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SCELC Conspectus
History and Structure
- Founded by the University of Southern California in 1986
- Original name was Electronic Guildhall of Knowledge
- Outreach to four academic libraries by USC: California Lutheran, Claremont, Pepperdine & Whittier College
- Core activities were networking and professional development, with speakers at directors meetings and one or two member conferences each year
- An “opt-in” consortium, meaning that members and affiliates participate in licenses and programs based on their own understanding of the best interests of their individual libraries
- “All-in” deals or activities are rare
- Incorporated as a 501(C)(3) nonprofit in 2001
- All governance documents were updated in 2018
- New Board Handbook completed in 2018
- Staff FTE of nine, including the Executive Director
- SCELC Board and Staff Organizational Chart (as of March 2023)
- Transition from a university-based operation to independent office in Downtown Los Angeles in 2011
- A generous staff benefits program was established with the transition from university affiliation to independent operation
- Management improvements implemented over the years with help from consultants
- Management team meets weekly, and staff meets most weeks after management team establishes staff meeting agenda
- SCELC finances are robust
- Reserve fund is in excess of the equivalent of one year’s operating budget
- Operational budget funded principally by our Administrative Surcharge business model
- Each licensing or purchase transaction includes an average overhead charge of ~3%
- Master Renewal model
- Similar to a subscription agent, SCELC bills each library for their subscriptions in aggregate prior to the close of each fiscal year
- Reconciliation invoices, sent three times/year, cover any price changes for libraries that are not yet available when master renewals are issued
- SCELC banks substantial funds and is thus able to pay all vendor invoices within 30 days, making SCELC a highly desirable consortium partner for vendors
- Developed a custom consortial business system called Wisdom in 2004
- Wisdom allowed SCELC to quickly scale its licensing business and manage exponential double-digit growth for many years
- Wisdom enabled SCELC to produce and consolidate all orders, invoices, and vendor and member contact information
- Upgraded our business system to ConsortiaManager in 2018 to take advantage of a more modern cloud-based system
- Established Affiliate fees to help underwrite additional overhead, allowing non-member libraries to license through SCELC
- Interest earning approach to banking has produced additional revenue
- Board Finance Committee provides oversight of SCELC budget
Licensing Services
- Licensing activity generates most of the revenue that funds the operational budget
- Licensing volume places SCELC in the top tier of licensing consortia in the US
- Centralized ordering and billing
- Centralized invoicing
- Order management
- Price quotes
- Affiliate program was established by the SCELC Board in November 2006
- Permits non-Member libraries to license through SCELC for a small additional fee
Programs and Initiatives
- Reciprocal Interlibrary Loan Program (RILL)
- Established in 2002
- Currently ~70 participating libraries
- Exploring pathways to enhance this program with a possible union catalog and current resource sharing tools, such as Project ReShare or Rapido
- Reciprocal Faculty Borrowing Program (RFBP)
- Established in 2002
- A companion program to RILL which allows faculty pickup of returnable items at any participating SCELC library
- SCELC RapidILL Pod established in 2017
- Camino patron initiated borrowing network
- This program is currently in hiatus due to the pandemic and budget constraints at some former participant libraries
- May be revived in conjunction with possible enhancements to RILL
- Established as a member benefit in 2015-16 with a cohort of 14 libraries
- Second cohort of 12 libraries was launched one year later
- Third group of libraries began participating in 2019, including Affiliate libraries (see below)
- A total of 34 libraries are now active in SCELC Shared Print Program
- Utilized SCS GreenGlass software to establish collection comparables and retention commitments
- Shared Print program was expanded to Affiliate libraries in 2018-19
- Currently eight CSU campuses have participated or are planning to join
- Atla libraries are part of our next Shared Print outreach effort
- Shared Print Committee provides oversight for the Shared Print Program
- SCELC is a Founding member of the Partnership for Shared Book Collections
- Scholarly Communication Task Force established in 2015-16 evolved into a new SCELC committee, the Scholarly Communication Committee (SCC)
- Subcommittees of the SCC reflect major areas of concentration:
- OER program - SCELC is an active member and participant in the Open Education Network (OEN) program for open textbooks
- Institutional Repository subcommittee, focusing on possible use of Hyku as a consortial repository solution
- Open Access, focused especially on transformative / open access agreements
- SCC also provides survey data and reports to SCELC to encourage further exploration of the transition of SCELC’s business to these new models
- Under the guidance of staff liaison and Research and Scholarly Communications Director, develop outreach and educational content and programming in order to advocate for and develop a sustainable, community-driven approach towards all things Open within SCELC
- SCELC worked with JSTOR in 2019 to establish a shared ebook collection
- 69 libraries opted to participate in the program
- This program is led by a Collaborative Collections Steering Committee
- The staff lead is the Research and Scholarly Communications Director
- The Callimachus digital library was established in ~2010
- SCELC purchased an unlimited license to OCLC ContentDM and then redistributed shared access to the participating libraries at a fraction of the cost ($2500/library)
