April 13, 2012 Minutes

1. WELCOME and CALL TO ORDER

The one hundred thirty-first meeting of the Ohio Public Library Information Network (OPLIN) Board of Trustees was called to order at 9:02 a.m. on Friday, April 13, 2012 by Board Chair Jeff Wale at the State Library of Ohio in Columbus, Ohio.

Present were Board members: Don Barlow, Jill Billman-Royer, Gary Branson, Jason Buydos, Ben Chinni, Karl Colón, Karen Davis, Jamie Mason, Sandi Plymire, Becky Schultz, and Jeff Wale.

Also present were: Stephen Hedges and Karl Jendretzky (OPLIN); Beverly Cain, Jamie Pardee, and David Namiotka (State Library); and Lynda Murray (Ohio Library Council).

2. APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA

Jeff Wale requested approval of the meeting agenda.

Karen Davis motioned to approve the agenda as presented; Karl Colón seconded. All aye.

3. PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

Lynda Murray provided a brief report on current legislative issues of interest to libraries. She also reported that she has had some conversations about the Shared Services proposal to integrate OPLIN and OARnet, though she does not expect any serious discussions while the Mid Budget Review (MBR) is under discussion.

David Namiotka shared information on the process of transitioning statewide library deliveries from Pitt Ohio to Priority Dispatch, scheduled to take place this weekend.

Beverly Cain provided an update on staffing changes at the State Library. She also reported on the upcoming State Library Board retreat. The State Library Board is filling two vacancies on the Board resulting from resignations; Krista Taracuk (Worthington) has been appointed to fill Ward Murrey's seat, and Melissa Hendon Deter (Cincinnati) has been appointed to fill Lynn Grimshaw's seat.

4. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES of February 10 meeting

Jeff Wale requested approval of the minutes of the February 10 Board meeting.

Jason Buydos motioned to approve the minutes of the February 10 meeting as presented; Sandi Plymire seconded. All aye.

Lynda Murray left the meeting at 9:20.

5. ACCEPTANCE OF THE FINANCIAL REPORTS

Jamie Pardee presented the Financial Reports as of March 31, 2012. Report A covered fiscal years 2010 and 2011, both of which have now been closed. In Report B for FY2012, Jamie reminded the Board that the Available Balance includes spending authority. Report C recorded the cash flow since July 2010 and reflected the cash balance as of January 2012. Stephen Hedges also called attention to the open encumbrance for network routers; that purchase has been delayed by AT&T concerns about E-rate. In response to a question from Don Barlow, Jamie reported that distributions from the Public Library Fund (PLF) to OPLIN occur monthly.

Gary Branson motioned to accept the Financial Reports; Don Barlow seconded. All aye.

6. DISCUSSION of Task Force on Stable Status of OPLIN (2001-2003)

Stephen shared information from the Task Force on the Stable Status of OPLIN which discussed funding and service alternatives about 10 years ago. At that time, the OPLIN Board took no action in response to a funding study commissioned from Levin, Driscoll & Fleeter, because it became clear that OPLIN funding would be taken from the General Revenue Fund (GRF) beginning in fiscal year 2005.

Jeff Wale discussed a conference call that took place between him, Stephen, two metropolitan library directors and their technology managers, concerning the disproportionate distribution of costs for OPLIN services and OPLIN policies restricting community Internet partnerships. Jeff also presented a spreadsheet he had developed to calculate Toledo library's "return on investment" in OPLIN. This spreadsheet accurately assessed what a library would have to spend individually to replace the statewide OPLIN services. Karl Colón suggested that the global spreadsheet the Board reviewed at last year's April retreat, which presented service costs, not replacement costs, should be re-done to reflect replacement costs. The value of OPLIN is that it saves the overall public library community money when compared to what it would cost them to buy the same services individually.

