February 11, 2011 Minutes

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

Minutes—February 11,
2011

1.
WELCOME and CALL TO ORDER

The one hundred twenty-fourth
meeting of the Ohio Public Library
Information Network (OPLIN) Board of Trustees was called to order at
10:00 a.m. on Friday, February 11, 2011 by Board Chair Sandi
Plymire at the State Library of Ohio in Columbus, Ohio.

Present were Board members:
Don Barlow, Jason Buydos, Ben Chinni, Karl Colón, Karen
Davis, Jim Kenzig, Jamie
Mason, Bonnie Mathies, and Sandi Plymire.

Also present were: Stephen
Hedges, Karl Jendretzky, and Laura Solomon (OPLIN); Beverly Cain, Diane
Fink and
David Namiotka (State Library); and Doug Evans (Ohio
Library Council).

2.
APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA

Sandi Plymire requested approval of the meeting agenda.

Jason Buydos motioned to
approve the agenda as presented; Don Barlow seconded. All aye.

3.
PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

The Chair recognized Doug Evans.

Doug noted that legislative activity related to public libraries had
been rare at the end of last year, but now there were a number of
pieces of legislation which the Ohio Library Council (OLC) is
monitoring, as well as watching for any news regarding the next state
budget. OLC Legislative Day is scheduled for March 24. Doug
particularly mentioned legislation affecting public employee retirement
and collective bargaining.

4.
APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES
of December 10 Meeting

Karen Davis motioned to
approve the minutes of the December 10 meeting after correction of a
typographical error; Jamie Mason
seconded. All aye.

5.
ACCEPTANCE OF THE
FINANCIAL REPORTS

Diane Fink presented the Financial Reports as of January 31, 2011.

Report A showed the
budget and expenditures at the end of Fiscal Year 2010 and Fiscal Year
2011 through January 31. Fiscal Year 2010 is now closed. In the FY 2011
budget, Diane noted open purchase orders for rent, staff travel, and
monthly consultant payments. Regarding telecommunications expenses, she
reported
that the Office of Information Technology (OIT) is behind on billing
for Internet access, but has also re-rated their services resulting in
lower costs for OPLIN. Diane noted that only two contracts for
filtering assistance grants are still outstanding. As of the end of
January, OPLIN has about $2.4 million in available spending authority.

Report B showed the
revenue and cash balances for Fiscal Years 2010 and 2011. The $1.3
million cash balance at the end of FY 2010 rolled over to FY 2011. In
the last two months, a considerable amount was received from E-Rate
reimbursements for funding year 2005. Diane noted the transfer out for
the quarterly savings from Cost Savings Days. The cash balance
as of January 31 was a little more than $3 million.

Diane
also presented Biennial Budget Reports, which are unchanged since the
last Board meeting. Executive Budget amounts will appear on these
reports once that budget has been released by the Governor.

Diane reported on other general news from the Office of Budget
and Management (OBM). In early January OBM released the 10% of General
Revenue Funds for non-personnel costs which agencies had been
instructed to set aside (about $130,000 for the State Library, but
OPLIN was not affected); after the new Governor was inaugurated, this
release was rescinded. Governor Kasich has issued five Executive
Orders, one of which concerns ethics training and will probably affect
OPLIN Board members. In news affecting public libraries, Diane reported
that the State Library and OhioLINK are working toward issuing a
Request for Proposal for statewide delivery services, to take effect
July 1, 2011.

Bonnie Mathies motioned to
accept the Financial Reports; Jim Kenzig seconded. All aye.

6. OLD BUSINESS

There was no old business to come before the Board.

7.
NEW BUSINESS

7.1. OPLIN "Return on Investment" document

Stephen Hedges presented a draft document titled "OPLIN Value" and
explained that at a recent meeting of the OLC Government Relations
Committee it was suggested that it might be a good idea to have "return
on
investment" information prepared in the event that libraries question
the value they receive from OPLIN in return for taking OPLIN funding
from the Public Library Fund (PLF). The document considered the three
primary
services OPLIN buys for libraries—Internet connections, EBSCOhost, and
Ohio newspapers—and listed the Internet connections currently provided
to each library and the undiscounted cost of EBSCOhost for each
library. Stephen requested feedback from the Board, with the goal of
developing a document which could be provided to OLC to be used as
needed.

