Present: As attached.

1. CALL TO ORDER/WELCOME – Marjorie Hill-Devine. Marjorie called the meeting to order at 10:05. Marjorie mentioned that the Holds Committee has met twice and thanked them for their work.

2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES. The January Minutes will be voted on at the next meeting.

3. TREASURER’S REPORT – Thomas Cesarz. Tom reported that the budget is on target. Marjorie inquired as to how much NOBLE has paid to III so far. Ron stated approximately 35% of the contact.

4. MANAGER’S REPORT – Ronald Gagnon. Ron reported that the ILL Center had a 97.7% fill rate for the first half of the fiscal year, which is up. The annual Regional ILL Center meeting will be held on March 22^nd, 10:00-12:00, at NOBLE. Ron reported that alternatives for the data network are still being looked into. He met with representatives from Bell Atlantic and is meeting with Digital Broadband again. The e-rate application was filed, but haven’t heard back yet for fiscal year 2000. Twice as much money was asked for that was available for fiscal year 2000, so we won’t be getting the second priority funding for hardware and hardware maintenance. Ron also reported that he filed the application for reimbursement for voice line and data line costs for the first half of this fiscal year to Bell Atlantic. Data Comm and UMass discount our bills on an on-going basis, Bell Atlantic does not. Ron announced that he will be speaking to the North Shore Computer Society on March 9^th to discuss the NOBLE project and web catalog access from home.

Martha Driscoll. Martha reported the connectivity issues she was working on with Northern Essex and Bradford College have almost been resolved. She explained that NOBLE interconnects with college LAN’s at NECC, Bradford and MCC, and wants to rework our network with them. She talked to Data Comm and they are looking into bringing the colleges’ phone lines in on the other side of our firewall. Ron explained that there is some money remaining from the telecommunications funds NOBLE received for the three new members and he is going to write to Rob Maier to see if that money can be used for this project. Martha reported the January monthly statistics that went out were done on web management reports. Also more memory was installed in the mail server to help speed up the traffic.

5. MILLENNIUM PROJECT UPDATE. Ron reported NOBLE staff is continuing to work with III and met with some representatives yesterday.

Elizabeth Thomsen. Elizabeth reported she has been working on tech services set up issues. She is still in the process of running our current authority records against the database and is doing some updates. Also the heads of tech services for both the Temp Records and OCLC libraries are scheduled for additional hands-on training this week and next week. These sessions are more review and catch up for outstanding issues. Elizabeth stated that Christine has been working on macros for the OCLC libraries. Christine wrote macros for both the CatME and Passport programs. This will help the OCLC libraries download things and put certain codes into the records that aren’t in the OCLC record, but would like to have in our record. This will help streamline the records. Elizabeth expects to keep having meetings occasionally through the next year and or so as things change. Elizabeth also has been meeting with the Catalog Working Group. There will be some changes to the web catalog and she will be sending out an announcement out about those changes. She also explained one aspect that is useful is the reports that can be generated. The reports can give list of searches by various categories, such as, most popular, searches done by people from home versus searches done in the library. Also can get list of unsuccessful searches. Elizabeth reported that 20% of web catalog searches are from home users, more than any single library. The information from these reports are being used to make some changes to the web catalog. Elizabeth

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stated that the searches that were unsuccessful in a subject search would have been fine in a "keyword" search. There will be a change in the web catalog to make it easier for patrons to do "keyword" searches. The system will keep the data on searches for ten days. Elizabeth stated she is looking into setting up a system that every week will offload that data to another system so it can be imported into Access or Excel and cumulate the data over a period of time. The Catalog Working Group is going to start looking at cataloging related issues and come up with some suggestions for cataloging policy and standards. There is an upcoming meeting with the children’s librarians on February 28^th in the Meeting Room, three staff per library can attend. The purpose is to look at things that can be done with the children’s catalog. There is a separate children’s scope for each library and an "All" children’s scope. Elizabeth will be setting up a session with the public library children’s librarians and public library catalogers. Date to be announced. Also scheduled are hands on training for the inputters. Other sessions that will be scheduled are serials, create list training, and hands on web catalog training. These sessions will be held some time late March, April and May.

