NOBLE

MEMBERS OF THE CORPORATION MEETING

PARLIN MEMORIAL LIBRARY, EVERETT

MARCH 21, 2002

 

Present: Eighteen libraries were represented at the meeting, attendance sheet attached.

 

1.  CALL TO ORDER /WELCOME - Deborah Abraham.  Deborah called the meeting to order at 10:15.  She introduced Maria Vagianos, the new assistant director at Peabody Institute Library.  She also announced she would be appointing a nominating committee.

 

2.  APPROVAL OF MINUTES -  The Minutes from the December 20th Meeting were approved without discussion.  Carol Gray made the motion to approve, Dennis Kelley seconded the motion.  The vote was unanimous.

 

3.  TREASURER’S REPORT – Thomas Scully.  Tom reported that as of the end of February spending is on target at 60% expended.  Linda Shea made a motion to accept the treasurer’s report, John Beauregard seconded the motion.  The vote was unanimous.

 

4.  MANAGER’S REPORT – Ronald Gagnon.  Ron reported that NOBLE would be changing to a new telecommunication network vendor as of June 1st.  NOBLE will be terminating it’s contract with Dimension Data as of May 31st and signing on with Atrion Networking out of Rhode Island.  Ron explained that Dimension Data is oriented toward large corporations and there were many extra costs.  Atrion will be providing better service at a savings of approximately 10%.  Also Ron stated that Paul Cronin, who worked for Dimension Data, is now vice president of customer service at Atrion and is familiar with NOBLE’s network.  Atrion also has the contract with SAILS network. 

 

Other telecommunications issues Ron discussed were: NOBLE will be changing Internet Service Provider from UMass to Genuity.  The contract was signed in December and the changeover will be sometime in June.  NOBLE’s e-rate forms were filed in January.  And Ron and Martha met with our Verizon account and network service manager in February to discuss past service issues.  He has been monitoring the situation and it has improved.

 

Ron reported on promotional activities.  NOBLE had a free ad in the Salem Evening News, our web site has been redesigned to incorporate the new logo from the new brochure, and there was a press release in January that was distributed to libraries. 

 

There will be some renovations and redesign done to the Member Services Room to accommodate new part-time staff and reorganize the work area for better efficiency.  The work will start shortly and the Executive Board approved the renovation costs of approximately $5,500.

 

Ron discussed the state budget cuts and how it will affect NOBLE this fiscal year.  The governor cut $275,000 from MA Board of Library Commissioners.  As a result NOBLE’s Telecommunication Grant will be cut $11,635, and the MARC Conversion funds will be cut approximately $3,000.  These are funds that are received this fiscal year and expended next fiscal year. 

 

Ron reported that Elizabeth has been selected by the Innovative User’s Group to be a functional expert for cataloging, database, and authority control functions.  She will be involved in the decision making process of reviewing and prioritizing enhancement requests from the Group. 

 

Ron reported that NOBLE received Net Lender funds from NMRLS on behalf of some libraries.  Ron also attended two meetings at NMRLS recently; one was a general meeting on imaging, and the other a meeting with Greg Pronevitz and Larry Rungren of MVLC about Serials Solutions.

 

 

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Ron and Elizabeth will be attending Innovative User’s Group conference from April 27th-April 30th, as well as the ALA Conference from June 14th-June 18th.

 

Ron also reported that the weekend of February 17th –19th NOBLE’s voice lines were down due to some construction that is being done next door.  The problem was fixed early Tuesday morning.

 

Sharon Gilley asked how the state budget cuts would effect NOBLE’s budget for FY 2003.  Ron stated that Executive Board would review the budget during the summer, but he doesn’t anticipate it impacting service.  Sharon also asked about the colors of the new brochure.  Ron stated the Brochure Committee would meet briefly after Members to discuss other color options.

 

Elizabeth Thomsen - Elizabeth reported the EBSCO records have been reloaded.  She is also working on issues of linking from EBSCO and Infotrac to the catalog for libraries to get their serials holdings. 

