Minutes

Maine State Library Studio

May 20, 2014

In attendance: Shelly Davis, Kevin Davis, Nancy Crowell, Steve Norman, Karen Valley, Nikki Maounis, remote sites: James Jackson Sanborn, Alisia Revitt, Lynn Uhlman, Gail Roy.

Also attending, James Rathbun, Baxter Memorial Library

Call to order by Shelly Davis, Chair

Minutes of March 24, 2014 were accepted with one spelling of a name corrected.

Old Business:

Spring Users Council meeting—Shelly reported that 32 people have registered so far (7 for Husson, 1 for NMCC, 4 for Norway, 7 for Thomas College, 2 for Camden, and 11 for York Public Library).  There was discussion of agenda items for the meeting.  The migration to Sierra should be a separate agenda item.  The topic is important and ought to be interesting.

Cataloging issues—There has been a fairly extensive back and forth between Thomas College and the Cataloging Standards Committee.  For the most part, the clean-up of the ten sample problem records was satisfactory.  Moving on to the second step, the library will be tackling the cleaning up of ILL-requestable items.  The matter bears continued monitoring and raises the general issue of consequences of noncompliance with Minerva policies.

Review of Minerva policies—Shelly received documents from Pam Turner, who has been working with Kevin Davis on this thorough review.  Shelly will forward these documents to the rest of the board.  She read an example from the documents to give us an idea what is there.  Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of ambiguity in what has been found and detailed information apparently sometimes missing.  The question was asked about the distinction between policies and other less formal decisions.  Determining which recommendations fall into which category is part of the work to be done.

Committee responsibilities & RFA (Request for Action) template—Nancy will continue to work on this and bring back more information at the next meeting.  The policy investigation by Pam and Kevin is a critical part of this whole issue and is needed in order to complete the work.

New Business:

Charging patrons for the use of other libraries’ materials—Two member libraries charge for the use of certain formats (AV) of other libraries’ items borrowed through ILL.  There was extensive discussion.  Shelly will contact the directors of those two libraries to find out what their sense of the matter is and to get a feel for what the implications of a change might be.

Reports:

Maine InfoNet—James introduced Lynn Uhlman as the new staff member.  Lynn is working on a new Minerva training manual.  Adding Kennebunk Free Library as a new Minerva member is a good motivator for creating the training manual.  James reported that InfoNet has new office space (in the same location).  They are testing new help desk ticketing systems and are getting ready to roll out the Fresh Desk ticketing system, which should be a good improvement.  Fresh Desk ought to play nice with firewalls, unlike the previous system.  There is a new Marvel! search page.  They have been working with the Kennebunk Free Library to be up and running, with going live scheduled tentatively for early June!  Minerva is tentatively set to go live with Sierra in September, but that depends on the scheduling of the University to get fileserver arrangements settled.  James is setting up a password-protected web page with information on the Sierra migration.

James asked for action on the approximately $21,000 cost of the fileserver.  The numbers work out well for the expenditure to fit within Minerva’s available resources.  Motion by Nikki, second by Steve, that Minerva purchase the fileserver, as requested, on the 5-year installment plan.  Motion passed unanimously.

Maine InfoNet Representative—Judy Frost was not present.

Minerva Technical—Alisia had nothing to report.

Finance—Gail reviewed her written report.  Revenue is coming in and payments are going out on schedule.  The draft budget will be coming.  A new Treasurer will need to be elected at the first meeting in July.  Gail will help with the transition to a new Treasurer.  Motion by Nancy, second by Nikki, that Gail amend the next FY budget to reflect the 5-year payments on the fileserver as a new line item.  Motion passed unanimously.

Committee Reports:

Membership Committee—Nothing new.

Circulation Standards—James Rathbun reported on the survey.  There was lengthy discussion.  It was noted that one of the libraries that charges to check out DVDs did not want to consolidate sets because more money could be made by checking out DVDs separately.  Kevin pointed out that the main problem is when items that are split up or are still together share the same record.  James R. commented that if people make exceptions to the rule of keeping sets together, then the item should have a stand-alone record in order to avoid confusion.  In such cases, however, if the ISBNs are left in the record, the record will merge incorrectly into MaineCat.  But if the ISBN is removed, then the catalog shows no jacket cover, which is an inelegant solution with all of the separate records showing up in the catalog.  The consensus was that, when at all possible, libraries should respect the packaging that a series comes in.  Shelly will work with James R. on the language for a policy regarding this issue.  The motion will be forthcoming shortly, with the vote to be taken by email.

Regarding the circulation periods for DVD sets, turnaround is a consideration favoring the 1-week loan period.  Still, does a longer loan period really, in practice, slow down the turnaround?  Further discussion is warranted at the Circulation Round Table and Users Council meetings.  Since the decision on splitting up of sets will have been made, subsequent consideration of circulation periods is advisable.  Alisia volunteered to get some numbers to inform our discussion.

Cataloging Standards—A request was made for consequences for noncompliance with Minerva policies.

Other:

Positions to fill.  Karen Valley is retiring.  Lisa McDaniels from SMCC took a position at Colby College, so her position will have to be filled.

Nancy made a motion to adjourn at 12:30.  Next meeting July 9.

Respectfully submitted,

Steve Norman (Secretary for the Day)