February 9, 2018

 
 1. WELCOME and CALL TO ORDER

The one hundred sixty-sixth meeting of the Ohio Public Library Information Network (OPLIN) Board of Trustees was called to order at 10:06 a.m. on Friday, February 9, 2018 by Board Chair Joe Greenward at the OPLIN office in Columbus, Ohio.

Present were Board members: Justin Bumbico, Susan Brown, Jeff Garringer, Chris May, Travis McAfee, and Tara Sidwell.

Also present were: Karl Jendretzky and Don Yarman (OPLIN); Beverly Cain and Jamie Pardee (State Library); and Michelle Francis (Ohio Library Council).

ACTION ITEMS

2. APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA

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

3. PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

The Chair called for public participation.

Michelle Francis gave updates on OLC’s efforts with HB312, concerning local government credit card use, and HB371, concerning property tax exemptions on new development properties. She reported that February PLF distribution was above estimates; so far, estimated revenue collections for the fiscal year have been on target. The general assembly is taking up the capital budget bill; no public library activity expected. Upcoming OLC events include the regional trustee dinners, fiscal officer CPIM conference, the first of this year’s New Director’s workshops, and most notably, a symposium on Ohio’s opioid crisis. The symposium will focus not on library services but of on the role of library systems as employers and public facilities. It will take place at the Fawcett Center on April 3^rd.

Beverly Cain reported that the public library data survey is now open; instructions have been shared more widely within the public library community than in the past, as often directors pass off sections of the report for other staff to complete. Congress has passed a federal budget that does not eliminate IMLS or Library of Congress. The State Library has fielded some questions about the impact of a federal shutdown; much of State Library does would not be impacted immediately.

The State Library, along with Ohionet and the regional library systems, is also working on an event in response to Ohio’s opioid crisis. This one focuses on impact on communities and explores resources for libraries and how they can position themselves as a resource for their community. This event will take place 4 times, starting in Gallipolis on August 6, and then in a different area of the state over the next 3 days.

4. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES of December 8 meeting

Jeff Garringer motioned to approve the minutes of the December 8, 2017, meeting as presented; Chris May seconded. There was no discussion, so the Chair called for a vote on the motion; all aye.

5. ACCEPTANCE OF THE FINANCIAL REPORTS

Jamie Pardee reviewed the financial reports, noting that disbursements are in line with estimates for this time of year. About $90,000 remains in unplanned spending authority, with a projected cash balance of $2.5 million remaining at the end of this fiscal year. The $500,000 increase from last fiscal year is due to the timing of E-rate reimbursements.

Justin Bumbico motioned to accept the financial reports; Travis McAfee seconded. There was no discussion, so the Chair called for a vote on the motion; all aye.

6. OLD BUSINESS — none

7. NEW BUSINESS

7.1. MOU between State Library of Ohio and OPLIN
Sec. 3375.66 (A)(5) says that the OPLIN Board shall “Appoint the state library of Ohio as the board’s fiscal  agent,” and outlines the services that entails. State Library staff estimates that these services account for about 5.5 hours of staff time per week, totaling close to $13,500 a year. The standing handshake agreement has been that the State Library absorbs the cost of administrative services in exchange for Internet connectivity and bandwidth, but as OPLIN’s bandwidth costs shrink relative to speed, and the State Library’s administrative budget tightens, it might be time to consider a more formal agreement. Don Yarman presented a memo drafted by State Library staff that outlines State Library’s responsibilities and proposes a payment of $10,000 to cover payroll costs for staff time. In response to Susan Brown’s question about dates on the draft, Pardee noted that this was a first draft and suggested drafting agreements to cover two years. Justin Bumbico asked whether it would be best to drop OPLIN’s payment of the State Library connection and simply pay the full, estimated cost of staff time. Karl Jendretzky said there was no benefit, as OPLIN is not maintaining equipment at State Library, and the State Library’s connection cost is currently just a clean line item in the consolidated bill; it would be more of a disruption to change the contract to move it off of there.

Yarman will work with State Library to revise the proposed agreement, which will include spelling out OPLIN’s responsibilities, and present the agreement for discussion at the April planning meeting.

REPORTS

8. OPLIN DIRECTOR'S REPORT
Yarman reported that he and Jendretzky met with Terry Fouts, Greg Gicale, and Henry Smith on January 22 to discuss a plan for OIT installers to deploy the new routers at the libraries. Jendretzky has proposed six sets of 3-4 libraries around central Ohio to get them started, expecting that technicians can start their mornings at a larger library, then visit two smaller libraries in the area during the day. Jendretzky and Fouts will take guys out for first sites to show them how to do it, prepare them for different environments. Jendretzky estimates that the process could take about four months to complete.

