Other Meeting Minutes

Electronic Collection Committee Minutes - March 27, 2007

In Attendance:

John Blosser, Jeff Garrett, Esmeralda Kale, Lucy Lyons, Kathleen Kordesh, Bill McHugh, Kathleen Murphy, Eric Parker, Julie Patton, Natalie Pelster, Anna Ren

Minutes

Minutes of the February 28, 2007 meeting were approved with submitted changes.

Announcements:

The Google Scholar link was added to the Library’s home page. Jeff distributed a copy of the article drafted by Google that reports on the Google relationship with Northwestern University Library.

Jeff announced an upcoming presentation in the Forum Room on social networking.

Demos
There will be a demonstration of SFX statistics at the March 28, 2007 Selectors Meeting. The SFX software has been recording link-through statistics since June 2005.

The Elsevier Portfolio Committee and Sarah Pritchard will have a strategy meeting on April 5, 2007 to prepare for the negotiation of the ScienceDirect contract renewal. Elsevier personnel will visit on April 6 for a presentation of their renewal proposal and other Elsevier products. Actual negotiation of the renewal will come at a later date.

There will be two sessions to demonstrate EndNote on April 12, 2007. The first session will cover EndNote X, and the second session will cover EndNote Web.
Representatives from Thomson Gale will visit on April 19, 2007 to talk about new products. Jeff recently negotiated reduced annual access fees that cover the full suite of the subscriptions of the universities’ libraries. The initial cap is $13,000.00 with an annual increase of 3% and an increase of $100.00 per new title added.

Recent Acquisitions
The Chicago Manual of Style online was recently added to the collection. The Chronicle of Higher Education was recently added for university wide access through a CARLI offer. The cost is free through June 2007 and will be $900.00 annually through 2010. The ECC helped facilitate the expansion of Oxford University Press titles to the full journal package for university wide access. The increase was around $8200.00. Galter will contribute $2000.00 and Law will contribute $1000.00 toward the expansion. Expanding access to the university community helped clear up access problems through EZProxy. Stu Baker expressed his gratitude for this change.

Old Business
The request from Africana for ECC support of the subscription to the Economist Intelligence Unit was discussed. Esmeralda explained the importance to the Africana collection of retaining the print copies of the Country Reports. The suggestion that Africana not contribute this year toward the renewal was countered by the Committee. It was agreed that the ECC and Africana would split the balance of the total cost (ca. $5200.00) that will be shared with a few other subject funds.
The ECC continued to reassign to subject funds the remaining titles from the ECC portfolio list. The following databases were moved from the ECC list:
Literature Resource Center (to Reference)
MLA International Bibliography (to Reference)
NTIS (to Government Info)
PAIS (to Reference)
Philosopher’s Index (to Philosophy)
PsycARTICLES (to Psychology)
PsycINFO (to Psychology)
RILM Abstracts of Musical Literature (to Music)
SciFinder Scholar (to Physical Science)
Sociological Abstracts (to Sociology)
SourceOECD (to Government Info)
Thomson Research (to Management Reference)
Ulrichsweb.com (to Reference)
United Statutes at Large (to Government Info)
Worldwide Political Science Abstracts (to Political Science)

It was agreed to retain the Public Library of Science, but that the open access contribution should be reviewed. The ProQuest historical newspaper databases were thought to belong to the newspapers fund, but due to the historical nature, may be better on the history funds. Harriet Lightman will be consulted. The 4 titles supported by the ECC endowed funds present a problem in funds transfer due to the different fund types involved. Endowed money can not be permanently transferred in or out of the fund. John will investigate if there might be a way to keep these on the endowed fund, but link the expenditure to the correct subject.

New Business

The Oxford University Press offer for the reference e-book collection was declined. The offer was for 4 modules of perpetual access to 1,200 titles for $38,815.00, a 30% discount from list price. The Press also offered 1,400 titles covering archival and current content for $47,157.00.

With the discovery of the availability of SFX usage data, there will be continued interest in evaluating the data as a partial indication of use of many of the online subscriptions provided for the Northwestern community.

Jeff asked for submission of online resources wish list titles for fiscal 2007 year-end purchase. A call for non-electronic collection items will be announced to the selectors.

Submitted by John Blosser

Electronic Collections Committee Meeting Minutes - February 27, 2007

Present: Blosser, Garrett, Kale, Kordesh, Lyons, McHugh, Murphy, Parker, Patton, Pelster, Ren.

Approval of Minutes from last meeting (Julie)

Approved.

Announcements, recent trials

Gale Thomson visit 2/15. The new Gale Digital Collections were introduced. Last year the Library saved by being early customer of a Gale historical newspapers package. It may be possible to negotiate a similar discount with new collection. Jeff will invite reps back for selectors to meet.

Julie noted that we are nearing the end of the Proquest trial of business/management databases. Leslie is collecting feedback from interested selectors. To date, the ECC is not involved.

World Biographical Information Services trial: The group voted against subscribing to the WBIS for several reasons. The Library already has access to other very good biographical resources online (DNB, ANB, Biography Resource Center), has made a large investment in the microfiche, and subscribes to the index online.

Jeff announced that librarians from the Law Library will be visiting the Main Library on March 22.

Jeff announced that money from Kellogg has been restored to the ECC budget. The money represents Kellogg’s share of the expense of several databases including ABI Inform, Business Source Premier and Factiva.

The Elsevier invoice has arrived. Total $1,446,102.00. Objectives in future negotiations with Elsevier include cancellation of 200K in low-use content and keeping the annual increase to 3%. The Elsevier portfolio committee will be meeting to discuss the contract in March.

