Present: John Beauregard, Tom Cesarz, Patrick Cloherty, Camilla Glynn, Dee Hanley, Marjorie Hill-Devine, Dennis Kelley, Doug Rendell, Bonnie Strong and Executive Director Ron Gagnon.

1. CALL TO ORDER/WELCOME—President Doug Rendell called the meeting to order at 2:05 pm.

2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES—Tom Cesarz moved approval of the minutes from the January 13, 1999 Executive Board meeting. Camilla Glynn seconded and the motion passed unanimously.

3. TREASURER’S REPORT—Tom gave the treasurer’s report, noting that we’re in pretty good shape. There was a question on the higher Internet costs, which Ron answered by saying that the system demands had gone up so they renegotiated for a higher band width with a higher price. Camilla moved acceptance of the report. Bonnie Strong seconded and the motion passed unanimously.

4. EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S REPORT—Ron noted that the college system had been down recently due to a disk drive problem. Tom commended the NOBLE staff for their excellent communication during the downtime. Many people realized that now with the email on a separate server, it wasn’t down when the system was down, and staff could use this to keep people in libraries informed.

The meeting room is presently being renovated and expanded. Elizabeth is continuing interviews for the ILL librarian and hopes to have that position filled shortly. Also, Paul Kissman will be coming out to meet with Ron to review the PC Support Program. The next round of funds is ensured but the Board just wants to review it before disbursing that.

5. SYSTEM SELECTION WORKING GROUP VENDOR RECOMMENDATION: INNOVATIVE INTERFACES INC.—Ron reviewed the selection process from the initial meetings through the responses to the RFP, past the demos and into the discussion when the group met to determine what to do next. There was thorough participation in the process all of the way. Bonnie mentioned that from her point of view as a member of the group this year’s process had been more thorough all along the way, that the analysis of the responses to the RFPs was excellent and that questions to the vendors during demos were much better than they had been the previous year. Others agreed. The group made the recommendation to President Doug Rendell that NOBLE go with III. Doug as President recommended following the working group’s recommendation. Therefore, Camilla Glynn moved that the Executive Board follow the System Selection Working Group’s recommendation to choose Innovative Interfaces Inc. as their new vendor. Bonnie seconded the motion which passed unanimously.

Included in this discussion was a lengthy discussion about the amount of computing power needed to run III’s staff functions with the focus on the Pentium II, 266 MHz being the minimum required.

6. VOTE TO APPROVE SUBMISSION OF GRANT—Ron reported that he met with Rob Maier that morning and learned that we will get $15,000 reimbursement for database conversion costs for new members. Also, telecomm money was approved for new members. Rob was also pleased with the progress of the grant application while expressing some concern about the relatively high cost in comparison to CW/MARS.

Dee Hanley moved that a grant application be filed this month by NOBLE with the Mass. Board of Library Commissioners to secure funding for replacement of NOBLE’s Geac central system software and hardware. The new system shall be client-server, and require the use of PCs as client workstations exclusively. The project will include merger of NOBLE’s college and public library databases and related files into a single integrated system, full library automation capability, capacity for new members and support for PC conversion. Camilla seconded the motion which passed unanimously.

Camilla moved to endorse the grant proposal as presented in draft, with the understanding that additional fine-tuning will occur prior to submission. Dennis Kelley seconded the motion which passed unanimously.

7. APPOINTMENT OF THE NOMINATING COMMITTEE—Doug appointed Dennis as chair of the nominating committee with Alyce Deveau and Linda Weinstein as members with the charge to nominate a clerk and a vice-president, president-elect for the annual meeting in May.

8. ADJOURNMENT—The meeting was adjourned at 3:55 pm.

Respectfully submitted,

Bonnie Strong, Secretary