Board Meeting Minutes: October 8, 2002: Wisconsin Public Library Consortium

WPLC Annual Board Meeting Minutes: October 8, 2002
Location: South Central Library System

Present: Mellanie Mercier (WCFLS), David Weinhold (ESLS), Peggy Shaffer (LLS), Stef Morrill (SCLS), Inese Christman (Marathon Co.), Kristen Anderson (LaCrosse), Linda Miller, Project Manager, Rick Krumwiede (OWLS), Tom Hennen (WCFLS), Michael Sheehan (NWLS), Mark Arend (WLS), Peter Hamon (SCLS), Phyllis Davis (SCLS), and Kathy Schneider (WiLS). Josh Morrill also attended.

The meeting came to order at 10:00 a.m.

1. Minutes from Annual Meeting

Copies of the minutes from the August 22, 2002 annual meeting were posted to the list with print copies available.

2. Partner Reports

ESLS finished the rotation of the ebook readers to all of the public libraries. Evaluations were done by all participants, both staff and public users. The responses were mainly positive. OfficeMax is selling its remaining readers for $99.
ESLS will determine what to do with the nine readers. David Weinhold demonstrated netLibrary for the Sheboygan County department heads who were impressed.

WLS has been promoting the use of netLibrary especially as a reference resource. Joy Schwarz is making progress on the WPLC website.

OWLS has submitted a draft of a project proposal for consideration by the WPLC Board.

SCLS reports that the final check from the WATF grant has been received. Staff demonstrated netLibrary and the ebook reader at their annual system celebration. Trustees from a new library were very impressed with the readers. SCLS is working on an authentication scheme for netLibrary that will allow all users from any location to access it using the same method. Staff see a need for more promotion of netLibrary to library staff and users.

NWLS has been promoting netLibrary and has incorporated netLibrary into the
system training program. Staff are working on adding netLibrary records to
the union database. NWLS staff attended a WPLC meeting in person for the
first time.

WCFLS discussed netLibrary with reference librarians at a recent meeting and offered to arrange workshops to help librarians use the service for reference.

Marathon County has completed a project to promote the use of netLibrary. Staff have added netLibrary records to the database and have seen an increase in use by both staff and the public. Staff are trying to encourage more WVLS libraries to use netLibrary since only a few are actively participating.

WRLS is doing online training for netLibrary which is going well.

3. Current Project Reports

Mellanie Mercier and Stef Morrill reported on the audio book project. All six participating libraries have the players and are trying to use them. Audible.com has no way of tracking usage. Mellanie and staff have developed a website that provides access to the titles and provides a way of tracking the status of a title. Each library must submit a form when an item is circulated so that the website can be updated. The website is "Listen Up Wisconsin!" and the URL is http://www.scls.lib.wi.us/listenup.They have purchased 44 titles with funds from August and September. Funds from October are still available to spend.
Batteries need to be replaced often, and they are considering rechargeable batteries.

Phyllis Davis expressed concerns about the project model. Mellanie and Stef added that Audible.com has proposed a new model for libraries that involves a user purchasing the one-time use of a title for $10. David would like some information about customer's reactions to the service before considering participating in such a project. Tom Hennen expressed that it would be useful to know the age of the average user.

Inese Christman added that some predict that MP3 players will replace the use of CDs by 2004.

David reported on the survey project. As part of the project design phase, Josh Morrill has developed a set of questions. These were submitted to SRLAAW and others for feedback. The design phase is completed. Next, Josh and David will determine how to actually conduct and administer the survey.

4. netLibrary

Kathy Schneider reported that the loan period for netLibrary titles changed to 24 hours. Additional titles will be ordered. The WebCT session is set to begin on October 15 with six people registered so far. There will be three sessions a year that will be instructor led. Participants have the option to go through the instructor led session with a specific schedule or to go through the material on their own. The next session will begin in January. A suggestion was made to offer CEUs with the training. The tutorial showing how to create a netLibrary account is now available. It requires a QuickTime plug-in.

