Present: As attached.

1. CALL TO ORDER/WELCOME – Deborah Abraham. Marjorie Hill-Devine was not present at the meeting, therefore vice president Deborah Abraham chaired the meeting. The meeting was called to order at 10:05.

2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES. Minutes from the October 21, 1999 and December 16, 1999 meetings were voted on. Tom Cesarz made a motion to accept the both minutes; Dee Brennan seconded the motion. The vote was unanimous.

3. BUDGET REPORT – Thomas Cesarz. Tom reported that we are half way through the fiscal year and are right on target at 50% of the operating budget.

4. MANAGER’S REPORT – Ronald Gagnon. Ron reported that EBSCO has offered NOBLE an opportunity for five librarians to attend a feed back session this coming Monday. A plain paper fax was purchased and installed last month. Ron attended the NMRLS Board meeting yesterday and reported on several issues. NMRLS approved the extension of our ILL contract through June 2001. The only change was in fiscal year 2001 in which we will facilitate the supplying of materials through OCLC. Currently we are not listed as a supplier on OCLC, but we do get some paper requests which we forward to libraries to fill at their discretion. Our contract will be $2,000 more to provide this service. The Region is evaluating the ILL service later this fiscal year in preparation for issuing an RFP in FY 2001 for FY 2002. Our ILL Librarian, Marilyn Graves, has been appointed to the NMRLS ILL Committee which is chaired by Doug Rendell. Marilyn also was on a NMRLS sub-committee in evaluating the delivery bids and is working with Andover’s ILL Librarian to come up with some region-wide standards for the ILL centers. Also at the meeting there was a presentation on the delivery contract and it appears the same delivery vendor will be awarded the contract. One change in the contract is that the vendor will come to NOBLE and MVLC first then go to two separate sorting sites, and then on to our libraries. This means that almost all NOBLE libraries should get same day delivery.

PC Support Program – Ron reported on an update of the program. So far it has been experimental for NOBLE and MBLC. It is a subsidized program under a MBLC grant for the first twenty months, which ends June 30, 2000. At this point there have been no minimum requirements, any problem or issue that arises is resolved. NOBLE’s subsidy will began July 1^st, 2000. New guidelines for the program will be developed. Also Ron has asked Dean Baumeister to attend next month’s Members meeting to provide some information on the program and LANDesk.

Dee asked about ILL statistics from MVLC. There was some discussion on how OCLC and ILL works. Ron announced that Pam Kahl, the director at Monserrat, is resigning as of today. SAILS on the South Shore has selected SIRSI as their vendor and has begun negotiations. MVLC has sent out an RFP for a new vendor and have narrowed it down to four. Ron reported that Elizabeth went to ALA Mid-Winter meeting and spent some time with III and she will discuss those issues later on in the agenda.

5. MILLENNIUM PROJECT – Ron Gagnon. Ron stated that it has been one month since we came up on the new system. There are some issues that III has been working with our staff to resolve. Overall the migration went well. The catalog came up without any problems and the PC’s are working out fine. There were some problems with the data transfer and holds. There has been a lot of training with more scheduled. The statistics and reports that needed will be going out shortly.

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Martha Driscoll - Martha reported that practically all data from the Geac system was converted over, but there were some complications. There were some pieces of data that were missed in the migration. A lot of the data was reloaded and the missing data went in the system except the transactions that were associated with the records that were missing could not be re-created. Martha has error logs and is working with III to track the material. Martha also reported that the three new colleges only gave NOBLE bibliographic and item records. That migration went smoothly. There are minor data problems that are being dealt with as they come up. One issue is the "Jr." indexing. The Geac system had a separate field for suffixes, the III system does not, so the "Jr." went in the wrong place. III has been responsive and they changed all data in the patron records to reflect the way we wanted it. Martha reported that the P’s and Q’s sessions were held. Many of the questions were on "holds". III couldn’t do local holds so when the holds were migrated they were all system wide holds. These had to be manually changed to local holds. Many of the questions and problems are specific procedural issues. The daily notices are now being run on a regular schedule. The monthly statistics are coming along more slowly at this point. Martha handed out monthly statistics for the three-quarters of December. The first two weeks are on the Geac system, and December 20th-December 31^st from the Innopac system. The week of down time isn't available yet. Martha asked III for the raw data file to get the statistics for that week. Martha mentioned that each library can get their monthly statistics by using the web management reports on the Innopac. She handed out the URL for it.

