College of Humanities and Social Science
Library and Academic Computing Committee
12 June 2013
Draft Minutes of Meeting
Present
Professor David Fergusson (Convener)
Dr Felix Boecking (School of History, Classics and Archaeology)
Dr Richard Holt (School of Economics)
Professor James Loxley (School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures)
Dr Alan Macniven (School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures)
Dr Hamish Ross (School of Education)
Jillian Taylor (School of Health in Social Science)
Professor Alice Turk (School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences)
Richard Battersby (Deputy Director of User Services Division, IS)
Abdul Majothi (Head of CHSS Consultancy Services, IS)
Fraser Muir (Chief Information Officer for CHSS)
Janet Rennie (CHSS Director of Academic and Student Administration)
Alex Baker (CHSS Head of Academic Administration)
Cindy Stubbs (Secretary to the Committee)
FORMAL BUSINESS
1
Apologies and welcome
The Committee noted apologies from Dr Galina Andreeva, Navraj-Singh Ghaleigh, Professor Timothy
Lim, Dr Kate Orton-Johnson and Professor Iain Boyd White.
The Committee welcomed Professor James Loxley, who would be the new Convener from 2013/14,
and Alex Baker, who would be the new Secretary from 2013/14.
2
Minutes of Library and Academic Computing Committee of 11 April 2013
Approved.
3
Matters arising from the previous minutes
A final version of the Library Policy document is now available and will be emailed to the Committee.
4
Convener’s Business
None to report.
FOR DISCUSSION
5
Collections review
The convenor welcomed Elize Rowan, Acquisitions and Metadata Services Manager from the Library,
to the meeting. She spoke to Paper 1, which followed on from an update at the February meeting.
The Acquisitions Manager summarised the expenditure for the four key strands of pilot activity,
stressing that the funding used was recurrent and took pressure off College and School funds.
For the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) strand, the £50,000 allocation had been notional and subject to an
investigation of the marketplace. The expected increase in ILL has not taken place, and next year the
funds for this strand will be reduced and reallocated to other strands.
With regard to the ebooks strand, the Library was again dealing with a developing marketplace. The
aim of the strand was to make available content the Library doesn’t currently own and to speed up
access. If there are multiple users wanting the same content, it will trigger purchases. This time next
year the Library will be able to provide a detailed report on usage. Edinburgh’s ebook usage is
generally very high and likely to get eight to nine months of spending out of the allocation. However,
it is difficult to estimate the ongoing level of demand and use; the model used with the provider is
flexible and can be changed (eg recalibrating triggers or moving to a rental basis).
For student requests, the requests have mainly come from PG students and largely from HSS.
Tracking is being done by School. A very high percentage of requests are being fulfilled.
The main strand of work for journals was meant to be buying articles, but in fact very few publishers
currently offer this service though some have it in development. School requests for journals can be
sent to the Acquisitions Manager. She noted that publishers can tell Edinburgh users are accessing
journal content, and if we don’t own or subscribe, this information is logged by the publishers.
The University Library Committee will receive a proposal for 2013/14, including the balance of funding
across the four strands, once the full data is available at the end of July and has been analysed.
6
Open access
The Chief Information Officer (CIO) introduced Paper 2, the Open Access primer, which is a joint
paper for the College Research Committee and LACC.
The University’s research information management system, PURE, makes the College’s outputs open
access. He noted that the green route is the University’s preferred route, as detailed in the flowchart;
it cannot afford to pay gold open access charges for every piece of research.
There is now an Open Access Team set up within the College, headed by an OA adviser, Dawn
Hibbert, who provides advice and support. There are six temporary assistants who are working
through REF submissions and making the outputs open access. The team will be meeting with
Schools.
The CIO noted that he will follow up the primer with a document covering other services and
solutions, but the key is to get material onto PURE first. It can then link to other places.
The paper should be circulated within Schools via Committee members; the CIO will also circulate it
independently.
The CIO also spoke to Paper 3, noting that the Scholarly Communications Team is working as quickly
as it can to train local support staff to input green publications on PURE and thereby increase the
volume of such publications available. He noted that it was important to monitor progress, including
the amount of material made available, and for the Committee to promote the work of the Team.
7
IS Planning and Budgeting 2013/16
Paper 4 was introduced by the CIO. The Committee noted that it was not always clear in the paper
whether projects had been funded, and the Director of Academic and Student Administration
explained that funding was often released incrementally, and sometimes not at all. There is a need to
capture this information, which the CIO will progress on behalf of the Committee.
The Committee agreed that it should return to its previous practice of requesting information from
Schools about their plans, priorities and requirements and feeding this into to IS before Christmas, in
order to meet the planning cycle timescales. The CIO confirmed that he continually feeds back to IS
the issues and challenges facing the College and Schools.
The Convener suggested that the paper raised two potential themes that the new Convener might
wish to pursue in the next session:

