Minutes for 08/14/2015

E-Content Committee Minutes August 14, 2015

Overdrive Report from Jimmy, Joyce, Alysa and Shelley

• Jimmy needs a recommendation from this committee for the budget for the OverDrive Assessment. We would need to make a recommendation to the board. The next board meeting is in October. We have got time to do the arithmetic that Alysa has started doing. Jimmy turned the floor over to Alysa. Alysa talked about the meeting between Joyce, Shelley, Jimmy and herself. They met to discuss if Marmot has the money in the collective budget to effectively purchase at the rate of 7:1. The rate is dealing with the leased titles as well as filling the holds list. When are ratio is in excess of seven holds to one copy, Alysa and Joyce are charged to buy another copy to pull that ratio down to 7:1 or less. Jimmy asked Alysa & Joyce to find out what they actually spend, and what would they need to spend if they had unlimited dollars.
• Alysa shared an email that was sent to Jimmy, Joyce and Shelley after their meeting. It was a quick summary of her findings. The metered checkouts are taking 50 % of the August budget. The budget is $2700. If Alysa deals with the metered titles for a certain number of checkouts, she is going to be spending almost $600 in August. If she is going to have to deal with the titles the expire after a certain date, she needs to spend $800 dollars to repurchase those titles. That leaves us $1300 to fill holds. She would actually need $5000 to purchase one copy for every hold. In reality, she would need a lot more money.
• Alysa went into OverDrive and downloaded Marmot's current hold list. She looked at the number of holds to the number of copies that are owned by the consortium. Joyce and Alysa use this to say how many more copies they need to buy, and do the math to get the ratio down to 7 to 1. Alysa was charged to come up with how much money it would cost Marmot per month, if we really did buy everything we needed. In reality, she only had the ability to spend $1300 and that's essentially what she spent for August. What she really needs, if she just bought one copy per title is $5271. In reality, it’s actually closer to $6000, when you look at some of the items that she needs to purchase multiple copies. Her question to the group is what to do about the arguing going on with respect to advantage libraries buying advantage copies, and not putting enough money into the collective budget? It is the collective money that really pulls down the holds ratios. Bud Werner and other libraries use their advantage dollars to fill holds for their patrons.
• Joyce makes a very good point that it does not matter whether we have advantage copies out there. Unless, an advantage library patron has a hold on an advantage item, no one else can use them. No matter what, we need to pull down the consortium to 7 to 1. This is the picture that Alysa was charged to share with the group and create some discussion about whether the ratio of 7 to 1 is reasonable? Alysa states that in fact that the ratio is not reasonable, because we do not have the money to buy to that level. It would be $6000 for this month alone, and we only have $1300 to deal with holds. We either need to ask the group from more dollars, or say that it is really not important to us and we're just going to buy what we can and call it good. Alysa asked Jimmy and Shelley if they wanted to add anything to the conversation.
• Jimmy – Something that was brought up in a group meeting is asking members to go shopping. With a little guidance actually starting the process with a monthly shopping list using the OverDrive current hold list. If you don't have time to even think about what you're shopping for, you can buy some copies off of this list. We have not done this in a systematic way, but it sounds like a promising angle to accomplish the goal without having to change the budget.
• Jimmy – We have six member libraries in the course of the first half of this year that have not spent 50% of their budget yet. Alysa or Joyce could came up with a list every month with 30 titles that we would want those libraries to buy. I could split those titles six ways and give it to those libraries who need help getting up to their budget, and say here is a shopping list.
• Proposal - Shelley proposed that we try sending out a list of titles to the libraries that have not reached their budget, and ask them to purchase these titles. We could try it for at least three to six months to see if this helps bring down the hold ratio.
• Action Item: Jimmy will send out a list of titles to the members. Alysa will work with Joyce to come up with a workflow, and send a list of items to Jimmy.
• Amy – She suggested we look at the circulation rates for leased titles. She thinks we should look at raising it from 10 circulation to 15 circulations. Alysa suggested that this rate could be raised. The issue did not go any further.

Odilo feedback from discussion with Jimmy and Shelley

• Jimmy and Shelley thought it would be a good to have a couple of libraries start with Odilo and try it out. Pine River is very interested in the Spanish collection. Shelley will check it out and report back to the consortium on how well it worked. Shelley thinks the Vail Library is also interested, so we might have two libraries reporting back to the consortium.
• Jimmy – Look at the email “ODILO Call Follow-Up for Marmot” send on August 1st by Shelly. Mark Eaton did include pricing, description of the pay per use model, and Q & A. Members can look at pricing based on population served, so they can calculate for their own library what the entry is for Odilo. I think this is going to be like a lot of other products where we do not have a consensus, but a pocket of interest here and there. It is good that a couple libraries look into this and share their experience. Odilo interface is like OverDrive. We might do the work to our discovery layer when more libraries decide that this is a good complement to our existing OverDrive collection.
• Action Item: Shelley will give Vail a call to see if they are interested in Odilo. They will report back to the group.

Total Boox

• Jimmy had a long conversation with Peyton Stafford from Total Boox. This is yet another eBook vendor that is a pay per use model. They have 50,000 titles. They have their own site. You can search the catalog and download and pay per use. Pay per use is not a book check out, but a pay per page the is read by a patron. We would only pay a fraction, because the patron only read a fraction of the book. Jimmy would like to put a presentation by Peyton on the agenda for the next meeting. We can do updates for the first minutes of the the meeting, and the presentation for the rest of the time.