Martha Driscoll. Martha reported she has been working on data conversion issues. There were a lot of duplicate patrons. The problem appeared to effect patrons that were registered in both databases. This has been taken care of. Martha will be having a statistics workshop on February 29^th in the Meeting Room. Again three staff per library can attend. She would like to follow it up with hands on sessions in the training room. Martha also reported that authorizations should be coming along soon. The system allows you to password certain functions so staff members can be limited as to what they can get into in MilCirc. She is working on documenting what functions can be passworded. Also there is a Circulation meeting in March. Some issues that will be discussed are notice schedules, loan rules, etc.

Ron discussed a couple of additional issues. At last month's meeting Dee Brennan brought up an issue about "notice" paper. A laser printer was suggested so library staff wouldn't have to remove the pinfeed margins. Dean has looked into a laser printer and they are much more costly to purchase and operate. NOBLE has purchased a better grade of "notice" paper that the margins are easier to remove. We are still looking into other paper alternatives. Also Ron reported that Release 2000 will be available for us to download onto our training system after February 18^th. Once NOBLE staff has gone through it we will make it available to libraries. Release 2000 has a newer version of the Millennium Circulation and Guicat clients. Elizabeth stated that NOBLE staff has had serials training and it is installed on the training system. We are working with Salem State on serials. Elizabeth will be sending out some information on serials so libraries can see how they look on the training system.

Ron Gagnon introduced Dean Baumeister, PC Support Specialist, and gave a brief background on what the program is about. A small part of it is actual site visits and repairs, but the main focus of the program is the software used by our libraries. Ron discussed by using a centralized server this lowers the costs of operating PC's, and it is a more efficient way to provide support services to our libraries. This worked to NOBLE's advantage when we applied for the grant with the MBLC. Overall we received just under $100,000 to support the program for two years. Training for libraries is part of the PC Support Program and will be upcoming. NOBLE will take over the subsidy for the program as of July 1, 2000. The details are being worked out, but there will be a Premium Service that will provide hands-on service through

on-site visits and troubleshooting of PC's through the centralized server. Telephone support will be provided to all members for general consulting, training, planning, purchases and recommendations.

Dean reported that last year he spent 840 hours on site visits working on 270 PC's, which is approximately 3 hours per PC. He spent much of the time setting up new PC's and troubleshooting. He discussed some special projects that he worked on for some libraries.

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Dean began his demonstration of the centralized server and LANDesk Suite. He talked about three main functions that the server does:

1) Automates routine maintenance that should be performed regularly on PC's. Some of these tasks include running utilities such as scandisk and disk defragmenter, and downloading and installing updates to anti-virus software. A PC can be scheduled to perform these tasks at a set day and time. LANDesk can configure this to be done on all the PC's in a library at one time, instead of a library staff having to set it up on each PC individually.

2) Facilitates the loading and configuration of software. LANDesk keeps a database of all the hardware and software on the PC's. A query can be done on the database to figure out what PC's have which software on it. Also it can run reports on the hardware and software, which can be put into spreadsheet programs or e-mailed. Can also make changes to existing software, such as WinU buttons. These changes can be done to all or specified PC's in a library.

3) Speeds up troubleshooting and problem resolution by connecting over the server to the PC with the problem and can diagnosis it without having to go to the library.

Dean announced that he has scheduled hands on training sessions for WinU on April 13^th & April 19^th, and a training session on "Improving Your PC's Performance" on May 4^th, 9^th and 10^th. All these sessions require on-line registration. Also tentatively scheduled on May 3^rd in the Meeting Room is an "Overview of PC Security Products".

7. WEB CATALOG UPDATE - Elizabeth Thomsen. Elizabeth stated she did some revisions to the pages on the Staff Information System from the December 7^th session. On March 7^th there will be another session on the web catalog. Elizabeth gave a demonstration on the web catalog. She showed how the "extended display" option works. She pointed out that the call numbers are a link because they are a link to a call number browse, this link doesn’t bring the patron any further. The call numbers have to be clickable links because they are indexed. Elizabeth reported she started setting up location pages on the training system. She explained how some of the search functions work and are displayed. There is a new keyword search engine that comes with Release 2000. III will replace the current search engine with one they have licensed from Alta Vista. It has new features, such as, the ability to do relevance ranking and pre-limit a search. On April 11^th there will be a session on creating links to the web catalog. It will be in the Meeting Room so three people per library can attend. Having very minimal knowledge of HTML will be required. More information will be sent out.

8. ADJOURNMENT. Sue Koronowski made a motion to adjourn, Linda Weinstein seconded the motion. The meeting was adjourned at 12:00.

Respectfully submitted,

Sue Koronowski