Recent Purchases

Jeff reported that the Library has subscribed to the Oxford University Press journal package. The package includes all 180 titles published by OUP. The total package was 8K, of which the Evanston campus contributed 5K, Galter 2K and Law 1K. Access will be systemwide. The group discussed whether or not to distribute the cost (and the ECC funds) to individual disciplines to be consistent with work on the ECC portfolio review. Before making a final decision either way, the group will review the title distribution.

Old Business

Jeff commended Reference for recent work done on their web pages.

Jeff distributed copies of the Daily article on Google Scholar.

Jeff also reported on data available through SFX that would indicate how many referrals to electronic content came from different resources such as Google Scholar or Einstein or others. Jeff is in conversation with Stu Baker and Frank Cervone about access and/or distribution of this data.

Project Euclid : There is the possibility of moving some Math journal titles to the Project Euclid portfolio. Anna will check with Bob Michaelson as this is not an ECC matter. John is inquiring about pricing.

Anna agreed that the membership ($600/yr) to the American Society for Information Science and Technology should be cancelled in favor of a separate subscription (print and online) to the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology). The value of the membership was primarily the Annual Review itself.

The Thomson renewal offer to the Web of Knowledge is in. The renewal will be for 5 years with a 4 % price cap. Total cost is $142,000. 2 reports (University Science Indicators Report and Local Journal Usage Reports) that were originally offered as free with purchase are now being offered instead with a 50% discounted price. Cindy Clennon is checking on this change.

The group continued to review the ECC Fund Commitments spreadsheet to determine which discipline-specific databases to move out of the ECC portfolio. Funds for these titles will be transferred to the appropriate fund.

The following databases were moved out of the ECC portfolio (new fund noted in parentheses):

• Historical newspapers online full text (History)
• Index Islamicus (Reference)
• Internet and personal computing abstracts (Microcomputing)

One correction and one change was made. The fund for Contemporary Women’s Studies should now be Sociology. Applied Science and Technology was moved back to ECC portfolio.

New Business

Esmeralda raised the topic of future funding of the Economist Intelligence Unit database. Julie, Leslie and Africana have paid for the database in the past. They have requested that the ECC contribute 15 % (or $5250) of the $35,000 total cost. Harriet may also be able to contribute. Eric will check on a possible contribution from Law. Esmeralda will look into usage statistics and a decision will be deferred until the next meeting.

Eric raised the possibility of requesting from Gale a bulk discount on access fees. Law alone pays $4100 annually and Main access fees are becoming a problem as well. The issue of access fees will be on the agenda at the upcoming meeting with Gale representatives later in March.

Various Blackwell offers (journal backfiles, a reference suite, larger individual reference titles) were rejected.

Reference offer from Sage rejected.

Submitted by Kathleen Kordesh, United Library

Library Web Services Group Meeting Minutes - April 4, 2007

Present: Charlotte Cubbage, Clare Roccaforte, Deborah Rose-Lefmann, Qiana Johnson, Bridget Canavan, Lindsay King, Jeannette Moss, Melissa Jacobi and Beth Clausen.

New member Clare Roccaforte was introduced to the group.

March 20 minutes were approved.

The group discussed and agreed on these final modifications to the Web Style Guide. Bridget will make these changes and remove the ‘DRAFT’ watermark, then send the guide to Frank Cervone to give the Administrative Committee for final approval.

1) Jeannette Moss suggested that in the first sentence to the guide, we change “providing Web-based resources” to ““providing Web-based resources and information”. Beth Clausen suggested use of the word “services” instead of “information”.

2) Charlotte Cubbage suggested removing the sentence “In most departments one staff member performs both functions.”

3) Charlotte also proposed that we strike the sentence “However, University webpages that serve an instructional purpose are subject to “Fair Use Guidelines” which permit limited use of copyrighted materials for educational purposes.” because these guidelines do not apply to a website that is public.

We request that the Administrative Committee decide who can, should or must go to the forum sessions where the Web Style Guide will be introduced and/or demos and hands-on training in compliance with the Library’s web standards.

We discussed a possible timeline for the scheduling of these sessions as well as deadline for compliance for all pages on the website.

• 2 sessions in the Forum Room during the last 2 weeks of May to introduce the Web Style Guide

• 2 demonstration sessions during the first 2 weeks of June (before ALA) to train staff in how to comply with the web standards set forth in the Web Style Guide.

• Optional follow up open lab sessions the last week of June and the second week of July to answer questions regarding Web Style Guide compliance, Dreamweaver templates and CSS.

• Deadline for compliance for all pages on our website is August 15, 2007

We request that the Administrative Committee approve the Web Style Guide and the proposed training and compliance timeline by April 30, in time for Sarah to present them at the May 2 Management Council Meeting. We also ask that the members of the Administrative Committee provide us with a list of web authors and content provides for each department in their division.

Feedback on Melissa Jacobi’s training document “Creating and Styling Pages on the Library’s Web Site” distributed at the previous meeting was tabled until the next meeting due to time constraints. Melissa will send the document to group as an attachment.

We discussed the feedback the group is beginning to receive from Library staff about the draft LWSG Project List. There are suggestions on prioritizing the projects on the list as well as additional ideas for the group to consider. We will take this feedback into account when we prepare a final version of the list to present to the Administrative Committee.

Minutes of Library Web Services Group Meeting, March 20

Library Web Services Group Minutes, March 20, 2007
Submitted by Charlotte Cubbage

Minutes from March 2nd and March 15th approved. Cubbage will ask Cervone and Clausen to send them to Mary Bradley for libstaff links.

Cubbage handed out a list of 7 possible projects for LWSG and asked committee members to distribute within their divisions, requesting
1. prioritized lists
2. items important to staff NOT included on list
Please make clear whether prioritized lists come from individuals or departments.
Cubbage will email the list to LWSG for easier distribution.

