August 26, 2014

Collaborative Technical Services Team WebEx meeting minutes August 7, 2014



 Collaborative Technical Services Team WebEx meeting minutes
August 7, 2014

Present at the meeting were: Beth Burnett, Cathy Jeffrey, Donna Bennett, Guy Frost, Hallie Pritchett, Jacqueline Vickers, Sherrida Crawford.

Cathy Jeffrey welcomed everyone to the meeting.  She asked for additions and corrections to the minutes for the July 17th meeting. The July 17th minutes were approved without additional corrections.

Cathy explained that the functional groups had been asked to review the RFP to determine if there were any refinements or additions that they wanted to make as a result of viewing the demonstrations or other contacts that provided additional information about next generation systems.  Cathy went on to say that since the questions from the Collaborative Technical Services Team had been dispersed among the functional groups, our questions would be included in the review by the functional groups.  The purpose of this meeting is to provide an opportunity for this group to make additions to the questions we had included in our RFP document. 

Cathy displayed a copy of the document and opened the discussion by saying that she had thought that security and staff authorizations might be an area that could use additional questions but upon reviewing the questions had decided we had covered the concerns she had rather well.  She asked if there were areas that others thought needed additional work.  Sherrida thought that adding a question about how our records would contribute to the vendor’s knowledge base might be a question that we should ask.  After some discussion the group decided to add a question to our Shared Records section.  The following question was asked:

How do our records function within your solution’s knowledge base?  Do our records form a separate knowledge base within your system?

Cathy briefly reviewed the CTS RFP sections and asked if there were any other additions or changes.  There were no additional comments.  Sherrida stated that she believed that the functional teams could be relied upon to address the details of things like authority control.  

Moving away from the RFP discussion Cathy asked Hallie to report on the progress of the survey.  Hallie reported that she had received 25 responses.  Cathy said that she would send a reminder the next week.  Hallie said that she would compile the results and e-mail the results to the team members the week of August 18th so that they could be reviewed before the next meeting.

Looking ahead Cathy stated at the next meeting we could discuss plans for moving forward.   She expressed the hope that we could work on a report to RACL that would be completed by the end of the year.  

Cathy asked if there were any other ideas regarding the RFP. There were none.

Cathy asked the group of they wanted to do a little preplanning on the RACL report or adjourn the meeting early.  Sherrida stated that she was very interested in looking into some of the work that was being done by the SUNY consortia.  The Gift and Selection Management Product was of particular interest.  Sherrida stated that SUNY may be reaching out to other consortia and she felt that we could forward that information to RACL.

Cathy stated that she hoped that for the next meeting she could compile a list of the ideas that we have already identified. During the meeting we could add more ideas and each member could pick one or two ideas that were of interest to them.  The members could do some research on these ideas including what other consortia are doing and report back to the group.  The information developed could form the basis for our report to RACL.  Cathy asked if there were other ideas about the way that we should proceed.  Sherrida said that she believed that was and excellent plan and that she would like to see the information that she referenced regarding the SUNY consortia on that list and that she would be interested in working on further.  Cathy stated that she knew some members would be interested in some topics more than others and used Hallie’s interest in government documents as an example.  Hallie agreed and the group discussed briefly how we might all share government documents.

There were no more thoughts on the RFP.  The next meeting will be August 21, 2014 at 12:00.  The meeting was adjourned.

Submitted by
Cathy Jeffrey

May 14, 2014

Update on Next Gen Library System Process and Next Steps

Change in our Next Gen timeline --

This past winter and early spring we were working to be ready to complete specifications for a next gen library system around July/August because money for this project might be available in mid-FY15 (January 2015), and we would need to be ready to move forward at that time.  This timeline has now shifted back by 5 or 6 months.  We would like to complete the specifications for a next gen library system RFP around January 2015 for a possible decision in June/July 2015.

At this point we have developed an initial set of specifications and participated in vendor demonstrations for 6 systems.