the University will not be able to maintain collections of a world class standard unless more
money is put into the budget

the unfairness of the devolution of the rental cost for the the Library Annexe to IS (it was
originally met by the Project Fund for the Main Library)
8
Office 365 for Staff
The CIO spoke to Paper 5, which had been discussed at the IT Committee the previous day. The
plan is to outsource the exchange service for most Schools to Office 365. It was important for the
Committee to consider the implications of the plan, as it has an impact on CHSS.
The argument in favour of the move is that there is no value to the University in running its own email
service, and staff resource in IS can be focused on more useful work. The University would use a
prearranged contract from JISC, which is used by all other institutions which have already moved to
the system. It would have to meet the same security standards as the University would have
provided; Records Management has provided some comments on the plan in relation to implications
for FOI and intellectual property.
The CIO reported that there was general agreement at the IT Committee that IS should proceed with
this plan. In the longer term it is likely that all users will be part of a single email service, but that is
not as straightforward a move as that of the Schools using Exchange to Office 365 will be.
9
Review of Open Access Mac Lab in the Library
The Head of CHSS Consultancy Services for IS introduced Paper 6. He emphasised that the paper
concerns one specific lab in the Library, and not support for Macs generally. The Macs would be due
for replacement at the end of next year (2014), and IS is proposing to replace them with PCs in the
light of higher costs for Macs and the wish to make best use of IS budgets. Seeking the view of the
Committee is the first step in the process, as IS can then decide how to take its proposal forward, and
in particular how to consult students. The consultation must be completed by the end of the calendar
year.
It was noted that the Macs do not have any subject specific software that is only available in School
Labs. It has been difficult to date to get any data on the usage of the Macs, in particular whether it is
mainly overflow from the PC Labs.
The Convener asked that the proposal be taken back to Schools for student comment; it is unlikely to
affect staff. Staff-student liaison committees should be asked to consider it, and the new EUSA VP
for Academic Affairs could also comment.
FOR INFORMATION
10
Research Data Storage and Management Update
The CIO reported that IS has the go ahead to purchase hardware, and that it will be used in two
Schools from October.
He also noted that the Implementation and Steering Group want to increase engagement with
Schools; he is the College representative on the Group. Any suggestions for how best to engage, eg
who to talk to, timings of discussions, can be sent to him.
11
Update on budget issues
The Director of Academic and Student Administration introduced a tabled paper, which would be
circulated to Schools afterwards (on the understanding that there could still be slight adjustments). It
gave details of the allocation for 2013/14 and showed the split by School. It was noted that there is
no indication as to what the allocation will be in future years.
The total allocation for 2013-4 represented an uplift for CHSS of 2.7% to £1,857,464, which is 44.8%
of the funds available for allocation to the three Colleges. The top-slice of £544,707 for funds
managed directly by the Acting College Librarian on behalf of the College was approved, which left
£1,312,757 to be split between Schools. This is 1.26% more than last year and will be available from
1 August.
Although there is an overall 2.7% increase in the College budget, its impact is not known yet as not all
publishers have made their price increases, so the full picture will not be known until March 2014.
Liaison Librarians will be working with Schools over the summer regarding how they wish to spend
their allocation.
12
CHSS Acting College Librarian’s Report
The Acting College Librarian introduced Paper 8 which set out the case for a subscription to
NexusUK, a news resource of enormous size in a number of languages. Though the request had
come from Law, the resource would be of interest across the College and a six week trial in Law had
been well received. Immediate access would be granted once the subscription was paid. The
Committee agreed to the cost for one year, with a review toward the end of the subscription period; a
further proposal to the Committee to then be made.
Overall, staff are working hard to achieve a full spend by the end of July. This is difficult to do,
particularly given UK publishers offering discounts. There are a large number of books on order that
will not be received and invoiced by the end of July; Liaison Librarians are using wish lists in order to
ensure a full spend. It was stressed this is not a new situation, but with a bigger budget for 2012/13
the level of commitment is higher than usual. It will be important to promote all these new resources
in the coming session.
There will be a review of ILL data during semester 1, as there will be a full year of data covering the
first year in which the loans have been free of charge. The review will take place across all user
categories and will include looking at loans by School and whether any frequently requested items
should be purchased.
There has generally been positive feedback on the Library Annex, as outlined in the tabled paper. IS
is setting up a Service Development Group which will include School representatives.
13
CHSS Consultancy Services Report
The Head of CHSS Consultancy Services for IS announced the resurrection of the Apple User Group.
Each College has a Computing Officer in the Group, who should contact those who deal with ordering
as those issues come within the remit of the Group.
He provided an update on staff feedback regarding Learn. There is a Learn User Group in place,
which meets regularly and anyone can attend, whether academic or technical staff. Only five CHSS
Schools are currently represented: Business, Divinity, HiSS, HCA and Law. The Group would
welcome more involvement, particularly from Education and ECA, where there is considerable usage
of the application but no members attending. Issues raised in the Group have already resulted in
tweaks being made. Wilma Alexander in the Learning Services Team is the contact.
It was also noted that IS now has a communications strategy, as it understands the need to make its
services more widely known.
14
ECA Library Annual Statement
The Convener noted that there had formerly been a practice of Schools submitting an annual library
statement to the Committee, but for this session only ECA had done so. It did illustrate the
importance of School Library and Academic Computing Committees providing updates. It was
recommended that School LACCs report to their Heads of School prior to Christmas in order to feed
into the update of School Strategic Plans in January.
15
End of session review
The Convener reminded the Committee that its structure had been reviewed a year ago, and that it
had asked for a further year to assess the usefulness of merging the library and computing
committees. The College was now asking for an update.
The following Schools gave their views:

