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Summary of Discussion at the NERL Meeting Attendance: All 16 member institution's Designated Representatives attended. Andrea Weinshenk replaces Robert Hudson for Boston University. Visitors included: Susan Sawyer, a.m. (Office of Yale General Counsel); Rodney Stenlake, Esq. (Advisor/consultant to the CLR Licensing Project). I. INTRODUCTIONS Each Representative introduced him or herself and briefly summarized extent of the availability of online electronic resources in the home library. Not surprisingly, a number of similarities emerged about the types of e-resources already available locally (largely, though not entirely bibliographic tools) as well as the desire to license and make available more such resources in a coherent and cost-saving manner. Differences occur in: the library department or officer or structure responsible for making electronic resources happen, the way in which institutions go about decision-making and implementation, the centralization or dispersion of available budgetary and IT resources, and some differences in fiscal year starting date. For example, Brown, Columbia, and Syracuse have "pots" of money allocated specifically to purchase or licensing of electronic resources; some other members treat e-resources within the normal collections subject budgets and make up the dollars for an expensive item by "passing the hat" among various subject selectors; Harvard's libraries are autonomous and a great deal of coordination is necessary to license a large resource for the entire campus. The group agreed that its common objectives of access and cost-containment made NERL a desirable experiment over the next two years (the period proposed in Scott Bennett's Letter of Invitation and the signed Letters of Agreement). As well as finding ways to secure advantageous terms through joint licensing and possibly joint deployment of e-materials, NERL is a forum in which members can share information about management and budgeting for electronic resources. II. LEGAL AND PROCEDURAL DOCUMENTS A. Letter of Agreement: Representatives reviewed the original Letter of
Agreement to discuss whether it needs to be changed at this time. Dale Flecker
had raised the question of how the letter of agreement does (or does not)
protect individual institutions when legal difficulties arise for NERL as
a whole (or when another institution that has signed a NERL license might
violate its terms). Susan Sawyer suggested that the Letter of Agreement is
basically sound but that an additional paragraph might clarify such protection
concerns. She offered to work with Ann Okerson to review and perhaps to amend
the Letter. B. Requests to Vendors: Gladys Ann Wells and Tony Ferguson reported that the State of New York has formed several state-wide committees that will attempt to leverage the budget dollars of New York libraries and jointly license electronic materials. As part of this process, an RFP is being developed. It was proposed that NERL would benefit from designing a brief, standard RFP that we can submit to producers whose products we are interested in. Followup: Tony Ferguson, Gordon Fretwell, Rodney Stenlake III. PROCEDURAL MATTERS A. Existing Affiliations and Relationships: Many NERL members (or subsets of NERL members such as the Law and Medical libraries) are already parts of other consortia that were created to achieve objectives related to or overlapping with NERL's. Some of these relationships include: State of New York purchasing initiative Boston Library Consortium's broad agenda NELLCO (New England Law Libraries Consortium) Pennsylvania Consortium of Medical Libraries The question was: is there a unique role for NERL that complements -- but does not trespass upon -- other territories (and can, in fact cooperate with others to leverage resources for even wider groups). Throughout a broad-ranging discussion, the Representatives affirmed that if NERL can focus on expensive (over $10k) scholarly e-resources of importance to research institutions, be flexible, agile, and commit budgets to electronic materials, it would offer a terrific service to its institutions. The two-year initial period will be a way to test these affirmations. In the meantime, NERL is ready to discuss common goals with other groups though appropriate liaisons, as needed, and these liaisons will bring their discussions back to the NERL Representatives as appropriate. Gladys Ann Wells and Tony Ferguson will be the contact points between New York State and NERL; Ann Okerson will continue to talk with Hannah Stevens of the Boston Library Consortium about initiatives of mutual interest; other Representatives will build bridges as appropriate. B. Offering Affiliations with NERL: A number of smaller libraries in the northeast region have asked if they can affiliate with NERL. The pros of such affiliation are that more libraries (than just the biggest ones) can benefit from our buying power or bargaining strength and that we might be able to bring a little more leverage to bear in negotiations if, say, our institutions included a number of local colleges and technical institutions (though this is not certain). The cons are that NERL is not staffed, and, therefore, to involve and to serve a large group of libraries becomes very difficult. Governance would become an important issue and the time invested in process could swamp the ability to be flexible and agile in electronic content licensing. It was agreed that NERL will not offer affiliations or membership beyond the cohort of Northeast ARL Libraries. C. Offering Affiliations to Specific NERL Licenses: Several libraries have requested to be attached to the Britannica OnLine license and Tony Ferguson had responded positively to those, given that Britannica had agreed to include others under the NERL umbrella. Likewise, with the blessing of Academic Press, Ann Okerson, had agreed to include regional institutions in the Academic/IDEAL license (both of these matters had been raised on the NERL-L list and in general received a positive response from Representatives). The downside of such affiliations are, again, the time and money that it takes to add multiple institutions to specific licenses and defeats the decision in B above. It was agreed that: · Since Tony, Ann, and the publishers are willing, NERL will "grandfather" the BOL and IDEAL licenses to be able to include appropriate regional institutions. · In the future, with each proposed new license, NERL will consider the issue of affiliation "up front" (before completing negotiations and signing). In general, affiliations will only be allowed if the affiliation brings benefits to NERL members. · For institutions that affiliate to a NERL license, the following terms will apply: 1. The institutions that affiliate with the license will accept the NERL license without exception, including use terms, pricing, and a common expiry date. 2. The institutions will pay a $100/year "processing" fee to affiliate with any NERL license. D. NERL Decision-Making re. Specific E-Resources: Tony Ferguson led this discussion. NERL Representatives had been provided, in advance, a summary of how the Florida consortium and the CIC ballot. After detailed discussion, the following process was agreed to: · Each proposed license will have a sponsor or "parent," one of NERL's Designated Representatives. Such sponsorship will be on a volunteer basis, or if no one volunteers and the group deems the resource important, then friendly coercion will be used.