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