German Resources Project
14 January 2001
German Resources Project
* About
the Project
* Project
Goals
* How
to Join the Project
*
Staff and Advisory Board
* FAQ
(under development)
WORKING GROUPS:
* Collection
Development
*
Document Delivery
* Digital
Libraries
* Bibliographic
Control
Participating
Libraries
* Partners
in Germany
I. The minutes of the July, 2000 Steering Committee meeting submitted
by Helene
Baumann were approved without changes.
II. Collection Development Working Group. Tom Kilton, Coordinator.
Tom Kilton report on the Collection Development Working Group meeting on Saturday, January 13. To date there are sixteen SSG subject areas for which there are contact partners on both sides of the Atlantic: Theology, Economics, Social Sciences, Classics, the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, North America (American history, literature, and German-Americana), Latin America, Jewish Studies, History, Art, Mathematics, Library and Information Science, German language and literature, and Philosophy. The GRP Partnership tables on the CD-Working Group web site have recently begun including "Resource Sites" links to other important collections for the various subjects. For instance, David Block's Ibero-America link to his own resources contains a pointer to other relevant North American resource sites featuring similar collections. Roger Brisson suggested that we publicize our American and German library collection descriptions to other groups, such as subject-specific listservs in academic departments. Barbara Walden reported and circulated handouts on the results of her recent survey of GRP-CD Working Group members with regard to the exchanges (both monographic and serial) which their respective institutions maintain with German libraries. Seven persons responded back to Barbara with survey data. She will send out the same survey to all of the 40 GRP US member libraries during spring, 2001. Tom Kilton reported that Christiana Schmiedeknecht (UB Efurt) has still not reported back concerning the tapes of the 60,000 titles she (i.e., the now defunct Pädagigische Hochschule Erfurt) is offering U.S. libraries on exchange.
Xipolis Database Proposal. Jeff Garrett
Jeff Garrett reported on the trial underway with Xipolis.net to offer GRP member libraries free access to a number of their reference databases until March 1. He summarized the Xipolis proposal for an eventual consortial subscription which would enable GRP member libraries to subscribe at a 60% discount to the full suite of 20 databases. The trial period has been set to end March 1, but Jeff will urge Xipolis to extend the trial period to May 1. Instead of the current login/password protection, permanent protection via IP domain accounting would, of course, be preferred. Jeff and other committee members felt it would be very helpful if ARL were able to manage the accounting in the event that a contract for a permanent consortial subscription is approved by GRP member libraries and Xipolis. Jeff urged everyone to take a look at the Zils proposal which he has forwarded to Steering Committee member by e-mail.
III. Document Delivery Working Group. Sem Sutter, Coordinator.
Sem Sutter reported that GBV Direkt/North America had not been receiving
a high volume of use by interlibrary loan offices. Costs must
now also cover German copyright assessments, which however are nominal.
Lynn Wiley (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Sherry Watson
(University of Minnesota) have recently become new members of the Document
Delivery Working Group. With regard to the proposed North American
counterpart of GBV Direct N/A Sem noted that the "RLG/ILL Manager" software
might be employed, and that RLG is in the process of supplying this to
a few test libraries, this process being coordinated by Mary Jackson.
Mary's counterpart at GBV direkt/North America is Regina Willwerth
<willwerth@gbv.de>.
*At our meeting, Mary Jackson noted that she had not yet received reports
of use summaries from GBV in Germany, however on March 27 Mary reported
the following figures regarding use for 1999 and 2000:
Of 27 participants, only 13 ordered articles in 1999 or 2000. The number of articles ordered ranged from 1 to a high of 19, with an average of 8 articles.
For calendar year 2000, there were 279 requests
71 were filled and invoiced
64 were filled but not yet invoiced
105 were not filled
39 were not filled but invoiced
The fill rate for all requests is thus 62%, if we include the "not filled but invoiced" category.
IV. Digital Libraries Working Group. Michael Seadle, Coordinator.
Michael Seadle announced that the Digital Libraries Working Group will be holding a meeting April 2-4 at Bielefeld, Germany. Currently there are more German than North American members of this Working Group. Many American projects seek German partners, and vice-versa. Several projects that have received both DFG and NSF funding are now in place: 1) Mathematics Monographs (Between Goettingen, Michigan, and Cornell) 2; Open Archives Initiative: Distributed Services for Physicists (Between the University of Oldenberg and Virginia Tech); 3) Archimedes Project: Open Digital Research Library for the History of Mechanics (Between Harvard, Tufts, the University of Missouri at Kansas City and the Max Plank Institute); and 4) Middle High German Interlinked (Dictionary project between the University of Virginia and the University of Trier). Unfortunately, the proposed "Age of Exploration" project between Brown University and the University of Goettingen was not funded.
V. Old Business
A. Helene Baumann's Draft of GRP Bylaws.
It was agreed to review Helene's bylaws at
ALA in San Francisco. Helene will re-circulate the draft to
Steering Committee members before the summer meeting.
VI. New Business:
A. Tom Kilton brought up the confusion with the current e-mail group listings in use. Everyone concurred that we need to be announcing more activities to the entire ca. 40 GRP member institutions. The following are the addresses to be used:
-For the 40 member institutions use <aau-gerbib@arl.org>
-Steering Committee: <aau-german@arl.org>
-ARL list manager (Dru): <dru@arl.org> or <arllmgr@arl.org>
-The individual internal addresses for each of the Working Groups
-The GRP Partners Forum of the CD Working Group: <grp-partners@arl.org>
B. Cuban library's request for GRP membership.
Lou Pitschmann reported that a Cuban university agriculture library founded in 1978 is interested in obtaining membership as a GRP library. Roger Brisson suggested that an affiliate status short of full membership might be appropriate. Deborah and Lou offered to prepare a letter inviting the Cuban library to become an affiliate member. It was noted that the Steering Committee needs to draft a statement on what constitutes affiliate status, and under what conditions a library might obtain such status. Roger Brisson offered to examine the membership statement on our GRP web site and to report back to the Steering Committee with a recommend statement on affiliate status.
Respectfully submitted,
Tom Kilton
Coordinator, GRP Collection Development Working Group
Washington, DC
