Minerva Executive Board Meeting
Wednesday, March 8, 2017
In attendance:
- MSL Studio: Steve Norman, Shelly Davis, Tim McFadden, Nancy Crowell, Judy Frost, Megan McNichol, James Jackson Sanborn, Cyndi Burne, Susan Preece
- Phone: Janet Elvidge
- Video: Lynn Uhlman, Alisia Revitt
Janet (Vice Chair) convened the meeting at 10:10am; Shelly volunteered to take the minutes.
Review and acceptance of the minutes of the January 11, 2017 meeting
- Two corrections:
- Under Maine InfoNet, “Board member Dick Thomson (CEO CIO, University of Maine System) led…”
- Under Membership, “With James Rathbun (Baxter Memorial) Jackson Sanborn (Maine InfoNet) we should be ready…”
- Minutes approved with corrections.
Old Business
Minerva/InfoNet MOU
Kevin sent signed document via email to Executive Board. Paper copy should live with other Minerva files (MOPs) at MSL. These used to be in a file drawer in Linda Lord’s office. James will check with Janet McKenney about the location of the Minerva “archives.”
Bylaws
Following up on the bylaws change re: term for Treasurer – This was noted in the January meeting minutes. Questions were raised about whether the bylaws on the Minerva website had been updated. Lynn Uhlman will check.
Spring User’s Council meeting
Per email from Kevin: Betsy said that Lithgow would be happy to host the Spring meeting. She said, “On our end, May would be better. We have a lot going on with our community read project and all of that culminates on April 28-29.” Perhaps you all can settle on a date in early May (the 5th?)
May 5 was determined to be a good date. Kevin to follow up with Betsy on details.
Possible agenda items: FY18 budget, annual fees, developments with II contract, Collection Development Committee work/survey results. (And tours of the library!)
Board elections
Public seat (Tim retiring): Interest from Susan Preece (Topsham) and Michelle Sampson (YPL) and Joanna Breen (BBH).
Per the bylaws, we need to ensure all candidates are the “official representatives” for their libraries.
Tim will talk with Joanna about transferring his “official rep” title to her.
Academic seat (Shelly’s term up): No one has responded to Kevin’s email. Shelly will contact Gail Roy (NMCC) to see if she is interested. If not, Shelly offered to stay on.
Special seat (Megan’s term up): Megan will stay on due to lack of other special librarians.
Janet and Steve will facilitate the election by email. Per the bylaws, the election “…will be held annually in April.”
New Business
None.
Reports
Maine InfoNet (James Jackson Sanborn)
Transition from Overdrive to cloudLibrary – Some content still in transition.
III contract discussions – See email to Minerva listserv. (Appended.)
Maine InfoNet Representative (Judy Frost)
Positive about the direction of the III contract talks.
Minerva Technical (Lynn Uhlman)
Holdshelf issues – Waiting for III update; hopefully soon.
Albie going to IUG in April.
System Codes – Group working on cleaning up/streamlining.
New MILS library coming on board – Wiscasset Public Library.
Discussion of Maine InfoNet staff feeling/being responsible for organizing/running committee meetings. Chairs need to be responsible for agendas, minutes, actions, etc. as the meetings are Minerva’s not Maine InfoNet’s. Further discussion at next Executive Board meeting.
Technical issues with meetings -Often there are issues with getting and keeping all sites connected. Should Minerva consider purchasing a video conferencing program? Further discussion at next Executive Board meeting.
Finance
Budget report from Amber was reviewed. (Appended.)
New delivery bags have been purchased and are being dispersed.
Committee Reports
Membership Committee (Steve Norman)
The committee will be meeting in about a week to review the application process, with a Fall/Winter timeframe for bringing any new libraries on board.
Collection Development Committee (Cyndi Burne)
Feedback on the survey was received and implemented. Judy Frost expressed that some of the question might not be pertinent to academic and/or special libraries. She will relook at the survey and provide Cyndi additional feedback.
Cyndi asked for thoughts on how best to distribute the survey. Via the Minerva listserv seems the only option. It should be made clear who should complete and submit the survey (official rep?)
Circulation Standards
Report emailed during meeting. (Appended.)
Cataloging Standards
After the meeting, it was discovered that Katherine had submitted a report, but it was not received by the Executive Board. (Appended.)
Other
Nancy mentioned the MSLN legislation currently under consideration to determine how to fund its continuation.
Discussion of funding issues with MARVEL.
