OHIO
PUBLIC LIBRARY INFORMATION NETWORK (OPLIN)
ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-SECOND REGULAR MEETING of the BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Minutes
— June 8, 2012
1. WELCOME and CALL TO ORDER
The one hundred thirty-second meeting of the Ohio Public Library
Information Network (OPLIN) Board of Trustees was called to order at
10:00 a.m. on Friday, June 8, 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, Karen Davis, Jamie
Mason, Sandi Plymire, Becky Schultz, and Jeff Wale.
Also present were: Stephen Hedges, Laura Solomon, and Karl
Jendretzky (OPLIN);
and David Namiotka (State Library).
2. APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA
Jeff Wale requested approval of the meeting agenda.
Jason Buydos motioned to approve the
agenda as presented; Jill Billman-Royer seconded. All aye.
3. PUBLIC PARTICIPATION
David Namiotka answered a few questions about the transition of
statewide library deliveries from Pitt Ohio to Priority Dispatch.
4. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES of April 13
meeting
Jeff Wale requested approval of the minutes of the April 13 Board
meeting.
Sandi Plymire motioned to approve the
minutes of the April 13 meeting as presented; Karen Davis
seconded. All aye.
5. ACCEPTANCE OF THE FINANCIAL REPORTS
In the absence of Jamie Pardee, Stephen Hedges presented the
Financial Reports as of May 31, 2012.
Report A covered fiscal years 2010 and 2011, both of which have now
been closed. In Report B for FY2012, Stephen reviewed the available
balances remaining as the end of the fiscal year approaches. He also
reported on budget items that will remain the same next year — Hannah
and Gongwer subscriptions, and the eTech contract for E-rate support —
and things that will change — the contract with Past, Present and
Future will not be renewed, and filtering grants have been discontinued
in favor of OpenDNS.
In Report C, Stephen called attention to the large cash balance as
of May 31 resulting from the receipt this fiscal year of E-rate
reimbursements that had previously been denied.
Gary Branson motioned to accept the
Financial Reports; Ben Chinni seconded. All aye.
6. OLD BUSINESS
6.1. OPLIN replacement cost calculator
Stephen Hedges provided the Board with a spreadsheet calculating how
much it would cost libraries to purchase the basic services currently
provided by OPLIN, as per the Board's request from the April meeting.
Stephen explained how the costs for Internet access and EBSCOhost were
determined; he also explained why calculating individual library costs
for NewsBank proved to be both very complex and speculative, so these
costs were not included in the spreadsheet.
Stephen suggested that this information was valuable for showing
some of the overall cost savings to libraries realized through OPLIN,
and also to answer queries from individual libraries. He did not feel
there was any value in generally publishing the spreadsheet, since only
a couple of libraries have questioned OPLIN's value.
After some discussion about the data in the spreadsheet, the
consensus of the Board was to use the information as needed when
communicating with library directors and legislators.
In response to a question about the status of OPLIN efforts to
coordinate services with OH-TECH, Stephen replied that the current plan
is to work closely with them as the next biennium budget is developed,
which should be starting soon.
6.2. Strategic Plan
Stephen Hedges presented the final draft of the Strategic Plan for
FY 2013-2014 and reviewed the major changes from the current plan. In
most cases, the changes were additions that recognize current aspects
of OPLIN and services to libraries that were not in previous plans.
There was discussion of the change to the objective, "Provide
Internet bandwidth to every OPLIN participant," which added language
about providing larger circuits at the request of a library. Since this
also would be part of a policy discussion under agenda item 6.4,
the Chair requested that item 6.4 be taken up at this point, being
relevant to the current discussion.
Item 6.4 was inserted at this point.
6.4 Extending OPLIN policy
Stephen Hedges presented proposed changes to the "Policy on
Extending OPLIN to Other Public
Institutions" that would allow libraries to share a larger OPLIN
circuit with other community organizations without restrictions, so
long as the library reimbursed OPLIN for 1) additional circuit capacity
beyond what OPLIN would normally provide to the library, and 2) the
additional Internet bandwidth used by the other organizations.
