CCM Expert Workshop
The RIN/CURL Workshop was held at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists on 16 July 2007
The Workshop brought together a group of experts, representing different library sectors from across the UK to discuss CCM and how to revitalise work in collaborative collection care and promotion.
Presentations
1. White Rose Collaborative Collection Management Project - Chris Senior
Presentation: 
White Rose
2. The UKRR plus latest developments - Stephanie Kenna and Nicola Wright
UKRR details from the workshop are now out of date. For latest information on UKRR, please contact Jean Crawford. (j.crawford@imperial.ac.uk)
3. Collaborative Collection Management in Scotland - Jill Evans
Presentation: The SCURL Experience
4. The CoFoR Programme - Lesley Pitman
Presentation: CURL-CoFoR: Collaboration for Research
5. SCoRe - Gill Dwyer
Presentation: SCoRe: Search Company Reports
Afternoon Discussion Session on the possible role of the RIN/CURL CCM Programme
FLARE - we started a project on Foreign Law Gazettes, we have French and Belgian with BL help; could we do more here?
SC : Are you first trying to collect them all physically, rather than info about them to make a virtual collection online?
FLARE: Physically - to put them into the British Library.
Mapping Asia - Retrocon needs to be considered, especially for Asian subject areas. The Mapping Asia project did compile a list of skills needed and a formula for all-format collection descriptions, searchable by language and by area, but there's no money (and personnel) to take forward the services. Should retrocon work be done collaboratively? Much of the work starts nationally but then runs out of steam. There's no need for every library to replicate previous work - perhaps we should be establishing a pecking order; let certain libraries do the work then let others feed off the information. There are distinct problems in the languages with regard to exchanging labour and employees with specific linguistic skills. Money and resources often don't go very far – CoFoR, found as a community they just didn't have enough between them.
MELCOM: In some areas money has gone on special acquisitions - MELCOM has successfully achieved collaborative acquisitions for about 25 libraries without so much as an official memorandum. There's lots of inter-lending between MELCOM members; officially it's through Boston Spa but unofficially a few friendly emails go round before hand.
Why has it worked in Middle Eastern Studies?
- its specialist nature
- they all knew and trusted each other
- it links to the individual's institution's specialisms anyway (i.e. not because of their integrity or commitment)
- NB: could break down if a few key staff members left
Not all MELCOM members are in COPAC, although they're just about to join - up to now there's been no common finding aid.
RIN: So there are two types of collaborative agreement:
- reflecting local priorities
- gap-filling -- much harder
CoFoR: The CoFoR desiderata list has turned out to be very useful for a number of secondary and unforeseen reasons, e.g. its enhanced the ability to make local acquisitions decisions also spending the budget surplus. It has also produced good publicity for the library, helps to make the case for the library. CoFoR members have technically signed up for 10 years, but there is a careful system in place if someone does pull out, giving a year's notice.
Q: What about the cost of document delivery?
SCURL: In CASS items are stored in the NLS and institutions are charged £10/metre, but given free document delivery which can be done electronically within a few hours. Items can also be loaned.
Q: Isn't there an issue of being able to provide for doctoral students in the future, when we don't know yet what their are interests might be?
Birmingham: At Birmingham we acknowledge that existing collections and their development are key to both attracting and retaining doctoral students. However, we see the disposal of low use journals as not compromising this. Ongoing consultation on stock profiles ensures that our collections are fit for purpose in meeting known areas of reference. We would expect developing needs to be signalled and we would respond to the need for developing collections using funds put in place to cope with such situations.
RIN: So, there are two kinds of issue here too:
- Relation between catalogue/portal/finding aids created for a specialist area, developing broader services with COPAC or SUNCAT where the area needs to grow
- Sustainability of finding aids created that rapidly diminish in usefulness unless they're kept up-to-date on a pro-active basis.
RIN: How do you avoid the very real problem of databases becoming out-of-date?
SCoRe: SCoRe has invested in a distributed web interface for companies to regularly update their content. SCoRe has become deeply embedded in their process, companies are trusting them with their primary record of reports. The SCoRe reports are not covered by Legal Deposit and there is no single comprehensive collection. The tool is valuable and it is easy to use.
RIN: Trust seems to be a key component in the areas where CCM has worked best. There are many variations in the nature of agreements that partners have signed; perhaps it would be useful to have a model or common framework available for us help people move forward nationally?
There are two contrasting examples of such models: the UKRR (very light), CoFoR (very detailed). Need the security but also make sure you remove any artificial barriers. On the other hand, perhaps a complete absence of agreements!? Or, like SCoRe, require membership fees that make sure partners are invested.
Neither CURL nor RIN has the ability to throw money at these things, but perhaps there are things that can be done . Collection descriptions are much easier to collate than full catalogues and do provide some value to researchers - so is it there we should focus our efforts? There was some agreement was that collection descriptions were actually not specially useful to researchers and only a stop-gap.
SCURL's federated search: - NLS and Edinburgh Libraries (not just the University libraries) are involved with an LMS but it had a poor federated search tool, however they now use Web Feet which works perfectly and comes thoroughly recommended. SDLC now sells the product to anyone under the auspices of SCURL.
Perhaps there is some kind of large-scale CCM federating that could be done?
COPAC: Would it be possible to put a filter in front of COPAC to search through institutions that belonged to a particular CCM project?
Issues: some libraries aren't involved in COPAC, keeping things up-to-date, first need retrocon.
Suggestions for CCM
It is often very difficult for researchers to find all the information from these projects that is available. We need somewhere a central service where all the CCM projects that are going on would be visible. It would also be useful for librarians. The service could also include contact details for all the people involved with the projects plus links to all the templates and toolkits that were used.
It was also suggested that top level advocacy to the Funding Councils as to the benefits of CCM was needed. Could a bid be made to JISC to do it [collaborative resource purchases] for the whole of the UK (as has been done in Germany and New Zealand, and which Scotland is trying to do)?
Finally, the group was invited to consider a name for the UK's aggregated research collection. The only suggestion was for “National Distributed Collection for Research”
Comments?
With thanks to James Brown (RIN communications Officer) for note taking on the day.
If you have any queries or comments, please contact Sally Curry:
Email: Sally.curry@rin.ac.uk
Tel: 0191 222 8655