June 14, 2019

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

Minutes — June 14, 2019

1. WELCOME and CALL TO ORDER

The one hundred seventy-fourth meeting of the Ohio Public Library Information Network (OPLIN) Board of Trustees was called to order at 10:13 a.m. on Friday, June 14, 2019 by Board Secretary Jeff Garringer at the OPLIN office in Columbus, Ohio.

Present were Board members: Angela Baldree, Jamie Black, Justin Bumbico, Jeff Garringer, Chris May, Garalynn Tomas, and Holly Varley. 

Also present were: Karl Jendretzky, Laura Solomon, and Don Yarman (OPLIN); Stephanie Herriott, Kirstin Krumsee, and Jamie Pardee (State Library); and Michelle Francis (Ohio Library Council).

Don Yarman introduced meeting guest Travis Bautz, director of the MidPointe Library System, who was appointed to the OPLIN Board starting July 1, 2019.

ACTION ITEMS

2. APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA

Chris May motioned to approve the agenda as presented; Holly Varley seconded. There was no discussion, so the Secretary called for a vote on the motion; all aye.

3. PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

The Secretary called for public participation.

Kirstin Krumsee said Beverly Cain was unable to attend, but wanted her to communicate that, although the State Library had asked for an increase in their budget, the most recent version of the Senate’s state budget keeps funding flat from this fiscal year. Applications to fill the vacancy on the State Library Board are due today. Yarman reminded the Board that as part of the State Library’s budget, OPLIN was also flat-funded, which is what we requested in our line item.

Michelle Francis arrived late to the meeting. At 11:52 a.m., the Secretary invited her to update the Board on OLC’s activities. Francis reported that OLC, along with the organizations supporting school libraries and academic libraries, is holding the “Re-IMAGEing Ohio’s Libraries” joint conference at the OCLC Conference Center today. Doug Evans’ retirement reception will follow, 3:30 p.m. at the Dublin Branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library. Evans officially retires at the end of June, and Francis has been appointed the new Executive Director of OLC. In the Senate version of the state budget, the PLF was increased to 1.7%, and OLC urges library directors and boards to thank Senate leaders for their support. There are numerous differences between House and Senate versions of the budget to be worked out in conference committee, including big differences between revenue estimates at the beginning of the budget cycle and actual collections over the ensuing months. The PLF revenues were above $401 million for the first time since the recession, and it’s the first time in six years (three budget cycles) where public libraries have realized PLF distributions more than the taxation department had estimated.

4. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES of April 12 meeting

Garalynn Tomas motioned to approve the minutes of the April 12, 2019, meeting as presented; Justin Bumbico seconded. There was no discussion, so the Secretary called for a vote on the motion; all aye.

5. ACCEPTANCE OF THE FINANCIAL REPORTS

Jamie Pardee reviewed the financial reports, noting that disbursements remain in line with estimates for this time of year. With just a few days left to spend funds this fiscal year, Pardee shows OPLIN will have a cash balance of about $2.8 million at the end of June. With the large planned purchases over the next biennium, Pardee projects the unspent cash balance to be $2.3 million at the end of FY2020, $1.8 million at the end of FY2021. Pardee currently shows a negative balance in “Unplanned Spending Authority” for FY2020, and projects that next spring OPLIN may need to request a small increase in spending authority.
 
Justin Bumbico motioned to accept the financial reports; Jamie Black seconded. There was no discussion, so the Secretary called for a vote on the motion; all aye.

6. OLD BUSINESS

6.1. Changes to Tactical Plan

Yarman suggested changing the description of the Webkit service from “generic” to “standardized” websites, and offered the following as an additional Marketing tactic in next year’s tactical plan:

OPLIN will ​ identify trends and best practices in cybersecurity ​ by following technology news and participating in cybersecurity education efforts in the state. OPLIN will find opportunities to have discussions with librarians and also will use temporary communications, such as email broadcasts and social media, to disseminate information about cybersecurity.

Jamie Black asked how many requests for cybersecurity assistance OPLIN receives. Jendretzky responded that the frequency varies. In the past couple months, Jendretzky helped a library quarantine a virus-infected domain controller so that could be by-passed and network access restored. OPLIN receives notices of library systems that are involved in outward-directed attacks. “If anyone calls for help, I tend to help,” Jendretzky said, adding that this doesn’t consume a lot of time. OPLIN’s main involvement is “shrugging off” denial of service attacks against library systems, usually managed by the new OARnet filters.

Chris May motioned to approve the FY2020 Annual Services and Tactical Plan; Angela Baldree seconded. There was no discussion, so the Secretary called for a vote on the motion; all aye. 

