2010 PINES Annual Membership Meeting

DRAFT Minutes - Original (Microsoft Word Version)
May 12, 2010, 2009; 1:30 PM
Macon State College, Warner Robins GA

I.    Call to Order                        Lecia Eubanks, Chair

Lecia called the meeting to order at 1:30 p.m.

II.    Welcome                        Lecia Eubanks, Chair

Lecia welcomed everyone and thanked Marsha Christy and the Houston County Library staff for all their work in hosting the meeting.  Marsha welcomed everyone and thanked her staff for their work.

III.    Roll Call                         Elizabeth McKinney    

Member libraries represented at the meeting were:  Athens, Bartram Trail, Brooks County, Cherokee, Chestatee, Coastal Plain, Conyers-Rockdale, Desoto Trail, Fitzgerald-Ben Hill, Hart County, Houston County, Jefferson County, Kinchafoonee, Lake Blackshear, Middle Georgia, Mountain, Newton County, Northeast Georgia, Ohoopee, Okeefenokee, Peach County, Piedmont, Pine Mountain, Rodenberry, Sara Hightower, Screven-Jenkins, South Georgia, Statesboro, Three Rivers, Twin Lakes, Uncle Remus, and West Georgia.

III.    Approval of the Annual Membership Meeting Minutes of May 20, 2009

The minutes had been made available on the PINES web site prior to the meeting.  Thomas Jones made and Susan Cooley seconded a motion to approve the minutes as distributed.  Motion carried.

IV.    PINES Staff Reports                        

A.    Annual Meeting Training Recap – Chris Sharp
PINES staff conducted training in Warner Robins on April 10 and 11.  Because of travel budgets, much of the training was consolidated this year into the sessions in Warner Robins.  Training was offered in database cleanup, local systems administration, PINES policies, reports, cataloging, and circulation.  Attendance was good at all sessions.  PINES staff will be putting training modules online and offering train-the-trainer sessions.
B.    Bucket Project – Emily Almond
Emily gave a presentation on where we are in the evolution of PINES and where we need to be to have better control over our own PINES specific version of Evergreen.  She outlined the steps that have been taken and what remains to be done to achieve that control.  The steps necessary to meet the objectives may require changes in staff responsibilities or additional staff.  RFPs and requirements for several projects related to this are under development.  This will be easier now that we are learning what we need to buy, what we need to build, and what we need to partner to develop.
C.    RFPs for Development, Hardware Administration and System Administration – Elizabeth McKinney
Elizabeth reported that competitive bidding for contracts for development (may use different vendors for different development pieces), hardware, and IT/Systems Administration for PINES.  In the short-term, Andy Witter, who currently works for John Miller, will serve as PINES systems administrator until that position can be filled.
D.    SIP2 Interface – Elizabeth McKinney
There has been a recent issue with vendors telling libraries that their products that are meant to interface with PINES database are “PINES approved” when this is not the case.  Some shady tactics are being used to sell products.  In order to provide every vendor with equal opportunities and every library with necessary information, PINES staff is proposing a PINES policy stating that PINES would provide standard, basic SIP2 interface and anything beyond that would be the individual vendors’ responsibility. A sample policy statement was distributed.  The reasons for that are that if PINES spends money to develop interfaces for individual vendors and libraries it will deplete the budget for all PINES libraries and obligate PINES to ongoing updates and development to keep those interfaces current and that vendors may take development pieces we paid for and sell them to other customers.  PINES staff is creating a third-party vendor checklist for libraries to use when working with vendors to be sure of compatibility with Evergreen/PINES.  And any vendor making claims of PINES approval should be checked out with PINES staff.  The plan is to vote on this policy at the next Executive Committee meeting on September 15th.  This should allow ample time for discussion and input from the PINES community before the vote.
E.    ILS Advisory Committee Work and Composition – Elizabeth McKinney
The PINES staff needs the input from the ILS Advisory Committee as it works on some system-wide items for development, including credit card processing and RFID issues.  They would like to solicit members for this committee with expertise needed to work on the items and make recommendations for members to the Executive Committee for voting on at the September meeting.  They also suggested that the ILS Advisory committee be put on the same two-year election cycle as other PINES sub-committees.  PINES membership concurred.
F.    PINES Circulation Policies and Procedure Manual – Chris Sharp
A revision of the PINES Policy & Procedures manual has been underway since last summer.  The subcommittee has put in a lot of work tying all policy decisions back to the Executive Committee vote dates and cleaning up inconsistencies.  The new manual was made available for review prior to the meeting.  The manual will be updated on a more regular basis and will contain version information, so that it will be easy tot tell if it is the most recent version.  
Some members voiced concern over some incorrect information and wording of some sections of the manual. Please continue to suggest changes or corrections for the next version.
G.    Slowness Problem - Tech Boot Camp – Emily Almond & Chris Sharp
Emily used the current slowness issues to illustrate why we need both a stable testing environment and better control of updates and schedules for maintenance.  The current problem is a result of three things – a new server, an OS update, and an update to database management software.  The fix involves rolling back the updates and at the same time developing a fix for the problems.  The issues are being worked on by John Miller and Emerald Technologies in conjunction with Equinox.  The goal is to get PINES database back to reasonable stability within the week and it is number one priority to get the fixes in place before Summer Reading begins the first of June.  PINES staff will communicate progress and issues as soon as information is available.  Chris indicated that some sort of patron information would be made available to help mitigate the damage to public perception of PINES because of the recent downtime frustration to help with local PR efforts.
Chris indicated that the recent Technology Boot Camp held at Amicalola was a success.  Plans are to hold this on an annual basis if possible.  The boot camp costs about $20,000 with GPLS paying for travel for all participants.
H.    Database Cleanup Update – Elaine Hardy
Respondents to the RFP for this project are being reviewed and evaluated.  While there will be a very large number of items that will be matched, there will also be a large number of items that will require local clean-up.  It is important that as much local clean-up as possible be done before sending as there is a per-record charge.  This process will not result in a perfect database – but on a continuum between as good as possible and good enough.  That does not mean that copy cataloging standards will be relaxed or ignored.  Libraries will be contacted individually for local record resolution.  The clean-up should result in a better set of search results with fewer duplicates and improved response time.  
I.    Upgrade 2.0  and Demo – Elizabeth McKinney
PINES staff is hoping to learn from King County libraries as they will go live with the new Evergreen version in September.  Then PINES will plan to go live later in the fall – late October or early November.  The new version will be brought online, followed by acquisitions.  Final date will depend on our test environment being available and any issues discovered by King County after their go-live.
J.    Annual Survey Results and Comparison – Elizabeth McKinney
Handouts of the results of the PINES annual user satisfaction survey and comparisons for the past three years surveys were distributed and will soon be available online.   
K.    Reminder of PINES 10th Anniversary Party – Elizabeth McKinney
Directions to the Aviation Museum were given by Marsha Christy.  Elizabeth invited everyone to participate and help celebrate this milestone for PINES.

