User Council Meeting - November 2007

DRAFT MINUTES

Members present: Ruth Anderson (MHS), Kathleen Ashe (SMSU), Bobby Bothmann (MSU), Diane Christensen (GAC), Cathy Colby (PALS) Todd Digby (MnSCU),  Stephen Elfstrand (PALS), Sharon Evensen (VCR), Keith Ewing (SCSU), Sandra Fuhr (SMSU), Sheila Hatchell (MHS), Robin Horowitz (MSLL), Janine Lortz (SJU), Gretchen Pyle (SMU-TC).

Members participating by conference call: Tammy Bobrowsky (Bemidji State), Michael Kirby (DCTC), Pete McDonnell (MSU).

Introductions

Amend or adopt agenda.

No additions or amendments. Agenda will be used a written. 

Minutes from September meeting.

No changes or clarifications.

Keith made motion to adopt minutes., Ruth seconded.

Minutes adopted.

Pals report from Steve Elfstrand.

Steve started by explaining the Aleph downtime earlier in the week. Had to do with new memory board for development server. Talked about installing v. 18—updates need to be installed separately. New linux servers are coming –for e.g., EZproxy and open source software.

PALS tech staff has gone to training.  Still struggling with ILL problems. Support staff looking at v. 18 documentation and training—training may slip 1-2 weeks. ILL training will take place after updates are installed. Site visit program still going on.  Received final report for organizational study. Will be posted on the Web for discussion. Improving communication – Wiki, forums. Handed out PALS office communication team report. Bobby said message about v. 18 was timely and appreciated, Rod’s message during Aleph downtime was also timely and appreciated.

Steve went to Innovative Interface’s user group. Waldo consortium in NY has signed a contract with Koha for LibLime; they are moving to open source software. Another possibility for PALS is to become an open source provider.

Report from Todd Digby

Attended last CALCO meeting with Steve.

Secured $65,000 for EZproxy update and discovery tool work. Will be getting 4% increase in budget for FY 2009.

Todd will be talking to MNSCU leadership about needs according to strategic plan. He is on agenda for January’s finance leadership meeting. Bobby suggested Todd tie his funding request to learning outcomes; how it promotes learning.  Todd agreed and said that MNSCU needs to take the lead in increasing funding.

Discussion about MAPE already settling its contracts.

Bobby asked if there is anything to do within members’ institutions to help advocate for more funding. Todd will send out info re: presidents attending the leadership meeting.

Todd doing site visits outstate to look at space/design issues. 

User Group Review

Michael Kirby, systems user group

They had a motion to identify some changes to be made on task force document, better communication from reports task force on what is being tested. Re: PALS centralized survey, PALS should be doing SXL reports. Concern re: v. 18 communication and migration process.

Inventory marking is working well at St. Johns/ St. Bens.

Discussed ARC software—business v. professional licenses.

Tammy Bobrowsky, acquisitions user group

Mostly updates from Dee Nolan re: v. 18. Dee reported back on ELUNA conference.

Group expressed interest in having an acquisitions/serials workday. 

Gretchen Pyle, circulation user group

Susan from PALS talked about PLIF loads. Problems between linking Aleph with ISRS business office. Motion for work around for this since Ex Libris has been unresponsive.

Inventory, patron record deletion not functional in v. 17, will be functional in v. 18. Presentation by Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Ruth Anderson, reference user group

Group discussed availability column and possibility of a reference work day. There was a World Cat Local presentation. Had discussion about discovery tool task force and its relation to access task force. Pete thanked Keith for posting discovery tool document.

Kathleen inquired what topics would be covered in a reference work day. Ruth replied, WorldCat Local, blogs and wikis in reference service, Library 2.0.  Reference steering committee has begun discussions re: reference work day; they are talking generally about what they may include. 

Sharon Evensen, ILL user group

No motions. Approved change in how ILL request records are listed.

Discussed ILL work day: looking at v. 18, small libraries v. big libraries—do we separate on that day on that basis?

Discussed direct borrowing; want to explore statistics they get out of Aleph.

Bobby Bothmann and Sheila Hatchell, cataloging user group

General business meeting, no presentations.  Mary Ann gave update on work plan. There was not a lot of feedback on what catalogers need, and discussed this lack of feedback at steering committee meeting. Catalogers want the serials union list holdings issue to go forward. Group was under the impression that it was PALS management decision to set this aside. Cathy Colby explained there was a problem with test bed and that’s why it was set aside, not because it was a PALS management decision to do so.  Steve mentioned that there might be some way to create a report to see what holding records need to prepare for this.

Talked about NACO training and restarting authorities task force—Should PALS have a NACO funnel?

Closed discussion with review of workday.

Evaluations

Will discuss after break. 

User Group Motions

Reference motion: call for volunteers for access task force and task force chairperson. Keith said that he had taken over leadership, but issues for this task force are very onerous. Keith discussed overlap between access and discovery tool task force—can they be merged or coordinated in some way? Ruth agreed with Bobby that access task force really needs a chairperson. Keith agreed—the coordination part is huge and it is a huge time commitment.

Keith suggested we hire a designer for Web OPAC interface, Sheila agreed. Keith said that availability, color, help screens are big issues. Pete interjected: reference steering committee will discuss this during their regular conference calls as a standing agenda item. The steering committee also talked about the possibility of looking at task forces that had a tighter focus (task or issue specific), rather than the broad MATF.

