2009 PINES Annual Membership Meeting

Georgia Library PINES Annual Membership Meeting Agenda

May 20, 2009; 9:30 AM
OIIT; Athens GA

I.  Call to Order                            Marsha Christy, Chair

II.  Welcome                            Marsha Christy, Chair

III.  Roll Call

Twenty-seven library systems were represented: Athens Regional, Brooks County (phone), Chatooga County (phone), Cherokee Regional, Chestatee Regional, Clayton County, Conyers/Rockdale, DeSoto Trail Regional, Dougherty County (phone), Hart County, Houston County, Jefferson County, Middle Georgia Regional, Mountain Regional, Ohoopee Regional (phone), Piedmont Regional, Pine Mountain Regional, Sara Hightower Regional, Satilla Regional (phone), Screven-Jenkins, Southwest Georgia Regional (phone), State Library, Statesboro Regional, Thomas County (phone), Twin Lakes Regional (phone), Uncle Remus Regional, West Georgia Regional (phone).

III.  Approval of the Annual Membership Meeting Minutes of May 2008

Kathryn Ames made and Wendy Weinberger seconded a motion to approve the minutes.  Motion carried.

IV.  PINES Staff Reports                        Elizabeth McKinney

A.  Elizabeth

1. Budget was approved last week by Governor Perdue.
2. Evergreen Conference begins this evening.
3. Courier service, STAT, is meeting their contracted delivery times.  There have been some problems, but most delays were caused by the five-day hold delay and individual library workflow, not the courier.
4. Annual PINES survey results were highlighted on a handout that was provided.
5. GLASS is moving to Atlanta-Fulton Public Library and has a small PINES collection.  They will issue PINES cards to GLASS users and only the PINES portion of their collection will move through the courier system.  There has been discussion on AFPL joining PINES.

B.  Chris Sharp

1. System Administrator Position is currently advertised and remains open.
2. Consortium-level System Administration has made some global changes to the database – for example, changing all the patron Alltel e-mail addresses to Windstream.  They are trying to better support local system administrators by taking on more reports duties and possibly facilitating shared templates for reports.  
3. Local System Administration Improvements are being made to improve ease of use of some tools and improve workflow.
4. Training Goals are to have more PINES training available online and presentations from face-to-face training shared via the PINES web page.
5. GPLS Forums were supposed to replace e-mail lists, but both have their purpose and both are being used.  Some of the unused or very seldom used e-mail lists will be purged in the near future.  To sign up to participate in the forums, visit georgialibraries.org/forums.  Forums are good to tracing threads all in one place without having to hunt for old or deleted e-mails on topics of interest.

C.  Bin Lin

1. Lead time for new formats/training is needed if library staff needs training to do original cataloging of new formats.  So please let Bin Lin know ASAP so she can prepare for and deliver training.
2. Cataloging Documentation will be placed on the PINES website as it is completed.  If anyone has already prepared documentation to share, please send it.

D.  Katherine Gregory

1. Statistical Reports were provided as handouts for overdues and intra-PINES loans.  Other reports are available on the PINES page for all of FY09.  Kathryn Ames asked if there were some comparison of our overdue statistics with national statistics.  No one knew of any available.  There was some discussion of some ways libraries deal with overdues and whether there was some way to get more information on libraries that use collection agencies (like Unique Management) and their rates of success.   
2. Reports Working Group is working on seeing what types of reports are most needed and creating lots of new templates in response to Help Desk tickets.  PINES library staff members are encouraged to submit Help Desk tickets if they need a specific report

