KY Virtual Library Advisory Committee Minutes

1:00 p.m., May 26, 2006

Frankfort, KY

Present: Mike Binder, Fannie Cox, Diane Culbertson, Carol Diedrichs, Paul Fuller [for Shelley Burgett], Holly Hedden, Chela Kaplan [by phone], Al Lind, Norma Northern, Hannelore Rader, Lisa Rice, Donna Travillian, Enid Wohlstein, Laurene Zaporozhetz [by phone]

Also attending: Tari Keller

Absent: Shelley Burgett, Anne Chase, Rose, Davis, Carol Diedrichs, Norma Northern, Stuart Johnston

1. Members Update

Lisa discussed the spring KPLA conference.

Hannelore discussed the SOLINET/ASERL meeting. HBCU received a Mellon grant, allowing for executive interns at five ARL libraries. UofL will have Brenda Wright for two weeks in July. Hannelore will go to Atlanta A&M. ASERL also did a non-MLS workshop during the meeting. On 2 June, a major event will take place in the new auditorium at Ekstrom Library. UofL will celebrate the 100^th birthday of Lyman T. Johnson and his family will be in attendance. Ekstrom Library has also had a lobby renovation to include an information commons, along with a coffee shop. The robotic retrieval system is going well.

2. KYVU Update [including budget and strategic planning] [Al Lind]

Al reported on the budget. KYVL received an additional $85K for each year of the biennium to restore the courier service to its previous levels. An addition $350K was approved for FY07-08 for the databases.

The $10m technology bond request was vetoed. We hoped to make a request for a small amount to add a component to the Endeavor system in the form of an ERMS or OPAC shell.

KYVU is servicing more than 50,000 learners. Nationally, there are about 3 million online learners.

The “Growing by Degrees” report is out. Of institutions, 64% say distance learning is critical to future strategic direction. Of the CAO’s, only 35% believe their faculty have embraced distance learning. The report also shows that core faculty are teaching the majority of distance learning courses.

Strategic planning for KYVU is moving along. A CCAO focus group was held this past Tuesday. CCAO and agencies will have another meeting. DLST and DLAC meetings have been postponed to allow further conversations with KYVU partners. NCHEMS has been awarded the contract to do an environmental scan of other virtual education entities and look at trends. Hannelore asked if we were like California and Norma replied No. There really is no typical structure as these type of entities evolve very quickly. In Michigan, recently it was announced that every high school graduate must take an online course. The strategic plan will most likely go before CPE in September. A draft will probably be ready in July.

Al handed out a draft of the Vision, Mission and Goals for KYVU.

3. BlackBoard Update [Al Lind]

COT has certified Blackboard as an enterprise standard. Eight of the nine public institutions will come on board immediately. Murray will be a little less aggressive in implementation. The pricing model is new for Blackboard. Kentucky has very aggressive pricing discounts for a four year period. KYVU will contribute $1m over the four years.

Mike asked of the $10m technology bond request, how much was committed to the new ILS. Al replied that none was earmarked for definite projects. Hannelore mentioned the impact Google has had on libraries and digital collections. Enid mentioned the skunkworks concept that had been discussed, where some funds might be allotted to innovation and trying new things without committing to a vendor via a contract.

4. BlackBoard and Copyright Clearance Center - potential VLAC subcommittee [Enid]

Enid distributed a copy of the Copyright Clearance Center brochure on a Copyright Permissions Building Block. We need to start thinking now how we might share expertise and staff in creating sharable building blocks and the CCC may be the place to start.

5. SREB Digital Learning Content - Distance Learning Steering Team/VLAC subcommittee [Enid]

The SCORE initiative from SREB has been in the works for a few years. SREB is now looking for buy-in from states. The learning object repository would include P-16 educational content. Metadata standards are part of SCORM. Dept of Defense has CORDRA and has partnered with the ADL CoLab. The SCORE initiative would have a registry, like a catalog, where a search could be conducted on the registry to find content in the participant repositories. Two states are in the forefront – Florida for postsecondary and Maryland for K-12. Harvest Road is coming 8 June to give a demo. Other vendors with LORs will be invited to demonstrate products.

6. ILS Task Force Progress Report [Tari Keller]

Tari provided an update on the activities of the subcommittee and preliminary findings. See attached.

