University Digital Library Review Committee
Minutes of January 7, 1999
University of Central Florida
DRAFT      DRAFT       DRAFT      DRAFT      DRAFT

Attendees: Grady, Barry, Janice, Rosann, Mark, Sherry, Pam, Shixing, John, Michele, Martha Guests: Jim Corey. Absent: Margaret.

Minutes: Minutes will be rotated in alpha order by institution. Florida Atlantic University will do the minutes of this meeting.

Budget request preparation Discussion:

• A rough budget plan should be submitted to the directors at their next meeting on March 1-2 for presentation in late May to Chancellor, Council of Academic Vice Presidents for funding availability on July 1, 2000. Options for requests include full funding in year 1, or roll out over several years. Should we limit the number of vendors we consider? If so, how do we do this? Per Jim, we are required by State guidelines to allow all vendors to respond to the RFP. Jim suggested a point system for evaluating vendors. The long-term viability of the vendor must be established before reading vendor responses to RFP. As a method for disqualifying, we could include a make or break question. We do not need to reveal the importance of the item to the vendor.
• Request from Dawson group to Grady to be allowed to submit response to RFI. Grady indicated this would be okay if submitted in a timely manner. Committee agreed
• Immediate task is preparing budget. No need to do an assessment of functional aspects of response today. Most urgent is costing and budget analysis.
• Martha: Should define scenario - commit and get the library directors to accept the scenario we suggest. That will be one way to approach limiting vendors considered.

• RFP has 90 day validity, and could be stretched to 120 days.

• Jim: Do we want to spend a year + to gradually build the RFP, so it is Awaiting in the wings@ for 2000 appropriation? Then we can come back in June-July to finish it and issue it in August-Sept. 2000.
• Committee acknowledged the major amount of work Grady did on the spread sheet comparisons for the RFI. Next time we will ask the vendors to submit their responses in spreadsheet format. We will not spend time today worrying about the details of functions.
• Clarification of Ameritech response: They eliminated the network in their quote because we have network in place.
• Jim: We have network. We are only asking for server hardware and server software. Ignored digital library and proprietary databases we have now. The vendors restricted themselves to LMS. We must address ourselves to a new spreadsheet to include these, or commit to going elsewhere to get this functionality.
• A lot of follow-up on the responses will be necessary. Mark and Jim are willing to do this. Michele suggests: Contact colleagues to find differential in RFI/RFQ/RFP experiences. Figure out the % in case of each vendor - use to adjust our figures.
• Jim: IBM Unix- every one of these systems runs under UNIX. We asked for support to IBM. We know about IBM but should be open to other equipment.
  
  

• Hardware
• Software
• Services

• Must do a cost estimate for equipment needs.
• Include maximum/minimum hardware requirements.
• RAM and disk space - use larger numbers suggested by vendors for disk space and CPU. This will allow for Afudge factor.@
• Use machine size as place holder for server.
• Then calculate cost as a minimum in order to meet needs of the system.
• Services - conversion of data base, training, etc.
• Server size - will be different for each scenario, with the most costly being for the distributive scenarios.
• Equipment costs will be down from the year we write the request. Disk storage and phone line costs no longer drive the cost of a system. Staffing and maintenance currently drive costs.
• How much detail is needed in our budget request? Not much, but we need it as backup. A brief description is necessary for legislature.
• We must state a clear decision on our choice of scenarios in a statement to the library directors. They have not been asked to discuss this yet.
• Can we eliminate any scenario? We will take each scenario one at a time and discuss it.

• We need to look at what FCLA can do also.
• Will we receive a proposal from FCLA?
• FCLA staff need to have a definitive document with specificity to say where we want to go.
• FCLA staff is currently developing serials check-in, acquisitions EDI capability, SUS-wide circulation.
• FCLA would like to gain control over its own equipment. Would like to purchase its own equipment in order to modernize the database structure to obtain more power and flexibility.
• The FCLA librarians are doing spec work and long-term design. They also need to support current operations.
• The major costing for FCLA is for staffing.
• FCLA is currently paying $3 million a year to NERDC ( some of this money is for databases).
• FCLA will also respond in some time table to the RFI.

• Is there any vendor out there who has more than we have now?
• All who responded have consortia customers.

1. we may lose flexibility and control. We would lose the evolutionary developmental approach.(Is loss of control necessarily a negative?).
2. would have to commit to annual maintenance costs (which we currently do not have)
3. we may gain a capability we do not have, primarily in technical services (need to do site visits to institutions to see their systems, as a measure of what actually exists before we embark on the Apoint of no return@; i.e., requesting and receiving money)
4. large up-front costs
5. elimination or downsizing of FCLA
6. FCLA has a significant impact at the Board and legislative level. FCLA is very visible in terms of cooperation among institutions. The elimination of FCLA would eliminate a strong coordinating force for the SUS libraries, and also a powerful lobbying force. To wish away FCLA would be to reduce your own resources.@
7. Budget request - either/or: Either an incremental request or money for a new system.

• Size of servers different for different scenarios. Distributive costs - most costly scenario (10 or 11 systems); regional; one central system.
• Scoping of scenarios: institutional; overall; single bib record
• Option: maintain system locally .
• Grady: doesn't mean equipment is onsite; could be central or regional, as in Georgia, but would increase staff and hardware needs. Support costs are a factor.

• Scenario 3 - Not desirable; maximum cost for 10 separate systems; scoping issue goes away.
• Scenario 2 - our present scenario - 10 databases on one machine ; scoping may not be addressed by this scenario per Mark.
• Scenario 1 - can we eliminate? policy and people politics. A possibly good long term goal of one shared bibliographic record.
• Convergence on Scenario 2 - insist that scenario 2 include scoping capabilities we desire and presently have. Scoping= query by different levels; e.g., SUS; institution; processing unit or dept. location; location groups. Presently we have this. It is driven by location codes.

• Jim Corey would like to work on normalizing vendor information - ad hoc
• Grady will draft an outline of a narrative for budget
• Committee members will share vendor information on budget figures and systems administration portion of RFI with Systems Committee rep for each of their institutions
• Remind the subcommittees for the functional areas who has copies of RFI responses; or take functional area of vendors response and distribute to subcommittee members
• We will also receive a response from Dawson group in the near future
• Committees to prepare spreadsheet regarding vendor responses to specific functional area questions
• Need some consistency to use when they give us presentations
• We should prepare scripts for vendor demos
• When we do visit customer installations, we might consider visiting in teams.
• TO Think about: We must know if CAVP will support our request before we go out
• We can get scenarios for examination from Missouri, Kansas, etc.
• Jim: If we are going off mainframe, to free up money to NERDC, we need a home for 20 data bases. Need to have the Public Services Committee or ECC think about alternative search engines. FCLA/Grady will do a statement to submit to Public Service Committee.
• Jim will donate some travel money for visiting customer sites.

• Will share budget proposal and narrative with Systems Committee rep at each institution.
  1. Committee chairs will share sections with their committee members.
  2. Also look into preparing specific requirements for vendors with the idea of a script for vendor demos.
  3. Will visit customers at some point. If vendors want to come on site it is okay.
  4. Will submit recommendations to directors in March.
• Next meeting: we will decide when we want to get together at a later date
• When will we know if our request gets into the budget? June or July. Legislature usually rubber stamps anything CAVP approves.

(Drafts of Budget Request and Budget Request Detail included in separate attachment)

Meeting adjourned at 2:40 p.m.

Respectfully submitted, Janice E. Donahue