At the end of the meeting Canavan asked that at the same time LWSG members solicit input on the next project for LWSG they also inform their divisions that we are currently working on a Web Style Guide for all library web sites, and will be recommending its implementation, training and support to the Administrative Committee. The rest of LWSG agreed.

Cubbage requested that Canavan contact Cervone about creating a new draft of the Web Style Guide, incorporating suggested edits. Canavan will arrange with Cervone. Note: define the terms content-provider and web-publisher somewhere in the document.

The committee then discussed ways to announce and train staff in the new Web Style Guide.

To facilitate the process Canavan will request a list of all web-publishers and content-providers from the AULs.

Canavan suggested that after the Web Style Guide is approved by the Administrative Committee that Cubbage ask Sarah Pritchard to present it to Management Council. Canavan also suggested that the LWSG ask the AULPS and the AULCM to say a few words in support of the Style Guide compliance at the Management Council meeting.

There was general agreement that we should offer a general overview for all staff and mandatory training sessions for all web content-providers and web publishers.

Cubbage stated that she would ask the AULPS and the AULCM to make some introductory remarks at the presentations. The remarks would focus on the goals of the Style Guide.

For general presentation: Overview of reasons to employ a web style guide, tied to the library’s mission statement. Define the LWSG as a body that looks at the entire web presence of the library in order to facilitate the discovery of content and services. Present a before-and-after demonstration with Cubbage’s English Research Guides, and a departmental page. Emphasize overall problems with current approach by referring to the most recent usability study.

Cubbage asked all committee members to pull a relevant quote from the Final Report of the last usability study that illuminates a major problem

Question outstanding: who should attend the overall meetings?

Cubbage said that during the next meeting we will decide on the number of general meetings we will need and whom we will recommend should attend. We will also discuss training/support, and a time-line. At that point Cubbage may form a small group to write up the proposal.

Electronic Collection Committee Meeting Minutes - March 9, 2006

In Attendance:

John Blosser, Julie Borden, Jeff Garrett, D.J. Hoek, Kathleen Kordesh, Lucy Lyons, Bill McHugh, Kathleen Murphy, Eric Parker, Natalie Pelster, Linda Walton

New Member:

Kathleen Murphy, Data Services Librarian in the Government and Geographic Information and Data Services Department, was introduced. She will be taking the place of Charmaine Henriques.

Approval of Minutes:

There were minor adjustments to be made to the minutes of the January 31 meeting; Bill will make those and then send the minutes along to be posted.

Announcements:

EndNote (which had been set to expire in April) has been renewed for another 3 years at the same price ($29,500 per year). The distribution of costs among different units is the same as before. It would be helpful to have usage statistics broken out by location, but ISI hasn’t been able to do this so far. A web version of the product is due to come out later this year (maybe in the summer?). On a related note, RefWorks is being discontinued at Northwestern as of 12/31/06.
JSTOR has recently updated its holdings (Jeff forwarded their announcement to the ECC mailing list). In short, the following journals are new in JSTOR: Canadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de l’éducation, Cell Stress & Chaperones, The Classical Journal, The Future of Children, The Journal of Cell Biology, and Waterbirds: The International Journal of Waterbird Biology. Additionally, the following titles have reduced their moving walls: Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden (to 3 years from 5), Dumbarton Oaks Papers (to 2 years from 3), and Journal of Biblical Literature (to 3 years from 5). Finally, Callaloo has gone from a fixed to a 5-year moving wall. While some of the new content is available through other means, the JSTOR version provides a trustworthy archive as well as cross-title searching. The Northwestern community currently averages about 20,000 article downloads per month from JSTOR.

Speaking of archiving, it looks like the Portico electronic archiving service will become a viable service within the next year. It could be useful as a final backup for e-journal content, which will likely have space impacts for the NU library system. Portico is subscribed to on a membership basis (currently about $15,000 per year for an institution our size).

Recent Acquisitions

Yale UN Oral History Project is now available in both the ER and via NUcat. It includes transcripts of approximately 180 interviews conducted with key individuals involved in international political developments in which the United Nations has played a role. Transcripts are available in either PDF or Word formats.

Galter has added title-level access to a collection of medicine-related e-books available through Ovid. These are available to the entire Northwestern community.

Current Trials and Vendor Demos

There is a trial through March 31 of Alexander Street Press’ Black Thought and Culture. The product contains 100,000 pages of materials from leading figures both historical and contemporary, including letters, speeches, prefatory essays, political leaflets, trial transcripts, and interviews.

There’s another trial of Greenwood Press reference titles, although the product appears to be same as it was during the previous trial.

Old Business

EBSCO Religion databases: Catholic Periodicals and Literature Index, New Testament Abstracts, and Old Testament Abstracts would (together) cost $3,325 per year for web access. These 3 products currently cost about $2000 per year in CD-ROM. Pricing for web access to the 2 Abstracts products is $1,030 apiece per year. Jeff would be willing to fund the $1,300 per year difference to upgrade to web access for all 3, and provide access system-wide (which would avoid having to specially configure EZProxy to limit access to United patrons only).

A printer has been identified that can be used with Newspaper Direct. There will be a 3-year lease agreement. This service will allow for timely (and relatively inexpensive) receipt of newspapers on a daily basis, particularly for those newspapers which ordinarily have to be mailed from overseas.

Vault Online Career Library is just about ready to go live. Law and Kellogg will not have access, though everyone else at Northwestern will. The Library system will be splitting the costs with Career Services and School of Continuing Studies.

The order has gone in for the Millennial Edition of the Historical Statistics of the United States. The cost is about $6,000 (one-time), to be split among a number of funds (History, Political Science, Reference, Schaffner). The maintenance fees ($100/year) will be picked up by Government and Geographic Information and Data Services.

