Meeting Minutes
Policy Group - February 19, 2016
Policy Group - November 20, 2015
Policy Group - September 18, 2015
Policy Group - August 28, 2015
Policy Group - July 24, 2015

The primary topic for this month's meeting will be about BorrowDirect development focus, priorities, and decision making. The Directors of IT that volunteered to assist with a straw proposal for the BorrowDirect shared index (Rob Cartolano, Tom Cramer, Dean Krafft, and Tim McGeary) have addressed questions (below) to the Policy Group which they would like to discuss prior to further work on that project. Not all members will be able to join the call, but there will be some representation from that group. Please come prepared to discuss these questions on the call:
 
At the end of the BorrowDirect meeting in Baltimore this fall, this group was formed to draft a BorrowDirect Shared Index Straw Technical Proposal. The Policy Group has also charged a small group with conducting an “environmental scan of systems” for BorrowDirect that is looking into discovery, availability, and request management software. There is concern that these two groups could be working to cross purposes. Given the state of both efforts, it would be useful to have a discussion about the following questions:
 

What problem are we trying to solve?

Improve discovery? and availability? and the request workflow/management?
Consideration of an entirely new architecture? To what purpose?

Would that be a “single vendor” solution?
Would this require piecing together several new components at the same time?

What is the product?

A component of the BorrowDirect service?
The service including technology, collections, policies, and services that represent BorrowDirect member institutions?
Replicate/maintain current model or map out backbone to support future collaborative initiatives?


How will any changes to BorrowDirect be managed?  

How will product decisions be made? Is there a product manager*?
How will technical decisions be made? Is there a technical manager?
How will any project work for changes be made? Is there a project manager?
Who will coordinate oversight of the system holistically (product, project, policy, and technical management)?


 
Given the number of variables, stakeholders and affected domains, should we have a coordinating group that offers holistic representation?

Policy
Technology
Collections

 
*Product Management is an organizational lifecycle function dealing with the planning, forecasting, and production of a product or products at all stages of the product lifecycle.
 
Policy Group Discussion:
 
Disclaimer:  It is impossible to reproduce a wide-ranging discussion such as this. The notes below touch on major themes and decisions.
 
The ReCAP Project:  Rob C. noted how ReCAP, the combined storage facility for Columbia, Princeton, and New York Public, has been in a multi-year project with grant funding from IMLS to build an integrated requesting and retrieval system. Before moving forward on that project, they brought together a broad coalition to create a high level map of what their needs were. In other words, it was important to understand the problem before beginning to think about a solution. After much deliberation, they decided to leave the underlying GFA system in place for the time being as they focused on the issues that seemed most valuable to their users: discovery and requesting. Instead of trying to replace all of the moving parts at once, it was deemed more viable to build a better user interface on top of the existing material management system (GFA). Once this was in place, then they could consider whether they wanted to also replace GFA.
 
The Correlation to BorrowDirect:  The ReCAP example is relevant to these discussions in two ways:

User surveys and feedback point to BorrowDirect discovery as the weakest link. Problems accessing material, handling diacritics, and offering true "discovery" are obvious detriments to the existing platform. If we are to focus on the weakest link, the biggest pain point, the public face of BorrowDirect, is the place to start.
The existing Relais availability algorithm, staff processing workflows, and circ integration are generally reliable, and when there are problems, it is invisible to users and quickly fixed. The Relais staff side of the system is more akin to GFA at ReCAP; we may want to improve upon it, but it is stable enough to get the job done.

 
The Relais Contract:  The environmental scan of systems was started because the current Relais contract will be up on June 30, 2017. The Policy Group was interested in having the assessment completed a year ahead of time so that if a system migration was recommended, we would have time to complete it before the current contract expired. Based on discussion on the call, it appeared that some were less worried about the timing of the contract, and more concerned that the group focus on the biggest pain point. It would be easy to renegotiate a contract for a reduced period and even for reduced components (if we built our own discovery and only used Relais availability and request management). 
 
Need More Input:  Meeting this fall with Directors of IT, the Collections Group, and the Policy Group was a good start, but if we are going to consider large-scale development to support BorrowDirect, we should engage members from across these groups in the project. Depending on the expertise in these groups, we may want to expand out to cover Cataloging and Metadata. When we think about discovery and we think about supporting BorrowDirect collections initiatives, we will be best served by consulting experts in these diverse areas.
 
Prioritize Discovery:  The general consensus on the call was to prioritize discovery and to reassess the underlying infrastructure later. By that time, the development underway to support ReCAP could even be one consideration to replace Relais.
 
A Vision for BorrowDirect:  On the March call, Peter will present a vision for BorrowDirect to stimulate discussion and help the group begin to think about where "product management" should reside.