January 16, 2009 Steering Committee Meeting Minutes
1) Roll call – Carol Adams (VA), Devra Dragos (NEBASE), Jim Duncan (CO), Steve Gregory (CO), Darci Hanning (OR), Deborah Littrell (TX), Bev Obert (IL), Michael Piper (INCOLSA), Jim Scheppke (OR), Justine Shaffner (Collaborative Coordinator)
2) Approve 11/21 Plinkit Steering Committee minutes - Duncan asked if anyone had any corrections - no one did. Then Duncan asked if anyone didn’t approve of the minutes - no one did, so the minutes are approved.
3) Report on latest financial statements - Duncan said he’s in his car so doesn’t have the numbers in front of him, but we have about $213,000 and he’ll email the exact figure later. He said we’ll need to spend some of this for Plinkit 2.0 documentation but wondered if next meeting we should look at lowering, reducing or not collecting some fees next year if our balance keeps growing and we’re not spending it. Littrell said that’s one of the things the membership fee group recommended.
4) Brief reports from the states -
OR – Hanning said not much to report, but some crazy snow! She’s been doing two to three sites per month. She’s had two trainings this month and will have one in February. These sites will go live soon, but after that she doesn’t have much in the way of new sites. In the next 6 months she’ll be working on two projects, one of which is content related. For the Best of the Web she’s going to round up some reference librarians to help and will hopefully use Delicious so when something is added all the Plinkit sites will be automatically updated. She’s also working on something for summer reading programs. She’ll be upgrading the Collaborative website and the Oregon Plinkit website to Plone 3.1 and doing skins work for OR libraries. She’ll also post the Plinkit Libraries location map at the Collaborative site after she finishes the upgrade. Hanning will send the link to the map of all Plinkit locations after the meeting so everyone can see what it will look like at the website once it’s posted after the upgrade.
IL – Obert said they have around 100 sites, but not all are live yet. The North Suburban Library System that didn’t join originally is now joining, thought they don’t have any libraries to add yet. She’s 95% done with a brochure she created and once it’s done she’ll send it out to the PC/Tech Group listserv. It’s for libraries to use to explain Plinkit to the lay person or administrator.
TX – Littrell said their new Project Coordinator is getting up to speed. They are adding new systems and continuing to move forward. She may have to sign off early as they are moving offices today.
NEBASE – Dragos said the holidays slowed them down, but that Sauers said he finds that the website materials and the user manuals are very helpful. Dragos is putting together a list of libraries that would be good potential first candidates for them. They’ll target libraries that don’t have a website and ones that have unstable websites. Duncan asked about how they are prioritizing which libraries to do next as this is something Colorado must also do. Dragos said the libraries without websites that are only open 10 hours per week aren’t at the top of the priority list.
INCOLSA – Piper just joined the meeting. They are in the early stages of implementation and are recruiting sites. The Indiana State Library is also interested.
PALINET – No one from PALINET is attending, so no report.
CO – Duncan said they hired a new Project Coordinator and she’s scaled up the training and retraining. They are about to roll out their 21st website and in the next month or so will prioritize what to work on next. They’ve been playing catch up for a while since they didn’t have a Project Coordinator. They are trying to give access to the statewide EBSCO databases for three libraries that have subscribed to the package and are working with EBSCO on the tricky authentication process. Four or five of their 21 libraries will now be offering access to their EBSCO databases for the first time. They wouldn’t have been able to do this without their Plinkit websites.
Library of Virginia – Adams said they are in the beginning stages. They are just getting their server up and are talking to some libraries about being pilot sites. Duncan asked if they had a timeline for getting the server running and Adams said they are having some issues with that due to work the state IT department is doing.
Duncan asked if there is anything the Collaborative should be doing to give further support to the new members. No one answered so Duncan said it seems everyone is pretty self sufficient. Hanning mentioned that since the PC/Tech Group has been working on the SOW (Request for Quote) they’ve been having joint meetings for half a year now which means there’s been no chance for the Tech Group to talk amongst themselves. At the last PC/Tech Group meeting they decided to tag a ½ hour onto the end of future meetings so they’d have some time to talk about technical issues. Also, people use the list serv for technical discussion. Duncan asked if the PC and Technical Group list servs are separate. Hanning said they aren’t and that if we need to, we can separate the two lists, but for right now it’s not overwhelming and it’s good for everyone to know what’s going on.
