VIVA Resources for Users Committee
Minutes of the Meeting of January 12, 2007
Present: Gene Damon (VCCS, presiding), Karen Cary (VCU), Sharon Gasser (JMU), Louveller
Luster (VSU), Paul Metz (VaTech), Frank Moran (BRCC), Pamela Morgan (ODU), Jane
Penner (UVa), Jim Rettig (Richmond), Sylvia Rortvedt (NVCC), John Walsh (GMU), Kathy
Perry (VIVA), John Tombarge (W&L), Pat Van Zandt (W&M)
Guest: Teresa Doherty (VCU)
1. Announcements
 Jim Rettig announced that he is a candidate for president of the American Library
Association.
 Gene Damon described proposed legislation that would make up the tuition to a fouryear school for community colleges graduates who meet certain grade point and
economic criteria.
2. Changes/additions to agenda—Scholars Resource was added to new opportunities portion of
the agenda.
3. Minutes of the October 20, 2006 meeting were approved as submitted.
4. Budget – K. Perry—
 Explained that VIVA will not need to pay an eVA fee for sole source purchases.
 The budget spreadsheet now includes a column for eVA fees.
5. Nature evaluation – P. Van Zandt—Would like several people to work with her to evaluate
Nature subscription, use, value, individual institutions’ responses if VIVA cancels, Also need
to have a way to make decisions when new sections are added. Paul Metz will work with Pat
on this.
 Kathy Perry explained that the Nature contract requires that VIVA use Nature’s archive
service for access to content from 2006 on if we cancel our subscription. There would
also be a substantial annual access fee.
6. Renewals
 MLA – J.
i. Renewal approved
 Academic OneFile – J. Rettig
i. Approved renewal, with qualification that Gale clarify in writing inclusion of InfoTrac
with quote for Academic OneFile
 Enyclopaedia. Britannica – S. Rortvedt
i. FTE rate is going up (from $0.382/FTE to $0.98/FTE); so is the number of FTE in
VIVA; so is use.
ii. Renewal approved
 Stats.USA – S.
i. Same FTE rate as last year, but cost is up because VIVA FTE is up.
ii. Use is declining.
iii. Use has risen at some institutions, declined at others.
iv. Maybe we should have a training fair session on alternate sources for statistical
data.
v. The added value comes from the interface. The content is available elsewhere.
vi. Renewal approved.
 Science (update) – K. Perry
VIVA RUC meeting, 1-12-07. p. 2
i. Cost based in part on use; JMU use increased significantly. Discussions with
Science continue.
7. Blackwell Proposal – G. Damon, S. Gasser, K. Perry
 Status update
i. Gene thinks he may have final institution-by-institution cost information; some
details need to be confirmed.
ii. VIVA now has a four-year deal rather than a three-year deal with a 5% annual cap
iii. Access is turned on but VIVA hasn’t publicized this because we don’t yet have a
contract.
iv. Wiley merger creates uncertainty
 New Titles Selection (ACTION)
i. Proposed way to cover this is to distribute coast proportionately based on past use
ii. Indexing of these titles will be scant to non-existent
iii. Decision on new titles postponed a year; use statistics for the rest of Blackwell
package will be informative.
8. New Opportunities
 Sage – G. Damon
i. Paul Metz reported that 2/3 of Sage titles are in the enhanced core; ¼ are
“supercore.” Typical Sage title has 5.4 subscribers in the state. This data gives
Sage a higher profile than Taylor & Francis.
ii. Pam Morgan says ODU is interested in adding Sage titles that relate to growing
number of PhD programs.
iii. A VIVA deal would not come from VIVA dollars but would be a shared among
participating institutions.
iv. JMU per title cost of Sage titles has been high.
v. Education package might fill a VIVA void.
vi. Pam Morgan will investigate further. We have good data on who subscribed as of
spring 2005.
 Pat Van Zandt discussed a new search engine from CSA called Illustrata; it indexes
images in articles. Thus far it covers only life science journals. It bears watching.
 BioOne 2 – P. Van Zandt
i. Pat has surveyed collection contacts in VIVA.
ii. Three schools are interested
 Scholars Resource – K. Cary
i. Scholars Resource is an image resource geared to the study of art history. Some
VIVA institutions have used it to license use of images. Six-figure cost is beyond
VIVA’s reach for such a specialized source.
9. PBS Media Project – J. Penner
 Test videos are being streamed from UVa.
10. Serials Analysis project – P. Metz
 Should we pursue package deals with additional publishers?
i. Percentage of titles in these sets and mean number of VIVA subscriptions indicate
value of publisher packages.
ii. By this measure, American Geophysical Union, American Physiological Society,
NRC Research Press, and Indiana University Press may be worth investigating.
iii. Karen Cary is still talking with the University of Chicago Press.
iv. We need to look at overlap with existing VIVA packages. Some university presses
may be covered in Project Muse.
VIVA RUC meeting, 1-12-07. p. 3
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What should we do with at risk titles?
Should some of us add subscriptions to one-only titles?
i. There are a number of titles in the enhanced core that have no subscriptions
among VIVA institutions.
1. Should a VIVA institution subscribe to some of these?
ii. Many of the one-subscriber titles are niche titles. All of this raises the question
about how much loss there is if a library cancels a one-only title.
iii. Had planned to post list of one-only titles on the Web, but has not been done yet.
Should we do a third load and analysis?
i. VIVA would have to pay
ii. There is little evidence that VIVA institutions are making good use of existing data
iii. RUC recommends postponing by a year a third load
List of one-only titles will be posted on the VIVA Web site.
11. Other business
 VIVA staff is working with IEEE to finalize the contract
i. Subscribers currently have access
ii. VIVA can invoice subscribers now
 Training
i. Pat Van Zandt, Louveller Luster, and John Tombarge will work on a training
program for statistical sources
ii. Training on placing links to articles in Blackboard would be good
iii. The VIVA Steering Committee has encouraged developing programs with an
academic emphasis for the VLA Annual Conference
12. Next meeting date
 Friday, May 1, 2007