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LINK Minutes

April 9, 2009

Present: Adams County – Calef; Baraboo – MacDonald; Brodhead – Rosa; Cambridge – Behm; Columbus – Kindschi; DCLS – Chase; Deerfield – Fritsche; DeForest – Berg; Lodi – Priewe; Madison – Dimick, Grogan; McFarland – Selle; Middleton – Westby; Monona – Gerber; Monroe – Guralski; Mt. Horeb – Unruh; New Glarus – Anton Wright; North Freedom – Roloff; Oregon – Santner; Pardeeville – Yurgil; Prairie du Sac – Endres; Plain – Palmer; Portage – Jensen; Poynette – Daugherty; Reedsburg – Steiner,
Mobley; Sauk City – Heidenreich; Stoughton – Vache; Sun Prairie – Herold; Verona – Thiede; Waunakee – Hedrick; Wisconsin Rapids – Barnett; Wyocena – Friesen.

Absent: Black Earth, Belleville, Cambria, LaValle, Marshall, Mazomanie, Rock Springs, Spring Green, Wisconsin Dells.

Also Present: Davis, Blough, Teal Lovely, Barniskis, Oliversen, Dries.

Call to Order: The meeting was called to order at 10:05 am.

Welcome new comers: Welcome to Leah Fritsche from DEE and Tiffany Thiede from VER. This is Hans Jensen’s last LINK Meeting. He is retiring on May 1st. There is a book being passed around for everyone to sign in his honor.

Establishment of Quorum: J. Endres reported there was a quorum.
Changes or Additions to the Agenda: There will be a group photo at the end of the meeting to celebrate the signing of the Koha/LibLime Contract.

Approval of the Minutes from the February 2009 meeting: J. Chase moved approval. A. Barnett seconded. Vote: motion passed.

Treasurer’s Report: The Budget and Personnel Committee have a meeting planned for April 30th to discuss the 2009 budget revisions and a proposed 2010 budget.

Project Manager’s Report:
TEACH Advisory Council Meeting - March 25, 2009
There is an economic stimulus program under the auspices of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that will provide designated funding for increased bandwidth. DOA and AT&T have begun planning for a statewide initiative to bring fiber to libraries. The plans would include a rate structure that would support affordable ongoing costs.
The federal agencies are working on the grant application process which has few instructional details at this point. Even the term “broadband” has to be defined. Wisconsin DOA staff came to the TEACH Advisory Council meeting to propose a coordinated effort for submission of an application that would benefit libraries and schools statewide. There is some fear that without this coordination, state quotas could result in one school district or one library system receiving funding and the grant administrators viewing that as the state’s “share.”
There are 3 proposed grant application periods: 1) April – June 2009, 2) October – December 2009, and 3) April – June 2010. Because there are so few details and so little time allowed for the first application cycle DOA has formed a task force with members of the TEACH Advisory Council to prepare for a quick submission when the time frames are confirmed. They are reviewing the research that went into the development of
BadgerNet 2 to see if updated data would be appropriate for this application.

Tally Printer
The Tally printer which was out of commission on Monday, March 23rd, has been repaired. Greg captured the print jobs and stored them in a temporary file which made it possible to continue daily processing. Heidi captured other data to a file to supply some
needed reports.

TeleCirc Spare Parts
TeleCirc manufacturers are either no longer in business or are not providing the same telephony products. A transition to a new product would have been required for Horizon and will be part of the development process for Koha. In the meantime, we’ve located and received some spare parts for the TeleCirc box which will be very useful in case of an equipment failure before the transition to Koha.

Dynix Resize
Approximately every six months we should plan for a system resize. Now that the /dnx file move has been completed, we’ll have to schedule some down time. The October resize took 28 hours over two weekends and we will try to make this event as unobtrusive as possible for library staff. It may affect public access during evening and/or weekend hours though.

COMPUTER SYSTEMS INTEGRATOR REPORT: Operations staff did complete the file system move. It did involve some downtime, but it should be the last we hear of this as there is plenty of space now to grow. Greg has been working on infrastructure for
the migration from Eudora to Thunderbird and you will see improved email services in the near future. Operations hopes to have the vast majority of user accounts converted before the summer library programs begin. A lot of work to be done will be up to the individual account holder. The Help Desk will be able to help you with any questions or problems. Libraries will receive an email asking which month works best for them for the migration. Advice for Eudora Cleanup is posted and was mentioned on the Tech Bits blog. Operations has learned that Microsoft intends to release Windows 7 in the fall. Dell will be permitted to sell licenses until April of 2010. Integrating Windows 7 will be a focus in the future.

