MINUTES

SCLS BOARD OF TRUSTEES

April 12, 2010 12:15 p.m.
SCLS Headquarters

 

Present:  J. Ashford, R. Barden, C. Chapman, P. Cox, L. Davis-Brown, M. Furgal, J. Harrington, J. Healy-Plotkin, N. Holman, T. Iaccarino, B. Keen, S. Martin, T. McIlroy, G. Poulson, J. Pugh, P. Townsend

Also Present:  H. Moe, P. Davis, S. Morrill, Tracy Herold

Absent:           M. Cole, E. DeSmidt, J. Morre, H. O’Donnell

Excused:         F. Cherney, M. Nelson, P. Westby

 

 Call to Order: J. Pugh, President, called the meeting to order at 12:16 p.m. 

 

a.                  Introduction of guests/visitors and new board members: none

b.                  Changes/additions to the agenda: none

c.                   Requests to address the board: none

 

Minutes: L. Davis-Brown moved approval of the March 8, 2010 minutes.  T. Iaccarino seconded.  Motion carried.

 

Bills for Payment/Financial Statements: J. Healy-Plotkin reviewed the bills for payment in the amount of $311,687.83 and moved approval.  The motion was seconded and carried.   

 

President's Report:  J. Pugh noted the handout “How Libraries Stack Up” and its usefulness in advocating for libraries.

 

Advocacy Committee:  T. McIlroy noted the Sun Prairie Public Library Trustees received advocacy training in March.  Tracy Herold, Director of the Sun Prairie Public Library, felt the training was helpful and would like to do the same for her Friends Group. 

Recruitment Committee:  S. Martin noted the applications received are being reviewed to determine who to interview.  The recruitment committee will meet April 14th at the Sun Prairie Library to discuss and decide upon the interview format as well as the presentation and essay questions.  Interviews will take place in May and when a decision has been made, the recruitment committee will present the candidate information to the Board in June for final approval before making an offer.

SCLS Foundation Report:  L. Davis-Brown noted the Foundation Board will meet following the board meeting.  A report from the fundraising planning committee will be discussed. Because Phyllis Davis and Barbara Brewer are retiring, their positions will need to be filled on the Foundation Board.  If anyone is interested, please let Linda know. 

Circulation and ILL Statistics:  No report.

 

System Director's Report:

Phyllis congratulated Sue Martin and Judy Ashford on their re-election to their county board.  Dan Jacobson and his wife Brooke had a baby boy whom they have named Matthew. SCLS recently purchased an Ipad for staff and libraries to try (and it was passed round the table.) We received an email from an Albany patron who sent his appreciation for our services.  Phyllis read the email to the board.

 

The LaValle Public Library will hold an open house for their new library April 17.

The Fitchburg ground breaking ceremony will take place April 12th.  Stef Morrill, Deb Haeffner, and Mark Ibach will be attending.


The Division for Libraries, Technology, and Community Learning (DLTCL) gave an opinion that library materials on open hold shelves should not be labeled with the patron’s name due to the library records and privacy laws.  They also said they were “uncomfortable” with libraries sharing patron information with collection agencies. We want to encourage our libraries not to stop or cut services because of these opinions. Phyllis will be attending the WLA Library Development and Legislative committee on April 16th to discuss whether language changes are needed.

 

We will be revising our resource library contracts with Madison Public Library.


The cost formula recommendation will go to the Administrative Council on Thursday.  The costs for ILS and technology will remain at the 2010 levels.  Part of the reason that costs can be held at 2010 levels is because of the addition of Fitchburg.  A draft addendum for the ILS contract has been created to reflect this change.  A complete review of the cost formulas will take place after we go live on Koha and (hopefully) have some network changes in place.  A new costing work group will be appointed in early 2011 to discuss a new formula for dividing costs.

 

A decision should come sometime in May regarding the Madison Public Library remodeling project.  SCLS technology staff will be working closely with Madison Public Library with moving and reinstalling workstations and telecommunication and the ILS staff will help with changing collection codes and locations as well as making some materials unavailable/available for holds.  Delivery will be working on changing routes depending on where the library materials are relocated.

 

Phyllis and Stef have met with Bruce Smith regarding the 2011 delivery budget.  There are some unknowns, but predictions are that we should be ok on gas prices and other basics because we have introduced some efficiencies.

