Attending: Dee Magnoni, President; Leslie Schoenherr, Past President; Cynthia English; Paula Polk; Paul Kissman, MBLC; Sunny Vandermark, MMRLS
Meeting called to order: 2:40
Motion to approve consent agenda: Leslie Schoenherr /Paula Polk
The committee introduced themselves to Sarah. She has been on the job for a week.
The line item budget shows a decrease of $7,968 for the revised budget for a total of $1,370.966. This budget was prepared in October 2006 but the state did not fully fund the regional portion of the MBLC’s budget request.
The FY2009 budget is due October 2008. The Executive Board will vote on this budget on September 12. We need to look for other sources of funds to increase the budget.
Through an agreement with the Boston Public Library and the MBLC the Regions will receive the $65,000 set aside for cross state delivery to help compensate for their reduced FY2008 budgets. Metrowest will receive $9,727 toward delivery (less than one week’s payment). The original FY2008 delivery line was $555,996 but the negotiated 2% increase over FY2007 and the $9,727 from Boston Public Library and MBLC results in a final cost for delivery of $518,529. The cost difference between these two amounts is $37,467 and $34,777 of this amount will be moved to the materials line. MassCat is reduced from $40,000 to $28,000 to cover the cost of lab equipment as planned in June 2007.
The Library Leadership Conference was held at the College of the Holy Cross July 15-18. There were 50 participants and nine of them were from Metrowest. All types of libraries were represented. As a condition of attending the conference, the participants agreed that they would become involved in committees and write articles. It was a very successful conference. Sunny will write the report about the conference.
Metrowest’s Annual Council of Members Meeting is scheduled for the second Wednesday in November but the location has not been selected. Paul suggested The Morse Institute Library in Natick as a possible location.
Metrowest has a full staff again. Sarah Sogigian replaced Beth Gallaway and she looks like a good fit. She will begin working with the public libraries and schools on YA projects.
The auditor has begun his work. MMRLS is audited every year. His fee has not increased for three years. Sunny is working on a records retention policy to weed out records that are no longer needed and free up space. All of the regions are probably facing this same issue. Paul will put this on the agenda for the next administrator’s meeting. Perhaps a common retention schedule could be made for all regions.
Three vendor demos for MassCat were held on July 10 and 11 at Metrowest. The Steering Committee has decided to stay with Auto-Graphics for one more year while investigating LibLime, an open source vendor.
At its July 12th meeting the Board awarded 85 Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grants to 76 public, academic, school and special libraries, regional library systems and library networks. Awards totaled $1,373,603 and will begin on October 1, 2007.
After nearly a year and twelve meetings, the State Aid Review Committee completed its work. The 30 member committee issued a Final Report that was presented to the Board of Library Commissioners at their July 12th meeting. The Final Report of the Committee will be presented at meetings. Feedback from the meetings will be reported back to the Board. This report is on MBLC’s website:
mblc.state.ma.us/grants/state_aid/sa_review_comm/index.ph.
At the August MBLC board meeting the FY09 legislative agenda was discussed. All libraries requested more money. New initiatives for the FY09 budget such as digitization, were also discussed.
Meeting Adjourned @ 4:00
Submitted,
B. Myles, Clerk
June 9 – August 3, 2007
Three vendor demos for MassCat were held on July 10 and July 11 at Metrowest. The Steering Committee has decided to stay with Auto-Graphics for one more year while investigating LibLime, an open source vendor.
Beth Gallaway left on June 30th. Sarah Sogigian started on August 1. Sarah attended a meeting of the Youth6 group (Regional YS Consultants) on her first day. And she has already started planning workshops for October. You will get a chance to meet Sarah next Wednesday.
I attended the Library leadership Massachusetts 2007 Institute at the College of the Holy Cross July 15-18. It was a very successful Institute with excellent participation. Follow up includes an online evaluation and personal action plans.
Our auditor has begun his work on the 2007 audit. He spent one day at the office and thinks he can complete the rest of his work through email. His fee will remain the same for the third year.
I have been working on a record retention schedule. After 10 years we are fast running out of space for paperwork. The schedule will be based on materials provided by our auditor and best practices.
Cathy and I have had some discussions about the FY2008 budget revision but have more work to do. We will discuss briefly at the August meeting. As a reminder the FY2009 budget must be prepared for Board approval in October. We will use our strategic plan priorities to help plan the budget revision.