No schools have been added since the last report. There are still currently four schools participating. WiLS will do a promotional mailing in November. The mailing will go to school districts and some high schools, primarily WiLS members. Schools will be directed to contact their public library or one of the WPLC partners.

Gale and netLibrary have reached an agreement to provide some new reference ebook titles, but Gale has not yet agreed to allow the use of these titles in shared collections.

Phyllis Davis asked about the availability of an Adobe reader for netLibrary titles. Kathy reported that there is still not enough content available in this format.

No Spanish titles are available in the netLibrary collection yet. ebrary does offer some Spanish titles but does not allow licensing of only the Spanish titles. The annual license fee is based on service population and ranges from $1000 to $9500. Some academic libraries, as well as Milwaukee Public and SWLS, are sharing their collections. There are about 13,000 ebrary titles with 100 Spanish titles. The academic consortium is considering a service from Safari that provides access to technical reference titles, such as the O'Reilly books.

The subject of independent netLibrary collections was discussed. One school that is an affiliate has created its own collection that is not available to WPLC members. David said that there is nothing in the partnership agreement to preclude a partner from having an independent collection. However, they are encouraged to share their collections. This policy seems to have been extended to the affiliates also. Kathy added that the school had expressed willingness to share their $14,000 collection. However, they would want some compensation, such as not being required to pay the annual fee for a period of time.

There was a discussion that the problem may be that the current netLibrary model does not allow affiliates to have enough input into the selection of titles. Peter Hamon said that perhaps a proposal could be submitted to create an agreement with this school to share their collection. The proposal would need to be sponsored by a partner. Comments were made that such an agreement could be used to attract other affiliates to contribute to the WPLC collection.

Rick commented that the original participation agreement states that electronic titles are only available to members, referring to partners, not affiliates.

David agreed that we should have an arrangement that allows affiliates to share their collections. If these offer unique titles that are not already owned by WPLC, the affiliate should be compensated in some way. One option would be to waive the annual fee for a specific time. Not only schools, but public libraries should also be able to participate in such an agreement.

Peter added that since there would still be overhead costs, the affiliate could be charged a lower annual fee for a longer period of time. He will draft some options.

The group agreed that the existing agreements need to be examined and an affiliate agreement should be created that will address this issue. Peter will work on this.

A problem was reported that a user's netLibrary account had expired. When the account was examined, it was found to be associated with WPLC in general instead of with a specific library system. Kathy confirmed that there should not be any such accounts. All accounts are created using IP authentication and associated with a specific system.

At the OCLC Peer Council meeting last week, there was some discussion of creating a joint quality control committee to handle issues with the quality of MARC records in the WPLC and academic consortia. It was decided at this meeting that such a committee will not be necessary.

Kathy will establish a committee to accomplish the merge of the WPLC and academic collections. The academic consortium is meeting at the end of October to consider the merger.

5. WPLC Statement of Purpose

Peter presented the revisions to the original mission statement. Mark Arend made a motion to adopt the revised statement. David seconded the motion. The motion was approved.

There was a discussion of the need to have clearly stated definitions of 'partners', 'affiliates', and their differences. A review of the partnership agreement is also needed. Rick stated that bylaws may need to be created.

David added that WPLC needs to use what has been learned from the netLibrary project model to make such adjustments. Once an affiliate agreement is created, it may be used in connection with many WPLC projects.

Phyllis asked for confirmation that the merging of the WPLC and academic netLibrary collections will not include merging any parts of the decision-making process. The group agreed.

Peter will establish a committee to work on development of the bylaws and other documents. Rick Krumwiede and Mark Arend will assist him.

The question was discussed as to whether a partner's membership can be transferred to an individual member library. Issues such as this should be addressed in the new documents.

6. 2002 Budget

The group discussed the 2002 expenditures. Funds for updating the training curriculum will not be spent, but other categories will be spent.

Phyllis will establish a committee to draft a 2003 budget before the end of the year.

7. Cost Recovery / Proposal Budgets

Peter commented that cost recovery is already taking place. David added that the initial research and development of a new project, such as the audio book project, could be funded by the membership fees. If a project is successful and continues, there should be a method for cost recovery. The group agreed that this issue can be addressed on an "as-needed" basis when new projects are implemented or move beyond a research and development stage.

