Sheila M. Riley, FEDLINK Advisory Council (FAC) DRAFT Minutes of the FAC Meeting - February 17, 1999 FAC Present: FLICC/FEDLINK Present: Maxine Brown (Chair) Susan Tarr Louise LeTendre Milton MeGee Bonnie Klein Ruby Thomas Denise Lomax Sheila Riley Fred Rettenmaier Carla Pomager Ken Nero (Vice-Chair) Cheryl Thomas AGENDA1. Election of New FAC Officers FAC 2. Approval of the December 16, 1999 FAC Meeting Minutes -- FAC 3. FAC Issues and Topics -- Maxine Brown, Chair 4. Status of Customer Service Initiatives Ruby Thomas 5. CY99 Performance Report/CY2000 FLICC/FEDLINK Performance Plan -- Susan M. Tarr 6. Report on the February OCLC Users Council Meeting -- Robert Ellett, UC Delegate & Louise LeTendre, UC Alternate. 7. Committee Reports 8. Old Business 9. New Business April 27 Membership Meeting 10. Announcements 1. Election of New FAC Officers FAC Fred Rettenmaier moved and Cheryl Thomas seconded that Sheila Riley be re-elected as Secretary; Ken Nero moved and Denise Lomax seconded that Maxine Brown be re-elected as Chair; Maxine Brown moved and Denise Lomax seconded that Ken Nero be re-elected as Vice- Chair. All motions were approved by the FAC. 2. Approval of the December 16, 1999 FAC Meeting Minutes -- FAC Fred Rettenmaier moved that the FAC approve the December 16, 1999 minutes; Ken Nero seconded the motion. The FAC voted its approval. [The January 20th FAC meeting was canceled due to weather.] 3. FAC Issues and Topics -- Maxine Brown, Chair Maxine inquired whether any FLICC Working Groups still needed a FAC representative. Susan Tarr responded that all necessary positions were filled. 4. Status of Customer Service Initiatives Ruby Thomas In response to customer focus group ideas on how FEDLINK could improve services, each FEDLINK manager set goals. Ruby highlighted some of the FY-99 accomplishments related to these goals. Fiscal Operations: The number of copies of IAGs needed has been reduced and they hope to reduce the number further with online registration. The year-end deadline for adding funds was extended to September 15th. Billing is being done in a more timely manner because implementation of a new automated process excludes double keying of data. They will work with members on using electronic fund transfers which will further speed things. They reduced the turn-around time in all fiscal processes and published the time guidelines. Procedures were established to assist members in establishing their accounts. Response to member complaints now occurs within 30 days. For FY-2000 they want to send quarterly reports of rejected invoices and publish a staff contacts list for members. Network Operations: OCLC phone support was improved by assigning fiscal staff to short term details. They set up a position of Information Specialist. They selected persons to fill a Support position and a Network Librarian position. Negotiations with vendors of online services resulted in expanded product offerings, improved discounts, and better understanding of needs between FEDLINK and vendors. Significant discounts were realized with some vendors. Further goals include having selected vendors publish lists of their products and services and to continue dialogue with vendors. They reported on their successes through publications and at workshops. Publications: Robin Hatziyannis succeeded in providing publications both electronically and in print. A large portion of the membership expressed the desire for both electronic and print options. They view the promotion of Web publications as an educational process. Enhanced access was offered to the Federal Librarian's Handbook which was released in September. They promoted the fact that minutes, announcements, directories, catalogs, and some WG and FAC minutes are available electronically. They upload at least one presentation from program events. Online registration was the main thing requested from the customer service focus groups. FEDLINK will focus on this for FY-2001. Members should be able to register on the WWW in the August/Sept. registration. FEDLINK staff will review the registration, send them back to the member and an IAG will print automatically. Members can then take this to their budget group but will still need to send a FAX of original (need signatures in print). Ultimately want to do an automatic electronic signature but due to technical reasons FEDLINK would need the assistance of the LC Tech group to accomplish this. Ruby said that the survey form is still on Web and she asks us to continue to let them know if what they are doing is helpful and whether we are being served well. Fred Rettenmaier spoke for all of us when he complimented Ruby on a job well done. He suggested that the Web include a reminder to fill out the survey questionnaire and to again call for input. 