MnPALS Executive Committee:
September 18, 2008

DRAFT MINUTES

Present:

The minutes for November 07 and May 08 were approved. Horton moved; Jorstad seconded.

Paul Dahl has agreed to accept nomination as chair elect for the Executive Committee.

Digby continues to look at the budget forecast for the state, which is not expected to be great. He is looking at options for hosting and maintaining servers and the Oracle database. They are pursuing a library facilities improvement initiative for the 2010 legislative bonding. There are eight facilities involved – smaller-scale remodeling. He is working with MnSCU facilities on that. Digby has arranged for a web cast on Fair Use issues and libraries to be broadcast on October 10. It is $195 to be a host. Let him know if you want to attend at the system office or to be host site at the reduced rate. Digby also recently attended Century College’s new science and library building grand opening.

Staffing. Michael Barnett has retired. Cathy Colby has taken a new job at Minnesota State U, Mankato. Elfstrand has hired some students to do some work in the PALS office.

Aleph. Version 18 migration was largely successful. A patron delete was run that got rid of 400,000 patrons. Version 18 is supporting media booking. We will do the patron initiated part of media booking next. ILL is integrated into the client and training has occurred. Feedback on ILL seems to be positive.

Elfstrand and other PALS staff are going to PALS libraries to do site visits.

U of M is on Version 19 now. The question of whether we are going to migrate to Version 19 was discussed. Elfstrand recommends we go to Version 19 and not skip it.

2011 is the target date for implementation of the next generation ILS from Ex Libris.

PALS is still in negotiation with Ex Libris on the draft maintenance agreement.

Innovation team – Elfstrand passed along a brochure on the MnPALS Plus Discovery Tool.

We are a week away from the Hold/ILL link to work in the discovery tool. The Discovery Tool TF has put together a usability study with a list of desired improvements/bug fixes. A few libraries are beginning to use it.

MnPALS Plus searches more broadly than desired (stemming). But the interface is nice.

The PALS Office has been tracking open source ILS developments. Koha has some consortium functionality coming and an agreement with Relay open source ILL. Evergreen is looking at adding serials acquisitions and they are also looking at an open source ILL they want to integrate (FulfILLment?)

The PALS Office has been exploring a partnership with the CUFTS project in Canada. This is a knowledge database of journals with an open-url resolver. They are willing to share their knowledge base with us. We have the knowledge base installed with the URL resolver. We will look at the ERM functionality and the federated search in CUFTS.

We brokered LinkManager with OCLC and it is working well so far along with OCLC Worldcat Local for several institutions. WorldCat Local brings back tiered results based upon regions. St. John’s and St. Benedict’s are live or close to being so.

The EZproxy migration is about 50 percent done. 5 libraries are in full production. 15 libraries are in process. Have room for 5 more libraries at this time.

Elfstrand distributed the following financial documents: “FY 08 Year End Report” – Income by Source, Expenses, Type”; “PALS Multi-Year Summary;” “Income and Expenses FY 06-11;” and “PALS Reserve Balances.”

The staff have been going through some strategic planning in the PALS office.

Cynthia Jorstad expressed thanks for the accomplishments of PALS over the last few years.

Stephen and Mary Ann will visit Alex Tech, Concordia, MSU Moorhead, and MSCTC Moorhead on the way to NDLA next week. Stephen will also be serving on the MnLINK RFP committee.

There was a discussion of the emphasis of the PALS staff with the exploration of open source versus vended systems. As PALS perhaps moves to Open Source, will there be more emphasis on training versus development? Either way there will be a training component.

User Council will have web only meetings in November and February, like the EC.

Are the current representative structures appropriate? Are there better categories to get more involvement from more of the smaller-staffed colleges?

User group meetings will be an hour long this fall. They will focus on business, no reports get run during the meeting. UC came up with lots of ideas for breakout sessions. LibData; Course Reserves; Inventory; and more.

Resource Sharing is up and running. With legislative increase MINITEX has hired some other staff. They are working from 7 am – 11 pm M-F and some Saturday hours in order to try to move resources more quickly.

ELM will go through the RFP process. We need to have a new contract in place by July 1, 09.

MINITEX is putting out a quicktrack RFP for a health database that will be added to the suite.

Training – if you want training for your faculty or students – MINITEX has the staff to do it as part of the ELM and also MnLINK gateway training. They are developing and putting up more online tutorials on helping the user use ELM better – short 3-4 minute snippets.

There are still a few libraries in the state without librarians or with very part-time librarians, which is a concern. Bill is working with these libraries and will suggest some options with them to get a librarian in there on some regular basis.

There are OCLC R2 workshops – technical services and next generation cataloging – coming up on October 21.

WebJunction is a new social networking resource for library staff.

