June 12, 2009 Minutes

OHIO PUBLIC LIBRARY INFORMATION NETWORK (OPLIN)
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH REGULAR MEETING of the BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Minutes—June 12, 2009

1. WELCOME and CALL TO ORDER

The one hundred fourteenth meeting of the Ohio Public Library Information Network (OPLIN) Board of Trustees was called to order at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, June 12, 2009 by Board Chair Gayle Patton at the State Library of Ohio in Columbus, Ohio.

Present were board members: Gary Branson, Holly Carroll, Karl Colon, Mary Pat Essman, Jim Kenzig, Gayle Patton, Sandi Plymire, and Mike Wantz.

Also present were: Stephen Hedges, Karl Jendretzky, and Laura Solomon (OPLIN); Diane Fink (State Library); Lynda Murray (Ohio Library Council); and Don Barlow.

2. PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

The Chair introduced Don Barlow, Director of Westerville Public Library, who will be a new Board member on July 1. Ben Chinni, Trustee of Euclid Public Library, will also join the Board on July 1.

The Chair called for public participation and there was none.

3. APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA

Gary Branson motioned to approve the agenda as presented; Holly Carroll seconded. All aye.

4. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES of April 10 Board Retreat

Mary Pat Essman motioned to approve the minutes of the April 10 board retreat; Jim Kenzig seconded. All aye.

5. ACCEPTANCE OF THE FINANCIAL REPORTS

Diane Fink presented four financial reports: Report A showing the budget and expenditures for Fiscal Years 2008 and 2009 as of May 31; Report B showing the revenue and cash balances for Fiscal Years 2008 and 2009 as of May 31; Report C showing the budgets for FY 2009, 2010 and 2011; and Report D showing projected revenue and cash balances through FY 2011.

Report A: Diane explained that there are two payrolls left in the current fiscal year, and taken together with some unemployment costs for a previous employee, these salary expenses are the largest unspent balances in the Administration budget. She also explained the small available balance for a consultant exists because the contract with Past, Present, and Future, for maintaining the ExploreOhio website, was suspended in April in accordance with the Governor's Executive Order. Purchase orders will be opened in the next few days to encumber the remaining balances in the Telecommunications budget. As a result of the Executive Order, there was a small decrease of about $5,400 in the overall budget.

Report B: Diane called attention to the recent receipts of E-rate reimbursements, which total more than they have in past years, because OPLIN is now applying for reimbursements every six months instead of annually. The result is our normal annual reimbursement and our first semi-annual reimbursement arrived at about the same time. This balance may be helpful with our cash flow as we begin the new fiscal year. Diane also noted the first receipts of revenue from the libraries doing the beta testing of the website kits.

Report C: This report shows the OPLIN budget as contained in the Executive Budget Recommendation, the House Recommendation, and the Senate Recommendation. Diane noted that all three recommendations are identical.

Report D: Diane pointed out the reduction in anticipated E-rate reimbursements in FY'11, due to the shift to semi-annual reimbursements. The projected cash balance at the end of FY'11 is only about $118,000.

Diane then reported on the details of the Governor's Executive Order mandating additional spending controls on state agencies. Restrictions on travel were increased, and all open purchase orders were reviewed; the purchase of telecommunications services was deemed to be "essential," so these purchase orders were not reduced. Agencies were required to submit plans to the Office of Budget and Management (OBM) for reducing their budgets by as much as 30%; OPLIN submitted a plan to reduce the OPLIN budget by about $24,000, including the already negotiated reduction in office rent. Diane also explained that all OPLIN employees must take ten unpaid furlough ("cost savings") days per year during the next two years, and salaries will be reduced accordingly.

Diane also reported on additional reductions to the State Library's operating (5%) and regional libraries' (30%) budgets as recommended by the Senate. Further reductions may occur in the Conference Committee. In response to a question about the cash flow in the new fiscal year, Diane explained that some of the OPLIN payments, particularly for databases, occur very early in the fiscal year; however, it is likely that OPLIN funds will be transferred from the Public Library Fund in small monthly amounts, so the E-rate balance may need to be used for these large, early payments.

Stephen Hedges expanded briefly on the budget reduction plan submitted to OBM, noting that the plan was written under the assumption that there was no good reason to hold onto Public Library Fund monies at a time when public libraries need the services that can be purchased with those funds; the funds cannot be returned to the libraries, they would just sit unused in the OPLIN account. Diane noted that we have not had any response from OBM to this plan.