5) Project Coordinators/Tech Group progress report – Gregory said the biggest item is that we got the Request for Quote out to 12 vendors and a teleconference is set for January 21st for a question and answer session for the vendors. We expect the quotes by the 2nd of February and there’s been lots of discussion on the list serv about the evaluation parameters. There’ll also be some updates to the Plinkit.org site soon to make it more presentable to a wider audience. He asked if Obert had anything else to add and she mentioned that they’re glad the Request for Quote has gone out and that Shaffner has developed an evaluation sheet for them to use when assessing the quotes we get.
6) Expansion of the Plinkit Collaborative -
a. Indiana - Shaffner and Duncan contacted the State Library to see if there was still interest and we had some follow up from them and then passed it on to INCOLSA and Piper has a call in to them.
b. Iowa – Duncan has calls in to the state librarian, Mary Wegner, to see if there is still interest.
c. Massachusetts – Scheppke contacted them. They are in an information gathering mode, but Rob, the state librarian, doesn’t seem to be interested in a statewide project.
d. Michigan – Duncan said they are primed and ready to get on board, but he’s been unable to talk to Adams about the prorating question. The Steering Committee had asked him to talk to the Library of Virginia to make sure they felt it was okay to let Michigan pay a half year prorated fee of $5000 even though Library of Virginia paid the entire fee. Adams said they knew the terms and conditions when they joined and if the terms change after they joined, she doesn’t feel she has much to say about it – it’s the Collaborative’s decision. Duncan said it sounds like it’s okay for us to go ahead and ask Michigan to join at the prorated amount of $5000 and he’ll contact them to let them know.
e. Pennsylvania - Shaffner said that she contacted Hollinger again and he said he will contact us if they want to pursue it further and that at the PC/Tech group meeting, Ceresini said he’ll be contacting Pennsylvania.
f. Washington - Shaffner said she has a call in to Gary Bortel from Washington, but that Hanning said they have lots of regional systems that are well funded and so would not have many libraries in need of Plinkit.
7) Report from group looking into the long term cost model (Fee Comm) – Obert said she, Littrell and Martire met two to three times and quickly came to some agreement on principles and you all have the document they developed. They thought it was best to start with the purpose of the Collaborative. It’s not about making money but rather growing the organization. They wanted to make sure the fee structure will be easy to understand, predictable and will further our missions. They considered several fee models, for example, they looked at one based on the number of participating Plinkit libraries that an organization had, but they felt that whether a member has 20 participating libraries or 100, they receive the same product and support from the Collaborative, so this approach does not seem to facilitate our mission. It also results in a larger cost for organizations with many participating libraries, and would mean the more successful the member is in deploying Plinkit, the more their fee increases. While this might work for a member that charges for Plinkit, members that do not charge would not have a way to pay the higher fee.
They recommend that the cost be divided equally by the members so everyone has an equal stake, and as new members join, the fee is reduced. To determine the cost or budget, we need to look at what we’ll pay for software development, BCR’s administrative fees and our other costs. The fee will be paid annually, but members who join between January and June will pay just half the annual fee.
Littrell reiterated that they did spend lots of time looking at models based on number of participating libraries, but that really didn’t seem to be the way to go. Duncan asked if they discussed a timeline re when to set the fee. Obert said the fee should be based on what the actual budget is, so if we know in March what next year’s budget needs to be, we just take that amount and divide it equally amongst the members. Littrell said depending on how you feel about their recommendation, you can consider the Collaborative’s history of software development so we can project budgets several years out so the fee can be stabilized, but we can still recover our costs. They assumed we’ll need a major software development every two years and a minor development annually and that each new software development will require manual updates. So there will still be a bit of work to do if you want to use this last approach to get a stable fee from year to year.