The AskMinnesota virtual reference service accepting new libraries to the list, 24X7 service. Let Todd or Bill know if you want to be added to the list.

MINITEX plans on going back in 2011 for more money from appropriations, but currently will try to to keep services running with what it has. For the MnLINK Gateway they will ask for a modest increase.

Serials Exchange is being discontinued. MINITEX is thinking of partnering with BetterBooks.

A question came up regarding the Minnesota statutes regarding destruction of property when it comes to selling/getting rid of library materials. Todd has the statute and is working with general counsel.

Robbi LaFleur worked on the Executive Committee portion and Michael Kirby worked on the Structure. The User Council would like to work on the structure of the library types and redefine better than currently stated. Are the types of libraries outlined in a section other than on the Consortium of MnPALS Library Executive Page. Somebody edited the EC membership section.

Old version: EC represents all seven types of libraries:
State us, colleges/us, comm. Colleges, private, state agencies, special libraries, public and school libraries

New version: EC represents various types of libraries:
State us – 2; private – 2; comm. & tech – 3; state agency – 1; special – 1; public and school lib – 1; adding a category for at large members – 3?. Membership plus an alternate for each type.

Should we identify consolidated, community, and technical colleges as one. For the purpose of listing our members, it might be good to have the three separate groups, but for gov. structure representation purposes, have them grouped together.
We will continue this discussion via the wiki or e-mail.
Put off motion until November – aim to ratify then.

Orrin has been working with Dave Barton as a possibility for an alternate for the state universities.

Nothing further to be discussed regarding the discovery tool.

Set guidelines/tasks for Task Force to operationalize Strategic Plan to establish a needs assessment for the MnPALS Consortium. On meeting for November. Maybe we can do some preliminary work on this on the wiki. Brittney will get that started on the wiki. At the November meeting we would have a draft and get this started.

Fall User Group Meetings. A motion was made and passed that the user groups will only be one hour in length. The rest of the time will be used for breakout sessions and to lengthen the general session for each day. Ideas that were suggested – course reserves, inventory, MnPALS Plus discovery tool, Minnesota Digital Library, LibData, Digital Archiving (institutional repository), Social networking in libraries (invite libraries to share what they are doing). Stephen will be doing a general session on what will be appropriate (CUFTS, etc.)

To suggest User Group topics, go on the PALS site and under Forums, Governance: User Groups – Topic – suggestions for topics – post them out there. 7 are there and 5 or six more will be added from today’s discussion. Perry Madden is managing this.

User groups are interested in doing work days on their various issues.

For next year we will pursue a user group meeting in the Twin Cities Metro Area.

Larry Kellerman made a recommendation that we migrate to Version 19. Horton seconded.

Discussion:
Based on the relatively painless conversion to Version 18, and if we do not keep up we are going to lag further behind. Version 19 – there will not be a Solaris or an Oracle upgrade – two big pieces in 18 that took a lot of work. The confidence we gained on the success of 18. Will it affect the ability the staff in the office to be able to continue to innovate. Also a question of TIMING. Will 19 functionality be that much more new/added to make it worth it. (1) course reserve integration/redesign much better; (2) services upgrades much easier to handle; and (3) staff permissions reworked and more flexible. It will take staff resources to do the upgrade and some training time.

Will moving to 19 affect your marketing of discovery tool and other products?

We could have a discussion with plusses/minuses at User Group general session.

Larry moved to table and Robert seconded.

This should go out on the PALS Discuss list and let people know it will be discussed at User Groups.

Remember that the web meetings will be for the November and February meeting. The Spring EC has been combined with the Annual Meeting – Annual mtg in a.m. and joint UC/EC meeting in the afternoon. April 16. Location – St. Cloud. The November meeting will be web-only. If you want to come to Mankato you can. Todd could also book a space at his office and some people will be there.

• Nov. 13 - web only
• Feb. 12 - web only
• April 16 -in person - Suggested Location - St. Cloud (combined with Annual Meeting - Annual meeting in the a.m. and joint UC/EC in the afternoon.)

AGENDA

1. Introductions, sign-in sheet

2. Amend/Adopt Agenda

3. Approve minutes from May Meeting and Annual Meeting
4. Co-chair Election by acclamation - (Paul Dahl has graciously volunteered)
5. Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Update - Todd Digby

6. PALS Executive Director’s Report - Stephen Elfstrand
7. User Council Report - Michael Kirby

8. MINITEX Update - Bill DeJohn
9. Old Business:
   1. Governance Structure
   2. Alternate for College and State Universities
   3. MnPALS Plus Discovery Tool
10. BREAK
11. New Business:
    1. Set guidelines/tasks for Task Force to operationalize Strategic Plan to establish a needs assessment for the MnPALS Consortium
    2. Fall User Group Meeting
12. Other?

13. Closing Remarks
14. ADJOURN