Maine InfoNet Board Meetings, August 15, 2007

The Maine InfoNet Board met on Wednesday, August 15 at 1:35 PM at the Maine State Library.

Members present: Judy Frost, Clem Guthro, Sue Jagels (ATM), Barbara McDade, David Nutty, Steve Podgajny, Joyce Rumery, Dick Thompson.

Members absent: Ralph Caruso, Linda Lord, Gary Nichols, Liz Reisz.
The Solar representative position is currently vacant.

1. July Minutes

Correction on p. 5: Portland Public Library’s migration to “URSUS,” not Minerva.

Motion to approve the corrected July minutes by Guthro, second by Frost. Approved unanimously.

2. FY 08 Budget (Sue)

Finance Committee (Sue, Barbara, Steve, Dick) met via conference call on Monday, August 13. This format proved to be too difficult to hold an effective meeting. The next committee meeting will be held on Tuesday, August 28 at MSL to discuss their role vis-à-vis the InfoNet budget.

The immediate difficulty for the committee is not having control or oversight over the budgets of the agencies involved in InfoNet. One possible role would be the pursuit of grant money.

The FY 08 budget handout includes known and projected costs. The State Legislature approved additional funding of $100,000 for databases. It is estimated that approximately $60,000 of that will merely pay for subscription increases.

3. Interim CEO Report (Barbara)

The MaineCat Summit meeting, with 102 librarians in attendance, was held on Thursday, August 2 at UMO.

Seven III system administrators from across the state met at MSL on July 16 at a session convened by Jon Forest. Future meetings of this group are planned.

Portland Public Library is now an associate member of URSUS.

Four new libraries will be accepted into Minerva by the end of September.

District consultants requested and received a proposal for statewide download of audio books from Over Drive Digital Library. What entity should be responsible for this type of project? MSL? InfoNet? Should participating libraries assume some of the costs?

Barbara will contact the New Hampshire State Library to learn how it is financing and administering statewide access to downloadable audios.

This topic will be addressed at the September meeting.

4. Maine InfoNet Board (Barbara)

It was recommended that Rich Boulet, director of Blue Hill Public Library, be nominated to run for the open SOLAR seat on the Board. The SOLAR libraries must vote on this nomination.

The open seat among the four independent III libraries (MECA, Maine Maritime, PPL, UNE) will once again be filled by Steve Podgajny, director of PPL.

Suellen Jagels was re-elected as an at-large Board member.

5. Maine InfoNet Summit Meeting (Barbara)

This meeting (see attached for full report) was very successful and productive. Four break-out sessions produced lively discussions and plenty of ideas.

In their evaluations of the meeting, attendees explicitly stated that their concerns and recommendations be seriously addressed by the Board.

First Break-Out Session (Requesting, Loan Rules, Settling Up, Delivery):

Board members actively discussed Millennium’s visiting patron feature which has been put into use by several groups of multi-type libraries in the state. Could this act as a model for universal borrowing in the state?

Systems-wide ILL of videos, audio books and music CDs will become a reality, with a few exceptions pertaining to curricula.

A consistent and scheduled systems-wide settling up of overdue institutional ILLs is necessary.

Summary:

Everyone agreed the summit was a worthwhile project and we should hold one again. We need to work on the recommendations that resulted as quickly as possible. The Board only got to discuss the Breakout Group A recommendations before time ran out. There seemed to be consensus that we should make AV items (feature films and music CD's, but not multi-volume videos or audio books) a one week loan for patrons. Can we make an Item Status that says "Local Patron Use Only"? Maine InfoNet should encourage member libraries to revisit what isn't requestable and open more collections to statewide borrowing. We should allow the Visiting Patron function across consortia lines; we should revisit the amounts charged for lost items in MaineCat. We talked a lot about "settling up" but the majority of the board seemed to think that this was not worth the cost in staff time. We will ask that there be a representative from URSUS libraries on the cataloging and circulation committees of Minerva and vice versa.

The meeting was adjourned at 3:20 when the Board moved into executive session.

Respectfully submitted,

Dean Corner, MSL
(for Linda Lord)

For the Public