1. CALL TO ORDER
This regularly scheduled meeting of the CLAN Steering Committee was called to order by President Regina Slezak at 9:45 A.M. at the Warwick Public Library.

Steering Committee members in attendance: Susan Aylward, Judy Bell, Carol Brouwer, Shirley Long, Laura Marlane, Leslie Page, Regina Slezak, Eileen Socha, Karen Taylor, Kathryn Taylor, Ulla Virks. Absent: Dan Austin, Anne Parent

Also in attendance: Peter Bennett (System Administrator); Cindy St. Amour (Head of Data Processing); Rick Payette (CLAN); John Carney (EPL); Fran Farrell-Bergeron (WWA); Doug Pearce (WAR)

2. MINUTES OF APRIL 27, 2006 STEERING COMMITTEE MEETING
VOTED unanimously to accept the minutes of the April 27, 2006 meeting as presented. (Carol Brouwer, Ulla Virks).

3. SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR'S REPORT (Peter Bennett)
Peter talked about the changeover from Cox to Verizon that will happen at the end of June. Providence will get an additional line (T3) from Verizon as part of this changeover. When the final cutover happens, the individual Cox libraries will be down for about twenty minutes. Advance notice of this event will be posted.

4. CLAN STAFF REPORTS
Rick Payette-Rick reported on the meeting that he and Peter had with Tim Gorham and Keith Lang from the Champlin Foundations. While Tim and Keith did not have a problem with the overall consortium request (for III & Wireless management) of $111,288, they were not pleased with the size of this year's request for individual library technology grants ($805,322). They asked CLAN to cut these by 10%. After discussing various means of making the cuts, Tim and Keith agreed to Rick's proposal to cut computers in this way: if a library asked for five or more computers, it would be cut by one PC for every five computers requested. The Champlin team further outlined a strategy for next year's (2007-08) grant cycle. That request will have to be about half of the amount that will be granted in 06-07. They strongly urge libraries to pursue other means of acquiring computers. Champlin no longer wants to be libraries' only source of funding for technology equipment.
Rick suggested that the Steering Committee might want to incorporate adding a line item in the budget for some portion of technology purchases for individual libraries. Regina Slezak will put this issue on an upcoming agenda for further discussion.

Rick also reported on the DNS switch from Johnson & Wales to RINET and the new CLAN mail server coming online.

Cindy St. Amour-Cindy has been working with various committees on mopping up the migration and preparing for Ann Tally's (III) visit in June. Peter and Cindy will do a Circulation Parameters demonstration at the Warwick Public Library on May 31st at 9:30AM as requested by the Circ Heads Committee. The Reference Issues Committee will meet on June 13th at 2:15 PM at the Warwick Public Library. Cindy asked that members continue to submit questions to the Committees since that is the most helpful method of getting the questions coordinated so that they will be easy to organize for the Ann Tally visit.

5. TREASURER'S REPORT (Shirley Long)
Shirley reported that there is no new information on CLAN finances since the April report was issued prior to the May CLAN membership meeting. We did have a $7,500 savings in the shared database budget line because the Ebsco contract was less than Gale would have been. And there was some savings in the cost of the SIP 2 licenses, since Peter and Kathryn were able to negotiate a lower price.

6. LIB FUTURES ALTERNATE FUNDING SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT
Regina Slezak reported on a call from Bob Aspri (HELIN) wanting CLAN to appoint a representative to the Lib Futures Alternate Funding Subcommittee, which is pursuing other avenues of funding for the bridge between HELIN and CLAN. HELIN does understand that Champlin is not going to be a resource for this project. Bob has negotiated a new price for the initial cost-now 1.1 million dollars instead of 1.3 million. However the ongoing maintenance costs would be roughly $130,000 a year. These would presumably be shared, but no determination has yet been suggested as to how they would be shared. Regina expressed her strong concern about these ongoing costs and it was the consensus of the Steering Committee that we really could not support the project until much more solid and specific information is available. The Steering Committee also agreed that it would be a very good idea for CLAN's representative to the Lib Futures Committee, Eileen Socha, to serve also on this alternate funding subcommittee.

VOTED unanimously to appoint Eileen Socha as CLAN's official representative on the Lib Futures Alternate Funding subcommittee on a motion by Shirley Long, seconded by Kathryn Taylor.

7. CLAN NAME CHANGE
Kathryn Taylor explained that the CLAN name change was removed from the agenda of the May membership meeting because a director had brought up a concern about the pending legislation naming "Cooperative Libraries Automated Network." Also, Kathryn had a sense from some members that the choices of names were not necessarily inspired or inspiring.

After much discussion, it was the consensus of the Steering Committee that it would be helpful to put this project in the hands of marketing and design professionals, not because anyone is interested in making a major financial investment in the project, but because it would be helpful to have some objective advice from people who do this for a living and who could design not only a new name, but also a logo and a tag line to go along with it. Kathryn Taylor knows the head of marketing at GTECH and she is willing to consult with her to see if she might be interested in doing this as a community service project.

8. STRATEGIES TO WELCOME THE NEW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
After discussing several possibilities, the Committee decided to arrange a luncheon directly following the September 14th CLAN membership meeting in Jamestown so that members would have an opportunity to talk with Joan Gillespie and to welcome her to the organization. Fran Farrell-Bergeron volunteered to write a press release to the Providence Journal in early July to coincide with Joan's starting the job as Executive Director.
 
9. OTHER
MINUTES OF STANDARDIZATION COMMITTEE MEETING--President Regina Slezak presented the report of the Standardization Committee, chaired by Chris LaRoux, on the issue of adding new loan periods. Regina explained, and Peter elaborated, on the complex tables that govern each loan period, because each loan period has holds allowed or no holds and renewals or no renewals and each of these variables also has all of the various fine levels attached to it. Before making changes to the existing loan periods, the possible loans periods will be posted for each library to think about their own loan rules and fine levels. Part of this discussion extends to the whole issue of circulation parameters. Many of these decisions were made 10-12 years ago when we migrated from CLSI to Dynix. Many libraries do not even remember what parameters they adopted. Peter is going to work on a chart of parameters that each library can consider. It was suggested that meetings be set up in the regions to discuss all of this.

DATABASE MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE REQUEST
Eileen Socha brought up a request from the DBM Committee to authorize certain members of the committee to merge records. The Steering Committee saw no problem with this since it was the accepted practice when we were using Dynix. Steering Committee members felt the DBM Committee already has the authority to allow its committee members to merge records.

ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS ON SPECIFIC ASPECTS OF III
There were questions on the following:  How holds work-on Horizon, holds were filled on an alphabetical loop; on III, they are filled on a random loop. Statistics-statistics will be compiled as soon as Peter and Cindy have a chance to talk with Ann Tally from III when she visits in June.

10. ADJOURNMENT
VOTED unanimously to adjourn to Executive Session to discuss personnel issues on a motion by Shirley Long, seconded by Carol Brouwer.

11. ADJOURNMENT
The meeting was adjourned at 11:25 AM.

Respectfully submitted,
Susan Aylward
Secretary

Minutes approved 6/22/06.

Next Steering Committee meeting, June 25, 2006, 9:30AM, Small Meeting Room, Warwick Public Library