MARINet Board Minutes

To:  MARINet Board and Staff

From: Sara Loyster, San Anselmo Library Director

Date:  11/1/99

Re: 10/28/99 Meeting at Marin County Civic Center, Rm. 410B, 9-12 (Approved).

 

Attending:

Board members: Debbie Mazzolini, Board President (Belvedere-Tiburon), Sara Loyster Board Secretary (San Anselmo), Mary Richardson (Sausalito), Carol Starr (Marin County), Vaughn Stratford (San Rafael), Cathy Blumberg (Mill Valley). Staff present: Val Morehouse (MARINet). Guests present: Jennifer Dyment (MCFL Systems Librarian), Frances Gordon (Larkspur Library Director), Scott McKown and Stephanie Leonard (County IST).

I.  Introduction of guests.
     Stephanie and Scott discussed a website enhancement proposal called Communities Online which would allow Marin County libraries (of all types), clubs and organizations to be listed in a directory that would be posted on-line and could be updated by the organizations themselves. They are going to bring the Board more information (costs, workload estimates and the draft application form) to consider. Sara will ask the Berkeley Library BIN (Berkeley Information Network) to share their application form with us, which we can adapt for our own purposes.
     Stephanie also explained the Web Trends statistical program that has been implemented for the MARINet home page site to track user activity.

II. Minutes, announcements.
     The Board will approve the September Board Meeting minutes later. A proposal to share minute taking was discussed and it was agreed the Board would try it. The minutes will now be made available prior to the meeting so they can be approved at the meeting.
     Directors must send "Holidays and Closed Days for the Year 2000" to Val.
     Stinson Beach Library’s Grand Opening is scheduled for December 12 in the afternoon and San Rafael’s Canal Learning Center should be circulating books by January, 2000.

III. Old Business.

  1. Personnel
     If any staff have left or changed jobs notify Val.
     Val is looking for someone to work in the MARINet Office for 15 hours a week as an extra-hire to replace Mary Cranston. The Board will need to budget money for additional MARINet staff for next year. Val and Glade can’t keep up with the workload.
     New County staff received the MARINet orientation.
     The audit begins November 1 and should go smoothly.
     The MARINet projects list (and assigned priorities) was reviewed.
     IST is hoping to move to 30 San Pedro Road and if it does there will be room to co-locate MARINet staff with IST, which will help ease current communication problems.
     Val will send out the Password Security/Responsibility Policy again for Board reconsideration (some directors did not remember receiving it) because Carol reported that some County staff objected to the language in the policy. Vaughn will look at combining the confidentiality and security forms so that new staff can sign both at once.
     The MARINet System Administrator Evaluation is due. Mary, Debbie, Carol and Sara will meet to begin the process.
     Val will arrange a demonstration of Millenium Circulation for the Board and interested staff before we discuss pricing.
     Val agreed she will not make changes to library staff authorizations without first discussing it with the appropriate Library Director or Staff Supervisor. Val plans to create a list of suggested authorizations for each level of staff to be distributed to the Board, which should help the Board (and supervisors) in determining which staff need which authorizations.

 

  1. Budget.
     Monthly Budget Update provided.
     E-Rate and Z39.50 grants provided an additional $850 and $3000 to the budget.
     The text version of BIP is loaded; the Web version will be available when Val has time to load it (after the LTI project is over). It costs $13,450 and only allows 5 simultaneous users, which may not be enough. The Board will have to review this after it’s in use for awhile.
     The Board of Supervisors wants to appoint a Blue Ribbon Task Force and do a phone survey on the subject of an 1/8 cent library sales tax measure. Other jurisdictions (cities) may want to participate in the survey and share in the cost.
     The Board would like the Public Services Committee to look at the Rand Database (which deals with population statistics), create a flier about it for the public, introduce the database to other reference staff and make a report to the Board on its usefulness.
  1. Training.
     Upcoming MARINet trainings include III CD ROM Manual on November 23 at Belvedere-Tiburon from 10-12 and TUG Basics on December 9 in South Novato.
     The Board has put the Management Institute on hold, but will discuss it at the Board Retreat in April.
  1. LTI Update.
     The authority control project turned out to be much more complicated than MARINet staff or anyone else realized and caused problems for cataloging staff. A special meeting of the Bib Standards Committee will discuss it on November 9 at MV at 10 a.m. and try to resolve any further problems.
  1. Juvenile Pack.
     Mill Valley has agreed to host the J Pack for one year beginning in December. It will be available only when the library is open and if the meeting room is not in use. Cathy Blumberg will notify Children’s Librarians about all details of its availability and location.
  1. Phone Renewals.
     San Rafael plans to begin phone renewals December 1. Other MARINet libraries are doing phone renewals (when the library is not too busy) and are not experiencing any problems with it.

IV. New Business

  1.      Report on the Innovative "Web-Based Computing in Libraries" Retreat:

     Those who went said it was an inspiring retreat, especially the discussion of future technology that will be available to libraries, such as automatic holds and e-mail notification of patrons.
  1. New policies:
     All libraries must have Internet and Video Access by Minors Policies in place by January 1, 2000. San Anselmo has done theirs and will share the text of these policies with the other directors.
  1. Library of California:
     Debbie attended the Region 2 Planning Retreat and reported that Region 2 seems well advanced in their planning process. SNAP also attended and is planning with Region 2, as well as Region 8. The October 20th MARINet libraries’ meeting with other libraries in Marin on LOC went well. Many librarians attended (30-40 librarians present) and many expressed interest in joining LOC.

V. Goals of MARINet committees     This discussion was postponed to the next meeting.


NEXT MARINet BOARD MEETING: 2:00 on November 18 at Belvedere-Tiburon.

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