Pioneer Council Meeting
April 1, 2002
Present: Patty Cutright, Ken Reading, Darcy Dauble, Marsha Richmond, Beth Longwell, Aletha Bonebrake, Vicky Bruce, Carol Anne Thew, Jo Cowling, Anne Uhl, Dale Edwards, Shirley Roberts, Tara Bartley
Speaker Phone: Jolyn Wynn and Pat Bradshaw
Recorder: Tara Bartley
1. Minutes of March 4, 2002
Tara noted that page 7, agenda item 9, Demonstration of My Millennium and Serials Acquisition Module, had two action items that were identical in the final copy of the minutes. After reviewing the previous drafts she realized that the original action item was copied over. The necessary changes have been made both in the hardcopy and the web based minutes.
Minutes of March 4, 2002 approved with the above noted.
2. Agenda Review/Modifications
Shirley will hand out a position description on the manual de-duping position. The position will have to be opened to the public. If there are any questions towards the position and the description it will be moved to agenda item 5, Old Business.
3. Information Handouts (handouts are attached to official hard-copy of minutes)
Shirley distributed two handouts, which are Grant Cataloging Assistant Classified Staff position description and Budget Additions to Discuss. Ken distributed the handout, Circulation Committee Proposals. Anne handed out the article, Cataloging Made Easy: New England State-Wide Virtual Catalogs and OCLC CatExpress, along with two informational handouts.
4. Reports
1) Systems Administrator-Beth
Beth reported that the training visit to SOLN was very productive. They visited all sites in the SOLN area except Harney County. Anne will go down to Harney in the following week for training.
An Innovative update of our system was done during the last week of March. The process went smoothly. There could be another Innovative update starting next week. Beth will let people know.
Phase 1 of Release 2002 of Innovative software upgrade has a release scheduled of early April. This will have added enhancements for the web pack and web access management module. Once the software is released Beth will install it.
The patron pin is now setup. It will prompt the patrons for a pin if they didn’t already have one. The pin will be encrypted in the patron’s record so no one will be able to view his or her pin. If the patron has forgotten their pin number staff can go in and delete the pin. The patron will have to create a new pin at that time.
The work order forms now have tracking numbers on them. Beth is working on the portion of all libraries being able to view the work orders submitted
Action Item/Person Responsible:
Beth will work on the displaying of work orders. She will report back to the Council at next months meeting.
Bibliographic holds are still a problem. Innovative is still in the process of working on it. Beth will continue to stay in touch with Innovative until they have resolved the problem.
Beth has contacted Vecmar, who will purchase any left over Wyse terminals. They will pay $5.00 per Wyse and $5.00 per keyboard. The libraries need to package the terminals up and give Beth the number of boxes they will be sending. Vecmar will pay for shipping and handling.
Action Item/Person Responsible:
Any library that will be sending Wyse terminals to Vecmar need to get them ready for shipping. They need to let Beth know how many terminals will be sent back. Beth will get the shipping labels from Vecmar and send them out to the libraries.
Patron’s can view their records and modify their personal information. As of now they can only modify their e-mail address. They can also cancel holds from their records and renew their items.
The preferred Searches are now being e-mailed to the patron.
Action Item/Person Responsible:
Beth will work on the e-mail format on the preferred searches. She will make the e-mails more presentable to the patron.
Action Item/Person Responsible:
Beth is still working on a patron handout for My Millennium. She will put the finished product on the web for Council members to review and give suggestions.
2) Cataloging Report-Anne
Anne reported that the training at SOLN went well. She expressed her thanks to Jo for coming down and working with the group on SuperCat. A group training session took place on the morning of March 19th. The rest of the 19th and 20th were spent going to individual libraries for training.
Anne gave packets out to the libraries that were put together by the cataloging workgroup. Anne had little time to work with each library extensively. She suggested libraries go to the LC database and copy and paste areas onto their SuperCat template.
SuperCat was the only database shown and trained on during this visit. Anne expressed her frustration on not being allowed to show the libraries different options for a bibliographic utility.
Patty clarified that it was her decision to not show alternative bibliographic databases at this point of time. SuperCat is the utility the libraries are using as of now and they need the necessary training. The libraries staff needed to have focused and extensive training with work on SuperCat. Other options for databases can be explored at a later time.
Jo reported that she had positive feedback from the group training session. People that were there were very responsive to the training.
Dale reaffirmed the libraries in SOLN are unhappy with SuperCat and would like to explore a different utility. He respected Patty’s decision on only allowing SuperCat to be demonstrated during the previous site visit, but now requests a LaserCat demonstration.
It was noted that the utilities used by the libraries do not need to be the same. If the libraries choose they can use LaserCat or SuperCat.