8. New Project Proposals

Two projects have been submitted for consideration at this meeting. Another proposal has been posted to the list.

David presented the Wisconsin library user survey proposal. Funds were requested to pay for the purchase of a call list, development of the survey and administering the survey. Josh Morrill developed a survey and collected feedback on it. The new proposal is to determine how to implement this survey. A consortium survey group could be formed and used for other similar projects. SCLS will use delivery staff to implement the survey. David raised two questions: What will be the source of the $10,000 estimated cost? What reason would non-members have to participate in the project if the results will be available to them at no cost?

Peter commented that SCLS could pay more than the required $714. This would offset the payment required from other partners.

Tom asked whether demographic questions regarding age, place of residence, library names will be included on the survey. Josh responded that these types of questions will be included on the survey. Tom referred to a project recently done by WCFLS with UW Extension that included demographics.

Comments were made that demographic questions should be limited to WPLC partners.

David commented that the survey needs to be copyrighted. There should be a requirement that the same survey be used in future projects to have accurate historical comparisons.

The question was raised of whether non-profit and government organizations are excluded from marketing laws. It was agreed that this is the case.

Comments were made that sponsors could be obtained to pick up the extra cost. It was suggested that the WLA Foundation may be a possibility. Corporations may also be a possibility.

Mark asked about the source of the call list. Stef responded that it was InfoUSA. This list includes 3000 numbers for $800. Tom suggested to negotiate a cost for lists for future years. Josh mentioned that this list would be good for two years. Tom suggested negotiating for more numbers.

Tom asked how the report will be distributed. Josh responded that it could be distributed in any way WPLC chooses. This would include PDF format or posting it to the WPLC list. David commented that one way to encourage libraries to buy in to the project would be to freely distribute only a general report. Libraries or systems that join the project would receive a report with value-added features.

Tom presented the proposal for a Wisconsin Librarian's Index to the Internet. This proposal is asking WPLC to provide funds for 2002 to get the project started. The project will continue in 2003 using funds from LSTA. If LSTA does not provide the matching funds, then the $5000 from WPLC will be returned. It will be known by November 15, 2002 whether or not LSTA funds will be available. Tom is also considering corporate sponsorship and individual systems paying into the project. Tom commented that the key element to keeping costs down is staff participation.

DLTCL will submit the application for LSTA funds and would administer the project.

Concerns were expressed about the amount of staff time required and the administration time required.

David suggested that the initial project be a feasibility study. Peter added that the WPLC money could first be used to hire a project manager. The next phase could be meeting with the Librarian's Index to the Internet staff and studying the feasibility of the project. The last phase would be to implement the project in 2003.

David expressed concern that it may be difficult to find willing staff to participate because of the time required. If cataloging staff needs to be hired, the feasibility of this needs to be examined. Phyllis expressed the same concerns.

Rick agrees that it will be difficult to find people to do the work and stated that OWLS is not interested in the project. It will be too much work and there will not be enough money. OWLS is expanding Cooler by the Lake to include non-Internet links, such as direct links to catalog records for books and magazine articles.

Peter moved and Mark seconded a motion that WPLC fund the survey project submitted by ESLS with $7,000 from the 2002 budget and $7,000 from the 2003 budget with the understanding that ESLS will investigate sources for the remaining $10,000. The motion carried.

With regard to the Wisconsin Librarian's Index to the Internet proposal, Rick made a motion to apply the remaining $3,250 toward a proposal for a two-year Librarian's Index to the Internet project that Tom will revise based on this discussion. Peter seconded the motion with the understanding that if no LSTA money becomes available then the WPLC money will be returned. The motion carried.

Tom will revise the proposal and post it to the list.

9. Next Meeting

The next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, December 11, 2002 at 9:30 a.m.

The meeting adjourned.