· The sponsor will propose the suggested resource to NERL Representatives either on the NERL-L list or at an in-person meeting. Representatives will ballot between 0-5 votes per resource, and the sponsor will tally the responses and report back to NERL-L. The balloting will determine whether the sponsor pursues the specific license on behalf of NERL or singularly on behalf of his or her own library. · This balloting shall be done requesting responses within two weeks. The sponsor will tally and describe the responses a week or so after balloting is completed. · If the vote is positive, the sponsor will pursue inquiries (preferably via the NERL boilerplate RFP -- see above) with the producer of the agreed-upon resource to a point where a first draft license and pricing terms are proposed to NERL. At that point (or earlier), the sponsor may choose to request additional teamwork with one or more NERL Representatives in order to analyze the license and negotiate further. Ann Okerson offered to serve in a supporting role as needed. · The license will go through an iterative process between NERL (spearheaded by the sponsor) and the producer until a positive (or otherwise) result is achieved. · This process will involve appropriate data gathering, deadline setting, etc., so that the negotiations do not drag on. In general, the Representatives believe that "getting on with licenses" and making significant progress on several, to the point of completion, is the right goal for 1997. E. Institutional Buy-In: Some of the Representatives have already made NERL a part of their institution's e-content process (Yale, for example). It was agreed that all Representatives would make their librarians aware of what NERL might be able to do for them with regard to electronic content. F. Meetings: It was agreed to use ALA (other national meetings were mentioned but they are not as regularly attended by most as ALA) as a place to meet in person and conduct NERL business. The next meeting was proposed for ALA Midwinter, on Thursday evening, between 5 - 9 p.m. Location to be announced. G. Funding: The Representatives voted to give Yale an operating fund for the two NERL start-up years, by paying $200 each upon being invoiced by Yale. The purpose of the funds is to cover consulting attorney costs (if necessary), lunches, faxes, overnight mail, long distance calls, staffing overheads as needed. This money will join the $100/year assessment for affiliated licensees (see above). If more money is required, the Representatives will vote again. This proposal was made spontaneously from the floor and is much appreciated! IV. OhioLink & CONSORTIUM OF CONSORTIA Ann Okerson reported that Tom Sanville, Executive Director of OhioLink, had been gathering representatives of a number of consortia together at certain nationalmeetings such as ALA, LITA, CNI. The purpose of the informal gatherings has been to share progress, initiatives, and general information about which consortium is negotiating for what resources. General deployment issues are also discussed; specific pricing of resources is not. Ann has been attending these meetings for NERL. There is a list which is largely procedural (dates of informal gatherings). This group, again led by Tom Sanville, has formed a subcommittee that is planning an electronic vendor "product fair," now set for U of Missouri St. Louis (sponsored by the Missouri Consortium) February 2-6, 1997. Over three days, a dozen vendors will present their electronic products, not so much with a view to product description so much as to ask what these producers can do for consortia of libraries (pricing, terms, services, format). Since each consortium can send 2-3 representatives, Ann asked if anyone was willing to join her at this meeting. Dale Flecker and John James volunteered and will attend. V. SPECIFIC RESOURCES DISCUSSION The following items had been placed into play for NERL discussion via NERL-L and were discussed with attached follow-up assignments: A. Beilstein (Joan Grant will follow up and report on the Wisconsin offer and report back to NERL NB: has been done; not promising?). B. Chadwyck-Healey (Ann to follow up the letter of proposal from CH, though not huge enthusiasm from a majority in the room). C. Clarinet (The consortial proposal reduces individual institutional fees by requesting that the feed be at one institution; thus only one monthly feed cost is paid instead of 16, resulting in a savings of about 30% per institution. Ann Okerson and Dennis Hyde will pursue via Penn ISC. NB: this is happening now). D. Environmental Bibliography (Discussion did not elicit an overwhelming response; Dale will re-submit to NERL-L). E. ISI (This presentation met with a resounding yes. John James will pursue). F. MLA Bibliography (Average amount of interest; Ann Okerson will confirm with MLA that they are now willing to talk to consortia and then John James will pursue, as the proposed installation would use the Dartmouth interface and be at Dartmouth). G. MUSE (Much interest but consortial terms are not advantageous -- too much trouble for savings yielded. MUSE may be changing this next year; we will revisit). H. Past Masters (Lukewarm reception; no action; RLG is offering a PM umbrella). I. Others: BIOSIS is a resource of interest to many. Yale is currently pursuing the possibility of making this available to others. Will report any progress over the next few weeks/months. · Since the meeting, Florence Doksansky has offered to take on the first phase of Lexis-Nexis consortial licensing effort. alo draft notes 12/13/96 final notes 1/19/96 Bonnie Turner
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