Sage Council-July 22 2009

Sage Council Minutes


July 22, 2009, 1 pm Pacific Time

Attendance:  Karen Clay, Beth Longwell, and Louise Weeks; via video:  Ken Reading, Marie Baldo & Shannon Van Kirk, Cheryl Hancock, and Perry Stokes; via conference call:  Marsha Richmond, Kathy Street, Denine Rautenstrauch, and Paul Weise, Project Coordinator.

Council Chair Karen Clay called meeting to order at 1:15 pm PDT. 

  1. Agenda Review—Add 6.) Grant (LSTA) support request—(kc) and 7.) Circ Rule Change (kr)
  1. Approval of Minutes—(kc) consensus agreed Minutes were ok.
  1. Fiscal year end budget review—(bl) We had to use about $2,000 of our reserves last FY.  Budget not yet finished.  Beth will email out in about one week.   
  1. Committee reports
    • Courier Committee—(bl) Enterprise PL, Elgin PL & Joseph PL are now using private local courier service that runs 2 X week.   Imbler Schools, Cove Schools and Union HS will go on as well when school resumes.  Lake Co. PL went to using the Orbis Cascade courier.  Gilliam Co. PL and Arlington PL were unable to switch to Orbis.  Beth made new courier diagrams—one on the Wiki and one on the Sage website.  [According to the diagram, Cove PL, Elgin HS, Enterprise HS, La Grande Middle School and HS also went/are going to the private local courier service.]

A trial service of Stamps.com will be conducted with EOU Pierce Library, Gilliam Co. PL, and Arlington PL.  One plus is that you can send via media mail. 

Beth asked the Council what they thought of production of courier bags.  Labels would still be placed on the books.  You can put items besides books in the courier bags instead of using envelopes.  Ken suggested we start small and have a few libraries on trial use.  Beth would ask a local 4-H sewing group to make, and we would purchase the materials.  Start with only 6 – 8 sites.  See how they work before making a lot of the bags.  Asked for volunteers and Hermiston PL, Enterprise PL, and BMCC said they would try the courier bags.  Beth will ask Elgin PL to also try the courier bags.  Beth will find a few more libraries to try this, too.  Would need about 100 bags?  Probably 10 bags per site are needed so will need about 60 to start with.  Design was asked about.  The fabric is a sage green, water-repellant material, about the same size as the Orbis-Cascade courier bags.  And yes, they will have the clear plastic pocket on the front.  We probably won’t start using until September or so. 

Re:  Stamps.com, it was brought to our attention, that you cannot pay for a lump sum (several pkgs.) at once but only each piece.  You must first apply credit to your account using the credit card and then debit your applied credit per piece.  Another consideration is that you have to supply the box or packaging to send book in, unlike Ship-N-Click which supplies the priority mail boxes free of charge.  Possibly use the courier bags? 

  1. Open Source—(kc & pw) The deadline for the grant is coming up at the beginning of August.  Test sites are behind schedule in implementation of tests.  Equinox finally brought online in July—we wanted to be up in April. The problem seems to be that Equinox is totally overbooked.  Our first booking had to be rescheduled and because Equinox seems to be the only one that supplies service for Evergreen, we had a long wait.

Karen is looking at the new grant and discussion is ongoing with State Library.  We are thinking of writing the second grant with an extra year.  They are pushing to keep the original two-year grant.  The new version of Evergreen is now thought to come out in August.  (Originally it was to be out in Sept. ’08)  Included in the new version are the academics’ modules needed for acquisitions, serials and reserves.  State Library suggested that we keep the two-year plan and if needed, ask for a six-month extension.  If we did that it would take us to July 2011.  Karen felt that if we were not ready by then we would never be ready. 

Karen already scheduled with Equinox for the new upgrade.  That will give us about four months to test the new version with the academic modules.  Sage Council can then make a decision in January 2010.  Beth will make two budgets to present to the Council:  one with Evergreen and one with Millennium.  If we go with Evergreen, we will go live Labor Day weekend 2010. 

Equinox pricing has increased four-fold for support.  The way to work with open source system would be to hire a contract support rather than pay Equinox for the Gold basic level support.  Paul is hired until October 2010 through the grant.  Paul has migration expertise and not programming expertise.  We would need to know by January [for the budget] an ongoing cost for the ad hoc programmer.  Beth and Karen discussed the idea of sharing a quarter-time I.T. person with EOU. 

Would like input from test sites.  EOU testers have concerns re:  cataloging—dual windows, cut & paste editing, global updates.  Use the test listserv for more input.  We might find our own solutions or they might be in the upgrade.  If you have issues, possible opportunity to have developers fix.  Paul and Beth have networking contacts.  Timeline was discussed and consensus is okay with it. 

Karen will put something in the grant that the timeline is pending on release of new version 1.6., which will have basic functionality of acquisitions, serials and reserves.  These modules will be more advanced in Version 2.0.   If the upgrade is not out in August, that will push us back to Christmas Break.  And if it doesn’t come out by Christmas, it will push us back to June, and so on.  Marie mentions that if we—all of us—can function, we can live with less [functionality] for a lower price.   Paul said that the first formal test was sent out and only one response has been received.  He is encouraging that all testers please send back input re: testing. 

  1. Region-wide loan rules for Sage—(kr) The committee is pulling together another draft next week and will focus on back half of August.  They have met twice.  The committee consist of Ken Reading, Marie Baldo, Shannon Van Kirk, Perry Stokes, Jo Cowling, Mary Finney, Kathy Street, and Jackie Redinger.
  1. Update on Sage Assistant—(kc) Louise Weeks has rendered her resignation effective August 7th.  She will be taking a full time position teaching Kindergarten.  Short-term administrative work (monthly stats) will need to be done.  An administrative assistant at Pierce Library will pick this up and also take minutes for the Council meetings. 
  1. Grant (LSTA) support request—(kc) Sage received a request for support of a grant from Portland.  This grant is re:  continuing education for Library staff of outlying regional areas.  It was questioned if this included Librarians (MLS) or just classified staff.  The grant only specifies “library staff” and Karen assumes it will include both MLSs and other staff.  Several other libraries also received this request letter.  Consensus was to write letter in support. 

Perry mentioned that EOLA will be meeting on October 2 in La Grande and he will be presenting a book repair workshop.  There will probably be a short 10-minute meeting preceding the workshop. 

  1. Circ Rule change—(kr) [There is a recommendation to put a Circulation Rule Change on the agenda for the next meeting.]  It was discussed and found that the rules re: renewals, when an item is overdue, are not equal across the board.  There are two renewal rules:
    1. For people who come into the library in person or who call on the phone
    2. For people who go online

These rules were put in place to be able to get materials back sooner.  When your book or item is overdue, you can renew in person or over the phone, but you cannot renew an overdue item online.  Do we need to vote?  Yes, this needs to be voted on.  We need to allow time for comments/feedback.  The issue is treating all patrons equally.  Shannon will write up the change and send to Beth for editing and dispersal to all members.  Beth will ask for comments/feedback and then call for a vote. 

Beth noted that she has the State Statistics ready and will post in the wiki.

Next meeting will be on TUESDAY, Sept 15, 2009 at 9 am PDT

Meeting adjourned at 2:15 pm PDT

Louise Weeks, Recorder