Linda K. Miller
linda@lmatechwork.com
815-229-8215 voice
815-229-5362 fax


		Home > Meetings > Minutes > Steering Committee Meeting, Oct. 8, 2002

Members Bylaws Committees Meetings Discussion List Statistics Current Projects Proposals for Future Services Reports Links Home Contact Us		WPLC Annual Board Meeting Minutes: October 8, 2002 Location: South Central Library System Present: Mellanie Mercier (WCFLS), David Weinhold (ESLS), Peggy Shaffer (LLS), Stef Morrill (SCLS), Inese Christman (Marathon Co.), Kristen Anderson (LaCrosse), Linda Miller, Project Manager, Rick Krumwiede (OWLS), Tom Hennen (WCFLS), Michael Sheehan (NWLS), Mark Arend (WLS), Peter Hamon (SCLS), Phyllis Davis (SCLS), and Kathy Schneider (WiLS). Josh Morrill also attended. The meeting came to order at 10:00 a.m. 1. Minutes from Annual Meeting Copies of the minutes from the August 22, 2002 annual meeting were posted to the list with print copies available. 2. Partner Reports ESLS finished the rotation of the ebook readers to all of the public libraries. Evaluations were done by all participants, both staff and public users. The responses were mainly positive. OfficeMax is selling its remaining readers for $99. ESLS will determine what to do with the nine readers. David Weinhold demonstrated netLibrary for the Sheboygan County department heads who were impressed. WLS has been promoting the use of netLibrary especially as a reference resource. Joy Schwarz is making progress on the WPLC website. OWLS has submitted a draft of a project proposal for consideration by the WPLC Board. SCLS reports that the final check from the WATF grant has been received. Staff demonstrated netLibrary and the ebook reader at their annual system celebration. Trustees from a new library were very impressed with the readers. SCLS is working on an authentication scheme for netLibrary that will allow all users from any location to access it using the same method. Staff see a need for more promotion of netLibrary to library staff and users. NWLS has been promoting netLibrary and has incorporated netLibrary into the system training program. Staff are working on adding netLibrary records to the union database. NWLS staff attended a WPLC meeting in person for the first time. WCFLS discussed netLibrary with reference librarians at a recent meeting and offered to arrange workshops to help librarians use the service for reference. Marathon County has completed a project to promote the use of netLibrary. Staff have added netLibrary records to the database and have seen an increase in use by both staff and the public. Staff are trying to encourage more WVLS libraries to use netLibrary since only a few are actively participating. WRLS is doing online training for netLibrary which is going well. 3. Current Project Reports Mellanie Mercier and Stef Morrill reported on the audio book project. All six participating libraries have the players and are trying to use them. Audible.com has no way of tracking usage. Mellanie and staff have developed a website that provides access to the titles and provides a way of tracking the status of a title. Each library must submit a form when an item is circulated so that the website can be updated. The website is "Listen Up Wisconsin!" and the URL is http://www.scls.lib.wi.us/listenup.They have purchased 44 titles with funds from August and September. Funds from October are still available to spend. Batteries need to be replaced often, and they are considering rechargeable batteries. Phyllis Davis expressed concerns about the project model. Mellanie and Stef added that Audible.com has proposed a new model for libraries that involves a user purchasing the one-time use of a title for $10. David would like some information about customer's reactions to the service before considering participating in such a project. Tom Hennen expressed that it would be useful to know the age of the average user. Inese Christman added that some predict that MP3 players will replace the use of CDs by 2004. David reported on the survey project. As part of the project design phase, Josh Morrill has developed a set of questions. These were submitted to SRLAAW and others for feedback. The design phase is completed. Next, Josh and David will determine how to actually conduct and administer the survey. 4. netLibrary Kathy Schneider reported that the loan period for netLibrary titles changed to 24 hours. Additional titles will be ordered. The WebCT session is set to begin on October 15 with six people registered so far. There will be three sessions a year that will be instructor led. Participants have the option to go through the instructor led session with a specific schedule or to go through the material on their own. The next session will begin in January. A suggestion was made to offer CEUs with the training. The tutorial showing how to create a netLibrary account is now available. It requires a QuickTime plug-in. No schools have been added since the last report. There are still currently four schools participating. WiLS will do a promotional mailing in November. The mailing will go to school districts and some high schools, primarily WiLS members. Schools will be directed to contact their public library or one of the WPLC