The Board extensively discussed the implications of such a change,
as well as the ability to verify that a library was not abusing the
policy. Jason Buydos noted that, while there currently is not a lot of interest in such shared
connections, if libraries begin planning to share their space with
other organizations, they are likely to offer to share Internet access,
too. Unless the internal library network was intentionally set up to
segregate Internet traffic, such sharing would be invisible to OPLIN.
The Board generally agreed that this proposed policy change deserved
very careful thought, since it affects aspects of public library
service that are evolving, and that some means of verification needed
to be incorporated. The Chair tabled this item for further discussion
at the next Board meeting.
Discussion now returned to Item 6.2.
6.2. Strategic Plan (resumed)
Discussion of the Strategic Plan resumed. In light of the prior
discussion, Jeff Wale asked Stephen Hedges if a delay or another draft
of the plan was needed. Stephen felt that there would be no problem
with simply removing the entire paragraph that dealt with over-sized
OPLIN connections from the plan, since that issue could be addressed in
the separate "Extending OPLIN" policy.
Stephen then completed the review of changes and additions, with no
further questions from the Board.
Ben Chinni motioned to approve the
Strategic Plan as presented and amended; Don Barlow seconded.
Recorded vote: Don Barlow, aye; Jill
Billman-Royer, aye; Gary
Branson, aye; Jason Buydos, aye; Ben Chinni, aye; Karen Davis, aye;
Jamie
Mason, aye; Sandi Plymire, aye; Becky Schultz, aye; and Jeff Wale, aye.
Discussion returned briefly to the
"Extending OPLIN" policy and how much enforcement might be necessary.
6.3. SMS proposal
Stephen Hedges reminded the Board of the problems with the text
messaging (SMS) service for libraries that were discussed at the April
meeting. At that meeting, the Board asked Stephen and Karl Jendretzky
to quickly investigate options for moving the messaging service to a
commercial plan and develop a procedure to recoup the cost from
libraries using the service.
A commercial service has been engaged that will cost OPLIN about
$3,300 per year at current messaging rates. Stephen presented a
proposed plan to sell blocks of messages to libraries; most libraries
would pay $24 for a block that would last them multiple
years. The entire system, except for invoicing the libraries, could be
automated.
Since the cost of the commercial service was lower than expected,
Jeff Wale asked if it would not be more sensible to avoid staff time
involved in invoicing libraries and simply cover the messaging cost
from the OPLIN budget. While other Board members agreed, some pointed
out that as usage of the service grows, OPLIN may want to revisit such
a practice.
Jason Buydos motioned to provide SMS
messaging as a free service to public libraries until the cost to OPLIN
reached $10,000 per year, at which point this decision would be
reconsidered by the Board; Don Barlow seconded.
Recorded vote: Don Barlow, aye; Jill
Billman-Royer, aye; Gary
Branson, aye; Jason Buydos, aye; Ben Chinni, aye; Karen Davis, aye;
Jamie
Mason, abstain; Sandi Plymire, aye; Becky Schultz, aye; and Jeff Wale,
aye.
7. NEW BUSINESS
7.1. Website Kits pricing
Stephen Hedges noted that is has always been the intention of OPLIN
to recoup the considerable staff costs involved in constructing and
maintaining the Website Kits for libraries. Based on the experience of
the past couple of years, it is clear that the current prices for
Website Kits are much too low to cover staff costs. Stephen presented
cost and revenue projections through fiscal year 2018 which projected
that OPLIN could cover staff costs by raising the price of the basic
kit from $300 to $795, and adding $40 per year to maintenance costs
until they reach $340 per year.
Board members expressed their belief that the Website Kits are a
great service, and will still be a bargain at the proposed new prices.
Don Barlow motioned to approve the
proposed price increase for Website Kits; Jill
Billman-Royer seconded.
Recorded vote: Don Barlow, aye; Jill
Billman-Royer, aye; Gary
Branson, abstain; Jason Buydos, aye; Ben Chinni, aye; Karen Davis, aye;
Jamie
Mason, aye; Sandi Plymire, aye; Becky Schultz, aye; and Jeff Wale, aye.
