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: Susan Aylward, Judy Bell, Shirley Long, Laura Marlane, Leslie Page, Regina Slezak, Eileen Socha, Karen Taylor, Kathryn Taylor, Ulla Virks. Absent: Dan Austin, Howard Boksenbaum,  Carol Brouwer

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

2. MINUTES OF THE JANUARY 25, 2007 MEETING
VOTED unanimously to accept the minutes of the January 25, 2007 as presented. (Taylor, Marlane).

3. TREASURER'S REPORT (Shirley Long)
The Treasurer's report was unchanged since the February 8th membership meeting. There were no additional questions.

4. EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR'S REPORT-Joan Gillespie
Joan reported on the following issues/items:
a. She has met with her counterparts in Connecticut library consortia.
b. She has had discussions with the Overdrive representative to talk about taking Overdrive CLAN-wide.
c. She has interviewed 5 candidates for the part-time cataloger position.
d. She has been discussing CLAN's financial accounts with a Bank of America VP.
e. She has engaged a lawyer to help with the details of the name change.
f. She would like to explore the possibility of using left over Champlin Funds from this year's grant to purchase the modules for the packet shapers that will allow libraries to segment their own server traffic from wireless traffic. It will cost $15,225 for all libraries to have this module. The consensus of the Steering Committee was that it would be fine for Joan to ask Champlin to use remaining Champlin funds for this purpose.
g. She will have lunch with Dorothy Frechette on Monday to discuss CLAN/RILINK concerns.
h. Cindy, Peter, & Renee had a conference call with Triple I about teleforms. The top teleforms guy at Innovative has been assigned to our problem. The upshot is the extra messages that we would need to make the product work more efficiently for us are not as burdensome as originally thought. If Innovative can resolve the problems, then we could consider buying the additional 72 messages that we would need.
i. She has talked with the St. George's librarian who is ready to go once the contract is firmed up.

5. SYSTEM STAFF REPORTS (Peter Bennett, Cindy St. Amour, Rick Payette, Ken Corsetti)
The Steering Committee did not have questions for Joan on the written reports from CLAN System staff that had been distributed prior to the meeting.
6. COMMITTEE REPORTS (Circ, LIT, Database Management, Reference & Childrens')
The Steering Committee did not have questions on the committee reports that had been distributed prior to the meeting. The Steering Committee discussed the need to look at all of the committee/working group charges to be sure that there is a clear understanding of the roles of each committee and working group particularly in the area of procedures, policies, and recommendations for changes in such.

7. LIB FUTURES COMMITTEE REPORT (Eileen Socha)
Eileen did not really have more to report than what had been discussed at the February 8th general membership meeting.

8. OLD BUSINESS
a. PAWTUCKET PUBLIC LIBRARY PROPOSAL-The Steering Committee discussed the Pawtucket Public Library proposal. Since there are not solid details about the number of books to be added to the database, the Steering Committee cannot yet place a value on what costs are involved. Joan has asked Patience to talk with the Pawtucket staff to get some additional information before she can negotiate terms.
b. IMPLEMENTING THE CLAN NAME CHANGE-Joan presented a tweaked version of the logo that eliminated the text over the wave, which was distracting to the eye. She presented a number of promotional materials that are available. The Committee authorized up to $2,000 for promotional materials. It was decided to have a cake at the May annual meeting to celebrate the name change.
9. NEW BUSINESS
a. ONE DAY ORGANIZATION WORKSHOP-Joan has been talking with consultants about conducting a one-day seminar to help CLAN define how we see ourselves-the question that Peter posed at the February 8th membership meeting. VOTED to give Joan the authority to hire a consultant, with a budget of up to $2,500,  for a date in April or May to facilitate CLAN's discussion of its future direction. (Bell, Marlane).
b. SENDING CLAN STAFF TO CONFERENCES-After discussing the various conference options and the need to establish a policy that defines conference attendance, with reporting requirements attached, VOTED unanimously to fund Rick's and Ken's attendance at Computers in Libraries in Washington, D.C. in March and Patience and Reva's attendance at the NELA Tech Services conference at the College of the Holy Cross. (Bell, Socha).
c. APPROACHING CHAMPLIN ABOUT CHANGING WHERE SOME OF THE MONEY WILL BE SPENT-Discussed during Joan's Executive Director's report. The consensus of the Committee was that this is a fine idea.
d. OVERDRIVE (Chris LaRoux)-Chris and Joan presented the idea to have Overdrive become a basic core service. As individual subscribers, libraries pay from $2,500 to $4,500 per year for this downloadable content provider. Of those fees, roughly $1,000 is a system cost, the rest is devoted to content. The cost to add all of CLAN would be $19,200 per year for the system fees. Then each library could devote as much or as little as it could afford to content. Everybody's content would be available to everyone system-wide. The $19,200 would be apportioned according to the existing funding formula. After a great deal of discussion, the Steering Committee VOTED to recommend to the membership at the May meeting that we adopt Overdrive network-wide and to use the established funding formula to apportion the costs. (Karen Taylor, Kathryn Taylor).
e. WORLDNET (Pat Redfearn)-Pat Redfearn asked the Steering Committee to consider adding something like Worldnet as a replacement e-mail for the LORI e-mail system so that all of CLAN would have the same e-mail extension. Most Steering Committee members preferred to have their own library's e-mail extension and Joan re-iterated the fact that CLAN does not have the staff to support the time commitment required to administer the e-mail accounts for all staff in every library.
10. OTHER-Joan talked about a concern she has about medical benefits in relation to CLAN's part-time positions and wondered if it would be acceptable for her to offer that part-time employees can buy their own benefits at CLAN's group rate by joining the CLAN health group. The consensus of the Steering Committee was that this was an acceptable idea.

11. ADJOURNMENT
The meeting was adjourned at 11:50 AM.

Respectfully submitted,
Susan Aylward, Secretary