Partnership of Automated Libraries in Suffolk

PARTNERSHIP OF AUTOMATED LIBRARIES IN SUFFOLK

Dennis Fabiszak, President Susan LaVista, Secretary

Andrew Hamm, Vice President Richard Rapecis, Treasurer

PALS EXECUTIVE BOARD MEETING MINUTES

Wednesday, July22, 2015

10:00AM in the SCLS Blue Room

Present from the Executive Committee: Dennis Fabiszak, Susan LaVista, Andrew Hamm, Richard Rapecis, Helen Crosson, Liz Burns (for Danielle Waskiewicz)

PALS TAC President: Ann Hofbauer

Present from SCLS: Kevin Verbesey, Ruth Westfall, Eileen Keller and Eric Frank

1)President Dennis Fabiszak called the meeting to order at 10:03 am.

2)Executive Board Minutes—The minutes from the June meeting were approved. (Susan LaVista/Richard Rapecis)

3)Treasure’s Report—Richard Rapecis. The report will be provided at the next meeting.

4)System Update—Ruth Westfall

a)PALS staff is working on bringing Emma Clark into the consortium. Tasks include setting up locations, training staff, restructuring network and frequent visits.

b)Remodeled Gateway—SCLS is reconstructing the current Gateway to make it more user friendly and accessible. Staff is currently sifting through data and remodeling the look with an outside vendor.

c)Call Center—PALS staff is still busy with a regular influx of calls from member libraries

d)Sierra 2.0.1—PALS will be scheduling a Sierra update with Innovative in mid-September

i)We waited for other consortia to test before we implement the change (ALIS)

ii)Afterwards we plan to stay slightly behind the release schedule and not be the first adopters.

e)James Buckman (Computer Services & PALS staff member) will be moving on to the Smithtown library and its branches. Kevin Verbesey/Ruth Westfall thankhim for his many years of wonderful service and flexibility in numerous departments.

5)Committee Reports:

a)Introduction of Ann Hofbauer (Amityville Assistant Director and TAC Chair)

b)TAC—discussed the growing concern of password security and will further discuss and recommend a possible consortium change at the September meeting.

c)Upgrade of Sierra 2.0.1 and TAC members will assist in testing.

d)Approval to change status labels of O/X

i)‘O’ currently reads “see librarian” and X “in library use”

ii)That status labels will be swapped to avoid blocks and overrides

iii)Eileen Keller ran a list and will change the 2,000 items on Friday, July 22, 2015. It will have no change other than behind the scenes.

6)Zone Reports

a)Zone 1—no report

b)Zone 2—no report

c)Zone 3—no report

d)Zone 4—met last week, no PALS related issues

e)Zone 5—no report

7)Old business—None

8)New business

a)Susan LaVista—Hampton Bays library has switched their email provider from SuffolkWeb to Gmail. She has a minor concern that since switching providers they have gotten “bounced” emails for patrons without email addresses. It seems to be courtesy notices. Susan will forward an example. Kevin will have PALS staff look into the report.

9)General Discussion

a)Richard Rapecis offered his services to Dennis Fabiszak if he needs help filtering through the data PALS provided in regards to PALS libraries loaning and borrowing ratios.

b)Ruth Westfall recommended viewing the August webinars on Community Connect as a good refresher with helpful insights.

i)Dennis Fabiszak inquired if Community Connect could incorporate voter registration data for his district and Ruth will investigate.

10)Motion to adjourn (Andrew Hamm/Richard Rapecis)

NEXT MEETING:

Wednesday, August 19, 2015 at 10:00AM in the SCLS Blue Room