7. NEW BUSINESS -- none

REPORTS

8. OPLIN DIRECTOR'S REPORT
Yarman briefed the Board on the recent discussions with the Lynda.com team about the transition to the new LinkedIn Learning platform, outlining efforts since he first learned of the plans in December, through the discussions with the Content Advisory Committee this spring, and up to the announcement to OPLINLIST on June 3 and the follow-up message with more information five days later. Yarman summarized some of the questions he received and the answers he provided, covering whether anyone was aware that LinkedIn would be absorbing Lynda.com in this way (not to the extent that a LinkedIn account would be required), whether early termination was possible (unclear, but state agreements do stop at the fiscal year boundary), or whether LinkedIn would be willing to segment the Lynda information from the rest of LinkedIn’s data operations (they are not). He discussed the Washington State Library’s leadership pressing for more GDPR-compliant tools for patrons to manage the processing of their personal data, and for content access to people under the age of 16. Board members contributed what they knew of other organizations engaging with issue, including the members of the Urban Library Council and the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom.

Travis Bautz asked if access to Lynda.com was true authentication. Yarman replied that Lynda.com is the only resource that authenticates directly against a library’s patron database, and that LinkedIn has a policy against the creation of pseudonymous accounts.

Chris May asked whether any libraries have declared they will not link to or promote the LinkedIn Learning program. No one has. A library that objected to Lynda.com access last summer did not put the link on their site; usage is low, but as it is only one library in a county with other library systems, patrons are probably using the access provided by a neighboring library system. OPLIN staff have had discussions about ways they could accommodate libraries (and their patrons) should the librarians refuse to allow LinkedIn Learning access for their library cards. There is a separate issue with maintaining access for those libraries who do not have automation systems, or whose systems lack an authentication module like SIP.

Jamie Black and others questioned why the company was so dismissive of the concerns of a major customer. There is some evidence that LinkedIn is simply not interested in maintaining library business.

The Board discussed the opportunity for libraries to take leadership in educating patrons on online privacy practices. Michelle Francis echoed that this fits nicely with the state’s concern of boosting cybersecurity. She discussed how the legislature and administration is aware of public library patron access to Lynda.com, noting that she was specifically asked about it during her budget testimony to the House finance committee. Yarman says he hopes to create guides to help librarians assist their patrons with privacy settings, but there is still no access to the LinkedIn Learning platform.

Looking further out, it is expected that during FY2021, OPLIN will issue an RFP for statewide access to continuous learning resources, and it is a hopeful sign that more vendors are moving into the market.

8.1. Library Services Manager report

Laura Solomon reported that the consultant Braindunk was able to compile existing modules and create some custom code to solve the issue with repeating dates in Drupal 8. They are implementing that mix of pieces into the larger project: building a tool to facilitate the migration of the 80 Webkit sites from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8. Solomon is studying the two paradigm sites to make sure the migration processes are working correctly. Braindunk will migrate a total of 6 paradigm sites in their first “rally” to perfect the tool.

Many sites have not had updates to their themes since the last migration from Drupal 6, and they use a site layout that OPLIN doesn’t build anymore. To streamline their migration to Drupal 7, Solomon and Yarman agreed to offer them a price break on refreshing their templates: OPLIN will waive the cost of installing the new layout feature ($375), and charge only for Solomon’s time to customize the site for the new layout (usually about $525). This results in fewer unique sites that we will have to give extra attention to later in the Drupal 8 migration.

8.2. Technology Projects Manager report

Karl Jendretzky reported that everything is on schedule for the many circuit changes due July 1 with the start of the next E-rate service year. Greene County has been moved to the new AT&T head-end at the SOCC, freeing up hardware for Cleveland Public Library to relocate their branch circuits. The Spectrum circuits being upgraded to 100 Mbps need to have their routers connected to a different port on Spectrum’s equipment, so Jendretzky has been working with the libraries to get that set up so the upgrades can happen smoothly. A new vendor will take over service for Cuyahoga County Public Library, and the NEO Regional Library System will be moved from their cable internet to fiber optic.

The network core equipment was upgraded to the most stable version of Juniper software during an overnight maintenance window, and the secondary core was brought up in tandem with the primary core. The hardware Juniper loaned us when the two cores separated in 2017 has been used to create additional redundancy; should the cores split again, no one should notice.

On June 8, Cleveland Public Library took over a rack in NR3. SEO will be moving equipment into NR3 in July, sharing a rack with the CLC.

