1. CALL TO ORDER:  This regularly scheduled meeting of the OSL Steering Committee was called to order by President Susan Aylward at 9: 40 AM in the Ocean State Libraries Office.

Present were:  Cheryl Abouelaziz, Jon Anderson, Susan Aylward, Howard Boksenbaum, Becky Boragine, Carol Brouwer, Joan Gillespie, Leslie McDonough, Eileen Socha, and Ulla Virks.

Absent:  Shirley Long, Laura Marlane, Amy Neilson, and Leslie Page.

Also Present:  David Macksam, John Carney and Cynthia St. Amour.

2)  MINUTES OF THE JULY 10, 2008 MEETING:

Voted to approve the minutes on a motion by Ulla Virks, seconded by Jon Anderson.

3)  TREASURERS REPORT: Shirley Long
There were no questions on the report Shirley submitted.

4)  EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS REPORT: Joan Gillespie

Joan's report addressed the following issues:
Blue Cross: Joan reported that she has been informed by Blue Cross that their rates have increased 4.6%, less than anticipated.  They will sign up for the same plan.  
Symantic: Joan reported that although Symantic antivirus had quoted us renewal would cost $13,000, the renewal invoice came in at $10,800.
RINET:  Joan has a call into RINET, their bill was also lower than expected, by almost $5K.  She has paid the lower amount.
Staff:  An OSL staff member who has been on sick leave has a doctor's note with a return date of September 8th.  If she gets the okay from the doctor, she may return on a part time basis beforehand.
Installation: Installation dates for the following items have been set; WebPacPro is scheduled for Wednesday September 3rd, Research Pro during the week of September 8th, Encore should be installed the week of October 7th.

5)  System Staff Reports:  There was a question about Peter's report.  Peter's report mentioned that he set up or tweaked loan rules for certain libraries.  It had been agreed in the past that we should try to standardize and all changes should be brought to Steering.  Joan will talk to Peter and find out more information.

6)  Lib Futures Committee Report: Eileen Socha
Howard reported on his correspondences with Peter Lewiss.  Rep. Lewiss doesn't feel that the commission's work is done even though the legislature has not renewed the commissions charge.

7) Old Business:

a) Statewide Reference Service-Tutor.com and EBSCO Databases:
Providence Public Library has purchased Tutor.com and World Book with state-wide licensing, with the monies given to them by the legislature for providing statewide reference services. Currently negotiations are underway with EBSCO for the purchase of many of their products for statewide licensing.

b) Tiverton follow-up
Cheryl Abouelaziz had previously brought up the possibility that the Town of Tiverton may go bankrupt and the library may be cut or closed.  Thankfully this year's budget passed.   There was a discussion about which authority should take responsibility for telling a town they need to support library service.  This will be put on the agenda for September's Membership meeting.

8) New Business:
a) Streaming video: The streaming video issue is more complicated than previously expressed. Raising the priority of streaming video now will have serious ramifications on both the budget and service.  OSL currently has a 40MB connection which hits 100% use in the afternoons.  As an experiment, Peter changed the priority of streaming video and there is some indication that is what caused a recent system malfunction. Joan and her staff are looking at both long-term and short-term solutions for how we might be able to provide this service.

b) Fee structure:  Susan Aylward
A new funding formula and fee schedule has been presented to Steering. We are trying to come up with a fair funding formula that represents a measure of usage of the system and its resources and takes individual library operations into consideration. It also must be implementable without hardship for libraries whose fees will increase as a result of the re-calculation. It is expected that we'll need more than one meeting to think and talk about this. So the September meeting will give us a chance to have the formula presented and explained and we can have some preliminary discussion about it and then we'll probably want to schedule another membership meeting in early October to look at the formula in terms of the FY 2010 budget and to take a vote at that time

c) Regional Reps:
Thanks go out to the regional representatives, especially Cheryl, for keeping their region members informed through sending the agenda and writing up a recap of what took place.  .

c) Change September Steering to October 2, 2008
The September Steering meeting has been changed to October 2, 2008.

ADJOURNMENT;

The meeting was adjourned at 11:15 AM

Respectfully submitted:
Becky A. Boragine, Secretary
Next Meeting:  Membership September 11, 2008 at 9:30 AM in Exeter;
Steering October 2, 2008 at 9:30 AM in the OSL Offices