State Publications & Records Task Force

Minutes 12-13-06

Page history last edited by Diann Weatherly 1 yr ago

Draft minutes

NETWORK OF ALABAMA ACADEMIC LIBRARIES

State Publications Task Force Pilot Project in 2006-7

December 13, 2006

NAAL librarians who volunteered to assist with the State Publications Task Force pilot project met on 13 December 2006 in the Jones Conference Room of the Alabama Department of Archives and History. Chairman Diann Weatherly called the meeting to order at 10:00 a.m. Attendees were: Tracey Berezansky and Mike Breedlove, Alabama Department of Archives and History; Al Craig, Alabama Public Library Service; Dwayne Cox, Auburn University; Rickey D. Best, Lucy Farrow, and John Gantt, Auburn University at Montgomery; Bethany Skaggs and Yolanda Cox, Jacksonville State University; Sue Medina, Network of Alabama Academic Libraries; Beth Ashmore, Samford University; Paul May, State Health Planning & Development Agency; Jess Echord, Troy University; Kay Hogan Smith, Lister Hill Library, and Jeff Graveline, Mervyn H. Sterne Library, University of Alabama at Birmingham; and Nicole Mitchell, University of Alabama Library School. NAAL librarians interested in volunteering for the project, but unable to attend the meeting were Carla Waddell, Samford University; Cecile Nabors, University of North Alabama; and Sheila Limerick, University of West Alabama. (Also, since the meeting, Lenis McBride, Alabama A&M University has volunteered to help.)

The Problem

Chairman Weatherly briefly reviewed the historical failure of the State to develop a comprehensive state publications depository program. Although authorized by statute, a depository program has never been funded. Libraries have always had difficulty obtaining state publications in a consistent and timely manner. No central agency has been funded to collect and catalog state publications. With many agencies routinely publishing documents on the Web but not in print, problems with identifying, locating, and using state information are increasing. In response to a question, Tracey described the ADAH programs to preserve state records. Some state agencies routinely send copies of their print publications to ADAH when they are published. ADAH is testing the use of the Internet Archive (Way Back Machine) to take a "snapshot" of 120 Alabama state agency websites. These are retained in the Internet Archive at (choose an institution menu). This has been a pilot project but is now a fee-based service; and Archives has not determined if it can subscribe. ADAH also asks State agencies to provide a copy of their websites to the Archives on CD or DVD. Unfortunately, many sites will not fit easily on a DVD. Tracey described the process by which ADAH obtains state records (including publications) and how archival cataloging (creating a record for a container of related items) differs from library cataloging (creating a record for individual items). She said that if the Task Force selected the top 100 state electronic publications, ADAH would harvest and catalog these individually. Tracey reminded the group that ADAH is mandated to preserve state publications and is doing this. However, ADAH does not attempt to collect publications outside of the records retention polices (i.e. as soon as they are published) nor does it catalog individual items as the agencies transfer their records to ADAH.

Tracey also mentioned the Alabama Digital Preservation Network (ADPNet) as a possible future place to archive digital publications of the state agencies. NAAL received a National Leadership grant from the Institute of Library and Museum Services, to test the feasibility of using LOCKSS software to develop a distributed archive for Alabama repositories. It is to be a "dark" archive without public access which would be used to restore files lost by their owner. If the model proves feasible at the end of the grant period, it would be available to archive electronic state publications. ADPNet participants are using a wiki to communicate which can be viewed by anyone at <http://adpn.org>. Once ADPNet is functional, ADPNet plans to a long-term archive storage option for any Alabama repository making its electronic content freely available to the public.

Information from the Best Practices/Technology Workshop, July 2006

Diann and Sue briefly reviewed the "best practices" presentations at the July workshop, "State Publications in an Electronic Age." Sue shared the cost information provided by OCLC. The Digital Archive Toolbox is a module with Connexion (cataloging module) and costs $13,500 per year. OCLC members can store their files in the OCLC Digital Archive for an annual fee of $60 per 1000 gigabytes. The cost per gigabyte is less as the number of gigabytes stored increase. In discussion about using the OCLC Digital Archive Toolbox and the OCLC Digital Archive, comments were made that the Toolbox is too expensive for most Alabama academic libraries. The group also suggested that OCLC be encouraged to modify the Toolbox to allow groups to use it in a shared project such as this. ContentDM was also discussed as a possible repository for publicly-accessible files.

Pilot Project Activities

Diann outlined the pilot project proposal and noted that project activities could be revised. The proposal approved by the NAAL Advisory Council outlined a pilot project to:

Identify electronic publications on state agency websites
Harvest (download) these publications
Store the digital file for public access (presentation copy)
Catalog the electronic publications into the library's public access catalog with a link to the publication's digital file for public presentation
Contribute the records with links to the electronic publication to OCLC WorldCat
Share the OCLC record number(s) with other NAAL members
Store the digital file (archive copy) in an archive for long-term preservation (local archive, OCLC Digital Archive, ADPNet, or other archival storage facility)

This pilot project is not intended to catalog as large a number of publications as possible. Its purpose is to document issues and problems that occur with activities that would be associated with an ongoing distributed program to capture these publications and make them publicly accessible. Tracey and Paul suggested that one desirable project outcome should be a document defining and recommending the policies and procedures that each state agency should adopt for electronic publication. This could be presented to the State Records Advisory Board for consideration to become part of the requirements for state agencies.

