Sage Library System User Council & Annual Meeting minutes
June 1, 2018 at 10am (PST)
Hermiston PL meeting room & via GoToMeeting
Present: Jennifer Costley (Pendleton PL), Kristy Cromwell (Ione PL), Becky Doherty (Ione PL), Delia Fields* (Hermiston School Dist.), Mary Finney* (Pendleton PL), Cecili Longhorn* (Stanfield PL), Erin McCusker (Umatilla Co. Special Lib. Dist.), Dea Nowell* – Vice-Chair (Umatilla Co. Special Lib. Dist.) [- via GoToMeeting], Mary Reser (Gilliam Co. PL), Mark Rose (Hermiston PL), Beth Ross (Sage), Perry Stokes* (Baker Co. Lib. Dist.), Kathy Street* – Chair (Oregon Trail Lib. Dist.), Kim Summers (Elgin PL), Michelle Timmons (Elgin PL), Terri Washburn (Cook Memorial Lib. – LaGrande), Erin Wells* (Milton-Freewater PL), Catherine Wick (Pendleton PL), Ernest Wick (chauffeur).
* denotes User Council Rep.
The meeting was called to order by Chair Kathy Street at 10:04 am. And introductions were made around the table.
Kathy Street reported that the membership level changes were voted on via email and it passed. Beth Ross will be checking to see on population figures to see if anyone’s numbers have dropped and may fall into a lower cost category this year. Beth Ross reported that we know that Harney Co. Lib. and Grant Co. Lib. are affected by this membership level change. The population figures that Sage Library System uses are the numbers that the State Library pulls from the Portland State University census information. This was a question asked via email.
It was established that we have a quorum, with 7 User Council Representatives present.
Minutes: Erin Wells moved to approve the March 20, 2018 minutes as presented. Mary Finney seconded the motion. The motion was unanimously approved.
By-Law Changes: Kathy Street read the proposed change: “The term of representation on the User Council shall be two three years or until a successor is elected. Representatives shall assume their duties at the first meeting of the administrative year [which starts July 1st] and shall serve until the end of the administrative year of their second third year on the User Council. Terms shall be staggered so that representatives within a given classification or grouping of classifications shall be elected in alternating staggering years.” “Suggested classification groupings: Public Libraries under 5,000 (3), Public Libraries over 15,000 (3), Circulating Schools (2) & Resource-sharing Partners/Special Libraries (1), Public Libraries 5-15,000 (2) & Academic Libraries (1).” Additionally suggestions were given on getting the 3 year stagger into place for the above classification groupings.
Perry Stokes asked if there was a position for the new membership level. Beth Ross responded that we do not, at the last Council meeting we talked about the fact that there wasn’t a need to establish a Council position at that point. The 2 libraries that currently fall into the new membership level fall into the 5-15,000 level and so they do have the ability to serve in that grouping. In the future we can decide whether there are enough members in the group to establish a separate Council position. Kathy Street stated that when we first started talking about this group we thought there might only be one library that would fit into this group – Wallowa Co. Lib. District. And the Wallowa Co. Lib. District didn’t pass this year.
Kathy Street iterated the process to change a bylaw would be a majority vote at a meeting. Erin Wells moved to change the by-laws as presented. Cecili Longhorn seconded the motion. The motion passed unanimously.
Committee Reports:
Cataloging Committee: Cataloging Committee chair Dea Nowell reported that the Cataloging Committee didn’t meet in April, but the Mentors met 3 times since the last Council meeting and some of the items that they have been discussing include cataloging Book with CD or “read along” type materials and we’re hope to do some training on that some time soon, series consistency issues, discussion about new bibs and some other related issues that have come up with that, some searching issues we’ve had in Evergreen, some MARC cheat sheets and we have some new resources that have just been posted on the website with those, 999’s and if there are needs for additional of those filters and a process for that and we’ve just updated that resource as well. The next meeting will be June 7th. The Cataloging Committee’s next meeting will be next Monday, June 4th. Just a note, some have been a bit concerned that some of our issues have taken a while to pound out; we have been working on a number of things for some time and we are aware of that. We want to make sure that we get things ironed out as much as possible before we send out any procedures, but all of the cataloging mentors are really very busy with the work at their libraries and it has been hard to find a lot of time to focus on works of various things as mentors. So just as a reminder the mentors are all volunteers.
