Meeting Minutes June 29, 2008

The meeting was called to order.

1. Roll Call – Darci Hanning, Bev Obert, Michael Piper, Sharon Morris, Tine Walczyk attending, with Justine Shaffner taking minutes.

2. Morris moved to approve May 29, 2008 Joint Project Coordinators/Tech Group Meeting minutes and Hanning seconded, motion approved.

3. We had a toast for winning the Plinkit award.

4. Hanning nominated Obert as Plinkit Project Coordinators Group Chair for FY ’08-’09 and Morris seconded.  Attendees unanimously approved, so Bev Obert is the new Chair of the Plinkit Project Coordinators Group Chair for FY ’08-’09.

5. Hanning reiterated the Plinkit Collaborative’s Project Coordinator’s (PC) work plan and the priorities.  They include setting up meetings for all committees, working with committee chairs to set and distribute the meeting agendas and getting the meeting minutes on the website and then approved.  The next priority for the PC is project management.  The PC will work w/ BCR to get the contract signed and will be the first point of contact with the contractor for issues and will ensure the work is proceeding according to the agreed upon timeline.  Tech issues and questions will go to the Tech Group.  Hanning mentioned we may want to choose a person from each state to take the lead on different aspects of the contract (e.g. Gregory or Brown could take the lead on skins) - they wouldn’t be responsible for making the decisions – but will provide direction to the contractor after consulting with others as necessary.  The PC will distribute and track responses to the RFPs.  The first two priorities for the contract are the administrators’ and users’ manuals.  The PC will also work on website content and general marketing.  Starting by January 2009, the PC will take the lead in getting the Users Group (may soon be called Advisory Group) started.  Hanning has asked RFP responders to give their availability as that will be a factor in choosing the contractor.   Hanning mentioned how busy the Plone contactors are and that there are lots from Europe, but with the exchange rate they’ll probably be too high priced.  Dependability is a big priority with the contract.  It was decided that the Plinkit User Group isn’t really for individual libraries, it’s for the people who administer it, so the PC will add a request for a name change in the bylaws from User Group to Advisory Group to the next Steering Committee agenda.

6. Status reports from each state followed.  Obert said IL will soon have 75 libraries up, Walczyk said TX has 50 plus libraries up with 75 in process, Hanning said OR has around 40 but she needs to concentrate on Plinkit business for a while before adding more libraries.  Morris said CO has 20, but CO is waiting until they replace her to add more - about 15 libraries are waiting even though CO hasn’t been promoting Plinkit. 

7. We then discussed innovative things being done in states.  – CO has a return on investment calculator that uses actual figures from the individual communities.  The Library Research Service helped with this.  Morris asked if anyone is interested in adding third party widgets.  Hanning has added a Google translator and IM help widgets (Library Help – similar to Meebo - see libraryh3lp.org).  Obert said IL has a link to their FirstSearch databases as does TX.  Hanning said if anyone has features that their libraries are asking for, ask her as she may know about them. Hanning also mentioned that you can restrict access to certain features and that if you have a master template you’d like to use, make it perfect now before we move to Plinkit 2.0.  Hanning also said that in Plone 3.0 there’s a very nice event registration form – great for summer reading – Morris asked if you can get statistics on it.  Hanning will find out and tell the group.  Hanning can do patron authentication for entry into library databases.  Obert mentioned she has one library authenticating for ebooks.  The possibility of having authentication depends on your vendor – she said Ebsco is a great help with doing this.  Piper asked how Gale is, no one was sure.  Piper then asked about using EZ Proxy with Plinkit and Hanning said no one had, but she doesn’t think it’ll be that hard.  Piper will let the cooperative know how it works.  Piper mentioned they are moving to KOHA open source ILS in house and would like to integrate Plinkit with it.  Hanning said Oregon is looking into KOHA too.  Piper mentioned the lack of documentation for KOHA.  Obert will be doing a poster session on Plinkit at the Illinois Library Association conference and Hanning will do a preconference at the Oregon Library Association in April and is going to a Plone conference in DC in October and will be attending skinning training there so she can create her own skins, which she’ll share with everyone.  Everyone is willing to share their skins – put them under Resources at the website.

8. We discussed setting a regular schedule for blog contributions.  Hanning said the home page has the “newsy” blog and that the other blog is having a problem with spam.  The PC will take care of the newsy blog which is general collaborative news and would have one or two contributions a month from the PC, plus the new items appearing on the individual state sites which are automatically pulled into the main Plinkit site.  The other blog will have at least one contribution per month from each state, and once the User Group starts will have more content.  

9. Obert will ask Troy or Eric to review the documentation to better inform the decision re should user manuals for Plinkit 2.0 be revised or redone from scratch?

10. Hanning will be wrapping up the Plinkit 2.0 Statement of Work next week and will get comments and thoughts from all at the joint 7/7/08 meeting.  Gregory has been providing information and Obert will ask Brown to be sure to review it.

11. It was decided to put off brainstorming and prioritizing the development list until January.

12. We discussed many things that weren’t on the agenda.  Obert and Walczyk both have state Plinkit administrator level list servs.  Hanning asked if the TX list can be opened up to all Plinkit Tech Group members and the state project coordinators.  Walczyk was fine with this and will send out the listserv links to the project coordinators to pass on to their Plinkit implementers.  Hanning mentioned that the biggest difference with Plone 3.0 for Plinkit 2.0 is that they use a version of Ajax so for example, when you’re logged into a website and you click on something like a title, you can edit it immediately.  You’ll also be able to drag and drop to reorder things within the folders.  Hanning recommends installing Plone 3.0 on your desktop to play around with it a little, to see if you want to use these new features or not (they can be turned off, and this can be done on a site by site basis, so Plinkit libraries can opt to use them or not).  Morris thought perhaps we should use the new features with new sites coming up, but leave the old ones as they are since that’s what they are used too.  Hanning will check to see if this will effect the forms (contact form…) and said Ajax is also called KSS (kinetic style sheets).  Plone Form Generator will be replacing Plone Formula.  And we’ll be replacing Calendar X with the Plone for Artists calendar which has the recurring events feature built in.  Morris asked why you can’t see the event date (instead you see the creation date) when you’re editing.  This causes a problem with RSS feeds as it’s using the creation date instead of the event date to send the items out.  Walczyk asked if anyone else had libraries that turn off the news module, because it displays the news creation date, but Morris said you can turn the date off.  Hanning suggested you think of news items as press releases which have the date they were sent out, but include the event date in the title to make it obvious when it happened.  Piper and Hanning discussed other possible candidates to join Plinkit and what some other states are doing for web presence for small libraries.  Some are doing it themselves with ftp like Nebraska or are using Drupal like Idaho.  Hanning said that Plone has some technical advantages for security over PHP and Drupal and mentioned “script kiddies” who find resources that allow them to break into PHP based sites.  Walczyk asked if it is possible to integrate some of the PHP features into Plone.  Hanning said it is now, but she’s not sure if this is true for Plone 3.0.  Hanning confirmed that Plinkit 2.0 will have recurring events, a one step site set up, an easy migration piece and that color schemes will be included.  Skins will be a separate piece.  Piper asked Hanning re Plone boot camps to recommend.  Hanning said use Joel Burton’s and will send Piper the information, but see plonebootcamps.com.  There’s one in NC in July.  Morris would like to cut the amount of time it takes to create a site so administrators can spend more time on customization.  Morris mentioned that at one of the CO libraries there’s a 15 year old boy who is doing incredible things with Plinkit.  We’ll be meeting jointly w/ the tech group until January at least.

There being no other business, Morris motioned to adjourn and Hanning seconded, motion approved.