TexShare Advisory Board Meeting
2 :00AM until 4PM on October 7, 2008 - Omni Austin Hotel Downtown
700 San Jacinto at 8th Street, Austin Room (2nd floor)
Austin, TX
Minutes
1. Elect Chair and Vice Chair: Joan Heath was elected
Chair and Larry Justiss was elected Vice Chair.
2. Approval of Minutes From July 7, 2008:
The minutes were approved.
3. Public Comment: Jay Clark says “thank
you” for receiving his certificate of appreciation;
he enjoyed serving on the TexShare Card group as board liaison.
4. Set Dates for Future Meetings: Tentative
dates are Feb. 26, 2009 and May 11, 2009.
5. TSLAC Update: Beverley Shirley reported
for Peggy Rudd. TSLAC is approaching our centennial in 2009
and we hope to have the majority of building renovation completed.
There were ten exceptional items in the legislative appropriation
request, with additional funding for TexShare programs included.
Peggy Rudd has appeared before the budget staff of the Legislative
Budget Board, the Governor’s Office of Budget, Policy
and Planning, and the Lt. Governor’s Office and should
be notified of their recommendations soon.
6. ILL Study Update: Sue Bennett, TSLAC
TexNet Coordinator, presented an update of the InterLibrary
Loan study. The ILL Study Implementation Task Force has completed
its initial analysis of the models presented in the study
and is now participating in a series of online meetings with
representatives from states that have adopted one of the models
presented in the study. The task force will write up an evaluation
of the strengths and weaknesses of each model and put them
up on the task force website at: http://www.texshare.edu/apps/illstudytaskforce/.
TSLAC staff and some study members have been presenting information
and holding discussions at regional library system meetings.
Most of the issues we’ve heard involve concern about
future staffing needs and postage costs for interlibrary loan.
There is still some work to be done in informing librarians
regarding possible systems for statewide interlibrary loan
and how they might work. The task force recommends that a
pilot project begin in 2010, and by the end of the pilot project
we plan to have a recommendation for funding approval by the
legislature by 2011 or 2012.
7. Proposed TexShare Statute Changes: Beverley
Shirley reminded the board that one of the recommendations
from the Resource Sharing Summit was to provide the current
membership flexibility and control over the growth of the
consortium. TexShare membership is currently defined by statute,
so membership can only be changed if the Legislature changes
the statute. Taking membership out of statute and putting
it in rule gives TSLAC and the current membership more control
over TexShare growth. TSLAC staff has drafted a revision to
the TexShare statute that would accomplish this. After considerable
discussion, the board recommended that:
· §441.226 dealing with the advisory board include
a statement that the advisory board composition be representative
of the various types of libraries comprising the membership.
One concern remained about the new statute allowing for-profit
organizations to participate in the consortium.
· §441.229 specify that participation in group
purchasing agreements be defined in a manner that enhances
resource sharing services to the consortium members.
· There will be a follow-up meeting in December to
consider the issue of nonprofit and for-profit members and/or
affiliate members. Several board members expressed concern
over the implications of possible future participation by
for-profit institutions. Prior to meeting on this topic, TSLAC
staff was directed to prepare a document on the advantages
and disadvantages of a statutory prohibition on membership
by for-profit institutions.
8. Statewide Resource Sharing Summit Update:
Beverley Shirley gave an update on the items that were recommended
by the board in the July meeting.
· Beverley Shirley and Ann Mason met with Pat Smith
and Gloria Meraz of the Texas Library Association (TLA) on
August 21, 2008 to discuss a survey TLA has planned in response
to needs identified in the Transforming Texas Libraries process.
Staff reported that the TLA survey will be focused on deriving
a “value of libraries” measurement. The Resource
Sharing Summit participants recommended a survey to determine
what services librarians and library users expect and need
in order to determine what collaborative resource sharing
activities could be instituted to address these needs. Consequently,
we will need to design and execute our own survey rather than
“piggy back” on the TLA survey.
· We have identified potential members of a Summit
Implementation Task Force and are in process of refining the
task force charge prior to contacting these candidates.
· We have generated a draft of legislation to provide
TexShare members more control over the growth of the consortium.
· In response to the recommendation that TexShare program
goals be expressed in terms of outcomes, we are exploring
ways to collaborate with the partners in our “Train
to Share” grant on training in and development of outcomes-based
evaluations for these projects.
9. Working Group Reports: no oral reports,
four written reports
Card Program Working Group: Submitted Katie
Prentice. A face-to-face meeting of the working group was
held during TLA in Dallas on April 15, 2008. Discussion focused
on outreach and recruitment of libraries to the TexShare Card
program. 150 of 540 public libraries are not participating
and 8 academic libraries are not in the program. Working Group
participants agreed to discuss options for recruiting participants,
possibly calling the libraries. The working group also discussed
comments on the Card program that were submitted by members
as part of the annual TexShare Report survey. The Working
Group members requested TexShare staff to explore ways of
computerized ways of producing cards for individuals. The
Working Group also discussed the issue of persons whose TexShare
card privileges have been suspended and reaffirmed the need
for participant libraries to be careful to issue cards only
to patrons in good standing.
Education Services Working Group: Submitted
Gillian Wiseman. A face-to-face meeting of the working group
was held in Austin on July 10, 2008. Public library database
usage statistics have increased only slightly over last year.
We have not yet recovered to levels of usage seen in 2005
after previous intensive TexShare database training. Members
recommended that TSLAC hire a consultant to build database
training modules, similar to the program for K-12 databases
in which ESC 20 created extensive and very successful training
for public school librarians and teachers. School library
training included both face-to-face and online training components,
presented by ESC 20 and other Education Service Centers around
the state. It is expensive but very well received. A similar
model could be followed to hire a group to create modules
for public and academic libraries, including both general
database training, promotion of databases, training in how
to teach end-users to use databases themselves, and more.