Don Yarman and Mandy Knapp met with OLC’s Michelle Francis and Emily Modell of the Governor’s Office of Workforce Transformation to review the draft RFP seeking on-line job training resources available from public libraries, verifying that the RFP addressed OWT’s goals. The RFP specifically highlights the list of in-demand jobs from JFS, and asks vendors to elaborate on how they will manage refunds to libraries that already subscribe. The plan goal is to release the RFP within a week; vendors will have about a month to respond, and the Content Advisory Committee can evaluate those responses at their meeting March 28. The target is to launch this close to July 1, with preparations far enough along so that it can be previewed at the June 12 OWT meeting at Columbus Metropolitan Library.

8.2. Digital Resources Manager report
Mandy Knapp is at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Denver so she submitted a written report.

eRate
All of our Funding Requests (FRNs) for eRate year 2017 (July 2017-June 2018) have been approved by USAC, the administrative entity that oversees the eRate program.  I have sent the information necessary to file the BEAR form for circuit charges incurred between July 2017-June 2018 to Lorrie Germann. We can expect to receive that reimbursement shortly. As you will recall, a BEAR form is the step in the eRate process where we specify our reimbursement amounts. We should receive funds in the amount of $116,891.86. We will file a second BEAR form in July 2018, which includes both circuit charges for January-June 2018 as well as internet access charges.

In addition, we have filed all of the necessary Form 470s for upgrades and moves as needed in the eRate year 2018 (July 2018-June 2019). A Form 470 acts as an RFP, and begins the eRate process. A number of these were needed to move circuits for the CLEVnet change.
On the eRate training front, OPLIN and State Library co-hosted a Form 471 Workshop on January 29th. Lorrie Germann presented the simultaneous webinar and in-person session. There were 19 attendees total.

Ohio Digital Network (DPLA Hub)
The Community Engagement Centers (CEC): Ohiolink, OPLIN and Ohio History Connection, met on December 13 at the State Library. The CECs discussed ideas for working together on future training. Similarly, on January 19, a larger Ohio Digital Network meeting has held. The majority of the meeting were updates on progress. In order for the first ingest of metadata to occur, the Ohio Digital Network must have a minimum of 50,000 records. I am happy to report that that number has nearly been reached and the first ingest should occur sometime this spring. Also discussed at the meeting was the need for a communication kit for the official launch of the Ohio Digital Network. As with other states, the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) has waited until the first metadata ingest from the Ohio Digital Network to occur before announcing the hub.

Ohio Web Library
As you can see from the attached sheet, there is an uptick in usage in January in EBSCO stats and searches as well as World Book use. In addition, Ancestry Library Edition usage appears to be declining this month; however due to our ongoing issues with statistics from Proquest, I would not take these numbers as final. On my return from ALA Midwinter I will recheck the numbers for accuracy.

Ohio Web Library Specialist (OWLS)
I am pleased to report to the board that OPLIN is working with SERLS (Southeast Regional Library System) to expand the reach of the OWLS program. SERLS has allowed the OWLS the use of their webinar software to present on any database.  To date, two OWLS have signed up to present in this fashion. SERLS is marketing these free webinars to both libraries in their region as well as libraries statewide.

Libraries Connect Ohio
Negotiations for the statewide databases are proceeding as expected. On February 5, the selection committee met for an update conference call. Although I cannot share details at present, suffice to say that progress is following our expected timetable.

RFP for Genealogy Resources & RFP for Career Resources
On January 11, OPLIN released an RFP for a Genealogy database. This RFP is posted to OPLIN’s website and emailed to relevant vendors. Responses to this RFP are due March 2. Selection will be made by the Content Advisory Committee at their March 28th meeting. Vendors will be informed shortly after, giving OPLIN plenty of time to prepare before our projected start date of July 1, 2018 for this database.

We are also making good progress on our RFP for Career Resources and are on-track to release it by the middle of this month.

In addition, Yarman reported that Knapp has drafted a communications plan for the new Ohio Web Library collection, anticipating our need to implement changes in the collection smoothly across the state.

8.1. Library Services Manager report
Laura Solomon was unable to attend the meeting due to road conditions. Yarman reported in her absence that two new Webkits have been launched: Upper Sandusky and Euclid. By far, Euclid is the most customized site OPLIN has ever done. It included a lot of custom features, including the import of several thousand local history records (Recorded City Council meetings and issues of their [former] local newspaper), as well as various displays for custom content. Solomon is currently working on 4 new Webkits and 2 site redesigns for existing Webkit customers.

In January, Solomon finished the security review, ReCAPTCHA installation and backend cleanup of all of the Webkit installations, a project started in early 2017. The ReCAPTCHA installation was necessitated by the coming end of the currently-used Mollom service for spam protection. Mollom will cease operations in April 2018.

Solomon started a Facebook Group, the "OPLIN Water Cooler," as an advance move to head off the loss of engagement anticipated by the forthcoming split of Facebook's newsfeed.

8.3. Technology Projects Manager report
In December, CLEVNET’s Spectrum link between Columbus and Cleveland was converted into a “Q-in-Q trunk,” which allows CLEVNET to extend their VLANs across the state, effectively “stretching” their network. CLEVNET has now begun migrating their equipment down to the Co-Location Center in the SOCC; they are scheduled to move their integrated library system hardware overnight Saturday, February 10. OPLIN is preparing to file the orders to transfer CLEVNET library connections from Cleveland Public Library to the SOCC, timing the moves as best we can to the E-rate cycle. Between OPLIN connection moves and Cleveland’s branches, there will be nearly a hundred separate orders to complete the move.