VLAC discussed that a next generation system isn’t out there yet, maybe it’s a core system with different components. SAALCK has created a ERMS evaluation committee and has been making progress in that investigation.

7. Contracts/RFP update [Enid - may or may not have information on this, waiting to hear from our Administrative Services and Finance]

No news yet from Finance.

8. Other discussion

VLAC meeting dates and membership:

Need KDLA Council dates to setup VLAC dates around those. We are still lacking a 2^nd PETAC representative. Need to add a KLA rep since we already have KPLA, KSMA, and Special Section/SLA represented.

We also need a Chair. Enid will present VLAC with a suggested rotation.

9. Meeting adjourned.

SURVEY OF CONSORTIUM ILS SERVER CONFIGURATIONS

PROGRESS REPORT

The ILS Task Force is a subcommittee of VLAC (Virtual Library Advisory Committee).

Members are:

Perry Bratcher (Northern Kentucky University)

Tim Chase (KYVL)

Charlene Davis (KDLA)

John Detweiler (KDLA)

Margaret Foote (Eastern Kentucky University)

Paul Fuller (KCTCS)

Tari Keller (University of Kentucky)

Mark Paul (University of Louisville)

Elsie Pritchard (Morehead State University), Chair

Enid Wohlstein (KYVL)

The ILS Task Force was asked to evaluate the current dual-server situation as a prelude to fulfilling its charge of seeking a next generation library system. As a first step, we constructed a survey to solicit information on server configurations at other consortiums. The consortiums surveyed were recruited from members of the Voyager-Consortium listserv, Voyager Admin listserv and a number of specific ILS consortiums. Thirteen consortiums responded. We concentrated on contacting other Voyager sites because their needs more closely resemble ours. However, we broadened the scope of the survey to include several non-Voyager sites so that we would have information to aid in determining our future ILS needs.

Of the consortiums responding:

• Most are housing their servers at a single site.
• The survey shows an average of 3 FTE server staff per consortium, and an average of 0.17 FTE server staff per institution.
• Most use a number of servers and provide a range of services in addition to running the ILS.
• One consortium, WALDO, outsources to servers located at a LexisNexis server farm in Dayton.
• All but one Voyager consortium are using the native hardware platform. That consortium is hoping to migrate to the native platform in the near future.

Twice a month throughout the fall and winter the ILS Task Force met via conference call. In March we held a face-to-face meeting at CPE offices in Frankfort and included staff from the two server sites: Bill Sandman (UL), Titus Anderson (UL), Dave Block (UK), and Ray Hyatt (UK). As a result of that meeting, the Task Force decided to expand the scope of its survey to provide more specific and detailed information.

The expanded survey will be used to get additional information from the original group of consortiums, but we will also seek to add more consortiums to the pool. Our original survey reached only those people working at hubsites; with the expanded survey we hope to also survey client institutions. In particular, we would like to know why consortiums moved from multiple to single servers; how single server sites handle disaster recovery; how consortiums are funded.

Also as a result of the Frankfort meeting, the ILS Task Force asked Enid Wohlstein to request the hubsite administrators to provide an accounting of hubsite expenses. The Task Force will need this information to evaluate the potential cost savings of moving to a single hubsite, if such a change seems feasible. The cost accounting should include any equipment upgrades that have occurred, and also note any upgrades that will be necessary in the near future.

Data from the expanded survey and from the two KYVL-Endeavor hubsites will enable the ILS Task Force to make an informed recommendation on the direction of the current server configuration.

THE ORIGINAL SURVEY

Consortiums responding:

Connecticut-Trinity-Wesleyan (CTW) *

Galileo-GIL (Georgia)

Keystone-PILOT (Pennsylvania)

LIBRIS (Connecticut state comm colleges)

LOUIS (Louisiana)

MnPALS (Was Minnesota's MnLINK)

OhioLINK

ORCA (Washington State Community and Technical Colleges)

Oklahoma State

OPALL - Oregon Pacific *

Scottish Endeavor Consortium *

University of Kansas *

University of South Carolina

WALDO (Westchester)

WRLC

* Came from Listserv solicitation. The rest were targeted consortia. Eleven of the eighteen consortia contacted directly responded.

1. If each institution in your consortium has its own Voyager server(s) on-site, please tell us why you decided to have independent servers.