Beverly Cain cautioned that the OPLIN budget is actually part of the State Library budget, and as such, OPLIN funding is used as part of the state match for federal LSTA funds. Any measures the Board might consider that would reduce the OPLIN budget would likely reduce the LSTA funds which Ohio can retrieve from the federal budget.

Don Barlow noted that the real problem which needs to be resolved is moving OPLIN funding out of the PLF and back into the GRF. Jill Billman-Royer warned that there had not been enough discussion of the wider effects of potentially reducing the OPLIN budget, such as the effect on LSTA funding that Beverly had mentioned. Beverly also noted that she would be worried about the future of the Libraries Connect Ohio partnership if OPLIN database funding were to be cut.

Jeff Wale noted that the lengthy discussion to this point had identified one action item: the global spreadsheet of OPLIN value must be improved with accurate reimbursement costs, rather than the rough numbers previously used to evaluate service costs.

Karl Colón motioned that the Board reaffirm its support for drawing OPLIN funding from the General Revenue Fund (GRF) rather than the Public Library Fund (PLF), because funding OPLIN from the GRF has historically fostered exemplary statewide cooperation and proven to be very effective in reducing costs for public libraries' Internet connections and content, and returning OPLIN to the GRF would continue to foster cooperation among public libraries in the future.

The Board suspended the meeting for a break at 10:30 a.m. and resumed at 11:05.

The Chair asked Karl Colón to restate his motion, and he did.

Don Barlow seconded the motion. With the consent of Karl Colón, Gary Branson added a friendly amendment that GRF funding fosters cooperation among not only the public libraries, but cooperation with other agencies as well. All aye.

Discussion returned to a spreadsheet to be made public that would calculate each library's cost to replace OPLIN services. The Board asked that Stephen share a draft of such a spreadsheet with the entire Board.

7. DISCUSSION of Managed Wireless survey

Stephen Hedges shared the results of an online survey of 211 public library directors regarding wireless Internet in their buildings (current and future CLEVNET libraries were not included); the survey got a 64% response rate. He was surprised at the number of libraries (27) that already have outside contracts for management of their wireless network. Only eight libraries said they would be interested in managed wireless from OPLIN at about $40/month/access point, and those eight would only need about 32 access points. In Stephen's opinion, there is currently very little need for an OPLIN managed wireless service. After some discussion, the Board agreed.

8. DISCUSSION of Strategic Plan

Stephen Hedges presented the draft strategic plan that was tabled at the December Board meeting. Stephen highlighted several areas that need to be re-worded in light of developments since this draft was written. He also reviewed the changes previously proposed in December.

There was some discussion of the sentence, "If a library chooses to purchase a larger circuit than the one provided by OPLIN, OPLIN will endeavor to provide financial assistance up to the amount of the cost of a circuit meeting this benchmark." It was not clear exactly what this means or how it could be implemented. The consensus was that OPLIN would provide whatever size circuit a library requested if the library paid the additional cost over the price of the circuit OPLIN would have provided under current policy.

Discussion then turned to how a library could use the additional bandwidth they purchased; would it be subject to the restrictions in OPLIN policies? The feeling was that so long as technical means could segregate the additional data traffic, there was no need for it to comply with OPLIN policies. Stephen will re-word this section to clarify and then distribute the draft to the Board.

Further discussion of the strategic plan resulted in a decision to re-word the plans for backup storage space at the State of Ohio Computer Center. The Board asked that an objective be added to the Marketing goal relating to efforts to return OPLIN funding to the GRF. No other major changes were suggested. Stephen will prepare a revised draft of the complete plan for the June Board meeting.

The Board suspended the meeting for lunch at 11:40 and resumed at 12:05 p.m.

9. ETHICS TRAINING

Stephen Hedges distributed documents and discussed ethical restraints on the conduct of Board members. He began with the Governor's Executive Order 2011-03K and then spent some time reviewing the relevant sections of the Model Ethics Policy published by the Ohio Ethics Commission. He also distributed copies of the "Ohio Ethics Law and Related Statutes" published by the Ethics Commission, and finished by informing the Board of the many other informational materials available on the Ethics Commission website.