Karl Colón noted that the document did not provide the amount each
library contributed to OPLIN through the PLF, so it would be hard for a
library to calculate their return on investment. Jason Buydos
questioned if the document should not be addressed to legislators,
rather than public libraries. Jamie Mason suggested that the amount
OPLIN pays for each library's connection be added to the document;
Stephen noted that some libraries might be able to purchase connections
locally for less than what OPLIN pays under statewide contract pricing,
but Board members generally felt this would still be valuable
information. Doug Evans noted that legislators would probably want to
see the monetary value their local libraries receive from OPLIN.

Jason Buydos reminded Board members that nine southwest Ohio
libraries jointly produced an ROI document several years ago that was
very useful. Other Board members noted that their libraries have
produced ROI documents and/or website calculators and found them very
valuable.

The consensus of the Board was that the document should be revised
and then presented again at the April Board retreat.

7.2. E-Rate RFP responses

Stephen Hedges reported that in response to an RFP
(oplin.org/erate/RFP2010.html) issued in conjunction with an E-Rate
Form 470, OPLIN received quotes from ValTech Communications, Time
Warner Cable and AT&T for providing data circuits beginning July 1.
The AT&T quote proposed circuits for all OPLIN connections except
two which currently are served by DS3 circuits. The types of circuits
proposed included OPT-E-MAN Ethernet, Meet Point OPT-E-MAN using
combined services from AT&T and various other local exchange
carriers (LECs), Ethernet Virtual Private Lines (EVPL), Private Network
Transport, and T1 lines. The Time Warner Cable quote proposed
business-class Ethernet services for 176 OPLIN connections spread
across the state. The ValTech quote was general and did not propose
solutions for specific sites; the offering was limited to libraries
within the AT&T LEC territories.

Responses were scored by Stephen and Karl Jendretzky, with low cost
and Ethernet technology getting the highest scores. None of the
proposals to replace any of the 87 current OPLIN Ethernet connections
were feasible once the penalty cost of breaking current Ethernet
contracts was added to the proposal prices. Stephen explained the
scoring in detail. Overall, the scoring indicated that of the libraries
and regional library systems currently connected with T1 circuits, 126
should be moved to Time Warner Cable Ethernet circuits, fourteen should be
moved to AT&T EVPL circuits, and twenty-seven should remain on T1 circuits.
Stephen noted that this would be a major upgrade to the OPLIN network,
while the overall cost would be nearly the same as current cost.

Stephen requested that the Board authorize opening negotiations with
AT&T and Time Warner Cable based on this scoring with the goal of
making a final determination of which libraries should be switched to
their Ethernet services and securing those services beginning on or
about July 1, 2011.

Karl Colón motioned to authorize the
OPLIN Director to negotiate with AT&T and Time Warner Cable for new
Ethernet circuits; Jason Buydos seconded. All aye.

7.3. OLC Convention
Gold sponsorship

Stephen Hedges explained that OPLIN has sponsored Internet
connectivity at OLC Conventions in the past, most recently paying for
wireless Internet in the exhibit area, and he has been in touch with
Lori Hensley at OLC about similar sponsorship at the Convention this
October. He noted that the Convention will also be the venue for the
OPLIN Stakeholders meeting this year. Lori has determined that the cost
of wireless Internet in the exhibit area, as well as connectivity for
the E-mail Cafe, would probably be about $4,000, which would qualify
OPLIN to be recognized as a Gold Sponsor of the Convention. Stephen
asked for approval to sponsor Internet connectivity for the Convention
at the Gold Sponsorship level.

Don Barlow motioned to sponsor the
OLC Convention at the Gold level; Jason Buydos seconded. All aye with
the exception of Karl Colón and Jamie Mason, who abstained because they
are members of the OLC Convention Program Committee.

8.
OPLIN DIRECTOR'S
REPORT

Stephen Hedges called attention to the copies of the OPLIN Annual
Report which were included in the Board packets. He commended Amie
McReynolds for her good work on the Annual Report, despite the fact
that she is new to OPLIN and was learning about the organization while
creating the report. Also included in the packet was a "one-pager"
about OPLIN which Stephen provided to Lynda
Murray (OLC) which she can
leave with legislators as she visits them.