Kathy Street asked about it taking a while to put out the procedures, how long has this been. Dea Nowell responded that with the cataloging Book with CD it has been probably about 4-5 months so far. Series has been about that long as well. Kathy Street asked what the progress is on training new CAT1 people that have applied. Dea Nowell stated that we have not come back to a discussion on that yet. We’ve been working on training for CAT2 level with GoToMeeting to this point just to try to get everyone as fully trained as possible in that area. Erin Wells asked, for the people that have applied for CAT1, when will they be able to start training? Dea responded that she can’t answer that for sure. Beth Ross stepped in and noted she was going to bring this up at the next mentor meeting to try to establish some sort of a plan. Kathy noted that there have been meetings in the last 2 months. Erin stated it has been almost a year, and Kathy noted there has been no progress. Erin stated that out of respect for the people that applied we need to give them a date that they will start their training. We had them apply with the expectation that they would train at some point. Dea noted, that while she agrees with all of the things that were stated, part of our issue right now is that we don’t have any mentors that are available to do that because they are incredibly busy with their current library situation. And that is part of the reason we haven’t gotten very far on procedures and why we haven’t gotten very far on implementing training for current folks. We’re hoping soon that we will be able to do that. Kathy stated it seems like we have created a situation where we expect to be able to do this using an entirely volunteer group of people which doesn’t seem to be sustainable. She asked if Jon is able to do any part of this need? Beth responded that yes, he has the knowledge and the background to train somebody in cataloging. She further stated that one of the things she was going to propose to the mentor group was that Jon and she take on the first two, because the mentors are so strapped with their own jobs and this would facilitate moving forward. The comments were that this is too much to base on a volunteer group to meet this critical need. Beth Ross stated that one of the things she is going to be talking about in the strategic planning later is looking at staffing and some ways that we can refigure some staffing potentially in the future. Erin Wells asked Beth if at the next Sage meeting, in August, she would have an update. Beth responded, yes.
Mary Finney asked, if some of the catalog cleanup could be handled by upper level catalogers as part of their training in order to free up mentors from some of this work. Erin Wells noted that the more CAT1 catalogers we have the easier it will be on the mentors. It may be difficult for a while; however down the road it will be more beneficial. Beth Ross responded that certainly down the road with more folks getting training, being consistent in their cataloging and being able to mentor others will benefit the whole system. Kathy Street asked if Beth could share which libraries have had CAT1 applicants. Beth responded, off the top of her head, Pendleton has 2 applicants, one applicant from Ontario Community Library and one from Oregon Trail Library District. Perry Stokes asked if their current status was CAT2. Beth responded yes.
Circulation Committee: Beth Ross reported that the Circulation Committee has met again, they are meeting monthly. She noted that she has some documents to put together, basically taking the input that they received on the lost in transit policy. There weren’t any corrections to the procedure for changing patrons from one library to another, so that is probably good to go. Along with lost in transit they were also looking at what to do with damaged materials in ILL. She will get those out for everyone’s review. Another thing they talked about at the meeting was a situation that came up with the patron profile group of educator and an ILL that happened. With that profile items check out for 42 days and have 2 renewals. It means that when someone checks out a DVD, it could potentially be out there for a very long time, which is what happened with this particular case. It was discussed at the meeting we should have a different procedure for ILLs in regard to the educator profile group. It should follow the policy of the lending library so that the lending library isn’t impacted adversely where the item is out for so long that their own patrons can’t use it. Beth opened it up for discussion as to whether that was a good idea. Erin Wells stated that she thinks it is a good idea, that they have had problems with items being out on an educator profile for a really long time and when they are new they don’t come back being new so much, so she thinks it is important for ILLs especially. Mary Finney also noted that if an item is on hold we should not override the hold to renew. That has also been the case, not just with educator cards, but when it is with educator cards it is more egregious. Beth noted that according to Sage policy and system settings renewal should be denied and item should go to fill the hold request. Perry Stokes asked how often this is happening, do we have any sense? Is it happening enough for it to be discussed? Erin Wells noted she thinks it is. She’s had situations where people are overriding the date protection. Kathy Street asked if everyone is doing date protection on new materials now? It appears that there are a lot that do. Beth noted that the date protection is based on active date not created date. They automatically roll out. Someone noted that there are some libraries that use not holdable. It is frustrating. Beth noted that situations change, staff changes, etc., and maybe we need to have this discussion again at a future Council meeting. She can do a table of who is doing age-based hold protection and what their policies are in general for the next meeting and we can have a discussion.
