MEMBERS OF THE CORPORATION MEETING

AT NOBLE

JANUARY 20, 2005

PRESENT:  Nineteen libraries were represented at the meeting, attendance sheet attached.

 

CALL TO ORDER: Mary Rose Quinn called the meeting to order at 10:05.

 

APPROVAL OF MINUTES:  Doug Rendell moved to approve the Minutes from the November 18th meeting.  Dennis Kelley seconded the motion.  The motion passed unanimously.   

 

TREASURER’S REPORT:  Tom Scully reported budget expenditures are on target.  Dennis Kelley moved to accept the report.  Bonnie Strong seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously.

 

MANAGERS’ REPORT

Ronald Gagnon:

·         Ron handed out the Member Directory for updating.

·         Ron thanked everyone for their expressions of sympathy on the passing of his mother last month.

·         NOBLE staff has been working on decertification issues, which will be discussed later on the agenda.

·         Reported on MBLC meeting attended last week.  MBLC staff presents an annual report to the Commissioners on statistical compilation that is collected from the networks.  The decertification issue was discussed also.

·         Received approximately $60k in Telecommunications and Resource Sharing funds from MBLC.

·         Ways and Means day will be February 9th at the State house.  Legislative agenda is to increase line item 7000-9506 to $5-6 million.  April 6th is the general MLA Legislative day.

·         NOBLE staff attended Midwinter ALA, which was held in Boston last weekend.  Ron and Elizabeth attended Innovative Users’ Group meeting, as well as EBSCO meeting. 

·         Ron has accepted an appointment to participate in EBSCO Public Library Advisory Board.  Elizabeth continues on the EBSCO Software Advisory Board. 

·        E-Rate Form 470 was filed on December 22nd for voice and data line services for fund year 2005.  Schools and Library Division have notified us before funds will be released they are requiring copies of the bills for the previous filing period, January – June 2004.

 

Elizabeth Thomsen:

·         Reported on Innovative Users Group Steering Committee Meeting, which she is a member.  Panel discussion was on Automating Your Library Automation System.  She also attended a Reference Focus Group at ALA.  Elizabeth mentioned if there is staff that is working on their MLS, not to hesitate to call with any questions. 

·         Attended EBSCO Software Advisory Committee meeting.  Outstanding enhancement requests were discussed.  Elizabeth will send the information to the reference email list.

·         OCLC is changing the programs that are used and moving to a new interface called Connexions.  Arrangements have been made with NELINET to do Connexions training at NOBLE on March 9th for our OCLC libraries.

·         Innovative has chosen NOBLE as the first site to host regional training.  The training will be for Advanced System Administration Training and will be held March 30th and 31st.

 

Martha Driscoll:

·         The new Millennium Release, Silver, was loaded January 4th.  System was running slow and it was determined that a drive went bad.  Hewlett Packard came out and replaced it.

·         On December 14th the system was down while Innovative upgraded the operating system. 

·         Two additional Internet T-1 lines were installed this week.  NOBLE now has four T-1 lines, which doubles our capacity.

·         Martha wrote a PERL script for Reciprocal Borrowing Statistics that will run monthly and be put on the Staff Information System. 

·         Long overdue items from 2001 will be purged later this month.

Members of the Corporation Meeting                                                                                    Page 2

January 20, 2005

 

 

PUBLISHERS’ RELEASE DATE POLICY VOTE:

Sue Koronowski explained this issue came up when patrons at Lynnfield were asking why new release items were not available to check out at Lynnfield prior to the publishers release date and in other libraries the items were.  As a courtesy vendors would send materials to libraries prior to the release date so the materials could be processed and on shelf for the official release date.  There is no policy in NOBLE in regard to this.  The issue was discussed at Executive Board and the following policy recommendation was approved unanimously:

 

             “NOBLE libraries will honor street date agreements with publishers and vendors and

               not circulate or display any materials prior to their street date or official retail release

               date.  Items input prior to that date must have a status of “in processing”.

 

Sue Koronowski moved to approve Executive Board’s recommendation of the Publishers’ Release Date Policy.  Sharon Gilley seconded the motion.  The vote carried by unanimous vote.

 

TELECOMM GRANT UPDATE:

Ron reported we have receipted $61,703 in LSTA funds.  There has been difficulty in getting information from Verizon. At a Network meeting with Verizon, NOBLE, MVLC, and SAILS did not have a sales rep.  After looking into this, apparently NOBLE’s customer service level had been downgraded.  Ron discussed this with Verizon and a sales rep has been assigned to our account.  This ties into the grant because as part of the upgrade a T3 line will be installed at NOBLE central site.  Atrion will coordinate scheduling with Verizon.  Once the T3 and new Cisco router are installed at central site, throughput to libraries will improve.  Ron filed a report with the MBLC for the first half of the project.

 

Martha and George Lally have completed set up of the VLAN’s at the PC Support Program libraries.  She will be contacting the remaining libraries to schedule their VLAN set up.

 

SYSTEM GRANT UPDATE:

In December our two LSTA grant letters of intent were submitted to the MBLC, one to replace our Innovative system hardware and the second for software improvements.  Both have been approved to go forward with filing a grant application.  Ron and Elizabeth met with Meta Search vendors WebFeat, and Innovative at ALA.  Meta searching allows a query of many resources and databases with a single search.  This is an avenue that is still being researched for consideration.  The grants are due before the March Members meeting, therefore will need to be approved at February’s Members meeting.

 

NEW RELEASE AND TRAINING SCHEDULE:

·         Elizabeth reported with the Silver release are new tools for improving templates and settings.  This allows libraries to make changes in work flow customization.  Elizabeth passed around a hand out that explains authorizations for templates and settings. Library directors need to notify Elizabeth as to who will have authorization in their library to set up templates and save settings.  She recommended it be a supervisor that works with acquisitions on a daily basis.  Elizabeth and Christine will be doing on site training with the designated tech services rep at each library.

·         Elizabeth handed out the training and meeting schedule for January-June.  It will be posted on the Staff Information System. 

·         Ron added the annual circ review meetings have been moved to September.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Members of the Corporation Meeting                                                                                    Page 3

January 20, 2005

 

DECERTIFICATIONS ISSUE:

·         Decertification means that a library will not receive state aid funding and will not be individually eligible to apply for MBLC administered grants.  Two NOBLE public libraries, Beverly Public Library and Lynn Public Library, have not been certified this year by the MBLC due to insufficient local funding in FY2004.

·         Mary Rose Quinn reported she is meeting with the finance committee seeking additional funds to meet the certification requirements for Saugus Public.  She will find out February 3rd if Saugus will be decertified by MBLC. 

·         Other libraries are not required to serve residents of decertified communities.  Decisions to serve or not are made individually by the governing authorities of our member libraries.  There was a lengthy discussion as to which libraries are serving Beverly and/or Lynn residents.

·         Tom Scully spoke on the subject of waivers and how Beverly came to be decertified.

·         There was a discussion on how libraries, and the system, will handle loans and holds if they choose not to serve residents of Beverly and Lynn.  Information is available on the Staff Information System.

 

NEW BUSINESS:

Nothing reported at this time.

 

ADJOURNMENT:

Martha Holden made a motion to adjourn.  Bonnie Strong seconded the motion.  The meeting adjourned at 12:05.

 

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

 

 

Martha Holden

Secretary