Meeting Minutes July 10, 2009

Roll Call
Steve Gregory (CO), Darci Hanning (OR), Christine Kreger (CO), Tom Metzger (INCOLSA), Sonya Norris (MI), Bev Obert (IL) – minutes by Justine Shaffner (Collaborative Coordinator)

Approve 6/12 Joint Project Coordinators/Tech Group Meeting Minutes
All are OK with these minutes so they are approved.

Status of Plinkit 2.0 work
Hanning said for the last three weeks or so they’ve been checking migration sites and have been reporting issues for all sites or for individual ones.  Brown and Krause-Thompson may have some outstanding issues.  Obert asked if they got the IL systems’ reports.  Hanning said they got four out of seven systems which Hanning forwarded to Brown.  The themes didn’t migrate so Enfold will rerun migration script this weekend to fix that.  Otherwise it’s mainly small CSS issues.  They’ll start sending us list of things to check once or twice a week, and then we’ll be asked to check to make sure the bugs are fixed.  We can now create Plinkit 2.0 sites off the master and state templates.  We can now go into ZMI and create Plinkit instances, so once we hear from Brown and Gregory we can sign off on milestone three.

At the Wednesday meeting they discussed issues like not being able to get to the configuration page.  Hanning thinks by late July/early August Enfold will be done.  Obert was amazed at what Hanning and Gregory have been able to accomplish and Hanning praised Enfold’s responsiveness.  We chose a great vendor to work with.  Obert said the vendor evaluation process helped.

a.User’s manual – Tom and Christine
Kreger said we’ll get a quote for the update from the person who did the original manual.  The original user’s manual won an award from the Society of Technical Communications.  Hanning and Shaffner will put an announcement of the award at the site and Toni will submit the update and administrator’s manual she’ll do for an award too.  Hanning should hear more on the quote soon.  Obert asked how long the user’s manual will take and Hanning said we should get a quote and timeline next week as the user’s manual is a top priority, which because of Kreger’s great work should go quickly, though Hanning needs to review this.  Kreger and Ceresini will review Toni’s work when done and others can also if they want to.

SOW for Skins
a.Update
b.Which skins available for Plone 3.0 should we clean up and implement for our use?
Brown is just back from vacation and not on this call, and is overloaded with work so no update here.  Shaffner to nudge him to have skins report ready for August meeting.

Report from Steering meeting
Duncan asked if anyone else has seen inquiries re membership from their peer groups.  Scheppke said he hadn’t really brought it up and wondered what our attitude toward expansion is at this point.  Are we still in growth mode or are we just trying to bring up the new states and organizations?
Duncan asked for other’s thoughts on expansion.  Obert said it’d be good to get new members up to speed and once they are rolling out Plinkit in their states, word will spread to other areas.  If we bring SEMRLS in then the following year we can start soliciting for new members again.  Mase said we didn’t really meet on bylaws, but some of these things may need a bylaw change…  Duncan said he wouldn’t mind stabilizing things on the technological and organizational fronts before thoughtfully pursuing new members if that becomes a strategic goal.  If we are contacted we will have discussions with potential new members, but we won’t aggressively go after any. 
Yurcaba said she proposes a separate membership for LYRASIS which will include the former SOLINET and PALINET regions.  Also NELINET (New England region) will join LYRASIS in the fall and that region would also be included.   
Dragos said the INCOLSA/NEBASE proposal is also for the coming year as things could change at INCOLSA as Piper has left to go to Prairie Area Library System (PAL).  They propose a joint membership (splitting the annual fee between them) as INCOLSA is hosting for them this year, but they only expect one vote on each committee.  They would like to have two representatives (one each from INCOLSA and NEBASE) on each committee so they can stay informed though.  Any reimbursements (e.g. for Plone Boot Camp) would be split between them.  Everyone said that this sounds reasonable.  Scheppke moved that we approve these proposals from LYRASIS and INCOLSA/NEBASE.  Littrell seconded the motion.  No one was against it so the motion was passed.
Shaffner asked if she should add all the LYRASIS states to the Contact Form at http://www.plinkit.org/contact-info  telling them to contact LYRASIS.  Adams said leave off VA.  When NELINET joins add those states but first ask the Steering Committee if MA should be listed as SEMRLS may want to join on their own.  Mase wondered if we should communicate with these state libraries before saying that libraries from these states should contact LYRASIS.  Shaffner will say contact LYRASIS or your state library if interested in becoming a Plinkit site.