Here are some of the next steps in this process for this Summer and Fall:

  1. Collect feedback on what was learned from the vendor demos.  Survey for Next Gen Team participants.
  2. Next Gen Team Leaders group will be discussing our next steps and updating the Next Gen timeline.
  3. Review additional recent back-office Library System RFPs  (Wisconsin's RFP plus ?).
  4. Share requirements document at the appropriate point with special groups (law library, medical library, government documents, etc.) and get their feedback into the discussion.
  5. Consider scheduling conference calls with a few groups that have recently made a next gen decision or are currently working on a decision.
  6. Discuss from a broad perspective the most important needs that a new system should address.
  7. Refine requirements / update Next Gen Planning document (specifications document).
  8. Complete RFP (December 2014/January 2015)


March 20, 2014



 Collaborative Technical Services Team WebEx meeting minutes
February 20, 2014

Present at the meeting were:  Team members - Beth Burnett, Bill Clayton, Bill Walsh, Cathy Jeffrey, Donna Bennett, Guy Frost, Hallie Pritchett, Jacqueline Vickers, Jeff Carrico, Miriam Nauenburg, Sherrida Crawford; Guest – Anne Barnhart.

Cathy Jeffrey welcomed everyone to the meeting. Minutes for the January 16th meeting were approved.   Cathy indicated that the minutes would be posted to the Next Gen Blog.   

Cathy indicated that the topic for discussion would be collaborative collection development.  Cathy mentioned that Anne Barnhart from the University of West Georgia had been invited to attend the meeting but seemed to be running a bit late. Anne was interested in participating in this discussion because she has experience with collaborative collection development.   Anne came to Georgia from the University of California.  Cathy began the discussion by sharing some suggestions that Anne had forwarded via e-mail.  Cathy shared Anne’s description of using the Gobetween feature of YBP’s Gobi ordering platform to view on order titles of other institutions.  Cathy asked if anyone was using YBP for orders.  Some were and some were not.  Cathy speculated that there could be some resistance to requiring the use of a single vendor.  Bill Clayton asked what would be the advantage.  Cathy stated that it would allow you to see the approval plan titles, firm orders and other acquisition details.  Otherwise there could be a lag between the time that a title was ordered and the time that it was entered into the catalog.  Cathy said that another option would be to display order records to the public.  Bill C. asked if the purpose of this would be to limit the number of copies purchased by the consortia. Guy Frost and Cathy agreed. Cathy stated that it could not apply to everything – probably only circulating collections.  She wondered how RACL would respond to the suggestion that they should accept a limit to the number of copies of a title held in the circulating collections of the consortia but that the purpose of collaborative collection development would be for all of us to use our funds more wisely and not all buy the same titles so that ideally our students would have access to more unique titles through GIL Express.  Bill C. stated that Orbis does this to a high degree.  Donna Bennett suggested that in new systems we would be able to see each other’s order information.  Bill C. agreed that would be possible.  Donna thought that a drawback could be the turn around time required for delivery from one institution to another.  Bill C. stated that we had not managed to have 24 hour turn around before we tried to reduce costs for GIL Express deliver and did not believe that we could count on that being easily done.  Sherida Crawford also thought that the ease of interface would be an issue that needed to be resolved.  As an example she mentioned that we had been promised a one click option to resubmit a search from a local catalog to the universal catalog and that had never happened.  Currently a separate search of the universal catalog is required.  Sherida felt that hints on the screen help but if we are going to rely on copies at other institutions there needs to be an easy way for students to know that this service is available.

Cathy asked the group how they felt about collaborative collection development in general and wondered if the rest of the group felt it was worth pursuing.  Bill C. asked if Cathy meant having a limit to the number of copies purchased.  She agreed that it could be that or that it could be having some institutions focusing on collection development in a particular area to create collections that are specialized.  Bill C. thought that it would be worth pursuing as did Hallie who suggested that government documents might be another area for collaboration that would help the depositories as well as the rest of the consortia.  Hallie went on to comment that the issue of electronic content going into a shared database needs to be addressed as it relates to collection development.  