5. CY99 Performance Report/CY2000 FLICC/FEDLINK Performance Plan -- Susan M. Tarr The FAC received a copy of the final report on accomplishments under the 1999 FLICC performance plan. This was submitted to Winston Tabb. The conclusion of the first cycle of the FLICC awards was a huge accomplishment. The awards did exactly what we wanted; they helped award winners get recognition within their agencies by showing they have government- wide respect within their profession. FLICC will focus more on the public relations and promotion of these. The FAC agreed that librarians need to overcome their reticence in applauding their own achievements. Louise LeTendre suggested that award winners and board officers be given certificates through their agency heads, as a way to gain more visibility within their own agencies. Along these lines, Susan Tarr said that last year she began going directly to supervisors to get their permission to ask their staff to be on working groups. She then sent a memo to the supervisor saying how they appreciated the support for letting the person take the position. The FAC suggested that FEDLINK send thank you notes to Working Group members and get Winston Tabb to sign them. Regarding the LC Bicentennial Tool Kit, Susan said we should be receiving the tube in the mail. The tube will contain a cover letter, the poster, 4 bookmarks, and a blank copy of the letterhead, all reproducible. Because FLICC was able to buy the copyright to the poster, we are free to reproduce them. Susan noted the progress made with OPM and the work that Personnel WG put into the qualifications for the GS-1410 Librarian series. She mentioned the Federal Librarians' Handbook shepherded by Denise Lomax. Denise received a certificate for her wonderful work on this and Susan Tarr said she would write a congratulatory letter to Denise's supervisor. Serials BOAs were re-competed his year. She is still hopeful that the revolving fund initiative will come to fruition; they have laid the groundwork Regarding customer services, the online services negotiations constituted the first time they had made a concentrated effort to get something specific out of vendors. They hope to work with LC and the Hill to do legislative branch consortiums. She noted that vendors are interested in getting the attention of the legislative branch. Susan stated that serving the vendors better will result in better deals for FEDLINK members because vendors will want their business to go to FEDLINK. FLICC/FEDLINK 2000 Performance Plan Highlights This draft was distributed to the FAC. The 4th bullet under #1 came from FAC discussion on the cost-benefits of FEDLINK. The 7th bullet, "consider whether to recompete technical processing services BOAs," questions whether we want to do labor-intensive process of re- competing since it hasn't paid for itself. The 8th bullet asks whether BOAS are the best contract vehicle to use to improve relationships with vendors. GWAS (Government-wide Acquisitions Services) exist which permit individual agencies to allow other agencies to use their services. Under "Program Management" #5 emphasizes a goal of decreasing member delinquencies. Need to ask why some agencies have problems with FEDLINK billing. 6. Report on the February OCLC Users Council Meeting Louise LeTendre; Written report from Robert Ellett distributed OCLC is doing a governance structure study. The question hinges on whether they be regarded as a commercial entity or a member organization (i.e ".com" or ".org") OCLC is looking for new directions; needs to be financially sustaining; need to go global; and be at least partially profit making. Their tax status would not be affected as long as a proper balance is maintained. Discussions on the various is were held in break out sessions. Coming to any decision will be a lengthy vetting process. After Council input they will go through a range of boards and will come back to the Users council in November. See written report for details. 7. Committee Reports Denise Lomax reported that the Education Working Group is planning training programs and brown bags at locations other than LC such as the Smithsonian and NIH. Cheryl Thomas resigned from Information Technology Working Group. Budget Working Group - Fred Rettenmaier reported that the FY-2001 budget is planning for new realities. FEDLINK still needs to hold the line on fees; would be impolitic to raise after just lowering them. Intend to keep things which will be supported and identify those that will not be supported (e.g. tech processes). They may be able to farm out people for salary reimbursement (2 out now) or plan to decrease number of librarians. Susan Tarr said the budget is more apt to have an impact on FLICC because those programs do not pay for themselves. Means there will be fewer free programs. They will look to increasing the training fees which have not gone up for at least 8 years. In sum the budget looks well planned and very realistic. 7. Old Business: Maxine Brown established that the FAC monthly date (3rd Thursday of the month) is OK for all members. 8. New Business The FAC discussed possible topics for the April 27th Membership Meeting. Maxine Brown suggested the issue of contracting out (some contracting out is beneficial and some forced) Louise LeTendre asked what will happen to FEDLINK/FLICC if libraries are contracted out; will membership of boards include contractors. Susan answered that the By-Laws state that members must be federal employees but the by-laws can be changed. Susan Tarr said that the contracting portion of Federal Librarians' Handbook will soon be ready and it will provide background, how to do contracting out, and lessons learned. Cheryl Thomas expressed interest in the topic of measures for library performance. Susan Tarr said she will get in touch with Julia Blixrud who has done work on core values to mission measurements for academic libraries and with Joanne Marshall, a library school dean who has done research in outcomes measures. [For more on performance measures see ARL website: http://www.arl.org/stats/perfmeas/] 9. Announcements: Bonnie Klein announced a March 30th NISO meeting to revise some technical standards of importance to libraries. She called for participation from the Federal library community. The question is whether a NISO standard should focus on print media only or include multimedia or establish a separate standards for each. The meeting was adjourned at 3:30 p.m.