At this point in the 7/10 meeting, Metzger mentioned that INCOLSA is merging with the Michigan Library Consortium.  Norris said her outfit has excellent relations with them.

Plinkit logo: discussion of use by member organizations - There’s been some confusion re accepting the logo designed by TX.  Scheppke’s staff wasn’t sure if the new logo was mandatory or optional but he feels we all need to be loyal to our brand identity and start using it on all our Plinkit materials.  States/organizations can use a different color scheme and can use or omit the tagline (as it talks about public libraries and CO and IL are not just public libraries anymore).  Obert said this is her understanding and though work on Plinkit 2.0 has taken precedence, they will get it done.  Littrell asked if this should this be on templates for all libraries’ websites?  Obert said she thought it should.  Scheppke wasn’t sure this should be mandatory – he said we just need to agree not to use a different logo. 

(At 7/10 meeting Hanning said for OR Plinkit site if they are not using the logo does this mean they can’t use anything else – we said yes.  Gregory said he took this to mean don’t make any new sites using the old logo - there’s no deadline to switch to the new logo but try to get it done when you can.  Hanning asked where she could put an advertising line, we thought not within the logo, but right below it would be OK.)

Discussion re modifying Plinkit for school libraries – Obert said IL has high school libraries that have already modified Plinkit to meet their individual needs.  Scheppke said for 10 years or so they have had a portal for schools, www.oslis.org  that has licensed databases, Citation Maker software etc. and is well used by schools.  They’ve discussed that if they want to take this to the next level, they could take this content and put it in Plinkit and let each library brand it for themselves and link to their catalog.  This would take a huge effort.  Perhaps we could apply for a National Leadership grant from IMLS and get lots of money to do this, but maybe we need to put this off for a year or so as writing a National Leadership grant is a lot of work and even more work once you get it. 
Duncan said he’s interested in this as CO is looking to pilot two to three school libraries and is thinking about a different kind of template for them with more appropriate out of the box content.  He wonders what the likelihood is that they’ll have the staffing to maintain their content, and he worries about principals wanting them to host their school sites (and then district sites - as some of their pages haven’t been touched in years) so he wants to investigate scope creep.
Obert said they’ve said no to doing school district Plinkit sites.  The school libraries that are doing it had been having issues getting changes done to their web sites so they like having control of this themselves.  Littrell said they haven’t had school libraries asking for this and they haven’t asked them about it as they don’t have a mandate to support them as the Texas Education Agency takes care of school libraries.  They are so busy now, that if lots of school libraries wanted to join they’d be overwhelmed.  Some of their library systems are moving in a multi type library direction.  Adams echoes what Littrell says as the VA Department of Education is where their school libraries see their home.  Scheppke will bring this up again in a year or so.  (Most of this information was just briefly mentioned at the 7/10 meeting, so here are the details.)


Status reports from each state (much here not discussed at 7/10 meeting but came from Steering meeting)
OR – Still seeing interest from new libraries but think there will be a plateau ahead as they already have the all the likely libraries in the state, (though there are still some in the queue waiting to bring up their sites).  Hanning has been working with Gregory on Enfold work and she upgraded the Plinkit website to Plone version 3.2 and she’s added the new logo and theme.

Duncan said the site looks really sharp, so please pass on our thanks to Hanning (Darci consider yourself thanked!). Hanning said nothing else new really, she has two to three interested libraries but she’s not in a rush to get them going as she has so much other stuff to do right now.

