Jan. 11, 2017
Maine State Library Studio

Present: Kevin Davis, Nancy Crowell, Tim McFadden, Steve Norman, James Jackson Sanborn, Alisia Revitt and Liz Soares

The meeting began at 10:10 a.m.

The minutes of the November 9, 2016 meeting were reviewed and approved.

Old Business

The Memorandum of Understanding: Steve said it went to Maine InfoNet Board. Their meeting was Jan. 18. James said it should be approved.

The bylaws change garnered 39 votes, all in favor. Now the bylaws just need to be updated.

James said the Minerva Board needs to give the Maine Infonet staff info to update the website. Steve said there should be a notification that the bylaws have been updated

Dues and Fees

James said III is charging a 3% increase, from the $131,000 range to $135,800. Also, there is an expected increase in Novelist from around $26,780 to around $27,250.  Maine State Librarian Jamie Ritter has said that delivery is going from $15 per stop to $15.60 per stop beginning next January, Kevin reported. He added that our budget is built on $18 per stop.

Regarding the dues, Kevin said, “In theory with no changes we could handle this just fine. I want to avoid people thinking that there’s never an increase. A $50 increase hopefully not a hardship. Philosophically I think we should only budget for what we need to spend.”

Nancy: Have we discussed a policy for what we keep in reserve? A benchmark to be protective of? Two months is what seems to be standard. We over-budgeted this year so we can handle an increase.

James: Delivery has always been the wild card and that is fixed. So bottom line is that we can handle an increase. Maybe we should explain to members why we don’t have an increase.

Tim: If we can keep a contingency fund than I am OK with no increase.

We agreed to anticipate no increase. Kevin will run it by Amber Tatnall.

A motion: “We proceed with the assumption of next year’s budget that there will be no increase in our membership dues and pending checking with Amber that Kevin post that to the Minerva list.”

This was unanimously approved.

Election

Tim is stepping down at end of April from Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library. His seat (public library) and Megan’s (special) and Shelly Davis’ (academic) are up. The election will be held in April, and the term begins in July. Kevin will put the word out.

Spring Users Council Meeting:

We discussed holding it at the Lithgow Public Library in Augusta, which was recently renovated and expanded. We discussed how to possibly broadcast to remote sites by alternative means. Kevin will look into this possibility as well as the State Library.

Maine InfoNet

James reported that III came back with “a shockingly positive response to a vehemently stated problem document.”

James said Maine InfoNet members met with III for a mid-contract check-in with a strong message. When we first joined, they were buying top-of-the line systems but all development has gone to additional products we don’t have access to because we’re not paying more…no modern administrative, front-end and back-end features. We went in not expecting a lot. Board member Dick Thomson (CIO, University of Maine System) led the meeting and did his job well. For III, there was the CEO, two VPs and two sales reps. We didn’t want to hear from them wanted them to listen.

Joyce Rumery (University of Maine system) spoke eloquently, James said.

The III reps were gracious: “Nothing you said is a complete surprise, but we didn’t know how unhappy you were.”

They came back with a proposed 3.5% increase.

The package: They will host our systems (no fees) and provide us with new services, including all of the Encore Discovery Level OPAC interfaces, Sky River access cataloging, Utility Copy Cataloging Direct, Mobile Worklist (helps with inventory), and Decision Center software (statistics). We ignored these before because they were too costly. There is also Directors’ Work Center for stats, and linked data that is crawlable through Google.

Basically they are including everything they offer.

Also, Minerva might be able to incorporate MARVEL! and there will be new tools for a web interface so a temporary station could be set up on an iPad, and a new create list function.

III recognized that company had been stagnant.

Steve asked if there were concerns about cloud hosting.

James: The biggest legitimate concern is the routing of traffic if there was a data breach in Kittery. We’re not expecting latency or delays. There are 99.99 percent up times

Steve: Is there a backup redundancy privacy?

James has documents to review but there are nightly backups that are moved off site.

Nancy: Do they document recovery time? James will check.

Kevin asked about confidence. James is reasonably confident There is a product plan of record. He is confident we will benefit from this. And he is highly confident there will be ongoing development. III is changing toward modern IT company practices.

Steve suggested a formal expression of appreciation for their hard work.

James would like this to be in place by the start of the next fiscal year. He asked if consultation with the Minerva Executive Board was sufficient. He noted it will be in the minutes and MIN will be making announcements. We would like quarterly updates from James, but agreed it was sufficient consultation.

Technical

Alisia said we had a successful upgrade. Soon the 3.0 unlimited web access will fix the problems with the holdshelf being unreliable. It has things we really want so will do quickly. It’s in beta testing now, so maybe later in January

Finance

Kevin said things look to be in good shape

Membership

Steve said Jen Alvino, director of Windham Public Library has agreed to come on but Joanna Breen has declined. With James Jackson Sanborn(Maine InfoNet) we should be ready to proceed to next round of accepting new libraries. There is one that really wants to join. James said it would have to wait until fall.

Collection Development Committee

There are now 11 members of this group. We reviewed a draft of a questionnaire they had created that is to be sent to library directors. We reviewed and thought too long and perhaps judgmental. We sent it back, but with our compliments. We suggest a shorter questionnaire, and then have members do more in-depth interviews with a selected few.

Circulation

Nothing to report

Cataloging

We discussed going retroactive to fix records on older DVD television series.

Kevin said it was a lot of work. Alisia said it benefits requests. She might be able to make a list of records where there is no volume number.

Kevin said he would examine the scope of the issue South Portland has and maybe weed out the singletons or replace with a full set. He doesn’t have a problem with doing that but doesn’t know the extent.

Tim: If the cataloging committee thinks it’s critical we should respect their opinion.

A Motion: To consolidate split DVD television item records and remove all volume fields from DVD television series catalog records to reflect the minutes from the meeting of June 2014.

Passed unanimously.

Nancy made a motion to request a report from the committee to provide an impact statement that includes the approximate number of items and owning libraries that will be impacted by this decision and to request a progress report from the committee one year from now.

Passed unanimously.

The meeting ended at 12:07.

The next meeting will be held March 8, 2017, at the Maine State Library.

Respectfully submitted,

Elizabeth A. Soares

Secretary

Minerva Executive Board