Sheila M. Riley, FEDLINK Advisory Council (FAC) Minutes of the FAC Meeting - June 15, 2000 FAC Present: FAC Absent: FLICC/FEDLINK Present: Ken Nero (Vice-Chair) Maxine Brown (Chair) Susan Tarr Fred Rettenmaier Carla Pomager Lynn McDonald Louise LeTendre Bonnie Klein Sheila Riley Denise Lomax Cheryl Thomas AGENDA 1. Approval of the April 20, 2000, FAC Meeting Minutes - - FAC 2. FAC Issues and Topics Ken Nero, Vice-Chair, Acting for Chair a. Budget vote 3. FLICC/FEDLINK Update Susan Tarr, FLICC Executive Director & FEDLINK Managers/staff a. Contracting: consortia, quarterly subscriptions, new OCLC agreement b. Program administration: Online registration, OCLC money moves, vendor partnerships c. FLICC Working Groups 4. Committee Reports 5. Old Business a. Legal training for library technicians b. Soaring to Excellence: can video travel c. Forum's RealPlayer pilot results 6. New Business 7. Announcements 1. Approval of the April 20, 2000, FAC Meeting Minutes - - FAC The FAC approved the April 20, 2000 minutes as amended by Lynn McDonald (p.3 2nd paragraph; add words "this fiscal year" to end of sentence relating to FirstSearch pricing.) 2. FAC Issues and Topics Ken Nero, Vice-Chair, Acting for Chair a. Budget vote The ballot for the budget is being mailed in the next few days for vote of the FLICC membership. Need at least 25 votes. As FAC members we are eligible to vote. Ballots due back by July 7th . The next FAC meeting is scheduled for July 13th. The votes will be counted by then. 3. FLICC/FEDLINK Update Susan Tarr, FLICC Executive Director & FEDLINK Managers/staff a. Contracting: consortia, quarterly subscriptions, new OCLC agreement Consortia: Susan Tarr, FLICC Executive Director, reported that there has been some progress on consortial issues. FEDLINK staff are touching base with some vendors. They have also developed a list of about a dozen federal libraries interested in an Inspec consortium. Kathy Eighmey interviewed them to see what they wanted and will report to Susan Tarr on her data gathering this afternoon. Since the focus was on sciences data she also asked them about ISI ; Susan Tarr explained that what is needed is a big enough group and prospects of new business to interest the vendor. Inspec data can be mounted by other interface vendors (e.g. Silverplatter) so could compete different vendors for that data. FEDLINK will try fast track Inspec; if there is a significant dollar amount they will try to close it by end of the fiscal year. Fred Rettenmeier suggested looking at the NARLA Website (consortium of NRL). They may be looking to expand their database coverage. Quarterly subscriptions: As background Susan Tarr explained 2 difficulties: 1) Vendors receive rejected invoices most often in the first 1/4 of the year (for a variety of budget reasons including the lateness of Congressional funding) so that they then must float funds and resubmit their billings and 2) then with OCLC FEDLINK is out the money because they must pay whether members have paid FEDLINK or not. Sometimes it's the case that members had not yet signed their IAGs. Susan Tarr asked if, instead of full-year subscriptions, FEDLINK should encourage members to do a subscription for the first quarter with end-of-year funds. Louise LeTendre suggested that a letter from LC to agencies Budget Officers might be more effective. FEDLINK could forward the letter to the Budget Officer through the librarian. Ken Nero stated that Congress's continuing resolutions wreak havoc for libraries' budgets. He saw a problem with using the end-of-year funds this way. His agency has a mind set which balks at forwarding front money for electronic subscriptions whereas they have no problem with print. He wondered if this was a legal problem. Susan Tarr and Lynn McDonald said that the original language was extended to electronic subscriptions with the phrase "regardless of format" but agencies may not know this. A FEDLINK letter could include this language and citation and a signature by Susan Tarr. Fred Rettenmeier applauded the proposal stating that if FEDLINK can make it work all the better; but said if the 1st Oct. comes without funding then we are stuck. He thought online registration would help and then those with no-year-money can at least do a partial transfer of a balance. Susan Tarr said that the problem for FEDLINK is that, without the revolving fund, fees from end-of-year subscriptions can't be carried over to the next fiscal year. At the legislative markup sessions, the revolving fund initiative took a back seat to the proposed House cuts to the LC Appropriations; LC is still trying to get the revolving fund through with separate legislation