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VIVA Users Group
Virginia Library Association
October 29, 2009
Kathy Perry welcomed attendees to the session and outlined the meeting’s agenda:
 VIVA
 Vendor Introduction, Q&A
 Procurement – Straight Talk with Iris Moubray, Contract Team Buyer Senior , Procurement
Services, James Madison University
 Stat-USA Task Force Update – Alan Zoellner, Government Information Librarian, College of
William and Mary
 VIVA OCLC Reclamation Project: Best Practices – Donna Hughes-Oldenburg, Bibliographic
Services, Old Dominion University and Peter Bruce, Systems Development, Old Dominion
University
Overview 2008-2009 Accomplishments
VIVA’s budget survived cuts.
VIVA’s activities include collections, training, holding an ILL community forum, regional EBSCO training
sessions, and a multi-media task force that organized an “Installfest” on November 12, 2008 for 12-15
schools, helping to build dialogue between IT and library people.
The VIVA Outreach Committee, chaired by John Ulmschneider, University Librarian, Virginia
Commonwealth University, worked with Tansy Matthews, Associate Director, VIVA, to develop new
publicity materials that are due out in early 2010. The web-page and brochure will feature serviceoriented pictures.
VIVA canceled subscriptions to Academic OneFile, Academic Press’ IDEAL Archives (1996-2002), Stat USA
and started subscriptions for EBSCOhost, ProQuest Safari Techbooks Online, Mergent Online, and
Mergent Horizon.
Budget Sources Allocation: 2009-2010/Estimated Revenue Sources showed that 56% of VIVA’s budget is
derived from the state, 26.6% from public institutions, and 17.44% from privates.
Estimated VIVA Expenditure: 2009-2010
 4% - Reimburse members for expedited ILL shipping within 48 hours
 92% Electronic Collections
 Less than 3% Central Administration
 Less than 1% Travel and training.
VIVA Leadership
 Steering Committee Chair, Gene Damon, Director of Library Automation, Virginia Community
College System
 Outreach Committee Chair , John Ulmschneider, University Librarian, Virginia Commonwealth
University
 Resource Sharing Committee Chair, Ralph Alberico, Dean of Libraries and Educational
Technologies, James Madison University
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
Resources for Users, Pat Van Zandt, Director, Research, Instruction and Outreach, College of
William and Mary
2009-2010 Priorities
RFP – for APA, chaired by Sharon Gasser, Associate Dean, James Madison University
 Proposal will be released December 9, 2009
 Vendor Fair will be held the week of March 9, 2010
 Services will begin August 1, 2010
Database Searches and Journal Article Downloads, 1996-2009 show that both trend lines are moving up:
Total A&I Searches=136,436,786; Downloads=53,975,816
The Steering Committee formed three task forces to look into 3 priority areas for long-range strategic
planning:
1. Collections Expansion: to explore what type of additional resources, formats, datasets, may be
of interest to member, e.g., art images
2. Discovery Tools: to explore other tools such as open-source based tools
3. Library & Information Technology Cooperation
VIVA will be proposing efforts to gain funding to sustain current collections and to sustain
funding for ILL reimbursement. While total ILL is leveling off, the number of books moving around the
state has increased in the past few years and the funds to reimburse our members for expedited
shipping have not kept pace. While the current estimated cost to move a book round trip is $13, current
reimbursement averages approximately $6.50. VIVA efforts will work to return to a higher
reimbursement rate of approximately $10 since reimbursement proportions have eroded over the last
several years.
Vendor Introductions
Oxford University Press/Jessica Chestnutt
Oxford University Journals/Jenifer Maloney
Gale/Cengage/Brad Edick
Nature/John Moore
IEEE/Joe Vaitkas
Lyrasis/Cathy Wilt and Ed McBride
Bowker/Randy Beocker
EBSCO/David Brisendine
ProQuest/Dave Fiumara
Paul Cappezzello/OCLC
Mergent/John Carino
Lexis-Nexis/Pamela Cowart
AAAS/Phil Smith
Vendors provided brief updates with a short Q & A session.
Procurement Straight Talk with Iris Moubray
Highlights
Iris displayed a large 10 lb file (1 of 2) of the paperwork for VIVA procurements. Its size is prohibitive
for converting to a .PDF format.
Because VIVA is short staffed, a lot is expected of the vendors, i.e., to know us and VIVA and to do
their homework. We have had some stellar vendors.
In general, RFPs in the United Kingdom and European Union are final with no negotiating.
In the United States, the RFP process is totally negotiable.
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The use of statistics is not just for cancelations, but identifies who is using it, where we may need to
have more training, and to justify use with legislators.
Reasons from vendors for not generating statistics: the resource was not designed to do that; the
statistics lump participants together making it difficult to separate out institutions.
In the RFP process, RFPs must not have the word “please” in it. Since it is a technical document for a
purchase, it needs to be direct.
The objective in final negotiations is the price we only dreamed we could get, but sustainable.
Iris’ favorite phrase in negotiations: “Is that your best and final offer?”
When we do an RFP, we also try to obtain discounts for optional items for our members.
Iris closed with distributing an addendum for list of all things VIVA does not agree to in contracts.
Stat-USA Task Force Update
Alan Zoellner, Government Information Librarian, College of William and Mary, discussed the
cancellation of Stat-USA last spring. In managing the loss, their task force looked at three points:
1. Find a way to map stats used in Stat-USA and to find a free way.
2. All federal depositories in the state have user names and passwords; library staff cannot give
these user names and passwords out, but must sign users into the system.
3. Expand access through proxy server.
Number 3 is against contract. There is no way to accomplish number 1. One may be able to create a
gateway that maps where users are going. A session on Friday will provide instruction on how to gain
free access to the same information that is in Stat-USA.
VIVA Taskforce – Reclamation Project
Donna Hughes-Oldenburg and Peter Bruce reported on their experience at Old Dominion University to
undertake an OCLC reclamation project that corresponded to a requirement for their implementing
World Cat Local. After isolating their records, exporting them as MARC, and sending them to OCLC via
FTP, OCLC matches them up. Multiple ways are available in the next step for the return of the records
from OCLC to the institution. After receiving the records, Peter Bruce wrote a small script that allowed
for a quick and painless replacement of records in their database. They made available a Best Practices
document is available for this kind of reclamation project.
Tansy Matthews reported that a do-it-yourself statistic generator is now available. The project was the
result of a graduate student’s assistance in building a retrieval system. It will allow generating statistics
on anything back to 2003 in an Excel spreadsheet. Tansy plans to update the numbers quarterly.
Tansy commented on Project COUNTER compliant data (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic
Resources). Some vendors do not supply COUNTER compliant data and some COUNTER compliant data
is not always useful from a vendor.
Tansy reminded members that a training session on statistics will be held this winter, tentatively
scheduled for February 2, 2010 at the University of Virginia.