Perhaps we should ask Jamie Ritter to come to the Spring User’s Council meeting to provide info and updates on pertinent statewide library issues?
Adjournment
Meeting adjourned at 11:45am.
Next meeting: May 10, 2017
3/10/17 sd
[MINERVAL] Update on talks with III
Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 8:23 AM
Good Morning-
At the last semi-annual all-Minerva meeting, I shared that the Maine InfoNet Board would be having meetings with III to evaluate where we stand mid-contract and to express our displeasure with how we felt our systems had been left behind by IIIas a company.
The Minerva Executive Board has been consulted with on these issues, but I also wanted to share an update with the full Minerva group now, rather than wait until the Spring meeting.
I’m happy to report that at our initial III meeting they clearly listened to us and really seem to have heard our complaints and understood many of our overarching issues.
They admitted that their previous practice of charging for each new module, on top of our regular annual costs (we referred to this as a nickel and diming approach) did not work for states like ours, and that had the effect of leaving us with systems that did not include the newest products and features and did not work as well as they might.
As a result of the original meeting, we have had a series of conversations that have resulted in III agreeing to rework the statewide contract that includes Minerva, URSUS, MILS, MaineCat, Portland Public and UNE for the next five years keeping our annual maintenance costs static at the current year’s rate for the next two years (rather than the previously planned annual increases). Following the two year price freeze, the annual increases would be capped at 3.5% for the following 3 years (matching our current contract terms).
More importantly, at the same time, and for no increase in the annual cost of our systems, they will be providing us access to their full suite of products for which they previously charged exhorbitantly.
These conversations are still ongoing and no new contracts have been finalized so this is not 100% guaranteed so some of this may be subject to change.
But assuming this goes forward we would be looking at, over the next year or so, a number of new features being turned on for our existing systems. These offerings include such requested features as ‘mobile work lists’, the MyLibrary app, the Encore next generation catalog interface, access to the SkyRiver cataloging utility and database, server hosting, access to various APIs and the ‘Decision Center’ collection analysis tool.
Again, the timeframe for when we may gain access to these services and features and the details regarding what each system will decide to implement is still up in the air, but I wanted to share where we are now in our conversations.
Feel free to send me any questions you might have–I may not have all the answers yet, but I can add them to our discussion points for future meetings.
Best
-James
James M Jackson Sanborn
Executive Director, Maine InfoNet
5784 York Village, Suite 58
Orono, Maine 04469-5784
207-581-3083
james.jacksonsanborn@maineinfonet.org
TO: Minerva Executive Board
FROM: Minerva Circulation Standards Committee
DATE: March 8, 2017
SUBJECT: Circulation Standards Committee Report
At the most recent Circulation Roundtable, we continued our discussion regarding the practice of creating “local use only” collections and how those should be handled within the system. Josh Tiffany from Gray Public came up with a particularly elegant solution but it does need to pass through Cataloging as well. With any luck, this will eliminate the confusion created in the catalog by these records and help to make them function as intended.
We’ve also started to formally explore updates to the Best Practices Manual and, related to that, the polices and procedures that are on the books. These need a considerable amount of updating and/or reclassification. The Best Practices manual will be receiving what amounts to a full overhaul in the not too distant future. We’ll likely be presenting some updated polices to the Board as well over the coming months. As of yet, this remains in the works.
Our next meeting will be on April 28.
Sincerely, James Rathbun
Minerva Circulation Standards Committee Chair
TO: Minerva Executive Board
FROM: Minerva Cataloging Committee
RE: March 2017 Report
Cataloging attendance for 2016
As of Wednesday, March 1 Calais, Hobbs, and Boothbay Harbor haven’t met the required three meetings for 2016. MaineGeneral has met the requirement.
Recommendation consolidating DVD television series prior to June 2014
The committee is busy working on compiling statistics for the Executive Board as request. In addition at our Thursday, March 16 meeting we will come up with a specific plan to submit to the Executive Board.
All day Minerva cataloging training session
At one of Minerva cataloging roundtable meetings this year the committee is planning to hold a training session. The committee felt this would be a good opportunity has we have had new catalogers and libraries join Minerva in the past year or so. The session will count as a meeting. The training will in Minerva cataloging polices, standards, and best practices, RDA, and using Sierra. I sent out a request on MinervaCats for what kind of training catalogers want and received many replies with specific cataloging needs. At our March 16 meeting the committee will look at the request from catalogers, decided where we can hold the session, and who will teach or present at the session.
Respectfully submitted,
Katherine Morgan, chair