COMMITTEE REPORTS:
Long Range – Did not meet (on hiatus while the Technology Governance Task Force meets).

CSC: Heidi reviewed the minutes. The committee recommends LINK approve a pilot project for RTH to change the Holds Threshold field to 0 for all LINK Libraries as of April 13th, 2009. The project will last for 6 months and the CSC will review the project at their September meeting using public comments and anecdotal information from delivery and circulation staff to gauge any discernable effects. S. Hedrick worries about an item with only one copy in the system. A patron could check it out, and place another hold on it right away, so they get it again when they have to return it. Unfortunately that is something we are not able to prevent. The date differential field will not be changed.
Vote: motion passed. The Committee also recommends to LINK that all patron types be allowed to self-renew online except for non-reciprocal patrons. Vote: motion passed.

BSCC: Vicki reviewed the minutes from the last meeting. Tiffany Thiede from Verona asked for further discussion of the proposed walkin ITYPE. They would like to request a walkin ITYPE of 28 day to be used for longer books. This issue has been re-directed to
the CSC for the May meeting. J. Chase moved that the CSC be authorized to create walk in ITYPE with a 28 day loan period if they decide this is a good idea. P. Westby seconded the motion. Vote: motion passed. Verona would also like walkin items to be
added to regular records so that they can be searched. There was some discussion, but this is really a topic for the BSCC. If Verona wishes, they may ask the BSCC to reconsider this issue..

UEPR: Vicki reviewed the minutes from the last meeting. Patrons are now able to cancel holds on the hold shelf, which may cause problems. A call has been placed to Dynix, but it is unlikely to be fixed.

JTC – Did not meet.

Budget and Personnel – Did not meet; the next meeting is scheduled for April 30th.

Delivery Advisory – Did not meet.

Migration Committees – Did not meet.

Implementation Committee: Susan Lee was the leader. The committee reviewed the contract terms with LibLime and moved to approve the document as it was drafted. Phyllis signed the contract yesterday. A payment of $740,000 will be sent. That leaves $180,000 left in the reserve. Migration committees will be reformulated to work on the implement of Koha. Vicki passed around a document with the proposed makeup of the module implementation committees. She will be working on reforming all the committees. Thanks to everyone who did serve on a committee. The responsibilities of committee members are listed on the document. Circulation will have more people and be divided into two working groups, as it will have the most work/most interest. There will also be an Oversight Committee and room for Ad Hoc Investigation Committees to be formed throughout the process. Vicki will send out a form to all LINK directors and to existing migration committee members this afternoon. We are working on a new Koha migration web page where all information will be posted in the future. We will create a new blog just for migration and it will not require a password. Heidi and Vicki are going to the Kohacon in Plano, Texas next week.

Technology Governance Task Force: The all day meeting is scheduled for May 15th at Olbrich Gardens. The task force met on April 3rd. Jeff and Linda Russell will be facilitating the meeting. Gray folders were passed out that include copies of the Bylaws
and LINK Agreement along with the SCLS Technology Staff Strategies and Library Staff Responsibilities. This is all required reading for the meeting. The invitation forgot to mention that lunch is included. Descriptions of governance models that are being considered will be sent out to participants. The models are based on comments from last year’s surveys and focus groups. This meeting is open to all SCLS libraries and staff. Please remember to register online if you plan to attend. SCLS hopes to receive guidance from this meeting that will result in a recommendation on how LINK and SCLS will move forward.

COMMUNICATION - None.

Other Business:

1. LINK Budget and Personnel Committee Appointment: Brian Simons from VER can no longer be on the committee. We need a representative from a library of a similar size to volunteer. Pamela Westby from MID offered to take his place on the committee. The Executive Committee recommends appointing her. Vote: motion passed.

2. LibLime Contract: Signing the contract was a major milestone for SCLS and LINK Libraries. There will be a toast and a group photo following the meeting. Please join us. The photo to will be sent to LibLime.

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