Minutes of the July 12, 2007 Meeting

SML 409
2:30 – 4:00 p.m.

Present: Daniel Dollar (for Kimberly Parker), Graziano Krätli, George Miles, Haruko Nakamura (Chair), Ann Okerson, Susanne Roberts, Marcia Romanansky, David Walls, Dorothy Woodson.

Absent: Hannah Bennett, Cynthia Crooker, Gwyneth Crowley, Jo-Anne Giammattei, Audrey Novak, Andrew Shimp, Martha Smalley, Paul Stuehrenberg.

Guests: Katherine Haskins (Integrated & Digital Image Resources), Carol Jones (Document Delivery), Bill Massa (Manuscripts & Archives), Rich Richie (South & Southeast Asia Collection), Cesar Rodriguez (Latin American Collection), Joan Swanekamp (Catalog & Metadata Services), Christine Weideman (Manuscripts & Archives).

Recorder: Graziano Krätli.

I. Announcements, questions, future agenda items

Ann Okerson (Associate University Librarian for Collections & International Programs) reminded the group that all people with selection responsibilities should have their budget allocations in place by now.

Sue Roberts (Librarian for European History & Coordinator of Humanities Collections) raised the issue of not being able to clean up old commitments. For some reason, it is very difficult to do this in Voyager, though much effort has been expended by various selector staff and their assistants. Selectors are receiving help in this regard but only to a certain extent, and consequently a more practical and efficient way to handle the situation would be greatly welcome. Ann suggested to report the issue in the minutes so that it can become a future agenda item.

II. ILL/Borrow Direct statistic reports (Carol Jones)

Carol Jones (Head of Document Delivery) started her presentation by informing the group that Borrow Direct (BD) has become a far more popular and prolific service than Interlibrary Loan (ILL), and it now generates at least twice the amount of requests.

Consequently, BD reports contain a significant and rapidly growing amount of potentially interesting data; the only problem is that they are not easy to mine. We don’t have access to the BD server (Jeffrey Barnett, as BD system manager, is the only one who does, but he is not in the position to generate reports for us). There is a BD project manager at the University of Pennsylvania Library, who downloads monthly reports from the BD server. Carol has looked at some of these reports, which go from to the beginnings of BD in 2000 to the spring of 2007. They contain interesting data (such as the titles requested and the number of times they are requested), although in evaluating them one should take into account a couple of things. One is that BD requests can be for books that are in the Yale collections but unavailable for various reasons (bindery, reserve, etc.). The other is that the software we use for this service is very old, and data mining should wait until a new one is in place. The Library is currently looking at some products, and Carol will send updates and other relevant information to Haruko, with the request to pass it around.

Ann asked how much life the current system has left in it. Carol replied that it is ten years old, which means ancient in software terms, and sometimes she thinks that it won’t be able to make it through the next semester!

Haruko Nakamura (Librarian for Japanese Studies) pointed out that once a faculty member was not able to place a request for a book on order. Carol acknowledged the problem, adding that the new software will be able to handle such requests, as it will be able to handle renewals (which the current system cannot do), as well as requests for multivolume works (currently, a patron has to submit separate request for each volume, no matter if he or she needs only one volume or the entire set).

The Library used to run an ILL management software called Clio, which is compatible with OCLC and still in use (although with us it is now a "retired" software). Its reports were never mined, and Carol will ask George Ouellette to check where they are and if they can be mined. Clio was followed by Illiad, which is used largely to generate data for year-end reports. (Carol is currently attending a 3-day training course on Iliad.) She then asked the group what kind of data and information selectors would like to have: Authors? Titles? Call numbers, etc.?

Selectors replied affirmatively to such data as authors, titles, dates of publication, call numbers of the lending institutions (including Dewey Decimal, or OCLC call numbers if available), also ISBN if the book was published after 1972. Haruko inquired about the possibility of also getting the number of times items are requested, to which Carol replied that it will certainly be possible to list the request dates.

Sue Roberts, mentioning that selectors used to get slips with the reasons for ILL requests, asked whether it would be possible to get similar information about BD requests. Carol replied that such information is potentially available and could be provided in the "Notes" field. As for the format of requested items, Carol acknowledge that such information could be useful, since we lend hundreds of microfilms and we borrow (but not lend) videos as well.

Marcia Romanansky (Chief Acquisitions Librarian) asked how are requests for journal articles reported in the system, so that they can be used to prove that we need to get the journal. Sue added that reports should allow selectors to sort out journal articles. Carol agreed, but pointed out that the results could include book chapters, and suggested that it would be more effective to count the number of times a journal title appears in the list of requests.