Kathy Street noted that looking at the Sage Standardized Loan Rule Policy effective July 1, 2010 it says people under the age of 18 can’t have their own card, and Oregon Trail Library District issues them to them. So this is something that we need to address at a later time. Beth Ross noted that we do allow libraries to have some individual autonomy over their own collections; we were just trying to come up with some consensus on policies so that the patron was getting essentially the same behavior at all the libraries for basically the same things.
Kathy Street asked Beth Ross if we need to have a motion or anything for the educator’s card thing? Beth noted she didn’t think so, as the educators policy was outside of the Standardized Loan Rules, but just having the approval of the Council to adopt a different ILL loan strategy for those cards is a good thing moving forward, she just wanted to make sure she wasn’t stepping outside of what the general consensus wanted to implement.
Kathy Street also had a question, according to the Sage Loan Policy cardholders must present their card or acceptable ID, do all libraries follow that or must they have their card? Many responded that they will check ID. Mary Finney noted at Pendleton PL that they have a form to fill out if they do not have ID. When specifically asked, Mark Rose at Hermiston PL stated if that is what the policy states they will follow that. Kathy noted that a future agenda item is to look at the Standardized Loan Rules Policy.
Additional discussion was held on the age-based hold protection. Many feel that being a small library they can’t keep new items available to their community if they don’t use age-based hold protection. Some look at the top holds list when placing orders. Perry Stokes suggested it might be helpful to have the libraries that don’t use age-based hold protection to implement it as it would be helpful to all the libraries and patrons. There was also a comment made that some place the protection selectively, not on everything. Beth Ross also noted that maybe there was a way to implement 0-1 renewals on new items based on some perimeter in the system. If everyone is willing, she can look into this. Jennifer Costley noted that if everyone is using age-based hold protection it may affect our buying habits — such as all buying the best sellers.
Kathy Street noted there is something to meeting in person, because we don’t have these kinds of discussions on GoToMeeting.
Budget Committee: Kathy Street asked is there a budget committee? Beth Ross responded that usually we do our work in the spring, however she just wanted to ask a question. Was the budget formally adopted? Dea Nowell noted that Perry Stokes sent out an email in April. [Perry, later in the meeting, confirmed the budget was approved with 8 responses. Since it was passed, there have been some adjustments to make in a couple of lines that he wanted to mention to make them adequate for the end of the year: Technical Services and Supplies we had talked about the order of $4,000 in courier and travel being bumped up coming out of unappropriated fund balance which is unspent from not having hired our IT assistant immediately (from the gap between one leaving and one being hired) so the unappropriated ending fund balance goes from $163,000 to $156,500. Perry will send a copy to Beth Ross to get updated on the website.]
Kathy Street asked if there would be a big impact if those 2 libraries dropped down. Beth Ross & Perry Stokes noted that there would be a drop in income, about $8,000 total. Beth noted that she would need to go back and see if there were some areas that could be adjusted in terms of cost figures.
Courier Committee: Beth Ross reported that the committee met and the major discussion was over the quantity of bags out in the system as well as loose items in crates, however that only happened in Umatilla County Special Library District, or those served by that courier. So we believe it is that boxes are arriving at ESD and they don’t have room on their truck so they are opened and dumped loosely into the crates. Someone noted they understood that these boxes were noted as mixed libraries. Erin Wells & Cecili Longhorn stated they thought that these boxes were coming from The Dalles. Beth stated that another email needs to go out stating not to use boxes and that if you are going to use a box put the items inside a bag(s) inside the box. It was suggested that it would probably be better if Beth contacted the library(ies) directly instead of sending a blanket email out. She further noted that maybe it would be helpful to have an ILL contact spreadsheet, much like we do for cataloging contacts. This would give a place to start as to who to contact at each library. Catherine Wick asked if it was also a number of bags issues, as well. Beth said, yes, it is. Beth noted that she brought lots of bags and media boxes, as well as labels to distribute today. And they are willing to send them wherever they are needed; sometimes it is a matter of not having the bags when needed, sometimes there is a disparity of number of things sent out than coming in. Mark Rose suggested we need to take a higher level look at this, Hermiston PL borrows more books than they send out, so they always have extra bags and are never short of them. Maybe look at what libraries are doing and see who needs to behave differently so that the bags get back to some of these other places. Kim Summers asked, are we not to be sending things in anything other than the green bags? Beth responded that as long as items are packaged correctly it is okay. Kathy noted that what we don’t want to see is items being packaged to a hub in a box that go to many different libraries. as the items often get damaged when they get dumped into the containers that go out from the hub. Distribution of bags probably needs to be looked at again. Beth stated that it has been a while back, but she created a spreadsheet to determine what the optimum number of bags a library should have on hand at any time was. She noted that she could do that again, as a heads up for any particular library so that they could request bags prior to needing them. Most of our extra bags are at EOU Library, they are a 5-day a week hub so they can get them out quickly into the system.
