NOBLE

MEMBERS OF THE CORPORATION MEETING

AT NOBLE

SEPTEMBER 19, 2002

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

 

1. CALL TO ORDER /WELCOME - Deborah Abraham.  Deborah called the meeting to order at 10:05.  Kim Lynn of Reading introduced her new assistant director, Elizabeth Dickinson.  Sharon Gilley discussed a recent incident that occurred at Wakefield library that involved a controversial racial group called World Church of the Creator, which used the library to hold one of their meetings.  As a result Sharon and the Trustees of the library are reviewing their meeting room policy to see what changes can made legally without violating any group’s rights.

 

2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES. The Minutes from the June 20, 2002 Meeting were approved without discussion.  Carol Gray made the motion to approve, Doug Rendell seconded the motion.  The vote was unanimous.

 

3. TREASURER’S REPORT.  In Tom Scully’s absence, Ron Gagnon presented the treasurer’s report.  Ron reported that NOBLE’s budget is 21% expended after two months into the fiscal year.  One expense that is paid in full at the beginning of the fiscal year is NELINET.  NOBLE gets a discount for paying in advance.  Tom Cesarz made a motion to accept the treasurer’s report, Kim Lynn seconded the motion.  The vote was unanimous.

 

4. MANAGER’S REPORT – Ron Gagnon.  Ron welcomed back Elizabeth back from China.  Ron reported that much of his time over the summer was spent keeping directors informed about the state budget.  Ron stated he presented a report at the August MBLC Commissioners meeting about the effects of the state budget cuts on our network and all the networks.  A copy was sent to directors earlier. 

 

Innovative Interface Updates - Ron and Elizabeth will be attending Innovative Consortium Partners Meeting at the end of September.  NOBLE staff has been getting together consortia issues to be discussed at the meeting.  Minuteman has selected Innovative as their system vendor and they will be visiting NOBLE on October 3rd.  CLAMS has recently gone online with Innovative as well.  NOBLE staff is beta testing Innovative new statistics module.  It focuses more on collection statistics rather than circulation.  Ron also reported that NOBLE’s “Swap Shop” was written up in Innovative’s newsletter.  New England Innovative User’s Group Meeting will be held on November 20th at the University of New Hampshire. 

 

E-Rate – Ron has asked public libraries to review their Internet policies so they will meet the requirements of the Children’s Internet Protection Act.  The filtering part is no longer a requirement to receive e-rate funding, but public libraries must have an Internet policy in place and follow certain guidelines.  Ron has sent out the guidelines to directors as well as some sample policies that meet the guidelines.  Ron explained every three years a Technology Plan needs to be submitted to MBLC.  He has filed a One-Year Technology Plan for this year, and will work on a new three-year plan in the spring. 

 

Personnel – Ron reported that due to the budget issues NOBLE no longer has evening part-time staff coming in after 5:00.  Those job duties, which was mainly running notices, have been incorporated into the daily routine of the part-time ILL Clerk. 

 

Ron has been working on ways to increase awareness to our libraries, as well as the public, about what NOBLE does.  On September 10th a NOBLE 101 session was held for libraries to come and learn about NOBLE.  Also on October 1st NOBLE will rerun a free ad in the Salem News. 

 

Ron reported that our auditor would be out on September 25th to begin his fieldwork.

 

NMRLS – The original proposed budget cut for the Interlibrary Loan contract was 24%, that has been refigured to around 8% cut instead.  Some changes will be made on how things are done with the

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September 19, 2002

 

libraries.  Previously ILL items that were borrowed out of state for your libraries were shipped back from the ILL center.  That will no longer be happening, libraries will have to ship the item back.  NOBLE will be receiving an amendment to our existing contract. 

 

Ron also reported that NMRLS has been working on a digital imaging project and they have asked NOBLE and MVLC to provide some input for a region wide effort.  There is a committee that is chaired by Mary Rose Quinn.

 

Debbie Abraham asked for clarification on one of the e-rate guidelines on the Internet policy.  Ron stated the forms are due by October 28th and will need libraries responses prior to that date. Hugh Williams asked if we could state we are in the process of establishing a policy instead.  Ron explained that we could, but the following year the policy has to be in place and we would forego two years of funding.  There was some discussion, it was decided to continue work on it and submit the policy by the due date.

 

Elizabeth Thomsen – Elizabeth reported on the training and meeting schedule for the fall. 

Acquisitions  – There will be separate roundtable sessions for public and college libraries.

Imaging - Iindividual library training is continuing. 

Course Reserves – College roundtable scheduled for October 24th.  One change: libraries can now have scoped course records.

Reference – Two meetings coming up. On October 10th EBSCO will be hosting a presentation at their headquarters for NOBLE libraries, and on December 12th there will be a roundtable session at NOBLE.

