FALCONS Meeting Minutes – August 2019

FALCONS Meeting Minutes

Date: August 15, 2019

Present: Cathy Sorber (APAL), Lisa Carr (AUB), Marcia Enright (CAN), Theresa Mekeel (CORT), Aimee Dorward (CORT), Diane Pamel (DRY),
Priscilla Berggren-Thomas (HOM), Carol Forde (NEVA), Lisa Semenza (POP), Anna Chappell (PORT), Jen Schlossberg (TCPL), Ksana Broadwell (TRU),
Cheryl Austin (WEED)

Remote via ZOOM: Sandy Groth (AURO), Fran Miller (BERK), Gayle James (CATO), Allen Tompkins (FAIR), Susie Gutenberger (LAN),
Heidi Eckerson (NEW), Heather Dungy (OVID), Meredith Gallaro (OWE), Jenny Burnett (SENF), Carla Jones (UNS)

Announcements

• Priscilla (Homer) gave information about the Story Arts Festival to be held at the Homer Library on Sept 27-28.
• Jen (TCPL) announced an opening for Library Page. For a complete job description, visit https://www.tompkinscivilservice.org/civilservice/post/1094

Approval of minutes: motion to approve by Priscilla.  Unanimous.

Old Business

• One Card: Rex is working through the duplicate patrons to update the database.
• Authority Project Update (Deb): authority records are just part of the catalog clean up. The new version of Polaris (6.3) will fix a problem with control numbers in the bib record. This means deep links and the content carousel links will be stable.
• 2019 Bulk Buy (Eric): The bulk buy is going well. Eric is staging and delivering the computers. He is still waiting on Office license keys from some libraries though which will hold up their deliver.
• Bring your own device printing (Rex): Rex is reviewing a few options. TBS will cost approximately $300 per library per year. Rex will send information out to member libraries. Libdata is not a good choice since is does not provide a system wide option.
• Pest remediation (Nora): Hot boxes have been ordered for member libraries.

New Business

• Training (Jenny)
  • A training survey was sent out in September.
  • Training has been scheduled. Item maintenance part 2 is scheduled to be held in Cayuga County in October.
  • Jenny plans to have a mini video series on training topics.
• Loan Policies (Jenny): Jenny is finalizing the loan policies from member libraries and is updating the existing documentation.
• Proposed 2020 CNS Budget (Rex):
  • Member fees remain the same.
  • No Polaris increase.
  • Rex reviewed the budget (attached) with members.
  • In November, Rex will submit the draft CNS budget to Sarah Glogowski and Jim Stebbins.
• Some questions/discussion came up:
  1. What are reserves? A. This is a percentage of the annual CNS/FALCONS Budget that is set aside in a special account.  All member library fees stay within CNS budget and are not part of the FLLS General Funds.
  2. What are the reserves used for? A. The reserve accounts are used for future equipment (servers, etc.) or software purchases.  If we migrate to another system, the reserve can be used to pay for the purchase or licensing of the ILS software and implementation costs.

• There was discussion about a change to our ILS at some point in the future. Innovative product roadmap includes a replacement for Polaris and Sierra which is several years out.  The first component of that new ILS is “Inspire” which is a new discovery layer (PAC). Originally, plans for LEAP were to make it a full replacement product for the Polaris Client but they have scaled that back and states LEAP will be a Circ client replacement, not a full Polaris Client replacement.  Many of us early adopters of LEAP have been pushing back hard on this product refocus.
• Polaris Upgrade to 6.3 (Rex): Rex reported there were some issues with the upgrade: there was a permission problem on log file folder on the server, which has been fixed. However, this problem affected all email notices (including Holds notices and Unique Management submissions) Wednesday through Monday. The other issue was a problem with the Offline files needed for Polaris Offline.
• Security Awareness (Rex): Rex subscribes to Knowbe4, a security awareness training program. This helps to identify malicious email and to help educate staff. Rex can accommodate up to 51 accounts with 16 already used. If your library wants an account, talk to Rex. The cost is $9 per license per year. Rex plans to do more training in the future.

Open Discussion

• Kristi will send out information about sexual harassment prevention training.
• Charter/Spectrum has sent a letter to a member library that required the library to check the box that they are aware of the complimentary service and want to continue. The small print stated the complimentary service is “available for a limited time”.   If you get a call from the state regarding this letter or service, please get the name, phone number, and email of the representative.

Respectfully submitted,
Lisa Carr, secretary