Sage Council Meeting Minutes
for
November 19, 2019
Attendees: Darlyne Johnson, Joyce McCurdy, Dea Nowell, Kathleen Schmidtgall, Mary Mitchell, Ryan McGinnis, Kip Roberson, Delia Fields, Jon Georg, Perry Stokes(vice-chair), Mark Rose(chair), Mary Reser, Kathy Street, Ann Zuehlke, Denine Rautenstrauch, Marsha Richmond, Cheryl Hancock, Beth Ross
Approval of May and September 2019 Minutes – May minutes approved as noted with typo correction. September minutes approved.
Committee Reports
Cataloging Committee – Summary provided by John Brockman (chair) The committee meeting consisted primarily of the demonstrations and training of a few resources as well as some general reminders based of the recent review of bibliographic records in the catalog. One of the resources demonstrated concerns appropriate subject heading terms for Spanish materials. The committee also discussed appropriate subject headings for manga materials in order to differentiate them from other types of comics or graphic novels. In the general reminders portion, topics included proper use and SAGE policy clarifications of certain MARC fields (040, 245, 655, 999), as well as common changes to be made during record import (Z39). As always, time was allotted for catalogers to ask questions about cataloging in the web client, as well as cataloging in general.
Other Committees – No other committees met since our last meeting.
Sage Staffing – Beth’s position and retirement
A new Oregon law allows an individual to retire and work full time, previously there was a limit on the number of hours per week one could work. Under this situation Beth proposes to retire and be rehired as a contract employee of Baker County Library District on behalf of Sage. Baker County, Beth and any interested parties will work out a proposal for this contract for consideration at the January meeting. If approved, this plan would take effect March 1, 2020.
Dea volunteered to assist Perry and Beth with proposal.
System Update (Jon) – Later this afternoon, RAM on the servers will be increased. This will help with how Apache handles web requests. We have purchased a NAS server and will be working with EOU on setup. The NAS server will be used to store backups, freeing the test server and allowing us to load the latest version of Evergreen so that it really can be used for testing. There were some outages in October due to a web crawler. Jon worked with Equinox on a solution. Evergreen 3.4 has additional security enhancements to prevent these attacks.
Budget Planning – The objective is to come up with a draft budget that can be proposed at the January meeting and approved at the March meeting. The Strategic Planning/Budget committee will begin meeting in December. We need volunteers to serve on that committee. Mark, Denine, and Marsha volunteered to serve. Perry and Beth will serve as well. Erin McCusker indicated interest in this committee at the annual meeting.
Fee structure discussion – Perry presented a spreadsheet with some alternatives for a re-structure of fees. We need to create a more logical structure. Survey showed support for a population based strategy. Beth expressed a concern that we might need to have a different strategy for schools and community colleges. The idea of a base rate to cover infrastructure costs was raised. Any significant changes would be phased in over 5 years. This presentation is just a starting point and we want to get ideas flowing. Mark expressed a concern that 5 years may be too long. Beth was concerned about the operating budgets of some libraries experiencing a substantial increase and whether they would be able to handle it, even after 5 years. Question about source of population numbers -population numbers come from State Library reports, which come from Portland State University census numbers. When do we pull those numbers, since statistics are a year behind. This is a good start. We need to find an equitable way to pay for the service. Committee will meet in December and work on this more.
System Migration (Beth) – January 15, 2020 is the date scheduled but can be changed if the Council has concerns. Dea asked if we are still doing a load test. A partial one was done but we will do another. Beth will send out a schedule of webinars to be held in preparation of the upgrade. At this point we have two months to go. Beth has some documentation for new features, bug fixes that she can put up on the web site. Discussion took place about the upgrade date. January 15 date approved. Beth will put a message in the catalog to announce the downtime. Suggestion was to put the message up starting January 1.
Evergreen App – there has been some discussion about the idea of an Evergreen App for Sage. Beth contacted a programmer whom has created an app for other Evergreen libraries and got a quote for 1200-5000 depending on customizations. Benefit of app can be ease of use to search the catalog, checking accounts, placing holds. Mark asked about system changes and whether we would need to re-program. Beth will check but her assumption is that it will keep pace with our system. The Hemlock app gives an idea of what the app would look like. Is there sufficient money in the development budget line? Additional hours will need to be purchased for the upgrade. We have sufficient funds in contingency and the overall budget that we could fund the app this year. Timing-wise, it seems best to phase in after the upgrade. Dea moved to move forward with the app development, up to a maximum of $2000. Ryan seconded the motion. Motion was approved.
CatExpress Overages – Communication from OCLC on increased cost (double)for overage records was buried in the invoice below some other information. and so we were caught off guard. With fore-knowledge of this we can make changes for the future and increase subscription amounts, but some libraries had significant overages. Do we offer financial help to these libraries? The consensus was that Sage does not need to cover these overages.
EXProxy subscription for Sage – in the past we’ve offered Proxy service for various libraries in the system and it was purchased a long time ago. When EOU separated from Sage they got their own subscription and we’ve continued to use the same version. Some databases are not working with the current version and the recommendation was made by the vendor was to upgrade Ezproxy. Should we continue offering this service? Quote request for 15 libraries was $500 for setup and $1,175 annually. Consensus – this is an add-on service and the costs should be shared by those libraries using it. Klamath is interested in possibly sharing this cost.
Sage training platform using Moodle software – Beth is still working on the Sage training platform. She created some videos in SnagIt.
In addition to the agenda
Cove Public Library is withdrawing from the Sage Library System. They don’t have anyone to do the resource sharing component and their patrons aren’t using it.
Denine asked if less libraries are allowing new materials to circulate. Most libraries are protecting their new materials and the recommendation was for Enterprise to do this as well. Good support to the local community. Also, items typically check out for a maximum of 9 weeks (3 weeks + 2 renewals) and she has objection to libraries who continue to check out the same item over and over again without returning it. They should contact the owning library. Transits where the item just disappears are also an issue. These are good issues to talk about with circulation committee.
Dea motioned to adjourn, Ryan seconded. Meeting adjourned.