Elizabeth Thomsen - Elizabeth reported that while at ALA Mid-Winter she went to III booth and saw a demo of new features in Release 2000. III is working towards having their system interact with other systems and programs. Elizabeth did an overhead demonstration on the catalog. She discussed that an option exists to have "view only" Guicat. Elizabeth sent by e-mail directions on using and searching the Innopac System and will also put it on the Staff Information System. Elizabeth mentioned that we will need the IP addresses of the workstations that Guicat will be run on. John Beauregard inquired about being able get to MARC records from the web catalog. Elizabeth explained the option is off. The Catalog Working Group felt this was more a staff oriented item rather than a patron item and they were trying to eliminate extra buttons along the top to make it be less confusing for patrons. Now that the system is up, this and other issues will be discussed again. Elizabeth also did a demonstration on a bar code reader. It is capable of reading an ISBN as well as a bar code. Information has been distributed and being put on the Staff Information System as to how to configure it to read both bar codes and ISBN.

Elizabeth stated that Web Management Reports is coming up on the system today. She did a demonstration on it. The reports can be downloaded for use in another program. The reports do need passwords, which Martha set up. Each library can also limit staff access to certain reports by passwording. Elizabeth reviewed some of the time periods that the reports can be generated. Also charts and graphs can be produced. Elizabeth sent a message to the "reference" group telling how the system can do statistics and reports for the past ten days of web catalog activity. She stated it is being looked into ways to systematically every week download this somewhere else so will gradually build up cumulative information. Elizabeth explained the system can count what indexes and searches people are using. Also it will retain the actual searches and sort them in various ways. Each library has their own range of IP addresses; therefore different groups can be created within a library by IP address. There will be training for web management reports coming up.

Elizabeth reported that the III trainer is here training NOBLE staff on serials. We will be working with Salem State as our pilot project. Also Elizabeth reported that Release 2000 came out in December and once NOBLE’s serials training is done we will discuss with our implementation consultant when we should move to Release 2000. Release 2000 will be installed on the training system first so it can be assessed.

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Elizabeth talked about some of the changes in Release 2000:

1) MilCirc version 2, currently have MilCirc Release 1.

2) Priority for local holds over system holds.

3) Course reserves moves into Millenium Circ.

4) New search engine. III is replacing their old search engine with one they have licensed from

Alta Vista. It is faster and has more operators and ways of doing searches.

5) Guicat version 3.

Elizabeth stated at some point there would be training for people that use the create list Review File program. This program lets you go in and specify what information you want on patrons and generate reports or put in files. Elizabeth explained that the standard Innopac system comes with forty review files, NOBLE bought 160. Also Millennium acquisitions are coming up and want to be able to have it out for July 1^st. After MilCirc 2, MilCirc 3 will be coming out. In that version and beyond, ILL and materials bookings will move into the Millennium environment. Also in MilCirc 3 is something new called "My Millennium", which is similar to how "My Yahoo" works. The last item to come in late 2000 or early 2001 will be Millennium Tech Services which is the program that will replace Guicat. Dennis asked when we would go to Release 2000. Ron explained that NOBLE staff needs to go through training with III and through the P’s and Q’s. Possibly in the spring but don’t want to promise it too soon.

Elizabeth went over the training schedule on the calendar. The heads of tech services from the Temp Records and OCLC libraries had training. They are scheduled to come back. Also there are sessions scheduled for inputters, children’s librarians, web catalog, tech services, and circulation. All these dates are on the calendars on the Staff Information System.

There was some general discussion about ILL’s and guidelines for borrowing now that the public and college databases have merged.

6. TELECOMMUNICATIONS UPDATE – Ron Gagnon. Ron filed the e-rate form for FY 2001. He handed out a summary sheet of what was applied for and reviewed it. Also he explained that our current office phones are getting to the point of needing replacement, and is looking into a new phone system that has voice mail, direct extensions, etc. This is a potentially funded item through the e-rate. Also included in the e-rate request is a backbone switch to improve output in the computer room. And there have been some issues with the e-mail server being slow so also included in the e-rate request was funding for a new server.

Ron also reported that in December he and Martha met with Digital Broadband Communications. We currently go through US Telecenters as an agent for Bell Atlantic. DataComm has had meetings with Digital Broadband also and has recommended them. They use DSL which gets more capacity over existing copper using different technology, therefore get more bandwidth cheaper. Digital Broadband was just awarded the contract for Massachusetts Community Network though. This is a statewide project that will bring Internet into schools very cheaply. Accordingly they would not be able to meet our timing for this fiscal year. Ron discussed this with Paul Kissman and Rob Maier and they agreed it would be best to stay with our existing bandwidth with Bell Atlantic, which is what we applied our e-rate funding for our current fiscal year. Ron explained that colleges are not eligible for e-rate funding. Our public libraries take up 65% of our data channels, therefore that is what NOBLE is eligible for e-rate funding. The public library communities' e-rate discounts are averaged which comes out to 47% funding NOBLE receives.

7. ADJOURNMENT. The meeting was adjourned at 12:15.

Respectfully submitted,

Sue Koronowski