CIC Conference call of 2/14/06:
• OCLC WorldCat Collection Analysis – CIC is trying to get OCLC to extend the duration of the contract since some schools couldn’t access their data
• EastView Chinese journals – Northwestern probably won’t license these
• LexisNexis Statistical– Northwestern will renew
• Encyclopaedia Britannica– Northwestern will renew

New Business

Elsevier Handbooks in Economics – These are subscribed to in print, and there is high demand for them. The cost to access them online is about $2,000 per year (with 8% increases per year). There’s also the possibility of a one-time purchase of $9,500 for the series (though it’s unclear if that means any updated editions wouldn’t be included in that purchase). Harriet will get a trial; right now, we’re likely to go with a 1-year license, and, if satisfied with the conditions, ask for Board of Governors money to purchase the series outright after that.

Alumni access to databases: this is a tricky issue; Linda is talking to EBSCO about a trial to a service aimed at alumni.

Inventory of ECC funds commitments: Jeff distributed copies of a spreadsheet showing resources paid (in full or in part) with ECC funds. At the next meeting ECC will review this list to see if all of the titles there are still needed.

Newsbank’s America’s Newspapers: this product has about 200 newspapers full text, some of which are not part of other databases such as LexisNexis. It’s supposed to be the full content. The price is $21,000 - $22,000 per year via CARLI. ECC will discuss at its next meeting.

Electronic Collection Committee Meeting Minutes - January 31, 2006

Approval of Minutes:

The Minutes from the November meeting were approved.

Announcements:

There is a new endowment for the ECC, the Early Fund. The fund has $400,000 in it and should generate $10,000 - $15,000 per year.

The renewal price for the Bibliographie der deutschen Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft (BDSL) is cheaper than last year’s price, due to the decline in value of the Euro. The dollar’s strength should help us with a number of subscriptions. The BDSL has also implemented SFX links.

We are investigating an alternative to the Elsevier “big deal,” examining our usage statistics for title that we might cancel our subscription to, and use the savings to provide individual article access on demand to those journals we do not subscribe to.

Recent Acquisitions

We negotiated a special deal for Black Studies Center and the new Periodicals Archive Online collections, saving about $20,000 of the Board of Governors money, to be used for additional purchases. A major part of the Black Studies Center is the full run of the Chicago Defender, though it is not yet complete, and locating the first four years to digitize has been a problem. It is very difficult for anyone to determine just how much of the file is digitized at the current time; Bill McHugh will write our representative to see if there is a way to determine this readily. We’ve approached the CRL about creating a print archive for Periodicals Archive Online; they are not interested, but might help organize a distributed archive.

Making of the Modern Economy has been acquired; the Board of Governors contributed $50,000, and we are working on locating the remaining $75,000.

We have acquired a set of CDs of Chinese historical census data, purchase by the Board of Governors and located in Government and Geographic Information and Data Services.

Acquisition of Elsevier backfiles in Psychology have been approved by the Board. The Springer Chemistry & Materials Science backfiles will be purchased; there is a special CIC deal for this.

Defining Gender, a database from Adams Matthew, is being purchased with a $21,000 discount.

Our new streaming music databases are now live; there have been intermittent problems with Naxos.

There have been a series of new nanotechnology acquisitions: ISI Derwent Innovation Index, ISI Scientific and Technical Proceedings Index, ASM Handbook, Alloys Center, Wiley Polymer Properties Database, and four or five new journals. The administration seems responsive to our request for another $25,000 recurring for nanotechnology and $75,000 recurring for cognitive science.

Lucy Lyon is working on the Worldcat collection analysis software.

The CDs of the Digitale Bibliothek are now almost cataloged; there are two copies of each, one circulating, the other for Reference.

We’ve signed up for DigiZeitschriften, online access to German scholarly journals back to 1815. The price is €1500 for the first year and €650 per year thereafter. CRL will help coordinate a distributed print archive.

An underspent preservation fund for microfilm reformatting will pay for the capital cost of the JSTOR Biological Archive, so that we now have access to the entirety of JSTOR.

We acquired some new titles from the Oxford digital reference shelf in an end of year sale.

French 17, an index of seventeenth century French studies, is now coming electronically. The price is being raised $5/year to cover the cost of going electronic.

Current Trials and Vendor Demos

There is a trial for ABC-Clio’s ebook site, and the databases African-American Song. A related database, African-American Music Reference, is under development by Alexander Street Press.

Old Business

The problems with the EBSCO Religion Database are still not resolved.

We are still looking at printers so that we can implement Newspaper Direct. We have a list of print units and other itemized costs for moving to this service. We need to figure out what to do with the funds we save from canceling the paper newspaper subscriptions

The Chinese Academic Journals has been paid for.

We are ready to pay the first invoice of the ACS Archives. The purchase of these archives will be amortized over 10-15 years.

New Business

We are looking at acquiring Vault Online Career Library, splitting costs with Career Services.

We’re looking at acquiring the Millennial Edition of the Historical Statistics of the United States. Cost is about $6,000, with renewal costs of $100/year.

A question was asked about the Congressional Research Digital Collection, which integrates several LexisNexis products, and which we have.

