September 2009 Executive Committee Meeting

Date: 
2009/09/16

September 16, 2009 – Hall County Library, Spout Springs Branch, Flowery Branch GA

 

I.Call to Order    - Lecia Eubanks, Chair

The meeting was called to order at 10:00 a.m.

II.Welcome -  Lecia Eubanks

Lecia welcomed members and visitors in person and on the phone.  Members present were Alan Harkness, Lace Keaton, Nancy Tillinghast, Thomas Jones, Lecia Eubanks, Claudia Gibson, Donna Howell, and Sandy Hester.  Marsha Christy participated by phone.  PINES/GPLS staff members present were Katharine Gregory, Emily Almond, Chris Sharp, Elizabeth McKinney, Steve Dressler, Tim Daniels, Bin Lin, Elaine Hardy, Dawn Dale, Lyn Hopper, and Julie Walker.  Grace Dunbar with Equinox was also present.  Several library systems were represented by phone and in person as visitors.

III.Approval of May 20, 2009 Meeting Minutes - Lecia Eubanks    

Claudia made and Thomas seconded a motion to approve the minutes as distributed.  Motion carried.

III.PINES Staff Reports     - Elizabeth McKinney

1.Elizabeth
a.Budget

A spreadsheet of the PINES budget was distributed.  The PINES budget has been reduced to $1.3 million for FY2010.
b.Overdue Notices
PINES overdue notices have been going out at 7, 14, and 30 day intervals.  By reducing the number of notices sent and changing them to one 10 day and one 30 day notice, the savings would be about $150,000 to $175,000 annually.  Only about 30% of all PINES patrons have a valid e-mail address in their record.  Sending notices by e-mail costs nothing.  If more PINES patrons have e-mail addresses for pre-minders and overdue notices, the savings would be substantial.  All PINES libraries should be encouraging their patrons to provide e-mail addresses.
c.Courier
The courier issue with Flint River Regional Library System caused by a budget problem has been resolved.  More than 3,000 items had been stalled in the process and have now been shipped.
d.PINES Boot Camp
PINES staff has been working toward providing an intensive training and review for PINES Executive Committee members first and then to all PINES directors.  They are interested in fostering better interaction between PINES libraries, PINES staff, and Equinox to improve understating among these groups.
e.New PINES Staff
Elizabeth introduced Steve Dressler, the new PINES Systems Administrator.  He is hoping to do more technical and hardware support in-house so more money can be devoted to Evergreen software development.

 

2.Chris Sharp
a.Documentation
He is working to get all existing PINES documentation loaded to the web and make it searchable.  Internal documentation and PINES Executive Committee minutes and documents are being posted in a timelier manner.  Policies and procedures updates are the next priority so that changes in policy passed by the Executive Committee get posted faster.
Evergreen and PINES specific documentation is coming by the end of the year.  The PINES staff is hoping to document all the “back end” processes so that local system administrators can have better trouble-shooting and configuration abilities.
b.Training
Circulation, local system administration, and reports training will be made available this fall – possibly via Wimba because of travel budget issues.

 

3.Bin Lin
No report.

 

4.Katherine Gregory
a.Statistical Reports
Handouts of reports showing intra-PINES loans and overdue materials by system were distributed.  More detailed reports by library are available on the PINES website under FY2009 reports.  The number of overdues continues to grow as the number of users and materials grows.  Katherine repeated the plea to get more patron e-mail addresses into the system and keep them updated.  An automated phoning system for holds notices, telephony, is in the works.  After a question about the number of overdue items by home library, Katherine said she would create the report and post it to the web site.
b.Reports Working Group
Katherine thanked all the members of the working group.  They are collecting reports templates to vet and share based on the needs of PINES member libraries.

 

5.Steve Dressler
Had been introduced earlier, no report.

 

6.Emily Almond
a.Holds Working Group
The working group is refining recommendations on improving the holds process and will be making a recommendation to the Executive Committee and PINES community soon.
b.Helpdesk Workflow
Efforts are being made to mesh PINES/Evergreen staff strengths to make sure questions reach the right person for resolution.  
c.Software Development
Version 1.4.0.6 will be loaded to the test system this week.  A list of bug fixes will be posted.  No re-installs of Evergreen software will be needed; the update should be seamless.  Once the new version is rolled out the development roadmap and priorities will be updated.

 

7.Grace Dunbar, Equinox Project Manager
a.   Updates on Equinox
Grace Dunbar introduced herself.  She said she was there to help developers communicate better with Evergreen community.  There is a development team, a support team, and a migration team each with separate responsibilities to help work better with users.  There is a new help desk process and more documentation for systems administrators to help them be more self-sufficient.  One person has been assigned to testing and quality control.  Equinox now has 20 employees and their new organization chart will be linked from the PINES site.