Cathy asked how the group thought we should proceed with work on this topic.  Guy commented that he did not believe we should spend a lot of time developing an idea that RACL was not interested in implementing.  He suggested that we should seek guidance from RACL and then develop the idea more fully once it was approved.  Bill C. stated that we would have to have a flushed out idea to share with them.  Guy agreed.  Bill stated that it did not need to be a fully developed plan.  Hallie wondered if it would depend on whether we went with a shared database option or not.  Bill C. thought that a shared database would affect the ease with which collaborative collection development could be accomplished but would not affect the ability to collaborate.  Hallie agreed but wondered if some of the rfp recommendations would work better with a shared database. Bill C. said that is one of the questions we would need to ask about the systems.  If there are things that we want to be able to do to work more efficiently then the question is how can systems can accommodate these goals and what database structure is needed for us to benefit from the systems capabilities.  Cathy said that collection development could be low tech and could be accomplished with our current system.  Bill C. agreed that new technology would not be required to move forward with some level of this idea.  Sherida commented that she had been using the UC in her ordering process.  She wonders how this would help us stretch our materials budget.  She is already depending on the larger universities to collect the more expensive science books that can be shared through GIL Express.  Bill C. said it is hard to know but that there are certain titles for which the system owns 15-16 copies.  We could save on those but he could not say how much.  Cathy commented that it would formalize what Sherida was already doing voluntarily.  Sherida commented that she was only using the UC for certain types of materials and considered the fact that one of the larger institutions owned a title became a recommendation to purchase it rather than a reason not to do so.  Bill C. said that he doubted that anyone was using the UC as a tool to determine whether a book was needed or not.  Sherida went on to discuss using peer comparisons to help build a better collection on selected topics.  

Jeff Carrico said that Tech uses the UC to determine not only what should be ordered but what should be retained.  If they have a weeding project or are considering moving something to storage, the availability of other copies elsewhere helps make the decision to withdraw a title.  Cathy said that a first step could be to simply encourage USG institutions to use the UC when making collection decisions whether it is ordering new titles or withdrawing older ones.  Bill C. said that may be what the limit would do for us.  “Could” doesn’t promote using the UC.  A limit would force people to check.  Cathy asked what the limit should be.  Bill C. said that he thinks Orbis uses four copies as the limit.  He doubts that it would be more than five copies.  Bill C. agreed that this limit would be for the circulating collection and that there would always be exceptions.  Sherida brought up the question of e-books.  She said that many times she has found that others hold the e-book title which would not be available to her students in any case. Sherida commented that going forward we would probably all be buying less hardcopy titles.  That would make 4-5 print copies of most titles enough for the system to share.

Cathy interrupted the discussion to introduce Anne Barnhart who was joining the group as a guest.  Cathy asked Anne to take a few minutes to describe her interest in and experience with collaborative collection development.  Anne’s experience includes not only collaborative collection development but also collaborative collection maintenance which would include the use of storage facilities and weeding projects.  Anne described how the University of California libraries used YBP’s Gobi system to assist with collaborative collection development.  The University of California libraries also used bibliographer groups which would meet at least once a year to discuss how they would share collection responsibilities.

Cathy thanked Anne for joining the meeting stating that the group could benefit from hearing from someone with firsthand experience with collaborative collection development since the system was considering adding it.  Anne stated that in her opinion it would not be appropriate to include all institutions.   She suggested that schools of the same type might want to work together or that as a first step schools with similar programs could work together.  Anne also said that using YBP was very helpful.  Anne stated that West Georgia was currently using a different vendor and did not know how much resistance there would be to the idea of switching vendors or if other vendors offered similar services.  Cathy stated that Clayton State uses Baker and Taylor and that she had asked the B&T representative if something similar to the Gobetween services was available from Baker and Taylor and that she had been told that it was not.  The group discussed YBP and Baker & Taylor for several minutes.

Bill C. asked Anne to discuss how the University of California librarians used the shared ordering information from YBP specifically whether it was used simply to limit the number of copies ordered.  Anne described strategies that she used to determine if a copy should be purchased including subject specialties, geographic distribution of existing copies and how they might or might not be retained in University of California storage facilities in the future.
Bill C. asked Anne as a relatively new USG librarian what she thought would be beneficial in terms of collection development that we might establish as a consortia.  Anne stated that we might do some collection maintenance as a consortia.  In particular she felt that a shared storage facility would be an obvious addition for the system.  She stated that a shared storage facility is not a new idea and that faculty from other states would be surprised that we don’t already have one.  Anne felt that shared storage would allow us to be weeding more thoughtfully and prevent the loss of titles because of lack of communication.  She felt that another first step could be for librarians at institutions with graduate programs to get together and begin a discussion or what subjects would be emphasized so that our collections to support graduate programs could compliment each other with more unique titles rather than duplicate the same materials.  Anne also described using vendors to craft approval plans for members of the consortia that would reduce duplication – provided that a single vendor could provide this service and would be accepted by all parties.

