PROPOSED MLAG AGENDA



Museum Librarians and Archivists Group February 2014

Committee Meeting (open to all members)

Meeting at Tate Britain

Friday 14th February 2014

10.00-12.00

Attendees:

Penny Allen (National Maritime Museum) - SE and London Rep

Fiona Baker (Tate)

Jane Bramwell (Tate)

Alan Crookham (National Gallery)

Martin Flynn (V&A) - Communications Officer

Mark Glancy (National Museums Scotland) – Secretary/Scotland and N.Ireland Rep

Anna Golodnitsky (Tate)

Melanie Grant (Wellcome Collection)

Catherine John (JISC Collections)

Alison Kay (National Railway Museum) – North Rep

Antony Loveland (British Museum)

Maxine Millar (Tate)

Chris Mills (Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew) – Interim Chair

Hellen Pethers (Natural History Museum)

Fergus Read (Imperial War Museum)

Joseph Ripp (National Portrait Gallery)

Julie Robertshaw (Imperial War Museum)

Caroline Warhurst (London Transport Museum)

Adam Waterton (Royal Academy)

Nick Wyatt (Science Museum)

Apologies:

Kristine Chapman (National Museum of Wales) - Wales Rep

James Hodgkin (Natural History Museum)

Antony Hopkins (Courtauld Institute of Art)

Eleni Papavasileiou (SS Great Britain Trust) - S + SW Rep

Hannah Rausa (Natural History Museum)

Mel Smith (Natural History Museum)

1. Welcome and Introductions

2. JISC MLAG Agreements – update

2.1 Catherine John from JISC Collections is now dealing with the MLAG agreements and gave the meeting an update gave an update on the current situation.

2.2 OUP agreements have been renewed to cover the period 01.01.14 to 31.3.15, but not all current MLAG subscribers have renewed their subscription.

The agreements are for:

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

• Oxford English Dictionary Online

• Oxford Quick Reference for Museums

• Oxford University Press Arts package for Museums

• Oxford University Press Biography and the Enlightenment package for Museums

• Oxford University Press Biography and the Enlightenment plus American Culture package for Museums

• Oxford University Press Biography package for Museums

• Oxford University Press Complete Arts package for Museums

2.3 Oxford Scholarship Online (a cross-disciplinary resource) and University Scholarship Online are two new resources which will be made available at a specially negotiated price.

2.4 The agreement for the Cengage Learning Archive for Museums (Times Digital Archive, 19th Century British Library Newspapers and the Burney Collection) will expire on 31.3.14 and is currently being renegotiated Cengage are considering a 3% increase for Year 1 of the agreement (from 1.4.14), followed by 4% for Year 2 and 5% for Year 3.

2.5 There is no increase in the price of JSTOR for Museums which is being renewed for a further 3 years from 1.4.14.

2.6 Membership to the JISC Collections is open to all MLAG member institutions and there is a flat subscription fee of £150 per annum. A JISC band will be assigned to each institution based on funding and staffing levels which is applied to the cost of all resources.

2.7 If MLAG members wish to contact Catherine John regarding current or potential agreements, her contact details are:

e-mail: c.john@jisc-collections.ac.uk

Telephone: 02030066009

2.8 MLAG members at the meeting thought it would be useful to get a report of the current MLAG agreements and the take up from members.

3. MLAG committee vacancies

3.1 Chris Mills reminded the meeting that he was MLAG Chair on an interim basis only and would like to get a replacement Chair in place as soon as possible.

If anyone is interested in becoming Chair, they can contact Chris in the first instance to discuss the role.

3.2 Alison Kay is stepping down as rep for the North of England and has approached colleagues to see if they would be interested in the role.

4 Continuing Development of MLAG

4.1 Chris Mills outlined proposals for the continuing development of MLAG for discussion.

4.2 Meetings with just the committee members were not in the spirit of the group – meetings also provided the opportunity for informal networking which all members found useful. Instead he suggested MLAG returns to a format of meetings which address how the group moves forward, but also have a more focussed topic with a speaker from within our institutions or an invited guest speaker. (Allocating 1 hour for business matters and 1 hour for the topic). There would be 3 - 4 meetings a year.

4.3 Revert to a three-year rolling development plan and concentrate efforts on those elements that have worked during the year.

4.4 Establish working groups on specific topics to support the Committee.

4.5 Hold a conference on a regular basis, preferably annually.

4.6 There was general agreement that this approach was a good one, Caroline Warhurst felt that it was important to have the same key ingredients as before.

4.7 A half-day conference on using social media was suggested, demonstrating how it could be used to promote the collection, but also how to encourage content and keep interest/enthusiasm/commitment.

4.8 Open access and research repositories was also suggested as possible meeting topic, particularly an update on Wellcome’s decision to include external researchers publications - based on research of the collection - in their repository.

