The CC-PLUS project is nearing the completion of the first year of its current two year IMLS-funded project grant. The grant project is scheduled to end in September 2020.

The Product Management Team has built an extensive list of requirements that will be used as the project is developed. Wireframe mock-ups of the interface were shared with the Steering Committee, and planning for a pilot/road test will be discussed soon. The UX Developer originally contracted for this project has stepped away due to other commitments, and a new contractor is being recruited for this role.

Lorraine Estelle provided an update about the development of the COUNTER consortial tool, which is still in progress, noting that the annual COUNTER survey had highlighted the great need consortia have for these tools. Jo Lambert shared a draft letter about COUNTER R5 that would encourage publishers and content providers to achieve compliance with the Steering Committee.

The Steering Committee had an initial discussion about opportunities and challenges related to the future CC-PLUS business model, such as the sustainability of the community and tools being created, a long-term home for the project and software, and service providers and funding models. The conversation included developing a common understanding of the vision of CC-PLUS, the expectations and roles of the community after the grant has concluded, and explored sustainability options and possible roles for ICOLC or other organizations.

CC-PLUS Advisory Board members voted to approve a formal partnership with ConsortiaManager, and Tejs Grevstad joined the group for their meeting on August 1, 2019. The Product Management Team has developed personas to guide defining requirements, including consortial staff member, e-resources librarian, library administrator, and systems administrator. It has been proposed to add a consortia board or collection development committee member, who would need to be able to see all libraries’ data. The Project Management Team has also developed draft mock-ups for the opening page, reports section, and profiles. Restated data is the next area for their discussion. The Advisory Board is currently voting on whether or not the Apache 2.0 open source software license will be used for CC-PLUS.

CC–PLUS Advisory Board members held meetings on September 28 and November 2, 2017.  Recent efforts have focused on the development of use cases, such as CC–PLUS as a consortial statistics portal, institutional statistics portal, and SUSHI harvester, as well as the tasks that would be associated with these use cases.  Scott Ross has developed draft wireframes for the administrative side of the software based on these use cases.  Sample pages include login, user administration, institutional administration, provider administration, report listings, alert settings, and more.  The system is being developed to support multiple consortia simultaneously.

CC-PLUS Advisory Board members held a meeting on August 24, 2017.  During this meeting, the Board reviewed a preliminary diagram of the software components and a draft communication plan.  Surveys and webinars are planned to gather feedback from ICOLC as the project progresses.  The Board also reviewed a recommendation by Scott Ross that PALCI contract with Hostwinds for a server with backup and security services for hosting the proof of concept software.  Exciting news learned at this meeting was that the project will be able to use code developed by Scott Ross for another library.  This code focuses on the ingest and validation of data, and is complementary to the presentation layer code provided by Jisc.  Use Cases/Personas will be prepared for the next meeting.

CC-PLUS Advisory Board members attended a webinar on July 19^th provided by Jisc about the Consortial Reporting functionality of JUSP.  The Board was impressed by the system and its user interface, and the group is excited to see it translated into a more generic consortial environment.

An initial set of code for JUSP was received by PALCI on July 21^st.  As the bulk of the code is a presentation layer and sample database tables, much of the development work will need to focus on harvesting, ingesting, and cleaning data.

The kickoff meeting for the project took place on July 26^th.  During this meeting, the Board discussed the JUSP webinar, project plan, and project schedule, as well as implications for COUNTER Code of Practice Release 5.

Questions? Contact Jill Morris (jill@palci.org).