March 20, 2009 Steering Committee Meeting Minutes
1)Roll call - Jim Duncan (CO), Steve Gregory (CO), Darci Hanning (OR), Deborah Littrell (TX), Sheryl Mase (MI), Bev Obert (IL), Michael Piper (INCOLSA), Jim Scheppke (OR), Ann Yurcaba (PALINET) minutes by Justine Shaffner (Collaborative Coordinator)
2)Approve 1/16 Plinkit Steering Committee minutes - Duncan asked if anyone had corrections or changes, Obert said she thought they were fine. No one was not in favor of approving them so the minutes are approved.
3)Report on latest financial statements - Our balance is $192,457. Duncan mentioned the Plinkit 2.0 work and the other work we’re planning on for skins and the Administrator’s Manual and the (end) User’s Manual will draw down this balance. He also said that BCR has migrated to a new CRM software so Duncan can access the financial account online anytime.
4)Trademarking the name Plinkit – Piper had brought this up originally. Scheppke wasn’t sure it would be worth the trouble as he thinks if you can prove you used the name before someone else did then the other party couldn’t use it, but he said he’s not an expert on it. Piper thought Scheppke was right but that there was a commercial venture called Plinkit some years ago, however, he’s not sure they are around anymore. Scheppke said there is a risk that someone might tell us to stop using it. Mase will ask their library law specialist for advice on this. Duncan said he’s been involved with trademarking names in the past and it can involve a small cost for searching for use of the name and the paperwork that needs to be filed. Obert mentioned there’s the logo to consider as well as the name. We agreed to wait to hear from Mase at the next meeting.
5)Brief reports from the states - Duncan said in the future this should be “Reports from states and organizations”
OR – Hanning said not much to report as she won’t be deploying any more sites until we’re at least through with acceptance testing of Plinkit 2.0. She’s about 75% complete with upgrading the Plinkit site to Plone 3.2 and the site will have a new banner.
IL – Obert said they are in a holding pattern, just doing a site here and there. They are asking for more advanced options and Brown will do some training on this (e.g. putting Flickr on their sites). They’re holding off on pushing for new sites until we migrate to the updated version. She has some sites that want to pull out, and she thinks it’s because Plinkit doesn’t do some things but that the new version of Plinkit will be able to do them. She mentioned the marketing brochure that is designed to help libraries explain Plinkit to their boards or others. It’s available at the website under Resources - For Project Coordinators - Marketing Materials - Brochures for Promoting Plinkit or click here http://www.plinkit.org/resources/for-project-coordinators/marketing-materials/brochures-for-promoting-plinkit/
TX - Littrell said they are doing some active training and have some new sites coming up but like Illinois they want to wait until the upgrade to push it and they also have people who want the new features that’ll be available after the upgrade.
INCOLSA – Piper said their first pilot site is up and running and they have had training at two of the pilot sites and are moving ahead.
MI - Mase said they won’t implement Plinkit until 2.0 is up and running but have issued their RFP. Norris is quite active with the PC/Technical Group. There’s a lot of anticipation about Plinkit in their state.
PALINET - Yurcaba said Tom Ceresini has had good conversations with Delaware and Pennsylvania and there’s lots of enthusiasm in both states for moving the project forward but she doesn’t have a timeline.
CO - Duncan said they have three new library sites they’re working on and are back in full bore production mode so should soon have 24 or 25 libraries up. They have some planning going on re new hardware and tweaks to infrastructure. They have a goal to separate development and implementation of Plinkit so they can try things and not affect the library sites. They’ve been approached by some non public libraries and are considering serving multi type libraries and are doing a business case that will have a slightly different support model, possibly with cost recovery and they should decide on this by 4/15. If anyone’s interested in seeing this business case he’d be happy to share it. Littrell would like to see this as would others so Duncan will send it to the list serv. Obert said they knew going into Plinkit that they’d do multi type libraries and needed to be self supporting so she may write something up on how they did this. Duncan mentioned Christine Kreger contacted Troy Brown for information on what Illinois did which helped Colorado in their work on this. Mase asked how many people are providing this free to libraries vs. having a fee structure. Colorado, Texas and Oregon all give it to libraries for free. Illinois charges $250 per site.
Duncan said several Plinkit libraries now subscribe to databases like World Cat and Ebsco and currently the vendors handle authentication, but he thinks some vendors may not want to handle this. He said CO is considering hosting an EZ Proxy style site for authentication and asked if anyone else was doing this. Hanning said that in Oregon, as part of using Plinkit, the library has to sign up for the statewide database package (which is mainly Ebsco now). She has yet to run into a case where a vendor won’t help with the authentication. Some libraries use the first few numbers of the bar code or have a library referral url or have a library wide password and login or the vendor provides a referral url. She’s worked with eight to ten vendors so far. Littrell said they have links to the databases, but they have libraries who give their patrons a login and password. Mase said they’ve been doing this for a number of years with the Michigan eLibrary via IP authentication and a login passed out by libraries but they ended up with lots of logins and passwords so are now using driver’s license number or state identification number algorithms so Michigan residents can access databases from anywhere in the world. They are now looking at geolocation authentication. Obert said Brown can give details, but she thinks Illinois uses solutions similar to what Oregon uses.
6)Project Coordinators/Tech Group progress report – Obert says it’s been a very busy three weeks for this group, but since she had knee surgery during this time she will let Gregory report. Gregory said we’ve seen a fantastic effort from everyone - mainly with pushing forward on Plinkit 2.0 We put out the RFQ and got proposals from five vendors and then narrowed it down to three and after further discussion the group unanimously selected Enfold Systems as the vendor - see their 2/25 revised proposal at http://www.plinkit.org/resources/plinkit-2-0-rfq-responses/enfold/ Gregory also said it came down to the technical details of the proposals and Enfold seemed to have the best architecture. We’re now reviewing the contract with a fine tooth comb and will have that done soon. We’re also talking about skins and developing the new administrator and user training manuals and Ceresini and Kreger will work on the training manual updates. Hanning is working with a local technical writer to get a quote on the Administrator’s Manual and they met last week so she will be getting a quote soon.