Anne used University Press approval plans as something that we all had.  Bouncing off that idea Cathy pointed out that we don’t all have University Press approval plans and wondered if some sort of data collection was needed to discover what sort of approval plans institutions have, which vendors are preferred etc. Anne agreed and also the details of how collection development is handled and what subject specialist are established.  Bill C. agreed that collecting that information could be a good start.  He went on to suggest that an analysis of the UC to determine purchasing habits and duplicate copies would be useful.  Sherida felt that a comparison of what we are doing now to the study that was done prior to Voyager might give us information about how our practices have changed.  Anne wondered if member libraries were using the UC as part of their collection development process.  Cathy suggested that could be one piece of data that we tried to collect.  Sherida stated that she does use the UC when weeding.   A brief discussion of the Last Copy in Georgia policies and procedures followed.  Anne asked if order records appeared in the UC. Bill C answered that in general order records do not show in the UC.  Sherida commented that we could have order records in the UC if we wanted to display that info.

Cathy asked the group what the next step should be.  She suggested that we could initiate a survey to gather information from the system libraries on their current practices or we could ask RACL for guidance.  Sherida thought that it might be a good idea to ask RACL if they were more interested in hardcopy or electronic collection development.  Most of our discussion so far has been about hardcopy.  She wonders what the turn-away statistics would be for the consortia held e-books.  Is one copy enough to serve all 30 institutions?  Cathy said that she is concerned about the e-book purchases that we make as individual institutions.  Sherida agreed but said she wondered if there was value in having three copies and buying them to serve the consortia.  Bill C. said that e-books constitute a prime topic that is being discussed by RACL with some planning for a major e-book purchase in the near future.  Sherida is interested in exploring ways to leverage our dollars so that we all have access to a single three seat license instead of buying the books individually.  Anne described problems encountered by the University of California.  She wondered if we could negotiate a license that would allow all of our students to have access to e-books owned by any of the consortia libraries.  Discussion on this topic continued including how likely the vendors would be to offer consortia wide licenses to all of us, how much it would cost and how we would pay for it.

The group decided to continue working through e-mail to develop a survey on current collection development practices for print and e-resources. Including what vendors people are using to buy e-books.  Would you be willing to pay more per title to have access to all the titles purchased by members of the consortia.  Sherida stated that we need to be forward thinking so that we don’t all end up owning individual copies of the same e-book.  Sherida agreed that having one survey to get as much information as we can from a single survey.

Cathy asked the group to send ideas for survey questions through e-mail.  The group agreed that working through e-mail was preferred.

Anne offered to continue participating with the Team.  Cathy said that she would follow up on that idea.

The next meeting will be Feb. 20, 2014 at 12:00.  The meeting was adjourned.

Submitted by
Cathy Jeffrey

February 20, 2014

Collaborative Technical Services Team WebEx meeting minutes January 16, 2014



Collaborative Technical Services Team WebEx meeting minutes

January 16, 2014

Present at the meeting were:  Beth Burnett, Bill Clayton, Bill Walsh, Cathy Jeffrey, Donna Bennett, Hallie Pritchett, Jacqueline Vickers, Jeff Carrico, Miriam Nauenburg, Sherrida Crawford. 

Cathy Jeffrey welcomed everyone to the meeting. Minutes for the Dec.19th meeting were approved.   Cathy indicated that the minutes would be posted to the Next Gen Blog.   Cathy asked if anyone had noticed if there was any blog activity.  No one had checked the blog.  Cathy indicated that she would check.

Cathy initiated a discussion of the meeting schedule for 2014.  Hallie Pritchett suggested that meeting once a month seemed sufficient.  Others agreed.  Bill Clayton said that once a month should be fine unless other tasks related to the NextGen process come up.  The group voted to meet once a month on the third Thursday at 12:00 noon.

The next item of business on the agenda was a report from Bill Clayton on a meeting of the Functional Group Team Leaders during which they discussed the draft RFP.  Bill Clayton reported that the Team Leaders Group met to discuss the RFP timeline and the combined RFP document.  Bill stated that each group submitted an RFP document covering their sections. Bill Clayton and Merryll Penson merged the individual documents into a single RFP document which they have now given back to the team leaders to review and determine if the combined document represents what they were submitting and that they don’t have questions or issues with the overall document.  The Team Leaders will have two weeks to review the document and provide feedback and to identify any omissions or organizational issues.  After the Team Leaders have had a chance to comment on the document.  It will be distributed to all of the team members.  An online meeting of all the team members is planned before demonstrations.   

