SSH Cluster Bibliographers Group
December 12, 2007
1-2:30
S&E Events Room

Meeting Summary

Present: Adele Barsh, Ken Calkins, Harold Colson, Kathy Creely, Tammy Dearie, Holly Eggleston, Ryan Finnerty, Lia Friedman, Tony Harvell, Martha Hruska, Rebecca Hyde, Sanae Isozumi, David Jahn, Elliot Kanter, Patrick McCarthy, Rob Melton, Stacy Nelson, Alice Perez, Annelise Sklar

Announcements and Updates

There are two more days remaining for the trial of Medieval Travel Writing, an Adam Matthew Digital product. Although the trial for the online Oxford Dictionaries is over, one student asked Rob where they were!

Ken announced the acquisition of the CineWest archive, a collection of 2500 high quality images and 17 videos documenting Mexican and Chicano public art from Mexico City, Tijuana, San Diego, and L.A.  The images will be digitized for ARTstor.

Harold announced that the EBSCO-Gale Task Force’s report had been submitted to CDC and would be discussed at the CDC conference call on Friday. This group was charged to make recommendations on the successor product to Gale’s Expanded Academic ASAP.

Kathy announced that AnthroSource (the journals of the American Anthropological Association) available via UC Press will transition to Wiley in 2008.

Martha followed up that the Wiley/Blackwell merger is difficult and this is perhaps the reason that the rep has not responded to Rob’s pricing queries. A UC report should be out this week and which outlines best practices in a consortial environment and business/access models.

Tony asked Adele and Harold to verify that Source OECD will be available online only, with no print add-on. There are some concerns regarding scope of coverage and data access.

We will ask YBP to bind approval volumes only for SSH and AAL, effective early 2008. This will bring our binding costs down to a more reasonable level. As in the past, the Preservation Department will review unbound firm/direct order volumes to identify those needing binding treatment.

Elliot, Mike, and Becky Culbertson attended a conference on newspaper digitization at UC Riverside on Oct.19. Elliot outlines some of the concerns on the loss of image quality after digitization and the challenges of preserving files. He described a number of digitization efforts in the works and distributed information subsequent to the meeting:

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers 
Search and read newspaper pages from several states 1900-1910 (including California); search a directory (including library holdings) for U.S. newspapers published from 1690-present.
http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/home.html
California newspapers included are San Francisco Call, the Amador Ledger, the Imperial Valley Press, and the Los Angeles Herald.

The directory in question is derived from the library catalog records created by state institutions during the NEH-sponsored United States Newspaper Program (http://www.neh.gov/projects/usnp.html), 1980-2007. It covers newspapers back to colonial times and includes detailed library holdings.

California Digital Newspaper Collection
http://cdnc.ucr.edu/
which currently has the San Francisco Call http://call.cbsrbox.araisoft.com/ 1900-1911 and the Daily Alta Californian http://alta.cbsrbox.araisoft.com/ 1849-1900.  The interface and browseability in the CDNC even of the same papers are much better than at the LC site (click on “calendar” for each to browse by years/months/days.

Several people attended a presentation and discussion with Emily Stambaugh, the CDL Shared Print Manager, on Dec. 5. She described emerging UC discussions with CRL to establish a shared print archive for Taylor & Francis titles. She also gave an update on the Cooperative Collection Management Trust (UCSD, UCLA, SRLF, and CDL are members) that would function as a shared trusted distributed print repository. Ryan is participating with the project and is gathering circulation data on single-volume monographs.

The Collection Coordinators Group met with Emily for additional discussion and verified that microfilm indeed will be considered “print” for the purposes of establishing a UC Shared Micro Archive. After her departure, we reviewed the call for special purchases: Martha will meet with each Collection Coordinator individually for further discussion. She distributed a Digital Collections Inventory and asked that new resources be added. There was also a reminder that people should spend their special purchase proposal funds in a timely manner.

Brief summary of the Collection Coordinators Group meeting on Nov.14:

Blackwell and Elsevier package title adjustments are being made at the campus level. There are six e-book packages in the queue, and those of interest to the SSH Cluster include Oxford Digital Library (new titles), ACLS Humanities E-book and the Duke E-book trial. Stacy is generating a list of titles which we receive in both print and online format. We hope to identify a number of titles that we can discontinue in print, or not catalog if it is not possible to subscribe to e-only.

Discussion

1. Duke E-Books Pilot

Sam reported that UCSD is participating in a pilot of Duke University Press E-Book Collection. We will have access to at least 100 new books published each year “as well as access to all of the Press’s books now in electronic form.” Titles will be hosted on the Ebrary platform, there will be usage statistics, and DUP will participate in Portico and LOCKSS. Because we are in the pilot phase, we are entitled to a 50% discount price of $3000/year. In addition, we have the option to add a complete print add-on for $500. Duke plans to offer the print add-on option in future years, but may adjust the price if they are losing money on shipping charges. There were many questions and concerns, including:

• When will get the print volumes?
• Could the print volumes be part of CDL’s Shared Print Collection?
• Is e- released simultaneously with the print?
• Duke pulled their journals out of Project MUSE, so what could this precedent bode for the future? This is a “Big Deal” publisher-based model that we should be wary of. We should be selective and do not need every title published by a particular press.
• We are in a transition phase and should exercise caution before moving to e-only monographs.
• We should pay particular attention in 2008 and watch for publishers to consolidate publishing and access pathways.
• At license renewal time, we should clearly state what we want from the package, such as improved searching capability, display, etc.

We agreed to pay $500 for the print add-on and send the volumes to SRLF and will have YBP convert DUP titles to slip only.

2. Proquest microfilm subscriptions

Sam distributed a chart showing campus costs for ProQuest 2008 microfilm renewals by campus, with the all-campus total of $117,188. The titles in question are Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal, all of which we have access to via ProQuest online, current and historic, as well as, in varying degrees, via Factiva. CDC is concerned that we are paying multiple times for the same content. This is an area that dovetails with the proposal to develop a UC Shared Microfilm Repository. There are many questions and concerns about resources that are of vital importance to research across UC. The UC Business & Economics Bibs group also needs to be involved in this discussion.

3. Micro weeding

Paul Harris and CPNM staff have identified a number of large microfilm sets that have electronic counterparts. We should consider transferring these to SRLF as part of UC’s yet-to-be-developed Shared Microfilm Repository. In addition, we should begin to identify other large sets that may already be at SRLF; these could be withdrawn from UCSD’s collections. We will continue this discussion in future meetings and other venues, as needed.