Meeting Minutes

Wednesday, June 15, 2005 – 10:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Maine State Library Studio, Augusta,ME, via ATM Bangor Public Library and Falmouth H.S.

In attendance:

MSL: Jennifer Lewis, Nikki Maounis, Cora Damon, Amber Tatnall, Martha Ott, Vicky Smith, Peggy O’Kane, Betsy Pohl, Linda Bills, Karl Beiser, Stephen LaRochelle, Karl Aromaa, Cindy Mitchell, Susan Beane, Amy Averre, Marian Peterson, Sarah Sugden, Jay Scherma, Judith Frost, Christine Eames, Vicki Stevens, Diane Jones, Peggy Malley, Nelson Eubanks, Dean Corner, Melora Norman, Pam Gormley, Ann Siekman, Pat Brunell, Barbara Harness, Janet Bolduc, John Clark.

ATM Bangor Public Library: Debbie Lozito, Sue Jagels, Karen Reilly, Candy Emlen, Jill Schoof.

ATM Falmouth H.S.: Priscilla Payne, Tracie Lammers, Jessica Thomas, Emily Graham, Carin Dunay, Lynda Sudlow.

I. Review/approve minutes from the last full meeting – December 15, 2004

The minutes were reviewed and accepted.

II. Welcome to all and recognition of Executive Committee

Betsy recognized the members of the Executive Committee for their hard work. Everyone was also reminded of their voting privileges. ONE representative from each Minerva library has voting privileges. Someone may be sent from your library to vote in your place if necessary.

III. Reports:

A. MINERVA update (Karl Beiser) 10 minutes

Karl: Karl handed out a whole packet of information. The first thing he addressed were some general statistics about Minerva. We currently have the 2 nd largest collection and are the 2 nd largest lender lending 2.3 times as much as it’s borrowing. There are 57 schools/libraries representing 80 locations.

Authority processing will be ready to go in a couple of weeks.
July 1 st is set as a date to unveil the new OPAC look.
This summer, Karl will install agency INN Reach model software that will give us ILL statistics on an individual library level as well as other procedural refinements.

John: Ludden is the next library to go live. Warren and Rice are next. Charlotte Hobbs in Lovell and Mechanic Falls has inquired about coming in.

B. Finance Committee (Amy Averre & Cora Damon) 10 min.

Handouts. Karl handed out a financial background summary sheet. Our estimated balance as of June 30, 2005 is $160,000.00. Projected for June 30, 2006 will be $195,900.00. The Finance Committee handed out a sheet summarizing prioritized recommendations for products and services for the 05-06 fiscal year.

1st priorities on the list included central computer hardware and software (put aside $8,000 per year), contingency funds for executive board and its committees ($2,000), Innovative training, peer-led training, content enhancement service subscription and staffing per consultant’s recommendations.

2nd priorities include money to help members attend IUG/ III meetings and conferences, increase amount for local delivery services and travel bags, subscription to downloadable audio and recorded books, and additional scopes. A motion was passed to authorize the spending of monies to subscribe to content enhancement services.

C. Borrowing/Lending Committee (Martha Ott) 10 min

Written report. Martha gave a summary of what her committee has been working on. It was suggested that more medium size mailbags be ordered. Also, people have started to suspect that people are hording mailbags. People who have extra mailbags should announce it on the list serv to see who needs them and then send them out via delivery service. Also someone should remind people that the bags should only be used for Minerva libraries.

The Borrowing and Lending Committee wanted to encourage anyone who wished to start walk-in in privileges for other area patrons, go right ahead. There are some clusters of libraries out there already doing this. The group also encourages libraries that are already doing so to announce it to the Minerva group so other libraries can use them as an example.

On the issue of delinquent patrons, the committee recommended that we get some sort of confidentiality policy, and doesn’t recommend that we encourage people to be “peeking” at other patron records, although they understand that by the nature of how the database is set up, it happens sometime.

A short discussion of having patrons just have one card in the system took place. Other consortia use it effectively. As far as fees, the User’s Council voted to eliminate both the $10 billing and the $25 processing fee for ILL ‘s in Minerva. Karl will make the change in the system as quickly as he can, but it might be that material already in motion will still get charged the fees. This does not affect your ability to put on any fees that you need for your library. Libraries are encouraged to work together to come to a mutual agreement over the billing price of unreturned ILL ‘s.

