Present:In Bellingham: Rob Lopresti, NGIN President & meeting host (Western Washington University), Barbara Massey (King County Library System), Daniel Ngyuen (Seattle Public Library), Cass Hartnett (University of Washington), Peggy Jarrett (University of Washington Law Library), Crystal Lentz (Washington State Library), Marilyn von Seggern (Washington State University Library).
In Spokane: Sue Anderson & Justin Otto (Eastern Washington University), Jean Hartman (Spokane Public Library)
Business Meeting:
Treasurer's Report -- Jean Hartman
Total paid 12 members, 1 student
Speaker’s expenses for the Spring meeting (RDA training from Lori Robare) $420
Current bank balance $693.34
Regional's Report--Crystal Lentz
Still in a holding pattern regarding the Washington-Alaska Model (WAM). State Librarian Rand Simmons has not spoken to Secretary of State Kim Wyman about it. Due to another significant reduction in the WSL budget, Crystal has lost one public service position. Rand Simmons has floated a scenario of stopping federal documents service as well as the WSL’s free obituary look-up service in order to demonstrate the severe cuts. WSL is now financed from Heritage Center funds, which are completely fee-generated, a new model of funding. GPO’s Robin Haun-Mohamed has an idea for all federal depositories in Washington: assess each library’s collection now, think about where you want to be in the future. Together, we should start profiling our collections with an eye to coordination regardless of the WAM. We discussed what a coordinated regional collection would look like. As Crystal updates Selective Housing Agreements, she is finding that some of the information is only stored on shelflist cards. As Crystal put it, although WSL is not asking for any type of commitment from libraries yet, what do each of us think we are not going to weed from our collections? On which topic areas do our institutions most focus?
The migration of the WSL catalog to Innovative Interfaces Inc. (III) servers still hasn’t happened yet (was going to be July 1). Crystal is now wearing seven different hats at work and is frustrated to see her public service statistics (over one thousand questions monthly) reduce down to two hundred questions per month now that the obituary service has been eliminated. Actually charging for obituaries – which people seem willing to pay for – would require legislative approval. The Heritage Center project (by that name) is effectively dead. WSL and the State Archives may be combined: this may be proposed in next legislative session. WSL has already been housed for 10 years in a temporary location (initially not to exceed 5 years).
A sad note: long time WSL employee and affiliate of the documents community Shirley Dallas died last month of ovarian cancer. Shirley’s memorial will be held this weekend.
Round Robin:
Justin Otto: (Eastern Washington University)
Susanna Milton is the new dean at EWU since July 1. She was an internal candidate selected after an international search. EWU currently has four librarian job searches underway. The Coordinator of Reference and the Metadata Librarian positions are still accepting applications. Three years’ professional experience is required for both.
Jean Hartman: (Spokane Public Library)
Andrew Chance, formerly of Maricopa County Library District started as Director at Spokane Public Library in June. The library has collaborated with the UW iSchool to design a new user survey to see how patrons use technology. A library levy passed, expanding hours at branches,and funding new librarian positions. Training was available on the Affordable Care Act and Washington Healthcarefinder, but library staff members have not received many questions yet.
Rob Lopresti: (Western Washington University)
Mark Greenburg is WWU Library’s new dean. Andrea Petersen is now Associate Dean for Information and Technology Services. WWU has two new searches in progress: the Scholarly Communications (i.e. institutional repository) librarian will report to the second position, a new directorship for Scholarly Resources. Rob spoke about all of our changing roles in our institutions. He is now responsible for government information plus five different subject areas and he has agreed to be the campus Copyright Officer. There is a campus-wide committee of stakeholders; the campus AG will be included and perhaps bookstore staff. One of their big areas for consideration is the fair use of streaming video for classroom use (their practice and policy needs to be in line with the TEACH Act).
Rob continues with his map weeding to accommodate the teaching/learning space in the middle of the map cases. They need wireless in this part of the building. A Research Help Desk has replaced the Reference Desk, using the learning commons synergy. WWU has implemented Alma/Primo: they call it OneSearch. Rob has pointed out to ExLibris the problems with SuDoc browse.