 

Elizabeth also reported that we are currently doing beta tests for Innovative for two products; MilCat, which is on the training and production servers, and Millennium Serials, which is only on the training system.  By participating in beta testing NOBLE has a chance to find bugs and get enhancements done quickly before the software goes to general release.  At the IUG meeting Elizabeth will be doing three sessions of a Millennium Create List program.  She also has been doing Create Lists training at individual libraries.

 

The Collection Assessment Project is underway.  Reports have been distributed on Physics and Chemistry.  Libraries are entering their assessment data through a web form and this information goes into a Microsoft Access database.  The next area of development is how to give libraries access to this database.  Elizabeth is also working on ways to get qualitative information into the database, as well as getting children’s non-fiction collection into the database. 

 

Elizabeth reported that three new staff members were hired for cataloging, they are Margot Isabelle formerly from Montserrat, Sarah Tarr, and Alison Barry.  All have library experience.

 

A Booklist Without Typing roundtable session was held at NOBLE focusing on ways to use information from the system and shortcuts to create booklists.  Martha wrote a script that is designed to work with data from the catalog.  There are some limitations on it and Martha is continuing to work on it.  This meeting was aimed towards Reader’s Advisory and will continue to do development and documentation.

 

The annual NOBLE-Hosted Web Site roundtable reviewed issues and services that are available.  Three new services were discussed at the meeting:

 

1) Blogger – This is short name for Weblog.  The idea is it gives you a quicker and easier way to add something new to a web page.  Elizabeth did an overhead presentation of how this software works. 

 

2) Calcium Calendar Program – This is a calendar program that NOBLE-Hosted Web Site libraries can use on their web sites.  Martha demonstrated how it works. Libraries would be given a log in and password for their calendar.  There is no limit on the number of calendars a library can have.  It is configurable and colors, text, settings, etc. can be changed.

 

3) MySQL Database Program – This program was added to the web server.  It is a freeware program that web sites can use to build databases and query them through a web page. 

 

 

 

 

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Martha reported there were several Public Web Browser Training Sessions in February.  Public Web Browser is a secure and free browser developed by librarians based on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.  Also Martha reported on PC Support.  George Lally has been doing Windows 2000 installations for libraries.  It is more stable than Windows 95 and 98.  Also George has been working on many printing problems throughout the network.  In regard to this Martha mentioned that NOBLE recently purchased a network printer.  A network printer has it’s own IP address and doesn’t sit on one particular PC and get managed by it.  Martha suggested if libraries are looking into their printing needs, that they consider purchasing a network printer.

 

5) STRATEGIC PLAN UPDATE - Deborah Abraham reported that Executive Board reviewed the material submitted by Marshall Keys as a result of the meeting in January.  It is on the Staff Information System.  Executive Board is moving forward and working on a few items; one being NOBLE’s mission statement.  Ron stated the goal is to have the Strategic Plan ready for presentation at the June meeting.

 

6) ACQUISITIONS UPDATE – Elizabeth Thomsen.  Elizabeth reported that work is continuing on the acquisitions module.  She explained that records cannot be deleted due to the auditing side of the module.  Also our libraries have their own method of ordering and doing accounting for acquisitions, which makes it more difficult to learn something new.  As a trial a small order was submitted for Bunker Hill and the order arrived.  Will also be submitting an order for Beverly.  Sharon asked if libraries would be able to do some things before the start of the new fiscal year.  Elizabeth stated that some things will be available to libraries shortly, that is why working with just a couple of libraries as a trial for now.  

 

7) DATABASE QUALITY WORKING GROUP RECOMMENDATION – Tom Scully.  Tom read the two recommendations that were approved at Executive Board meeting on March 13, 2002:

 

            1) Order records will appear in the web catalog until an item record is added.

            2) Orders will only be used for items that the library has selected for purchase, not for approval

                  plans.

 

Tom explained the first recommendation means that in order to place an order there actually has to be a record in the catalog of some sort.  Elizabeth added that order records would be displayed until it is replaced with an item record.

