Library Collections

The VIVA Resources for Users Committee has approved renewals for several ProQuest databases including  Agricola, Factiva, and Sociological Abstracts among others.  A renewal was also approved for CINAHL on Ebsco.  The committee also discussed the results of the RFP that was done this spring for the MLA database.  One vendor emerged as a clear winner and we hope to be able to publicly share the recommended choice in the very near future so stay tuned.

The VIVA DDA project is moving into the implementation phase and libraries now have records they can load.  These titles are in STEM disciplines and supplement the ebook collections VIVA recently purchased from Springer and Elsevier.

The committee also reviewed some potential new opportunities including ebooks from the American Society of Microbiology, Worldwide Political Science Abstracts, and LibGuides.  At this time the only one recommended to move forward as a VIVA product was to pursue a single statewide license for JSTOR.  This will result in some cost savings on annual fees.

Two VIVA databases will be going away when the current contract runs out at the end of June.  These are Bowker’s Books in Print and Gale’s Contemporary Women’s Issues.  Usage of these did not warrant their continuation by VIVA and we currently have no plans to try to pick them up locally.

VIVA is moving ahead with its plans to implement a Demand Driven Acquisitions (DDA) e-book program for books in STEM disciplines. EBL was selected as the primary partner earlier this year. Several publishers have now agreed to participate in the VIVA program, and we have just heard that the following will be included:

· John Wiley & Sons
· Oxford University Press
· Jossey-Bass
· McGraw-Hill UK
· Wiley-VCH

The negotiations continue and VIVA hopes to have more publishers in the plan soon. As details are finalized we will be modifying the parameters of our own DDA and approval plans to take full advantage of the new offerings through VIVA.

The VIVA Resources for Users Committee met in early March.  Most invoices for the current cycle have now been paid. Overall the budget picture for the next fiscal year looks good but rising subscription costs continue to be a concern.  Numerous current products were reviewed  and recommended for renewal but there will also be a few changes coming for items previously identified as a low priority based on use and availability of alternate sources.  You can see Kathy Perry’s message of March 16 on the VAVIRTUA listserv for the full list of products renewed but the two that will be dropped are Books in Print and Contemporary Women’s Issues. Both cancellations will take effect this summer.

Ebooks are now becoming available to all VIVA public institutions as part of the 2013 frontfile collections through Elsevier and Springer. These titles will be provided by the ScienceDirect and SpringerLink platforms respectively.  Work in also progressing on a pilot program making DDA titles from STEM disciplines available to VIVA members. These DDA books will be on the EBL platform.  Three VIVA training fairs are being held across the state to better share information about these new resources.  Ladd Brown, Dave Beagle, and Ed Lener attended the session last week at Radford University and will report back.

The Resources for Users Committee also recommended funding for two initiatives that will look at cooperative collection opportunities.  One of these focus on video materials while the other will concentrate on English language monographs in the Q-T call number range. The VIVA Steering Committee approved the funds for the video project but voted to table the monograph collection development pilot project.

Not everyone subscribes to the VIVA listserve, so I’ll share some information that was posted by Kathy Perry yesterday.  The DDA RFP committee has completed negotiations with EBL to provide Demand Driven Acquisitions for ebooks in Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine, & Health (STEM-H).  EBL is currently negotiating with publishers to participate in the program.  The VIVA plan will take precedence over our own DDA plan.  It will include short term loans, just as our plan does.  E-reserves and coursepacks will be available upon special request.  The addition of VIVA’s plan should only affect Collections and Technical Services:  we’ll work with YBP to eliminate EBL STEM-H DDA selections from our consideration pool, and load discovery records for the new EBL collections to Summon.  Ladd and Ed will attend the VIVA ‘training fair” in March, so more information about ebooks will be forthcoming.

CASH!

(Now that I have your attention…)

The Collections Access Strategies Hub (CASH) is meeting this coming Wednesday to discuss the first two of many key articles to be tackled by the group (citations and links provided below).  Each hub meeting will also include a Lightning Round Report where representatives from various units relay ongoing work and upcoming changes within respective units.  The purpose of the reports include filling communication gaps between units, departments, and other groups so that we might all better anticipate problems and plan for changes in workflows.  If you don’t have a rep in CASH and you’d like to pass along information to our group, please get in touch with me.

Hub Readings

Strategic Direction: Transforming Research Libraries: Outcomes & Strategies http://www.arl.org/arl/governance/strat-plan/trl.shtml

2012 Top Ten Trends in Academic Libraries: A Review of the Trends and Issues affecting Academic Libraries.  C & RL News June 2012. http://crln.acrl.org/content/73/6/311.full

Approval Plan

As of January 30^th, consider the new policy of e-preferred approvals to be in full swing.  Ladd and Ed are working out details and getting answers to questions.  More information to follow soon.

VIVA

To quote directly from VIVA’s Kathy Perry, “VIVA’s hard work exploring STEM-H e-books has resulted in awarding contracts to Elsevier and Springer for 2013 frontlist e-books… As you know, VIVA received special funding from the General Assembly for the 2012-14 Biennium for e-books in the STEM-H subject areas.  VIVA can now confirm contracts for the Elsevier and Springer 2013 frontlist e-book packages and that all participating institutions have been activated for both Elsevier and Springer.”  At the local level we have made the necessary changes in our approval and DDA plans to reflect these new deals.

*WHO GETS WHAT THROUGH CENTRAL FUNDS?*

*PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS*:  All of the VIVA public institutions will have access to the following packages:

Elsevier – The entire SciVerse ScienceDirect eBooks Collection  2013

Frontlist:  http://www.info.sciverse.com/sciencedirect/books/ebooks

   Springer – 4 collections for the 2013 frontlist

http://www.springer.com/librarians/e-content/ebooks?SGWID=0-40791-0-0-0

– Behavioral Sciences

– Biomedical and Life Science

– Computer Science

– Earth and Environmental Science

Cooperative Collections
You’ve no doubt heard many mentions of the ASERL Print Journal Cooperative.  Now we have an additional partner:  the WRLC or Washington Research Library Consortia.  To understand how this partnership will work, ASERL will be holding a webinar next week.  Constance Malpas and Brian Lavoie of OCLC Research will provide an overview of how holdings at our member libraries would contribute to a mega-regional approach.  During the webinar, Constance and Brian will discuss an initial analysis of holdings at ASERL and WRLC libraries and how this could contribute to a mega-regional vision for national library print collections.  If you’d like to attend the webinar, it is listed on the library’s training events page.

Vet Med Library Collection

In case you haven’t heard, The College of Veterinary Medicine may be renovating spaces this summer and renovations will affect allotted space for the Vet Med Library. We’ll be looking at print and electronic journal overlap in this case, too, in order to help reduce the collections footprint from 25,000 volumes to between 15,000-18,000 volumes.  Expect more news as Brian, Leslie, and Vicki work with the architects and as we take a close look at the collection.

Journal Overlap Analysis

Analysis of overlap between print and electronic journals is moving along.  Most recently, we finished looking at the Oxford backfiles, and we are just one collection away from completing our overlap analysis for all the Taylor and Francis archives.

More next week… and until then, STAY WARM!

Connie