partners. Gale and netLibrary have reached an agreement to provide some new reference ebook titles, but Gale has not yet agreed to allow the use of these titles in shared collections. Phyllis Davis asked about the availability of an Adobe reader for netLibrary titles. Kathy reported that there is still not enough content available in this format. No Spanish titles are available in the netLibrary collection yet. ebrary does offer some Spanish titles but does not allow licensing of only the Spanish titles. The annual license fee is based on service population and ranges from $1000 to $9500. Some academic libraries, as well as Milwaukee Public and SWLS, are sharing their collections. There are about 13,000 ebrary titles with 100 Spanish titles. The academic consortium is considering a service from Safari that provides access to technical reference titles, such as the O'Reilly books. The subject of independent netLibrary collections was discussed. One school that is an affiliate has created its own collection that is not available to WPLC members. David said that there is nothing in the partnership agreement to preclude a partner from having an independent collection. However, they are encouraged to share their collections. This policy seems to have been extended to the affiliates also. Kathy added that the school had expressed willingness to share their $14,000 collection. However, they would want some compensation, such as not being required to pay the annual fee for a period of time. There was a discussion that the problem may be that the current netLibrary model does not allow affiliates to have enough input into the selection of titles. Peter Hamon said that perhaps a proposal could be submitted to create an agreement with this school to share their collection. The proposal would need to be sponsored by a partner. Comments were made that such an agreement could be used to attract other affiliates to contribute to the WPLC collection. Rick commented that the original participation agreement states that electronic titles are only available to members, referring to partners, not affiliates. David agreed that we should have an arrangement that allows affiliates to share their collections. If these offer unique titles that are not already owned by WPLC, the affiliate should be compensated in some way. One option would be to waive the annual fee for a specific time. Not only schools, but public libraries should also be able to participate in such an agreement. Peter added that since there would still be overhead costs, the affiliate could be charged a lower annual fee for a longer period of time. He will draft some options. The group agreed that the existing agreements need to be examined and an affiliate agreement should be created that will address this issue. Peter will work on this. A problem was reported that a user's netLibrary account had expired. When the account was examined, it was found to be associated with WPLC in general instead of with a specific library system. Kathy confirmed that there should not be any such accounts. All accounts are created using IP authentication and associated with a specific system. At the OCLC Peer Council meeting last week, there was some discussion of creating a joint quality control committee to handle issues with the quality of MARC records in the WPLC and academic consortia. It was decided at this meeting that such a committee will not be necessary. Kathy will establish a committee to accomplish the merge of the WPLC and academic collections. The academic consortium is meeting at the end of October to consider the merger. 5. WPLC Statement of Purpose Peter presented the revisions to the original mission statement. Mark Arend made a motion to adopt the revised statement. David seconded the motion. The motion was approved. There was a discussion of the need to have clearly stated definitions of 'partners', 'affiliates', and their differences. A review of the partnership agreement is also needed. Rick stated that bylaws may need to be created. David added that WPLC needs to use what has been learned from the netLibrary project model to make such adjustments. Once an affiliate agreement is created, it may be used in connection with many WPLC projects. Phyllis asked for confirmation that the merging of the WPLC and academic netLibrary collections will not include merging any parts of the decision-making process. The group agreed. Peter will establish a committee to work on development of the bylaws and other documents. Rick Krumwiede and Mark Arend will assist him. The question was discussed as to whether a partner's membership can be transferred to an individual member library. Issues such as this should be addressed in the new documents. 6. 2002 Budget The group discussed the 2002 expenditures. Funds for updating the training curriculum will not be spent, but other categories will be spent. Phyllis will establish a committee to draft a 2003 budget before the end of the year. 7. Cost Recovery / Proposal Budgets Peter commented that cost recovery is already taking place. David added that the initial research and development of a new project, such as the audio book project, could be funded by the membership fees. If a project is successful and continues, there should be a method for cost recovery. The group agreed that this issue can be addressed on an "as-needed" basis when new projects are implemented or move beyond a research and development stage. 