Meeting Minutes

1. Attendance and Apologies for Absence.

Present: Di Martin (chair), Stewart Brownrigg, Catriona Cannon, Liz Chapman, John Gilby (Minutes), Robert Hall, William Marsterson, Brian Murphy, Jean Sykes.

2. Chair and Membership of the Group

2.1 Noted that DM was standing down as chair of the group following this meeting and that she will continue as a member of the group for the time being.

2.2 Noted that WM will take over the role as Chair of the group.

2.3 Catriona Cannon from University of the Arts London was welcomed to the group.

2.4 Noted that Sarah Gerrard had resigned from the group. The Group thanked Sarah for her contribution to its work.

2.5 The group discussed the possibility of trying to recruit another person to the membership and this was felt beneficial. There had been a request from the Advocacy group for RDWG members to join the web review group. Since JG, RH and WM were already connected with the web review activities, SB volunteered to assist. JG volunteered to be responsible for taking minutes for all future group meetings and this was gladly accepted.
Action 2.1 WM to investigate recruiting a further group member.

3. Minutes of the meeting held on 14 May 2004

These were agreed as a true and accurate record.

4. Matters Arising

Previous meeting actions not covered elsewhere:

• 5.2 'Quick Bath' configuration for Sirsi Unicorn Z-servers means that they are able to receive Bath Profile searches but that the server might not necessarily carry out the search according to the profile due to limitations on the relevant indexes.
• 6.1 JG with the Consortium Secretary and Administration Assistant are drafting an M25 documentation standards guideline specification to cover both printed and web documents.
• All actions relating to the M25 Systems Team Service Delivery Plan have been completed.
• Implementation of some of the recommended changes to the InforM25 interface following the CC-interop Project CERLIM study are still on-going, partly due to their being more complex to implement than initially thought, and partly due to the forthcoming web review which is likely to include further sylistic changes.

DM noted that the Annual Performance Report written by the M25 Systems Team against the Service Delivery Plan was well received by the M25 Steering Group and showed good performance. DM had presented about M25 resource discovery services at the WHELF Regional Collaborative Conference on 21 September 2004 (slides available on website), and she had also been asked to write up the presentation for the Journal of Academic Librarianship. The M25 Systems Team Autumn 2004 newsletter was also noted.

5. External Linking to 'Search catalogues'

JG introduced his paper about linking to the 'Search catalogues' service, firstly using OpenURL and secondly, via Z39.50 (the possibility arising from the work of the CC-interop Project). JG explained that Copac had recently become an OpenURL target and that this could likely be done with 'Search catalogues' relatively easily. Enabling Z39.50 access to 'Search catalogues' would be useful for institutions implementing resource discovery type products such as Metalib and Encompass though would be a substantial task to implement and would require external funding.

SB commented that both options were valuable ways to utilise InforM25 and felt that the Z39.50 option could be particularly useful to link e-repositories into a clump in both directions. There may be benefits in talking with the SHERPA-LEAP Project. It was agreed in principle to make 'Search catalogues' an OpenURL target and that it is a good future strategy to make the service Z39.50 accessible, should external funding be secured.

6. Review of 'Visit a library' Pilot

JG reported that during the annual data review of the 'Visit a library' service some bugs in the software had been identified and, although not noticeable to users, ought to be fixed. The issue of 'public' schemes needed explaining - the 'public' scheme being where data is put that does not apply to any of the named schemes. The suggestion is to have two schemes on the tool, one for the Member of the Public user category, the other scheme for other user categories such as commercial users. The formal scheme would still be named 'Public' whilst the new scheme would be called something else.

Proposal 5. in JG's paper (suggesting adding the re-introduced M25 scheme by adding a standard entry for all institutions) caused significant debate about how and why libraries implement standardised local and national schemes differently. The group agreed that M25 libraries ought to be encouraged to apply the schemes as they have been agreed, rather than tweaking them or making mistakes in the way the schemes are implemented locally. If the schemes are implemented as published, then there is less confusion for users (and there are savings in maintenance of the service).
Action 6.1 DM to put recommendations to the M25 Steering Group that it instruct members to apply the schemes as published.

Another point agreed that should be included in the service improvements was to change 'foreign' to 'international' when referring to non-UK user categories.

7. Web Server and Service Usage Statistics Requirement Specification

JG outlined his proposal to look in more detail at how much the different M25 web pages are being used. For InforM25, JG had looked at how Copac and WiLL provide useful data about how users are using the catalogues, being able to show usage trends over time. The Advocacy Working Group had looked at the specification that morning and were in favour of the proposal. They liked the idea of seeing what advocacy activities might be introduced to increase usage of certain pages or monitoring what happens after marketing campagns.

For InforM25, JG had classified the desired usage data as 'Essential' and 'Desirable' and following discussion, it was decided to try to implement all. It was agreed that usage of the core services was the most important data and this was needed as soon as possible.

Agenda Items 5, 6 & 7 all have resource issues and require specialist programming effort. Following discussion, it was agreed that the priority of the work should be: statistics, OpenURL and then 'Visit a library'. There is a small underspend from the Systems Team's 2003/4 budget, which together with the underwriting offered by JS at the previous meeting, would provide sufficient funds to cover the cost of the statistics work. It was hoped that programming effort could be sourced from the Perseus Project Team at the LSE.
Action 7.1 JS/JG to alert group via email the outcome of discussions with the Perseus Team.

8. Preliminary Findings from M25 AWG 2004 Survey

JG reported from the AWG the preliminary findings of the 2004 M25 Awareness Survey conducted over the Summer. There were 780 replies to the survey and the trend when compared to 2001 was that people were much more aware of the Consortium and its activities. In terms of InforM25, the awareness of the service had risen from 48% to 68% and usage from 27% to 48%, hence confirming the need for the statistics work.

