User Council Meeting - February 2007

Minutes of the 1 February 2007 MnPALS User Council Meeting

9:00 a.m. 12:30 p.m., Hennepin Technical College, Brooklyn Park Campus

1. Introductions/Attending:

Members:  B. Bothmannn (MSU—Cataloging), M. Kirby (DTC—Systems), S. Hatchell (MHS—Cataloging), O. Ausen (BLC—Exec), T. Martinson (SBJ—Serials), R. Schwartzkopf (MSU—Serials), L. Weber (MSU—Circulation), P. McDonnell (IHC—Reference), S. Evenson (VCC—ILL),  R. Zietlow (MTR), S. Fuhr (SSU—Exec), K. Ashe (SSU—Circulation), K. Ewing (SCS—Systems)

PALS Office:  L. Richter, R. Bell, S. Eilertson

MnSCU: T. Digby

2. Amend Agenda:

Add: MARC records Task Force within Cataloging UG  to Agenda 8: Governance/Structure

3. Minutes from meeting of 7 September 2007

MSP Schwartzkopf/Martinson: Approve minutes as written.

4. Spring 07 User Group Meeting

Minor editorial revisions to draft agenda were accepted.

Keynote speakers: Shane Nackerud (UM) and Cody Hansen (UM) on social networking applications in libraries. 

Action:  Title and description for keynote to be developed by B. Bothmann and P. McDonnell.

Conflicts in schedule of user group meetings; difficult to avoid

MSP Ashe/Weber: Switch Ser/Acq with Sys in meeting schedule

General session topics:

• Strategic planning – O. Ausen and S. Fuhr
• Governing structure – someone from Exec Comm
• MnPALS ILS progress: 17! 18? – R. Bell
• Consortium/PALS report – T. Digby
• Break out session on Reports Task Force update
• Discovery Tool Task Force will be asked to report during joint Cat/Ref meeting

5. Annual Meeting of Deans/Directors/Coordinators

To be planned by Exec Comm.  Among suggested topics of discussion were:

• Strategic planning document: impact upon cost, willingness to support, next steps, sustainability
• Participation in Consortium of MnPALS Libraries

6. Task Forces Policy Document

MSP Schwartzkopf/Ashe to accept D. Richards suggested wording change (from Fall User Groups meetings) :  Insert “Every effort will be made to insure representation by size and type of library” after the first sentence of #4 [Membership] of the Task Forces policy document.

MSD Ashe/Zietlow to change wording from “When” to “As_ in 7.b. :  “When the Task Force finds that their work has met the goals of their charge…”.

MSP Bothmann/Martinson to accept Task Forces Policy document as amended and forward to the Executive Committee.

7. Strategic Planning

Lengthy discussion of both process and outcomes:

• Next steps coming out of last strategic planning meeting were of variable ambiguity, yet some are moving forward (see below)
• Need to make it clear from the Exec Comm that strategic planning needs to continue and identify measurable benchmarks
• General frustration that Aleph consumes too much time
• Possible 2-track process: continue moving forward with actions identified in strategic planning process and continue dialog among membership as strategic planning continues.
• Whose responsibility is it to do the strategic planning?  Can’t be everyone in the consortium; yet it affects everyone in the consortium
• The document produced by the strategic planning process does not address why and how the consortium exists: what do we gain from each other that makes us greater than our individual parts and gives us strength?  Purpose will drive participation.
• What comes first – purpose or funding?
• What are we marketing – ILS, services, the consortium?
• Is the Vision Statement issued by the strategic planning process really a “vision statement”?  Keep the first sentence, but revise the rest.

MSP Zietlow/Ashe :  The MnPALS User Council requests that the Executive Committee identify 7 possible core activities for the consortium to pursue for the next 10 to 15 years.

MSP Ewing/Zietlow: The MnPALS User Council needs to identify and provide an appropriate forum to continue the discussion of strategic planning.

MSP : Refer the Vision Statement that came out of the strategic planning process to the Executive Committee for revision.

Strategic Planning Action Plans:

·         Discovery Tool:  Forming a new task force; current nominees: T. Dolenz (MSU Moorhead), M. Prescott (SCS), A. Sonsteby (TRC), J. DeYoung (MTR)

·         Governance structure: discuss during Spring User Groups and Annual Meeting

·         Centralizing Tech Issues:  Under discussion in the PALS Office

·         Effective member participation: Needs further discussion

·         Benefits of Membership:  Formed a Marketing Task Force to address this issue

·         Marketing Assessment : Referred to the Marketing Task Force

·         Fiscal Alignment: T. Digby has initiated discussions within MnSCU for strategic/funding alignment with MnSCU IT.

