PROSPECTOR DIRECTOR'S GROUP

Minutes

August 14, 2002

Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries

First Floor Conference Room

Denver, CO

Present: Gary Alexander (DU Law), Brenda Carns (Fort Collins Public Library), Pat Ingersoll for Nancy Allen (DU), David Gleim (Auraria), Jim Farmer (CSU, chair of Prospector Document Delivery Committee), Jerry Kline (president, Innovative Interfaces, Inc.), Bill Knott (Jefferson County Public Library), Karen Lange for Maggie Farrell (UW), JoAnne Lerud (CSM), Michelle Jeske for Rick Ashton (DPL), Janet Lee for Ivan Gaetz (Regis), Georgia Briscoe for Barbara Bintliff (CU Law), Gary Pitkin (UNC), Gwen Gregory for Carol Dickerson (Colorado College), Lois Jones (chair of Prospector Cataloging Reference Committee), Leslie Manning (CU/Colorado Springs), Jim Williams (CU/Boulder), Alan Charnes (executive director, Alliance), George Machovec (associate director, Alliance)

PROSPECTOR UPDATE

Machovec provided an overview of the Prospector system. The PowerPoint for the presentation is available on the Web at the Prospector staff Website (http://www.coalliance.org/prospector).

• Prospector borrowing/lending use data.
• An explanation of new loan periods and lost book fees for media (1 week checkout, no renewal and $100 lost item fee) and PASCAL journals (1 week checkout, no renewal and $400 lost volume fee).
• A review of some of the special uses for Prospector by member libraries that were not originally envisioned
• The future of Prospector in terms of growth, policy, software and systems.
• A proposal from Julie Wessling, chair of the Alliance Document Delivery Direct Task Force, was briefly presented. The plan would develop and implement a high-speed article delivery system that will allow users to directly request journal articles through Prospector and have them delivered directly to the patron. The patron will receive instant access to full-text when it is available online or a web-delivery of the complete article within 2 days or less, from any journal title held by an Alliance library. Items not held by Alliance members will be automatically transferred to OCLC ILL system (local review file) (or any ISO compliant system, such as DocLine) for filling. Because of the costs associated with developing such a service, it is being considered by the Alliance Member Council to see if a critical mass of Prospector member libraries would have an interest in launching such a project.

David Gleim, dean of libraries at Auraria, reported on research he has been conducting regarding borrowing and lending patterns with Prospector and how it relates to collection size and the institutional level of uniqueness within the union catalog. Preliminary use data were distributed and a final report will be presented at the October 2002, Colorado Academic Libraries conference.

III INN-REACH UPDATE

Jerry Kline, president of Innovative Interfaces Inc. (III) provided information on where III is taking the INN-Reach software in the next few years. In addition to the current availability of their Advanced Searching software (AVS), III is developing software called "Pick-Up Anywhere" that would allow a patron to designate that they would like to pick up a book from any INN-Reach library (INN-Reach is the software in which Prospector operates). Currently patrons can only pick-up materials at branches of their "home" library. Kline provided interesting statistical data on Prospector and borrowing and lending patterns within our union catalog. He also provided a comparison of Prospector to other INN-Reach systems around the United States.

PROSPECTOR BUSINESS PLAN

Alan Charnes presented the Prospector Business Plan to the Directors. Over the last few years, Prospector concentrated on adding all member libraries of the Colorado Alliance and the five non-Alliance libraries that were part of the original grant that funded the system. With this meeting, and the new Prospector Business Plan, the vision has turned to enhancing services and enriching the collection. Prospector is now positioned to add new libraries and services.

When the Colorado School of Mines and the University of Wyoming, the last libraries mentioned in the original grant are added to Prospector, the system will move to "Phase Two." This next step includes adding new members from among libraries who already have indicated an interest in participating, plus libraries in neighboring states that Prospector would invite to participate for reasons of collection enrichment. In addition, "Phase Two" would see the addition to Prospector of III's Advanced Searching module (AVS) and a local effort to integrate article level document delivery.

At the meeting two major resolutions were passed unanimously:

1. Following the procedure described in the Business Plan, Fort Collins Public Library was voted in as a new Prospector library. Alliance staff and Fort Collins staff will begin work in fall 2002 on preparing their system for integration into Prospector. The goal will be to have Fort Collins fully loaded and operational in January 2003.

2. The library directors voted to fund the addition of the Advanced Searching (AVS) software from Innovative Interfaces. The cost of this software for Prospector will be $14,500 and will be equally assessed to all libraries in their Prospector maintenance bill in July 2003. However, the software will be acquired in the fall of 2002 with the Alliance advancing the payment.

As a result of the meeting, Alliance staff will continue to meet with other libraries in the region that may be interested in participating in the Prospector system.

The meeting adjourned at 11:30am.