The working group also discussed how to publicize the databases
without crossing the line into “advertising.”
TexShare already has good “brand recognition”
with the State Legislature – need to keep this going
and spread recognition at the local user level.
Electronic Information Working Group: Submitted
by Kerry Keck. Renewals for several of the non-core databases
have been completed – the latest being StatRef!. Renewal
for the American Chemical Society journals for calendar year
2009 is pending. The Texas State Library and Archives Commission
staff has prepared informational reports for the Legislative
Budget Board, and further activity for the Electronic Working
Group will await the outcome of the next legislative session
and the setting of the databases budget.
Library of Texas Working Group: Submitted
by Judith Hiott. The LoT software will soon be re-located
to servers maintained by the LoT development contractor, Index
Data. Moving to software as a service model will facilitate
both the development and maintenance of the program. Kevin
Marsh will spend the first half of October making sure participating
libraries have the new IP addresses and facilitating access
on the new server. The server switch will take place in the
second half of October.
The September 18, 2008 working group meeting focused on outreach
to libraries that would benefit from LoT and on improvements
to the LoT service. Improvements that the group recommended
include:
- Limiting searches to full-text articles.
- Creating database search groups that will further delineate
article from book searches.
- Using freely available API’s to bring book cover
art into LoT.
- Continuing to simplify the LoT search interface in the
direction of a more Google-like experience.
- Making individual library pages more customizable to
match the library’s Web site look and feel.
- Exploring better ways to authenticate small libraries
for the service.
- Testing OpenURL functionality with a Houston Public Library
link resolver.
The working group approved necessary development of LoT if
the ILL working group wants to test using LoT to mediate interlibrary
loan.
10. Strategic Partner Reports:
University of Texas at Austin: no report
Amigos Library Services: Tim Prather reported
for Judye Glick. TExpress has been busy with new pricing for
the new fiscal year in light of the addition of 2-day-per-week
and 3-day-per-week delivery options. Subsidies have stayed
the same for the 5-day-per-week service, but the working groups
may recommend changing these in the future. The courier service
newsletter is now being emailed to participants to increase
readership.
Education Service Center, Region 20: no
report
11. Administrative Report:
Welcome New Board Member. Welcome to our
new public university representative: Dr. Farzaneh Razzaghi,
director of the University of Texas - Pan American library.
Dr. Razzaghi received her doctorate in library and information
studies in 1990 and master's in library science in 1980 from
Texas Woman's University in Denton. She has been an active
member of the TexShare Education Services Working Group since
2003. Dr. Razzaghi is a member of ALA and ACRL where she is
serving on three committees. She is also a member of the Texas
Council of Academic Libraries.
TexShare Database Fees. We have collected
$1,579,907 (100%) of the TexShare FY08 Database Program Fees.
673 libraries have paid (99.9%). 103 public libraries used
their Loan Star Libraries funds to pay their database fee.
New TexShare Member fees. The South Texas
College of Law was added to the TexShare consortium as a result
of a change in the definition of “Private or independent
institution of higher education” enacted in the last
session. This institution does not fit into any of the fee
categories that have already been established. We have temporarily
assigned them a fee commensurate with that of medical libraries.
We will ask the Database Cost Sharing Working Group to determine
a permanent fee assignment for them this year.
ILL Study. See agenda item #6.
Study of the needs of K-12 Libraries. The
results of the study of K-12 library needs and recommendations
is still available for review and comment at: http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ld/pubs/schoolneeds.
The study found that all of the needs listed in the survey
are considered important to good school library programs.
The ones the school community ranked the highest focus on
funding and resources to ensure a strong and successful school
library program, while emphasizing that school librarians
are part of the educational process for student success and
need support and recognition of that role. Of the seventeen
needs listed, the local district was scored as best suited
for ten needs, the Texas Education Agency for seven needs,
and the Texas State Library and Archives Commission for two
needs.
The study includes a lengthy set of recommendations. Some
summary points include:
- Additional funding from local districts and the state
is key.
- Both TEA and TSLAC can work with local districts in areas
such as collaboration among libraries and with community
organizations.
- Many respondents call for the Standards to be mandatory;
mandated district programs and services are clearly a responsibility
of TEA.
- Data are essential for evaluation; this could be a responsibility
for TEA, if additional resources were available and the
necessary statutory changes enacted.
The study will be taken to the Texas State Library’s
commission at its October 20, 2008 meeting. The study must
also be approved by the Texas Education Agency.
Resource Sharing Summit Update. See agenda
item #8.
Next board meeting will be Monday, Dec. 8, 2008.
Present:
TexShare Advisory Board Members:
Evelyn Bonner, Wiley College
Megan Cooper, Leander ISD
Cathy Dean, San Antonio
Kathy Fair, Kilgore College
Joan Heath, Texas State University San Marcos
Kathy Hoffman, MD Anderson Cancer Center
Larry Justiss, Tom Green County Library System
Sheila Ross Henderson, Pasadena Public Library System
Candice Scott, Schreiner University
Martha Tandy, Weatherford College
Texas State Library and Archives Commission:
Sue Bennett, Library Resource Sharing Division
Julie Hughes, Library Resource Sharing Division
Ann Mason, Library Resource Sharing Division
Danielle Plumer, Library Resource Sharing Division
Beverley Shirley, Library Resource Sharing Division
Working Group Chairs/Liaisons: None
Strategic Partners:
Sue Phillips, University of Texas at Austin
Tim Prather, Amigos Library Services
Guests: None
|