Three consortiums have independent servers for at least some of their institution databases.

• Galileo-GIL (Georgia)’s two independent servers are located at the Medical College and Georgia State, for political reasons according to the respondent.
• The University of South Carolina reported that Clemson and USC have servers locally, but no reason was given.
• OhioLINK has 59 institutions have independent servers and 23 share a local ILS. It was important to the libraries to be as independent as possible and be able to have their own local policies and procedures. They have a Union catalog on a central server with de-duped bibliographic records and item records from each local system with current circulation status information.

Integrated Library System in use

We focused on contacting Voyager sites because we are in the process of evaluating our current arrangements for hosting our Voyager system. Representative non-Voyager sites were included to provide scope, and to allow us to consider the effect of a different system on our hosting decision.

Connecticut-Trinity-Wesleyan (CTW) Voyager

Galileo-GIL (Georgia) Voyager

Keystone-PILOT (Pennsylvania) Voyager

LIBRIS (Connecticut state comm colleges) Voyager

LOUIS (Louisiana) Sirsi

MnPALS (Was Minnesota's MnLINK) Ex Libris Aleph 500

OhioLINK Innovative Interfaces

ORCA (Washington State CTC System) Voyager

Oklahoma State Voyager

OPALL - Oregon Pacific Voyager

Scottish Endeavor Consortium Voyager

University of Kansas Voyager

University of South Carolina Innovative Interfaces

WALDO (Westchester) Voyager

WRLC Voyager

a) Where are your servers located?

With the exception of WALDO, all respondents reported that their servers were located at universities associated with a consortium member. WALDO uses servers located at a LexisNexis server farm in Dayton.

All but three consortia house all of their servers at a single site. The exceptions were the three consortia that have institutions with independent servers. However, the Scottish Endeavor Consortium consists of two hubs at one physical location. The number of servers used by the consortia varied greatly, depending on the number of institutions in the consortium, the applications supported and the hardware platform.

b) How many institutions are using your servers?

Answers ranged from 2 to 70 institutions per server site, with a median number of 12 institutions per server site.

2. What is the staff size in FTE dedicated to Voyager and related server support for each hub-site?

The average FTE was 3 and the median was 2 FTE, but staff FTE varied greatly depending on the number of institutions in the consortium and the additional services supported. The sites with larger numbers of FTE were also supporting activities like customized reports, digital library management, electronic resource licensing, programming, network management, etc.

The following questions offer information on the staff workload factors for the consortiums.

3. What is the server configuration at your hub-site(s)?

Five consortiums reported running single server configurations; seven consortiums have application server/web server configurations; one has three servers for application, web, and databases. OhioLINK is using all three configurations, depending on the institution's needs. Their union database is running on a single server.

4. What Endeavor applications are in use by your consortium members?

Only two consortia (OPALL and ORCA) are running just the ILS. All others are supporting other applications such as Link Resolver, meta-search engine, digitized collection, Universal Borrower, Citation Server, Interlibrary Loan, media scheduling, etc.

5. Who is responsible for network problems occurring between hub-site and institution?

Answers varied widely and seemed to depend on the individual state (or country). Only OhioLINK seemed to have a staff person responsible for locating the problem sources. The responsibility for fixing the problem is with the source.

6. What is the relationship of the consortium's hub-site host institution(s) and the client institutions/libraries whose databases are housed on the servers?

Our purpose in asking this question was to determine the nature of the various formal agreements in place, but some institutions didn’t understand the question. Out of those answering appropriately, four reported formal written agreements and one reported an informal verbal agreement only. Several indicated funding came directly from state education budget, implying that participation may have been mandated.

7. In what ways does your consortium operating structure benefit your institution? Do you see any disadvantages to your consortium operating structure?

Advantages reported: 24 hour support is more affordable; equipment sharing provides savings; fewer staff required; small libraries benefit from additional support; not competing with local IT priorities; higher level of support for all.

Disadvantages reported: arranging dates for upgrades; may be some delay in staff response - compared to local staff; one site’s shared database is difficult to manage. OhioLINK reported that the only disadvantage has been receiving a flat budget the past couple of years.

Platform

Sun/Solaris – 11

IBM/AIX – 2

Unknown - 2 (One is probably Sun/Solaris or a Microsoft server.) OhioLINK may be a mixture of platforms, depending on the institutions.