HCA: they maintain two separate committees within the School, and Dr Boecking sits on
both. It seems to work well, though in the School structure it is important that the committees
have the same convener.

PPLS: it does not work well for them, as there is no parallel structure in the School.
Professor Turk feels comfortable with the computing side but does not feel she represents
them well in library business.

Education: it might be helpful if the structure at University level was the same as that at
College level.
The Director of Academic and Student Administration noted that the University Library Committee is
named in the Founding Statute so it cannot be changed, but the Knowledge Strategy Committee
could, as could the IT Committee. Knowledge Strategy isn’t intended to look after the Library or IT; its
remit is to take responsibility for pan University projects such as timetabling and EUCLID.
The CIO said that it was useful to maintain the library and academic computing strands together;
many current issues, such as open access and RDSM cross both, and there are likely to be more
issues of that kind in future. Also, IS joins both together, so the Committee provides a unified view to
IS.
The Director of Academic and Student Administration stated that there was a need to recognise the
difficulty Schools had in finding representatives who felt comfortable dealing with both strands. It may
be possible to support Schools in doing so or to provide support to representatives. The Convener
noted that the experience of being on the Committee helps to build people’s skills; for example,
though Professor Turk may feel less comfortable with the Library issues, she has contributed
effectively to those discussions as well.
16
Any Other Business
The Director of Academic and Student Administration thanked Professor Fergusson on behalf of the
Committee for his five years of valuable service to the College as he finished his term as Convener.
He had run the Library Committee, then presided over the creation of LACC and guided it during its
settling in period, as well as negotiating his way through two budget reviews. He had done an
enormous amount of work behind the scenes, giving generously of his time, and the College and
Committee very much appreciated his commitment and enthusiasm.
Dates of next session’s meetings: To be notified