8. New Project Proposals Two projects have been submitted for consideration at this meeting. Another proposal has been posted to the list. David presented the Wisconsin library user survey proposal. Funds were requested to pay for the purchase of a call list, development of the survey and administering the survey. Josh Morrill developed a survey and collected feedback on it. The new proposal is to determine how to implement this survey. A consortium survey group could be formed and used for other similar projects. SCLS will use delivery staff to implement the survey. David raised two questions: What will be the source of the $10,000 estimated cost? What reason would non-members have to participate in the project if the results will be available to them at no cost? Peter commented that SCLS could pay more than the required $714. This would offset the payment required from other partners. Tom asked whether demographic questions regarding age, place of residence, library names will be included on the survey. Josh responded that these types of questions will be included on the survey. Tom referred to a project recently done by WCFLS with UW Extension that included demographics. Comments were made that demographic questions should be limited to WPLC partners. David commented that the survey needs to be copyrighted. There should be a requirement that the same survey be used in future projects to have accurate historical comparisons. The question was raised of whether non-profit and government organizations are excluded from marketing laws. It was agreed that this is the case. Comments were made that sponsors could be obtained to pick up the extra cost. It was suggested that the WLA Foundation may be a possibility. Corporations may also be a possibility. Mark asked about the source of the call list. Stef responded that it was InfoUSA. This list includes 3000 numbers for $800. Tom suggested to negotiate a cost for lists for future years. Josh mentioned that this list would be good for two years. Tom suggested negotiating for more numbers. Tom asked how the report will be distributed. Josh responded that it could be distributed in any way WPLC chooses. This would include PDF format or posting it to the WPLC list. David commented that one way to encourage libraries to buy in to the project would be to freely distribute only a general report. Libraries or systems that join the project would receive a report with value-added features. Tom presented the proposal for a Wisconsin Librarian's Index to the Internet. This proposal is asking WPLC to provide funds for 2002 to get the project started. The project will continue in 2003 using funds from LSTA. If LSTA does not provide the matching funds, then the $5000 from WPLC will be returned. It will be known by November 15, 2002 whether or not LSTA funds will be available. Tom is also considering corporate sponsorship and individual systems paying into the project. Tom commented that the key element to keeping costs down is staff participation. DLTCL will submit the application for LSTA funds and would administer the project. Concerns were expressed about the amount of staff time required and the administration time required. David suggested that the initial project be a feasibility study. Peter added that the WPLC money could first be used to hire a project manager. The next phase could be meeting with the Librarian's Index to the Internet staff and studying the feasibility of the project. The last phase would be to implement the project in 2003. David expressed concern that it may be difficult to find willing staff to participate because of the time required. If cataloging staff needs to be hired, the feasibility of this needs to be examined. Phyllis expressed the same concerns. Rick agrees that it will be difficult to find people to do the work and stated that OWLS is not interested in the project. It will be too much work and there will not be enough money. OWLS is expanding Cooler by the Lake to include non-Internet links, such as direct links to catalog records for books and magazine articles. Peter moved and Mark seconded a motion that WPLC fund the survey project submitted by ESLS with $7,000 from the 2002 budget and $7,000 from the 2003 budget with the understanding that ESLS will investigate sources for the remaining $10,000. The motion carried. With regard to the Wisconsin Librarian's Index to the Internet proposal, Rick made a motion to apply the remaining $3,250 toward a proposal for a two-year Librarian's Index to the Internet project that Tom will revise based on this discussion. Peter seconded the motion with the understanding that if no LSTA money becomes available then the WPLC money will be returned. The motion carried. Tom will revise the proposal and post it to the list. 9. Next Meeting The next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, December 11, 2002 at 9:30 a.m. The meeting adjourned. Linda K. Miller linda@lmatechwork.com 815-229-8215 voice 815-229-5362 fax

		Updated October 22, 2004