Sage Library System User Council & Annual Meeting minutes
July 31, 2018 at 10am (PST)
via GoToMeeting
Present: Mary Finney* (Pendleton PL) [arrived at 10:54am], Cheryl Hancock (Harney Co. Lib.), Erin McCusker (Umatilla Co. Special Lib. Dist.), Dea Nowell* – Vice-Chair FY2017-18 (Umatilla Co. Special Lib. Dist.), Denine Rautenstrauch* (Enterprise PL), Jackie Ray* (BMCC Lib.), Mary Reser (Gilliam Co. PL), Mark Rose* (Hermiston PL), Beth Ross (Sage), Perry Stokes* (Baker Co. Lib. Dist.), Kathy Street* – Chair FY2017-18 (Oregon Trail Lib. Dist.), Michelle Timmons (Elgin PL), Ryan McGinnis* – Chair FY2018-19 (Cook Memorial Lib. – LaGrande).
* denotes User Council Rep.The meeting was called to order by [FY17-18] Chair Kathy Street at 10:05 am.
It was established that we have a quorum, with 7 User Council Representatives present at the time – Dea Nowell, Denine Rautenstrauch, Jackie Ray, Mark Rose, Perry Stokes, Kathy Street, and Ryan McGinnis.
[A vote took place via Survey Monkey and approved the selection of new council representatives – Circulating Schools – Ann Zuehlke, Academic Libraries – Jackie Ray, Public Libraries over 15,000 – Ryan McGinnis, Public Libraries over 15,000 – Mark Rose, Public Libraries under 5,000 – Denine Rautenstrauch]
Kathy Street suggested moving the Chair and Vice-Chair vote to the beginning of the meeting.
Chair and Vice-Chair vote: Kathy Street noted that she sent out an email yesterday looking for volunteers/nominations for Chair and Vice-Chair. Ryan McGinnis responded via email that he’d be willing to be Chair or Vice-Chair. Several others emailed that they would not be able to at this time. There were no other volunteers at the meeting. Jackie Ray nominated Ryan McGinnis as Chair. Mark Rose seconded the motion. The motion was approved.
Ryan McGinnis took over the role as Chair. The Vice-Chair position is still open and was tabled for now. Dea Nowell was asked if she would do the minutes for this meeting and she agreed to.
Approval of Minutes: Chair Ryan McGinnis asked if the minutes from the June 1, 2018 meeting were acceptable as presented. Kathy Street moved to approve the minutes as presented. Mark Rose seconded the motion. The motion was approved, with Jackie Ray abstaining since she wasn’t at the meeting.
Committee Reports:
Cataloging Committee: Dea Nowell (Cataloging Committee Chair) reported that the Cataloging Committee had met once and the Cataloging Mentors had met 3 times (one being a pre-training for read alongs) since the last User Council Meeting. A cataloging training on MARC tag 856 was also held by Beth Ross. The Mentors are continuing to work on a number of areas, including read alongs, series, etc.
Ryan McGinnis asked if the cataloging permissions had been formalized since he was last on the Council. Beth responded that yes, the CAT1 cataloging level requirements had been formalized and are on the website.
Circulation Committee: Beth Ross stated that the Circulation Committee has not met since the last User Council meeting. She is planning a meeting in September.
Denine Rautenstrauch had a question regarding patrons ability to place holds on items in own library, which is something that used to be available. She stated that often times ILLs come in for items that are on the library shelf. Beth responded that the way the holds rules are set up is to fill a hold with a local copy first if one is available. She also noted that it may be that a title level hold is being placed on a different bib than the one the library copy isn’t attached to. Denine noted it may also be that when an item is put on hold that their copy is not available, but is by the time the ILL comes in from another library. Beth will add this to the Circulation Committee agenda. It was also noted that age-based hold protection is set on a number of libraries items for new items and that may play into things. This is an upcoming topic for discussion and consistency. Denine noted that Enterprise PL does not use age-based holds protection on their items. Jackie Ray noted that doing an analysis of what is really going on and weighing all the variables would be good.
Budget Committee: Beth Ross stated that technically the Budget Committee doesn’t need to be on the agenda except for one time period of the year, when we’re getting ready to adopt the budget.
Courier Committee: Beth Ross stated that the Courier Committee has not met since the last Council meeting and is scheduled for a September meeting as well.
Denine Rautenstrauch mentioned that they have a fairly new courier. She has noticed that things can be in-transit for up to 2 weeks before being delivered. She noted that it has been a huge delay in a significant number of requests. She is not sure if it is coming from any particular library. Beth Ross stated that she will pull some reports and see what she can figure out looking for patterns. Ryan McGinnis stated that La Grande notices this occasionally, though it seems to be mostly from smaller libraries and he wonders if it may be staff related or based on the number of scheduled deliveries at particular libraries.