Stephen reported that on a couple of occasions during the past two
months, OPLIN
experienced some unexpected circuit outages that affected a number of
libraries, sometimes for extended periods of time. One outage was
prolonged enough to violate the Network Availability guarantee (99.99%)
of the AT&T Service Level Agreement with the state, so AT&T
will be refunding part of our circuit charges. OIT set up a meeting
with AT&T on December 21,
which Karl Jendretzky and Stephen attended, to determine the cause of
these
problems and steps which might prevent similar problems in the future.
Basically, the problems all seem to have been communication-related.

Stephen informed the Board that Karl Jendretzky has installed a new
and improved system for tracking trouble
tickets. In the course
of migrating tickets from the old system to the new system, he also
removed many tickets that could have been closed earlier. OPLIN will
now have monthly staff meetings to review all open tickets and
identify problems that need further attention.

Stephen reminded the Board that he has worked with Bill Morris
(State Library) to submit altered budget language to OBM that would
change the OPLIN report
to the leadership of the legislature and the Governor on filtering
activities in libraries from a bi-annual report to an on-demand report.
Stephen has also asked Lynda Murray to keep in mind, as she meets with
legislators,
that OPLIN would have no objection to the removal of the earmark in our
budget for support of filtering in libraries.

Stephen reported that OPLIN recently began the process of developing
smartphone apps for
the Find-A-Library service; instead of
apps, however, a modified version of the service was built so it now
performs well in any mobile device web
browser. This mobile-optimized version can be found at
http://oplin.org/labs/mobilefal.
It has been coded to bypass a display
problem on iPhone screens, and library phone numbers
can be called (if your device is a phone) just by touching the number.
You can also touch the library's address to launch Google maps, which
can then provide you with other information, such as driving
directions. Finally, you can touch on the library's web address to go
to the library website.

Looking at the calendar of OPLIN office activities, Stephen
highlighted his participation in an EBSCO focus group on December 9,
Karl Jendretzky's on-site networking help at Putnam County District
Library, and Laura Solomon's workshop presentation for NEO-RLS on
January 19. He also mentioned that Laura will be doing a presentation
at the Computers in Libraries conference in Washington DC in March.

8.1.
Technology Projects Manager report

Karl Jendretzky reported that the Support Center has been very busy
since the beginning of the year with ordering upgrades and branch
connections for libraries. The Support Center has also had to deal with
a considerable number of e-mail accounts that have been compromised
through phishing attacks. Karl also reported that he is pleased with
the performance of the new ticketing system.

Karl mentioned that the SMS messaging system is now processing more
than 2,000 library text notices each week. He reported that the project
to upgrade the OPLIN webmail service to Zimbra software is ready to
move forward again, now that the latest major version of Zimbra was
released four days ago. So far, it looks like this version of Zimbra
will offer improved document sharing.

Finally, Karl reported that he and Terry Fouts (OIT) think they have
developed a way to load an entire operating system and network testing
software on a bootable flash drive, which can easily be sent out to
libraries. These would be an inexpensive replacement for the more
cumbersome testing pod currently being used to track down network
problems at library sites. A further refinement might be to implement
similar software over the network for remote testing.

8.2. Library Services
Manager report

Laura Solomon reported that three new kit websites have launched,
bringing the total to twenty-eight website kits completed and seven
more in process.

Laura also reported on an ongoing project to transition the old
"personal" OPLIN Facebook account to an "organization" account. When
OPLIN first established an account, there was no option for
organization accounts. Now she is asking people to "de-friend" the old
account and "like" the new account, so she can close the old one.

Laura mentioned her upcoming presentation at Computers in Libraries,
but also reported that she will be doing presentations at most of the
OLC Chapter Conferences following her return from CiL.

8.3. Database usage

Stephen Hedges presented statistics of
database usage. He expressed some concern over the continuing trend
toward fewer searches and more article retrievals, which could mean
that fewer people are using the databases, even though those who do use
them seem to be finding more articles. OPLIN staff may try to use other
tools to determine if fewer people are using ohioweblibrary.org, for
example.

11.
CHAIR'S REPORT

Sandi Plymire read a resolution in honor of Jim Kenzig, who is
resigning from the OPLIN Board:

Sandi reminded Board members to be sure they submitted their
Financial Disclosure forms to the Ethics Commission before April 15.
She also reminded Board members that the next meeting on April 8 will
be the all-day Board retreat, and they should bring money for lunch.
Stephen will provide a menu at a later date.

12. ADJOURNMENT

On motion of Jim Kenzig
the Board adjourned at 11:17.