Attending: Dee Magnoni, President; Tom Jewell, Vice President/President Elect, Leslie Schoenherr, Past President; Jeff Cramer; Cathy Lee, Treasurer; Cynthia English; Jeannette Hudson, Paula Polk; Linda Stetson; Paul Kissman, MBLC; Sunny Vandermark, MMRLS
Meeting called to order: 2:35
The job has been offered to someone. Her answer is due Friday 6/15.
The final State budget for FY 2008 has not been finalized. There is a chance that money for the regions may not be as high as FY 2007.
Now MMRLS’ strategic plan has three tiers. The first tier contains the top priorities for the coming year and the bulk of staff time and energy is spent on these priorities. The second tier maintains and improves important priorities. The third tier uses the least amount of staff time to maintain important but lower priorities. Sunny asked the Executive Board about the focus of these priorities. Leslie suggested time will have to be spent training the new YA person and questioned whether this will impact time available for other activities. Dee suggested and we agreed to move marketing/PR up from tier two to the bottom of tier one. Sunny would like to see a new logo that doesn’t look like the Men’s Warehouse’s logo. Paul would like to see Metrowest’s new web site promote services at other web sites such as MBLC and other public libraries.
The MassCat ILL pilot project has completed. The pilot project provided delivery to some schools to see if ILL activity increased. Cynthia told us that her ILLs went up even though she did not have delivery service. Sunny explained that librarians encouraged their users to use ILL during this pilot project so all libraries were more active. When the report about the MassCat ILL project is finished, it will be sent to the executive board. There is no money in the delivery budget to continue this project. Bids are due for a new vendor for MassCat. Three bids were received. Demos are scheduled for July. Autographics, the current vendor, LibLime and Evergreen are the bidders.
Sunny is going to ALA in Washington, D.C. June 30 is Beth Galloway’s last day. There will be a party for her.
The State Aid to Libraries Review Committee will present a report to the Board of Library Commissioners over the summer. Recommendations for changes to the state aid to libraries program will be sent to libraries. More information is available on MBLC’s web site. The summer reading program’s web site is wwwreadsma.org. Newspaper ads will run in June and early July to promote the summer reading program. Planning and design grants were awarded to all 19 applicants including Somerville, Sherborn, and Framingham. MBLC is still pushing the state legislature for money for the regional library systems. Saugus was decertified because its public library closed. Saugus received construction grants within the past 20 years so they owe the MBLC the entire amount of the grant plus interest ($1.3 million). Returning the grant is part of the agreement made when a library accepts a construction grant from the MBLC. They must promise that the new building must be open for the next 20 years. Randolph Public Library was not certified but things are looking better for them. The Public Library Fund is still in the FY08 budget. EBSCO databases will probably begin in September.
Beth Galloway gave us a brief report about the 2007 continuing education survey. Beth told us that the majority of the 152 survey participants attended 4-6 workshops last year. The top reasons why people did not attend workshops were: lack of staff coverage, schedule conflicts and lack of relevance to topic to individual/job. 45% of respondents rated continuing education as very-highly important and 50% rated their continuing education as completely-highly satisfying. Content, variety, speakers and handouts were chosen as favorite aspects of classes, while time, day and location were cited as inconvenient or dissatisfying. Full survey results will be available on Metrowest’s web site.
Meeting Adjourned @ 3:25
Submitted,
B. Myles, Clerk
By May 18th I completed 13 interviews, including 2 phone interviews. Six candidates, including one from Michigan, were scheduled for a second interview, either May 31st on June 6th. Dee Magnoni, Rita, Judy, Carol and I attended the interviews on May 31st. Leslie Schoenherr, Judy, Carol and I attended the first 2 interviews on the 6th, and Katie Baxter attended the interview in the afternoon instead of Leslie. References are being checked. A recommendation to fill the position will be coming shortly.
The MassCat ILL pilot project is complete. We were very pleased to see a significant increase in ILL activity, not just with the libraries that were placed on delivery during the pilot, but also with other MassCat participants. We are trying to decide how to continue this momentum.
The MassCat Steering Committee decided to go out for bid for a vendor. Monday, June 4th was the deadline. Three proposals were received. The Committee will review and score the proposals by June 27th. Vendor demos are scheduled for July 10 and July 11 at Metrowest. I will be leaving the Steering Committee at the end of June although I plan to attend the demos and have input in the selection of a vendor. Rita will remain on the Committee as the Metrowest representative and as President of the Committee.
Trans-Solutions continues to work on the routing survey.
The second budget revision for FY2007, approved by the Executive Board on May 9th was approved by the MBLC at their June 7th meeting. Also at the MBLC meeting 19 Planning & Design Grants were approved; attendees were encouraged to contact the Governor’s Office in support of the $100m dollar request for public library construction funds. In addition, librarians and supporters are encouraged to contact their legislators to support the higher library funding for Account 7000-9501 State Aid to Public Libraries, Account 7000-9401 State Aid to Regional Public Libraries, and Account 7000-9507 Public Libraries Fund. It is critical that the entire amount of funding in 7000- 9401 is requested. A lesser amount could be a problem for the regional part of the proposed funding.
It was announced at the meeting that Joe Hopkins, MBLC Commissioner and past director of the Worcester Public Library died on June 6th. There was a moment of silence.
Rita attended SLA in Denver. Because she was away I attended the database training session held at SEMLS on Monday, June 4th for the Thomson Gale and Proquest databases that will be available July 1, 2007.
Over the summer the budget Committee will be developing the FY2009 Plan of Service and Budget for the Executive Board’s approval. Please review Metrowest’s Strategic Plan. I would like to know if you want staff to focus on the same tiers for the upcoming fiscal year and think about FY2009. One goal that should be a focus in FY2008 is the marketing, branding, PR work that we did not start this year. This was an important focus during the Future Search.