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Heads of Resource Management
The Boston Library Consortium [BLC] Heads of Resource Management [HRM] Committee is formally charged by the Board of Directors and is responsible for establishing goals and making recommendations to the BLC Board and Executive Director regarding information resource issues that the committee raises or that the Board assigns to the Committee. Types of projects assigned by the Board may include:
- Collection development, management and assessment projects and policies involving the consortium or a subset of its members in ways that encourage cooperative purchasing and facilitate the notion of shared collections
- Work with appropriate vendors and publishers on behalf of the BLC
- Monitor and assess MOUs and retention agreements in place within the consortium
- Investigate new tools that have the potential to improve user service across the consortium (i.e., GIST, pay-per-view, “Get It Now”)
- Monitor consortial collection projects
HRM is particularly interested in creating projects that have a significant and tangible impact on information resource management and access to library materials.
Membership
Members of the Committee will be selected by BLC library directors based on their expertise and their role as “head” of resource management within their institution. All institutions are expected to have a representative on the Committee and each representative is expected to gather input on behalf of all relevant divisions, branches, autonomous libraries, etc., and speak for their institution. The BLC Executive Director will be an ex-officio member of the Committee. HRM will have co-chairs, recommended by the Board, who rotate at regular intervals, with overall responsibility for insuring that minutes, policies, retention agreements and other information needed by the BLC membership as well as by other BLC communities is maintained accurate and accessible.
Minutes
The Committee should meet regularly, up to three times per semester. Telephone or other types of virtual participation will be available for those unable to attend in person. Minutes should be recorded for each meeting and made available to the full BLC membership. See the members only wiki site for access to the HRM minutes.
Cooperative Collection Agreements
Over the years, the Heads of Resource Management has worked closely with a number of the other subject related BLC communities to develop cooperative collection agreements to define retention for monographs with the goal of preserving access to the scholarly record and supporting the core resource sharing mission of the BLC. In May, 2011 the group developed Best Practices for Monograph Deselection with this goal. A review of the Best Practices in September of 2017 concluded that they were no longer appropriate or feasible, particularly since many of the BLC libraries actively participate in the Eastern Academic Scholars' Trust (EAST) which support de-selection and withdrawal of print materials based on retention commitments made by the particpating Retention Partners.
In addition to their commitment to cooperative collection agreements through EAST, a number of the BLC libraries have agreed to collaboratively retain chemistry science indexes and abstracts as well as chemistry journals. For more information, see details on the Chemistry COI web page.