Present: As attached.

1. CALL TO ORDER /WELCOME - Marjorie Hill-Devine. Marjorie called the meeting to order at 10:05.

2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES. The Minutes from the January 18th meeting were voted on. Bonnie Strong made a motion to approve the Minutes; Camilla Glynn seconded the motion. The vote was unanimous.

3. TREASURER’S REPORT - Tom Scully. Tom reported that spending is on target at 54% of the budget expended. Tom Cesarz made a motion to accept the report; Camilla Glynn seconded the motion. The vote was unanimous.

4. MANAGER’S REPORT - Ron Gagnon. Ron discussed that the state budget for next fiscal year is coming up. He attended the Ways and Means Day at the State House earlier this month, as well as the Network Administrators meeting. He explained we need to be aware of how the budget will effect state funding NOBLE receives through the MA Board of Library Commissioners for resource sharing, telecommunications, and virtual catalog grants. Ron and Elizabeth also attended a meeting at the Boston Public Library with other networks and regions to go over what databases were being bought locally and statewide, and prioritizing them in case there are any budget cuts. Ron stated NOBLE would make its annual contribution to the legislative breakfast being held on March 30^th at Billerica. Ron reported that the local account rep from Innovative met with NOBLE staff to discuss consortia issues. Also we received the last bill for the new system upgrade. Our rep from Verizon met with Executive Board at their last meeting to discuss the on-going problems libraries are having and customer support issues. Ron stated he sent a letter to the FCC in response to Verizon’s application for long distance service in Massachusetts. In addition he also sent a letter to the FCC against the filtering of Internet in libraries. On April 1^st-3^rd Ron and Elizabeth will be attending an Innovative Consortia Meeting in Chicago.

Elizabeth Thomsen. Elizabeth reported on upcoming meetings. There is an EBSCO Session on February 27^th, Create List Help Session on February 28^th, Serials Session on March 7^th, and Web Catalog Session on March 21^st. She has been working on Web Catalog issues. The new keyword search engine has been installed on the training system, but some configurations still need to be done. This will be ready for the Web Catalog meeting. Elizabeth stated she wants to have our outstanding web catalog issues and enhancements documented to present at the Consortia Meeting in April. Elizabeth will be scheduling hands on training for EBSCO in April and May, and for Web Catalog training in June and July.

Martha Driscoll. Martha stated that George, Michele, and she had two days of LANDesk training. LANDesk is the server that allows for remote management of PCs acquired with the PC Support grant. She reported that patron services has been in place since the beginning of February and as of yesterday there were 586 renewals on the web. The Picklist has been in place since February 12^th and is going well. Hold/cancellations notices are produced by the system if the last item is missing or unavailable. These notices are not intended to be mailed to a patron, but for library staff use so they know they need to act on that item. The notices are being printed on yellow paper so they stand out from patron notices.

Ron also stated that the North Shore Chamber of Commerce is having a Tech Symposium at the Sheraton Ferncroft on February 28^th. NOBLE will be helping out with a library booth arranged by Gwen Charter of Peabody.

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Electronic Resources Working Group - Camilla Glynn reported ERWG met on February 8^th and are continuing their discussions on electronic books. She stated the MARC records for the netLibrary statewide project has been ordered and will go in the catalog when they come. Also a goal for July 1^st is to have titles from all the databases put in OPAC in some MARC record form. Camilla stated that three of the four issues they were working on; databases, journal titles in the full text databases, and E-Books have been worked through. The fourth issue, web resources, will be discussed at the next meeting.

Database Quality Working Group - Elizabeth reported they have been working on several catalog-related issues and will have more to report after their next meeting.

Brochure Committee - Ron explained that the first contract we received from Susan Edwards of Extra Mile Design was much more involved then what NOBLE’s needs were and the price was over our estimated budget. She prepared a revised contract which was more of what the Committee was looking for. Ron explained he is sending a copy of the contract to our attorney for review and it will be discussed at the next Executive Board meeting. The reason being is that it states that Extra Mile wants copyrights to the design and NOBLE can’t reproduce it or use it, for example, on our web site. There was some discussion regarding this issue.

New Members Committee - Tom Scully reported that the Committee hasn’t met since NOBLE’s last Members meeting. He did state that he met with the Peabody Essex Museum on another matter and got the sense they are committed to doing an on-line catalog. He’s not sure if they going to do it themselves or join a network. Bonnie reported that she spoke to Rob Maier about Nahant Public Library. Rob talked to the director at Nahant and apparently they don’t have any interest in joining a network.