Electronic Collections Committee Meeting Minutes - November 22, 2005

Present: John Blosser, Julie Borden, Jeff Garrett, D.J. Hoek, Lucy Lyons, Bill McHugh, Charmaine Henriques, Eric Parker, Natalie Pelster, Anna Ren

Recent Acquisitions
• Calendar of State Papers, Colonial: Archival copy of CD-ROM will be made and kept in the Reference archive cabinet
• Shaw-Shoemaker: Various selectors contributed to the purchase and payment is now complete
• Gale Testing and Education Reference Center
• Database of Recorded American Music (DRAM): Has gone live
• Naxos Music Library: Order has been placed; once live, MARC records will be purchased

Current Trials and Vendor Demonstrations
• Alexander Street Press: Representatives visited on Nov. 15 and met with Jeff and a few selectors
• Westlaw Campus Research
• Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: It is uncertain if FAZ will still be available through LexisNexis. (Le monde and El País are no longer available through LexisNexis.) FAZ is available electronically by direct subscription. Lucy will confer with Tom Mann and look further into this.
• Gale Making of Modern Economy: Trial has been requested

Old Business
• Chinese Academic Journals: Lucy proposed that ECC pay for the $2536 remaining balance, and it was agreed that ECC would.
• Nanotechnology Funds for E-Resouces: A report on what has been purchased with the new allocation for Nanotechnology will be given to the President next week.
• WorldCat Collection Analysis: Becomes available Dec. 1; there will be 5 accounts for this across the NUL system
• EBSCO Religion Databases: Jeff will contact CIC representative to check status of this.
• NewspaperDirect: Natalie is exploring the effects that print-on-demand availability will have, including an $8000 annual savings by canceling print subscriptions. David Bishop has reviewed Natalie’s proposal for a printer and is considering leasing a large-format printer.
• RefWorks: Subscription will be renewed for another year and will review again next year

New Business
• Smithsonian Global Sound: D.J. explained that, since the subscriptions for DRAM and Naxos Music Library are being paid entirely by the Music sound recordings budget, a subscription to Smithsonian Global Sound will need support from other areas. In addition to Music, Anthropology and Africana have offered support. After discussion, it was decided to go forward with a subscription for 5 simultaneous users ($3,510 total) funded by Music ($2000), Africana ($500), Anthropology ($175), and ECC ($835). D.J. will work with John to establish the subscription
• Results of Board of Governors Proposals: Jeff circulated a draft of the purchase proposals for FY06
• The Nation: Decided against
• Greenwood E-Books: Lucy will confer with bibliographers and curators about this.
• Duke University Press Journals: Decided against

Submitted by
D.J. Hoek

Electronic Collection Committee Meeting Minutes - August 3, 2005

Present: Bill McHugh, Linda Walton, John Blosser, Charmaine Henriques, Kathleen Kordesh, Julie Borden, Anna Ren, Jeff Garrett.

AGENDA

Approval of Minutes

Linda will complete and distribute soon.

Announcements

Biosis Backfile Access Resolved (John)
Lloyd Davidson is cancelling the Library subscription to BIOSIS, but we have a considerable investment in BIOSIS backfile. John Blosser has been negotiating with ISI to host backfile for us, plus what we've paid through this year. ISI has agreed to offer it on the Ovid platform for approximately $1000/year.

Wilson usage stats revised (Jeff)
We've received corrected data from Wilson that is more in line with what we suspected usage to be than the previously provided statistics.

NetLibrary purchase (Jeff)
The first 200 titles from the newly purchased collection of 5000 academic titles are now available.

Recent database purchases

USA Trade Online (Charmaine)
John renewed USA Trade Online, but it wasn't available through the consortium so we had to pay full price. We decided not to renew the full IP-authenticated version of STAT USA and instead will go with the depository password that allows access for two users at computers in the Government Publications department. There was some confusion over who would be paying for USA Trade Online. The group decided to put the issue back on agenda when Eric Parker attends to determine how to split the payment.

LA Times Online (Jeff)
The LA Times Online is up and available. Surplus from Yankee approval fund helped to fund the out-of-copyright portion of this purchase.

IDAL Renewals (John)
John reported that the IDAL renewals are now happening more or less automatically. Titles received through IDAL include PsycINFO and PsycArticles, Communications and Mass Media Complete and Alternative Press Index.

PAIS International (Bill)
Our subscription to this database has been moved to CSA Illumina from SilverPlatter. In addition we have purchased the retrospective file which, when completed, will date back to 1915 (currently covers 1937-1976).

Trials and vendor demonstrations

Ovid demo, August 24, 3-4 p.m., Forum Rm, to demonstrate their new interface.

Bill reported that we currently have a trial of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies Database on EBSCOhost.

Old Business

Scopus Offer: ad acta? (Jeff)
Jeff reported that Elsevier is now offering a 10% CIC discount. However, we are still not interested at this time--we simply have too much of an investment in Web of Science.

ATLAS Developments (Jeff, Kathleen)
Jeff reported on the CIC deal for 5 title package of religious studies databases (ATLA + Full Text, Catholic Periodicals Index, New Testament Abstracts, and Old Testament Abstracts). We have decided to split the package cost with United Library paying $5734 and Main Library paying $4487.

bepress: ResearchNow--decision time (Jeff)
Jeff reported that bepress has offered their entire package with 20% discount off list price, with an additional 15% discount for a 3 year deal, and with a 5% per year price cap. This works out to about $4220 for 25 journals with a 3 year commitment. The group decided to split the cost with $1000 coming from Jeff, $500 from Galter, $300 from SEL ($100 from each selector), and the rest covered by selectors who already have titles from this publisher.

NewspapersDirect/Print on Demand (Jeff for Natalie)
Both products are being marketed by ProQuest. Print on Demand utilizes special printer to print full newspapers in their original format on the same day as publication. Libraries must purchase blocks of print units plus the special printer. David Bishop has not yet signed off on purchasing the printer (all possible models are quite expensive), and would like to investigate if it can be used for anything else in addition to printing the newspapers. Jeff noted that there are a lot of issues to work out if we were to go with this system, such as who would be responsible for maintenance, toner, paper, etc.

New Business

Year-end purchase list status (Jeff)
Purchases of Elsevier backfiles from Cell Press and the Decision Science and Social Science collections are at the top of the list. We are still waiting for things to sort out so that we know exactly how much year-end money is available.

