)
        • Expectation management of faculty RE serials resources and collection development
        • Death to loose-leaf - http://www.slaw.ca/2012/06/27/death-to-loose-leaf/
        • Negotiation skills (beyond just license agreements)
    2. Survey on Collection Development Trends in Law Libraries report
      • Damon Campbell briefly mentioned that he and Shyama Agrawal have preliminary results from the Acquisitions Standing Committee's "Survey on Collection Development Trends in Law Libraries" which they will hopefully be publishing somewhere in the near future.
  5. Serials Roundtable Discussion - The below questions were posed, with some variation, to the group for discussion. Mainly our discussion, however, in the short time that was left, focused on print journal cancellations and methodology libraries were using for determining what stayed as print and what was electronic only access. These are as follows:
    • relying on HeinOnline for their journal literature access
    • cancelling on print journals that have no embargo on HeinOnline
    • cancelling lower tiered law school journals regardless of electronic access
    • retaining only print for top 50 journal titles
    • retaining only print for top ranked subjects of interest
    • no binding of periodicals
    • keeping print for current year only
    • weeding/withdrawing bound periodical sets available in HeinOnline to save space
    Questions Proposed for Discussion:
    1. In what ways are you acquiring and providing access to journals online? Such as through third party aggregator databases, full-image archive sites, individual title online subscriptions, or purchasing individual articles when requested, etc.
    2. What print serial related "passenger pigeons" are you maintaining in your library?
    3. What changes to workflow and staff duties have you made this year, because of decreased print/increased online access to serial related materials?

Meeting was adjourned at 8:17am, since discussion exceeded meeting time frame.

Submitted by: Wendy Moore, Acquisitions Librarian, University of Georgia Law Library and Damon Campbell, Acquisitions Librarian, Florida Coastal School of Law Library & Technology Center.