Dwayne asked if the Task Force had defined "publication." After a good discussion of the differences in ephemera, publications, and records, no standard definition for "publication" was offered. The volunteers were left with "you will know it when you see it." In further discussion, the group reviewed internal library support that might be needed for this project, including public service librarians, catalogers, and information technology/systems staff. It was agreed that institutional support is an issue that needs to be explored as part of the project. Some libraries may be able to support the additional workload required to harvest and catalog a large number of state publications; but others may not be able to accept an extra workload. Each volunteer was asked to work with his or her colleagues to document the workload and institutional support for the project report.

Publications Selection

The Task Force asked the volunteers to decide how to select publications for the project. They asked the project to consider:

a. Are some publications are more critical than others?

b. Are some state agencies are more important than others?

c. Should some other criteria (to be determined) be used?

Diann thanked Rickey for his notable contribution to the project in preparing the list of urls to state agencies and their publications. He reviewed how this was done (http://www.alabama.gov) which includes links to state agency websites but does not include links for the public universities. (Before the meeting, Rickey sent information about the list with information to access the large file (1.6 MGB and approximately 100 pages of text). The url is: http://aumnicat.aum.edu/internet/StateAgenciesPubWebinfo.pdf

The original message noted that he had identified as a "publication" any publication that was not a news release. In some cases, the url is a link to a list of all the documents and not to a specific document. The url list also includes a number of sites which allow the user to create their own data reports by filling in areas that they are interested in and running a query. This is true in the Dept. of Transportation and the Dept. of Agriculture. Some of these rely on federal data, and aren't technically state publications, but are included.)

One suggestion was to assign a few state agencies (perhaps 3) to each volunteer. Dwayne asked if the volunteer should contact the agency to see which publications it considered the most important. The group discussed this approach and agreed that this would not be encouraged. They agreed that part of the project purpose is to identify problems with harvesting documents from a website, and it would be best not to contact the agency before attempting to identify and harvest the files. Each volunteer should identify problems with an agency's website navigation to find its publications, as well as problems or issues with the publication (downloading and its format). A project outcome will be preparing recommendations to improve how state agencies publish their materials online. Diann suggested that it might be best to start with publications such as annual reports that we know exist, are published serially, are important to library users, and can be identified as publications.

Lucy Farrow distributed a list of sixteen (16) publications that are included in the Statistical Reference Index (SRI). Sue suggested that the group use this list as the starting point for the project. There was an almost universal "no" response to the question, does each academic library try to catalog its institution's electronic publications? If each volunteer wanted to try out the project tasks on its own institution's publications, this might provide a good overview of possible issue and problems for the statewide project. Electronic theses and dissertations should not be collected for this project.

Who Will Identify, Harvest, Catalog, and Archive Which Publications

Each volunteer was asked to select one or more of the reports from the SRI statistical report list for a first attempt at identifying, harvesting (downloading), and preparing an initial draft catalog record (not necessarily added to the OPAC and definitely not contributed to WorldCat) as an initial step. An option (when each volunteer accesses a state agency website to harvest the statistical report) would be to determine if there is an annual report and include it in the project. The SRI statistical reports list with each volunteer's selection is attached. For this initial step, no effort should be made to store the presentation copy for public access. Also, no archival copy will be stored. Everyone will document issues and problems encountered for discussion at the next meeting. Diann encouraged everyone to contribute their findings to the State Publications Task Force wiki and gave out password needed to add content to the site. The url for the wiki is: http://sprtf.pbwiki.com/

Timeline

The group agreed to meet again on 7 March 2007 at 10:30 a.m. at Archives. Sue reminded them that NAAL appoints a Task Force for a specific charge and that Diann will be preparing a report for the Planning Retreat in April. The group should not feel pressured to complete everything outlined in the project proposal. The report can be about progress being made, not about a completed project.

Summary

For most activities listed, the volunteer should identify issues and problems to share with the group. Each volunteer selected at least one publication from the list of publications in SRI and will:

work with his or her colleagues to assess the library support needed and the project's impact on the library's workload.
access the websites for the publication(s) selected. Possible questions:

o was the website easy to navigate?

o were publications easy to locate on the site and identify as publications?

o did the site include an annual report?

o were the publications downloadable? (do not select databases for this project)

o what was the format of the publication(s) downloaded?

o are formats consistent for all publications on the site? If not, what formats are used and are any of these likely to cause problems for downloading?

o did the publication retain its format and was it usable after the download?

use a draft record to catalog the electronic publication (but not enter it into a local OPAC or WorldCat. Possible questions:

o was the publication a bibliographic entity with the standard elements needed for a MARC record?

o had a record for the publication been added to WorldCat? (OCLC record number?)

o did the electronic publication continue a print publication?

o what problems were encountered in completing a cataloging record for the electronic document?

identify issues and problems with this stage of the project

At the 7 March meeting, the group will have an Internet connection if anyone wants to demonstrate the good and the bad practices found on any of the websites or review records found in WorldCat. Also, PowerPoint will be available if anyone wants to use it to report on issues and problems.

Alabama Documents indexed in Statistical Universe

(Statistical Reference Index SRI)

Alabama Agricultural Statistics Annual Bulletins

http://www.aces.edu/department/nass/bulletin/annual.htm

Dwayne Cox, Auburn

Alabama Dept. of Corrections Annual Report

http://www.doc.state.al.us/docs/AnnualRpts/2003AnnualReport.pdf http://www.doc.state.al.us/docs/AnnualRpts/2004AnnualReport.pdf http://www.doc.state.al.us/docs/AnnualRpts/2005AnnualReport.pdf

Rickey Best, AUM

Annual Report of the Alabama Unified Judicial System http://www.alacourt.gov/Annual_Report.html

Jeff, UAB

Alabama Vital Statistics

http://ph.state.al.us/chs/Publications/AVS%202004%20BOOK.pdf