Michele Reilly of CWU told of her experience with the University of Houston campus copyright committee and a week-long copyright training institute she attended in San Diego. [At this point in the meeting, we discussed copyright stories, including problems with Mexican published resources.]
Crystal Lentz: (Washington State Library)
WSL has new librarian positions; all are branch openings in prisons libraries. WSL also has numerous volunteer opportunities, and is willing to take on Directed Field Work students from the iSchool.
Dan Nguyen: (Seattle Public Library)
Daniel took over Judy Solomon’s job as Documents Coordinator in December 2002. City residents passed the levy, and SPL opened additional branches with new directors and is going to update their book security system from the current RFID technology. SPL is in a heavy weeding stage, leading to refurbishment and a new collection development policy. The old RFID tags won’t be compatible with the updated system, and this problem is taking most of his time. The collection includes about 5000 older fiche and he’ll be offering them. Daniel has been actively taking webinars and attended Inter-Agency Seminar in DC. SPL is now down to a 25% depository, and the collection is over 100 years old. His operation is now technically part of Magazines & Newspapers. The depository collection is now on level 6 of the library (a quiet reading floor), and documents staff are on level 7. They are using GPO promotional materials. There is a backlog of government documents processing, electronic records. David Palmer is their library associate.
Marilyn Von Seggern: (Washington State University)
Washington State University named their ExLibris Primo catalog “SearchIt.” They are in Orbis-Cascade Alliance Cohort 2, along with EWU, and will go live with their new library catalog in December. Marilyn is happy to see Primo’s call number browse capability. WSU has hired a new Instruction Librarian. WSU has not had a “research commons” type space to date, and the campus has never had a student technology fee. Thus Marilyn does not foresee a writing center or technology center moving in to the Library, though they are currently clearing space for more study tables. Her campus hosted a nationally televised Thursday night football game: quite a production.
Peggy Jarett: (University of Washingtion Gallagher Law Library)
The new ExLibris Integrated Library System (Alma/Primo) is challenging. Because Gallagher’s holdings records have now been merged online with the main UW Libraries, some of the technical problems concern de-duping records and struggling to find one’s own holdings (they are now checking in a few FLDP titles using an Excel spreadsheet). Peggy knows that in two years’ time, things will be better. A challenging time facing law schools nationally: there are not enough law students. A steady increase in law schools means that there are too many JDs graduating with too much debt and no jobs. All law schools have smaller incoming classes.
Barbara Massey: (King County Library System)
Mary Jane Vanella retired at the end of September. The system is pulling documents out of branch libraries, and only the Bellevue Library will retain tangible FDL resources. Moving forward, they will only select online publications and will start using MARCIVE’S Documents Without Shelves service starting in January 2014. Bellevue is weeding 40% of its old magazines, making room for more seating. 10% of reference collection will be cut.
Michele Reilly: (Central Washington University)
Central Washington University. Michele is very new on the scene at Central. Their Academic & Research Commons (ARC) is a learning commons, connected to the tutoring center and is packed all the time. The Library wants to be a center of institutional help, and foundational help for people. They debuted their institutional repository (IR) yesterday with Bepress/Digital Commons as platform. With their depository cataloging, CWU has 65,000 brief records waiting for overlay (holding onto them because they lack OCLC numbers). Michele is eager to learn from other institutions. By next January, CWU should have two paraprofessionals working on this.
Question: How should we create a documents group with the Alliance? There’s the public service/ Primo side and the technical service/ Alma side – and there may already be a govdocs/Alma group within the Alliance. Rob could talk to Bob from the Alliance. Everyone’s confidence in local holdings is shaky. At the Washington State Library, Steve Willis will be doing the Marcive work and some IT functions since WSL no longer has server space at The Evergreen State College.
Secretary's Report-- Cass Hartnett
Nearly-completed minutes from May 17, 2013 approved with minor revisions!
Afternoon Meeting:
WWU celebrated its fifty years as an FDL in grand style, with speeches, a depository eagle cake, an
exhibit
of one document per year for the past fifty years and an excellent panel of faculty scholars. Revelers could continue on to attend an evening event, a reception marking the reopening of Wilson Library’s Special Collections in its new location.
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