Minerva Executive Board 03/11/2015

Minutes

Maine State Library Studio

In attendance: Steve Norman, Liz Soares, Shelly Davis, Nancy Crowell, Kevin Davis, Amber Tatnall, Alisia Revitt, James Jackson-Sanborn, Lynn Uhlman, Katherine Morgan

The meeting was called to order shortly past 10:00am; Shelly volunteered to take minutes.

Review and acceptance of the minutes of the January 14, 2015 meeting

  • The minutes were approved as written.

Old Business

Review of Minerva policies

  • Steve reported that Pam Turner continues the work on this.

Executive Board election

  • Shelly and Cindy had agreed to serve as the Nominating Committee. Cindy sent out a call for candidates, yielding the following:
    • For the public seat: Kevin Davis (South Portland), Anna Romer (Hobbs), Josh Tiffany (Gray)
    • For the academic seat: Janet Elvidge (EMCC)
    • It was decided to forego the election process for the school seat, recently filled by Liz.
  • Shelly will follow up with Cindy about distributing the ballot; per the bylaws, this must happen by March 30.

Approve budget for FY2015

  • Amber presented a proposed budget for FY16. As we have more members, two proposals were offered – dues remaining flat at $4200 and dues reduced to $4000.
  • Discussion of the dues resulted in agreement to leave the dues flat.
  • As Minerva funds are now with Maine InfoNet, there is no STACAP fee, however we need to include a “Maine InfoNet Financial Services Fee” for accounting costs, billing activities, etc. The amount in the proposed budget is 50% less than the STAPCAP fee and was negotiated between James and Amber. Also, Minerva funds now earn interest.
  • Van delivery – The current contract ends in June, so an RFP will be going out soon. It is expected that Freedom Express wants to continue and that the price will be fairly stable. The current cost is $15/day; Amber budgeted for $18.
  • Nancy advocated increasing the amount for delivery bags to $3500.
  • The “Catalog enhancement” line has sufficient funds to support a change from/beyond Syndetics if that is decided.
  • MOTION: Approve “Proposal A” (dues @ $4200) with an increase in the amount for delivery bags to $3500. Unanimously approved.

MARC 791 field recommendation

  • Request for Action form submitted by Cataloging Standards Committee; tabled at last meeting.
  • The Committee recommends the following policy: Minerva libraries currently using the 791 field may continue to use the field for future additions to the current collections, but going forward a Minerva library cannot use MARC 791 field for a new local collection.
  • Input from members of the Committee, Maine InfoNet staff, and Karen Jones (LPL) was considered.
  • MOTION: To approve the policy as presented. Unanimously approved.

Minerva strategic planning

  • Maine InfoNet recently unveiled its strategic plan, and following suit seems a good idea for Minerva; to be discussed further at a future meeting.

Open lending/collection development issues

  • Steve received a request from Devin Burritt (Director of the Wells Public Library) for Wells patrons to continue to request nonfiction through Minerva even though their nonfiction collection will be inaccessible for lending for the next month or two because of the recent roof failure there. All agreed this would be OK.
  • Steve asked for any feedback on the PPL Bridge Program; an automation of the ARRC services that allows PPL staff to place holds on behalf of non-MaineCat libraries in the SMLD and have those items shipped directly to the borrowing libraries. No one expressed any issues.
  • Steve reported that he had to mediate an issue of a library making their new books and certain AV materials non-requestable in Minerva. This issue was resolved successfully.
  • Kevin noted a dramatic increase in the amount of requests SPPL is receiving from PPL and wondered why this is happening. Also, he mentioned the unfortunate way due dates are displayed in the OPAC for items requested through MaineCat. This is a known issue with INN-Reach, as checkouts and renewals that happen in the patron’s “home” system are not communicated back to the item’s “home” system.

Flow chart for resolving conflicts within Minerva

  • Steve presented a “best practices” document for working through conflicts that may arise between member libraries. The five steps are:
  1. Address at staff level (library to library)
  2. Address at director level (director to director)
  3. Ask for guidance or assistance from the appropriate Minerva committee (Cataloging Standards Committee, Circulation Standards Committee, etc.)
  4. Contact Chair of the Minerva Executive Board
  5. Action of the Minerva Executive Board
  • All agreed on this as an appropriate practice. Steve will ensure it gets posted on the Minerva website.

Syndetics and other options

  • The sub-committee formed to investigate has not yet met.

Professional and business liability insurance

  • James shared Maine InfoNet’s business practices policy by email.
  • As Minerva is not a “legal entity” do we really need insurance such as this? It was decided to table the issue.

New Business

Plan for Spring Users Council meeting

  • Last year’s Spring meeting was held in early June; this seemed as good a time as any.
  • The meeting will be virtual (multi-site). Lynn reported that having four locations (York, Lewiston, Bangor, MSL) seems to be working well for the Circ and Cat meetings.
  • Shelly shared that after last year’s meeting was scheduled, several folks emailed her requesting that, in the future, the meeting either be in the morning (9-11) or afternoon (2-4) and NOT in the middle of the day (10-12 or 1-3).
  • Steve will work on getting the meeting scheduled.

Scheduling module in Sierra

  • There is some interest in exploring this option. Maine InfoNet staff will contact III for a price quote.

Reports

Maine InfoNet

  • Moving MSL Outreach to URSUS is in the works,
  • LD 13 (An Act To Provide an Exemption from Sales Tax and Service Provider Tax to Nonprofit Collaboratives of Libraries) went through committee with a unanimous “ought to pass.” It is in the “reading” stage now. There is concern that as the bill contains the words “tax” and “nonprofit,” it could be at risk for veto by the governor so steps are being taken to inform the governor’s office about the true nature of the bill.
  • James asked the Board to consider allocating up to $2000 of Minerva funds for Lynn to be able to attend IUG in Minneapolis. MOTION: To dedicate up to $2000 from the “Other” line of the Minerva budget to support Lynn’s IUG attendance. Unanimously approved.

Maine InfoNet Representative

  • No report.

Minerva Technical

  • Alisia reported that the recent outage seemed somewhat of a fluke and was resolved by restarting the server.

Finance

  • Amber distributed the budget report, ending February 2015. She noted that she will be re-working the format of the spreadsheet to make it more informative.

Committee Reports

Membership Committee

  • No report.

Circulation Standards

  • James sent a report by email a few hours earlier; it was reviewed.

Cataloging Standards

  • Katherine shared that there is nothing new to report this month. The committee meets on Monday, March 16 after the Catalogers’ Users’ Group to decide goals for the year.

Meeting adjourned at 11:35am.

Next meeting:  May 13, 2015

3/13/15 sd