The meeting was convened by Vice Chair Carol Brouwer at 9:40 AM.  
Attendees:

Committee members:
        
        Susan Aylward, Secretary and NKI
        Peter Bennett, Central Site Rep
        Carol Brouwer, Vice Chair and NSM
        John Carney, Regional Rep and EPL
        Leslie McDonough, Treasurer and SCI
        Anne Parent, OLIS Rep
        Doug Pearce, Regional Rep and WAR
        Regina Slezak, Regional Rep and NPT
        Ulla Virks, Regional Rep and CHA

CLAN administration:
        Peter Bennett, Systems and Network Administrator
        Ginny Moses, Executive Director
        Richard Payette, Technical Support Specialist
        Cindy St. Amour, Head Data Processing

Others:
        Dan Austin, PRO
        Deborah Barchi, BAR
        Donna DiMichele, DSL
        Laura Dixon, WWA
        David Macksam, CRA

1.   Previous minutes were unanimously accepted

2.   The Committee did not go into executive session.  Peter managed an acceptable settlement with DYNIX. Details are available from the Executive Director.  The Committee was unanimous in its approval of the terms and commended Peter for a job well-done.

3.   Treasurer's report for FY04:  Leslie presented the final budget cash flow report for FY04.  There were no questions.

4.   Leslie McDonough presented the proposed CLAN budget and fee schedule for FY06. There is a 4.8% increase overall.  She explained that NELINET costs are for our cataloging with OCLC and our membership in NELINET. The cost does not include First Search.

Final salaries for PRO employees will not be final until July 2005, as per Dan Austin, but he sees our projections as reasonable.

Erate and reserve fund were discussed.  Past erate rebate had been allowed to accumulate as a capital fund so that we can ask Champlin Foundations for less money.

With the approval of our CPA CLAN doesn't keep the reserve fund in a separate account.

If we had stayed with DYNIX our maintenance cost on this budget would have been $140K, rather than Horizon's $95K.

Peter indicated that creating reports with Web Reporter is easy for the end users but an arduous procedure for him to set up.  WR should make next year's reports to OLIS much easier to prepare.  You should be able to choose which stats you want to track (as Peter says, "at least in theory.")

  ***Motion by Doug to recommend the budget as presented to the Membership.
  ***Second by Susan
  ***Discussion:  Doug commends the Finance Committee and CLAN Administrators for a job well-done preparing a workable budget with controlled costs.  Special praise was given to Elaine Clark, CLAN's Administrative Assistant, for her superior records-keeping.
  ***Unanimously passed.

5.   Peter reported that he has spoken with Bob Aspri of HELIN regarding CLAN's participation in InRhode to create a common user interface (virtual catalog). The figures III had given Bob previously were not correct and are in fact much higher:  similar to what Peter had reported before.  Bob is working on getting exact numbers, but as of now we would have these options:
  
    a. buy a server and software licenses for an estimated $500K to $600K, then pay an annual maintenance fee of an estimated $75K per year
    b. Lease the system at an initial $24K, plus $24K per library (or maybe per site) per year ($1,896,000 initially, $1,872,000 annually thereafter)

Donna has also been working on this project, and reports that NELINET is interested in states that want virtual catalogs.  Come to the November 16 LORI meeting and see a demo of OCLC's product that does the same thing.  Maybe competition will change III's costs. III reps should come to RI libraries and demonstrate their product.

The $500K would be for hardware and software.  After that we might need to pay $75K a year for maintenance. HELIN should share the maintenance cost, but it depends on the server situation. Websites to view demos will be posted.

Peter told us that Cox Cable is still with us.  They have been problematic and not forthcoming with information. Verizon was good to us and didn't cut us off when we had problems with Cox.

The telecommunications pool is in financial trouble.  The formula that the legislators voted on for obtaining funding had exemptions that make the reserves telephone bills surcharge less than expected.  Also, erate has nearly bankrupted the pool. Verizon and Cox want to be paid. So the costs of lines were so much more than expected that the pool needs us to use cheaper COX lines. Cox libraries that had 384K lines will be getting the good network cards that go into the routers. The old 384s that were to be converted to T1 lines will have to stay as 384s as there is no $$ in the pool.

Oshean is changing the ISP vendors it uses. The main effect on CLAN is that we will have to point our two internal DNS servers at different IP addresses (probably at Johnson & Wales). CLAN Member libraries will not have to change any of the DNS information on their desktop or server systems.  However, libraries who have their websites hosted on the CLAN web server at Providence (located internally at 204.17.98.73), and who also have their domain hosted through CLAN, will have to update the DNS records at the company where they purchased the domain (e.g., Network Solutions). When the changeover takes place, a notice will be posted on clan.message

"Transit to and Transit from" custom programming is up.

6.   Executive Director's report:  as posted on CLAN message.

7.   Organization Study Committee will meet at WAR on December 2 at 9:30 AM.  Ginny provided Steering members with copies of CLAN's Articles of Incorporation and by-laws for several New England library consortia.

8.   Questions for CLAN staff regarding reports:

Patrons stay logged on to HIP terminals for 2 hours before timing out and Debbie believes that is too long and creates confusion and problems.   When a HIP station is left for too long a period it reverts to the PRO HIP. (NOTE:  Discussion ensued, but it was recommended that we check with Rick, who had had to leave the meeting on a service call, about options.  He has said that many libraries in CLAN are using Public Web Browser and that solves the problem.) The Membership will discuss the situation.

***Motion by Regina:  have Peter set the timeout on HIP to 5 minutes
  ***Second by John
  ***No discussion
  ***Unanimously passed.

9.   EPL is using the Home Service Module at the Fuller Branch.  It is an add-on to the Circulation module.  It tracks reading lists and delivery schedules.  Cost is about $11,600, one-time and $1 to 2K annually for maintenance.  Anne suggested that LORI may be interested in finding funding.

***Motion to adjourn by Leslie, Second by Ulla, at 10:55 AM.