NOBLE MINUTES

MEMBERS OF THE CORPORATION MEETING

AT SAUGUS PUBLIC LIBRARY

OCTOBER 16, 2003

Present:  Seventeen libraries were represented at the meeting, attendance sheet attached.

 

1.  CALL TO ORDER – Mary Rose Quinn called the meeting to order at 10:10.  She acknowledged John Beauregard who is now interim director at Endicott College.  Nadine Mitchell announced that Joan Reynolds, director of Lynn, would be retiring.  Mary Rose also acknowledged Randy Gowman, interim director of Gordon College.

 

2.  APPROVAL OF MINUTES – Deborah Abraham made a motion to accept the Minutes from the September 18th meeting; Martha Holden seconded the motion.  The vote was unanimous.

 

3.  TREASURER’S REPORT – Tom Scully reported that the expenditures to date are on target.  Kim Lynn made a motion to accept the report; Martha Holden seconded the motion. The vote was unanimous.

 

4.  MANAGER’S REPORT – Ron Gagnon.

 Virtual Catalog – The Boston Library Consortia will no longer be operating the Statewide Virtual Catalog effective December 31st.  They will continue the service for their members, but not statewide. The Mass. Board of Library Commissioners will see the project does continue and will be looking for a place for it to be housed.  Ron had recommended to Executive Board, who agreed, to postpone opening the catalog to public patrons until this issue is resolved.

New England Innovative User’s Group –Ron, who is on the Planning Committee, stated plans are in place for the meeting in November. Elizabeth facilitating a program on customized catalogs, and Martha is presenting a program on scripting.

UPS – The new unit, a Liebert Nfinity, has been ordered.  The unit is smaller and more efficient than the current one.  The cost was 10% lower than budgeted. Some additional electrical work will need to be done prior to installation on Wednesday, November 26th.  The web and mail servers, and network equipment will be transferred to other circuits prior to installation to minimize downtime.  The Innovative server will be down that day. 

Audit – The fieldwork has been completed and a draft of the financial statements was received.

Meetings – Ron attended a CIPA/Patriot Act Workshop in Andover, and the NMRLS ILL Committee with Marilyn Graves.  The ILL Center will begin a new policy of loaning materials out of state for a $12 fee.  This is a three-month trial and will be reviewed by the ILL Committee in January.  In Ron’s absence Elizabeth attended the Network Administrator’s Meeting.  NOBLE will receive $37,000 for telecommunications funding.  No funding is expected next year. MBLC was told to cut their budget 8% for next fiscal year.  On November 13th there is a legislative planning meeting, which Ron will attend.

Publicity –NOBLE was mentioned in an article in the Salem Evening News on the CIPA/Patriot Act.  In the MBLC Notes, NOBLE was mentioned as part of the article reporting the opening of North Shore Com­munity College’s new Danvers campus library, and about the State House bond bill testimony in June.

 

Elizabeth Thomsen.

Phillips Andover – Continuing to work on integrating their data.  Meeting tomorrow to discuss loan rules and set up training schedule for their staff.

Deduping Project – Received the data back and 10,000 records have been identified as duplicates to be merged and another 15,000 records that are possible duplicates.  The same process will be performed for Phillips Andover data.

EBSCO – A new version of EBSCO Admin was loaded.  It has new features and is easier to use.  An EBSCO meeting is scheduled in January to discuss options.  All libraries are encouraged to attend.  Ron and Elizabeth met with Duncan Smith, creator of NoveList, EBSCO regional sales manager Ed Roche, and sales rep. Ann Murdock to preview a new product called Book Index with Reviews.  Elizabeth had seen a prototype at ALA.  The product is designed for use by staff or patrons, but is limited and not versatile.  For example, staff cannot place orders for books nor can patrons place a hold on a book.


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Acquisitions – This new release lets libraries manage their own funds.  Roundtable sessions for public and college libraries were held to review the new features with this release, as well as searching and inputting sessions for serials and acquisitions.

Training – Other training scheduled are Javascript, Cascading Style Sheets, and Introductory Create Lists.  Local Tech Meeting on security issues was held last week.

 

Ron stated November’s Meeting will be held at North Shore Community College’s new Danvers campus.

 

Martha Driscoll.

Phase 3 Upgrade – Was installed on the Innovative Server on October 3rd.  Some unanticipated issues arose during the process due to beta software, which delayed the upgrade.  Once the installation was complete the system slowed down and stopped due to the transaction file becoming completely filled up.  It is usually 18%-20% full during the day.  To free up space a system backup had to be performed, the system was down about 1˝ hours.  The problem was a bug in acquisitions rapid receive causing an item to be added repeatedly, filling up the file.  Innovative was able to reproduce the problem and determined that the new release was not programmed to accept barcodes with spaces.  Thanks to the Swampscott library staff for working with us to pin down the problem, which first showed up at Swampscott.

Power Outage – On October 4th there was a power outage in Danvers for about 45 minutes and while our systems continued to operate our T-1’s went down so libraries were without service.  Phone lines should not go down in a blackout.  Similar issue happened in the spring and Verizon was contacted and came out.  We escalated the issue and the technician that came out this time clearly replaced some of the power equipment.

Laptop – A Gateway laptop with wireless capabilities was purchased to improve presentations.  The laptop cost $2,000 with state pricing.

 

5.  FY 2005 ROLL CALL VOTE – Mary Rose Quinn opened the floor to discussion, there was none.  Kimberly Lynn took the roll call vote (copy attached).  The vote was unanimous from the seventeen libraries that were represented.  Libraries not present were Danvers, Gloucester, Marblehead, Middlesex CC, Montserrat College, Northern Essex CC, Revere, Stoneham, and Wakefield. 