Bobby suggested that the reference steering committee needs to tap people to volunteer for chairperson and task force. Keith suggested that there is a reluctance to participate because they do not see results; the response has been so slow from PALS. Kathleen agreed that the issues are so mammoth. Keith said that the access task force members have to have an technical understanding of indexing, structure of data systems, and user behavior, and that no one has expertise in those areas. Steve was bothered by the long list of access issues that haven’t been responded to. Steve discussed designing OPACS and discovery tools—what does evidence from user surveys say? What do users really need? What does target audience want to see and know? Discussed University of Minnesota usability lab, which has worked on Aleph. Keith said the problem is we’re serving multiple audiences.

Bobby called time on the discussion.

Systems motion: To assess procedure in task force policy document for making recommended changes. Bobby said that this has to be handled by a subgroup. Should we ask task forces to review it and make changes? Kathleen asked whether the steering committees should reassess this. Keith said the availability column drove this discussion; there were issues re: the timing of the changes. Steve said that task forces should work even while school is not in session.  Bobby said that some librarians don’t want to do task force work while they’re off for the summer. Steve reiterated that task force members should work in the summer. Bobby suggested we talk about this at spring user group meeting. Bobby and Kathleen suggested that steering committees and task forces should look at the policy document and their processes and suggest issues. Cathy Colby said that task forces are responsive during the summer; it’s just that the access task force wasn’t. 

Circulation motion: PALS to consider a work around for the link to the ISRS/business office. Cathy said it’s in the work plan, but she does not know where on the work plan it is. Todd met with IT and they recognize that it has to be worked out. Bobby asked whether there was a fiscal component in getting a work around in place. Cathy replied that it is a staff resources issue. Sheila asked whether it was a MNSCU issue. Cathy replied yes. Kathleen suggested that as long there continues to be progress on the work plan, user council does not need to discuss it. Cathy said that Al is the one who needs to work on it. Steve would like to get other staff involved because Al is working on so many things at once.

User Group Evaluation results

Re: having the meeting once or twice a year, the votes were split. Discussion on the merits of one or two day conferences. User council members had a general consensus that that two day plan is working better. Bobby asked how the work day can fit into this. Steve asked if we could piggy back user group with work days, e.g. work day in the morning and user group in the afternoon.  Kathleen suggested that some subgroups could not pull of a whole work day, e.g. circulation. Diane Christensen liked the idea of combining work day with user group. Keith thought it was a good idea to combine work day with business component, but asked what brings us together other than the ILS?

Janine asked why user groups aren’t in the TwinCcities. Cathy replied that there was a survey done on where people would like to have user groups. The top three picks were Mankato, St. Cloud and Twin Cities.  The problem with the twin cities is that it does not have good venue options that do not involve high conference fees. People are not willing to pay a conference registration fee to have user group meeting in the twin cities. Keith agreed, saying that no one is going to pay a conference registration fee for a business meeting; it’s not like it’s a seminar.

Bobby asked if we can work with Minitex on a venue. Cathy replied that they charge a fee for their conference center.

Sheila said that catalogers want to have user group in the spring because of elections and save the fall for work days. Todd agreed this was a good idea. Sheila asked whether funding could be available for work days for possible speakers and food. Cathy did not know where that money would come from. Steve asked how much does user group cost? Cathy has never tracked the cost. Bobby said that people indicated they would not mind paying a small fee for lunch at work day, but cataloging steering committee did not have a fiscal agent to take care of it. 

Fall 2008 User Group Meeting Days

October 29^th and 30^th, 2008

Wikis and Forums

Sheila asked if it was possible to get training on how to use the wikis and forums. Cathy Colby agreed this was a good idea and PALS will get something going to teach basic wiki text. Discussed forums becoming primary method of communication, especially with v. 18. Michael Kirby brought up putting e-mail archives on forums and whether or not the archive could be searchable. Keith mentioned that it is hard to get to the wiki from the PALS Web page. Cathy will display it more prominently. 

ARC/Version 18

Discussed ARC licensing—business or professional? Steve said people who did not respond to the survey will get a business license. Will there be a fee for consortium members for reports from PALS? Cathy replied that PALS has always charged a fee for custom reports and they will continue to do so. Bobby asked if we can expect a one person library to do a report? They will always have to pay a fee. Sheila believes that writing reports was part of the centralization survey. Todd suggested that the consortium share reports. Keith said reports should be in a template library. Where should we put the template library for reports? PALS will figure that out.

We do not have a date when electronic lists will be consolidated. Gretchen asked whether PALS can send an e-mail telling people to use one list only (the PALS discussion list), and then worry about shutting down migration.

Work Days

Bobby discussed the success of cataloging user group work day. Sheila said that 100% were in favor of doing it again. Bobby said the preparation work was done completely by the cataloging steering committee with help from PALS for surveys and registration. Bobby observed from the work day that next time we may not need a computer lab. Cathy asked whether there were any thoughts to doing it virtually. Bobby and Steve thought being there in person offered a better dynamic in terms of participation. 

Executive Committee Report

Bobby asked whether we would ever need an executive committee report to the user council.

User group will take place in the spring. Maybe fall will be for work days or spread out throughout the year. Governance—change the structure of twice a year user group meetings?

Kathleen made a motion to adjourn. Diane seconded. Meeting adjourned.