Blackwell deal with CIC: breakthrough!
Jeff reported that Blackwell agreed to offer the CIC a 3 year deal with a 5% per year price cap (down from 8%). The CIC is still negotiating whether the price cap applies to year 1 (2006) or year 2 (2007). This deal converts all our paper subscriptions to electronic; those wishing to receive paper as well pay an extra 20%. The year 1 price will be about 95% of what we're paying now. An additional $20,000 (or so) yearly pays for the difference between what we have now (about 265 titles within the NU library system) and Blackwell's total of 538 titles. This payment will be divided this between Law, Galter and NUL based on each's current volume paid to Blackwell.

Electronic Collections Committee Meeting Minutes May 24, 2005

Present: John Blosser, Julie Borden, Frank Cervone, D.J. Hoek, Jeff Garrett (Chair), Kathleen Kordesh, Bill McHugh, Eric Parker, Natalie Pelster, Anna Ren, Linda Walton

Absent: Charmaine Henriquez, Lucy Lyons

Guests: Andrea Stamm, Gary Strawn

Minutes of the meeting of April 26, 2005 were approved.

Announcements

Bill McHugh announced offers from Wilson for complete backfiles to Education Index, Book Review Digest. Bill consulted with Leslie on the Education Index. The one time cost is $12,000 for one user, with an annual access fee of $300.00. It is not heavily used. Book Review Digest is heavily used. The one time cost is $12,355.00 for one user, with an annual access fee of $618.00. The database PAIS will also have full backfiles available soon. Jeff asked that the information on these offers be forwarded to him for inclusion in the end-of-year purchases list.

Linda Walton announced a backfile offer from Elsevier for Cell Press titles for $10,150.00. There is interest in acquiring these archives.

Jeff announced the new JSTOR Citation Search which allows you to search for a known item. Jeff reported on a conversation he had with Carol MacAdam, Associate Director of Library Relations at JSTOR, in which she clarified that subscribers have no archival right to the online content of JSTOR.

Recent Purchases

We have purchased the archive of the Early American Newspapers Online from Readex. It was purchased with the Fitzgerald and Deering Library endowments. Access problems for the Chicago campus are being resolved.

We have ordered another segment of netLibrary through the Missouri Library Network Consortium (MLNC) academic shared ebook collection. Jeff distributed a sample title list of this collection and what we already have access to or own. The comparison was done by Leslie. The cost is $8,000.00 for about 5,000 titles, and we will receive MARC records. The cost is to be shared by Main, Law, and a title substitution from a request granted to Leslie by the Board of Governors for other netLibrary titles. Leslie determined this purchase would support the needs of the Kellogg school. The collection will be released in four batches between June and the end of December 2005.

The Wiley backfile purchase is complete, containing 7 collections in all: Biotechnology, Biochemistry, and Biophysics; Cell and Developmental Biology; Chemistry; Materials Science; Neuroscience; Analytical Sciences; Genetics and Evolution. We received a 35% discount on this CIC deal.

The Historic Document Series is linked. There is no aid in direct linking to individual documents within the database. The coverage begins with 1972.

Recent Product Demos and Trials

Otis Foster, from Thomson Gale, was here recently to talk about an offer on the database Making of the Modern Economy. He did not leave us with a firm price, but said we would receive some discount for overlap coverage with our other Gale databases, e.g., ECCO.

Bill is finishing up trials for multiple versions of MLA, and PAIS. Lucy has evaluations of the EBSCO database GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender).

Old Business

Jeff reported that everything we have rights to have access to has been turned on through the University of Chicago Philologic platform. This arrangement will save us about $1,200.00 per year in access fees to several databases. Having online access to certain titles also allows us to access content that is stored on CD-ROMs which were unable to be networked. Jeff also cleared up a question on an annual payment we thought we were making to the University of Michigan for access to databases on one of their servers. We originally made a $3,000.00 payment, but Michigan decided not to bill for server use since little maintenance was involved for them.

After reviewing the offer on the remaining ISI Web of Science backfiles, it has been decided not to spend money on them at this time.

New Business

Wendy Shelbourne, the electronic resources librarian at UIUC, posed a question to Jeff about PCI subscription and an offering through IDAL. She is concerned that the IDAL offer may be for different coverage than their current subscription. The cost is lower through IDAL. Bill explained the intricacies our PCI subscription relating the link between the index and the full text database.

Andrea Stamm and Gary Strawn joined us to discuss issues with loading MARC records. Some issues as outlined by Jeff are discovering the availability of record sets, evaluation of cataloging quality, physical loading or inputting into Voyager, the ER, SFX, and how to handle updates. John added that the timing of adding them to the catalog affects acquisitions workflow. John volunteered to coordinate the process as part of the acquisition process. Jeff invited Andrea to consider appointing a cataloger as a member to the ECC. Andrea will discuss the matter further with John and Gary before she makes a decision.

Jeff asked for suggestions for end-of-year purchases. Suggestions were: Elsevier backfiles, Elsevier monograph series, and more online reference works. Jeff asked that we go back and poll our constituents, and then send suggestions to him. Price range should be $5,000.00 to $50,000.00.

Linda asked about the status of the Blackwell deal. Jeff reported that there was no CIC agreement yet, and that Blackwell was abiding by single year agreements. Northwestern could join the deal independently if we chose to do so.

Anna asked about the status of RefWorks renewal for the future. Jeff and Frank agreed that there were no plans for cancellation at this time.

Submitted by John Blosser

Electronic Collections Committee Meeting Minutes - April 26, 2005

Present: John Blosser, Julie Borden, Jeff Garrett (Chair), Charmaine Henriquez, D. J. Hoek, Lucy Lyons, Bill McHugh, Eric Parker, Natalie Pelster, Anna Ren, Linda Walton

Announcements

1. Gale Virtual Reference Library (a Board of Governors purchase) is up, which includes encyclopedias and other reference materials in Biomedical and Life Sciences, Education, Business and Management , Social Sciences, Political Science, Arts, and History.

