Present: Deborah Abraham, John Beauregard, Tom Cesarz, Patrick J. Cloherty Jr., Camilla Glynn, Marjorie Hill-Devine, Dennis Kelley, Doug Rendell and Executive Director Ron Gagnon.

The Executive Board met for the second meeting to review and discuss the FY 2000 budget as prepared by Ron.

Initially, Doug reported on a meeting with Rob Maier, MBLC, on September 16, 1998 regarding the grant for a system upgrade. $300,000 of the $500,000 in state technology funds will be available to networks. However, an RFP is needed, which we are preparing. Ron added that the focus of the meeting was on a solution for us and that our application will hopefully catch both the $300,000 and next year’s state and federal monies, as $300,000 is not enough money for us. There was discussion of the time lags between the above funding sources, with John asking if we could handle the upgrade by starting with the $300,000. Patrick cautioned against spending everything that we have on the upgrade.

Ron distributed a fifth scenario of the FY 2000 budget, redistributing costs with the goal of lowering the impact on smaller libraries. Pat distributed an analysis of the impact both with and without Montserrat as a member. Dennis wondered if we didn’t have this same discussion every year. Ron said that there have been subtle changes in the past two years. Doug indicated that we have to be careful not to change the formula every year or we’ll look unstable. This is particularly true for the year of the upgrade. A straw poll showed members in favor of more than one budget scenario. The issue of future NOBLE costs with a new system was discussed, with a new cost basis being likely.

The motion was made by Tom and seconded by Camilla to accept the original budget as a whole as prepared by Ron. Vote 6-1 in favor.

There was a motion by Doug to put the NMRLS Web money into the capital account to use for the new system. This was seconded by John and passed unanimously.

Pat made the point that we should lobby NMRLS for money to support networks. Deb noted that the recent MBLC rationale for network subsidies was to encourage smaller and different types of libraries to be brought into networks. There is $90,000 in FY 2000 for the virtual catalog. There was discussion about finding other money by pitching how important networks are to the regions.

There was a question on what exactly is the virtual catalog. Ron said there are two parts—one, the record stays at NOBLE and statewide access to it exists. The second part may include a system above the system which will require only one search and will have interlibrary loan capability. There was further discussion, with Pat expressing concern that some of the smaller libraries will eventually spend money for stand-alone systems. He suggested that it might be possible for NOBLE to propose handling the problem completely for X amount of dollars (a sizeable chunk).

Dog reviewed the conclusion to the disappearing video problem. The meeting was adjourned at 11:37 pm.