Joint Collection Development/Digital Libraries Working Group
ALA Midwinter Meeting
12 January 2008
Philadelphia, PA

Present:

Richard Hacken, facilitator (Brigham Young University), Anna Shparberg (Rice University), James Simon (Center for Research Libraries), Brian Vetruba (Washington University), Kate Brooks (University of Minnesota), Sebastian Hierl (Harvard University), Frances Ott Allen (University of Cincinnati), Anne Oechtering (Yale University), Mary E. Marshall (Walter de Gruyter), Ulrike Engel (Walter de Gruyter/KG Saur), Judy Alspach (Center for Research Libraries), Kizer Walker (Cornell University), Deborah Rose-Lefman (Northwestern University), Jim Niessen (Rutgers University), Gordon Anderson (University of Minnesota)

Meeting attendees briefly introduced themselves.

Minutes from previous meeting were approved.

Report from the Steering Committee meeting

The bylaws were reviewed by the Steering Committee and some minor wording changes were made. The Steering Committee supports implementing GNARP membership dues for institutional members, beginning in FY 09. Dues will be $250 annually for members of CRL and $350 annually for non-members of CRL.

A Nominating Committee will be formed in the coming months to solicit nominations for the Officer and Steering Committee member positions that will be elected just prior to the ALA Annual Meeting.

The Steering Committee discussed the possibility of GNARP becoming more active in supporting librarian exchanges, likely involving German librarians visiting the US. Michael Seadle had submitted a written report on the potential for this kind of activity. Beth Remak volunteered to work on this issue and update the Steering Committee on her progress at the June meeting.

GNARP Inventory of Digital Projects in German Studies

According to the statistics, there were more than 6000 hits on this site in the last year. An additional database of note is Sophie, which highlights female authors.

German-Language Newspaper Access in North America wiki

This wiki lists holdings of German-language newspapers, and at least ten institutions have added portions of their holdings so far. All institutions are encouraged to add their holdings, so that the list can be as complete as possible.

Kate Brooks asked if there is a way to help her determine how she might combine their holdings of uncataloged newspapers that they would consider discarding. In many cases, these would be short runs. A separate wiki could be used to make these holdings known, or one could put this information on the Discussion tab of the existing German-Language Newspaper Access in North America wiki.

KG Saur’s 20th Century online trial

Responses to the survey were read. Respondents reported a wide variety of opinions about the product, but most agreed it was too expensive, even with the discount, for their institution to purchase. Several institutions reported that it would be helpful to have the trial period extended, so that faculty members could adequately try out this resource.

The current product, including primary sources for the time period 1933-1945, is the first to be released. The Weimar and DDR time periods are likely to be the next to be added, and are expected in 2009. They would be separate products, and be priced separately. The search function would work in one or multiple databases, depending on the user’s preference.

The card index to the Nuremberg Trials is included in this resource, since only 3 institutions in the world have hard copies of this information. The card index has been confusing to many users, but can be very useful. The intent is to eventually get all of the documents referenced in the card index digitized as well.

The database interface will be relaunched by the end of January, and the changes will hopefully result in the information being easier to find.

The DL/CD WG would like to reach an agreement of principles with Saur that would cover all of their products, so there would not need to be separate negotiations for each new product as it comes out.

Next Steps: DL/CD would like to move toward a schedule of seasonal regularity of database offerings.
CRL’s collaborative workspace will be used to post information about database offers.

18th Century German Literature online database

$16,000 for those who have purchased microfiche
$32,000 for those who have not purchased microfiche
$1,000 annual maintenance fee.
A longer trial is possible, in order to allow faculty time to try it and hopefully get excited about it.
Saur really appreciates feedback on its databases and encouraged trial participants to submit their opinions about the product and its use.
This product covers the German Enlightenment and contains 4500 volumes, including approximately 1.1 million pages.
It is full text searchable. All texts are in Gothic type. OCR has been trained to recognize different versions of Gothic type and there is a guide within the product that helps researchers learn to understand Gothic type (Fraktur).
MARC records to be available by end of January.
The trial will be for four months (until the end of April 2008?).

Long term archiving—CRL and NESTOR—GNARP involvement?

Most GNARP people are in Collection Development and don’t have expertise and responsibility in area of preservation of digital items.
CRL had Mellon grant to test methodology of auditing digital archives. The methodology is known as TRAC (Trusted Repository Audit and Certification: Checklist and Criteria). CRL just received an NSF grant to expand its work within US and abroad and to refine TRAC criteria. Assessments of US based repositories will be conducted (Associated Press, ProQuest, Sloan Digital Sky Survey, etc.)

Michael and Dale propose GNARP participation. Kate Brooks expressed interest in a learning opportunity. GNARP participants would do well to learn more about these activities in order to make good decisions regarding the collections. Sebastian suggested getting document with guidelines. James offered to get this together. James recommended advocacy for requiring perpetual access to databases as part of future contracts for databases. GNARP could recommend archives that should be audited for trustworthy status. The next issue of the Charleston Advisor will include information of certification of digital archives.

Other GNARP database negotiations

WBIS—might be part of package discussion with Saur. The current offer for annual subscription to WBI for $500 (50% off). For the purchase of WBIS archives,
120 archives purchased is target = 60% discount
100 archives purchased = 40?% discount
Mary thinks 120 threshold will be reached by mid 2008.
The group discussed the possibility of opening offer to other GRN/CRL members who do not participate in GNARP.
Various models were discussed, including subscription vs. purchase and whether these all count toward the number of archives ‘purchased’ by GNARP and leading to a bigger discount. Simple models are preferred by Saur and they could consider installment purchases as counting toward this deal.

BLL—the English language interface has been produced, despite many delays. GNARP gets good discount. Five institutions will be subscribing to this product, although there is some overlap with the LLBA database.

LIP—from Brockhaus Duden Neue Medien, which also publishes Xipolis. The pricing of LIP was universally seen as too high by GNARP members, so this negotiation has been effectively dropped and there has been no correspondence about it in several months.

Xipolis—there will be an increased number of GNARP subscribers in the coming year.

Other topics of interest

Digitization—CRL is ramping up its capabilities for in-house digitization and it would be helpful if GNARP librarians could suggest to CRL some items or projects for digitization from CRL’s collection. So far, ILL requests and some interest groups have been driving digitization priorities for CRL, and there is no reason GNARP could not contribute to this as well. At the same time there is a limited capability by CRL to do in-house scanning, so larger projects would need to be outsourced.
What are other institutions doing in-house? In progress projects could be listed on the Discussion tab in WESS/GNARP Inventory of Digital Projects in German Studies wiki.
Anne Oechtering described a new project called Ebooks on Demand. 13 European libraries are currently taking part, with new partners joining soon. University Innsbruck is coordinating the project. An interested patron contacts the library, and requests digitization of a book, which costs the patron about 60 Euros per book. Books from 1500 through 1900 can be digitized through this project. After a period of time, the digitized book is available free of charge to anyone. Dick suggested adding this project to the WESS/GNARP Inventory of Digital Projects in German Studies wiki.

Minutes submitted by Judy Alspach