VIVA Outreach Committee
May 8, 2012, 2012 10am – 12noon
University of Virginia Clemons Library room 407
Meeting Notes
Present: Beth Blanton-Kent; Cy Dillon; Jason Sokoloff; Luke Vilelle; John Ulmschneider; Tansy
Matthews
VLA program proposal
The committee approved the VLA proposal as submitted. The committee will consider possible
changes to the VLACRL proposal to include the VIVA program in its program track. John U
will submit the VLACRL proposal on May 18.
The committee decided to form the program around a panel presentation again this year.
Members believe that including a vendor on the panel will be helpful, but are mindful that some
of the VIVA community are skeptical about letting vendors participate in a VIVA program in
this fashion. If a content provider participates, that representative needs to contribute to the
substance of the program and not act solely as a company or sales representative. Some issues
for consideration as we put together the panel:
-
VIVA has issued an RFI for its ebook purchase, with the focus on STEM-H content.
-
One member noted the difference in perceived use and actual use of ebooks from UVa’s
homegrown survey. Does it indicate that textbooks are still important for
undergraduates? The panel might look at the different ways that ebooks can be used.
-
The panel might consider different models for the growth of collections. Perhaps this
could take the form of a point-counterpoint discussion, and include the influence of these
perspectives on library building design. The focus would be on program planning and
collection modeling. For this approach, we might consider NSU and VCU: NSU is just
opening a new library building, and VCU is about to start design for one.
-
Possible vendor participant: can we get someone from YBP or another jobber to talk
about the growth of ebooks and where the future is going with this? Or perhaps someone
from a humanities or university press? Oxford University or Duke University press?
American Council of Learned Societies?
Communications mechanisms and communication issues
The committee considered how best to construct an inventory of communications mechanisms
used by the VIVA community, using a template developed by Tansy. A number of points arose
in discussion.
•
All VIVA blog entries go to the listerv as well, so anyone who is on the listserv gets the
blog entries. But is duplicating on the listserv too much? We could eliminate blog
entries from the listserv and tell people to do RSS if they want to see these things.
Minutes VIVA Outreach 5-8-12
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•
One member suggested a key question for designing communication mechanisms: how
does VIVA news get to me, and how am I touched by VIVA?
•
One member asked about the kind of announcements that are sent. What is PR and what
is FYI, and what are essential communications, mission critical things? Should we do an
analysis of the postings to determine what is what? Where do product announcements fit
into this mix? They go to directors now.
•
VIVA needs to target librarians for some things, directors for others. We need a way to
discern what’s appropriate, and then set up rules and procedures for that.
•
The committee decided that it would be helpful to do an analysis of those things that have
been posted, and then use that to decide on rules to help VIVA staff. Tansy will go back
to the beginning of the year – January – and classify the messages that have been sent
through the listserv, the website, etc.
•
Tansy is investigating a new product. She is summarizing all the activities of VIVA in
the hopes of developing something that could be handed to new librarians in the state that
provides a one-shot overview of all the VIVA-related issues at the time of the librarian
arrives.
•
VIVA does have some clandestine, un-anointed mailing groups. Can we take advantage
of these informal, un-anointed groups?
•
VIVA’s Facebook site: right now, this serves only a publicity mechanism. Do we need
such a publicity mechanism for VIVA, and does that mechanism need to be Facebook?
We could make Facebook private, but that’s more work. We’re not about fostering
relationships between people; we’re not an association; why are we using Facebook?
•
The committee agreed that it’s reasonable to eliminate VIVA’s presence on Facebook,
Linkedin, and Youtube.
•
The committee noted that VIVA must target its messages carefully in order to preserve its
good relationships with private, non-profit institutions.
•
The committee agreed that fewer channels of communication, not more, might actually
help the VIVA community get the news they need.
•
One member noted that VIVA might want to add the VICULA listserv to the list of
communications avenues.
•
Print materials: VIVA just did a refresh of these. There is a default distribution list, but
should the committee review that and help VIVA target print distributions more
carefully?
Minutes VIVA Outreach 5-8-12
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•
Press releases: who should receive these? Should they go to campus newspapers, the
library directors, the institutional PR offices? Should they perhaps go to the presidents?
•
The questions about the target of press releases leads directly to another question: What is
the purpose of press releases – what are we trying to accomplish? There are other
avenues we can use to announce products to the VIVA community. Should we transform
press releases into product announcements, and put our language into these things, and
then use our other mechanisms to announce the product?
•
After much discussion, the committee decided that it was reasonable to substitute product
announcements for press releases.
•
One member noted that there is very little published information about VIVA. We don’t
have any research articles about VIVA out there. There is material about VIVA on the
web site; should it be added to the Wikipedia page? Perhaps we could use the VIVA
Update Session this year to describe the value of VIVA, a description of “macro-VIVA”,
how we’re delivering value, and how we’re getting money when no one else is.
Web site use and redesign
•
The most heavily used item on the web site is the e-journals list, which links to the SFX
server maintained by VCU and the VCCS. It appears that the e-journals list is mostly used
by community colleges; some institutions direct students to the site as their database catalog.
Some other smaller institutions also are using the e-journal list. Tansy said that all VIVA
holdings are being put into WCKB for ILL; can we piggyback on that?
• It is clear that the chief use of the VIVA web site is internal, by and for the VIVA community.
This led the committee to question the current design, which focuses on presenting VIVA in
a favorable light, and on highlighting VIVA institutions.
•
The committee agreed that the current site could be very much simplified. It would be made
much easier to get at what’s being used, and obsolete material could be removed (Ariel
keycodes, for instance.)
•
The VIVA website should be clean and informative, but not a publicity site. It’s mostly used
by internal communities, although it can be informative to outside visitors. It should be easy
to integrate educational and publicity materials into such a web site design. Should we do
this latter part anyway? It’s hard to get people to register things, to include links, etc.
YouTube and other avenues may have supplanted the need for this.
•
Tansy informed the committee that in her opinion, using Wordpress for the VIVA site would
not be a good decision. It is difficult to get Wordpress to be 508 compliant. The php
technology is hard to implement in Wordpress, but the VIVA Quicklinks page is php-driven.
Changing to Wordpress will require that new folks know Wordpress, whereas most everyone
would come in with HTML expertise. Redesign in the future would be harder, since
everything would have to stay in Wordpress.
Minutes VIVA Outreach 5-8-12
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•
One member suggest that the committee consider getting some students involved in doing a
design for the VIVA website. Do this as a contest? Get students from 2-3 institutions and
then choose the winning design?
Minutes submitted by John Ulmschneider
Feb. 27, 2013
Minutes VIVA Outreach 5-8-12
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