VLAC Minutes

Present: A. Almquist, D. Culbertson, M. Molinaro, J. Nelson, M. Pattie, L. Van Orsdel, H. Rader, L. Rees, K. Reilender, J. Scarborough, N. Northern, W. Onkst

Absent: K. Hamperian, J. Stith, D. Taulbee

Guests: C. Davis, T. Keller, D. Rabuzzi

1. Approval of Minutes: Approved with request for corrections.

2. KYVU Report (Rabuzzi): Good news: Numbers are up. The unduplicated headcount in spring was in excess of 6,600. It should be well up in the 8,000s in the fall semester. KYVU has launched adult education initiatives. KYVU has also gone through a complete overhaul of its technical structure. The organization is moving away from PeopleSoft to a custom SIS learning system. The first phase of the SIS system will go "live" on September 23. Pattie is commended for making the change happen successfully. Much hard work has been done. Rader: Will the move from PeopleSoft cause problems with campuses that remain users of that system? Rabuzzi: No. There should be no compatibility problems. Rabuzzi also commented very favorably about the Virtual Library's "Kid's Portal."

Rabuzzi indicated that KYVU is seeking guidance on budget issues regarding KYVL. He currently has no idea how bad cuts will be and is preparing for the worst case. The courier service is an important but expensive service and this may be the first place that will need to be looked at for potential cuts. In short, they will be looking for input from the Virtual Library Advisory Committee. As an alternative, if no cuts are made, KYVL may have to ask for additional money from participating institutions. Whatever the decision, it will be made in close consultation with member institutions. A list of potential areas for cuts may be forthcoming. Regarding the courier service, the unit cost for shipping by UPS is cheaper than the price offered under the current contract. If VLAC suggests that the contract be terminated and that libraries use UPS, a number of small libraries may cease providing interlibrary loan since any savings would not be going directly back to library budgets. The timetable for any decision will depend upon the eventual creation of a state budget. The earliest that we will probably see a state budget will be late fall.

Committee members commented that KYVL's #1 priority is databases. If we don't cut there, #2 is courier service. After that comes staff. There are few options. Van Orsdel asked if we need to make any potential move now to avoid the greater impact of a cut in the latter half of the fiscal year? Rabuzzi replied that the sooner that feedback can be provided so that a decision can be made, the better. In terms of the size of cuts, anything over 5% will definitely impact this year's services. KYVU has already taken substantial cuts this year. We are getting to the point where pain will result.

KCTCS and KYVU have signed an agreement with West Virginia. 161 West Virginia community college students will be able to enroll this year in the KYVU. West Virginia is paying for access to the KYVL and KYVL is keeping hard data on usage. Students enrolled through the program will be dual enrolled as KCTCS students. Enrollment status will be invisible to the faculty. In addition to the joint programs, we are also looking at joint faculty development and joint program development.

3. KYVL Report: The new "Kids' Portal" will be official unveiled next Tuesday at a local elementary school. The Governor will attend.

System Statistics: We have 3 years of data. There has been a big emphasis on training (outreach). There have been 67 presentations, down a bit from the previous year. 1,400 people have attended presentations. These have been both lecture-style and hands-on (70% lecture, 30% hands-on). Attendees have been a combination of librarians and general users. In addition, presentations have been made to the legislature, remote libraries, and school districts. Five presentations were given out of state. The Virtual Reference Desk answered about 2,000 questions last year. 1,000 were actual reference questions while 639 were about KYVL services. The breakdown included 188 from out of state, 243 from K-12 teachers and students, 266 from librarians, and 99 from state employees (the numbers may not add up since users may have been from multiple groups). There were a total of 6,311,029 searches at a rate of 525,919 per month. In terms of interfaces, Web-Z was originally used in 11% of the access. By 2000-2001, it was used 22% of the time. For this year it is at 36% of total access. It looks like it is worth keeping this interface. Rader commented that we may want to look as well at interfaces being developed by individual institutions.

SiteSearch will probably grow in popularity since it is free. SiteSearch is used nationally by some very big organizations. The working group is looking at helping SiteSearch in its move from proprietary to the open source world. KYVL is also looking at other proprietary interfaces.