Board members noted that prices could go up in the future if
it is determined that this new pricing is still too low.
7.2. Digitization project
Stephen Hedges reported that he had a conversation with the
Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County and the State Library
about expanding the Cincinnati Virtual Library project to include new
locations at the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library and the Cleveland
Public Library. Stephen felt that this would be a good project for
OPLIN involvement, since it involves making electronic information
available online to the public, and he also noted that there may
be an opportunity to collaborate with the OhioLINK Digital Resource
Commons in this project. Jason Buydos explained the Cincinnati project
in detail and the developing plans to expand it to Toledo and
Cleveland, and eventually other locations, and answered many questions
from the Board.
Stephen asked the Board if they would entertain a proposal in the
future to use some E-rate reimbursement funds — probably about $250,000
to $300,000 — to match federal Library Services and Technology Act
(LSTA)
funds to support expansion of the Cincinnati digitization project. The
Board expressed great interest in entertaining such a proposal.
7.3. Draft "OPLIN overview"
Stephen Hedges presented a two-page summary of OPLIN and OPLIN
services for Board review; this was drafted in response to a request at
the April Board meeting. The Board was pleased with the document and
suggested no changes.
8. OPLIN DIRECTOR'S REPORT
Stephen Hedges reported on a productive meeting with John Conley,
Chief of P-20 Educational Technology at the Board of Regents, and Lynda
Murray to share information and ideas. All parties intend to stay in
touch during the process of developing the next biennial budget to
identify partnership opportunities. He also informed the Board about
the State Library award of LSTA funds to support the Ohio Web Library
collection for another year, and the development of another contract
with the eTech Commission for E-rate assistance to OPLIN and the public
libraries.
Regarding OPLIN office activities, Stephen highlighted his visits to
the Ohio Library Council (OLC) Legislative Day and the ETM Libraries
meeting at the West Chester library, Laura Solomon's presentations at
the OLC North and SE/Central Chapter Conferences, and Karl Jendretzky's
onsite work at Southwest Public Libraries.
8.1. Technology Projects Manager report
Karl Jendretzky explained some of his work to rebuild the SMS
messaging software and the server that hosts the OPLIN listservs. He
has also reconfigured the email server used by public library staff to
increase security. The project to replace the routers at the libraries
is over half complete, although some shipping problems have caused
delays. There are now forty-seven libraries using the OpenDNS content
filtering service. Karl also reported that the Office of Information
Technology is planning to assign a very large block of the state's IPv6
addresses to OPLIN.
Item 8.3 was presented out of order.
8.3. Database usage
Stephen Hedges reported that usage of the databases was stronger
than expected in May, although there was a slight decline compared to
last May if Ancestry Library Edition and Mango Language usage is not
included.
8.2. Library Services Manager report
Laura Solomon reported that forty-five libraries are actively using
Website Kits, ten more are waiting for libraries to complete their
training and content writing, and another ten are under construction. She plans to do some
major feature upgrades later this year, as well as an upgrade to the
next version of Drupal.
9. CHAIR'S REPORT
9.1. Board officers slate
Jeff Wale noted that there was no Nominating Committee needed this
year, so in its place the Executive Committee will propose the
following slate of Board officers for election at the August meeting:
Jamie Mason, Chair; Jason Buydos, Vice-Chair; Karl Colón, Secretary;
and Gary Branson, Treasurer.
9.2. Director's evaluation results
Jeff Wale asked Jamie Mason to report on the Director's evaluations
received from all the Board members. Jamie reported that in every area
and on every evaluation, the Director met or exceeded Board
expectations;
he also shared the general comments attached to the evaluations.
Jeff also noted that this has been the most volatile year in his
experience on the OPLIN Board, and he commended Stephen on his
leadership. Stephen likewise expressed his great appreciation for the
time and effort Jeff dedicated to OPLIN during a difficult year.
10. ADJOURNMENT
The Chair asked if there was any more
business. None appearing, the Chair adjourned the meeting at 11:58 a.m.