 

8.Elaine Hardy
a.Database Cleanup Project
Vernon Davis at the Board of regents is processing the RFP for the database instead of DOAS, so it should expedite the process.  The RFP is going out on September 17th and will be out for about a month.  The process will be in three phases – de-duplication, overlay with OCLC records, and quality control and updating subject headings.  Currently there are about 2 million bibliographic records in PINES.  Estimates are that from ½ to 2/3 of those are duplicate records.  A large number of records are essentially “unfindable” in a subject search because of problems with the record.  The large number of problem records creates slowness in searching, circulation, holds, retrieval, billing, and all other transactions.  A batch this large would take 10 people 8 years to correct manually, so machine clean-up is the only real option.  This will be paid for from federal money and will cost about $356,000 as a one-time cost.  The RFP will include the ability for any new libraries wishing to enter PINES to get the same pricing structure for cleaning up their database prior to loading their records.  There will be some records that will require manual handling by the owning libraries.  It is suggested that all PINES libraries take care of weeding projects and shelf-checks for missing items now so that money is not spent cleaning up records for items that will be removed soon.
b.Acquisitions Development
The acquisitions workgroup has had some confusion over the development timeline.  The deadline for the acquisitions module for King County is late 2010.  It is currently being tested in Canada and Indiana.  The Evergreen 1.6 release version should have a preview version of acquisitions.  
There was much discussion on the need for better communication on development progress and frustration with the lack of information available to the PINES community on the acquisitions module and the fact that clients who contracted with Equinox after PINES seem to be getting such a module before PINES.
c.Other Working Groups
The cataloging workgroup is busy revising all documentation for cataloging.  And the Inventory work group is building the documentation from scratch.  Both have been very busy.
9.Dawn Dale
a.Courier Label Update
There will be an update to the courier label on or about October 1st.  The new label will have the sending library and date in small type and the STAT delivery code of the receiving library in very large (36 font).  This is all that is needed for delivery of the items and will help with confusion in sorting of packages.  All libraries should update their label database as soon as they receive notification of its availability so the new labels can go into use.  The process for printing will be the same; just the label format will change.  There was a request from the group that the filename be exactly the same as the old file so it will overwrite the old file instead of having two databases.  There were questions about the availability of the courier information printing to the receipt printer to make labeling simpler.  PINES staff said they were trying to get this worked out, but it was not yet possible.
b.Group Order
A group order for library cards is in progress.  Because of high demand for item barcodes, a group order for those will be coordinated soon.

 

IV.Executive Committee Action Items        

 

AI1.  What to name the new staff/patron profile
This item concerns a new staff profile with no permissions.  This is to establish a new name for the profile.  Claudia made a motion to add the new profile with the name “staff-no perm”.  Alan seconded.  Motion carried.
AI2.  Proposal for partnerships with other types of libraries
Discussion centered on the implications for other libraries choosing this as a way of circumventing PINES requirements while gaining membership, potential funding issues, and confidentiality of patron information.  Alan made a motion to vote no to AI2, the partnership proposal between Three Rivers Regional Library, Coastal College of Georgia and Altamaha Technical College. Thomas seconded.  After more discussion, the motion was amended to read vote no to AI2, the partnership proposal between Three Rivers Regional Library, Coastal College of Georgia and Altamaha Technical College, and no to other partnerships that involve 3rd party access to the PINES patron database.  Thomas re-seconded.  Motion carried.
AI3.   Ability to edit a patron’s internet access level
After much discussion on this topic, Alan made a motion to vote no to AI3 and that staff in PINES libraries continue to have the ability to edit internet access for PINES patrons.  Thomas seconded.  Motion carried.
AI4.  Non-Cataloged Items and Due Date
Currently non-cat items due dates do not consider closed dates.  This is confusing to library users and is inconsistent with the treatment of other items.  Claudia made a motion to accept AI4, that due dates for all circulating items should change with the due date editor.  Sandy seconded.  Motion carried.
AI5.  Block patrons from renewing if they have fines of $10.00 or more revisited
After discussion about how long this would take in development from Equinox and a promise from Emily to find out the time frame and priority level of this item, Sandy made a motion to accept AI5 and have Evergreen software match PINES policy on circulation (including renewals), and that development be prioritized according to what is most pressing need not to displace more important development items.  Thomas seconded.  Motion carried.
AI6.  Withdrawn or Discard Status Added to the Actions for Selected Items under the Item Status tab just like the "Mark Item Damaged" and "Mark Item Missing" function.
Currently to get an item to be non-OPAC visible and non-holdable, the options are to mark it damaged or missing.  This is not accurate and is confusing.  Circulation staff needs a means of identifying items to be discarded or withdrawn.  The status “Discard/Weed” already exists in Evergreen, but is not currently available to circulation staff.  Donna made a motion to add a status of “Discard/Weed” to the circulation dropdown menu. Claudia seconded.  Motion carried.

 

V.Executive Committee Discussion Items    

 

a.Fines for items marked as lost
Currently, when an item is marked “Lost”, the price of the item is billed to the patron and fines are voided.  The Executive Committee voted on this in 2002.  Since that time, several items have been found and returned and refunds made to patrons.  There needs to be a way of keeping fine history for these items so fines can be withheld for refunds given on found materials.  After discussion, it was unclear how this was being handled in Evergreen.  Thomas asked to have the appropriate subcommittee review the policy and actual software functionality to see exactly what was happening and make recommendations for how it should work.

 

VI.Old Business - None

 

VII.New Business - None

 

VIII.Next Meeting

The next meeting will be December 9th in Savannah at the Live Oak Public Library System.  Exact location and time is to be determined.

 

IX.Adjournment

Alan made and Sandy seconded a motion to adjourn the meeting.  Motion carried.

Signed,
Donna W. Howell
Secretary