 

Delta Properties, our delivery landlords, sent some builders to look at the storage building on our site, but we have not yet heard back from them.  If we don’t have a solution before winter, alternatives will need to be considered for Jesse Stewart, the fleet manager, inside our current garage.

 

Several member libraries have old computers on our network that we cannot support any longer.  SCLS has an obsolete equipment policy but it has not always been enforced.  An amendment to that policy is in the works.  Several libraries will be receiving new computers through the Gates grant.  

 

Due to some questions about control over the library’s money, the Brodhead Public Library is out of compliance, but the issue should be resolved soon.  If not, a compliance plan will be brought before the board next month.  The North Freedom Library may also have a compliance issue.  The director needs to complete required courses before a specific time period, which is quickly approaching.  SCLS is assisting in every way possible.

 

S. Morrill mentioned the handout “99 Things SCLS Can Do for You”, which was distributed to the board.  The document was prepared for staff visits to libraries for 2010.

 

The Libraries for Real Life website is having contest for National Library Week to encourage people to submit stories.  If anyone has a story to share, please do so!

 

ILS staff had their first round of Koha training.  They have finished mapping all of the codes and doing the first batch of data checking, which was a huge project.  Libraries will soon have access to the test sites of the catalog and the staff programs, but these will not include all of the development that we are doing.  If you’re interested in keeping up, here is the link to the blog where the ILS staff is posting weekly updates about the progress: http://scls.typepad.com/link2koha/

 

The audit is finished.  Dave Odahl will be reporting on the audit at the May meeting.  Last year we were excited by how few audit adjustments we had.  This year, there were even fewer.  There were absolutely no big surprises, and only a handful of adjustments.  Char Paglini did an amazing job!

 

The fiber grants funded by stimulus funds continue to progress.  Some slots may be available for libraries that had not been part of the original grant. S. Morrill and P. Davis contacted libraries to encourage them to be part of the grant.  A potential increase in installation cost and the upcoming changes in SCLS computer support are strong motivators for the libraries to participate.

 

A draft Technology Plan has been sent to the Technology Committee who will review it and then recommend it to the Administrative Council.  This plan has to be submitted to DPI for e-rate proposes.  Among other changes in the plan is a large change in direction for computer support.  SCLS has been providing support to any library who wanted support, regardless of what ISP they were using.  Over the years, the number of computers that we are supporting that are NOT connected to our network has grown to over 400.  Dan Jacobson is supporting all of these by himself, and the remote tools for providing support are primitive, compared to what we can do with computers on the SCLS network.  This type of support is not sustainable, and our technology plan calls for a move to only supporting computers that are part of the SCLS network.  The stimulus grants will give us the bandwidth to support the extra computers and over time, this will provide the best support to the libraries. However, this means that libraries not part of BadgerNet will have to join or they will no longer get support. 

 

Shawn Brommer has developed a great partnership with Wisconsin Public Television, which brought a celebrity to our office.  WPT needed a space to do a production meeting this month, and we were able to accommodate them. Nancy Zieman, of “Sewing with Nancy” was part of the meeting, and many staff were excited to meet her.


Another partnership S. Brommer has been working on involves the Department of Agriculture, which was reported to the board in February.  From that partnership, Shawn has learned about a program from the Department of Agriculture that provides volunteer technology trainers. SCLS member libraries may be able to use some of these trainers to provide training for our LSTA technology and job training grants. 

RFID (Radio Frequency ID) is starting to take off in member libraries. Sun Prairie is already using it.  At least 2-3 other libraries will be converting to it this year.  SCLS is helping them by providing conversion carts for encoding the RFID tags to put on books and by having discussion and education forums on the topic. Libraries are also starting to consider automated materials handling, where materials can be machine sorted after return. At least one library will be implementing this technology after the Koha migration. 

Administrative Council (AC) Report: The minutes may be viewed here: http://www.scls.info/committees/ac/minutes/2010-02-18.pdf

 

Multitype Advisory Committee (MALC) Report:  The Multitype Summit will take place May 18th at Olbrich Gardens.

Other Business:  S. Martin noted Shannon Stiller, Director at the Portage Public Library, thought of a fun idea for National Library week.  Patrons with fines can pay with food donations for a local pantry.  Sue also discussed the “Yell and Tell” program which trains children what to do in scary situations like fire, poison, guns, water, etc.

Information sharing:  None

 

Meeting adjourned at 1:25 p.m.

Heidi Moe, Recorder