Sage Library System User Council
Regular Meeting Agenda
10.00a – 11.00a PST (11:00a–12:00p MST)
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Draft Minutes
I. Call to order & roll call (Chair)
In attendance: Perry Stokes (chair), John Schoppert (vice-chair), Beth Longwell, Brent Mills, Ann Zuehlke, Buzzy Nielsen, Debbie Lind, Dea Nowell, Erin Wells, Marie Baldo, Marsha Richmond, Mary Reser, Ryan McGinnis, Cheryl Hancock, Delia Wallis, Jeff
II. Additions/deletions from agenda (ACTION) (Chair)
III. Approval of September 2015 minutes (ACTION) (Chair)
– approved as written
IV. Open forum for the general membership (Chair)
- Increase number of renewals (Buzzy)
- OPAC visibility of lost items (Brent)
V. Reports
Sage staff (Longwell/Mills) –
Brent: Updates on server operating systems, SIP, security, and the database were made to pave the way for future Evergreen upgrades and to improve system efficiency. Hope to upgrade to Evergreen 2.9 in December, date to be determined but will be outside of normal library hours.
Link to update given at Umatilla County Special Library District in-service – https://sagestaff.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/ucsld_brent_sys_update_112015.pdf
Two-part reports training is planned. The first will cover setting up folders and running basic reports. The second is more advanced and will cover creating your own versions of the report templates. Local administration training is also planned. This covers setting up closed dates, receipts, offline procedures, settings. Proposing some Sage-wide settings changes – hold expire and disabling patron credit. Buzzy indicated that some libraries are keeping their items (several months) on the hold shelf too long. This may be a training issue.
SIP was upgraded and there were some settings that had to be changed. If any sites are having problems please contact Brent or Beth.
Beth: Work is ongoing in regards to content development on new Sage web site. More site visits were made since the last council meeting, along with attending the Idaho Library Association conference. She looks forward to trying out some of the ideas they had there, especially a weeing report. Database cleanup, reports, committee work, and automation projects were also a focus. Automation projects are going well. She attended the Irrigon Library grand opening on behalf of Sage.
Perry announced that there was an automated materials handling battle between King County Library System and the New York Public Library System and King County edged out New York. This is a great testimony to their installation of Evergreen. They did a lot to make Evergreen robust enough to handle that quantity of items at such a rapid pace and this shows what can be done. Perry plans on sending them a congratulatory card on Sage’s behalf.
Cataloging Committee (Longwell) – Sarah needed to step down from chair due to work responsibilities. In lieu of a volunteer to fill the position, Beth volunteered to be interim chair. David has been hard at work on a training manual and will begin work on a cataloging reference guide (old cataloging standards manual). The cataloging committee decided to meet monthly and cataloging mentors are meeting on a weekly basis (as possible) to determine priorities and a unified direction for grant work and future cataloging efforts. Matching standards were reviewed toward the aim of reducing the number of very similar records in the database. A draft of the revised standards will be considered by the committee at the next meeting.
Circulation Committee [inactive]
Courier Committee (Longwell) – The courier committee met earlier this month. Discussion took place regarding damaged media cases. Beth proposed the purchase of DVD boxes after checking to see that courier funds would be available out of this year’s budget. The committee voted to purchase an initial quantity of 1,000 DVD boxes to be distributed amongst member libraries for use within the Sage green bags. Audiobook boxes and CD boxes will be considered at the next meeting. One of the difficulties with audiobooks is the variety of sizes that we need to cover. Jeff (EOU) is working on a draft of an updated courier procedure document.
Carmen has been working on re-design of their label, mainly serving as library identification with logo. Are some still using due date on the slip? Several still use the due date. Destination is still important as well, especially when not printing transit slip.
Development Committee [inactive]
Governance Committee (Baldo) – they were unable to meet due to emergency issues with Leo but hope to schedule a meeting between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
VI. Previous business
Seeking volunteers/nominees for chair and vice-chair (?) – The question was put out for volunteers. Ryan volunteered to fill the chair role. Erin volunteered to be vice chair and Beth volunteered take care of minutes. Dea made a motion to accept the nominations and Ann seconded. There was unanimous approval. They will assume their roles with next meeting.
VII. New business
- Policy review and member guide (Longwell)
Some policies are old and could stand some review. For example, our item lost policy was recently questioned. Would like to review all policies and make sure that they are up-to-date and what we want them to be. Also, a member guide with all the policies in one place and an explanation of how Sage operates will be a good asset to our members and something we can put on the web site to refer members to.