D. Statistics Committee (Brian Damien) 5 min.

Written report. Reported by Judy Frost. Brian is removing himself from this committee.

The committee has two major concerns;

reporting loans between member libraries
anomalies in the circulation statistics for at least two Minerva member libraries.

The group recommends that the Minerva staff work with the consultant together on these issues for a resolution by August 1 st , 2005. They also recommend that Minerva staff and the consultant develop and publish a simple procedure for each Minerva library to audit, for accurate assignment of codes for its own patron records. This group needs to determine their charge more clearly. More list education and updating John’s list recipes on the web would be very helpful.

E. Cataloging Standards Committee (Rebecca Francis) 5 min.

The Cataloging Standards Committee submitted a written report summarizing issues they are working on. Their biggest concern is the number of duplicate records and poor quality records in the database. Bonnie Collins has started working with an assistant who will focus on getting rid of duplicate records over the summer.

The committee is also working on possibly posting informational things on a regular basis to help catalogers make better decisions. Recently, they helped Karl Beiser choose an authority-processing vendor. Issues they are continuing to work on include getting display constants to show in the OPAC, educating catalogers about correct form of heading for audiovisual materials and how to display library specific information in bib records.

F. PR/Education Committee (Amber Tatnall) 10 min.

Amber gave a summary of her committee’s charge as well as a quick run down on what they have been working on. Essentially, they are working on creating PR and training materials that put Minerva out there as a brand consistently without a duplication of efforts from every single library. They have so far created a logo consisting of an owl:

The committee has developed a tri-fold brochure, a poster and a flier that are posted on the web off the Minerva management page under “keeping informed” the “public relations” link so far. Amber passed around a very attractive clear display holder with the poster and tri-fold brochure in it as a sample. Amber mentioned that she got a response from Gary Nichols who spoke about mugs, pencils, etc. and that he’d be happy to help us.

IV. Old Business:

A. ILL/New Books issue 10 min

Betsy wanted everyone to know that the Executive Committee discussed this issue several times at length and recommend that things stay the same for now with our three options for participation (1. Don’t lend or borrow AV. 2. Don’t lend or borrow new books. 3. Don’t lend or borrow new books or AV.) Many of the options that the Executive Committee talked about are very hard to either determine or manage. Patrons seem happy.

V. New Business:

A. Executive Committee election results 5 min

Cora Damon from Maine General Medical Center received 26 votes, representing special libraries.

Stephen LaRochelle from Kennebec Valley Community College received 26 votes representing academic libraries.

Betsy Pohl from Lithgow Library received 26 votes representing public libraries.

B. Introduction of consultant Linda Bills; overview of her Minerva evaluation 60 min

Linda Bills gave an overview of her experience. She is impressed and honored to be involved with us. She said we are good builders and we don’t hang back. The way we are dealing with issues is complete and impressive. Linda started out in serials, and then she became an automation consultant in Illinois where she introduced OCLC to many different types and sizes of libraries and then reported out her results. For the next 17 years she was a systems librarian for the Tri-college Library Consortium. Then she became a part time director for a college. She has talked with the Executive Committee and she remarked that we have energy, enthusiasm, ideas, communication, a sense of responsibility, can handle change and has a sense of balance and confidence in our structure. She will give us options with pro’s and con’s in her final report. She will spend a week here and meet some of us. Some of the topics we should be thinking about before she gets there are:

What kinds of stresses do you experience?
What is the organization doing for us?
If you described the perfect experience in Minerva, what would it be like and what is incomplete in that vision now?

She is going to send out a survey on paper and online. If anyone would like to send Linda your thoughts, her e-mail address is lindabills@mac.com . She requests that we start the subject line with “Minerva.” She will also be contacting other consortia for models, but we still need to come up with ideas that are uniquely our own. She will also be working with John and Karl. She hopes to finish her visits by the end of the summer and be completely done by August or Sept. and then discuss pros/cons. Gary Nichols will also receive the report. Things for Linda not to miss would be speaking with staff that works in the libraries she visits. Please let Betsy know if your library needs a visit from Linda. Phone conferences are an option for those libraries she can’t get to. Also, if she sees libraries with branches, maybe everyone could meet in one place that would be helpful. Another issue for Linda to look at is if we can be doing a better job dealing with libraries with branches and how things are currently coded.