Ken stated that the EOLN areas have SuperCat placements in the libraries and LaserCat is being used in at the Umatilla County Library District office. Statistically they report SuperCat is about 50%, hitting 1 out of 2 records. LaserCat is about 3 out of 4 records and CatExpress has a high hit rate.
The Cataloging Workgroup kept statistics for a week during March of what couldn’t be found on SuperCat and what could be found on LaserCat. Baker Public and La Grande Public kept track of their no-hits on SuperCat and sent them to Umatilla County Library District to check and see if LaserCat had them. The results were; La Grande sent eight records and five were found on LaserCat. Baker sent twenty-five records and ten were found on LaserCat.
It was noted that the prices of these utilities differ greatly. SuperCat is the cheaper utility and LaserCat is more expensive.
Harney County noted that they have had a great amount of success with LaserCat.
Beth questioned when Dale wanted a LaserCat demonstration done in the SOLN area. It was decided that late April, early May would be a good time to give the demonstration.
The Council agreed to start negotiating with OCLC for consortia pricing. It is known that a single purchase of LaserCat is $1600. The Council wants Beth to find what kind of deal they can receive with consortia pricing.
Action Item/Person Responsible:
Beth will negotiate to find some firm numbers on how much LaserCat or CatExpress would be in a consortium our size. She will get back to the Council with these numbers at next month’s council meeting.
It was noted that CatExpress is $.90 a hit, but no base fee is set for the utility. Therefore, libraries could just pay for the records that are hard to find.
It has been discussed before that the libraries use SuperCat or LaserCat as their first tier utility. If records were not found on these utilities the no-hits could then go to CatExpress.
In the end, no conclusion came with the discussion. It was decided that Beth would negotiate consortia pricing for LaserCat and CatExpress utilities. The pricing will be the main issue in purchasing a utility. In May, demonstrations of these utilities will take place in the SOLN area. The Council will continue to discuss what utility will be used for the libraries.
Anne approached the Council about upgrading to LaserCat for Arleta Langley and Tara Bartley. Arleta is cataloging Wallowa County’s records and it would be much quicker for her to use a utility like LaserCat. It was clarified that Arleta is only attaching Wallowa records to records already on the Pioneer System. The no-hits are being sent back to Wallowa to be taken care of.
Anne explained one of the informational handouts she handed out to the Council to be a statistical sheet she is asking all circulating libraries to keep track of for the next two months. It will give some firm numbers on what libraries are finding on SuperCat, LaserCat or OCLC. Discussion followed.
Anne expressed that each library can choose whether to keep the stats or not. Darcy commented that she had asked Anne to gather statistics on the bibliographic utilities.
3) Circulation Workgroup
Heidi Florenzen, chair of the Circulation Workgroup, sent a Circulation Committee Proposal to the Council members. There are two proposals listed on the sheet (handout is attached to official hard copy of minutes).
Beth explains the first proposal on the use of patron library cards at other libraries. It is proposing that public library cards be consolidated into one patron record. This would exclude academics.
It was clarified that the fines follow the item. Blocks can be put in place for fines that are unpaid at libraries; therefore, patrons will have to pay the fines before they can check out a book at any other library.
The loan rules are sophisticated enough that they will follow the item. The policy that is set up will follow the item, so libraries don’t have to worry about other libraries loan rules.
It was noted that at this time libraries could look at a standard number for loan periods. This would keep consistency for all the libraries.
Aletha was concerned with the possibility of having a patron return a book to a random library and then that library being responsible for returning the book to the owning library. Not all the libraries are on a courier route, which will require those libraries to have an additional shipping cost. These costs are not built into budgets.
The recommendation is to have the patron return the book at the library they borrowed it from. The realization with this recommendation however, is books could still be returned to other libraries and the library where the item was checked out.
Discussion lead to some ideas but nothing was determined. The following paragraphs are some ideas the Council members kicked around.
A charge could be implemented for shipping and handling. The cost could be initiated if the patron returns the book to any library other than the one checking the item out. If the library is not on a courier route, they can charge and phrase it on their policy.
A suggestion for the collection of fines would be to have the patron’s home library collect the fine and then reimburse the library that sent the book back to the owning library. Quarterly payback to each library was suggested.
Jo commented that because La Grande Public does not collect fines this would be a problem. The money would be reflected in their internal budget. This could also hurt other libraries that don’t collect fines. She also commented on how much paperwork this would create.
The proposal needs to have more focus on shipping costs. This is an important area for the use of one patron record for all library borrowing.
After careful consideration it was agreed upon that the Circulation Proposal is a good framework to work from, but additional issues need to be defined such as how to handle shipping costs. A fuller clarification of the proposal will be looked at during May and/or June’s Council meetings.