Kathy Street asked a question about patrons checking out kits that don’t fit into their courier crate. The item stated it had to be returned in a cardboard box. When she asked the courier committee, at the time, she was told that her library had to return it via mail, since the courier wouldn’t accept it — is that what is expected? Beth Ross stated she thought this was another policy that we probably need to discuss. How often is this happening? Erin Wells said probably once a month. She said it was frustrating because one end of the courier works and the other doesn’t. Cecili Longhorn noted that she takes her kit contents out of the container and puts them in a green bag to send. It was noted that often a large green bag is not big enough for some of these items and possibly these would not be able to go in courier.
Strategic Planning Committee: There was no meeting. The plan was to do some of this by having some discussions in the afternoon.
Board nominations: Kathy Street asked what openings do we currently have? Dea Nowell read through which terms were ending: Circulating schools, Ann Zuehlke’s term is expiring end of the fiscal year; Public Libraries under 5,000, Denine Rautenstrauch’s term is expiring; Public Libraries 5-15,000, Kathy Street’s term is expiring; Public Libraries over 15,000, Rose Peacock and Jeff Wavrunek positions both expiring; and Academic Libraries term is expiring also. That should be 6.
Kathy Street noted that not everything on the website for the Council Representatives is correct. Mary Finney has replaced Jennifer Costley. Perry Stokes asked if the terms were going to be 3 year terms then for those being elected to the Council? Kathy noted that the bylaw proposal had a suggestion of how to balance out the terms to get the 3 year stagger in place. Beth Ross noted that she sent nominations/volunteers to Kathy. Delia Fields agreed to extend her term to expire in 2020 (her email has changed to deliafields@hermistonsd.org). After some discussion it was suggested that Dea Nowell’s term be extended to expire in 2020. The others in the suggestion will be determined at a later date.
Nominations/volunteers for Council Representatives that have been proposed are: Jackie Ray (BMCC) volunteered for the Academic Libraries seat, Ryan McGinnis (La Grande PL) volunteered for one of the Public Libraries over 15,000 seats; Denine Rautenstrauch (Enterprise PL) volunteered for Public Libraries under 5,000 seat, and Kathy Street was nominated for Public Libraries 5-15,000 seat. For Circulating Schools there is one opening and Ann Zuehlke noted she would be willing to serve again. Public Libraries over 15,000 have two positions, with only one nomination. Mark Rose was asked if he was willing to be on the Council, he agreed to. Kathy asked if anyone present was dying to run against any of these nominated or who volunteered? Mary Finney moved to accept the slate of nominations. Cecili Longhorn seconded the motion. There was no discussion on the slate. The motion was unanimously approved. The term length decision not yet decided will occur later.
Council officers, Chair & Vice Chair, will be elected during the next meeting (July 17), as stated in the by-laws. The Chair runs the meeting and the Vice Chair does the minutes. We will also look at whether we need to change the meeting time.
[After a lunch break there was a drawing for door prizes. Winners were Kristy Cromwell and Mark Rose.]
Overdrive linked to catalog: Beth Ross reported that we will have the ability to integrate Overdrive into our catalog, it began in 2.12 and we are on 2.11. There were more enhancements made in 3.0. We will be upgrading to 3.1, so all of this Overdrive integration will be possible for us and she wanted to have a discussion of the impact and find out if everyone was in favor of this. Basically when we have this functionality in our system and load the records that correlate with our subscription in Overdrive, patrons will be able to see what is available in Overdrive. It gives them the ability to check things out right from the Sage catalog, so basically ties Overdrive, which for us is Library2Go, to our catalog. There is an API that communicates with Overdrive/Library2Go and brings the information into the Sage system. Those that have implemented it have said their patrons love it. One of the impacts will be loading MARC records and maintaining those MARC records so that it mirrors what we have available in the system. We used to have Overdrive records in the system a long time ago and it was kind of bulky in the display and at the time there were more libraries that didn’t have the service than did. The academic libraries do not have them, however there is a way to manipulate what they see and don’t see.