Other roundtable and training sessions coming up will be for Children Services, Create Lists, Tech Services, and Circulation.  All dates are posted on the Staff Information System except for Create Lists.

 

John Beauregard stated that he spoke to someone at EBSCO and they are trying to develop a sociological database at a reasonable price.

 

Martha Driscoll – Martha has been working on a solution to reduce the amount of spam that is getting into e-mail accounts.  One way this is being done is the mail server queries a “black hole”, which is a database of known spammers.  The server will check this database and will not accept the mail if found in this database.  The message is automatically returned to sender with a message.  It is not keeping all spam out, but has reduced it.

Wireless Technology  Session – Atrion will be hosting this session at NOBLE on September 26th.  This is an informational session about how it works, how it can implemented, security issues, etc.

 

NOBLE has purchased a program called “Remote Administrator”.  This will be used for our PC Support customers and will replace the LANDesk program.  The program will be installed on the PC’s and we can remotely access your PC from NOBLE’s office.  To go along with this, licenses for Norton Anti-Virus will be purchased. 

 

5. FY 2004 BUDGET PRESENTATION – Ron Gagnon.  Deborah Abraham thanked Ron for his work on the budget.  She explained this is the budget Executive Board approved.  The budget is presented this month and will be voted on at next month’s meeting.

 

Ron began his presentation by explaining that NOBLE will be facing a complete loss of state funds for this fiscal year and fiscal year 2004 due to state budget cuts.  These funds represent over 20% of NOBLE’s annual costs.  Ron explained this will affect only part of this fiscal and the full effect will be in FY 2004.  The reason being is that the telecomm funds received in a given fiscal year are held over to support the following year’s budget.  Therefore, the funds received in FY 2002 are applied to FY 2003 budget. 

Also the ILL contract will be decreased by 8%. The ILL and the PC Support budgets are separate and not in the general operating budget. 

 

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EXPENSES -

Ron reviewed a bar graph comparing FY 2002-FY 2004 expenses in Personnel, Administration, Site, Computer, MARC, Telecommunications, Continuing Ed., PC’s, and Capital.  Telecommunication and Computer maintenance comprises 40% of the operating costs, and Personnel costs also comprise approximately 40%.  MARC expenses has the largest increase due to more cataloging activity.  Other areas remain level or have only slight increases.

 

INCOME –

Executive Board has approved an average 2.9% increase in assessments for FY 2004.  There are operating surpluses from FY 2001 and FY 2002 that have been applied to the current fiscal year and FY 2004 to offset the state funding losses.  Also spending for FY 2004 has been reduced by $40,000 largely by lowering the capital contribution. 

 

OPERATING COSTS –

Base

The base operating costs will be $12,000 lower than FY 2003, a reduction of 1.8%.  With the effect of the reduction in capital contributions, the reduction in the base budget is 17.2%. Due to the reductions in state aid, Ron explained that the base assessment for FY 2004 would be $24,978 per member, an increase of 1.3%. 

 

Capital

Currently the capital account is $681,332 with another $148,000 to be added this fiscal year.  These are invested in bank CD’s and money market funds.  Ron explained the principal uses for capital funds are system upgrades and site improvements.  He explained that in the next few years we would need to start looking into upgrading the system hardware as well as the telecomm system.  

 

Per-User

The per-user expenditures are increasing by 4.1%, but because of the decrease in outside funding the increase in the per-user cost is 6.7%.  The per-user cost for FY 2004 will be $1,072.  Ron stated that two line items, Central Innopac Maintenance and Power Conditioner Maintenance (UPS), are increasing.  The Innopac Maintenance is increasing mainly due to NOBLE assuming the hardware maintenance costs of $14,000 per year beginning October 1, 2002.  The initial contract included three years of maintenance which is now over.  UPS Maintenance costs include a new set of batteries, which should be replaced approximately every five years and in FY 2004 ours will be seven years old.  There have been some costs savings by switching to Atrion Network and changing our Internet Service Provider to Genuity.

 

6.  PC SECURITY: A MANAGER’S OVERVIEW – Martha Driscoll.

 

Martha did a presentation on security issues for PC’s that can be utilized by using Windows 2000.  She reviewed some of the areas she and PC Support Specialist George Lally discuss in their training sessions.  Some highlights she discussed were how to protect your patron and staff PC’s by using Centurion Guard, using security settings, not allowing auto logons, password protecting shared files, and updating virus software regularly.  She also did a demonstration of LANguard, which is a free program that can be used to scan your network by entering an IP address range. 

 

7.  ADJOURNMENT.

The meeting was adjourned at 12:00.

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

 

Kimberly Lynn

Secretary