Sage Council Meeting Minutes
March 20, 2018 10am
Via GoToMeeting
Video Recording is available.
Attendees: Mary Reser (Gilliam County), Marylou Martin (Sherman County), Kathy Street*– Chair (Oregon Trail Lib. Dist.), Jon Georg (Sage), Ann Zuehlke* (Hood River HS), Delia Fields* (Hermiston HS), Beth Ross (Sage), Erin McCusker (UCSLD), Rose Peacock* (La Grande Public), Cheryl Hancock (Harney County), Perry Stokes* (Baker County), Cecili Longhorn*(Stanfield Public), Denine Rautenstrauch* (Enterprise PL), Jeff
*Denotes Council Member
Approval of Minutes (November 21, 2017 and January 16, 2018) – no changes needed but short of a quorum at beginning of meeting to vote approval.
Proposed By-Laws Changes – Kathy will work with Dea to make sure we have the draft finalized for the vote at annual meeting June 1.
Beth was supposed to send out numbers in each membership category and send out. She will pull the numbers and do so.
Committee Reports
Cataloging Committee (Beth) – Cataloging mentors continuing to meet monthly and discussing cataloging issues. We are getting together procedures for book with cd materials. Will be available soon for a training. Cataloging sessions have been held, well received, and we will continue to increase training available. Cat 1 training has been delayed while we strengthen cat2 catalogers. Expect to be able to start with this in a couple months.
Kathy – What would happen if a library hired a cataloger next week that comes from another library, had an MLIS and was a cataloger? Would they automatically be given cat1 cataloging permissions, or have to do cat2 and then wait for cat1? Beth – this is dependent on experience. If they are experienced they could get cat2 permissions right away, but need to become acquainted with the Sage system and have some oversight before getting cat1 permission. Kathy – Concerned that the cat1 process is stretching out longer and that we are tying the hands of the libraries that rely on having a cataloger in their district. Beth- Cat2 catalogers can do quite a bit. Cat1 can overlay records, remove duplicates, create original records. Often you can download a record that is close and enhance or change. Do not think there is a big need for a lot of original cataloging. Kathy encouraged others to provide feedback.
Circulation Committee (Beth) – committee met last week and reviewed a couple documents. Looking at duplicate patron procedure and lost in transit policy that was written a long time ago and had no dates associated with it. Those documents were modified and sent out for feedback. The committee will meet again next month and go over any feedback and make additional changes as needed.
Budget Committee (Perry) – Perry presented the proposed budget and budget vs actual of current fiscal year. There are some libraries that have a Sage credit due to funds being transferred from their former network when they migrated into Sage. The plan is to work with these libraries to spend down the credit. Goal is to do this by end of fiscal year.
Membership fees are projected at a 3% increase to cover cost of living increases.
If LSTA does not fund courier how much would we have to make up to cover? Members would have a 30% increase. LSTA funding vital. If we lose the funding it would be a very different conversation and we would have to strategize new ways of doing things.
When do we vote on budget? Perry can send out ballot this week and give three weeks for responses. Beth can post a link to the draft budget on the Sage web site.
Perry suggest allocating money to purchase stickers (window decals) that could be used to advertise that the library is a part of the Sage Library System. Since we now have a great logo it could be printed up on clear vinyl. Possible vendor – StickerMule. Could be placed on book drop, etc. Not very big – 5” x 5”. If we spend $1000 we could get a variety of formats and plenty of labels to share for a few years. We could lower contingency to add this amount to budget.
Courier Committee (Beth) – met yesterday. Will meet every other month for now. Things are going well. Expak courier is providing more timely delivery. Green bags came up. We still have an entire box of small green bags that are not in distribution and are available. Beth will drop some off at sites when traveling. Beth got a quote for large green bags – 500 bags would be $3,515 plus shipping. This cost will come out of the Sage courier line. Bring bags to June 1 meeting.
Strategic Planning Committee – has not met, but the June 1 meeting would be a good forum for this.
Additional discussion took place on standardized loan rules and the charging of fines which is up to the individual libraries. In the circulation committee there has been talk about collecting money from other libraries for lost in transit items. Perry gave an example where they were about to pay the library for an item and it then was returned. It becomes problematic if you then have to request a refund. Discussion of having a central Paypal account and distribution to the respective libraries quarterly. This would allow libraries to pay online. We could discuss at annual meeting in conjunction with strategic planning.
Discussion also took place about items being loose (not in bags) in a crate. Often this happens when items are boxed and the boxes need to be emptied to fit in delivery crates. DVDs should be in DVD boxes within bags. Hopefully loose items will occur less often with the use of large green bags when needed.
Need to think about nominations for council seats. Officers ideally should be instated at annual meeting. Last year this didn’t happen until Fall. Concern was expressed that some council members have not been attending meeting and there were only two meetings that we reached quorum. Need to reach out to members that have not been attending. We may need to consider changing meeting time in the new fiscal year. We can send out a poll once we have our new council in place.
Our next meeting will be at Hermiston Public Library, June 1. Sage will cover lunch costs.
Meeting adjourned at 11:12pm Pacific Time
Minutes written by Beth Ross