4.9 Digitisation was proposed as a conference topic for Spring 2015 as many libraries were already involved in digitisation projects including:

• Tate: major project to digitise 55,000 images

• Kew: Biodiversity Heritage Library and Darwin Letters

• RMG: geneaological material

• Wellcome Collection:

and could give tips and advice from their experience.

The conference could also cover digital preservation and contracts/control of content and rights management.

The conference could have an accompanying suppliers exhibition which would help to defray costs. The venue would have to be free of charge and able to accommodate approximately 120 people. MLAG would have to use the host’s booking system – delegates would be charged around £30 (with a booking fee built in) and the venue would get any profits that were remaining. The venue would also have to be close to places for lunch as this would not be provided as part of the delegate fee.

ACTION POINT – MLAG members that could potentially host a conference to contact Mark Glancy and Jane Bramwell.

4.10 Social Media

During the open discussion that followed, the use of social media as an effective communication tool was raised. Martin Flynn suggested that members go the MLAG list on JISCMail in the first instance, rather than the blog. There was not a high take up for the blog, but that could be due to the fact that most institutions were unaware of their blog logins due to staff changes.

ACTION POINT – Members to forward requests for blog logins to Martin Flynn and Mark Glancy.

4.11 The blog was considered effective in avoiding wasted effort with duplicated threads on the mailing list and in highlighting resources (as it was searchable). It also provided a central point to link to the blogs of member libraries.

4.12 Twitter was seen as a useful tool to promote blog posts, events and raise awareness generally of the blog. Hellen Pethers mentioned that the London Museum Group used meeting action points to generate blog posts, supplemented with e-mail alerts. Penny Allen raised the successful use of social media by a local history group she is involved with which has 2000 members. With social media it was important to look at how we engage after the initial enthusiasm has gone and share experience of best practice and what worked well.

ACTION POINT – Martin Flynn, Hellen Pethers and Penny Allen to meet to look at the potential use of social media and report back at the next meeting.

5 Membership

5.1 There are currently 33 member institutions. In addition, both the mailing list and conferences are open to all.

5.2 As most of the national institutions are already members, smaller museums would be targeted to increase membership, emphasising the upcoming activity (meetings and conferences) and the JISC deals.

5.3 Links with other museum library groups was considered, but IFLA does not have a group for museum libraries, so this was not possible at the moment.

6 Regional Reps Report

6.1 North of England – Alison Kay reported that the National Coal Mining Museum was now a member of MLAG.

The Search Engine at the National Railway Museum had reduced hours and was now only open 4 days per week.

6.2 Scotland and Northern Ireland – Mark Glancy reported that there were no new institutions added from this region, but would continue to contact potential museums and archives as they would certainly be interested in the conference planned for 2015.

National Museums Scotland is now involved in Phase 3 of the Museum of Scotland Masterplan – creating 8 new galleries to showcase its Art and Design/Science and Technology collections plus refreshing two technology galleries. An HLF has been submitted and if successful there will be a phased closure of the galleries from September 2014, reopening early Summer 2016. The public access to the library is off one of these galleries, so access arrangements will have to be revised for during this work. The corridor to the library and the library itself are included in the works, so there will be some refurbishment.

The National Galleries Scotland library and archive catalogue was launched on 12th November – it can be searched at:

?

6.3 South West – Eleni Papavasileiou has been e-mailing colleagues about MLAG and using the AMA regional support network as an additional avenue for communication, encouraging MLAG as a further CPD activity. She suggests that there should be a joint campaign from the regional reps, using promotional tactics that have previously worked. Eleni also asked if it was possible to have meetings later in the day to keep travelling costs low for those travelling from outside London.

7 Locations and topics of future meetings

7.1 Kew – Friday 30.5.14

British Museum – 12.9.14 – visit to the new conservation centre

Wellcome Collections – 12.12.14 – open access

7.2 Future venues – dates tbc:

Science Museum – 2015, visit to new Research Centre

National Museums Scotland - 2015

8 Any other business

8.1 Science Museum – The library is now closed. It was previously sharing library facilities with Imperial College, but they need the space and the collections are currently moving to the Wroughton Library in Swindon. There will be a new Research Centre opening in 2015 which will house the library collection and support the museum’s research team output and academic work on the museum’s collections. A new library management system will be procured, as the current one is shared with Imperial College.

Nick Wyatt is currently acting Head of Library to April 2015, when he will then become the Research Centre Library Manager.

8.2 Royal Museums Greenwich – Stuart Bligh is the new Head of Archive and Library, who took over the post in January 2014. RMG now uses the Aeon ordering system – an online request system for special collections and archives – and are the first library in the UK to use this system.

More information at

8.3 Natural History Museum – has a new discovery system (Primo – Ex libris) and are the first non-HE customer. They will go live on 1st July 2014.

8.4 CALM/MIMSY XG/ADLIB systems are planning to combine in the future.

9 Date of next meeting

Friday 30th May at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

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