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OCLC MEMBERS COUNCIL
Kevin Furniss


The February 2006 OCLC Members Council meeting was called "Partnerships: Building and Expanding the Collaborative", carrying over the title from the October 2005 meeting. The following report includes topics discussed at the various meetings that should be of interest to OLAC members.

eSerials Holdings Service Update - Bill Carney

Bill Carney reviewed the features and benefits of the service, then provided an update/progress report on it. Twenty-one libraries are currently involved in the pilot, but that number will be growing to 36 libraries with the addition of a group of SUNY libraries. Over 270,000 holdings have been set in WorldCat and three of the pilot libraries are testing the MARC record updating option. The pilot libraries are showing that, on average, 16% of their ILL serials traffic is related to these holdings. The production service will enable libraries to deflect ILL requests automatically to the next library in the lending string, based on settings in the OCLC Policies Directory. Libraries will be able to deflect all of the requests related to eSerials, or deflect all except those from existing groups. The Service will be available in June 2006, through the OCLC Online Service Center. The holdings portion of the service will be offered at no additional charge to OCLC member libraries. The optional MARC Record Service will be available in the future, for which there will be a first year subscription rate that includes the value of the initial record set, with a lower annual price for subsequent years taking into account the lower number of records sent as updates. The pricing model focuses the value on the updates. OCLC continues to recruit additional partners. Information on this service may be found at <http://www.oclc.org/productworks/eserialspilot.htm>.

Terminologies Service Update - Susan Westberg

Susan Westberg provided an update on the Terminologies pilot, which provides access to multiple controlled vocabularies for libraries, museums, and archives to create consistent metadata for their collections. The pilot is being conducted by phasing in different vocabularies at different points in the pilot. Libraries can use Connexion Client or Browser, or any other Web-based metadata editor. A survey has been completed with the initial participants, with another survey in process for non-Connexion users and MeSH and RVM users. Pilot participants indicated that they liked having access to multiple thesauri and the ease of adding the terms to a record in Connexion. Westberg shared the list of the eleven terminologies that will be included in the initial release of the service in June 2006. A question was raised about whether or not local authority files could also be used with this service. The answer was yes, that the Microsoft Research pane allows adding URLs for an institution’s thesauri. [After the meeting, Susan clarified that some programming still needs to be done to add additional URLs, such as Web-based in-house thesauri.]

More information about the Terminologies pilot can be found at <http://www.oclc.org/productworks/terminologiespilot.htm>. For more information, see <http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HP010733831033.aspx> and <http://msdn1.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx>.

Pricing for New Products under Cataloging Subscription - Chris Grabenstatter.

Chris Grabenstatter reviewed OCLC’s three current types of cataloging pricing (transaction, fixed-fee, and subscription), and stated that all libraries will be moving to subscription pricing in July 2006. Once all libraries are under subscription pricing, OCLC will consider how to handle pricing for new cataloging products. Grabenstatter outlined the three options:
  1. Include in Subscription package, no additional charge
  2. An option to Subscription package, with an additional charge
  3. Outside of the Subscription package
Discussion centered on support for avoiding complicated pricing levels. A Cataloging & Metadata Interest Group member indicated that it is frequently easier to get subscription pricing approved/paid, and that additional options may complicate this. Another member suggested that anything that adds value or contributes to the cooperative be included in the core subscription price.

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Last updated: June 16, 2006
http://www.olacinc.org/newsletters/june06/oclcmc.html
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