Minutes for 07/14/2015

E-Content Committee Minutes July 14th, 2015

Odilo Presentation – Shelley & Amy

  • Mark Eaton from Odilo presented the product and answered member’s questions. See E-content email titled “Odilo Next Meeting” from July 10th, 2015 for more details about Odilo. Here is the video for the Odilo Presentation.
  • Action item: Shelly will follow-up with Mark Easton about pricing.

OverDrive & Sierra Expired Patron Accounts Update - Jimmy

  • We conducted a survey. The results were distributed on July re “ECC Minutes from the June 9th Meeting.” The majority of libraries voted “yes" to ask OverDrive to remove the block for expired patron records, but there were still a few strong “no" opinions expressed in comments.
  • Mark considered several enhancements to Pika that could allow more granular control of what, for OverDrive, is a system decision. These ideas ran aground due to unsustainable complexity. But he came up with a technique that could be implemented immediately with no code change:
    • a. Advise OverDrive to NOT block patrons whose records are expired.
    • b. A few member libraries can periodically set M Blocks based on patron expiration dates.
  • OverDrive already blocks patrons for other reasons (M Blocks etc.). So no new code is really needed. The procedural burden of running global updates on patrons weekly or monthly can be limited to a few libraries with strong negative opinions. Either way, the likelihood of patron complaints will be much reduced. The group agreed to go forward with the proposal to stop blocking patrons by expiration date. Contact Marmot if you need any help with M Blocks or global updates.
  • Action Item: Tammy will contact OverDrive to them know that expiration date should no longer be a factor for blocking Marmot patrons from accessing OverDrive.

Overdrive WMA records - Shelley

  • Marmot was awarded $446 in content credit, applied to billing account 1201-0001 on June 10.

OverDrive Policy – Alysa

  • See the July 7th E-content email titled “July 14th Meeting” to see the outline of what Alysa and Joyce do every month for OverDrive Purchases.
  • Alysa - these are very simple polices that we are proposing to the group that we like to put in writing. A team of buyers use the Assessed dollars to do two separate things. Repurchase the lease titles that have expired, or purchase additional titles to fill the hold. Those are our two primary actions every month. Joyce and Alysa will repurchase a leased title upon expiration, if it has seen more than 10 circs in one year, and does not have any holds on it at that time. The hold issue is because an older title can become popular when a movie comes out. It can have less than 10 circs in the last year, but suddenly it's popular again, so we're going ahead repurchase that leased title. The other side it that we purchase many copies of a leased title. We let them all expire except one, providing we're not trying to fill a hold list. When that last title reaches its expiration date, or for a number of copies that's when Alysa and Joyce decide it's time to buy another title. They fulfil holds and try to maintain a hold ratio of 7 to 1. If it's greater than 7 to 1, they purchase additional copies. The number of leased titles increased tremendously. This takes a lot of the budget. When it comes to fulfilling the hold list they rarely get down to hold ratio of less than 9 to 1 for the Marmot consortium. Alysa wonders if we need to be giving more to the consortia budget? Some advantage libraries use their funding only to fulfil the hold list to reduce the holds at the consortia level. This is done to get copies to their patrons, and get patrons off the group hold list. The thing on the table is that 1 ) Do people agree with that policy and 2) Perhaps a discussion on money. Amy - If the expiring title has 10 or more circs in one year and does have holds, does that mean you don't buy it, or you buy it regardless of the holds? Answer: we buy it regardless of the holds.
  • Amy - one way we could save money is to increase that to 15 or some other number. I don't think we should automatically buy them.
  • Joyce - A lot of ones with less circs are the kids titles. We've been trying to develop that collection, because a lot of us have used some of our state grant for libraries money to enlarge the collection to keep kids reading in the summertime. When Joyce goes back to check, they have not been used that much. Is it worth expanding that collection or not?
  • Alysa - We can also look at the option for the Marmot collective to have us be more ruthless with respect to lease titles, and let them expire knowing that people can always request a title, and we can repurchase it later. We can really focus our budget needs on holds. Alysa and Joyce picked 10 this month give a test ride. Alysa did a price per circ, and it basically come out to the same number. It's easier to say the number of circs per year vs the price per circ makes buying go more quickly. If we want to increase it 16 or 20 and try that for a couple of months, and see if we're getting back down to our 7 to 1 hold ratio that is a reasonable experiment. The other option is to focus on holds first, and whatever money we have left over gets used to repurchase these titles.
  • Joyce - the only problem is we will need to keep a list of what is expiring, because once they're gone we will not know what went away. Alysa agreed with Joyce.
  • Jimmy- thank you to Alysa and Joyce for making this process public, so people know what you're working with as far as numbers and ratios. Even if we don't make any changes to this today, I think people want to think about this, and talk to their directors about it. Jimmy thinks that last bullet point about asking people for more money is something to think about, because he is working on the budget for August board meeting. During this board meeting might be a good time to discuss the issue that we need to increase the assessment for holds and leased title purchases done at a central level for the consortium by Joyce and Alysa. The numbers we have been using for the last few years have been informed by people like Joyce who knows this stuff really well. It has not been a scientific collective decision. If it's time to raise that number from what we are operating this year ($35,000) to something higher, than this is the ideal time to do that. Even if this committee through a vote or a survey could say that we recommend that 7 to 1 is a proper hold ratio, or if this is the minimum hold ratio we want to afford. Jimmy suggests a small group conversation for Joyce, Shelley, himself and a few other people can have that is separate. Anyone want to volunteer for a small group discussion? Alysa volunteer to join the small group conversation.
  • Action Item: Shelly will set up a meeting with Joyce, Alysa, Jimmy and herself to bring back recommendations for this committee.

ALA Exhibits - Shelley

  • Shelley plans visited BiblioBoards. She does not see how that fits into what we want, because it's more like what we are doing with our repository. She can bring it up to Jimmy separately and report back to the group.

Other Issues

  • Jimmy suggests that we start an offline conversation about Odilo. What you saw and what you think about it. Pine River is doing a big push working with Hispanic and Latino communities that's the really appealing part of Odilo. Jo - we are having the same issue here in Vail, so that is the one part of the Odilo demo that piqued her interest.
  • Jimmy - it would allow us a simple collection development policy if we arrived at a place where we had English materials from OverDrive and Spanish materials from Odilo. That would be something he could envision working well for us, but he thinks we need to get Mark Eaton's proposal first. 
Meeting Date: 
Tuesday, 2015, July 14
Documentation Type: 
Meeting Minutes
Committees: 
eResource Committee