A question was asked about if there was a way to get rid of seeing electronic resources that they don’t have access to. Beth Ross responded that yes, if you are seeing electronic resources that belong to another library they weren’t coded correctly and Beth has been trying to clean that up so if you see that let her know. Statistics will still be on the Overdrive website. Beth explained the coding in the MARC records of the LEO Listens package and the extra packages purchased by a few libraries so that the libraries’ patrons who have access to the various resources will be the ones that have access and see them (unless searching all of Sage & not their specific library’s holdings). The question was raised about a Sage app — Beth stated that she just found out that there has been an Evergreen app developed but only for Android (called Hemlock), someone is working on developing one for Apple. Kathy Street noted that she has been showing patrons how to download a browser search to their phone. We would do a monthly process for updates through the Overdrive vendor.
Beth Ross noted there are search issues currently on Sage and they are random. We are looking into what is going on, however so far haven’t been able to determine the source. The servers are being restarted every night to try to help alleviate some of this, but it hasn’t eliminated it. There are several server upgrades that need to be done this summer and Beth will be looking at some performance tweaking of the actual database and see if we can’t make these search issues go away. That needs to be solved separate from this and it shouldn’t impact it. The question was raised if adding a number of records like this for Overdrive would slow down the functionality of say checking out books at the circ desk? Beth responded, no. Beth stated that we also have the ability to change the language from the term “Overdrive” to “Library2Go” for patron’s familiarity. In terms of searching we have the ability to limit our search to all formats no electronic resources. One of the search format limits could be Library2Go items. When going to get the Library2Go item there is a check out option right in the display, along with the formats available. The question was raised about whether it would be easier to check out Library2Go items from within Evergreen than in Overdrive. Beth noted that it has the “check out” link right on the initial search screen and if not available would have a “place hold” link instead. It was suggested for those who don’t use a lot of the downloadable formats to maybe make it a different color so as to stand out — is that possible? The icon will be different. It may make Library2Go more used, as it is a system that the patrons are already using. When asked when the upgrade to the Web Client would occur, Beth responded with the 3.1 upgrade we will get the full robust version, rather than the buggy one that is currently available, hopefully in September; after all of the server upgrades are done.
Sage Update: Beth Ross gave an overview of Sage support. She is currently working remotely from her home in Buhl, Idaho, and continuing to travel as need to library sites in Oregon. She has the same availability as before, via phone and email. Something new she has started doing is individual GoToMeeting sessions for those individuals that need additional assistance along with the group sessions, like the cataloging sessions that have been offered. And we are going to be doing some reports training, too, on a regular basis. She attended the OLA and Evergreen conferences and she learned lots both places. Jon Georg is working remotely from Port Townsend, Washington. He has a solid systems’ background, however he didn’t have any Evergreen experience so he is learning lots about Evergreen. Ongoing projects: always have database clean-up and are making good strides in it – getting rid of duplicates and cleaning up brief records, training, report template cleanup and creation, improvements to cataloging searching, the website is a continual thing, and of course committee work.
Upgrade to the Web Client was originally projected for early in the year, but enhancements needed to be made to the code before it was practical for us to implement, so that we had a less than stellar outcome; Beth is thinking September. Because the Web Client is so different, we will be doing some training before we move to it.
