Notes from 12/5/03 GPLNE Discussion of Consultant Proposal

Possible functions of consultant:

1. Facilitate preservation, particularly of the many older collections

    which exist in New England.
     A. a consultant could inventory these collections and document their

          significance.

B.     Highlight the specialized expertise needed to access them.

C.     Educate the director and others about their value, urge that measures be
taken to preserve them (and certainly caution against discarding valuable materials).

D.     Perhaps the consultant could even appraise the monetary value of these collections.

2. Seek and write grants.

3. Provide cataloging and technical expertise.

4. Serve as "efficiency expert"; help staff do the most with scarce

    resources.

5. Trainer.

A.     Perhaps train entire staff, not just staff with documents duties. Another person

      suggested that consultant could do "train the trainer" for staff, or actually train

      staff of libraries not in FDLP that are located in the region.

B.     Act as a mentor and trainer for new government documents librarians.

6.      Advocate

1. The consultant should advocate for freedom of information and access roles of the FDLP.
2. Libraries and the LPS should be putting more emphasis on the
   larger community outside of the academic community--i.e., people with
   limited or no access to computers, who are not computer-literate and who
   need extra help in accessing government materials electronically.
3. Work to enhance cooperation between  neighboring depositories, and state and regional organizations

Other notes:

There was some discussion about what states will actually make up the
region. Could perhaps New York state be included in a NY/New England
region, and would including New York be an overall advantage or
disadvantage to New England depositories?  (It is possible that GPO already has in mind how the regions will be organized).

New England has approximately 94 depositories in New England,  and New Hampshire, Vermont, and Rhode Island do not have their own regional libraries. This should be emphasized in the proposal.  Would bringing New York into this mix be too much for one consultant?

If the consultant is to serve for two years, then return to his/her own institution, this would put a lot of pressure on the consultant to fulfill all the requirements of the position.

Since different libraries have different needs, could we have two consultants, each specializing in a particular function, rather than one consultant who might have to be jack of all trades? There should be an emphasis on flexibility in the program

The issue was also raised of having GPO serve as a broker for buying commercial products for us as a group, such as NELINET and other organizations have done. Not sure how this fits/would fit into the proposal.

It is recommended we communicate with other libraries who have submitted proposals.  Obtain proposals from them to help us in creating our own.

We need to find out what, if any, are the guidelines we should be following as we pursue the development of a proposal for a consultant.