10. OLD BUSINESS

There was no old business to come before the Board.

11. NEW BUSINESS

There was no new business to come before the Board.

12. OPLIN DIRECTOR'S REPORT

Stephen Hedges provided updates on the Invitation to Negotiate for another year of a genealogy and a foreign language learning database, on the status of the OPLIN E-rate applications, and on the Information Technology consolidation efforts taking place in state government. If all goes as planned, this round of E-rate should result in only nine libraries still remaining on T1 circuits. He also reported that Laura Solomon has been selected as a participant in Library Leadership Ohio in July.

Regarding OPLIN office activities, Stephen highlighted Laura's presentations at Ohio Library Council (OLC) Chapter Conferences and his attendance at the Worthington Community Breakfast.

12.1. Technology Projects Manager report

Karl Jendretzky reported that 43 libraries are now using the OpenDNS content filter and all is going well. The Office of Information Technology (OIT) has started the installation of the new Juniper routers at the libraries, while Karl has been building some new OPLIN servers from used parts.

Karl noted that he is having trouble with the SMS text messaging service, which seems to have become so busy that the SMS gateway services used by cellphone companies are starting to block messages as spam. He has worked extensively with AT&T on finding a solution, but there does not seem to be a way to make our current, inexpensive system work reliably at these volumes; the reliable solution is to send messages directly through a gateway service rather than through AT&T, which will be considerably more expensive.

Board discussion of this problem revealed that this service is fairly popular among the libraries, and also explored options for paying for more expensive service. There was also general agreement that the problem should be fixed quickly.

Don Barlow motioned that OPLIN staff find a workable solution to the SMS problem and take steps to pass the cost to libraries using the service by the beginning of June; Gary Branson seconded.

Roll call: Don Barlow, aye; Jill Billman-Royer, aye; Gary Branson, aye; Jason Buydos, aye; Ben Chinni, aye; Karl Colón, aye, Karen Davis, aye; Jamie Mason, abstain; Sandi Plymire, aye; Becky Schultz, aye; and Jeff Wale, aye.

The Board now returned to a discussion of how a library might use a larger Internet connection than the one provided by OPLIN to support community computing; this built on the morning discussion of the Strategic Plan. The discussion served to clarify that the Board would expect libraries using a larger connection for purposes outside of those approved by OPLIN policy to pay for not only the increased circuit cost, but also all additional Internet bandwidth used for those purposes.

12.2. Library Services Manager report

Since Laura Solomon was presenting a session at today's Ohio Library Council Northwest Chapter Conference and unable to attend the meeting, Stephen Hedges presented this report. There are currently 42 website kits in use, six more in the training and content buildings stages, and thirteen under construction. New semi-automated update procedures were used recently to upgrade all website kits with an improved text editor.

12.3. Database usage

Stephen Hedges reported that usage of Ancestry Library Edition and Mango Languages continues to be strong, but also noted that usage of the other databases continues to decline slightly.

13. CHAIR'S REPORT

Jeff Wale began his report by asking the OPLIN Director to create a marketing fact sheet about what OPLIN is and what OPLIN does, to be distributed to public library directors. He also reminded the Board of the sensitivity and complexity of the OPLIN "return on investment" information.

13.1. Board recruitment

All four Board members serving terms that expire June 30 are eligible for re-appointment to the Board. All four expressed an interest in continuing to serve.

13.1. Director's evaluation

A sample of the evaluation form used to evaluate the OPLIN Director was distributed, and the evaluation procedure was discussed. Stephen Hedges will email the evaluation forms to all Board members; Jeff Wale assigned Jamie Mason to collect and collate them.

14. ADJOURNMENT

The Chair asked if there was any more business. None appearing, the Chair adjourned the meeting at 1:05 p.m.