Pursuing improvements and new features — here again we’re talking about the random search problems. She’s forwarded the problem to Equinox and they don’t know what is causing it either. Beth talked a bit more about this and Perry Stokes asked what the age of our servers is. Beth noted that we have a mixture in that some are virtual servers and some are physical servers. The virtual server means that we are sharing space on someone else’s server and she doesn’t know how old those are. Her next avenue of research was looking at those search failures to see if it was a particular server that is always failing, this was a recent thought. So based on that research if we need to upgrade our servers, we have some money in the budget to do that. Another feature of the software that we have not configured yet, but is available to us right now is what is called a popularity sort. Right now, our searches appear in a relevancy order and the relevancy has to do with how many times does that search term appear in the record, along with does it match the title exactly, etc. There are a number of factors that affect relevancy. Now there is what is called a popularity sort based on how many check outs, how many holds, etc., there is a whole list of different things that can affect popularity and we get to choose what we want to affect popularity sorting in our system. And we can do either a popularity sort all by itself or you can combine relevancy and popularity, so there are a lot of search possibilities for us to look at. That is something else Beth would like to start configuring this summer. Another thing is re-doing our bibliographic indexes to improve relevancy weighting. She learned a lot at the Evergreen conference about ways to improve our relevancy by breaking down our indexes differently and she has done some of that with series, however she hasn’t done that with authors (like main author and added author, etc.) Adding genre searches to the catalog is another thing that has been requested by patrons. One of the initial concerns about adding this was that we didn’t have many genre headings in the records to begin with, that has since improved. Evergreen App available for Android (Hemlock on Google Play), ios App in development — Beth will have to investigate what more has to be done for the app to show up for Sage she thought it was more of an out of the box type of thing and she doesn’t have an Android phone so she can’t touch it — so more to come about the Evergreen App.
Beth noted the list of the sessions she covered at the Evergreen conference which included cataloging sessions, authority control training, etc. She took lots of notes and learned a lot — she thinks it will benefit us in the future. The link to the Evergreen session slides is https://evergreen-ils.org/conference/2018-evergreen-international-conference/2018-conference-presentation-slides-and-files/ .
The question was asked if there was ever going to be a misspelled suggestion or a “did you mean?” This is something that was placed on the wish list for Evergreen. It requires development money. Beth threw out a thought about suggesting that a patron use the browse search and possibly changing the message that comes up when no results are found.
Strategic Planning: Are there other things that libraries would like to be added to a wish list of sorts for us to be thinking about? Erin Wells mentioned patrons placing holds on items that are available at local library and them showing up from other libraries via ILL. Her understanding is that patrons can’t place a copy hold for an item. Beth asked if it was possible that the hold was placed on a different bib than the one the local library was attached to. We are trying to tackle duplicate bibs and we also changed the matching standards to try to help eliminate some of that. There could be a number of other factors that are also affecting this occurring, like searching all of Sage before searching the local library. Beth explained the logic behind the holds fulfillment within Sage.
A question was raised about duplicate bibs and small libraries. Beth noted that sometimes we don’t find out there has been a change in staff until several weeks or months after it occurs and then we’re kind of broadsided by it. The thing is you don’t know to remove permissions if you don’t know someone has left. Erin Wells asked if the login for cataloging could be set to expire every so often, like yearly. Beth said it could be changed to yearly, rather than the 3 year default, and would be fairly easy to change on an across the permission level basis.
Going around the table, anything anyone wants to address, whether Evergreen or Sage:
Becky Doherty: Asked about the sign in being talked about, CatExpress or what? Beth responded it is the sign in for cataloging & there are different permission levels. Beth explained some of the training related to these different permission levels. Kathy Street noted that in some of the smaller libraries there seems to be a bit of disconnect on training for new staff when there is a change in staff and they don’t know where to turn. There was a suggestion that for the strategic plan that we need to have better new member orientation. It was requested that if you hear of personnel changes in libraries to reach out to Beth and let her know, so we can be proactive.
Kim Summers: Tried to contact someone regarding the information listed on Sage for a library and was unsuccessful. Who is responsible to update the Sage website library information? Beth Ross noted there are lots of places within Sage where your information is listed: in Evergreen there are some settings that show email, phone number and hours, and also the same information is listed in the Sage website. Most of those changes Beth, or Jon, has to do; knowing about this information is the issue. Perry Stokes suggested sending out a review invitation annually to the libraries.
Mark Rose: Asked if with Overdrive integration in Evergreen if it was time to transfer Library2Go from LEO to Sage? There was some discussion following this regarding the roles of each organization, etc. Mark noted that we have several small organizations doing a number of things that crossover, is there value in looking at lessening some duplication? Maybe this is something to look at, as well as additional consortium buying.
Delia Fields: Echoed that some sort of basic training be regularly either offered or that we know how to obtain it, as some of us that are around it only know enough to be dangerous. Brainstorming some ideas of connecting students cards for public schools to public libraries. Beth Ross asked if anyone is using online registration. A patron can fill in information and then it is reviewed by staff — may be something to look at. It was requested to send information out to the libraries about this.