2. Alloy Center is up, which enables users to search in one easy step across ASM property data, performance charts, and processing guidelines for specific metals and alloys.

3. Biography Center is up but no MARC records in Voyage. Bill McHugh will follow up on this.

4. The BIOSIS database will be cancelled in 2006. The usage is low. We will loss 10 concurrent users in the ISI web of knowledge due to the cancellation.

5. Please inform Robert Trautvetter, NUSS, if you increase or decrease simultaneous users of any networked CD-ROM databases.

6. All Springer titles are finally up at Chicago Campus.

7. Galter is working on a retro conversion project.

8. MARC records for German Library Classic have been loaded on Voyager.

Recent Purchases

Purchased the INSPEC Archive database coverage from 1896-1968. The access to the archive will be available from EBSCO.

Upcoming Product Demos and Trials

1. Making of the Modern Economy (trial available through 05/31/2005): monographic collection of 1450-1850 economic literature. Unknown expensive one-time purchase cost with unknown annual access fee.

2. Online version of the Historic Documents Series: pricing for orders placed though April 29, 2005 is $2,500 one-time and $150/year thereafter. The committee has decided to purchase electronic version of the series. ECC will pay one-time fee of $2,500 and the Government Publication department will pay annual cost of $150/year.

Old Business

1. Decided to purchase the Wiley backfiles: paid $20,000 by ECC and AUL, $20,000 by Anna Ren (SEL), and $5000 by Galter.

2. Impending an expensive purchase of American Historical Newspapers/ Shaw Shoemaker from Readex: Harriet Lightman will talk with ECC in its May meeting

3. We will add five titles to our Oxford Reference Online account. They are: International Encyclopedia Of Dance, Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre And Performance, Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. The total cost is $3100 which will be paid by funds from Jeff Garrett, Bill McHugh, and Julie Borden.

4. The Collection Management will look into what Proquest/Chadwyck-Healey databases we can add to the Philologic portfolio at the University of Chicago.

New business

None

Electronic Collections Committee Meeting Minutes - February 8, 2005

Minutes from the ECC meeting of February 2005.

Present: John Blosser, Jeff Garrett (Chair), Charmaine Henriques, Kathleen Kordesh, Lucy Lyons, Bill McHugh, Eric Parker, Natalie Pelster, Anna Ren, Linda Walton

Announcements

1. JSTOR Usage
Very heavily used resource (11,800 sessions logged in March 2004; 4,155 in April). Conjectured that the current number of retrieval requests from long-term storage (110-180 per mo.) could decrease significantly if availability within JSTOR and PCI checked first. NUL will be moving some journals available in JSTOR to CRL for long-term storage.

Would like statistics on what journals are being accessed through JSTOR in addition to number of sessions. One full year’s usage statistics on Science Direct should be available in May.

1. ARTSTOR also very heavily used resource. 14,000+ hits in December, 2004.

1. MoML (Making of Modern Law) MARC records now in NUcat

1. ECCO (Eighteenth-century collections online) 132,000 records in NUcat, but none have subject headings­are looking into sources for records with subject headings. OCLC and RLIN records for print may be downloaded­10,000 to 15,000 records.

1. Check out new xipolis site­Bill/Reference will pay annual subscription fee of about $400.00.

New Acquisitions

1. Communication and Mass Media Complete (an EBSCO database) 200 full text journals, indexing for 300 journals, which is broader indexing than other communications databases. Purchased as part of IDAL deal that included American Humanities Index. Saved about $1,000.00 by purchasing both CMMC and AHI.

1. Nature backfiles--$40,000 + Covers 1950-1985. Linda, Lloyd and Bob will share annual maintenance fee. All backfiles will be available by end of 2006.

1. Social Sciences and Humanities Index (Wilson)­ backfiles turned on but not yet listed in ER.

1. Film Literature Index--Online access currently available for free.

1. Georef­currently subscribe to Georef, a geoscience index (Cambridge Scientific). No interest in subscribing to new Geoscience World Millennium Collection & Literature Archives-geology faculty would not be willing to cancel print journals, which would be needed in order to pay for online.

1. New York Review of Books--Cost less than $1000/yr. Will be funded by AUL and Bill will get it started.

1. Springer titles--Linda reported that Health Science’s access has been cut off and that earlier there was trouble with Blackwell titles. Linda, John and Eric will discuss how to restore and maintain access for Chicago campus.

1. EBSCO discussion postponed

New business

1. Leadership Library on Internet --14 “yellow book” directories offered as a package deal. Law and Main (gov. pubs) subscribe to some in print. Eric asked about interest in package. Cost $3500/yr. for automatic renewal and $3700 if not automatic renewal. He will share trial information.

1. Endnote--New version released in Fall, but major bugs with XP and so not distributed. 2 patches have been added that fix many problems. New version is first version to not be compatible with earlier ones. Health Sciences needs to have new version anyway. Jeff will ask TSS if they can make new, patched version (8.0.2) available for download on chocolate server with a warning posted that no toolkit is available for this version.

Submitted by Kathleen Kordesh, United Library.

Electronic Collections Committee Meeting Minutes - October 26, 2004

Present: John Blosser, Charlotte Cubbage, Jeff Garrett (Chair), Charmaine Henriquez, Kathleen Kordesh, Lucy Lyons, Bill McHugh, Eric Parker, Anna Ren

Announcements

Cataloging Department is finishing cataloging records for the Rare Gothic Novels e-resource we purchased a few years ago. We had been awaiting some arrangement with the publisher, which was not being realized.

