Meeting Minutes December 12, 2008

Roll Call
Chris Adams (OR), Troy Brown (IL), Tom Ceresini (PALINET), Steve Gregory (CO), Darci Hanning (OR), Jeff Humphrey (INCOLSA), Kathleen Krause-Thompson (TX), Christine Kreger (CO), Tom Metzger (INCOLSA), Bev Obert (IL), Michael Sauers (NEBASE) Justine Shaffner (Collaborative Coordinator), Henry Stokes (TX)

Approve 11/14 Joint Project Coordinators/Tech Group Meeting Minutes
Hanning moved to approve the minutes and Ceresini seconded.  All in favor said aye and no one was opposed so the 11/14/08 minutes are approved.

Status of SOW for work on Plinkit 2.0
Hanning just sent out an email with the updated appendices.  They are examples or additional information to support the SOW.  She’ll have the final draft of the SOW sent out by two hours after the end of this meeting.  Everyone should review and comment to the group on all of these documents by the end of business Wednesday, December 17, 2008.  The only differences from previous versions are a few things that Brown requested e.g. having Kupu, which enables additional table layouts and text formatting.  Hanning will have this put in the SOW with a switch so it can be allowed or disallowed and we can turn it off or on individually for each Plinkit site.  Obert encouraged everyone to get their comments in on time and Hanning said if you don’t understand anything, just ask her or the list serv about it.  Sauers didn’t have the SOW draft but can wait until Hanning sends the revised one in a couple of hours.

Update on potential new members
Duncan should be talking to Indiana and Michigan soon.  The Iowa State Library has expressed interest and should be calling Shaffner soon, if not, she will follow up with them shortly.  Disregard what Shaffner reported about Pennsylvania during the meeting.  The person who contacted her was James Hollinger, the Director of the Bureau of Library Development at the Pennsylvania Department of Education.  He asked about the cost to join Plinkit and after discussing his question with Duncan, Shaffner sent him information on costs, told him that the membership fee structure is being looked at now and offered to set up a conference call between him and Duncan and Hanning.  We’ll be following up with Hollinger soon.

Report back to group on decisions and discussions at Steering meeting – Bev and Steve
Obert said the Steering Committee had reports from states and talked about expansion.  The trademarking discussion was tabled and the logo is being discussed via email.  Littrell, Martire and Obert are looking at long term pricing/fee structure for the Plinkit collaborative and will have a second meeting on Monday.  They have fleshed out principles that they’ll be sending to the Steering Committee.  Gregory added there was a brief discussion re Hanning helping INCOLSA with their server.  Hanning said INCOLSA is all set up now.  There was a little bug that she fixed, but it shouldn’t present problems to the rest of us unless someone is doing a new install.  If you are doing a new install under Plone 3.0, make sure you get the latest version of a major Zope version (e.g. use Zope 2.8.9-1 if installing Plone 2.1).

Status reports from each state
CO – Kreger said Duncan has told the current Plinkit libraries that she’s been hired so she’s busy answering their questions.  In January they’ll be launching Red Feather Lakes and Trinidad.  Gregory said they just hired a new systems administrator, Mark Ferguson, so hopefully technical things will be smoother from now on.

IL – Brown said this is the first year since the grant was finished and so they are now self supporting.  Many of their 100 libraries that are on Plinkit are getting interested in doing advanced things so he’s trying to put together some advanced training.  Their server has been stable and they are plugging right along.  Obert said the North Suburban Library System (they weren’t part of the original grant) has come on board and so they now offer Plinkit to about two thirds of the state. 

INCOLSA – Humphrey said their server is up and functional and he sent login information this week to PALINET and NEBASE.  At their Indiana Library Association meeting in November they spoke to two libraries that are interested in Plinkit.  Metzger added his thanks to Hanning for her help with the server.

NEBASE – Sauers said their server is up but he thinks they won’t be doing much with Plinkit until January.

OR – Hanning said they should have 50 libraries live by the end of January and should top out at about 65 libraries.  She hasn’t really been pushing Plinkit recently.  All these libraries came via word of mouth or from her first push.  Hanning did a live webinar on Tuesday for WiLS (Wisconsin Library Services, a statewide network) and the slides from that are available at the website.  She’s going to try to get access to the recorded presentation for collaborative members.  Oregon has been working with a graphic designer to do banners and has completed about 24, but won’t be doing any more until the new fiscal year in July due to budget constraints.  Gregory asked what Hanning specifies when requesting banners.  Hanning said the designer works with the library directly to learn about its culture, the geography…  He does a brief of that local information and three drafts of a banner and the library picks one or asks for more changes (he’ll do one more revision). When he’s done and the library has chosen their banner, Hanning gets the colors and redoes the website colors to match that banner.  Hanning said if she had to set this process up again, she’d specify a solid background so that you can match the top part of the site to the banner otherwise the banner is too prominent.  She said if people are interested in working with the graphic designer (Thomas) he’s open to that.  He charges $5000 for 8 banners. 

