Ref Committee Meeting Minutes: June 2009

Tuesday, June 23, 2009
2:00 – 4:30 p.m.
Dudley Knox Library, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey

Note: for the first time, the minutes were first posted to the MOBACREF wiki in draft form, for editing.  On 7/23/2009, the edited minutes were shifted to the MOBACREF site.

–ICB

Call to Order
In attendance: Present: Janie Silveria (CSUMB), Pamela Jungerberg (PGPL), Heather Geddes (WPL), Jean Chapin (HML), Janet Cubbage (HML), Irene Berry (NPS), Frank Gravier (UCSC),  Inga Labeaune (MPL), Mary Housel (MCO), Georg Romero (CAB).

Adoption of May 27, 2009 Meeting Minutes
Adopted with one minor change under News from Libraries:
WPL:  Staff has taken a 10% reduction in hours and pay.

Reports

Technology Committee Report (Georg Romero)
All day DRUPAL Workshops to be held on June 26 at MPC.

Interlibrary Loan Committee Report (Jean Chapin)

  • Discussion of libraries canceling or curtailing Interlibrary loan services.
  • Working on a workshop proposal

Old Business

Hands On workshop

  • October 9 is our first choice of date, with October 16 as a backup if October 9 doesn’t work out.
  • Attempt to reconstruct who is on the subcommittee- Frank, Deborah, and Irene.  Does anyone else remember volunteering?

MOBAC Wiki (mobacref.pbworks.com) and Website – www.mobac.org

  • Discussion of what types of information should go on each site.  What are people using the MOBAC website for?  Services survey, directories, meeting minutes…
  • What needs to be password protected?  We can always put a link on the Wiki to the password protected website if necessary.  Or, we could create an internal documents section of the Wiki and password protect it. Irene volunteered to send out a query to other committees asking their reaction to removing the password protection from the MOBAC Intranet site.
  • Mary wondered how other consortiums handle their websites.
  • We discussed methods of preventing email addresses from being harvested. Irene noted that current MOBAC website protects emails currently.
  • Discussion of best uses for Wiki.  Consensus was it is best for things that need collaboration.  We’ve started with the scheduling of meetings and locations.  Jean will post the draft minutes from this meeting so attendees can make corrections.  Final minutes will still be posted to the Website. Other suggestions- directory information, services survey, but wondered how to get everyone to make corrections for their own library, and how to get other committees to update their information?
  • Irene will create a Hands On Workshop folder, so the committee, whoever they may be, can collaborate on planning,
  • Frank will send out the URL for the UCSC wiki again so we can take a look at it again.
  • Georg will look into ways to make tabular data display better.

New Business

Possible activities for 2009/10

  • Co-sponsoring Spanish language book fair in September. What will this entail? Mary will resend link that Christa made for Spanish language materials.
  • Heather suggests making a handout for ESL users.  Does anyone know a good vendor for ESL materials?
  • Pamela’s nephew works for Facebook and would be willing to arrange for a presentation- either by himself or someone else.  Would we be interested in a field trip to Palo Alto? (Probably not). Hands On presentation?  Workshop?
  • Using Twitter?
  • Based on these ideas, how about a theme for Hands On workshop- social networking?
  • Heather will chair the MOBAC reference committee effective 8/09, but will not be able to make every meeting.  Georg will co-chair if needed.  Heather and Georg will look into the necessity of this.

Repeat Business

New Reference Sources (books, websites, etc.)

  • Mary: Tried free trials of Maps A to Z database and the Alexander Street Press database of Arcadia Press books.  Liked both.  Not all the Arcadia Press books are up yet, but more are coming.
  • Irene: Gave a demo of Press Display – Online Newspapers from all over the world.   Very impressive.  Great for outreach, international students and visitors, foreign language speakers.  Suggestion made that we might like this as a consortia product.  Or maybe Califa could negotiate a price.
  • Pamela mentioned LAFCO directory (Local Agency Formation Commission.) The last issue was 1999, but 2008 will soon be is available online.

Problem Sharing/Solving/Trends

  • Georg has OCLC’s Content DM product for Digital Collection Management through Califa, but the price recently doubled, making it unaffordable.  He’s looking at Digitool.  Any other suggestions?  Janie says the CHAMBR project is looking at products and will share the information they found.  She later sent an email sharing information about a product they liked called Collective Access.
  • Pamela asked are any of our libraries rethinking fees?  PG will raise fees for ILLs to $3.00 if the city council approves it.  Heather said WAT is starting to charge for print jobs at reference. Some publics are reviewing fines. Discussion of charging for obituary searches. Jean mentioned looking into charging for internet guest passes.  Some libraries are offering 60 minutes for cardholders, 30 minutes for guest passes. WAT says they don’t let children use the Internet without a card.
  • Mary talked about volunteermatch.org – great for recruiting volunteers.  Links to Presidents Obama’s serve.gov project.  Also, the United Way website- 1-800-Volunteer.

 

News from Libraries

UCSC: Cutting service hours.  Talking about changing website over to DRUPAL.  Student email accounts will be moved to G-mail.

WAT: 10% cuts in staffing.  Staff working 9 hr/4 day work weeks.  Main branch is closed on Saturdays now.  The Freedom branch will stay open Saturdays.  Materials budget cut 50%. Summer reading going strong. Circ staff computers switched to touch screen, and staff loves it.  Special monitors, works with Millennium. Heather will send out info.

HML – No cuts in staffing for 09/10, but the materials budget will be cut.  A new webpage will be coming soon.

CSUMB: Made a proposal to the unions- prefer layoffs for some or a 2 day/month furlough for all?  Still waiting for the response- should find out in August.  Over the summer they are moving to a Google institutional account for Docs and Email.

PGPL: Lucy Therrien, a longtime library assistant, is retiring, and will be missed.  Open hours are being reduced to 24 hours/week, based on an hours survey with patrons. The new hours will be 11-6 Tues Wed, 12-5 Fri Sat.   They may revisit ILLs if MPL cancels their service. Currently there is a limit of 1 ILL request per person per week. The fee will be raised from $1 – $3.

CAB: Not cutting service hours at this time, but are in summer hours right now.  They will be making a 50% cut in print periodicals. They will soon have 15 new laptops available for students to use in the library due to shrinking their Scotts Valley campus.  A new library tech has been hired and started work.

MCFL: 80% cut in materials budget!  They have a wish list on the website, and individual libraries are seeking donations of periodicals. They are cutting subs, but not regular staff.  They just started a calendar on their website showing events at all of their 17 libraries, with each branch manger inputting their own events.  They started an adult summer reading club this year.  They are adding downloadable audiobooks to their services, starting with NetLibrary.  They have dropped Grolier databases in order to save money, and are revisiting ILL fees.

Monterey Public: A proposal of 20% cuts is before city council.  It will impact 7 positions and the acquisitions budget.  They will be closing Sundays, effective July, and more service hour cuts may have to happen.  All bargaining units agreed to waive their COLAs and accept furloughs.

NPS: Successful Centennial Celebration

Minutes submitted by Jean Chapin

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