CALL TO ORDER AND APPROVAL OF AGENDA
The regular meeting of the Rochester Public Library Board of Trustees Meeting was called to order by Dick Hall.
Members present: Jerry Balm, Chris Colby, Ed Haskell, Dick Hall, Tonya Holt, Naomi Lipsky & Dave Nelson
Members absent: Betty Hutchins & Steve McMaster
Staff present: Audrey Betcher, Library Director; Tom Dyer, Head of Communications; Kim Edson, Head of Reader Services; Carrie Farrow, Head of Circulation Division; Rebecca Splittstoesser, Head of Technical Services; Beth Warfield, Head of Children's Division; Purna Gurung, Office Services Coordinator.
Others present: Al Dollerschell, Friends of Rochester Public Library
APPROVAL OF MINUTES
Jerry Balm moved, Ed Haskell second to approve the meeting minutes from June 18, 2003. Motion approved.
APPROVAL OF BILLS
There were no unusual bills for the month.
Ed Haskell moved, Jerry Balm second to approve the bills as submitted. Motion approved.
MONTHLY REPORT
Jerry pointed out that circulation is increasing steadily.
Ed Haskell moved, Dave Nelson second to approve the May 2003 monthly report as submitted. Motion approved.
FOUNDATION REPORT
The Annual Foundation Fund Drive letters were mailed out last week. A second batch will be sent out shortly. All donations raised will be matched by the Mayo Matching grant. All IBM matching grants are included. We used a different format than last year. Tom had some assistance from volunteers from Mayo's Development Department for the letter this year. We will see how effective this format is after the conclusion of the fund drive.
SELCO REPORT
There is a SELCO Board meeting next Tuesday. We are still on for July 18th as the conversion date.
COMMITTEE REPORTS
Ad Hoc Budget Committee: None
Planing Committee: None
Policy Committee: None
ILS UPDATE
All the agreements are in place between SELCO, Sirsi, and RPL. All necessary documents have been executed. Ann assures us we will get the tapes on July 18th. Procedures are in place for the transition to the interim system.
We are providing some training to staff for the interim system. Because it is the same software, the training has focused on the few differences between the systems.
After the purging of SELCO data is complete on our interim server, Sirsi will extract the data to convert it for the Unicorn system. The first staff training will start on August 19th.
We are asking the Board to approve the purchase of SureStart, a Sirsi service that includes an extra level of consulting for the first year. The cost of the service is $9,000 and includes one 1-hour long conference call a week, for 10 consecutive weeks after initial system training and one 2-hour conference call per month thereafter, for the remainder of the year. This service is beneficial especially after migration, when we need a higher level of assistance than the help desk can offer. If we purchase this service, the Sirsi person assigned to us during go-live will be our SureStart consultant. Sirsi is currently offering a discount on testing/training systems. We asked for it and Sirsi will give us an $8,500 discount for the testing/training system. There are funds in the CIP budget to cover the difference.
Ed Haskell moved, Naomi Lipsky second to approve the purchase of SureStart. Motion approved.
BUDGET
The county cut $74,000 for our allocation for 2003. This puts the county below their contract amount. Both the County Administrator and the Finance Director were aware that the 10% cut would be in violation of the contract.
Audrey sent a letter, which was approved by Steve Kvenvold, to the County Commissioners expressing her disappointment. There has been no response as of yet from the County. Board members agreed to contact their respective commissioners to request that the 10% cut is a one-time deal and ask them to honor the contract for 2004. Audrey will put together some talking points for board members.
The 2003 budget is not yet final. Steve Kvenvold is working with City Council on the budget. Currently, we are still looking at a 5% cut for 2003.
We need to submit the 2004 budget to City Hall by August 15th. There are too many variables at this point to know what our bottom line will be (e.g. how much City Council levies back, negotiations with bargaining units for smaller increases etc.). We recommend submitting a flat budget at this time (same as 2003 revised budget with 3% increase for temporary salaries and utilities). The City will put in the personnel numbers for full-time employees.
Once we know the numbers for 2004, we will bring back a revised budget for the Board based on our on-going budget discussions.
Ed Haskell moved, Dave Nelson second to approve turning in a flat budget for 2004.
CIPA
With the Supreme Court decision, we have asked Terry Adkins for an opinion of our current Internet policy. We expect to be in compliance or close to compliance with our existing policy. We already filter the children's and young adult Internet stations and have the technical capability to filter the adult stations. We can set up our filtering software, I-Gear, to block sites that the courts determine to be obscene or child pornography on our adult stations.
CIPA is now tied to funding e.g state funding, LSTA etc. There are liability issues (overblocking/underblocking) surrounding the decision. The FCC, which is responsible for enforcing this law, will be providing feedback to libraries on how to comply with CIPA.
As we migrate to the new system, we will investigate the opportunity to map individual patron profile (age) with their card to enable blocking by who logs in, not by the location of the PC. However, no system is full-proof.
NEWS
Kim Edson and Beth Warfield were interviewed by Fox-47 for a half hour show on the pros and cons of Harry Potter.
Kim was also interviewed by TV and newspaper after the Supreme Court CIPA decision.
Audrey informed the Board that RPL will not be submitting the LSTA grant for StoryLine due to possible copyright issues involved with recording and storing the stories. More investigation is needed. We had planned to use the funds to add more stories and digitally record them.
THANK YOU NOTE
We received a very nice thank you note in braille from a patron who loves the braille printer.
There being no further business, the meeting adjourned.
Respectfully submitted,
Purna Kumari Gurung
Secretary Pro Tem
The next regular meeting of the Library Board will be Wednesday, August 20, 2003, at 4:30 pm in the auditorium on the first floor of the library (please note change in venue).