Shaffner will send all the latest contract documents with the list of questions and the changes that we’re asking Enfold to make as soon as she has a finalized list.
7)Discussion of Enfold as vendor for SOW - Duncan said that we didn’t have a clear procedure re how Steering would be involved in the contract process. There was a question re who should sign the contract, but because BCR serves as the fiscal agent for Plinkit, he decided BCR will sign the contract, but he wants to make sure the Steering Committee is okay with this. He thinks the Steering Committee shouldn’t micromanage this as the PC/Tech Group has a good handle on the work. Littrell agrees as does Scheppke who suggested a motion.
Scheppke said - I move we accept the recommendation of the Plinkit Project Coordinators/Technical Group on the contract and of the vendor Enfold Systems. Littrell seconded this motion. After the discussion below, Duncan asked anyone not in favor of this motion to say no, no one did, so the motion is approved unanimously.
(Discussion of the above motion) Piper wondered if the Committee should include the annual support contract in the motion. Hanning mentioned that Enfold is giving us four support hours per month free for the first year. Piper asked what we should do after the first year. Hanning recommended we evaluate the need for this around eight months into the first year’s support contract. Piper supports all this and wants to compliment everyone on their diligent work on this. Someone asked if we should include the cost and we didn’t think so. Gregory mentioned we had some cost negotiations already and the price was lower after we got one item removed and the first year of support cost waived. Obert said thanks to Shaffner for all the work coordinating calls, references, contracts, the evaluation form etc.
8)Expansion of the Plinkit Collaborative -
a)Iowa - Duncan spoke to Mary Wegner, the Iowa State Librarian and they run a Plone based website hosting service for over 200 libraries and are in the midst of migrating to the latest version of Plone. They discussed having a meeting to see how we can work together. Duncan will have Shaffner set up a conf call with Gregory, Duncan, Hanning and Wegner to have a casual conversation re where things are headed and how we could work together. Scheppke said Iowa had major support originally from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which is why they did their own thing originally. He’s glad they are looking at the future now.
b)Washington - Shaffner said she spoke to Washington and they said with their budget being such as it is now they can’t justify spending this kind of money for such a small number of libraries that need websites, but they’ll contact us if they change their minds in the future. Hanning mentioned they have strong regional library systems so all but the smallest libraries have web sites.
c)Tennessee - Shaffner said she got a call from a Tennessee librarian who’d seen the press release about Michigan joining and brought Plinkit to the attention of their state library who asked her to get more information. Hanning and Duncan offered to do teleconferences with them, but for now they are in information gathering mode, so Shaffner will contact them at the end of April if they haven’t yet contacted her.
9)Report from group looking into long term cost model – Obert hasn’t been able to finalize this due to the knee replacement surgery, but they have a rough outline re where they are with expenses. It appears that next year’s budget will be around $60,000. They need more on BCR’s fees. Duncan said he can get them that. Re travel, they figured the Collaborative would pay $750 for each of the seven project coordinators (INCOLSA, PALINET and NEBASE are considered to be one entity here) to meet face to face once each year and would pay $750 each for two people to travel to Plone bootcamps. Fees next year should be $8000 each. The group will meet in the next three weeks and finalize this year’s and future year’s fees. Littrell said they are trying to find a balance between what people can afford and the expenses we have. Obert says she’ll have this finalized for the May Steering Committee meeting. Piper asked who would go to the bootcamps. He wondered if we should sponsor a Plone bootcamp for the Plinkit community. Hanning asked who would this be for. Piper said one person from each state/organization could attend. Hanning said you can find existing training or contract with a trainer but the latter route would cost more. Joel Burton likes to have 35-40 people at his bootcamps to cover his costs and he’s still one of the best. There’s a bootcamp soon in San Francisco and three others in the US are coming up. Maybe the bootcamp should be combined with the face to face meeting. Duncan mentioned Colorado members can’t travel out of state now due to the economy. Littrell said her travel funds are closely scrutinized. Piper said they’ve had some preliminary discussions with the bootcamp folks. Hanning asked if they had a timeframe.
10)Logo – This has been released and the source files are available under the Resources section of the website or click here http://www.plinkit.org/resources/plinkit-logo-image-files/ so we can all customize colors as we like. Littrell said if you needed format or other changes let her know. Many expressed thanks to her and her graphic artist.
11)Modifying Plinkit to use with school libraries – Since we’re out of time, Scheppke will email the listserv on this as it’s not pressing.
12)Other business – Shaffner talked about good times for meetings for next year and will email the list serv asking for their schedule quirks so she can narrow down the suggested times.
Duncan adjourned the meeting.
The next Steering Committee meeting is May 15, 2009 from Noon-1pm ET, 11am-noon CT, 10am-11am MT and 9am-10 am PT
Action Items
Who What
Mase Ask the Michigan library law specialist for advice on trademarking the Plinkit name and logo
Duncan Send your business case on serving multi-type libraries and cost recovery to the list serv
Duncan When ready, ask Shaffner to set up a conference call with Gregory, Duncan, Hanning and Mary Wegner from Iowa re how we might start working together
Obert Meet with the fees group again and have final recommendations for this year’s and future year’s fees by the May Steering Committee meeting
Scheppke Email the list serv to start a discussion on the possibility of modifying Plinkit for school libraries
Shaffner Email the list serv asking for their schedule quirks so as to narrow down suggested times for the group’s 7/09-6/10 meetings, then establish a regular date/time