Duncan asked for some reaction from members who weren’t on the fee group. Scheppke said he was interested in a per library approach because it works out best for them since they are from a state with fewer Plinkit libraries, but he feels he can live with this. As long as the annual fee is around $10,000 he feels they’ll get plenty of value for their membership. Littrell said that the fee per library idea just didn’t seem to work. Obert said when they figured it out, it’d mean that Illinois was paying out more in fees than they were taking in from their Plinkit libraries. Littrell said it became clear they needed to keep the fee as far below $10,000 as possible. Scheppke said the staff exchange idea that Western Council uses for travel is interesting but it would create overhead for BCR and Shaffner and it adds a lot of complexity. Obert said that was something they didn’t realize so she’s glad he said that. Scheppke said new members might think that since they don’t have many libraries yet they shouldn’t have to pay as much as members with lots of libraries, but since new members go to boot camp and have other costs, they do end up getting their monies’ worth.
Littrell’s moving truck arrived so she had to leave.
Duncan said they were one of the early members and were able to take advantage of Collaborative funding to send Gregory to boot camp which the state library may not have been able to afford, so it’s not just new members that can take advantage of this training funding. Hanning added that she hasn’t been trained on Plone 3.0 so it’d make sense to use the staff exchange to send those who need it to Plone 3.0 training as well.
Adams had to leave the call.
Duncan asked others for input – no one had any. He said he feels the process has moved along so there’s more structure and this has been valuable work, we just need a little more information before we can set fees for next year, so he’d like to wrap up this discussion with a decision. Scheppke said maybe we should look at next year’s budget at our next meeting and that we can assume we’ll do what the Fee Comm recommended and we can use that as a basis for budget decisions. Duncan asked if the Fee Comm could now get together to come up with a budget recommendation for next year. Obert said sure and asked Shaffner to set up the conference call.
Duncan will give the Fee Comm the latest financial numbers. The Fee Comm will use the latest financials, the software development cost, the cost for the skins work and BCR’s costs to determine the proposed upcoming budget. Hanning can help estimate some costs and their first meeting will be after February 2nd so they’ll know what we’ll be paying for the software development work. Scheppke asked if Duncan will get the cost of the coordinator for next year from BCR and Duncan said he would. Gregory thanked the Fee Comm for all their work on this and Duncan and others agreed.
8) Trademarking the name Plinkit – Duncan proposed that we skip this item so we can discuss the logo as we’re running out of time. Scheppke asked that we put it higher on the agenda next time so we do get to it. Duncan said we will.
9) Logo – Duncan feels we are really close to sending out the final logo options. He’ll send out an email in the next week for discussion and we can then make a decision by next week if there are no comments. Obert asked that we do this quickly as she is planning on using the logo soon. Scheppke thought we still have three design variations. Duncan said he believed we do but he doesn’t have the information in front of him to confirm this. Scheppke said are we just going to vote and go with the majority and Duncan said yes. Shaffner asked if there would be any costs on this for the Fee Comm to consider and Duncan said no, Littrell is donating the designer’s time. Hanning asked if we plan to go with gray scale so each state will be free to change colors as long as they use the same design. Duncan didn’t know and said this can be part of the final discussions on the logo. Hanning wants to be able to modify for color and Obert said she’s fine with that.
10) Other business -
a. Updated Suggested Project Timeline - Obert said since some things took longer than expected we had to revise the timeline. The only changes we made were to the dates so it’s a realistic depiction of what’s happening when. We just need to have the Steering Committee adopt it formally. Scheppke said it’s fine and Duncan and Obert agreed. No one felt the need to vote on this. They also agreed to change the term “Community User Group/Advisory Group” to just “Advisory Group” because “User Group” means the implementers of Plinkit, not the libraries that use it.
b. Apply for Center for Digital Government Award? – Shaffner said there is no information on the website about the 2009 award yet so she emailed and called them about it, but has not received a response. She’ll keep trying and report on this at the next meeting.
Duncan said thanks to everyone for your continued attention and work and the meeting was adjourned.
The next Steering Committee meeting is March 20, 2009.
