Minerva Users Council Executive Board
Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Maine State Library Studio

Meeting called to order at: 10:00 am by Steve Norman.

In attendance were board members Steve Norman, Shelly Davis, Martha Ott, Kevin Davis, Jay Scherma, and Janet Blood and Cindy White via telecom. Also, new member Lisa Auriemma; James Jackson Sanborn and Alisia Revitt, Maine InfoNet; Pam Turner, membership committee; and Cyndi Burne, circulations standards.

Cindy moved to approve the minutes of the May meeting, Jay seconded, no discussion, – approved.

Reports

Maine InfoNet Rep – No report

Maine InfoNet – James reported on staffing. Marilyn Lutz is retiring. They will have an unpaid intern, a URI graduate who will do some tickets and also work with Alisia on OPAC issues testing possible upgrades. Meanwhile he will do a job search for tech-related positions His name is Peter McGovern. They are waiting on the articles of incorporation to be returned from the secretary of state, and then will work on the IRS filing. A Maine InfoNet collection development meeting is up-coming. They are also trying to pull together a MaineCat policy colloquium to have discussions on overall policies and training – what loans, what doesn’t, and why. This could also involve invited speakers from other consortia in order to learn how they work. There were two technical updates. Scarborough wants to add a children’s scope and will pay for it. James will ask if others also want a children’s scope. Cataloging is also looking to do some work on material types which will require re-indexing. It is a good time to do both.

Technical – Alisia reported that they will be doing the 2009b upgrade in the wee hours of this Friday morning. It should be smooth. Acquisitions must take a break from today through Friday. The update will run after the 1:00am back-up runs. The biggest issue of concern is that the Millennium clients must be the newest version. Computer start-up will be slow the first time as jars upload.

Finance – Jay. We are solvent. He is still learning how to work with the State service center to have things run smoothly. Twenty-vive percent of our members need billing to be in July. At the end of May only four locations had paid. We will probably clear the year with approximately $85,000 over. Most of the surplus is because of savings in delivery costs. There has been no word on the trust that had been initially proposed. We do now pay the State 2.311% for processing Minerva’s accounts. There may be alternate ways to hold the money while still keeping it under state “control.” At some point, the board should consider a revised budget – there have been some substantial changes, and it should be brought closer to reality. There have been problems for some libraries that needed invoice date in FY 2010/11 (not just the due date).

Circulation standards Committee – Cyndi asked for a decision on the proposed policy for putting the full retail price in the item’s price field. Some libraries did object – one wanted a price that would be valid 10-15 years out. Seventy percent of libraries already use the retail price (most libraries get a discount on their own costs so that there is a bit of “play” built into retail). What happens when a patron returns the book? Calling the individual library is always OK. Jay moved to require that from now on the retail price of an item be entered into the price field. Martha seconded, and the motion passed. The committee’s second recommendation dealt with opposition to the practice of splitting up the features/bonus disc from the movie disc, and circulating them independently. Opposition was endorsed by both the cataloging and circulation standards committees. Some discussion ensued about the necessity of using the volume field when cataloging episodic DVD titles (like television series) entering either “complete set” or “Disc 1”. Doing so will prompt a second screen when requesting that requires patrons to choose what they want. This field should also be used if an item is missing a component. These requirements help the patron to choose specifically what they want. Jay moved acceptance on both of the committee’s recommendations. Kevin seconded. No further discussion. The motion was approved. How do we do notify everyone? Alisia will upload these to the policy page on the Web. We should notify everyone and set an effective date of July 1. A comprehensive cataloging manual would be useful, but it is difficult to separate a straight cataloging manual from a Minerva specific one. Perhaps a specific document could reference a standard cataloging manual. Alisia will work on getting things all in one place. Cyndi mentioned complaints about circulation practices that don’t seem fair, such as libraries that aren’t filling holds on new titles, or very old holds staying on missing or billed items. One library can always call another library and ask. The library may not necessarily be in knowing violation. The committee and the Board don’t need to be police. What do you do if you don’t get satisfaction? If an issue is not resolved, what happens? What about very old holds? Could there be a technical way of just cancelling very old holds by policy? What about items in transit for a very long time? Steve will post a notice about the approved policies which will be effective July 1. Please review policies, if you have any questions, ask Alisia. The committee should also consider the issue of items long in processing. What about limbo holds? There are technical issues of holds with an expiration date of 72 hours. After that period, they won’t be paged again. Is there no way to purge very old holds? What about very old records? Missing, lost, etc. They should be deleted or suppressed. These items should go on the next agenda. We will also revisit best practices and making policies easily findable.

Statistics Committee – Nothing new on statistics, Marion at Curtis, with contributions from others, has created a nice guide on how to do lists. Alisia will put it out.

Membership Committee – Pam did ask for updates to membership information before the Minerva invoices went out. They are waiting on other membership issues until the agreement to participate and bylaw revisions are done.

Old business

Revision of bylaws and Agreement to Participate. Steve said that now that our money is placed, we will update the bylaws to reflect changes. Individuals were invited to participate on a committee to revise the agreement to participate a long while ago, but then we ran into issues of money placement. The committee is ready to begin work now. Some questions remain unanswered, but we will work with III. Do we need to add new members? Will we lose more members when the new Agreement is finalized? Are there libraries who still wish to join? What about licenses that are no longer being used? –Can we recoup costs? Jay says we are stable financially.

Policy for developing policies and implementing changes: The policies enacted today demonstrate how the system is now working well. We will continue to develop criteria for deciding when things need to go before the full Council.

Fall conference program. Alisia says the conference meeting is scheduled for tomorrow. There may be a program on RDA, and Minerva may propose others. This conference will be a trial separation of MLA and MASL.

System wide continuing training – Alisia says there will be a survey

Policy on patron registration information – This was passed several years ago and requires an expiration date of one year, the patron middle initial, and asking for email address.

Policy on new scopes. Scarborough is the current requester – already discussed. Any requests for scopes beyond children’s’ scopes will require Board approval.