- Ongoing maintenance costs are also covered by SCELC
- 17 active SCELC libraries in Callimachus, hosting ~650GB of local archival content
- Beginning in 2008-2009, these are ongoing programs that were originally established to repurpose SCELC’s annual budget surplus, which exceeded the amount needed to meet our annual fiscal reserve goal
- Grants
- Conference grants have been provided for librarians to attend a specific library conference for the first time
- These grants are were redefined as Professional Development Grants during the 2020 pandemic, due to the suspension of in-person conferences
- Professional Development Grants are offered three times a year
- Scholarships
- SCELC provides scholarships to deserving library para-professionals working in a SCELC member library and enrolled in a library school master’s degree program
- Two amounts: $1000 for most scholarships, plus one $1500 Locke Morrissey Scholarship awarded to the highest ranked applicant
- The SCELC Program and Professional Development Committee (PPDC) administers the grant and scholarship application process, and has developed scoring rubrics for accepting, ranking, and evaluating applications
- SCELC provides scholarships to deserving library para-professionals working in a SCELC member library and enrolled in a library school master’s degree program
- Grants
- In addition to grants to individuals, in 2012 SCELC established a grant program for SCELC member libraries to help fund or provide seed money for new and innovative library projects
- One of the goals of the SPIF program is to encourage the applicant libraries to develop projects that will engender broader collaboration with other SCELC libraries, thereby strengthening consortial connections and building a stronger foundation for our membership
- The Executive Committee of the SCELC Board oversees the SPIF program and evaluates applications for recommendation to the greater SCELC Board
Professional Development
- An annual event, typically held in March, made up of four day-long events:
- Research Day
- Colloquium
- Vendor Day
- Committee Day
- SCELCapalooza events focus on a variety of topics
- Research Day, programmed by librarians at Loyola Marymount University, focuses on training librarians to do quantitative and qualitative research
- Colloquium, programmed by the PPDC, brings focus to cutting edge topics via keynote speakers and panels, as well as providing professional development opportunities
- SCELC Vendor Day is probably the largest consortium-run event of its kind. Approximately 50 vendors are invited to exhibit and present interactive sessions at this live event. With access to a facility with 22 classrooms, SCELC is able to offer over 120 different sessions during the day, as well as an exhibit hall. Typically 100 vendor representatives and 200 librarians from more than 70 different libraries are represented. (Due to the pandemic this event will be virtual in 2021.)
- Committee Day is designed to provide an opportunity for multiple SCELC committees to meet face to face and network with other committees over the course of the day
SCELC is a founding participant in the Professional Development Alliance (PDA), a new federation of multiple consortia who have agreed to provide multiple professional development virtual programs through the year. Both SCELC staff and SCELC librarians are encouraged to offer PDA programs
- Channel One was launched at the beginning of the pandemic lockdown in early April 2020. Each Friday morning, for one hour, librarians were invited to join in an hour-long conversation on different topics. Topics have included public health approaches to reopening libraries, dealing with staff morale issues, copyright issues , open educational resources, and many more. Typical attendance might represent as few as 25 libraries to as many as 140 libraries. Now bi-weekly, Channel One has revolutionized SCELC’s approach to enabling better communication among our very diverse and far-flung libraries
- Office Hours with the Executive Director meets monthly, and is dedicated to providing a slightly more formal version of Channel One’s forum for discussion exclusively among library directors, committee chairs, and other leadership-focused parts of the SCELC Community.
- SCELC eResource Hackfest, now led by the Library Relations Manager, was first created by two of SCELC’s libraries via a SPIF Grant. It provides an intensive, two-day, in-person collaborative event focused on intensive problem solving and discussion of issues related to eResource management.
- Virtual Lightning Talks - Lightning round presentations were incorporated into the Colloquium program several years ago. A recent successful innovation was to migrate these to a separate virtual platform, as a supplement to the traditional Lightning Talks held at SCELCapalooza.
SCELC has long sought to join forces with other consortia to achieve mutual goals and increase negotiating leverage. These efforts have included:
- Participation in ICOLC meetings and leadership on the ICOLC Coordinating Committee
- Open Access collaborations are currently being explored with the California State University system, and the California Digital Library/University of California system
- SCELC’s has been part of shared print collaboration via the PAN (Print Archiving Network) meetings at ALA and now as a founding member of the Partnership for Shared Book Collections
- To advance SCELC recognition in the library community, the Executive Director has presented at numerous conferences, such as ALA, ACRL, the Charleston Conference, IFLA, and more
Over the years SCELC has budgeted funds specifically to support other conferences or awards. Some examples are:
- ACRL CLS (College Libraries Section) Innovation in College Librarianship Award
- Conference sponsorships to underwrite costs, such as Digital Initiatives Symposium, the ACRL Job Board (at conference), CARL Conference, ICOLC North American meetings, etc.