 

6.  STATE OF THE TELECOMM SYSTEM REPORT – 

Ron and Martha did an overhead presentation on two main issues facing our telecommunications system, age and security.

Age of Equipment – Ron explained our current equipment is seven years old.  The Bay Network routers in the libraries use PC-type hardware to process data transmissions.  Nortel will be ending their support of the routers on December 31st.  Atrion will continue to support them.  The 16-port hubs in the libraries are obsolete and need to be replaced with switches.

Security – Martha reviewed the security issues facing our network.  Wireless is a new technology and our current equipment doesn’t allow the proper security for it.  Patrons can connect to our network in the libraries with their wireless laptops and bring in bad software or viruses.  NOBLE’s firewall protects the server and the libraries from outside the network, but it doesn’t protect libraries from each other or from patrons who connect to our network within a library. 

Solutions - Martha discussed what issues effect the network and some ideas to make it more secure. 

Isolating Libraries – Atrion has reprogrammed all libraries routers so they cannot communicate between each other.  This will prevent viruses or malicious software from spreading from one library to another.

Virtual LANS – This allows libraries to separate equipment by groups of users with the use of a switch.  To accomplish this the hubs would need to be replaced with Cisco switches, and our current 10-megabit

routers would need to be replaced with 100-megabit routers as well.  Hubs are not secure and older technology.         

Wireless Gateways – This is a separate piece of equipment that performs functions to manage security of wireless technology on a network. Some of the functions it performs are: data encryption, authentication, manage bandwidth, assigning an IP address, and access control management.  Debbie Abraham asked if it could provide management statistics.  Martha stated she believes it does.   


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Ron continued the presentation with what the objectives are and how the equipment upgrade will be funded.

Objectives –

·         Replace Bay routers with Cisco equipment at the libraries and NOBLE.

·         Replace hubs with switches.

·         Provide wireless security devices for libraries that currently have this technology. 

·         Upgrade the computer room network to a gigabit network.

Funding Options –

·         Cisco equipment grant previously applied for was not approved.

·         MBLC announced a special telecommunications grant round due November 14th.  The top priority requests will receive 75% reimbursement.  Only $200,000 is available for networks this grant round.

·         LSTA grant round in the winter will have more funds available.

·         Need to amend the FY 2004 Action Plan. When objectives were approved last fall for the FY 2004 Action Plan, upgrading our Millennium server equipment was going to be the priority project for grant funding in FY 2004.  With the recent security issues it is apparent that upgrading our telecommunications equipment is now a higher priority.  The Millennium server equipment has been reliable and is under maintenance contract with HP/Compaq.  Also we will be able to use some of  Minuteman Network’s old DRA central servers to upgrade memory on our Millennium server.

 

7.  AMENDMENT TO FY 2004 ACTION PLAN –

Ron recommended to Executive Board to go forward with these changes and apply in November for the telecommunications grant. Executive Board passed a motion to amend the FY 2004 Action Plan as follows:

“In light of the age and lack of manufacturer support for NOBLE’s library routers and the telecommunications system’s inability to handle modern security needs, we vote to amend our FY 2004 Action Plan to replace the system server and software upgrade project with the telecommunications security and hardware upgrade throughout our FY 2004 Action Plan.”

 

Mary Rose Quinn asked for a motion to amend the FY 2004 Action Plan as stated above.  Tom Scully made a motion to approve the FY 2004 Action Plan as stated, Barbara LaChance seconded the motion.  The vote was unanimous. 

 

8.  VOTE TO APPROVE SUBMISSION OF TELECOMM GRANT –

The MA Board of Library Commissioners requires a cooperative vote from the Membership to submit a grant.  Since the grant is due November 14th the vote needs to be taken at this meeting.  Executive Board will meet and approve the final language before submission.  Following is the motion to submit the telecommunications grant:

“Security issues with NOBLE’s network present a real threat to the ability of our libraries to maintain service.  In light of the age and lack of manufacturer support for NOBLE’s library routers and the telecomunications system’s inability to handle modern security needs, Executive Board recommends that the Meeting of the Members vote to submit a grant application to the Mass. Board of library Commissioners under their Network Connections for Libraries grant round in November 2003.  We seek the grant funding for replacing routers at libraries and at NOBLE, upgrading hubs to switches, upgrading the network at NOBLE and implementing specific network security hardware and software to increase security and reliability.”

 

Tom Scully made a motion to approve submission of the telecommunications grant as stated above, Martha Holden seconded the motion.  The vote was unanimous.

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9.  WORKING GROUP UPDATES –

Ron stated most of the Committees are filling vacancies and have not met yet.  Only Electronic Resources Working Group has met regularly.  Bonnie Strong is chair of Holds Committee, Tom Scully chair of Database Quality, and Michael Colford chair of Collection Management, which is a new committee.

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS –

·         Mary Rose Quinn announced Saugus is having a wine tasting on November 15th.

·         Barbara LaChance asked if anyone had any old paper equipment, card catalogs, shelves, they could donate for a program sponsored by Merrimack College for 5th, 6th, and 7th grade boys in Lawrence.

 

 

10  ADJOURNMENT. 

John Beauregard made a motion to adjourn, Alyce Deveau seconded the motion.  The meeting adjourned at 11:30.

 

 

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

 

 

Kimberly Lynn

Secretary