LPC Minutes--September 15, 2004

LINC Policy Council Meeting Minutes (not yet approved)
September 15, 2004

Members Present: Glenna White, Rick Dulaney, Anne Newman, Barb Turner, Lynn Schmit, Scott Drone-Silvers, Cynthia Helms, Mary Bissey, Fred Sclipf, Jan Ison

Members Not Present: Alice Cisna

LTLS Staff: Pat Boze, Donna Schaal, Joe Sciacca

Others Present: Deb Lissak, Marsha Grove

Scott called the meeting to order at 2:10 p.m. Pat mentioned that the posted minutes of the July 16 meeting had an error under LINC Policies Discussion - the "General--Peripherals" should be in the group of policies to be rescinded, not edited. The minutes were then approved. Jan gave members additional handouts on the LINC Governance and a comparison chart of Dynix and Horizon software that had been prepared for a recent Urbana Free Library board meeting.

LINC Financial Update
Jan gave a summary of the current balance in the Automation equity Fund, which is used to purchase capital improvements and pay for upgrades. The balance is $313,296.73. We still do not know the general state-allocated LTLS FY2005 budget.

Minor Policy Revisions
The policy rescinsions and revisions discussed at the July meeting were revisited. Pat explained that during migration, LINC tried to follow existing LINC policies as much as possible; however, there are many that are now no longer applicable. After a short explanation of the four policies to be rescinded (General—Peripherals, General—Peripheral Maintenance, General—Policy on Dial Access for Libraries, and Serials—Serial Publication Patterns), Lynn moved, seconded by Barb, that these policies be rescinded. After a short discussion of the policies to be editied, Lynn moved, seconded by Fred, that these policies be edited to reflect minor changes with the implementation of Horizon.

LINC Update
Pat gave an update on LINC. Much of August was spent enhancing and customizing LINCPac. However, when LINCPac became unstable during the week of September 6, the restoration of LINCPac all of the customization to disappear. Dynix is working to restore the lost customization and has put together a ‘tiger’ team to work on the instability of LINCPac and has given it a very high priority. Marsha Grove indicated their frustration with LINCPac and said that Dynix should offer some monetary compensation for all that has happened. She would also like a written explanation of what caused the problems we experienced.
LTLS staff installed WebReporter on August 26 and has been extensively testing the product. Scott suggested an FAQ to help staff understand initial questions about getting started with WebReporter. The product is targeted for release for the end of September.

Communication Update
The format for LINC Update has been changed to look more like QC and will be published biweekly on Tuesdays. Pat noted that the FAQ page has a new interface that allows users to search for questions. She also noted that LTLS staff has been working on compiling a database of all the questions received from libraries.

Holds Discussion
Urbana Free Library presented a position paper asking that a current LINC policy that doesn’t allow local holds be revisited. Barb Turner asked for a definition of local holds: this is where certain types of materials owned by a particular library can only be requested by patrons of that library. There was much discussion about the issue of local holds and the positive and negative impact it could have on individual libraries and the system as a whole. Issues included:

What effect does this have on the free flow of materials within the consortium?

If a library implements this for their patrons, should their patrons be allowed to request these types of materials from other libraries?

How do we define the types of materials? Should it include bestsellers only or all new materials?

Is this a solution for creating a ‘browsing’ collection in a library?

How difficult will this be to set up and what impact will it have on other holds rules that are currently in place?

Is this the best possible patron service?

Scott indicated that there would be no decision at this meeting. First, we need to determine all that is possible within Horizon itself and within the holds matrix that will contain these rules. Scott asked Pat to work with Horizon to determine what is possible technically. Jan asked that the libraries not currently filling holds either begin to fill holds or else use a dummy barcode to get books out of transit status, thus placing patrons back on the hold list. There was discussion about a special meeting to discuss this issue again before the regularly scheduled November meeting but then members agreed to discuss it at the November meeting. It was also decided that the length of time an item remains on the holds shelf needs to be addressed.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:50 pm. The next meeting of LINC Policy Council is November 10, 2004, at 1:30 pm.