Notes from the CMCAB Meeting in July 2016

As reported in a previous blog post, the CCM Tools Advisory Board broadened its scope and remit following discussions earlier this year and with this came a new name: the Jisc Collection Management Community Advisory Board.
As part of this new remit the Board would like to keep members of the community updated with news of our activity and discussions.  Thus we will be providing a brief blog post summary of our meetings which are usually held 3 times a year.  Following this we are happy to receive comments and suggestions which can be discussed at future meetings.
The first meeting of the new CMCAB took place on 15^th July at the Jisc offices in Manchester.  Our new chair, Christine Wise, took the helm.  The other members of the Board are as follows:
Jo Aitkins, University of Leicester; Sandra Bracegirdle, University of Manchester; Shirley Cousins, Jisc; Ruth Elder, University of York; Neil Grindley, Jisc; Stuart Hunt, University of Bristol; Thalia Knight, Royal College of Surgeons of England; Diana Massam, Jisc; Jane Saunders, University of Leeds; Gary Ward, University of Sheffield; Christine Wise, SOAS (Chair).
Highlights of the meeting were as follows:
CCM Tools: The Board were updated on responses to the general user survey about the revised interface launched earlier this year (these were small in number but all complementary) and two successful community events held in June/July.  It was agreed that the team would run a targeted survey in the future with more publicity and would focus on running additional events over the next few months.
Service enhancements: the team collated and prioritised all those suggestions we have received over the last year or so.  For this year we are looking at defining library groups, more search/refine options including looking into format and date; search history management and re-use.
A Copac update was provided: enhancements have been made to the de-duplication processes for pre-1800 items, improving the ability to successfully match records for newly added or updated records on Copac. Direct links to individual records are now available, for example, via a list of ‘Latest Popular Search Terms’ which can be accessed by search engines.  The direct links and search engine visibility enables individual Copac records to appear in web search results: recent usage graphs show how this data exposure has generated substantial traffic to Copac.
The Copac team are working on developing a new administrative interface to help streamline data loading and updates; there are many complexities involved in dealing with data loads, which can cause difficulties and delay to schedules.
Governance: positive feedback was received following Board member Ruth Elder’s announcement of the Board’s new remit and relationship with the BIBDOG group (see May blog post).  The Board agreed to provide details of discussions to the community via this blog which would also be a channel to gather feedback.
It was reported that a new oversight group is under consideration to work with Jisc as it develops a Library Support Services portfolio, called the LSS Advisory Group.  There is an overlap in membership of all three groups and it is important that they work in conjunction with each other but retain specific remits.
Community Events: we have a volunteer to host another CM@ event so will be taking this forward with a sub group.  Likely date may be early 2017.
National Bibliographic Knowledgebase: procurement is under way and the chosen supplier partnering Jisc will be announced by the end of October.  The implementation schedule for the NBK involves data aggregation at scale beginning from November 2016 followed by development of functionality and additional data loading, with the ambitious aim of service roll out by November 2018.
Working with consortia: the potential for CM activity to dovetail with activity taking place in a number of library consortia was flagged up.  Several Board members have links with relevant consortia and will keep the Board in touch with potential projects/links which we can facilitate.
Please send us your comments, observations and suggestions either by commenting on this blog post or contacting any member of the CMCAB.
Diana Massam.