III. Marcnow pilot project (Joan Swanekamp & Marcia Romanasky)

The Italian vendor Casalini Libri has been producing and selling LC core level catalogue records for Italian publications as part of a pilot project initiated by the Library of Congress in 2004. Yale has been buying these records, together with a number of other academic and research libraries including Cornell, Harvard, New York Public, Princeton, Stanford, Toronto, and UCLA. So far, explained Chief Catalog Librarian Joan Swanekamp, it has been an interesting experience, with most of the interest being generated by the way Harrassowitz has reacted to this new service. The German company first looked from a distance and then decided that this was not the direction they wanted to go. Instead, they partnered with a company called Marcnow, which produces cataloging records for the books Harrassowitz supplies to various libraries. Marcnow is a relatively new company founded by two women graduates of the Harvard Business School (one Indian and the other Russian) and based in New Delhi, with offices in New York City and St. Petersburg. All cataloging is done in India, where Marcnow taps the language and subject expertise of a large expatriate community working in over fifty languages (including Western European, East and South Asian, and Slavic). (One of their catalogers is a former Harvard librarian who relocated to India - a little but telling footnote to the globalization of the information economy.)

The pricing structure is based on the number of records provided and the title overlaps among the various libraries supplied. Since Yale is currently getting more records—and consequently having less overlaps—than any other library, Harvard included, it is also paying the highest fee, which amounts to about $15-16 per title.

Overall, the quality of Marcnow’s cataloging is very good, subject analysis and LC classification included, and Joan mentioned a particularly satisfactory experience with Russian titles.

Marcia added a few relevant data about the amount of records processed, or to be processed, as well as on the process itself. Books usually arrive in separate batches, 50% from Harrassowitz with provisional records and the rest from Marcnow with full records. When the latter arrive, they are laid over the provisional records previously received from Harrassowitz.

IV. Manuscripts & Archives policy on collection development (Christine Weideman)

Christine Weideman (Interim Director, Manuscripts & Archives) distributed a printout of the Web page which describes the collections held by Manuscripts and Archives, explaining that, as a general rule, most materials collected by MSSA have some link to Yale and almost all of them are donations or gifts. She added that, for the purpose of today's presentation, she would not include two large and separate collections, i.e., materials regarding the history of Yale University and the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, but focus instead on other areas in which MSSA collects broadly and consistently. Two of them are architectural history, for which Yale is rapidly becoming a major center in the U.S. (especially in regard to urban history), and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender history and culture (LGBT). The latter collection was started by Jonathan D. Katz when he was Executive Coordinator of the Larry Kramer Initiative for Queer Studies and Associate Research Professor in Women's and Gender Studies at Yale University. After he left, MSSA decided to focus on the gay and lesbian community in New Haven, which is well organized and does a good job of documenting itself.

Christine distinguished between a proactive and a reactive approach to collection development. The former is driven and defined by a specific interest in one of the official collection areas, while the latter results from specific offers, which usually occur two or three times a month. Most of these offers are declined, since the materials don't really relate to Yale, although MSSA tries to place them elsewhere or provides the prospective donor with helpful information in this regard. However, if the materials offered are interesting and suitable, MSSA still tends to be very cautious since they don't want to add too much to their (already sizable) backlog.

Since the Area Curators collect non-literary manuscripts and archival items as well as bibliographic materials, and because of this have an ongoing relationship with MSSA, Christine added a few words of advice specifically for them, but useful to anyone else with or without collection responsibilities. In particular, she stressed the need to contact Bill Landis, MSSA’s Head of Arrangement, Description, & Metadata Coordinator, to arrange for description, and to do so ahead of time. She also reminded the Area Curators that they have to find the space to store any new materials they bring in, since MSSA’s storage area is full.

Dorothy asked about any collection development policies specifically related to visual materials, as she often receives inquiries from people in the art community. Katherine Haskins (Integrated & Digital Image Resources) explained that she is working right now on a collection development policy for visual materials, and one of the issues she is debating is whether we should still accept analog materials at all. The important point, though, is that whatever the outcome of this and related debates, we need to provide potential donors and other inquirers with clear answers that are meaningful and consistent across campus.

On a different note, Christine explained that MSSA had to reconsider their policy in regard to the collection of faculty papers, since in the past they received too many of them and for the most part they are never used. Based on the new guidelines, MSSA will not accept research papers, unless they support current teaching or research activities, or publication drafts, and they tend to be very specific when dealing with faculty members who are willing to donate their archives. So far, the implementation of this new policy has not resulted in any serious or significant complaints.

Marcia asked how many overlaps are expected or experienced between materials collected by MSSA and materials collected by selectors. Christine replied that, as a general rule, MSSA works with selectors covering specific subjects, as well as with other repositories on campus (e.g., Beinecke, Divinity) whose collection areas may overlap with theirs. One typical example is the boundary between literary and non literary materials, which in the former case are collected by the Beinecke and in the latter by Manuscripts and Archives. Nonetheless, exceptions may be found in either repository, as pointed out Cesar Rodriguez (Curator, Latin American Collection), who said he was surprised to find the papers of a Latin American literary critic from the 1970s in MSSA rather than at the Beinecke.

Marcia then asked how MSSA deals with space issues, to which Christine replied that 85% of their materials is stored in the Library Shelving Facility – this strictly because of space issues, rather than low usage.

Next meeting: September 6, 2007.