Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Minutes from 2008 Annual

Philosophy, Religion and Theological Studies Discussion Group

June 29, 2008

Anaheim, CA

Ted prepared an agenda which we followed (kind of!)

1. selected note taker

2. everyone introduced themselves

3. Products, Databases, Resources

LibGuides: Several members are currently constructing guides. Since there is a ‘community’ link available to authors, it facilitates sharing of information and sources.

Poeisis: Database that offers smaller press and society journals online, but the library must have a subscription to the journal in print.

Philosopher’s Index: Database is not comprehensive but offers select literature as building blocks for new thought.

Oxford Biblical Studies: similar in format to Oxford Islamic Studies. Oxford Classical Studies is forthcoming.

Ebsco/American Antiquarian Project: Project availability in 2009. They will be offering historic American periodicals (1693-1876) that include sermons and church notes. These will be sold as collections with a one time cost.

Reference Universe: mentioned as a way to promote print collections.

Guide to Reference: ALA electronic source that will be updated annually.

4. Collection Analysis Tools: OCLC and Resources for College Libraries

Member discussed varied experiences with each and compared costs. RCL doesn’t pick up superseded editions.

5. Collection Development

Gifts: Large collections are costly to process, house, and manage. OCLC provides processing services. Discards can go to Better World Books or booksontherun. Some member libraries are able to sell used books or unwanted gift books as fund raisers. Ebay is a way to sell rare books to raise money for the library (or to locate rare titles to buy).

Move to electronic rather than print: partly to address space issues, partly driven by faculty preferences. There was a discussion of the stability of electronic sources and the group expressed trust in JStor and Project Muse but not other aggregators. Many libraries have stored JStor –held print off site or relied on agreements to make certain one copy exists for a consortium. Other options include not binding JStor titles pending discard once they are included in the database.

Faculty Relations: be vocal, know the chair of the department, be open to suggestions. An issue for some libraries: faculty have figured out that requesting a book for reserve that the library doesn’t own will mean it gets ordered from another part of the budget. They are working the system

Media Requests: Most have noticed a decline in requests.

6. Instruction

Graduate Students: renewed focus on guiding to the sources they learned as undergrads in a new system. For older returning graduate students instruction introduces them to sources that are new to them.

Workshops for Faculty: Names such as “Resource Update” work better than “Faculty Workshop”

7. Blog Value?

Ted will check on the upcoming ALA Connect that may offer blog space to groups.

8. Colin agreed to co-chair with Ted. Group discussed inviting vendors or speakers to meetings such as ATLA when we meet in Chicago.

Respectfully submitted,

Debbie Gaspar

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