Steering Committee Meeting Minutes: March 28, 2001
Location: South Central Library System
Present: Ken Hall (WLS), Phyllis Davis (SCLS), Barbara Strauss (OWLS), Mellanie Mercier (WCFLS), Mary Tlusty (L.E. Phillips), Bernie Bellin (LLS), Sue Siewert (KCLS), Matt Bollerman (MWFLS), Inese Christman (WVLS), Peg Zappen (La Crosse PL), Lynn Bellehumeur (Milwaukee PL), Mark Merrifield (NLS), Linda Miller, Project Manager, and Kathy Schneider, WiLS.
The meeting came to order at 10:00 a.m.
1. Welcome to New Members
New consortium members in attendance included Lynn Bellehumeur, Milwaukee Public Library (MPL) and Inese Christman, Wisconsin Valley Library System (WVLS). Phyllis Davis announced that Northern Waters Library Service (NWLS) would be joining also.
2. Partner Reports
This was the first meeting of the Steering Committee since netLibrary services were introduced to the public by most partners on February 1, 2001.
SCLS went live on February 1st. All training is completed. Efforts are now on publicity to generate interest. Phyllis Davis presented two training sessions for the SCLS target group, CESA 5. School librarians attended, but no teachers attended. She experienced some problems accessing the collection from the school labs which are outside of the IP range given to netLibrary. Phyllis reported that the school librarians were excited about the resources available, especially on science fair projects, crafts, and Cliff Notes. Special events are planned during National Library Week.
IFLS libraries went live with netLibrary the first week of February. A press release was issued. Training is now completed. Sandy Robbers of IFLS met with the literacy volunteers, the project target group. Activities with the target group will be developed further into the project.
LLS reported that staff members were excited after training.
KCLS plans to go live in June after staff training.
OWLS loaded all of the MARC records for the netLibrary collection with item records. Item records were created in one hour and display in the PAC. OWLS has registered with OCLC to get notice if the URL in any of the records changes. OWLS went live March 1st. Training by WiLS is completed. Barbara Strauss will train children's staff in late spring.
Winnefox also went live on February 1st. Library staff are helping a lot of people create accounts. There was good coverage in the newspapers. MARC records have not yet been loaded. Some ILL requests have been received for the netLibrary titles. Kathy Schneider mentioned that OCLC is going to add a message about not being available for interlibrary loan. Ken Hall mentioned concern over netLibrary freezing while in use.
NLS reported that most libraries are live with netLibrary. Brown Co. went live on March 1st. There was live coverage on the local television station. Press releases were provided to all of the libraries for distribution. Posters were laminated at the NLS offices before distribution to the libraries. Information is being added to library web sites. Library staff at all of the libraries were trained and are very excited. The project has been going well.
WRLS reported that MARC records are loaded. Public access to netLibrary continues at La Crosse PL from the earlier standalone project. La Crosse PL is ready to go with an expanded reader program.
MWFLS has completed the training but not yet set a date for going live. Matt Bollerman reported that a lot of projects were occurring at the same time. MARC records will be downloaded for libraries to add. Authentication by IP address is in place, but Matt expressed interest in being able to use referring URL.
WCFLS reported that 119 accounts had been created to date by users from fourteen libraries. There is some concern about overlaying existing MARC records when records are loaded into some systems, so not all of the libraries had added them to their systems. There seem to be some authentication issues although IP addresses have been given to netLibrary. Mellanie Mercier shared a copy of a flier that the system produced.
WVLS has two training dates set, one for Marathon County and the other for the other libraries in the system. A school lab will be used for the training. June 1st is the target date for going live with netLibrary.
MPL had a six month trial with netLibrary prior to joining WPLC. MARC records from netLibrary had been loaded as a part of that project, but MPL staff were not entirely satisfied with them. The OCLC records are preferred. MPL worked with their ILS vendor, Innovative Interfaces, Inc., to specially display records for this collection. MPL instructed netLibrary to turn off referring URL authentication. Lynn Bellehumeur reported some customer support issues, especially with login problems. An article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel promoted the service.
WiLS reported that additional netLibrary Quick Start guides should be available the first week of April. Kathy Schneider shared that some of the academic libraries reported concern over the completeness and content of the MARC records.
3. Grant Report and Dissemination
The six month narrative report to WATF was posted to the WPLC list on 1/25/01. Although WATF will no longer exist as a granting agency, reports still must be submitted.
