Digital Developments Working Group Meeting Minutes

NOTE: The following minutes are unapproved and will be formally agreed at the next meeting of the working group.

1. Welcome, Introductions and Apologies for Absence

Present: John Tuck (Chair - JT), Gavin Beattie (GB), Sarah Crofts (SC), John Gilby (JG), Georgina Parsons (GPa), Glyn Price (GPr), Gurdish Sandhu (GS).

Apologies: Marcus Wolley (MWo).

Also in attendance was Andrew Amato, M25 Web Services Project Officer. As the meeting was the first for JT and the first for the newly named group, members each gave brief introductions.

Robert Hall had stood down from the group after several years' service, and Maureen Wade had also stood down due to the changes in line management of the M25 Support Team.

2. Previous Meeting

The minutes from the last meeting of the Resource Discovery Working Group held on 17 July 2009 were agreed as a true record.

There were no actions arising from the meeting.

Actions from earlier (RDWG) meetings:

• JG to do further work on usage statistics to include adding  a suitable graph to the InforM25 website - JG tabled three graphs showing usage of InforM25 Overall, Search Catalogues and the ULS for the years 2003-4, 2004-5 & 2008-9. Following further discussion, the group agreed that it would be beneficial to do further investigations into available usage data with the aim of presenting something about InforM25 use to the Steering Group meeting in January 2010.
  Action 2.1 JG/AA to carry out further work with data, liaising with group memebrs prior to the January Steering Group meeting.
• JG to obtain more images for the development version of Find-a-library and advertise the service once live - Action 2.2 ongoing.

3. Group Membership

JT noted that with various recent changes to group membership, he had approached Douglas Dodds, V & A Museum regarding possible group membership, especially since this would give representation to non-HE institutions. DD had agreed to join but was unable to make this meeting.
Action 3.1 JG to add DD to DDWG pages on website and JISCmail list, and invite to next meeting.

Following discussion, it was agreed that the group seek another member, preferably at director level.

4. M25 Support Team Manager's Report

JG had previously circulated a report in line with "M25 Support Team InforM25 Tasks" document. Issues highlighted from the report included:

• The Royal Society of Chemistry now had Z39.50 capability and following further testing would be added to the Search-catalogues service.
• No further news on HEFCE funding for WAM25, it was hoped that there may be further news later in the Autumn.
• The Directors' Room was successfully launched at the recent Consortium networking event on 23 September.

JG noted progress with copying the InforM25 services to a virtual server provided by LSE ITS but that he was still chasing details of potential costs (to M25) and Service Level Agreements. The group also discussed progress with programming tasks and agreed that the highest priority be given to moving the live InforM25 service off its current (old) server.
Action 4.1 JG to summarise programming tasks to group with priorities and dependancies.

The group agreed to keep the format of this agenda item, pending any changes to the remit of the group in future.

5. Remit of DDWG

JT introduced this item noting that the terms of reference for the group should be reviewed/renewed to accurately reflect the group's remit and sought the views of attendees. The discussion was wide-ranging and included the following issues:

Issues raised from Networking Event feedback

• Inform25 was generally considered of "high importance" but decreasing "performance"
• Questions were raised over continued relevance of ULS with more online journals and SUNCAT
• Mention was made of SCONUL's impending report on "shared services", which may be relevant to future DDWG work and could lead to possible pilot projects

UoL Collaborative Digital Platform Study

• As presented by Mary Nixon at the AGM: Paper
• MN asked for registration of interest from the Consortium to work on the report's suggestions, but no further activity
• Consideration of coordination/centralisation of purchasing/management of e-resources with a view to efficiencies; it was felt that may raise significant complexities around licenses; national deals, etc., etc.

Sharing digitised resources

• Whether this issue comes under DDWG's remit
• Many suggestions may be superceded by SCONUL "shared services" work
• But digitisation of local collections and resources may still be relevant to the Consortium
• May be more appropriate for DDWG to provide context (in terms of a knowledge-base of expertise, e.g.) and advice for helping individual groups of institutions manage their own individual shared-access schemes
• M25 could be a pilot for new service ideas from other bodies
• GS volunteered to find out more about NoWAL and in particular, if any work is being done on consortial digitisation at article/chapter level for sharing.
• Mirror services and disaster preparedness
• Cross-searching of (M25) repositories

Action 5.1 JT to draft new Terms of Reference and circulate to the group, if possible in time for the October 2009 Steering Group meeting. Also to float ideas of the group's remit/responsibilities in the Directors' Room, and to propose some tasks for the current year's Action Plan.

6. Review of InforM25

JT introduced this item explaining that the proposed review of InforM25 had not progressed as all quotes received exceeded the available budget. JG confirmed that the budget was carried over into 2009-10. 

The group discussed the way forward with this task, in particular noting:

• that more data was needed about InforM25 users
• possible secondment of a member of staff (or panel of staff) in an M25 library or libraries (with appropriate skills) to carry out the work
• need to include specific mention of recent reports by bodies such as the RIN, JISC, etc..

7. Collaboration/Horizon Scanning

JT suggested that it would be of interest to the group if members could keep the group informed of relevant digital development activities by various bodies and the following volunteered to do this:

• GS - SCONUL
• JT - The British Library/CIBER (UCL)
• GPr - JISC

8. AOB

There was none.

9. Next Meetings

Next meetings are arranged at the LSE for:
9 December 2009 at 10.30
24 February 2010 at 14.00
17 June 2010 at 14.00

Minutes by JG