Members present: John Butler, Tricia Cruse, Todd Grappone, Julia Koch, Paul Soderdahl, Ed Van Gemert, John Wilkin, Bob Wolven
Members absent: Sarah Pritchard
1. Spend time discussing the principle takeaways for the SAB from the Constitutional Convention. What is the role of the SAB moving forward and how best to communicate that to the Executive Committee?
- Board members voiced the need for a focus on strategic planning in addition to operational oversight; perhaps from two separate groups.
- With functional objectives previously identified, the SAB was often in a reactive position.
- SAB at times served as a high level implementation agent.
- Who does the SAB advice? The Executive Committee, the Executive Director, others?
- Where is that boundary and handoff where strategy and operations meet?
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Moving forward, the focus of an advisory group needs to be on strategy.
- For example—the ballot proposal questioning the need for a fee for service--Will that review service occur at the Board level or elsewhere?
- What happens with other formats? How would that affect fees, membership?
- These seem like likely tasks for a newly formed advisory group to consider.
- An advisory board can be viewed as a panel of experts who are able to dig into large questions on behalf of the Board. Advisory to the Board and separate from operations.
- Committees: not a clear process for what that structure is.
- Some of this will be cleared up with new bylaws.
- What authority does the SAB have to launch new groups?
Action Item: The current SAB will draft a new charge for consideration of the new Board of Directors.
2. Update: John Wilkin.
- Google stopped sending GRIN files in a timely manner.
- Last sent in mid-October.
- Google partners should complain because it is not seen as a priority by Google.
3. Review the recommendations from the duplicates report prepared by the Collections Committee.
Comments and suggestions from the SAB for the Collections Committee:
- Joint ownership. Questioning joint ownership of retained copies when others are withdrawn adds unnecessary confusion. Raising the issue implies uncertainty over the legal uses of the retained copy. Additionally, the newly approved cost model does not work without the assumption of joint ownership of digital copies. SAB recommends removal of this language.
- A recommendation in the report would prohibit the deletion of a file based on duplication. Practically that won’t work. Exceptions need to be made. Institutions today do elect to have their copy deleted in favor of a superior copy.
- SAB raised this issue for further consideration of the Committee. Perhaps we should rely on the user to decide. Can we improve the user interface without removing duplicates? Can we consider methods for the user to promote a copy?
- SAB raised the following question for the Committee. What empirical evidence is there that duplicates do present a problem? We assume that they are a problem but what evidence is there? Is there a threshold of tolerance for the user? How much is too much?
These four suggestions were referred back to the Collections Committee for revision. Following revision the draft will return to the SAB to be forwarded to the Executive Committee for approval.