Notes from  2CUL JSMIN meeting, June 8, 2017

Attending: Adam Chandler, Sarah Elman, Kate Harcourt, Jesse Koennecke, Jim LeBlanc, Mark Wilson

1. We shared our thoughts on the current impact on our operations of Ivy Plus initiatives and the recent proliferation of Ivy Plus working groups, task forces, and proposals for the development of new collaborative tools.  Some observations:
   • There are now a lot of groups, chiefly made up of higher-level staff, with some overlap, lots of meetings, and quite a bit of administrative work.  Not much is "filtering down" to mid-level staff; definitely not a "middle-out" approach.
   • In the Technical Services Group, it seems difficult to "keep things at scale"; discussion about retention statements developed into a debate about OCLC and its pricing model and how other consortia wish to approach OCLC; the more other consortia are brought into the discussion, the more the focus of the group seems to "spin out."
   • The E-Book group has been charged specifically to do environmental scans and to work out specs for a consortial project; the charge is also explicit about bringing others into the conversation, so this group seems overall more focused.
   • Certain tasks are more easily accomplished with smaller partnerships; when there is actual work to be done ("something practical") is the best time to bring in experts "on the ground"
   • Could be that the composition of these groups is determining the attitudes and approaches to the task at hand; and since these groups are composed of higher-level staff, the approach is necessarily more top-down than middle-out.
   • We have a lot of local activities and priorities that compete with this big picture work; it might be best for the Ivy Plus groups to focus on the latter.
2. Columbia and Cornell are both participating in the PCC ISNI pilot – Columbia in both the planning and hands-on phases, Cornell in the hands-on phase only.  We are going to seek opportunities to work together to get more catalogers involved in the pilot proper.
3. We talked a bit about  the Collections and Technical Services Workflow and Organizational Analysis performed at Columbia by outside consultants (Carol Pitts Diedrichs and Brian Schottlaender) this spring.  Columbia JSMIN members were surprised that some of the issues we explored together in conjunction with TSI – questions regarding centralized vs. non-centralized processing, limitations of union rules, etc. – didn't come up in the report.  The review did notably address issues surrounding "pre-cat" storage (which the consultants didn't seem to understand completely) and the level of influence selectors have on processing at Columbia.  The consultants also stressed the need for better communication.
4. Communication also arose as an important concern in Columbia's recent strategic planning initiative.  Regarding this initiative as a whole, there are dozens of tracks to be pursued and leaders haven't gotten very far yet in prioritizing these tracks.  Several ideas will need "championing" to move forward, but staff are already feeling "overstretched."