Meeting Minutes for 10/13/2020

E-Content Committee Meeting 
10/13/2020

PressReader Demo (Jean Johnson & Patrick Moore, Baker & Taylor)
Demo Recording

• PressReader, in partnership with Baker & Taylor, provides a comprehensive collection of over 7,000 US and international magazines and newspapers for an annual subscription price.
• Library users have unlimited access to all the titles for streaming or download access.
• PressReader title catalog list: https://www.pressreader.com/catalog

Q & A Section

• Q: Are there MARC records for libraries?
• A: Patrick was not sure, but would follow-up with the information.
• Q: How often does PressReader lose publications?  Meaning they can offer Outside one year but then discontinue it the following year?
• A: Patrick did not have the answer but will find out.
• Q: Would each library have its own usage data?
• A: Yes, this would be a subscription at the library level, unless there was a system-wide subscription.
• Q: How do you price this product? By library size? By consortium?
• A: Pricing is based on the population served, and it’s a tiered pricing strategy.
• Q: Is there a price break if all the members join or just a certain percentage of members join?
• A: Patrick is working on a discount as a Marmot member. Patrick thinks he can get a better discount with more libraries joining. 

OverDrive API and Pika Issue (Pascal)

• Ashley sent out an email about the OverDrive extract taking longer than expected.
• The issue stands now that when the OverDrive extractor does a reload on the weekend, the extractor ends up being behind on updates for most of the rest of the week because it takes 4 to 5 days to catch up completely. 
• OverDrive runs through the availability updates for every record in the Marmot OverDrive collection.
• The issue is two-fold. 1. There is a natural bottleneck with the OverDrive API with availability. 2. Combined with the fact that Marmot has 20+ Advantage accounts- that a call has to be made for each Advantage library to get the availability counts for that particular library.
• The patch that the Pika team put into production reduced that bottleneck by being able to do 25 products per call but it is still not enough to keep up with the full reload.
• Also, the Marmot OverDrive collections are expanding.
• The OverDrive API is checking availability on things that are always available which is a waste of computation to check the availability for something always available.
• There is a bug in the OverDrive API that tells our system incorrectly that an always available title has a normal availability. Fortunately, the copies count has a specific number for anything that is always available, so Pascal can look for and fix the issue for those numbers.
• The reason for the full reload on the weekend is to catch things that are missed with the regular extraction process on new purchases.
• OverDrive ingested over 400,000 CPC titles into the CMC collection.  CMC is doing a sideload of their OverDrive collection which should not normally affect Pika. However, Pika had the CMC Advantage credentials listed and was fetching the titles. If this happens for another library where they purchase 100,000  CPC titles that will clog up the extractor as well. 
• If your library is migrating another RBdigital collection or ingesting over 10,000 titles into your Advantage account please send an email to pika@marmot.org.
• When Delta fully joins Marmot, they plan to keep ACDC which will put a load on the extractor to extract Marmot’s shared collection and Delta’s shared collection.
• The Pika team just wanted everyone to be aware of this issue even though there is nothing members can do to help solve the problem. The team is working on developing a solution and might have to wait and do a full reload every couple of weeks. Unfortunately, if a title did not get ingested after purchasing, you would have to wait two weeks for it to be added. The Pika team would need to work on a tool to tell the extractor to extract a specific record.

Update on Creativebug (Ashley)

• If you have Creativebug, send an email to pika@marmot.org.
• Ashley will get a sideload ready for your library to use
  • She just needs your library’s URL organization name/ID that is supplied by your Creativebug rep
  • Creativebug vendor is working on providing Ashley with this information -- they might not be familiar with what you may be asking for.
• Creativebug is working on getting a general recordset

Vendor Relationship Discussion (Adam)

• Create “ground rules” on behavior when looking at competing packages
• Adam knows the vendors will get in touch with libraries individually or people will be copied in on emails between Tammy and vendors
• Adam just wanted to see if there are certain things we wanted to adhere to when we are in this type of situation
• Some examples would be sharing details about other plans or options from other competing vendors in such a way that it could hurt any negotiations.
• Tammy mentioned that there were purchasing guidelines on the old Marmot wiki site that never made it to the new site. These purchasing guidelines are probably not necessary anymore. She just wondered if we should have some guidelines with information the group would like Marmot to ask vendors, as well as things we should not share through email about other vendors.
• Action Item: Adam suggested that we take the older document and update it since Marmot is going to be working with more vendors to accumulate more shared content. We should have metrics spelled out regardless of the vendor.
• Action Item: please notify Marmot when you are interested in a vendor product. Marmot will look into getting a demo as well as group pricing when available.

The next meeting is on November 10th at 1 p.m.