On January 30, the Columbus Metropolitan Library moved their head-end into the SOCC, giving them, like CLEVNET, 20 Gbps of connectivity direct to the OPLIN core. The large capacity means that small DDOS attacks will not affect service to the libraries, as they can be easily absorbed. Because 20 Gbps is currently well beyond the highest anticipated traffic for those organizations, Jendretzky is weighing limiting those connections, to perhaps 300% of needed bandwidth, to prevent accidental saturation of the link.

All of OPLIN’s physical servers have been migrated out of 322 into NR3. All of this work – migrating OPLIN servers, moving Columbus and library consortia head-ends into the SOCC – has happened very smoothly, with services shutting down and coming back up cleanly.

Even though AT&T hasn’t finished migrating OPLIN’s circuits into the new 10G AT&T head-end, AT&T now proposes to implement full redundancy for large customers. So that each 10 Gbps of connectivity to us will be handed off with two separate pathways (20 Gbps of connectivity), AT&T intends to install four 10 Gbps head-end interfaces. We are billed for any 10G ports until they are filled to capacity, and since AT&T is responsible for the timing of this, they have agreed to stop billing us for our current interfaces. Once completed, this project provides OPLIN with redundant connectivity to every vendor – AT&T, Oarnet, and Spectrum – and frees up hardware we can use to build more redundancy for tenants in the Co-Location Center.

Jendretzky wrote an automated hardware inventory script which scans the network to keep track of equipment serial numbers and devices. As things go forward with the new router deployment, everything will be tracked and our records updated in real time; information will be stored in OPLIN’s internal databases viewable through our office Quick Info Tool, giving us a higher degree of visibility where the devices are in our network.

We had a small issue with Trumpia, the service that supports our SMS Gateway. Messages through our gateway are preceded by a period and a colon; if the first character of the message is a capital-O (as in “Overdue”), the :O is interpreted by most messaging clients as a screaming emoji face. Jendretzky solved the “problem” by adding an extra space after the colon.

In January, OpenDNS accidentally disconnected our reseller portal from the library accounts, which removed enterprise licensing for every library for a day. This didn’t disable filters in libraries, just prevented higher level functions on the accounts, such as library logos, bypass codes, etc. It was repaired quickly, resulting in a major outage but with a low profile. Currently, 150 libraries are configured in OPLIN’s OpenDNS service. On January 25, Yarman and Jendretzky spoke with staff of the Wisconsin South Central Library System about OpenDNS filtering for library consortia, which they are considering adopting.

The new Oarnet DDOS perimeter protection is up and running in manual mode. On Monday and Tuesday of this week, the Worthington Library was hit with small attacks for about 10 minutes. On Thursday, it escalated to a 90 minute, 1 Gb attack. The system is actively mitigating all traffic to Worthington now, and we’re monitoring to make sure it doesn’t cause any issues, such as blocking legitimate traffic to and from the library. Our goal is to have automated notification, so that if Oarnet detects suspicious traffic they notify us, we verify against our tools to check for service degradation, and then we can activate mitigation and notify libraries of our action. As discussed, this service is paid for by not getting the usual reduction in cost in our annual bandwidth bill.

Michelle Francis asked if we knew the origins of the attack against Worthington. Distributed Denial of Service attacks are by nature impossible to pinpoint; botnets can be rented for attacks, and it is clear that’s what someone did for this one. OPLIN will work with OLC to provide them the information they need to answer questions about cybersecurity measures in place that protect public libraries.

EZProxy service; some libraries dropping their own local (Cuyahoga County). They individually have to fight the same things we are doing centrally.

Justin Bumbico praised the Co-Location Center with its level of resiliency and security, thanking Jendretzky and Fouts for their support during Columbus Metropolitan Library’s move into the SOCC.

 
9. CHAIR'S REPORT

9.1. Appoint Nominations Committee

Joe Greenward appointed Jill Billman-Royer, Susan Brown, and Travis McAfee to the Nominations Committee. The committee will work with Don Yarman to select candidates to fill current and upcoming vacancies on the OPLIN Board and will develop a slate of proposed officers for election at the August Board meeting.

9.2. Review April planning meeting arrangements

At the request of the Chair, Don Yarman explained the usual procedures for the planning meeting and lunch arrangements. As no extraordinary items requiring extra discussion are anticipated, the Board decided to meet at the usual 10:00 meeting time rather than earlier.

9.3. Ethics training reminder

Board members are reminded that they must complete ethics training each year. Beverly Cain said the Ohio Ethics Commission has just released the link to updated training, and she will send to Don Yarman for distribution to the Board.

 
10. ADJOURNMENT

On motion of Susan Brown and second of Jeff Garringer, the Board adjourned at 11:18 a.m.