6. MANAGERS’ OVERVIEW OF NEW FUNCTIONS - Martha and Elizabeth did an overhead presentation of new service enhancements that are being introduced. A handout was passed around to go along with the presentation. The information on the handout will also be on the Staff Information System.

Directory Server - Martha explained she set up a Directory Server on the network. This is a database of all e-mail addresses of staff members of all NOBLE libraries, including those who have accounts on systems other than NOBLE. This can be used with Netscape or another PC-based e-mail program, as well as Pine. Instructions are on the Staff Information System for configuring and using it.

EMUmail - This is a web-based e-mail program that will allow users to read their e-mail through the web browser of any PC anywhere. The e-mail stays on NOBLE’s server and doesn’t download to the PC. It is a fully featured program that can do attachments, has address books, and folders. It can also read multiple mailboxes for users that have several e-mail accounts. NOBLE will be looking into purchasing the program and make available to libraries.

Majordomo - Elizabeth explained that NOBLE is offering Majordomo List Management services to our libraries. This will give libraries the ability to set up and maintain their own e-mail lists for staff or patrons. NOBLE staff will help set up the lists for libraries, but a library staff member needs to be designated as the "list manager". That person will be responsible for adding and removing e-mail addresses for the lists and perform any list maintenance tasks.

EBSCO - Elizabeth and Martha did an overview of issues that will be discussed at the meeting on February 27^th:

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Profiles - Every library has two user groups: in-house users and remote uses. Statistics are generated at the user group level. Each user group can have multiple profiles. Libraries can add or modify profiles through EBSCOAdmin, or NOBLE staff can do it.

EBSCO Statistics - Martha showed on the overhead that once a report is set up in EBSCOAdmin it could be e-mailed to you each month. Examples of reports that can be set up are Session Usage, Database Usage, and Title Usage.

EBSCO Links - Elizabeth discussed how direct links can be created to individual articles. EBSCO will check validation by IP address, and then, if necessary will prompt the user to enter their barcode.

EBSCO Title Searcher - This is a search link that is on your personal toolbar. You can highlight a word or phrase on a web page and click on "EBSCO Searcher" and it brings you to EBSCO articles on the topic.

netLibrary - This is a state contract Boston Public Library has with netLibrary through EBSCO. Libraries should have a referring URL they received from the state that will link them to netLibrary. Elizabeth recommended that libraries should add this link to their web site. NOBLE will add a netLibrary page to NOBLE’s main page, www.noblenet.org. This page will include all of the netLibrary referring URL links for our libraries. Also NOBLE will be adding MARC records for all the netLibrary titles acquired through the state contract. NOBLE has set up a Training System Test Link to show how patrons would be directed if they need to set up a netLibrary account.

Create List Creativity - Martha demonstrated how to put a new booklist on a library’s web page. She also explained how Perl scripts can take data from a file and create booklist that is linked to the web catalog. First create a Create List report, send the data to the script via e-mail, and the script formats it.

Reportster - Elizabeth explained that Reportster moves data from the system into Microsoft Access. It will take data from a Create List, import it into a database and generate reports. Elizabeth demonstrated how this is done. Reportster can be downloaded from the Staff Information System and need to have Access on the PC as well.

Create Lists in Millennium - Elizabeth explained that Create Lists is moving into Millennium as part of the MilCat client later this year. She did a demonstration of what it looks like.

My Millennium Enhancements - Elizabeth discussed My Millennium services, which will be added for patrons. One is a Personal List, which saves records a patron searches while they are logged into the catalog. Another enhancement is Saved Searches, which gives the patron the option to save their favorite searches so they can choose them at another time.

Elizabeth briefly reviewed Content Linking, which is the ability of the software to provide automatic links to other search engines that will match your search results. Also she discussed VIPs: Valued Information Providers. These are vendors that have partnership agreements with Innovative to provide enhanced content, such as cover images, dynamically through the web catalog and other Millennium clients.

6. ADJOURNMENT. Camilla Glynn made a motion to adjourn; Bonnie Strong seconded the motion. The meeting adjourned at 12:00.

Respectfully submitted,

Douglas Rendell

Acting Secretary