Mike Wantz motioned to accept the Financial Reports; Holly Carroll seconded. All aye.

6. OLD BUSINESS

6.1. Discuss proposed FY'10-11 budget

Stephen Hedges asked Lynda Murray to report on the overall state budget situation before moving to a narrower discussion of the OPLIN budget.

Lynda began by noting the $2.3 billion difference between state revenue projections two years ago and now. For public libraries, the current projections for the revenues going into the Public Library Fund (PLF) are $365 million in calendar year 2009, $356 million in 2010, and $360 million in calendar year 2011. It is likely that some library systems will not be able to survive in their current form. About two-thirds of Ohio public libraries have no local levies and are almost entirely dependent on the PLF.

The current budget language diverts about $5 million per year from the PLF to pay for OPLIN and the Library for the Blind, then diverts $5 million from the General Revenue Fund (GRF) into the PLF to negate this reduction. The Ohio Library Council is quietly working to maintain this arrangement as the budget moves through the Conference Committee. If the language is maintained, the State Library and the Ohio Library Council will probably recommend to OBM that the diversion from the PLF happen monthly instead of in one lump.

Lynda noted that the revenue projections do not include any future federal stimulus money, which is an unknown amount at this point. She also feels that the budget eventually passed by the legislature will be a placeholder budget that will need to be revised downward in the near future. The eventual recovery is likely to be very slow.

Stephen Hedges reviewed some of the findings of the OPLIN Task Force on Governance and Funding, which was created when OPLIN funds were taken from the Library and Local Government Support Fund (LLGSF) in FY'02, FY'03, and FY'04. The two biggest funding issues at that time were the fact that the OPLIN funding was fixed instead of being a percentage of the LLGSF, and local libraries felt that they did not have as much control as they would like over the OPLIN budget. The Task Force did not propose any procedure for funding OPLIN as a percentage of the LLGSF, but it may be a good idea to pursue that once the current budget is set. OPLIN should also be mindful of spending funds in such a way that libraries see a strong return on their investment in OPLIN. Lynda noted that OPLIN funding will likely be just one of a number of issues which OLC will be discussing with its members in the near future.

Lynda Murray left the meeting at 10:51 a.m.

6.2. Discuss possible OPLIN services

During the April Board Retreat, several possible new services were mentioned, and OPLIN staff were asked to examine each service and estimate the resources needed to implement it. Stephen Hedges presented a list of these services with an estimate of the staff time and money needed as well as the amount of time needed to implement the service.

The services which received the most support during the ensuing discussion were creating and maintaining: a) a website that provides information on job searching, and; b) a portal to e-government forms and resources. There was also discussion of selling website kits to non-profit organizations other than public libraries.

The Board concurred that some services should be undertaken as soon as possible, others require more study and detailed proposals, and some should be postponed until a later date.

Undertake ASAP

1. Offer OPLIN email service using existing library domain names; a library could have staff email addresses like staffname@libraryname.org instead of staffname@oplin.org.
2. Continue to provide support for librarians in Second Life.

Prepare proposals

1. Survey the availability of job help websites and prepare a proposal for a job help website if there is a need.
2. Survey the availability of e-government websites and prepare a proposal for a portal to e-government resources and forms if there is a need.
3. Prepare a proposal for a text messaging service that would send library notices to mobile devices via SMS.

Postpone

1. Offer to assist libraries with finding and hiring technology staff for a fee; hold until economy is better.
2. Sell website kits to non-profit organizations; hold for further consideration once most public library website kits have been completed.

6.3. Set guidelines for Website Kits

Enough of the beta testers of the website kits have reached the final stages of creating their sites for OPLIN staff to project expected costs and revenues with a fair degree of accuracy, and it appears that we are recovering our costs for providing the service. One purpose of the beta testing was to test our pricing to make sure it was adequate to cover our costs; there was no intent to make any profit. Stephen Hedges proposed that the Dynamic Website Kits now move from beta testing to production and that the current pricing used for the beta testers be continued: $200 for website kit creation; $180 per year for website service; $300 for any special Drupal module; $150 per hour for limited custom design and graphics work; and $600 for on-site training of up to 20 library staff. Stephen also suggested that some website kit customers will want more custom features than OPLIN is willing to provide, and for such cases we should develop a partnership with other non-profit library entities that do full-scale website development, so we could pass the customer to them in return for a fee to cover our costs for work already done toward gathering customer design requirements.