PALINET – Ceresini said PALINET had their annual conference in October.  They had a booth there and got a couple of Plinkit leads from that and from the Pennsylvania and West Virginia Library Association meetings and have started talking to people at the state and district level in a number of states.  He is also starting to work on processes for Plinkit.

TX - Stokes said Gordon is leaving but Krause-Thompson is taking over lots of Gordon’s work.  They are doing lots of training and outreach.

Library of Virginia – Schooff is not here but Hanning said Virginia is finalizing specs for their server.

Innovative things done by states – add to website
Stokes said he appreciates the training and work flow videos Illinois posted.  Krause-Thompson said be sure to use the title attribute of the iframe tag so you’re 508 compliant (she’s put the 508 compliance information on the website page that discusses using YouTube and flickr).  Obert is working on a Plinkit brochure for Illinois libraries to show trustees.  Once she finalizes the Illinois version she will do a generic version for any state to use and post it on the collaborative website.

Illinois report on contribution to website for the month
Brown decided not to put up information about how non public libraries use Plinkit, so put up some great training videos that are really helpful for libraries in their state instead.  They’re a good marketing tool as they show potential Plinkit libraries the Plinkit work flow.  There’s also a link to their help center within the videos.

To Do list status
Shaffner said that Krause-Thompson added the information about making the iframe solution 508 compliant and Hanning created an errata page for the Administrator’s Manual and Gregory is working on writing something new for the front page.  Obert said she looked at the website to see what needed to be updated or made clearer and there is much on the front page of the site that’s outdated, but she thinks once Gregory makes the changes he’s suggesting the front page will be up to date and look great.  Gregory reminded everyone to get comments back about SOW and appendices ASAP.  Sauers asked if there’s a way for the RSS feed to distribute all the comments instead of making everyone click through to the website to find them.  Hanning said it’s possible that when the website is moved to Plone 3.0 it might fix this problem.  She will see if she can find information on how to fix the RSS feed for Plone 2.1 and will let the list serv know, but it might require an add on.  Obert asked if this could be added to the SOW.  Brown said this is the default and he’d hate to change it, but thinks it could be added as an option that could be turned on if people want to have it. 

Other Business
Obert said we haven’t started a Plinkit Advisory Council and asked that everyone pick two to three people that could be in a conference call in January where we could make some decisions about what the Users Advisory Council should do.  Brown mentioned that Computers in Libraries is at the end of March or beginning of April and wondered if others planned to go and if so could we all try to meet up.  Sauers is presenting and moderating so will be there and Ceresini will also be there and would like to meet.  Gregory said if you are going to this conference email the list serv so others know you’ll be there.  Brown highly recommends this conference.   He feels it’s worth every cent and minute that you are there.


Gregory asked if anyone had anything else and since no one did, he welcomed the new members and adjourned the meeting/


Next Meeting
January 9, 2009 Friday - noon Eastern Time, 11 am Central Time, 10 am Mountain Time and 9 am Pacific Time


Plinkit Updated To Do list

Who                        What
All                            Review the SOW and appendices and email the list serv your input or that you think it’s fine as is by end of business 12/17/08.

All                            Pick two to three people that could be in a conference call in January where we could make some decisions about what the Users Advisory Council should do.

Gregory                   Write something new for the home page – whatever you like, but especially about who our intended audience is.

Hanning                   Will fix the “Contact” page at Plinkit.org, so that it lists the member states and next to each state, says “If you have questions or want more information about Plinkit and are in ___________ (member state) contact ______________ (name, title, phone and email for the project coordinator from that member state).”  Then below that say “If you have questions or want more information about Plinkit and are not in one of the above states please complete the form below.” and make the form go to jshaffner@bcr.org

All                            Look over the website and make suggestions about what needs to be made clearer and what needs to updated.

All                            Look at your state sites and see if there is anything there that might be helpful at the collaborative site and send a list of those topics to Shaffner.

Shaffner                  Compile a list of helpful topics from the above item and send it to the list serv asking if they agree that all these things should be added to the collaborative site (as long as one person would like it at Plinkit.org, then it should be posted there). 

Humphrey                Ask Piper what he thinks we need on the website.

Hanning                    See if you can find information on how to fix the RSS feed for Plone 2.1 and let the list serv know about it one way or another.

Gregory                    In December, add a blog entry highlighting the Colorado libraries’ use of the Library Value Calculator.