[Mcls-print-storage] New MCLS print project participants

[Randy Dykhuis]

We began the discussion about adding new participants during our 
conference call last week. Currently, we have two libraries that are ready 
to commit to the project: Oakland Univ and Hope College. The quickest and 
easiest way for these & other interested libraries to benefit from the 
work done so far is to treat each additional library as an independent 
project. These subsequent projects would benefit from the information 
collected during the initial analysis but the library would be under no 
obligation to follow the guidelines we're developing. When the data is 
refreshed, most likely in mid or late 2013, all participants subsequent to 
the original seven would be included in the new round of analysis.

This approach strikes me as more ad hoc than I'd like to be. It appears to 
me that this project is saying that Michigan academic libraries overall 
gain from a collective approach to curation of their print monograph 
collections. If that's the case, then an ad hoc approach to the new 
participants, while not harmful, doesn't move us as a group closer to our 
goal.

The suggestion that was made on the call that we investigate a second 
group seems to move us further down the field. If we go down that path, 
that group would not be informed by the analysis of the first group, but 
it would have the advantage of adhering to the criteria we have already 
set and there would be coherent collective action by that set of 
libraries. The libraries in that group would all share the costs & 
benefits of the joint activity, just as the original 7 have.

So after thinking about all that, I wondered about this kind of scenario:

February 15 - April 30: Open window for participants in a second group
May - Sept: Analysis & pick lists for group 2
August/Sept 2013: Refresh data & combine groups (This could be deferred 
until later depending on how quickly deselection is taking place in 
participating libraries.)

Theoretically, this model could be expanded to a third group as well.

As a whole, the state doesn't gain maximum benefit until all participating 
libraries are in one group but it seems like there would be more greater 
gains with multiple small groups than one group and several stand-alone 
projects until the refresh 18 or 20 months from now.

Rick and I have had some initial back & forth on this and he raised 
legitimate questions about timeliness of adding new participants & cost of 
the collective analysis if we go the route of forming another group. I 
also have questions about the effectiveness of the collective analysis if 
all participants in the second group are from smaller libraries. But maybe 
that doesn't  matter?

There may be other ways to approach this.

=========================
Randy Dykhuis 
Executive Director
Midwest Collaborative for Library Services (MCLS) 
Lansing, MI & Indianapolis, IN 
Phone:  (800) 530-9019 x119
Fax:    (517) 492-3879
Cell:  (517) 927-5121
E-mail: dykhuisr at mcls.org
Skype:  randy dykhuis 

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