Maine Shared Collections Strategy
Year One Update, May 15, 2012

Web Presence:
The project has a website, which includes searchable meeting summaries and an embedded project calendar, an associated Gmail account, and a presence on Twitter and SlideShare.
Website: http://www.maineinfonet.net/mscs/
Twitter: @MEsharedcolls
Gmail: mainesharedcollections@gmail.com
Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/Maine_SharedCollections

OCLC Reclamation:
It became clear early in the process that if we were going to compare holding and circulation data (among the partners and to WorldCat) that an OCLC reclamation project would need to be completed. This was not incorporated into the original project plan.

Portland Public Library completed a reclamation in 2009 and has continued to maintain its records, so it was exempt from this project. All URSUS libraries were given the opportunity to participate, not just the grant partners. Partner libraries were not required to send all of their records, but monographs and serials at a minimum. Some libraries elected to send more.

OCLC was contacted in late September 2011 with preliminary reclamation inquiries, and a reclamation order for URSUS libraries was submitted November 17, 2011. 2,080,299 monographic records and 20,000 serial records were sent November 25 – 28, 2011. The records were run by OCLC on December 24 – 28, 2011. The live scan/delete process for all URSUS schools was run between March 12 and 16, 2012.

Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin (CBB) completed the reclamation individually. By March 20, 2012, processes were completed for Bates and Colby. Bowdoin did not have their live scan/delete run until March 30th, which may have been after the start of the WorldCat Collection Analysis (WCA) scan. Combined, the three sent roughly 1,748,483 records.

In February and March the Technical Services Subcommittee explored the WorldCat Knowledge Base  as an alternative to loading records for owned or licensed e-resources. After much investigation, and a question & answer session with OCLC project managers, it was decided to not invest much time in populating this product right now.

Collection Analysis System:
After researching existing collection analysis products, taking stock of the current environment, and contemplating the uncertainty of future development resources, the team decided not to develop a local collection analysis system. A group subscription to OCLC’s WorldCat Collection Analysis (WCA) was chosen as an initial solution. The project team also began discussions with OCLC regarding the development of a new analytics product. Discussions are continuing, and we have sent them detailed information regarding the data we want to upload into the system, the data we want to export, and examples of reports we feel are integral for a complete collection analysis.

Unfortunately, because of the limitations of the existing WCA product, and the discovered need for partner libraries to undergo reclamations of their catalogs, access to accurate data for the group has been limited until now. Post-reclamation data for most partner libraries has just become available, so we will soon begin reviewing unique items (unique to the group; unique to WorldCat) and begin testing the application of retention-related metadata and determining a policy for the preservation of those items.

The Collection Management Subcommittee began meeting in November and has been wrestling with several collection analysis issues.  Some test reports have been run from individual systems, based on various criteria (ie, call number ranges “QH” and “57*”). This has allowed us to review sample data for evaluation purposes, and also to identify some coding inconsistencies across the group. The project’s system librarian has used the HathiTrust API to compare our holdings (including item-level data) to HathiTrust availability.

Documenting Retention Decisions:
The project team has been closely following the activities of the OCLC Print Archives Disclosure Pilot (final report available at http://bit.ly/IIz0Kz). Some internal testing has been done regarding how this could be implemented in local systems and in MaineCat, but we anticipate more directed activities once a list of unique titles is identified.

Print-on-Demand (POD):
Based on a higher than expected price quote, as well as feedback from two (academic) libraries who have installed them, the decision was made in spring 2011 to not purchase an Espresso Book Machine (EBM). Other avenues that have been explored:

• University of Maine’s Printing Services Unit
• Booksurge / CreateSpace (Amazon)
• TextStream (Baker and Taylor)
• Lightning Source (Ingram)
• Two EBM hosts were contacted: Harvard Bookstore and Darien Library (CT)
• Other university print-on-demand initiatives were researched (UC reprints; Cornell; UMich reprints; Western Ontario Libraries)

There has been limited discussion about the integration of public domain titles into systems, the majority of which has surrounded HathiTrust. Membership has been explored by at least one institution, however no partner libraries have joined at this time in part due to lack of Shibboleth implementation. The University of Maine (Orono) implementation of Summon has been configured to provide access to public domain items available in HathiTrust; it has been expressed that no one wants to load these nearly 3 million records into MaineCat. At this time it is unclear how the MSCS POD solution would interact with HathiTrust POD availability (via UC and UMich).

Presentations/Outreach:

• Presented an overview of the project at the Maine Library Association conference in Portland; October 29, 2011
• Presented an overview of the project at the University of Maine Staff Development Day, January 3, 2012
• Presented an overview of large-scale digital initiatives for employees of partner institutions; Colby College, February 24, 2012
• Presented an overview of the project at University of Southern Maine staff meeting, March 15, 2012
• Presented an overview/update on the project at the Maine Larger Libraries Spring 2012 Staff Development Day, Bowdoin College, May 8, 2012;
• Invited to collaborate on a panel presentation at New England Library Association, Fall 2012
• Submitted a proposal for a panel presentation at ACRL 2013