Corollary discussion of continuation of MnPALS Access Task Force in relation to Discovery Tools Task Force:

·         Many of the enhancements previously identified but not completed need to be reviewed in light of v.17 OPAC changes.

·         The OPAC may be important in certain environments/instances or with certain libraries even after the implementation of a “discovery tool” interface; some libraries may choose not to participate in a discovery tool. 

·         There may be need to further address OPAC issues in v.17 and the future implementation of v.18.

Action:  Poll the membership about continuation of Access Task Force.

8. Governance Structure

Thanks to R. Bothmann for recent updates to the Governance Structure document.

The discussion started to identify editorial changes to the document-- e.g., in the section Executive Committee/Meetings, deleting the sentence relating to purpose—but decided to change focus.

MSP: Recommend to the Exec Comm to assign 2 people to work with 2 people from the UC (Bothmann and Ewing) to edit and present a final draft document in time for distribution and review at the Spring User Groups meeting.

Action:  Someone from the PALS Office, in coordination with T. Digby, needs to draft the PALS Office segment of the document.

Recommend: The structure of user groups—e.g., steering committees—needs to be treated as a separate issue within the definition of user groups in the document.

Recommend: As document is edited and in relation to the ongoing strategic planning process, some discussion of how the consortium is structured as it evolves beyond the central focus on the ILS needs to occur.

Corollary discussion of a MARC Task Force within the Cataloging User Group. 

·         The discussion centered on how far the consortium should go in mandating MARC standards and requiring OCLC membership.  The Task Force, as a subset within the Cataloging User Group, does not explicitly require a charge from the UC.

MSP (Ewing/Schwartkopf): Allow the MARC Task Force to move forward with a policy recommendation, but ask that the Task Force not reinvent or supercede existing standards (e.g., MINITEX cataloging standards) and be cognizant of potential impact upon current and future members of the consortium.

9. MnSCU Update

·         PALS Director search committee has been formed and met for the first time on 31 January.  R. Schwartzkopf (MSU) is chair of the search committee.  The committee has a target date of 1 July for the new director to assume responsibilities.

·         MERLOT, a national clearinghouse of learning objects—MnSCU is a member--   (http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm) is looking for a librarian to join the steering committee—contact T. Digby if interested.  MERLOT’s annual conference is 7-10 August in New Orleans.

10. MnPALS Update

·         ELUNA (http://www.elu-na.org/) is still looking for presenters for the 2007 Annual meeting in Spearfish, SD.  If interested, submit a proposal at the ELUNA website.  Registration is not yet available online.

·         Upgrade to Aleph v.17 has been “rough”—generating the highest number of eDesk questions received by the PALS Office and a large number of SI’s to ExLibris, many of which remain open. 

·         PALS staff is seeing far higher system utilization in v.17 than in v.15.5; consequently, PALS may need to strip some memory from lute, affecting performance on that server, in order to maintain performance on harp.  This may also affect implementation of the Aleph Reporting Center; PALS staff is investigating options.

·         PALS staff has not started implementing some of the new features available in v.17—e.g., summary holdings, new inventory process, booking, etc.  PALS staff has started testing some of the features and identifying problems to forward to ExLibris.

·         PALS staff is also dealing with other problems as they are reported.  However, it takes considerable time to sort through eDesk tickets, identify the problem, and investigate solutions.

Recommend: Subject lines in eDesk questions need to be explicit to assist PALS staff in responding.  [Example: One subject line simply read “Help!!!” – an obvious plea for assistance, but not easy to determine to whom the plea should be directed for resolution.]

·         Aleph v.18 implementation schedule may be “extremely optimistic.”  PALS staff is focused on stabilizing and completing the implementation of Aleph v.17.  While a May implementation date is still possible, an August date (or later) may be more realistic.

·         Because the meeting was running long, the UC chair asked if R. Bell could distribute the full PALS report electronically.

Recommend:  PALS Update report be made available electronically.

Recommend:  The current spreadsheet of PALS eDesk problems identified with Aleph v.17, be made available electronically and kept periodically up-to-date to assist member libraries in understanding problems and issues that are being addressed.

11. Other

The new PALS website should be complete and available sometime in March.

MSP (Schwartkopf/Weber) Adjourn (12:20 p.m.)

Calendar of future meetings:

·         MnPALS User Council meeting:  26 April, Hennepin Technical College at Eden Prairie (Adam Marsnik, secretary)

·         MnPALS User Groups Spring Meetings: 16-17 April, St. Cloud State University

·         MnPALS User Groups Fall Meetings: 11-12 October, Minnesota State University, Mankato

·         MnPALS Annual Meeting: 22 March, Hennepin Technical College at Eden Prairie