V.    Membership Action Items

None

VI.    Executive Committee Election Results            Lecia Eubanks

Lecia revealed the results of the PINES election – Chuck Gibson, Jean Turn, and Carrie Zieger were elected to the PINES Executive Committee and Claudia Gibson was elected as incoming chair of the Executive Committee.   She also thanked Marsha Christy, Donna Howell, and Nancy Tillinghast, for their service as they rotate off the Executive Committee at the end of June.

VII.    Old Business

None

VIII.    New Business

None

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

Dusty Gres asked for some time to discuss a couple of issues with patron records in PINES that have been recently identified.  The first has to do with how patrons with no middle name are handled and the second when a space is entered when it should not be entered. 

Following is wording directly from Dusty, because it is important that all PINES libraries staff understand the problem and know how to deal with it.

How did I find these problems?  The tab issue was discovered when I found a Caleb Martin (no middle name) as number 1 in a list of Caleb Martin’s and another one number 9 in a list of  Caleb Martin’s - shows you how it can throw things off.

The space issue was discovered when I was doing a random check of new cards and found a paper application that was a duplicate and could only find the two exact names by doing a number search.  Then, after looking at both records, and trying name searches with different variables; I discovered they were almost 20 names apart because of a space after the middle name of one of the entries.

Problem when patron has no middle name

• If the patron has no middle name (i.e. John NOMIDDLENAME Smith), PINES policy is that we do NOT put in a “filler” like NMN or anything similar, so it is John Smith.
• If the staff enters John, <tab> (to middle name blank)<tab>(to last name blank) Smith (that is enter first name, tab to middle name space, tab to last name and enter last name, in the alphabetical listings of John Smiths (no middle name) this patron will be at the TOP of all the John Smiths.
• If the staff member uses the mouse to click on the first name, then the last name, leaving out the middle name (seems reasonable I know), then the patron will be at the BOTTOM of all the John Smiths, and of course, almost impossible to find because of the fifty limit on patron records on a search.
• This issue cannot be correct by library staff, it must be reported to the PINES Helpdesk

Problem when a space is inadvertently entered after a patron’s name

• If the staff member while typing (EASY TO DO I KNOW BECAUSE I HAVE DONE IT!!) enters John<space> by hitting the space bar on any of the names first, middle or last, that is hitting the space bar accidentally while typing, that space changes the alphabetization.  It is not clear exactly where it places people but it changes them.
• So when looking for Smith, John George, if there is a space after John or after George or after Smith,  that patron is not in the correct location with all the Smith, John George’s - maybe after a Smith, John Henry for instance.
• It looks like this: (if you can see how the extra spaces enter)
  • Smith,   John George or
  • Smith, John  George
• This can be corrected when discovered by library staff b y deleting the spaces

Some clean-up has been done, but we need to be aware as we search, that there may be names that are not where they belong, and duplicates that are certainly unintentional or at least done even though folks looked carefully. And, we need to be aware as we enter that until it is fixed we may, again unintentionally, be adding duplicates or names that can’t be found.

The next version of Evergreen software is supposed to fix both of these issues. In the meantime, all library staff needs to be aware of these issues when entering patron records.

X.    Next Meeting

The next Annual membership meeting will be in May 2011 in Warner Robins – exact date TBD.  The next PINES Executive Committee meeting will be on September 15th in Columbus at 1:00 p.m. – exact location TBD.

XI.    Adjournment

As there was not further business, Lecia adjourned the meeting.

Respectfully submitted,
Donna W. Howell
Secretary, PINES Executive Committee