The Jisc Collection Management Community Advisory Board (CMCAB) met on the 7th November 2016 in Manchester, and welcomed a new member, Mark Hughes, Head of Library Services at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Details of the other members of the Board are provided in the Board report from July.
A brief summary of the meeting follows:
Updates on activity and key developments from the CCM Tools and Copac teams were provided.
CCM Tools:
- The team are finalising details of a pilot project with the University of Sydney which will enable our Australian colleagues to use CCM Tools to investigate international collection significance. It will enable Jisc to demonstrate the value of the CCM Tools to international partners and to investigate future access models. The pilot is likely to begin in early 2017.
- Community events remain a priority: events in Manchester and SOAS (London) will be run before the end of the year with additional events in the pipeline for 2017.
- Development work continues on improving functionality.
Copac:
- A Copac IdP (Identity Provider) has been set up and is currently undergoing testing. In the first instance this will allow those Copac contributors who are not members of the UK Access Management Federation to access CCM Tools. This will be rolled out when testing is complete.
- There have been a number of large updates and reloads of data to process recently. Update statistics are now provided on the Copac homepage. The Board were interested to note this information and felt some more context would emphasise the volume of work involved.
- A Copac contributor web site and dashboard have been created with the aim of streamlining workflows for both new and existing contributors. In the first instance these will be trialled as part of a project to load M25 consortium data onto Copac.
- Some of the libraries in the M25 consortium fall outside the original scope for Copac, where the academic libraries were all members of RLUK. As we move towards the development of the National Bibliographic Knowledgebase, which will have a much broader scope, it was felt this was a good time to start expanding the range of contributors, so a new workflow is being tested with some of the M25 libraries..
- It was suggested that it would be interesting to find out about the collection management projects undertaken by this broader spectrum of libraries, possibly via a survey or through forthcoming events.
GreenGlass projects
The University of Sheffield and the White Rose Consortium are both working with OCLC Sustainable Collection Services (SCS) using their GreenGlass product for collection analysis. Board members outlined the data inputs and outputs involved and reported that further analysis of the outputs is underway. There are many complexities involved in investigating and using the data and SCS have engaged in positive dialogue to investigate some anomalies identified. The Board concluded that the project outputs were very interesting and would value colleagues reporting back on further analysis as it occurs.
Feasibility study on monographs
It was reported that this recently announced study had been initiated by the National Monograph Steering Group, which consists of representatives from UKRR, RCUK, British Library, SCONUL, RLUK and Jisc and is convened by HEFCE. An invitation to tender invites bids from consultants to report on extending the UKRR to monographs, covering shared storage, digital surrogates, data, inter-lending, models and appetite for such an approach to monographs amongst the community. The study has an ambitious timescale for completion by the end of April 2017. This work is being undertaken in the context of the requirement for the UKRR to become self-funding.
Board membership
Following the appointment of Mark Hughes to the CMCAB it was agreed that Dawn Holland, Collections Manager at the University of Hull would also be invited to join from 2017. This will improve representation from non-RLUK and SCONUL member libraries.
Community Engagement
It was agreed that making available summaries of CMCAB meetings on the CCM blog was a useful step in developing community engagement, which had been welcomed by colleagues.
It was reported that once the National Bibliographic Knowledgebase procurement was complete communication and engagement with the community will be more forthcoming. There was some discussion about how to engage the community with wider conversations about NBK developments and other collection management initiatives. A webinar could be a valuable way to share information and to test community reactions to proposals.
It was also agreed that it could be useful to put out a pre-meeting call for input to the lis-collection-mgmt mailing list and to make more use of the list for possible surveys. In addition information could be shared via SCONUL Focus and the RLUK mailing list.
Collection Management events
There was discussion about timing and content of potential events in 2017 hosted by the University of Edinburgh and Bodleian Libraries, Oxford (who have offered to host a visit to their off site storage facility). We will liaise with colleagues at these institutions to progress plans and ensure that the momentum created by previous events is maintained.
Progress report: National Bibliographic Knowledgebase procurement
At the time of the meeting the preferred bidder had been selected but the constraints of the procurement process meant that the information could not be released until later in November. The contract will be signed with the supplier in early December with activity starting in the New Year. NBK activity will run alongside Copac initially, at least during year 1 of the process.
Jisc’s Bibliographic Data Oversight Group (BIBDOG) will likely be incorporated into a new Library Support Services Advisory Group which will come into being shortly. A dedicated section of the agenda for this group will be devoted to steering the NBK. The CMCAB will still be required in order to drive community developments and input to the NBK. The Board will be reviewing its Terms of Reference at the next meeting so will examine role and purpose moving forward more closely at that time.
Please send us your comments, observations and suggestions either by commenting on this blog post or contacting any member of the CMCAB.
Diana Massam.
