Present: As attached.

1. CALL TO ORDER/WELCOME - Marjorie Hill-Devine. Marjorie called the meeting to order at 10:10. Carol Gray, acting director of Gloucester, announced that David McArdle would be returning as library director of the Sawyer Free Library.

2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES. The Minutes from the October 19^th meeting were voted on. Tom Scully made a motion to accept the Minutes; John Beauregard seconded the motion. The vote was unanimous.

3. TREASURER’S REPORT - Tom Scully. Tom reported that almost half way through the fiscal year spending is at 35% of the budget. Camilla Glynn made a motion to accept the report; Carol Gray seconded the motion. The vote was unanimous.

4. MANAGER’S REPORT - Ronald Gagnon. Ron passed around the NOBLE Member Directory for updating. Ron stated it has been one year since coming up on the Millennium system. Update "D" was just loaded on the main system this week. Ron reported on the telecommunication systems update that is ongoing. He explained we switched to a frame relay network with Verizon from our dedicated point to point network during the summer and early fall. It has not been reliable and takes a long time for problems to get resolved. Alternatives are being looked into. The state just signed a contract for a new group of telecommunications services, which includes dedicated point to point networks. The contract goes into effect January 1^st. Ron has asked our Verizon representative to look into pricing for switching back to a point to point network under the state contract. Tom Scully suggested inviting an upper management marketing representative from Verizon come to the next Member’s meeting to hear the dissatisfaction. The discussion continued. Ron announced a new PC Support Specialist has been hired, George Lally. He began on December 4^th. In Elizabeth’s absence Ron reported on training. Several Create Lists sessions for different groups were over the past months. Next month she will be talking about "Reportster", which automates the formatting of certain reports, particular reports that are done on a regular basis.

Martha Driscoll. Martha reported that Update "D" was loaded which is an update to Millennium Circulation and Guicat It was first tested on the training system and no problems appeared for MilCirc, but a few existed for Guicat which were documented and sent out to the Tech Services Reps. An improvement in MilCirc is it can now print hold slips. Martha reported that she met with reps from Verizon and Dimension Data at Montserrat College to try and resolve their ongoing problems with their communication link. During the meeting it was determined that many of libraries that are having ongoing problems were going through some temporary routers that were set up at NOBLE in August. These routers are older and smaller and were intended to be there just a couple of weeks. The upgrade has been going slower than anticipated so everyone was switched back to NOBLE’s main router on the 100 MB network.

Martha reported that at the Executive Board meeting it came up that libraries would like to compare their monthly statistics to other libraries. Martha did a demonstration of a web management report that shows the entire systems circulation. She will be posting it to the Staff Information System with links to the Excel documents.

Ron reported that the EBSCO contract has been renewed. He was able to negotiate a 6% discount with a three-year contract, which is a savings of $210 per year per library. This discount will be reflected in the billing cycle for next fiscal year. Also, contracts were signed with the MBLC for the Telecommunications

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and Virtual Catalog grants. The audit is complete as well as the tax returns and was also just signed by Marjorie and Tom. Ron also reported that staff is continuing to talk with Innovative about problems. The III Circulation Product Manager was scheduled to meet with NOBLE staff yesterday but didn’t make it due to the weather. The meeting will be rescheduled. NOBLE staff went out to CW/MARS to see how things are implemented in their network. Ron stated that although they started with III several months ahead of us, they aren’t at the point that NOBLE is and have not implemented things NOBLE has. Hugh Williams asked about the serials and acquisitions module. Ron explained that we have been working on serials with Salem State for several months and have begun working with Middlesex now. Serials is close to being ready for release, possibly in the spring. Acquisitions is further down, it won’t be this fiscal year. Mainly because acquisitions is in Release 1 in Millennium and prefer to wait for a later release.

John Beauregard mentioned that it still takes a long time to log into Pine. Martha stated she will look into it, but explained the current mail server is very slow and the new server is waiting for a bad tape drive to replaced and isn’t on line yet.

5. WORKING GROUP UPDATES.

Electronic Resources Working Group (ERWG) - Camilla Glynn, chairperson, reported that ERWG has met five times and have been discussing three different issues.

1) "856 Field" - this is the MARC field in MARC records that allows you to link to the web. Elizabeth and Christine have been going through and editing them. Elizabeth also met with OCLC librarians to reinforce the guidelines.

2) EBSCO Titles of the Electronic Journals - last week Elizabeth began loading the titles into the NOBLE catalog. MasterFile Premier titles are being done first.

3) Net Library - there is a contract at the statewide level through EBSCO to provide "Net Library". The contract is negotiated and funded through the Boston Public Library. ERWG will meet again the first of February to discuss electronic books.

New Members Committee - Tom Scully reported they have not met since the last Executive Board meeting, but will be arranging one with the other committee members.

Database Quality Working Group - Ron reported the group has had two meetings. There is a lot going on as far as database clean up. Other issues being discussed are the "856" field and serials records.

Brochure Committee - Marjorie reported that the designing of the new brochure has been awarded to Extra Mile from Pepperell. The designer will be away for a couple of months leaving at the end of January, but the process will be started before then. The goal is for a product release in the spring. There is the possibility of a new logo. Depending on how the design comes out that’s an issue the committee may look into.

6. IMPROVED INTRA-NOBLE REQUESTS WITH PICKLIST - Martha Driscoll. Martha passed around a handout, "Consortium Holds in the Innopac". She explained that currently to request material that is on the shelf in another library an e-mail message is sent to the library and a staff member monitors the e-mail. Martha explained that the system is designed to print a Picklist. This happens when a hold is placed on something, the system sees it on the shelf and it sends a Picklist to a library. The library prints out the Picklist, takes the item off the shelf, checks it out and sends it to the requesting library. The system takes care of finding an available copy. Suburban Library System in Chicago had custom programming done to improve the Picklist process for them. This software is now in general release and has been implemented and tested on our training system. One disadvantage was the format of the Picklist. Martha reviewed the process and procedures in the handout. She stated they haven’t found any flaws in the

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software or any reason not to implement it. Items appear immediately and stay there until a staff member does something with it. It will be discussed at the Circulation Meeting on January 11^th. Martha stated sometime after the Circ meeting we would have III turn this feature on and send out documentation to the appropriate people. This is for staff use only at this point, not patrons.

7. SELF-SERVICE CATALOG FUNCTIONS: RENEWALS AND ACCOUNT REVIEW-

Martha did an overhead presentation in the web catalog on the training system. She explained a new function, "View Your Patron Record", can be turned on in the system so patrons can view their record from home or the library. The system is set up so patrons must have a PIN to get into their record. The circulation staff in the library will assign the initial PIN, but the patron can change it after they first sign on. The patron will be able to view what they have checked out and if they owe any charges. Also patrons will be able to renew items and view their "holds". If a patron owes fines or there is some problem with their record a message will appear and stop them from renewing. Also when a patron logs off the cache automatically clears so another patron can’t use the "Back" button in Netscape to see the previous patron’s record.

Lorraine Jackson announced that Beverly, Peabody, Danvers, and Salem are having a joint ad placed in the Loews Movie Theatre. The ad will appear on the screen before movies begin.

8. ADJOURNMENT. Carol Gray made a motion to adjourn, Doug Rendell seconded the motion. The meeting adjourned at 12:00.

Respectfully submitted,

Doug Rendell For Mary Rose Quinn, Secretary