 

In regard to the second recommendation Elizabeth explained this is a way to avoid having too many potential orders in the system that vendors may send to libraries for them to review and decide what they actual want to order.

 

Linda Shea asked for further explanation regarding not being able to delete an order record.  Elizabeth explained that the order record is tied to fund accounting and auditing.  You can cancel order records, but can’t add one and then delete it through this program.  Ron added acquisitions works as an auditable accounting system.  John Beauregard asked if acquisitions would handle serials.  Elizabeth stated yes, and explained how, but it is not the first priority of acquisitions. 

 

Deborah Abraham stated this is a committee recommendation so it does not need a motion.  For the record all present members were in favor, none opposed.

 

8) IMAGING/DIGITIZING PROJECT UPDATE –  Ron reported that we did receive approximately $14,000 in grant funds from MBLC for this project.  There was a delay in getting the project started due to the fact that Innovative was coming out with a new version of the imaging software that costs more than the old version.  NOBLE staff was working on reconciling the differences between the two versions. 

Ron stated roughly half of the funds goes to the Innovative software, and the other half goes to scanning equipment.  Equipment that was purchased are an 11 x17 large format scanner, a PC workstation with a 19” monitor.  The workstation will be set up at NOBLE in the print room for libraries to come and use. 

 

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Elizabeth did an overhead presentation of the software.  She is currently working on documentation.  She showed samples of how digitized images and text would look in the catalog.  These images or text can also be thumbnails that you can click on and bring to a larger image in the catalog.  Part of the project is getting items into digital format that libraries own.  The Database Quality Working Group is discussing how to catalog these images.  Elizabeth stated that libraries need to decide at what level they are going to catalog images.  There can be up to ten thumbnails per bib record.  Elizabeth stated libraries would be trained individually.  A time would be set up for a library to come to NOBLE with 10-20 items to digitize.  Library staff would be trained on the scanning process and how to create the record and add the thumbnail and images to the record.  Ron added the grant allows NOBLE to purchase an additional hard drive for the web server to store the images.  Would prefer to have the images connected to books stored on NOBLE’s server, any local collections can be stored on a library’s own web server.  Images can be scanned locally.    

 

9) LOOKING AHEAD: CATALOG ENHANCEMENTS – Elizabeth Thomsen.  Elizabeth did an overhead presentation of new catalog enhancements that will be available.

 

1. Syndetics - is a company that provides cover images and reviews that can appear in the catalog.  There is a cost associated with this; therefore NOBLE is currently doing a trial on the training system.  This is also accessible in acquisitions.

 

2. Millennium Access Plus (MAP) – this is suite of products available for purchase from Innovative:

a)      Web Bridge – this lets you do a search and gives you additional resource options to search on, such as EBSCO, Google, Barnes and Noble, etc.

b)      MetaFind – lets you select several search locations at one time, such as online databases, various libraries and search engines. 

 

Ron stated the cost to purchase just data images from Syndetics is approximately $4,000/year and can go up to $22,000/year depending on options. To add Web Bridge and MetaFind the one-time cost is approximately $150,000.  Ron will be discussing this with Executive Board over the next few months. 

 

10. WORKING GROUP UPDATES –

Brochure Committee – will meet briefly after Members meeting to discuss the new color.

Electronic Resources Working Group – Elizabeth stated no updates to report.

Holds Committee – Deborah Abraham reported the committee is working on two issues; one is the

multi-title volume problem, and the other is a public relations issue where libraries have the right to decline to loan materials vs. the patrons desire to borrow the material.

Wireless Committee – Deborah reported haven’t met recently, nothing new to report.

Personnel Committee – Ron reported that the committee met to discuss health insurance costs.  Currently NOBLE offers Harvard Pilgrim to staff; the cost was increasing 20%.  The committee approved the change to Tufts Health Plan for a lower cost.  It is essentially the same health coverage with an increased co-payment from $5 to $10.

 

11. ADJOURNMENT.   The meeting was adjourned at 12:10.

 

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

 

 

Mary Rose Quinn

Secretary