For the greater good: Franken-reads is the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley building up to a full text read on Halloween. There is a website available for this. Also the Great American Read information has recently been released. Beth Ross suggested that things like this could be sent out on the email list. Delia noted that this is one area where she isn’t really sure of.
Erin McCusker: Noted that the Standardized Loan Rules from 2010 come up often in the District’s library director meetings. Kathy Street noted that these will be on the agenda for next meeting. Erin noted that she really appreciates the work that the committees have done on their volunteer time. She also appreciates the de-duplication that has occurred; she has seen a difference as a user since she came to the area in 2013.
Erin Wells: Would like to see some consortia rules regarding patron registration, as there are various rules at different locations. It was noted that this is a part of the Standardized Loan Rules. One of the concerns was references — the loan rules list other contact information. Erin noted that this can be considered a privacy issue, and also some people who are new to the area know no one. She asked why we are making it harder to get a card at one library than at another. It was suggested that we have a standard application. And it was noted that it boils down to best practices. Some discussion ensued, including people finding a way around the system.
Kathy Street: Oregon Trail Library District would like to create a policy to not fine children for overdue materials. How will this affect their membership in Sage? Beth Ross noted that fines are a local decision. There was some discussion on this, in terms of doing this at the item level, incentives to return items, sending to collections, etc. Kathy noted she would do some research on this within the state and bring it back to the next meeting.
Another question, they are signing up for Bean Stack this year for summer reading. It is an online reading incentive, is anyone else using this? For 15,000 population and under cost is $1,000. Terri Washburn noted that they are going to utilize it year round for all their programs. Perry Stokes noted there is similar program called Wandoo Reader.
Erin Wells: Erin stated she would love to see someday a consortium level subscription to CatExpress. It was noted that there is one already. Beth Ross stated that there are about 20 libraries signed up for this and the libraries subscribe to what they think they are going to use annually. We can sign people up all the time, cost is around $1.10/record. Erin asked if they could sign up for that. Dea Nowell noted that Umatilla County Special Library District has one for Milton-Freewater already that the District utilizes. Erin asked if the District would send the login so that they could utilize it. Dea stated we could discuss it later.
Perry Stokes: Perry noted he is glad to see there is an Evergreen app, it was something on his wishlist. Online payment is also something he would like to see accomplished. Beth Ross noted that it is available, it just needs to be set up with either PayPal or Stripe. Each library would need to have their own account. Perry noted that they have tried, but never gotten through the setup (they tried when Brent was still here).
Beth Ross: Do we want to have a Sage-wide PayPal account for not only accepting online payments from patrons, then divvying those payments out on a reconciliation basis once a quarter? It could help reconcile with each other on lost books. The response was that this would be good. An idea of having an over-reaching one would be a way to accept payment from patrons without everyone having to have their own account. Would there be a minimum charge per transaction? Beth is not sure of the technical points. Is there a surcharge involved? It was suggested that a limit be set on the minimum payment through PayPal. There was also some discussion about using Square.
Perry Stokes: One more thing he wants to mention for Strategic Planning purposes that he thinks will be a big challenge, and that we’ve already experienced this past year when trying to replace Brent, is that our salary level for the level of expertise in our administrators is so low that we had real trouble finding qualified people. So when Beth retires our succession plan could be a big challenge. Beth Ross noted that she would like to have us potentially look at a different mix. She suggested we could continue with a systems tech position (like Jon’s position) and have a head cataloger, who would be responsible for cataloging oversight, training, and database work, whether 30 hours or 40 a week, and having an half-time administrative position type position that could coordinate committee work, facilitate communication between all of the libraries, etc.. Because that changes up the mix and the experience requirements we may be able to fund three positions instead of just two. Beth also was thinking of a way to transition herself out of Sage when she is looking at retirement. It was suggested that we also look at bumping up the system tech position as well. It would need to come from the membership dues. There are currently 74 libraries in the Sage consortium.
Meeting adjourned by Chair Kathy Street at 2 pm.
The next User Council Meeting will be July 17, 2018 at 10am (PST).
Submitted by Dea Nowell
GoToMeeting session recording available at https://youtu.be/14Y466TMz4A