FALCONS Meeting
Date: February 16, 2012
Minutes: Motion to accept November’s minutes: Cortland made a motion to accept the minutes, seconded by Apalachin and approved.
Present: Apalachin, Auburn, Aurora, Candor, Cato, Cortland, Dryden, Groton, Homer, Interlaken, McGraw, Ovid, Poplar Ridge, Seneca Falls, TCPL, Trumansburg, Union Springs, Waverly, Weedsport and Kim, Rex, Eric, Robert, Annette, Linda, Marisa and Jan from FLLS.
Absent: Alternatives, Berkshire, Cincinnatus, Fair Haven, Lansing, Lodi, Marathon, Moravia, Newark Valley, Newfield, Nichols, Owego, Port Byron, Spencer and Waterloo.
Announcements:
- Kim announced that the free direct access plan has been approved by the FLLS board; however feedback is needed before submitting the plan. This plan, recommended by DLD was last updated in 1999 and contains few changes. Any proposed charge for services would need to go to every board before approval. Please submit your questions and concerns to Kim.
- Annette announced there will be funding for the summer reading program this year.
- Several new directors were announced; Waterloo has a new interim director; Brandi Rozelle, Auburn’s new director, starting in March will be Lisa Carr and the new director for the Alternatives Library is Ryan Clover-Owens.
- Cheryl from Weedsport announced their water problem has been fixed with little damage to materials however 2 inches of standing water did some damage to the library itself.
- Rex announced that if you require a certificate for contact hours for the amount of time you are here today, please let Jan know.
Old Business:
- An update on the common
card was discussed. Tioga County has met, is working on equalizing fines and loan periods and is ready to move forward with a common card. Cortland County, Seneca County and Tompkins County did not have any issues to report. We did discuss however, the important of identifying the correct statistical class and school district in the patron’s record. Guidelines were discussed with Rex proposing to add all school districts to all libraries accessible using the drop down list in the patron record. This information is important because it identifies patrons that are non-resident or resident borrowers and funding sources. Several libraries are included in the school district budget and therefore need that information to determine patrons who reside within their school district. Out of state patrons use the statistical code of “other”, in state but out of the FLLS service area, use the county code. Within the FLLS service area the smallest geographic location where the patron resides should be used. TCPL was concerned that many of their patrons have no idea what tax district or school district they are in especially if they rent and staff cannot determine if they are out of the county or what stat class to assign. Danette from Auburn announced they have a program loaded that if you insert an address, this program can determine which school district they are in. She will forward this information to Rex. - Rex gave an update on the credit card functionality in Polaris. An SSL certificate has been loaded on the server and is now in a secure format and personal patron information is encrypted. Rex has a meeting next week with a vendor. We still need to make sure our entire network is PCI compliant and secure. Rex also pointed out that libraries should be aware and check for keystroke loggers on your PC’s. Check and make sure that the keyboard is plugged into the PC and not any other device. A keystroke logger looks similar to a flash drive and would be plugged into where the keyboard is normally plugged in. We also have a custom report from Polaris that is designed to monitor where payments would go. A question was raised if we could use a phone scanner to read credit cards. To reduce costs and PCI compliance requirements the goal is that staff will never touch a patron credit card.
- Eric discussed bulk computer purchasing. He will update the website with new configuration parameters and pricing. This bulk purchasing will probably start in May. He also reminded libraries that if you are contemplating purchasing a new printer please check with CNS to verify that it is compatible with Polaris. Eric will contact the member libraries when he is ready to start taking orders with a cutoff date. If you need prior board approval to purchase any equipment you should start that process now. The operating system and security software only will be loaded on any new PC so if you want additional software you will have to order that through Tech Soup yourself.
- Robert discussed Quick Bibs. 27,000 new bibs records were added last year and over 18,000 of these were Quick Bibs. The remaining 33% were processing slips. Less than 1% required sending the actual material in. Robert pointed out that it is really important that the UPC code or publisher number be included in the Quick Bib to facilitate searching and matching. He also reminded libraries to include the publisher of the actual film not the film company. If both the UPC and the ISBN number are missing, please send those materials in. Do not enter “none” in both of these fields in the Quick Bib. Polaris keys on the title or the ISBN number so if there is a duplicate you will see a prompt. You then should cancel the Quick Bib and search for an existing Bib record. If the title matches but the ISBN is different it is not an exact match. Robert also reminded libraries that they should never use the initial article in the title. If a title starts with The or A or An, you must enter the title starting with the first significant word only. AV material sent in does require more work thus resulting in a longer return time to process. Rex also reminded libraries to be sure and enter in accurate disc counts in the volume field of the item record. This impacts the patron’s ability to place first available holds. For DVDs insert the number of discs in the volume field. A check in note should also be added as a block for staff to check the number of discs before the item is checked out and on its return. Periodicals also should have the date information in the volume field. Rex also pointed out that if your barcode scanner does not read UPC codes, let him know, he has a barcode you can scan that will turn that functionality on. This makes it easy to directly scan the UPC code into the find tool when searching for the correct bib record.
- ILL announcements were made. A new delivery schedule has been set up and was handed out. Slight changes on the south route for the new drivers and to facilitate forward sorting. If you have items going to another library on the route make sure those items are separated and on top of the delivery bag. ILL has gone up 15% from January of last year and 500 completed Out of Systems requests were handled just last month. Please make sure you use the special loan period when checking out Out of System ILLs. Linda also handed out a survey regarding which database the member libraries would like training on for the upcoming database sessions in October and to evaluate which ones currently are popular and used within your library. The deadline to return this survey is the end of February.
- Marisa discussed cooperative purchasing for Overdrive. 22 libraries have expressed an interest in participating. She will email those libraries to discuss upcoming meetings and possible pros and cons sometime in March. Marisa also asked for feedback regarding the Nooks. If you would like to order EBooks Rex can set up a user ID in Overdrive.
New Business:
- Polaris version 4.1 is still in beta testing and will be implemented as soon as it becomes available. Libraries will be given a 30 day notice prior to the upgrade. Highlights in the new version were handed out and discussed. There are a few changes in Power Pac, such as a “river of books” which would display new books owned by a library after that library is selected. There will be a separately licensed Community Module enabling agencies to enter information on events and contact information with the option of displaying relevant titles in the catalog. Rex also handed out the enhancement voting results and which enhancements FLLS voted for and their status in future releases.
- The automation contract was handed out and discussed.
- Jan discussed the 2012 training schedule. A handout of topics and dates was provided.
Open Discussion:
- Please come to advocacy day in Albany. FLLS has lost over $400,000 in funding since 2008. On March 6th a bus will pick up crusading library advocates in Ithaca, Waterloo and Weedsport.
- Linda Beins would like to update the ILL policies for each member library and would like feedback on your policies regarding loaning new materials and special collections.
Meeting adjourned:
Motion to adjourn by Trumansburg, seconded by Poplar Ridge, meeting adjourned at 11:33 am.
Next Meeting:
FRIDAY May 18, 2012 from 9:30 – 11:30 am. Please note the date change. This meeting will be on a Friday NOT the usual Thursday in May.