9. M25 Systems Team Manager's Report

JG highlighted a number of issues from his reports to the M25 Steering Group:

• Devised way of coding email addresses on the web pages to prevent them being picked up by spamming robots
• All Consortium members are on 'Find/Visit a library'
• Very few Z-server problems experienced with no difficulties during the traditional library system upgrades over the Summer
• Creation of a secretarial archive area on the website
• A lot of work done on accessibility issues, particularly for Working Group pages and recent additions
• There were disruptions to the M25 services and websites on 8 November due to firewall changes - rectified within two hours. Further work is necessary to enable ULS data contributions to be sent using an alternative method to FTP
• LSE and OU Voyager Z-servers had been added to 'Search catalogues' and the opportunity was taken to test all Voyager sites. Some inconsistencies were identified and all (4) Z-servers now work consistently
• NHM is now on 'Search catalogues'
• Testing Talis Prism Z-servers at Brighton, Sussex and TVU has begun
• There had been over 250 communications with the Systems Team since 1 August 2004
• JG had met with the MASC25 Team

JG tabled some proposed minor adjustments to the previously agreed Service Delivery Plan. The changes consisted of the addition of alphanumeric labels to the tasks to assist with recording, and the addition of a 'catch-all' task to cover miscellaneous issues such as software maintenance and user interface improvements. The group agreed to the changes and thanked JG for all the work that had been carried out in connection with the Plan.

10. Interim Report on Survey About Resource Discovery Activities & Developments

DM presented some initial findings from the group's recent survey and these are listed below:

1. Most libraries review their library system on a five year cycle
2. WebCT is popular
3. Most libraries plan to, or already, provide access to library collections and full text digital resources through a VLE/MLE
4. There was the expected range of MIS systems in use
5. Real-time interaction between MIS systems and VLE/MLE/Library catalogues was on everyone's agenda but nobody had yet achieved it
6. Digital asset management services were used less than expected
7. There was a lot of interest in cross searching and link management products
8. Interest in reading list management tools was higher than expected
9. E-print repositories received higher profile
10. Use of e-book services was piecemeal but many pilots
11. It was felt that responses regarding InforM25 were from a library staff perspective
12. InforM25 was promoted within the institutions but there appeared to be no systematic strategy
13. There were many suggestions for future developments on InforM25
14. Some libraries predicted a decrease and others an increase in their usage of InforM25
15. The RDN and Copac were popular external resource discovery services but it was thought Google Scholar might have been higher had it been more established
16. The expectation of full text delivery is a key feature

The survey indicated both a perception of local responsibility for resource discovery & delivery and an increase in national activities. In this context, where does the Consortium fit? Mutual support was considered to be beneficial, as was done in the early days of InforM25 with the Z39.50 servers. JS spoke about the London MAN 'experts list' as an example of trying to create a directory of support but commented that it was not easy to get staff to 'sign up' to it. It was noted that there is some mutual support going on at present between M25 members who have purchased the same products. Repositories are going to be used by everyone in the future and politically, the regions are becoming more important.

Following discussion, it was agreed that the way ahead was to use an outside consultant to run some focus groups drawn from member institutions to discuss the future shape of resource discovery for the Consortium.
Action 10.1 DM to investigate possibile external consultants. LC and RH to supply recommended names.

11. Future Developments

All members gave verbal updates on their assigned areas:

• JG - SUNCAT & the ULS - Two possible options: i) develop a 'London' view of SUNCAT possibly including current non-ULS libraries within M25; ii) data submission to SUNCAT could also go to ULS. SUNCAT has only three ULS libraries in Phase 1 and it is not clear when other ULS libraries might be included.
• JS - National Catalogue post RLN - RLN director has been appointed and there is no reason to think that a national catalogue will not go ahead. The CC-interop Project (with the M25 Systems Team as lead partner) did valuable work towards national catalogue architecture and interoperability. JCIIE placed CC-interop results in context of broader resource discovery issues and have commissioned a study from UKOLN which will hopefully lead to a new programme of funding in 2005.
• RH - Relationship with WiLL - The London Portal recently received an impetus due to a survey of capital cities and the aim is to have an operational portal by March 2005. It was unclear as to where HE libraries would feature in the portal which is designed to support both visitors and residents. Work is also being done to link smartcards with the Oyster card.
• SB - E-print repositories & open access archives - summary notes are available.
• LC - Metadata developments - Need to think about digital preservation and look at where metadata is used elsewhere. Is there a conflict on local institutional work and that outside?
• E-learning and managing learning objects for academics (This area currently has nobody assigned to it) - Noted that an E-learning Strategy was soon to be distributed by HEFCE.

12. Updates on Other Relevant Developments

JS informed the group that she had been approached by Google's Business Development Department with a view to crawling catalogues of M25 libraries via InforM25 if possible. JISC are also in contact with Google and have commissioned a study from UKOLN. Discussion at the JCS was enthusiastic about the opportunity for Google to act as an additional 'shop window' to JISC services. It is likely that JS and JG will talk with Google soon.

JS gave a brief overview of the successful CC-interop Project event held at the BL on 11 November 2004. About 60 delegates attended from all over the UK and presentations were done by all the project participants including CERLIM. Event feedback was extremely positive and complimentary. InforM25 was given special mention by CERLIM for coming out best in the user behaviour study.

13. Next Meetings

The next meetings were agreed for 4 March 2004 and 20 May 2004, both at the LSE.
Action 13.1 JG to arrange room bookings.

14. Any Other Business

There was none.

J Gilby 21 December 2004