Mike Wantz motioned that the Dynamic Website Kits move from beta testing to production; Jim Kenzig seconded.

Holly Carroll asked if the intent is still to just cover our costs and questioned whether the pricing is too low. Gary Branson also expressed a concern that ongoing support of kit users may be more demanding than we anticipate, but Laura Solomon said that has not yet been her experience with the alpha tester and the early beta testers.

The Chair called for a vote on the motion. All aye.

Gary Branson asked if the motion had included the pricing structure; he had understood that it did not, but others assumed that it had. The Board then agreed that the Director will periodically review the balance between revenue and costs and approach the Board for price changes when deemed appropriate.

7. NEW BUSINESS

7.1. OPLIN overtime on holidays

It has been the practice for the OPLIN Support Center to stay open on four state holidays when many libraries are open: Martin Luther King Day, President's Day, Columbus Day, and Veterans' Day. This results in about $2,500 per year in overtime costs for Support Center staff. The State Librarian has the authority to approve or deny overtime, and because of recent pressure on state agencies to eliminate or reduce overtime, Jo Budler asked the Board for their opinion as to whether this practice should be ended.

Stephen Hedges explained that whenever the Support Center is closed, on weekends and other holidays, calls to the Support Center are automatically redirected to the State of Ohio Network Operations Center.

Jim Kenzig asked for clarification as to how long any change in overtime practice would last. The consensus of the Board was that they would ask for re-consideration if it became evident that closing the Support Center was becoming a problem.

Sandi Plymire motioned that the OPLIN Support Center be closed on all state holidays until such time as this may become a problem for libraries; Holly Carroll seconded. All aye.

8. OPLIN DIRECTOR'S REPORT

Stephen Hedges reported that the replacement routers have started to arrive, beginning with the core router. Site routers are expected to start arriving very shortly. These routers should allow OPLIN to better handle quality-sensitive network services such as Voice-over-IP.

Stephen noted that he has been working with a group of librarians convened by the Ohio Library Council to develop a number of statewide proposals for using American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds for broadband stimulus. Efforts are underway to gather partners other than libraries for a number of projects which have been loosely defined. It is probable that the guidelines for grant applications will be released around the end of June, and applicants may have only 60 days to submit proposals.

Stephen reported that rumors are circulating that the Broadband Ohio network, which currently provides free transport of Ethernet traffic from remote areas of the state back to Columbus, will need to begin charging for this service due to budget pressures. Although nothing is official yet, it is possible that this change could cost OPLIN about $200,000 per year in additional telecommunications costs.

Stephen highlighted a meeting he attended in Washington DC on May 12, sponsored by the American Library Association and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, on ARRA broadband stimulus funding.

8.1. Website Kits progress

Laura Solomon reported that six of the ten beta test libraries have received their kits and completed training in loading their content into the kit; three of those libraries are now using their websites "live" on the Internet. One library has asked to be removed from the beta test and placed on the waiting list after the kits go into production. That places three on the waiting list, and more libraries have begun to express interest.

8.2. Bandwidth report

Karl Jendretzky reported on the results of a test he constructed to sample the destination IP addresses of the OPLIN Internet traffic. Over 70% of the traffic goes to content delivery networks, groups of servers that move bandwidth-intensive applications, such as video, closer to the end user. Akamai is the largest such network, with many servers, and accounts for about 43% of the total bandwidth, but even more noteworthy was Eyewonder, whose two servers distribute Flash advertisements and accounted for 22% of the bandwidth, costing about $15,000 per month.

Karl suggested we may want to cache the Eyewonder servers instead of retrieving the content from the Internet. There was also some discussion of simply blocking these servers from the OPLIN network.

Karl also reported that the Office of Information Technology was intrigued by this data, and that we had also shared it with OARnet. We may be able to negotiate a a lower bandwidth cost if a significant number of the content delivery servers are accessible on Internet2.

8.3. Databases and Network Reports

8.3.1. Database usage

Laura Solomon noted the steep increase over the last two months in the number of documents retrieved. Most of that is due to increased usage of EBSCO by Cuyahoga County Public Library, but no one seems to know what would have caused that.

