MINERVA Executive Board Meeting
April 4, 2012

Maine State Library Studio

Attending were Kevin Davis, Pam Gormley, Nikki Maounis, Betsy Pohl, James Jackson Sanborn, Judy Frost, Gail Roy (remote), and Steve Norman.

Call to Order—The meeting was called to order at 10:05 a.m. by Kevin Davis (Chair).

Acceptance of the Minutes of the January 11, 2012 Meeting—Motion by Betsy, second by Pam to approve the minutes as written. Motion carried.

New Business

Approval of the FY 12/13 budget—Motion by Betsy, second by Pam to approve the proposed budget. Motion carried. Nikki will resend the budget with the $4,000 membership fee inserted.

Review of revised “ATP” document—Steve described the latest changes. There was lengthy discussion of the new document. The consensus was that concerns about the Maine State Library Outreach Services’ participation obligations were not sufficient to prevent approval of the now renamed Memorandum of Participation. Motion by Nikki, second by Pam that the Memorandum of Participation (MOP) be approved as written. Motion carried unanimously.

Discussion ensued of next steps and a timetable. The MOP should be a main topic for the next Users Council meeting. The date for the Users Council meeting was tentatively set for May 16 or 30. The MOP should be sent out well in advance of the Users Council meeting to MINERVA-L. After consideration of how the vote should be conducted, it was decided that an email vote for approval of the MOP will happen after the Users Council meeting.

Reports

Treasurer’s Report—Nikki summarized her report with the assessment that Minerva’s finances are in good shape.

Maine InfoNet/Minerva Technical—James talked about the options for mobile apps for the Minerva catalog. The cost for an app from Library Anywhere should be about $3,500 annually, a reasonable cost. He talked some about other proposals that were not affordable. Thomas College Library, Walker Memorial Library, Portland Public Library, Maine State Library, and the Bangor Public Library already have Library Anywhere. Motion by Steve, second by Nikki that Minerva proceed with the purchase of a mobile app from Library Anywhere, as long as the price is in the neighborhood of what James stated. Motion carried.

In other news from James, he hopes to hear from the federal agency within the next two months on the status of Maine InfoNet’s 501(c)(3) application. Work is under way to make changes to the MIN website. An invitation for new SOLAR members will be going out soon. We may be ready to add a new Minerva member in the fall. The recent major system upgrade basically went fine, and the corrupted name index bug that came with the upgrade has been fixed. The Download Library continues purchasing. The collection is up to about 8,500 items. Circulation for the Download Library was about 15,000 in December; 19,000 in January; 18,500 in February; and over 19,000 in March. About a third of the circulation is Kindle e-books; another third is non-Kindle e-books; and the remaining third is audiobooks.

Maine InfoNet Representative—Judy reported that the MIN Board is looking at the future direction for MaineCat and also exploring the concept of a digital commons in Maine. A joint subcommittee has been set up with representatives from the MIN Board and the Maine Library Commission.

Work on implementation of the IMLS collection management grant is progressing.

A MIN Board retreat is set for June 27. If we have any issues that we want addressed at that time, let Judy know.

Concerns about the impending new ILL delivery contract were discussed.