E.  Elaine Hardy

1. Empty Volumes and duplicate records are causing issues in the database.  GPLS will use some LSTA grant funds to do a machine match and merge to help eliminate some of these problems that started with the initial load of records and became compounded with each merge of records.  However, not all can be handled with a machine process.  Items that cannot be resolved will be sent to the owning libraries for resolution.  They are doing the RFP now to get a vendor to do the machine clean-up.
2. Cataloging module has several issues that need resolution; there are 70 outstanding bug fixes now.  Because there are so many issues, they are planning a major redesign of the entire cataloging module instead if individually dealing with the bugs.  The cataloging subcommittee will form the base for a cataloging working group for working on the module redesign.
3. Acquisitions Development Workgroup, consisting of the Acquisitions and Cataloging Subcommittee, is approaching the completion of the final requirements for the specifications document for the PINES acquisitions module. The group has been hard at work for several months defining local workflows to use in defining the requirements for a module that facilitates the acquisitions functions for print and non-print materials for the 50 library systems that comprise the PINES consortium, with scalability if more Georgia libraries join.  Handouts of the current drafts of the requirements, workflows and uses cases that are the result of the meetings and online discussions amongst the group, facilitated by PINES staff were distributed and area available online.
4. Inventory Module is under development and volunteers for a working group are being sought.

F.  Dawn

1. Documentation is now online as soon as it is available.  Any PINES library staff with good documentation of procedures or workflows is encouraged to share with Dawn so she can post it to the web site.
2. Online Training for basic circulation functions and other short refreshers are being developed as an alternative to travel for face-to-face training.
3. Group Order for barcodes and library cards will be done at least annually.  Please let Dawn know if you need additional barcodes and/or library cards so orders can be coordinated.
4. Helpdesk Tickets are being resolved much faster now that the backlog has been eliminated.  If you are still having issues and have not received an answer to a Help Desk ticket, please re-submit.  All requests to the Help Desk need to come through the online Help Desk ticketing system so they can be tracked.

G.Emily

1. Testing Cluster helps make sure new releases have fewer problems when the release is rolled out.  Lecia Eubanks complimented the PINES staff on doing a much better job of dealing with issues and problems in a timely way.  Donna Howell asked if all Evergreen sites get new releases at the same time as PINES and if other Evergreen sites have responsibilities for working groups to do software development for Equinox or just Georgia PINES.  PINES staff said right now just Georgia was doing the testing and work groups, but that all Evergreen clients get the software updates. Some sites are waiting for PINES libraries to load the client and see how it goes before they load it.
2. Holds are still having some problems.  Currently because of proximity holds filling, if an item is in a branch of a regional system and there are holds at other branches, the item stays in that branch regardless of when the hold was placed.  Proximity overrides the holds order, even within regions.  This was because of a decision made when the courier was having such a difficult time with capacity.  This will be revisited and considered after testing.  Also, the unfilled holds list has diminished considerably since libraries can now see their entire pull-on-shelf holds list and not just the first fifty.
3. Development Roadmap is a partnership between GPLS, PINES and Equinox.  PINES staff are acting as the brokers for items going to Equinox for development.  There is a process for making sure the right person gets the right question or information so it can be resolved ASAP.
4. Helpdesk Workflow diagram was distributed and reviewed.
5. PINES Website will be the clearinghouse for all PINES information at georgialibraries.org/PINES.  PINES library staff may subscribe to have RSS feeds from the site.  All documentation, development items, Work Group documents, etc. will be available here.
6. Long Overdue batch processing will need a lag time for local system administrators and library administrators to decide how they want to handle their items in regards to bills, fines and processing fees.   

V.  Membership Action Items

A.  None

VI.  Executive Committee Election Results            Marsha Christy

A.Alan Harkness, Lace Keaton, and Sandy Hester will be new members of the PINES Executive Committee replacing Jeff Tomlinson, Lisa Rigsby.

VII.  Old Business

A.Kathryn Ames asked that the GPLS and PINES organization chart and PINES budget be posted to the PINES website.  Elizabeth said she would have these made available.

VIII.  New Business

A.None.

IX.Issues/Requests/Discussion/Reports from the Membership

A.Discussion of the problems associated with PINES compatibility with Internet Explorer 8.  Chris indicated that the work-around provided to library OPAC users was about all they could do as they had no control over Microsoft or their updates or changes.

X.  Next Meeting

A.May 2010 with exact date and location TBD.

XI.  Adjournment

A.Jennifer Durham made and Kathryn Ames seconded a motion to adjourn.  Motion carried.

Signed,

Donna W. Howell
Secretary, PINES Executive Committee