4) Systems Workgroup
It is clarified that Beth is the chair of the Systems Workgroup. They did not meet during the month of March. The morning of April 16th will be the first meeting for the Systems group.
The Systems group will work on courier issues, universal borrowing card, new sites coming in, and node representation. Beth will send an agenda out for the Systems meeting.
5) EOIN training and upgrade
Darcy sent a follow up e-mail to the libraries asking for feedback on their usage of EOIN. One issue that was relayed back to Darcy is if libraries send a request there is no way to know if a library has responded to the request.
Beth commented that if libraries can fill the request they could send an e-mail out to the library making the request. She agrees that if it can’t be filled there is no communication that occurs between the libraries. Updates on EOIN are scheduled. Eastern’s Systems Administrator will be working on the updates.
Patty suggests having Noel Peden, Eastern’s System Administrator, join next month’s Council meeting to discuss the updates that will be made, etc. At this time some brainstorming can be done to better improve EOIN.
Action Item/Person Responsible:
Patty will ask Noel Peden to attend May’s Council meeting and give the members some insight on the enhancements that will be made to EOIN.
6) Courier
The courier discussion needs to be kept on the table. As of now there are issues that need to be worked out. The System’s workgroup will work on the problems.
Patty suggested utilizing the statewide courier and the ESD couriers. Eastern could be the centralized drop off area and then work from there. EOU is a statewide drop-site for the Pioneer System. However, it may be facing problems locally because of ESD uncertainties.
SOLN-Malheur County is on statewide courier so it is positioned for resource sharing. SOLN-Harney County is not a statewide drop-site.
EOLN does not have a statewide drop site. This will need to be looked at further.
The System’s group will make recommendations on courier solutions at next month’s meeting.
7) Millennium Self-Checkout Module
It was reported that the first module purchased would cost $4500 and after that each additional one would be $2500.
It was mentioned that a 3M module might not need to be purchased in order to do Millennium self-checkout.
Pat Bradshaw commented that they are buying a 3M module for $20,000, but if she does not need to she will hold off on buying the equipment.
Action Item/Person Responsible:
Beth will get more information on the Millennium Self-Checkout Module. She will find out what is needed to run the program and how much maintenance costs will be. She will send the information on the list serv.
5. Old Business
1) Memorandum of Agreement signing
Shirley passed around the final copy of the Memorandum of agreement for Council member signatures.
2) Noel Peden informed the group on the difference between 8 x 8 technology and Polycom video conferencing. He strongly recommends not getting an 8 x 8-video conference. They are from point to point with poor picture quality.
The low end Polycoms are sophisticated systems that can handle several functions such as, PowerPoint presentations and clear communication. It can handle four connections at one time. The cost would be around $14,100.
Aletha commented that through LEO ten areas around the state would be receiving Polycom units. She believed Harney County would be one of the sites that would receive a unit. Aletha could not remember which sites would be receiving the units.
Action Item/Person Responsible:
Aletha will e-mail a list of libraries that will be receiving the Polycom units.
It was noted if some of the areas receive their units from the LEO grant to upgrade the initial system to a ten-connection unit. Noel was unsure if this would be possible. He will find some information and report back.
Action Item/Person Responsible:
Noel will research and see if more connections can be added to the Polycom unit. He will also speak to Scott Carter from North Central ESD in working with the areas that will be receiving units from the LEO grant.
This discussion is tabled to next months meeting. The information will be gathered and reported. At May’s Council meeting a decision will need to be made.
6. Budget Additions
Shirley handed out a new budget additions worksheet (handout attached to original hard copy minutes). She encourages people to look at it and review it. As of now there is $41,286 in unallocated funds.
She commented that if any library was interested in utilizing the Serials and Acquisitions module they would need to let Shirley know as soon as possible. She will need to schedule training with Innovative. It will be an additional $5000 for the Acquisition fund table for libraries collectively, each library does not need a separate acquisition fund table.
Dale requests going back to the nodes and checking to see if any sites are interested. They will get back to Shirley with any interested library.
Baker Public and La Grande Public are not interested in the Serials and Acquisitions module.
Hand held computers (data devices) have not been ordered yet. Beth questioned when the libraries would need these items. They will need to have the programming and the training done before mid-May. As of now Beth will order two per node. If she can get them cheaper then the initial price she will order more per node.
Action Item/Person Responsible:
Beth will order the hand held data devices and get them programmed and sites trained before mid-May.
7. OLA Presentation Preview
Thursday, April 17th, Patty, Dale, Marsha, and Shirley will be presenting a presentation at the OLA national conference. They showed the Council their preliminary presentation for feedback.
8. Next
The next meeting is scheduled for May 6, 2002 at 9:00 am.