Strategic Planning Committee: Perry Stokes stated there had been no activity with the Strategic Planning Committee since the last Council meeting.
New Business
Standardized Loan Rules update (last revision 2010): Beth Ross asked if this is something we’d like to have the Circulation Committee look at initially. Kathy Street noted that it would probably be a good starting point. Beth stated that when advertising the Circulation Committee meeting she will ask for input on areas that need to be updated, to kind of get a feel for where the Standardized Loan Rules are not meeting everyone’s needs . It was noted that one area that was mentioned at the Annual meeting in reference to the Standardized Loan Rules was the patron card registration process needing to be refined a little. Beth noted that there is an online registration process on Evergreen, though it hasn’t yet been enabled. It could be looked at and enabled if people are interested. Jackie Ray stated that BMCC uses an online registration process as their students are scattered over 1,800 miles. Mark Rose, Kathy Street, and Jackie Ray noted that they would be interested in this. And it would be helpful if it were bilingual (English & Spanish).
Online Payment options: Ryan McGinnis noted that La Grande PL is very interested in this, as their city has very strict rules about account information and who has access to it. Mark Rose noted that Hermiston PL is looking at this and their city has given them permission to access their credit card system, though it would be done outside of Sage. He stated his understanding is that Evergreen doesn’t completely give all of the information needed. Beth Ross noted that if we did this on an across the board situation we’d have to pull reports to do a reconciliation on a quarterly basis, or so, instead of constantly cutting checks. If we used a vendor like Stripe (PayPal is very similar) and there is a 2.9% charge and a 30¢ charge per transaction — would the libraries have to eat that? Someone asked if we could just post a sign stating that the charge would be added the patron’s transaction? Someone else noted that at the last meeting someone stated that we couldn’t do that. The question was raised as to whether patrons would have to choose between the library’s payment system and Sage if they set up their own. Mark Rose noted that he wasn’t as concerned about the transaction charge as they only accept checks if the amount is over $5 and would probably follow the same thing with online payment, but wondered if a patron could chose to pay online from home into the Sage setup. Beth stated she was getting the sense that people are pursuing this individually rather than expecting Sage to provide the solution. Mark Rose and Kathy Street responded that they are (Hermiston PL & OTLD). Ryan McGinnis stated that La Grande was trying to, however is interested in Sage. There was concern raised about how this would affect auditing, and also upon relying on reports for this. There was some discussion regarding this.
Beth asked if she should table this for now, whether anyone else was interested in pursuing it, or should we just let it go. It was asked if we shouldn’t survey the libraries in the consortium about overall interest, since we only have a few libraries represented here. It was asked if there was an option to have some libraries participate and others not. Beth stated that it was customizable based on library settings. Beth noted that she would also need to talk with and work with Perry Stokes, as fiscal agent, as there would be some responsibilities that would be added and decide whether we have the time and/or resources to manage this? The discussion will continue on this topic.
Possible meeting time change for future meetings: Beth Ross noted that there was concern as to whether this was the best time or whether there was a better time for the Council meetings. And we felt that it would be best to find out from the new Council Members. It was asked if it would be good to also check with the libraries in the consortium as well. It was suggested a poll be done. Conversation centered on how many options to offer. It was suggested earlier in the day would be better (morning versus afternoon) & determined to stick with the 3rd week of the month. Perry Stokes suggested doing a poll of the Council and the general membership separately since we’d want to make a priority on the Council’s need and it would make it easier to extrapolate the responses that way. Jackie Ray offered to put together a sample poll and it was gladly accepted by Beth and Ryan.
Dea Nowell asked if the Council list had been updated yet with the new Council members. Beth noted that she would have to double check that.
Other: Ryan McGinnis asked if there as anything else that we needed to bring to the table.
Beth Ross stated that she will be working on statistics again. When asked when the statistics would be available she said that the majority of the spreadsheet should be available in a couple of weeks. There is a new component, tracking [OPAC] website traffic, for which information will be coming later — she needs to look again at the definition of it, etc.
Perry Stokes asked the status of the search performance issue. Beth Ross responded that it is basically the same. The server software updates have been scheduled and we are planning to update to Evergreen version 3 in September/October, whenever we can get a slot with Equinox. Beth noted that they can’t tie the performance issues to any specific function, though they are restarting servers every night and when issues arise. Perry asked if there was a server diagram. Beth said that there was and she would dig it up and post it on the SageLib website. Perry noted that the age of the application servers would also be helpful information for planning purposes.
Being nothing else, Perry Stokes moved to adjourn the meeting. Kathy Street seconded the motion. The motion passed. The meeting was adjourned by Chair Ryan McGinnis at 11:01am.
The next User Council Meeting will be based on the feedback from the polling.
Minutes submitted by Dea Nowell.
GoToMeeting session recording available at https://youtu.be/99sIwLgMg_U