TX - Littrell said Stokes is away, but they are continuing to add more new libraries and have well over 100 sites now.  They are actively planning for testing and transition to Plinkit 2.0. This will be more work than anticipated so they are looking to contract out this work.

IL - Obert said they added one library and lost one, but will wait until Plinkit 2.0 is finished and do a big push for more members at their fall state conference.  They are actively doing user acceptance testing at the system level.  At the end of May they brought all their system coordinators together to review their plans.  The North Suburban System joined recently and their system coordinator hadn’t met anyone yet, so this helped to update her. Brown did some advanced training and explained what he did so the system coordinators can all go back and train their members.  So they are in a holding pattern but are still busy.

VA - Adams said they are doing training for their pilot libraries.  They have trained seven libraries so far and are continuing to do this.

MI - Mase said Norris is their Plinkit queen and their plan is to bring libraries on with Plinkit 2.0.  They have a contract with Enfold for hosting and programming and some graphic work too.   They have five pilot libraries signed up and ready to participate.  These are the smallest libraries in MI and they will they will make up a state advisory group (plus one of their cooperative directors will be on this group too).  All this will be approved by their state librarian.  They have a procedure for new libraries where you submit an application to join so will follow the same procedure for Plinkit.

INCOLSA - Piper said they are working with pilot sites but are seeing little interest as many libraries think they have a website already (though their sites are really more like online brochures).  They are still working with NEBASE and LYRASIS.  Metzger said nothing much else new, some libraries testing it out, lots of flux there.

LYRASIS - Yurcaba said they had nothing really, except they are still working on the proposal for the PA State Library.

Nebraska Library Commission (note name change from NEBASE) - Dragos said they are working with one pilot library and have them signed up for training after Sauers goes to bootcamp this month.

CO – Duncan said their new server will become the new Plinkit production server after the migration. The existing Plinkit server will become a development environment for Plinkit and other UNIX projects.  He’s completing the business case planning for their expansion beyond public libraries and he will email this to the Steering Committee when it’s done.  They are already hosting a non public library.  Lots of libraries are asking about authentication which they had been doing via their ILSs, but since they now have a delivery platform, they are subscribing to the statewide database package.   This is getting a little complicated so they are looking into rolling out an EZ Proxy solution (so if you’ve done this, please let him know about it).  Kreger said holding off til 2.0 is ready, have four libraries waiting, three possibilities, plus they are working on a pilot project for schools and working with a juvenile detention center.

Update on potential new members
SE Massachusetts Regional Library System – Shaffner spoke to Lussier on 6/29 and she said Roach had talked to their board and they are all in support of moving forward.  They’ll probably be in touch with us over the summer, but if not, Shaffner will contact them 8/29.

Innovative things done by states – add to website
No one’s had time.  We are focusing on Plinkit 2.0 which is enough for now, and once that’s done we’ll have more innovations.

To Do list status 
Shaffner will send a gentle reminder to everyone to try to do the items on the To Do list.

Report on website contributions for the month
Shaffner did a News post on the Plinkit website upgrade and Schooff did a blog post on how helpful the Administrator’s Manual, the list serv and the other members are to new Collaborative members.

Mentoring program
Hanning and Brown are willing to be mentors.  We need an administrator/usher though.  Shaffner will send another request to the list serv re we need more mentors and we really need an administrator/ usher – who doesn’t have to be a mentor.  The administrator/usher would just need to spend one to two hours with each new member and then deal with other issues that come up.  She’ll also put this on the next agenda.

Other Business
We need to do a link check for the website before finalizing the template for Plinkit 2.0 and we should split up the work.  Hanning said she thinks Schooff is interested (Shaffner will confirm) and Obert said Brown may be able to do this.  Shaffner will work with Hanning so she (Shaffner) can coordinate this process.


Next meeting - August 14, 2009 Friday - 11:30am Eastern Time, 10:30am Central Time, 9:30am Mountain Time and 8:30am Pacific Time


2nd part of meeting – Technical Group Discussion – 45 minutes