Bill Clayton pointed out that the Collaborative Technical Services questions were distributed among the functional areas so that they would appear in the document with related topics.  In some cases a Collaborative Technical Services question was repeated in multiple places in the combined document.  So the document that the Collaborative Technical Services Group drafted is scattered across the overall document.  There is a collaboration section for broader topics.  The Group’s introductory statement is included as the introductory statement for the collaboration section and as the Value Statement for the overall document.  One question put to the vendors is how does their system address our value statement.  There were a few other broad collaboration questions in the collaboration section.  Bill reminded the group that this is the first version of the document and that there will be opportunity for people to provide feedback on both how their sections were represented but also on the overall document.  The Team Leaders have been asked to look at the entire document of missing, redundant or unclear sections.  Bill asked if there were questions on the information that he shared regarding the document.

Bill Clayton then moved on to a discussion of the Next Generation Library System Planning Time Line which was shared with the group.  The planning progress is currently at number 12 on the timeline which was Team Meeting Discussion of Document Review Process.  Bill described the document format that the Team Leaders will be reviewing.  Bill stated that perhaps after making some additional changes to the document after the Team Leader review it will be distributed to all of the team members and soliciting feedback from all of them.  Regarding the timeline, Cathy asked Bill if the timeline implied that the NextGen system would be implemented in January 2015.  Bill Clayton answered that based on the information that he had the governor’s budget included $2.5 million requested by the University System for Galileo initiatives including money for e-books and affordable learning Georgia.  It does not appear at this point to include funds for a NextGen system.  Bill stated that FY16 is when we might have the money to move forward with the NextGen system.  He stated that Merryll had pointed out to the Team Leaders at their meeting that RACL wanted to move forward with a NextGen system regardless of whether additional funding was immediately available.  Bill stated that this does not negatively impact the current plan and that supplemental money might be available in FY15 but we will not know that until the end of 2014.  The current worse case would only delay the current plan around 6 months.  Bill pointed out that he was not the best source for budget information.

Continuing down the time line Bill Clayton said that vendor demos will be scheduled with the six primary vendors (not including open source vendors) on six dates in March 2014.  The purpose of the demos will be for USG staff to learn from the vendors the capabilities of their systems to help us refine our document.   It will not be an evaluation of the systems.  Evaluation of the systems will be after we generate the RFP.  Bill pointed out that this was an important distinction.   Bill asked if that was clear.  Sherrida summarized that the demos would be fact finding exercises.  Bill agreed and stated that it would be to help us improve this process on our end.  Bill stated that these would be online demos that would be open to all team members and probably other USG staff.  It is hoped that each vendor will have one to one and a half days to demo their projects with a schedule for each area of functionality so that USG staff could attend the presentations that are of most interest to them or the entire session if appropriate.

Bill pointed out that the timeline also includes a meeting for all team members to discuss the document before the vendor demos in March.  A date has not yet been set for this meeting but it is likely to be late February or early March.  It will also be an online meeting.
Hallie asked a couple of follow up questions regarding the demos in March.  As part of that discussion Bill Clayton indicated that the demos would be open to USG staff.  It will be an online meeting and people can come and go to the meeting.  Cathy stated that she thought it should be available for everyone.  So that all USG library staff could feel that they were part of the process.  Bill stated that the feedback for these demos would not be for people to pick the system that they thought was best but to identify features that would be especially helpful.  

Bill asked if there were other questions about the timeline or any other questions for him.  Hearing none, he concluded his presentation to the group.

Cathy asked the group if there was any discussion or comment regarding the RFP draft that we submitted on Dec. 19.  Hearing none she asked if the group was ready to move on to a discussion of non-system collaboration issues Sherrida Crawford and Bill Clayton agreed that there was nothing more to do on the RFP at this time.

Cathy suggested that there were several topics related to nonsystem collaboration that could be discussed.  She asked the group what sort of outcome was desired for this work.  Cathy suggested that the outcome could be a list submitted to RACL of recommendations that would enhance and encourage collaboration.  Sherrida agreed.