Presentations on the WPLC project have been scheduled for WiLSWorld, LITA, and WLA. These will help satisfy the grant requirement to disseminate information about the project.
Linda Miller suggested that the Steering Committee consider discussing the continuation of the consortium after the grant ends. This issue will be included on the agenda for a future meeting.
4. Target Group Issues
WCFLS is working with the Badger Association of the Blind. Problems with the netLibrary screen reader have been identified. netLibrary is working with an agency in Madison to make its site more accessible.
Bernie Bellin recommended that materials for English as a second language be selected.
Kathy Schneider informed the committee that WiLS is starting to organize a consortium of school libraries. One approach might be to add schools to WPLC. Another could be to merge all consortia into one multitype consortium.
In the discussion that followed, committee members stated that the fall might be a good time for a trial period of adding school libraries. Concerns were expressed about selection issues and how materials budgets might be allocated to different types of materials, wanting to be sure that materials that were public library-oriented were purchased with the funds contributed by library systems and public libraries. The WPLC Selection Committee is developing a collection development policy which could be used to address some of these issues.
There was agreement that public library users would benefit from having access to the schools' collections. Cooperation always makes a good political statement.
Few schools are aware of the WPLC project, although several partners, including SCLS, NLS, and ESLS, are promoting the program in the schools in their areas. One problem in implementing the netLibrary program in the schools could be the lack of computer equipment in many of the schools. Another issue could be the low number of juvenile titles currently available through netLibrary.
The committee decided to continue the discussion at a future meeting.
5. Project Evaluation
The committee would like to know the date of the release of the staff survey in order to inform staff. There was a question as to whether any evaluation will be done that involves the target groups.
6. Reader Issues
The question of whether or not to use the amount originally budgeted for readers was discussed. Several committee members stated that interest in the readers was not as high as it had been. The amount of change that the industry has seen since the project began was a concern to many, and several members remembered the problems that libraries had when VCRs first entered the marketplace and no single standard yet existed. The fact that netLibrary titles cannot be loaded onto a reader, and the cost of the readers, contributed to the lack of interest.
Peg Zappen (La Crosse PL) stated that the readers are always out and that the library has received very positive feedback. The library plans to use readers in a project with at-risk youth. Other partners remained committed to trying the technology. DeForest PL (SCLS) is using readers in a program with a school where students have plays loaded on the readers.
A consensus was reached to allow partners to either purchase readers or to apply that portion of the grant funds to purchasing additional netLibrary titles. Phyllis Davis will submit a request to WATF to revise the budget and project activities. Partners are to post their decision on how they want to use their funds to the WPLC list by April 15th.
7. Authentication Issues
Ken Hall reminded everyone that the committee decision was that referring URL was acceptable provided that individual users were being authenticated against a patron database. Libraries that are still using dial-up should be able to get an IP range from their ISP that could then be given to netLibrary for IP authentication. The IFLS model where library staff, in dial-up libraries, have passworded access to the IFLS web site to create user accounts was acceptable. Referring URL has been used by some on a temporary basis, such as when training was done. Peg Zappen expressed the need to consider authentication beyond netLibrary while Phyllis Davis added that the issue of measuring use was another factor in the authentication method decision.
8. netLibrary Update
Kathy Schneider reported that the only change in publishers was that Rosen might be adding schools as allowable netLibrary participants. Joan Mueller, Oshkosh PL, will edit the letters to the publishers.
Some problems in using Netscape and in using Macintosh computers were reported.
Kathy Schneider will check that everyone is receiving the netLibrary newsletter. She also reported that netLibrary staff have been reassigned and that Patrick Moore was no longer the account representative. A public library support team was being created.
The committee approved the expenditure of all grant funds allocated for netLibrary. Funds contributed by partners will be held for future allocations. Kathy Schneider will inform the Selection Committee to prepare another order.
9. Committee Activities
The Selection Committee will meet for training and collection development discussion on April 25, 2001. A trainer from netLibrary will present information on statistics.
The next meeting of the Steering Committee is scheduled for May 30, 2001 at 10:00 a.m. at the SCLS offices.
The meeting adjourned at 1:00 p.m.
Linda K. Millerlinda@lmatechwork.com
815-229-8215 voice
815-229-5362 fax