This year, SMS shortcodes will be discontinued, so in August the SMS messages OPLIN relays for libraries will come from a new 10-digit number: 877-675-4632 (877-OPLIN-32). The new number was selected so that if patron’s call it with questions about their library notices, a recording will instruct them to contact their local library for help. The SMS Gateway service continues to send about 135,000 messages a month.

With OPLIN providing the SSL certificate for every library site in the Webkit service, there is a lot of overhead in purchasing and installing new certificates. Because library websites do not require banking-level certification, Jendretzky has switched to using the free, automated Let’s Encrypt certificate authority. Certificates are good for 90 days; Jendretzky installed daemons on the servers that reestablish the authority and install new certificates after 60 days. OPLIN can now encrypt the library’s subdomains, whereas previously we provided the certificates only for the main website domain.

The last of OPLIN’s legacy webservers has been decommissioned. The old server supported applications which required an old version of PHP, so Jendretzky had to update the code line-by-line to move each service to a new version.

Expanding on the work he did to programmatically pull Lynda.com stats for each library, Jendretzky has added automatic stats harvesting/reporting for EBSCO (stats.oplin.org/ebsco)  and WorldBook (stats.oplin.org/worldbook). The plan is to automate as much of the monthly stats work as possible, and present the stats in ways that will be most useful to libraries for reporting to the State Library annually.

9. CHAIR'S REPORT

9.1. Recognition

The Secretary recognized Chris May to offer the following resolution:

WHEREAS JOSEPH GREENWARD has been a member of the Ohio Public Library Information Network (OPLIN) Board of Trustees since July 2013; 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 six years; and WHEREAS his service as director at the Lane Libraries gave him a distinctive outlook on OPLIN and its services to libraries; and WHEREAS he has provided additional service as the Vice-Chair of the OPLIN Board from 2016 to 2017, and Chair from 2017 to 2018; and WHEREAS the insight he developed throughout his career have always been a helpful source of information for the Board; and WHEREAS he has consistently contributed his productive opinions to OPLIN Board and OPLIN Executive Committee deliberations; and WHEREAS he has been a committed advocate for OPLIN throughout his tenure on the Board; NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that, on the 14th day of June, Two Thousand Nineteen, 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 JOSEPH GREENWARD during his outstanding tenure with the Ohio Public Library Information Network, and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Board extends its most sincere thanks and appreciation to JOSEPH GREENWARD for his continued volunteer service as a member of this Board.

Jamie Black seconded the resolution. All aye.

Secretary Jeff Garringer offered the following resolution:

WHEREAS MICHAEL PENROD has been a member of the Ohio Public Library Information Network (OPLIN) Board of Trustees since July 2013; 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 six years; and WHEREAS his service as director at the Wood County District Public Library gave him an important perspective on OPLIN and its services to libraries; and WHEREAS he has provided additional service as the Treasurer of the OPLIN Board from 2015 to 2017, as Vice-Chair from 2017 to 2018; and as Chair from 2018 to 2019, and WHEREAS his financial acumen and political instincts have often proved beneficial; and WHEREAS he has consistently contributed his valuable opinions to OPLIN Board and OPLIN Executive Committee deliberations; and WHEREAS he has been a steadfast guardian of OPLIN’s interests throughout his tenure on the Board; NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that, on the 14th day of June, Two Thousand Nineteen, 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 MICHAEL PENROD during his outstanding tenure with the Ohio Public Library Information Network, and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Board extends its most sincere thanks and appreciation to MICHAEL PENROD for his continued volunteer service as a member of this Board. Justin Bumbico seconded the resolution. All aye. The Secretary recognized Angela Baldree to offer the following resolution: WHEREAS, DOUG EVANS has served as the Executive Director of the Ohio Library Council (OLC) since 2002; and WHEREAS he has dedicated his time and efforts to ensure the success of Ohio public libraries by serving as a leader for Ohio’s public libraries for 17 years; and WHEREAS he regularly attended Board meetings of the Ohio Public Library Information Network (OPLIN), keeping the Board updated on OLC activities and offering his perspective on OPLIN’s services to libraries; and WHEREAS his exceptional perspective across library activities in the state have always been a helpful source of information for the Board, and  WHEREAS he has been a valuable partner for OPLIN throughout his leadership at OLC, NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that, on the 12th day of June, Two Thousand Nineteen, 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 DOUG EVANS during his outstanding tenure with the Ohio Library Council, and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Board extends its most sincere thanks and appreciation to Doug for his esteemed service.

Jamie Black seconded the resolution. All aye.

10. ADJOURNMENT

With no other business pending, the Secretary adjourned the meeting at 12:12 p.m.