The group listed the following areas that could be included in a report to RACL on ways USG staff could improve or enhance collaboration regardless of which system we are using:
·         Collection Development
·         Developing Best Practices
·         Identifying recommended Equipment or Peripherals  that are available from E-pro
·         Developing shared cataloging options for special or difficult formats or languages
·         Floating Collections

 The group agreed to begin working on these topics at the next meeting beginning with Collection Development.  An example that Bill Clayton mentioned would be agreeing on a number of copies available in the system that would be mean no additional copies should be purchased.  Cathy agreed that was the idea she had in mind and stated that she believed we would need to develop specific recommendations of policies that RACL could adopt for the system.  Sherrida said that possibly we should aim at practices or procedures rather than policies.  The group also discussed floating collections as another example of collaboration that we could consider.

Cathy asked if there were additional suggestions for the next meeting.  The next meeting will be Feb. 20, 2014 at 12:00.  No additional comments were made.The meeting was adjourned.

Submitted by
Cathy Jeffrey

January 17, 2014

Collaborative Technical Services Team WebEx meeting minutes December 19, 2013



Collaborative Technical Services Team WebEx meeting minutes
December 19, 2013

Present at the meeting were:  Beth Burnett, Bill Clayton, Bill Walsh, Cathy Jeffrey, Donna Bennett, Hallie Pritchett, Sherrida Crawford. 

Cathy Jeffrey welcomed everyone to the meeting. Approval of the minutes for the Dec. 12 meeting was delayed to give more members time to arrive.  The minutes for the Dec. 12th meeting were approved at the end of the meeting.   Cathy indicated that the minutes would be posted to the Next Gen Blog.   

Cathy reported that no additional comments had been made in response to the Collaborative Technical Services blog posts.  

Cathy asked if there were other topics to discuss before the group moved to a discussion of the RFP questions.  No other topics were suggested.

The group moved on to the discussion of the RFP questions.  The final version of the draft RFP document that will be submitted to the Planning Team is included at the end of the minutes.
Cathy described changes that she had made to the organization of the document and briefly discussed clean-up needed.  The group agreed with the numbering format and removal of extraneous information.

The group moved on to a discussion of three new sections of the RFP.   These were Authority Management, Collection Development and Serials Management.  Cathy mentioned that Miriam Nauenburg who could not attend the meeting had sent suggestions regarding serials management for the group to consider.

The first section discussed was Authority Management.  Cathy mentioned that she had included three suggestions from Adam Kubik who handles authority management for Clayton State University.  The Group discussed and edited the four authority management questions.

Next the group considered the Collection Development question that had been suggested.  It was approved without changes.  Later in the meeting the group added a second question to this section dealing with floating collections (i.e. collections of physical items that can be housed in any of the member libraries).  

The group reviewed the two questions on Serials Management suggested by Miriam Nauenburg and decided to include them in the document.

As a housekeeping issue Cathy asked if each group of questions needed introductory explanatory text.  Some questions have it, others do not.  The group decided to leave the explanatory text where it existed but not to add it for those sections that were lacking it.  As a follow up Cathy asked if each set of questions should include text that asked for answers to address how the solution would support work in a consortial environment and enhance collaboration. Bill Clayton said that since it was likely that the questions would be split up that adding this statement to each section made sense.  The other team members agreed.

The group approved the questions as edited and indicated that these should be submitted to the Planning Team.  Cathy offered to prepare the final document and submit it to the team through e-mail for approval.  With the winter break upon us, the group felt that it might be difficult to get the replies needed in a timely manner.  The decision was made to submit the document as it exists at the end of this meeting and send a copy to the Team members with the understanding that this is a first draft and additional work can be done later if needed.

The next meeting will be Jan. 16, 2014 at 12:00.

The meeting was adjourned.

Below is the final version of the draft RFP document that will be submitted to the Planning Team.