RefWorks subscription will be renewed at last year's price of $6,600.00 thanks to negotiation of Brian Nielsen. The Library will cost share this subscription for at least another year. It runs concurrently with EndNote, but has less usage than EndNote. EndNote is showing high usage and strong attendance by students at classes for instruction in using it. United Libraries is not seeing EndNote as a menu choice for downloading from the TSS page. Kathleen will follow up on this. Linda Walton is working with TSS on problems Galter is having with downloading.

The early deadline for the Board of Governors purchases proposals is November 8.

Recent Purchases

We recently renewed the Nature package through the CIC. John sent the statistics to the ECC list. The list of Research and Review titles may be individually selected, but are currently shared at 50% cost with Galter.

The Gale digital archive package is available, but still through the Law Library's Web site. John is trying to get this corrected. We have not been invoiced yet.

Making of Modern Law is live.

Recent Product Demos and Trials

Alexander Street Press presented on October 20. They clearly have less content in some databases than was expected. ISI Thomson visited today. They develop their data retrieval and analysis. Now one can analyze the results for institution rankings in a field of research. Value Line Investment Survey standard edition has been reinstated online. Leslie is working with Kellogg to possibly subscribe to the additional edition that includes small and mid-cap companies. The extra expense is a bit much for the collections budget.

Minutes were approved with corrections for the meeting of October 12.

Old Business

The Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (ESBS) online was thought to be too expensive at $3,000 per year. Bill said it is comprehensive and has depth of coverage. He and Lucy thought that the print edition would cover Northwestern's needs. The additional online reference works may fill in a few gaps in not having the online edition of the ESBS. The offer was turned down.

Empire Online has a trial coming up.

Anna reported on the CIC ASM (American Society of Metals) deal for the annual handbook, Alloy Center, and Micrograph Center. Anna has login information for a trial to the Alloy Center, which works better than a previous online product ASM marketed. Having the online version would allow cancellation of the 3-ring binder format print edition. Annual subscription rates would be between $1,000 and $1,300. Anna asked if the CIC would pursue offering the three parts separately so we could subscribe to only the Alloy Center online as part of the deal.

The Blackwell Synergy task force had not met since the last meeting.

Jeff and Bill led the discussion on the WBIS online offer. It was thought too expensive to subscribe to the entire WBIS database some of which is out of copyright and most of which is no longer updated. For $900 per year, we could subscribe to the online index, which would have excellent coverage of our biographical archives microfiche collection. Jeff and Bill have a call to Gale tomorrow, and among other discussion points, will ask if it is possible to have usage statistics from the currently free online index we have been using.

Discussion on subscribing to the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the New York Review of Books was tabled until the next meeting.

Bill outlined the offer for the Dictionary of National Biography British edition for which usage statistics are available. Law agreed to contribute $200 to $300 towards a subscription of 2 to 3 users. A single user subscription is $1,400.00. For the Dictionary of American Biography, a single user subscription is $500.00, but the coverage is less than the DNB. The DAB is a good resource in lieu of the online WBIS. One user may not be enough. A subscription of 2 to 5 users is $600.00.

Jeff gave to Charlotte to forward to Leslie an ICCMP offer for the Kraus Curriculum Development Library.

Jeff announced he would fund the acquisition of NetLibrary shared collection IV. The collection costs $15,000 and contains about 6,000 titles with perpetual access.

Electronic Collections Committee Minutes - October 12, 2004

Present: John Blosser, Charlotte Cubbage, Jeff Garrett (Chair), Charmaine Henriquez, Jeanette Casey, Lucy Lyons, Bill McHugh, Eric Parker, Natalie Pelster, Anna Ren, Linda Walton

1. Announcements

Jeff announced that CIC Summit on Scholarly Communication will be held October 28-29, 2004.

Jeff reported that RefWorks is up for renewal. The cost went from $6630 to $8,000, an increase of 21%. The University AT will talk to CAS and try to bring the cost down.

Jeff announced that the early deadline for BoG proposals this year. The CM Office will need to have the proposals by Monday, November 8 so they can be discussed in the BoG meeting on November 17.

Eric announced that Westlaw will soon come to the Evanston campus. It will be available on one computer in the GovDoc department.

Bill and John reported the problem with access to the Valueline online edition. We are currently entitled to one password on one computer with our print subscription. In order to have campus wide access, we would need to pay $5,000.

2. Recent Purchases

Jeff reported that we have subscribed BDSL-Online for $606 a year. Lucy reported that we have purchased China National Knowledge Infrastructure backfile covering subjects in social science, politics, finance, etc.

Upcoming Product Demos and Trials

Eileen Lawrence, Alexander Street Press, will give a demo on 10/20. Jeff will make announcement about the time and place.

3. Old Business

Bill reported that we have signed the Gale Suite contract. Access will be turned on soon. Eric reported that Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective should be available soon. Jeff reported that Blackwell has made another proposal on access to its electronic journals. Lucy, Linda, and Jeff will get together to examine the new proposal and report back to ECC.

4. New business

Linda reported the situation with AACR Journal Site license. It would cost $15,000 to get university wide access to all five AACR journals. The Galter will pay $11,000 and the Science and Engineering (Lloyd) will pay the remaining $4,000 if Lloyd can find money.

Jeff talked about an online product Empire Online, produced by Adam Matthew Publications, which provides online access to approximately 60,000 images of original documents with introductory essays and combined indexes to the following five sections:

Section I: Cultural Contacts, 1492-1969
Section II: Empire Writing & the Literature of Empire
Section III: The Visible Empire
Section IV: Religion & Empire
Section V: Race, Class & Colonialism, c.1783-1969

Bill report that it would cost $4,000 a year for unlimited access to the Dictionary of National Biography.

Agenda for Next Meeting

ECC will take a look at and discuss the following products:

World Biographical Information System Online Chronicle of Higher Education New York Review of Books Dictionary of National Biography International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences