Notes from 2CUL JSMIN meeting, March 10, 2016

Attending: Sarah Elman, Kate Harcourt, Jesse Koennecke, Jim LeBlanc, Joyce McDonough, Chew Chiat Naun, Mark Wilson

Announcements:

  • With the conclusion of the TSI project, Colleen Major and Robert Rendall (members of the original 2CUL TSI Steering Committee), are stepping away from JSMIN.  We are grateful to them for their three-plus years of service on the TSI Project!
  • Cornell has postponed the target date for its OLE implementation from summer 2017 to summer 2018.
  • Kate and Jim hope to submit their final article on TSI to LRTS within the next few days.  Thanks to Adam and Robert for reading and commenting on the draft.

We identified the "discrete projects and initiatives of mutual strategic interest" in which we are currently engaged under the banner of the 2CUL Technical Services Strategic Alliance:

  1. Jesse and Joyce reported that the E-Resources Working Group continues its regular communication and collaborative efforts, although their routine phone calls are less frequent.  Colleen has gotten INTOTA to add the NERL Wiley database to their system, which benefits Cornell as well as Columbia.  The group has also been talking about usage and assessment of e-resources, including the COUNT-IT workflow, which may turn into a 2CUL project.
  2. Mark explained that although three of the four 2CUL teams with which he's involved no longer have regular, routine contact, Columbia continues to consult with Cornell regarding initiatives such as Cornell's authorities browse in Blacklight, the recent Summon upgrade, and how we're all handling the front-end interface for databases.
  3. Kate remarked that Jason Kovari has helped to set up a Cornell Vitro instance for Columbia's Amber Billey for our collaborative Linked Data for Production (LD4P) project to develop the RBMS linked-data vocabulary.  Columbia and Cornell will be sending representatives to the next LD4P meeting in Washington DC at the end of this month. The Columbia and Cornell Metadata Working Groups continue to broadcast and attend each other's programs – most recently the presentations on Columbia's Promoting Access to Research and Collaboration (PARC) program and Cornell's "Linked Data Reality Check."  Along with Harvard and Brown, 2CUL has been talking about better pricing models for ISNI.  As current Chair of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC), Kate is planning the appointment of a PCC advisory committee on moving from MARC to linked data, with Steven Folsom as chair – an idea that originated within 2CUL technical services while Steven was still at Cornell.  Naun added that our 2015 plan to share BIBFRAME expertise and training together is likely to materialize after our LD4P work begins.
  4. Sarah plans to continue her lobbying for better East Asian e-serial records. A cooperative cataloging project group meeting will be held at the Council on East Asian Libraries (CEAL) meeting later this month. The group is recommending moving away from Serials Solutions toward getting records for the Chinese Academic Journals from the University of Hong Kong Libraries. Participating catalogers will then perform maintenance as needed. She may ask Cornell for help with this arrangement.

We spoke about ways to "preserve, promote, and invoke the 2CUL brand in broader collaborative forums" in support of the charge for the Alliance.  Ideas include: continuing to negotiate licenses as 2CUL whenever possible and appropriate, emphasizing the Columbia/Cornell collaboration within the LD4P project, and presenting together at ALA and other national and regional meetings whenever possible and appropriate.

We began talking about a possible face-to-face JSMIN meeting in summer or fall of this year, though it will be important for this agenda to be driven by concrete goals that support "better overall quality, productivity, improvement of services, and/or fruitful innovation" – as per the charge for the Alliance.  The idea arose that whatever funding is available might be better spent in support of functional area activity – for instance, a non-MARC metadata meeting in conjunction with the Code4Lib Unconference that Cornell plans to host in early August, an e-resource assessment summit, or a more broadly collaborative linked data meeting at a third-party location (e.g. Harvard).

Columbia and Cornell will share intel on upcoming individual meetings with Backstage Library Works, especially in regard to shelf-ready options – at Columbia on 3/11 and at the "Metadata Matters" seminar in Philadelphia late this month (which Adam is attending and at which Naun is speaking).

Jim will distill Alliance goals for 2016 from this discussion and record them in our Basecamp instance for tracking and eventual updating.

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