University System of Georgia Libraries
Next Generation RFP Draft
Collaborative Technical Services Section
Dec. 19, 2013

Collaborative Technical Services
Introductory Description. The University System of Georgia (USG) Libraries continue to seek operational efficiencies and are committed to collaborating with each other in ways that will improve services to our students and faculty. Improved services will result from streamlining workflows and reducing redundant procedures.  The USG Libraries seek a solution that will support shared data and reduce or eliminate duplicate record-keeping and repetitive tasks while preserving options for individual institutional preferences and local customizations.  The solution should facilitate the sharing of best practices among member libraries and allow them to collaborate in shared processes and assessment.
Questions.
1. Granularity of Security. The solution should support administrative and functional authorization and security at multiple levels: individual staff or patron, single institution, subset consortia, and consortium-wide. Address how your implementation will support work in a consortial environment and enhance collaboration.
a) Describe how your solution handles system security in the assignment and creation of administrative and functional accounts.
b) Describe how the solution will provide tracking of and accountability for staff editing of all records within the shared environment.
2. Unique Identifiers.  Address how your implementation will support work in a consortial environment and enhance collaboration.
a) Describe how the solution insures that identifiers that are unique at an institution are unique throughout the consortia.  This includes but is not limited to item and patron barcodes, university identification numbers, and staff authorization codes.
3. Shared Records.  Member libraries of the USG Consortium understand the benefits of using shared records.  We also value the additional service to users that local customization can provide.  We seek a solution that can make use of shared records while still allowing each institution to make local additions.  Address how your implementation will support work in a consortial environment and enhance collaboration.
a.) How does your solution manage shared records?
b) What types of records can be shared by member libraries (bibliographic, vendor, license, other)? Please provide a complete list.
c) Does this solution support the addition to shared records of local data such as local notes, access points and other unique metadata?  
d) What types of records that are shared by member libraries can include local customization?
4. Reports and Reporting.  Address how your implementation will support work in a consortial environment and enhance collaboration.
a) What reports are available to compare data among member institutions?
b) Can different subsets of institutions be selected for comparison?
c) How are locally customized reports shared with the rest of the consortia?
d) Describe how shared reports are accessed and by whom.
5. Workflow. Address how your implementation will support work in a consortial environment and enhance collaboration.
a) Which of your solution’s technical services workflows can be integrated across institutions to avoid repetitive data management?
b) Describe how your solution manages duplicate data across institutions.
c) Are there automated processes that encourage the use of existing records or data across the consortia?
d) Describe workflows for updating local holdings in WorldCat for consortially owned titles.
6. Electronic Resource Management.  The USG Consortium includes electronic resources owned collectively and individually.  The successful solution must facilitate the management of all electronic content owned or subscribed by USG libraries. Address how your implementation will support work in a consortial environment and enhance collaboration.
a) Describe how your solution supports the management of electronic resources at both the local and consortial level.  
b) Describe how your solution would handle trials at the local or consortial level.
c) How will your solution assist in the movement of ownership data into associated systems like discovery systems or link resolvers?
d) Describe the workflow for loading records owned by all members of the consortia.
e) How will your solution clearly expose the resources a user has the right to access and connect users with the appropriate electronic or digital resource?
f) Does your solution include a method to manage license agreements locally as well as at the consortial level? Is there a way for member libraries to share license agreements that they have negotiated?
g) Does your solution include an OpenURL resolver?  
h) Describe how your solution works with an OpenURL resolver in managing both local and consortial resources.
i) Describe how your solution provides usage statistics for electronic resources.
j) Describe any features your system provides to facilitate and manage the lending of e-books and possibly other e-resources to users at non-owning member institutions.
7. Authority Management. Address how your implementation will support work in a consortial environment and enhance collaboration.
a) How does your solution support the collaborative management and maintenance of a shared authority file?
b) Describe how the solution allows changes to authority records to be efficiently and accurately loaded into the shared environment.
c) Does the solution allow institutions to make local decisions on the use of specific thesauri (e.g. MESH, FAST), or utilize local headings?
d) Describe how the solution promptly incorporates relevant authority data in a shared database environment as bibliographic access points are added, removed and updated by local institutions.
8. Collection Development. Address how your implementation will support work in a consortial environment and enhance collaboration.
a) Describe how your solution supports collaborative collection development among USG libraries.
b) Describe the mechanisms you offer for managing Floating Collections (i.e. collections of physical items that can be housed in any of the member libraries).
9. Serials Management. Address how your implementation will support work in a consortial environment and enhance collaboration.
a) Describe the solution's support for the reuse and sharing of date prediction patterns and enumeration prediction patterns for check-in purposes.
b) Describe the solution's support for generating local- and consortial-level statistics from serial records for collection development purposes (e.g., number of active or canceled subscriptions, number of pieces received, number of issues claimed, etc.).

Submitted by
Cathy Jeffrey