Meeting Minutes

Maine State Library Studio
February 28, 2014

In attendance:  Nancy Crowell, Kevin Davis, Shelly Davis, Judy Frost, Nikki Maounis, Steve Norman, Alisia Revitt , James Jackson Sanborn, Amber Tatnall (telephone), Pam Turner, Karen Valley, Cindy White

o Call to Order – Shelly Davis, chair, called the meeting to order at 10:05 am.  This was an additional meeting of the board called for the primary purpose of discussing the new contract with Innovative Interfaces, Inc. and Minerva’s participation.

o Acceptance of Minutes of the January 8, 2014 Meeting – Steve Norman moved to approve the minutes, Nikki Maounis seconded, and the minutes were accepted.

o Old Business

New contract with III; implications of the proposal to divide into two separate catalog systems –

James Jackson Sanborn provided some background.  In December, the Minerva Executive Committee by email approved participation in the new III agreement which will involve upgrading to a new server (Sierra), unlimited SIP2 licenses, upgrades to AirPac, unlimited access to Item Status API and other added services and functions.   Agreement needed to be reached by the end of the calendar year in order to lock in pricing with III.  (The vote was then reaffirmed in person at the Jan. 8 Board Meeting.) The agreement specified dividing Minerva into 2 servers, one for public and school libraries and the other for academic and special libraries.  James noted recent concerns regarding this split and asked the board to consider 2 questions:  1) do we want to do this? and  2) if we don’t, what happens to the current agreement pricing?.  He explained that splitting into 2 servers would enable Minerva to add lots more libraries; currently, we are limited on loan rules, ptypes, etc.  III recommends a maximum of 60-75 libraries in Millenium.  They have not yet recommended maximums for Sierra.  James thinks there are potentially 3 academics and around 13 publics to add to Minerva so we could still have enough space with judicious use.  In terms of the agreement pricing, we were going to pay $[REDACTED CONTACT JAMES] for the split so III will ask to keep this payment and leave it on the books as a credit for anything other than annual costs.  In answer to a question, James indicated that it would not be difficult to spend this money.  In response to another question, he stated that we could postpone the split until sometime in the future but that would be difficult and very expensive.  He now is leery of proceeding with the split given the recent feedback he has received via email and at committee meetings.

Nikki Maounis made a motion that Minerva agree to migrate to Sierra but amend the agreement to a single server with the $[REDACTED CONTACT JAMES] fee put aside at III as a credit for Minerva.  Amber Tatnall seconded and a discussion followed.  Steve Norman asked James for his comments.  James said he feels good about the system and supports the motion.  Nikki Maounis said she reluctantly supports the motion as she is concerned about Minerva’s ability to grow.  James agrees although he feels we are making the right decision.  Nancy Crowell said her library’s IT person was very supportive of the split.  Shelly Davis indicated her concern with not splitting into 2 servers.  Amber stated that she feels strongly about the benefit of maintaining Minerva.  Judy Frost passionately defended the benefit of keeping Minerva on a single server.  Cindy White noted that technology is constantly changing and the III structure could change as well which might make a difference sooner than we think.  Steve Norman expressed his congratulations to James for making this happen as there were lots of stakeholders and it was a very complicated negotiation.  Karen Valley said that we need to focus on making the system better no matter if it resides on 1 server or 2.

The board took a vote on Nikki’s motion.  All were in favor except for Shelly Davis and the motion passed.

Thomas College cataloging issues –

Shelly had emailed an update of the situation at Thomas College regarding non-compliant bibliographic records.  A new set of records has been sent to them and they have been notified that they have until March 7 to fix them.  The Cataloging Standards Committee will review them and provide feedback.

 

The regularly scheduled board meeting is on March 12, 2014 which coincides with the PLA conference.  Shelly will investigate alternative dates and get back to us.

 

o Adjournment – The meeting adjourned at 11:55 am.

 

Respectfully submitted,

Cindy White