Public academic institutions' percentage of database usage is 50%. Public libraries are dropping off both in terms of percentage and raw numbers. It was suggested that public libraries are finding information from sources other than KYVL's databases.

Interlibrary Loan at public libraries continues to escalate. Q: Has the decline in public library usage of databases been due to access problems caused by the use of modems/dial-up? A: Most public libraries now have direct network access. It may be that PCs are being used for other purposes, such as word processing and e-mail rather than for database access. The K-12 group is showing a slight decrease from this year to last. All other groups are showing an increase.

The copyright workshop was a great success. KYVU paid for someone to come from each public institution. The Endeavor Consortium is working on the Service Level Agreement form. A signature line will be added. Q: Will cost rise? A: This is not a part of the document. Rather, the SLA is an agreement concerning the responsibilities of members in the Consortium, that is, who runs the servers, hubs, etc.

In terms of resource sharing, 6,000 books per month have been sent through the courier while 5,000 articles have been shared via Ariel. It was asked if this represented growth. The answer was that the numbers would have to be analyzed to tell for sure, but that we have overshot our goals.

4. Users Group: [See Bill Hansen's e-mail] An event will be held on Thursday, October 17 at KLA (The Water Poet Room, 5:00-6:00 p.m.). This will be a social gathering for the formal approval of the bylaws of the new group. The Users' Group will officially come into existence at that time. The group will be separate and independent to ensure that it is a true source of feedback to VLAC. Comment: VLAC bylaws will need to be revised to indicate that the representative to VLAC will now be from the users' group rather than the now defunct Kentucky Library Network. Motion: To change the bylaws to eliminate the position on VLAC for the Kentucky Library Network representative and to replace that position by the Users' Group representative. Action will be taken at the next meeting since the Users' Group will not officially be constituted until October 17th.

5. Courier Service: Rader suggested that a subgroup be created to analyze the courier service and come up with ideas in case there are cuts/reallocations. Depending on various factors, cuts to the program could be major (30%-40%). Members suggested that the size of group be kept to no more than 5. It was suggested that the group be made up of Charlene, Norma, Wayne, someone from UK, and Caroline. A report will be due at the November 15 VLAC meeting.

It was asked whether cuts in database subscriptions should be considered. Van Orsdel stated that database cuts should be avoided as long as possible. Databases are KYVL's most visible service. This was further confirmation that we do not wish to cut databases.

Pattie announced that KYVU will be hiring a Director rather than Associate Director for the KYVL and that she will be leaving KYVL as that position is filled. The need for Pattie as CIO for KYVU is great enough that she cannot be doing both jobs. An official announcement will be forthcoming. The advertisement will be approved next week. VLAC members were asked to help to recruit for the position. VLAC members will be receiving job position description shortly. The other open position will be the next to be filled. However, CPE's position is that all open positions are frozen unless "critical."

Rader asked if there will there be a search committee, and if so, will a VLAC member be involved? There was a call for volunteers for the search process and Nelson volunteered. There was a request that the resumes of finalists be shared with VLAC members. In essence, KYVL will be losing a position (Assoc. Director). Because of this, they are looking at scaling down some services. One item mentioned was the Virtual Reference Desk. Molinaro commented that since we're all looking into virtual reference at our libraries, we may be able to do this on a collaborative basis.

6. Work Group Reports:

Endeavor Group: The SLA form is a major accomplishment. The group has decided to skip an update/release at Christmas. Instead, we would do the next upgrade during the summer. That would give us the enhancements coming in 2001.2 while alleviating stress during the holiday period. The group has been told that the Kentucky group is the only Endeavor consortium in the world that is currently growing.

Collections Workgroup: The Subgroup for Assessment of Databases has had 2 meetings. They are bringing up a final draft for the survey instrument. They will be meeting on October 4 to approve the survey. Once approved, the survey will be mounted on the web for a lengthy period of time. The group is looking at other methods for obtaining qualitative data. These methods may include usability studies and focus groups.

7. Other Items: The question was raised about private schools (K-12) who would like to join KYVL. EBSCO has provided a cost to add the schools as a group and a cost for the privates yo join separately. Grolier has indicated that there will be no extra charge. Wilson and OCLC have not answered yet.

Meeting adjourned at 3:00pm

Next Meeting: November 15, 2002

Last Updated: 9/25/02