8.3.2. Support Center (April and May)

Karl Jendretzky reported that Support Center ticket flow was normal, with no significant issues, as reflected in his written report.

9. CHAIR'S REPORT

9.1. Director's Evaluation

Gayle Patton noted that all Board members had received a copy of the consolidated evaluation forms and comments regarding the performance of the Director, and that they were positive overall. All Board members completed evaluation forms, and none requested an Executive Session to discuss the evaluations. She thanked Bonnie Mathies for collecting all the forms and collating them.

9.2.  Resolutions

Gayle Patton shared a few comments about the departing Board members. She noted that Bob Richmond had served two terms, had served as a Board officer, and brought the valuable perspective of a public library trustee. Mike Wantz has advanced his retirement date to early October, so he will not be joining the Board for a second term; Gayle thanked him for his participation in OPLIN affairs, including volunteering his library as the alpha tester for the Website Kits. Gayle praised Mary Pat Essman for her thoughtful observations, questions and comments; Mary Pat in turn praised the "fabulous" OPLIN staff.

Karl Colon motioned that the following three resolutions be inserted into the minutes as read; Gary Branson seconded.

WHEREAS, MARY PAT ESSMAN has been a member of the Ohio Public Library Information Network (OPLIN) Board of Trustees since July 2006, and WHEREAS she has generously contributed her efforts to ensure the success of OPLIN by serving on the Board for three years, and WHEREAS her dedication and attention to the perspective of the public libraries have maintained OPLIN's integrity, and WHEREAS she has served ably as the Vice-Chair of the OPLIN Board, and WHEREAS her experience as Director of the Lane Public Library gave her a valuable point of view concerning OPLIN and its services to all Ohio public libraries, NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that on the 12th day of June, Two Thousand and Nine, the members of the Board of Trustees of the Ohio Public Library Information Network recognize the significant contributions made to public libraries and library service by MARY PAT ESSMAN during her tenure with the Ohio Public Library Information Network, and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Board extends its most sincere thanks and appreciation to MARY PAT ESSMAN for her continued volunteer service as a member of that Board.

WHEREAS, BOB RICHMOND has been a member of the Ohio Public Library Information Network (OPLIN) Board of Trustees since July 2002, and WHEREAS he has freely and unselfishly given of his time and efforts to ensure the success of OPLIN by serving on the Board for seven years, and WHEREAS he has demonstrated a firm sense of commitment and dedication to advancing public libraries in Ohio, and WHEREAS his service as a trustee of the Canal Fulton Public Library gave him a unique perspective about OPLIN and its services to public libraries, NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that on the 12th day of June, Two Thousand and Nine, the members of the Board of Trustees of the Ohio Public Library Information Network recognize the significant contributions made to public libraries and library service by BOB RICHMOND during his tenure with the Ohio Public Library Information Network, and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Board extends its most sincere thanks and appreciation to BOB RICHMOND for his continued volunteer service as a member of that Board.

WHEREAS, MIKE WANTZ has been a member of the Ohio Public Library Information Network (OPLIN) Board of Trustees since July 2007, and WHEREAS he has generously contributed his efforts to ensure the success of OPLIN by serving on the Board for two years, and WHEREAS he has shared his valuable insights and wisdom to maintain the integrity of OPLIN, and WHEREAS his experience as Director of the Perry County District Library gave him a diverse point of view concerning OPLIN and its services to all Ohio public libraries, NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that on the 12th day of June, Two Thousand and Nine, the members of the Board of Trustees of the Ohio Public Library Information Network recognize the significant contributions made to public libraries and library service by MIKE WANTZ during his tenure with the Ohio Public Library Information Network, and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Board extends its most sincere thanks and appreciation to MIKE WANTZ for his continued volunteer service as a member of that Board.

The Chair called for a vote on the motion. All aye.

9.3. August meeting procedure

Gayle Patton suggested that discussion of filling Mike Wantz's seat on the Board be placed on the August meeting agenda. She informed the Board that she will open the August Board meeting and immediately ask that Jeff Wale, representing the Nominations Committee, propose the slate of Board officers for the 2010 fiscal year. Following the vote, she will pass the gavel to Karl Colon as the new Board chair.

10. ADJOURNMENT

Sandi Plymire motioned to adjourn the meeting at 12:06 p.m. Jim Kenzig seconded.