1. CALL TO ORDER
This regularly scheduled meeting of the CLAN Steering Committee was called to order by President Regina Slezak at 9:35 A.M. at the Warwick Public Library.

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

Also in attendance: Joan Gillespie (CLAN); John Carney (EPL), Doug Pearce (WAR); Pat Redfearn (WRR)

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

3. TREASURER'S REPORT-Shirley Long
Shirley Long went over the Treasurer's Report dated August 31, 2006. To date, CLAN has spent $464,802 of the $1,557,585 budgeted figure. Some of the $464,802 in expenditures is actually for the fourth quarter of FY 05-06; they show up on this report because of the date when the bill was paid. To date, CLAN has received $260,446.73 of the $1,557,585 budgeted figure. Shirley reported that Elaine has sent the FY 05-06 information to CLAN's accountant, Bob Allen. He usually does the audit in October. He will make a presentation to the Finance Committee and then to the Steering Committee. The Steering Committee had no questions for Shirley on her report.

4. EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR'S REPORT-Joan Gillespie
The Steering Committee read the written report from Peter, Cindy, and Rick that Joan had provided in the packets for the Committee. There were no questions on this report. Joan re-iterated that there is no perfect system. The questions we have to address as a consortium are: How can we make the system work to do what we want it to do? What can the system do for us today that we're not utilizing properly? How can we use it better? How can we communicate our needs to Triple I for future program enhancements? Most of the issues Joan wanted to address were separate items on the agenda.

5. OLD BUSINESS
STANDARDIZATION ISSUES-At Chris LaRoux's request, Joan, Chris, and Regina met to discuss the standardization issues that have arisen from the standardization committee's attempt to simplify the loan parameter table. Taking the results of the survey that Chris did of member libraries and their loan parameters, not only has he been unable to reduce the loan parameter table, member libraries want to add more customized loan parameters. The size of the loan parameter table directly affects the efficiency of the system. In their informal discussion of the issues, Joan, Chris, and Regina felt that the questions need to be isolated rather than trying to look at all of the parameters and their permutations simultaneously. They recommend that the membership look first at the issue of grace periods and Chris will be prepared to discuss this one issue at the CLAN membership meeting next week. Joan reminded the Steering Committee that standardization is an important issue. The more we can agree to do business together similarly, the better it will be and the more efficiently the system will run.

Joan also expressed concern that member libraries are establishing workarounds to circumvent the rules and the standard parameters that have been approved by the full membership. These workarounds undermine what we're trying to accomplish. Joan will be issuing a notice for e-mail distribution asking member libraries not to circumvent the rules in this way.

STATISTICS-Statistics continues to be an issue of concern to everyone. It is unclear what the system is counting, particularly in the area of "loaned to" and "borrowed from" statistics. In the most recent version of compiling these statistics, some libraries have found their statistics to be lower than expected. Joan reported that Peter will be prepared to explain statistics at the membership meeting next week. Everyone on the Steering Committee agreed that we all need to understand what the system is counting; we need to identify what it is we want and need to count; we need to see how the system can provide that information; then we need to have a workshop to explain statistics to the members.

CLAN NAME CHANGE-Joan reported that Susan Strouse, the PR professional working with the Westerly Public Library on its capital campaign, has agreed to help CLAN come up with a new name. Joan presented five possible names, logos, and taglines that Susan Strouse had provided. The Steering Committee discussed the possibilities, but did not feel that any of the choices was compelling enough to take to the membership at this point. There was discussion about whether CLAN needs a corporate identity; whether the name should also be an acronym; the importance of the tag line as opposed to the name itself. Joan pointed out that some of the neighboring consortia have names that are actual words, one or two meaningful words, for instance: Minuteman, Library Connection, Libraries Online, and Bibliomation. She will be back in touch with Susan Strouse with the feedback from the Steering Committee.

ST. GEORGE'S SCHOOL-The Steering Committee continued its previous discussion of the possibility of taking on new members, which are not public libraries, such as St. George's School.  Joan has talked with Bob Aspri of HELIN, since HELIN has also been approached by St. George's. HELIN does offer affiliate memberships, which is an avenue CLAN might want to investigate. Steering Committee members expressed their continuing interest and concern over such issues as multi-type versus public libraries only and how this would affect governance, advocacy, and funding; access to collections of other types of libraries; the number of additional members that could be accommodated before the CLAN staff would need to be expanded; the impact of possible competition with HELIN for additional members.

6. NEW BUSINESS
CLAN MEMBERSHIP MEETING AGENDA-The Steering Committee agreed on the agenda for next week's membership meeting.

7. OTHER
HEALTH CARE FOR CLAN EMPLOYEES-CLAN recently switched to a new Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan that has produced budget savings. Because of an inherent inequity in the system for co-paying, Joan did a cost analysis of three methods of co-paying for health care. She recommended that CLAN adopt the model in use at the Newport Public Library which is a 90/10 split, employees paying 10% of their health coverage, with the co-pay capped at 2% of the employee's gross pay.

VOTED unanimously to accept Joan's recommendation to follow the Newport Public Library model for health care co-payment using the 90/10 split with a cap of 2% on the employee's gross pay on a motion by Dan Austin, seconded by Shirley Long.  

ATRION CONTRACT-In continuing her look at all of CLAN's contracts, Joan feels that we need to make some adjustments in our contract with Atrion. She outlined her plan of action for the Steering Committee, which the Committee felt was a good idea.

8. ADJOURNMENT
The meeting was adjourned at 11:30 AM.

Respectfully submitted,
Susan Aylward
Secretary
Minutes approved as presented 9/21/2006