Perry – has always wanted to see a report of items that were billed to other libraries. Beth will try to gather statistics. Buzzy asked if he wanted to know what was lost and paid at other libraries. Perry responded that both would be helpful. Mostly the latter so that they could tell if getting money back. Would be good to standardize procedures – better if patron can write check directly to owning library. Some libraries will tell the patron they have to go to that library. Having online payments could be a way to handle. Sage-wide account could be used for lost and paid payments. It really is easier to have check written by patron and mail via USPS. Beth- if we do centralized payments suggest reconciliation twice a year so we don’t have to cut as many checks. Would that still be too many checks? There is concern about stretching staffing too thin. Let’s collect data first to see what we are looking at. Brent and Beth will come up with draft report to send out and get feedback.
- Upcoming budget review and discussion (Longwell)
Beth wanted to bring this up and ask for volunteers to serve on the committee. We try to present a draft of the budget at the January meeting so that we can vote in March. Need to meet in December. Buzzy is happy to be on committee and willing to serve as chair. Perry, as fiscal chair, will also serve on the committee. Marsha volunteered, as well as Delia. Marie would like to sit on committee as well and contribute historical perspective.
- Proposed Sage-wide setting changes (Mills) – hold expire interval and disable patron credit
Hold Expire Interval – hold long should hold be unfilled before being canceled by system? The Sage-wide setting can be overridden at a local level. Beth and Brent working on holds reports that can let libraries know when holds have been sitting too long. This setting is for when patrons don’t set a hold expire time. Buzzy feels it should be longer than the age protection of 6 months. Age protection policy also needs be reviewed. Original policy was for 3 month. 6 month policy was created because of libraries having items in process for so long. Now have age protection based on active date rather than create date so we could look at scaling back. Suggested that we communicate with libraries that have higher age protection and see what their reasons are and also communicate about active date. There was question about “in process” items – they are not coming up on pull lists – they can be held, just not targeted. Having them on pull list could be problematic for “on order” items. Holds report could help with this.
If hold expires do patrons get notified? Yes, by email. What if they don’t have email? No notification is going to library currently. Dea – Maybe the smaller libraries would like notification of hold expirations for those patrons that don’t have email. Beth – a report could handle this. Beth and Brent will work on. Perry – couple different scenarios: popular items that have large hold lists and bibs that have only one item. Brent came up with hopeless holds report that could help. Buzzy – is there a notice that could go out to patrons warning that their hold will soon expire? They have the option to increase the hold expire interval. Consensus was that we could go with 365 days for now and re-evaluate later. Dea made motion to accept setting, Ann seconded. No objections. Motion passed.
Disable patron credit – Have any libraries used patron credit or has it just caused issues? Several have indicated problems. This is a “pay by” option. Is there a way to get rid of refund? Evergreen 2.9 has some limited negative balance options. Is there a way to get rid of negative balances currently in system? Have to find bill and zero it out. More support for that in 2.9. In the admin menu you can check for patrons that have negative balance. Some patrons opt to keep extra change in Evergreen to offset future fines. Lost and paid status new and may not be working as it should.
Ann made a motion to disable patron credit, seconded by Ryan. No objections. Motion passed.
Renewal increase (Buzzy) – can research be done toward the possibility of having 4 or 5 renewals? Perry – is there a feature where renewals can be applied automatically? Yes. Buzzy – There has been recent debate on Evergreen listserv as to whether this is wise. Negatives – removes responsibility from patron, could lead to increased losses. Could lead to confusion for patrons as to what will be renewed (items on hold won’t be renewed).
Suggestion was made that we (Brent/Beth) survey Sage members to find out if they are in favor of increasing renewals to 4. This will be done prior to next council meeting
OPAC visibility of lost items – patrons would not see these items but staff in the staff client can see them. The Evergreen default is to not show them in public OPAC, but most likely was a setting that we changed early on because of migration. Should we query Sage members? Decision was made to add this question to survey. Offer variable text area to allow members to share reasons for both questions. Limit survey to one response per library.
VIII. Agenda items for next meeting (Chair)
Reports from governance and budget committees
Member guide
Survey feedback
IX. Review of task assignments (Chair)
Beth will look at buying audiobook and CD boxes.
Beth will begin looking at policies and developing member guide
The governance and budget committees will meet
Beth and Brent will come up with draft report for lost and paid data
Sage-wide hold expire interval will be set to 365 days and patron credit pay option will be disabled
Brent will check with libraries having higher age protection to see what their reasons are
Report will be created showing “in process” items that have holds
Report template will be created to show hold expirations by library (for use when patrons don’t have email notification of the hold expiration).
Survey will be sent out to Sage members prior to the next council meeting asking about increase in renewals and whether lost items should display in OPAC
The circulation committee will be re-activated. Brent volunteered to chair
X. Adjournment (Chair)
Next meeting: January 19