but it doesn't look very likely this year. However, at this point FEDLINK is focusing on the rejected invoice problem and disregarding the one-year fee issue. b. Program administration: Online registration, OCLC money moves, vendor partnerships Online Registration: FEDLINK will first automate only the initial registration process. The 2001 registration will be online. Members will be able to pull up last years registration, adjust that and renew. Money moves and changes will not initially be available because in this first year working between two systems it will be too complicated. FEDLINK hopes to do a demonstration of the online registration at the July FAC meeting. OCLC money moves: FEDLINK wants to do more up-front work with members on their OCLC accounts. Libraries who overspend their OCLC accounts in mid-year sometimes have this problem because they move money from their OCLC account thinking they have a lot more money there and they need it elsewhere. They then use OCLC more than they thought and come up short. So FEDLINK will be looking more closely at those moves if they think it will get members in trouble with their OCLC account. Lynn McDonald said that OCLC is looking at taking its cataloging flat-fee model where discounts are built-in and seeing if it can't be used for ILL and Telecom. FEDLINK is also converting its OCLC agreement from a BOA to direct contract which is more reflective of reality. FEDLINK is tightening up the 1st quarter schedule to make sure they have signed IAGs from members. Vendor partnerships: The goal is to improve communication with vendors so that everything works better. FEDLINK staff met with a Janes representative and they have a proposal now for network pricing (previously they had only individual pricing). c. FLICC Working Groups The Preservation W.G. met with the GPO Binding contract representative. They are interested in getting the current binder to do minor repairs so that when books are sent for binding they can also have pages tipped-in, etc... GPO learned that they need to consult with the Federal community before issuing a 3 year contract. The Personnel W.G. proceeded to draft a proposal that Susan Tarr sent to the FLICC membership last week. They received comments from a former personnel specialist and as a result are reworking the proposal. Susan Tarr will meet with Ed McHugh of OPM and will review the draft at the Army Library Institute to see if it works for Army staff. She encouraged the FAC to look at the revised draft to see if it would be useful for our hiring needs. The W.G. was trying for a positive education requirement and to be located under the Scientific and Professional category. They are using the Archivist series as a model. It won't allow only the MLS. There must, for the lower grades, be an experience and at least 24 hours undergraduate requirement. There is a subject specialist opportunity as well. Then it comes under a chart for the all scientific and professional staff. This is perceived as being a better situation than the existing one where the library series stands out there on its own and doing this should also help with contract equivalencies requirements. Louise LeTendre inquired about the qualifying test. Susan Tarr responded that test validation is a tough thing to do. Using scientific indicators and psychologists, a test validation process would need to demonstrate that it is objectively testing what needs to be tested. The previous tests were not scientifically validated. The current Personnel W.G. believes the test should be done away with in favor of a positive education requirement. OPM wants to establish specific competencies. The Education W.G.'s first of its Brown Bag series is July 18th. They are trying to design a series that is focused on how the library presents itself and shows its value to the organization. Three or four people will show what they are doing and then open it up for discussion and sharing. Susan Tarr said she went to SLA specifically to go to measurements and advocacy programs and hopes to sponsor a full day in November on this topic. The Information Technology W.G. series will be good and is filling up fast. The Nominations W.G. is being chaired again by Gail Henderson-Green and they will be working on new members for the FAC and FLICC groups. Susan asks that if the FAC has colleagues we would like to see on the Executive Board, get in touch with Gail. Her email is Gail.M.Henderson-Green@m1.irscounsel.treas.gov Susan Tarr reported that they now have the Awards segment of FLICC Forum finalized in video. One awardee, the NOAA Library, just got front page coverage on the NOAA Newsletter. Cheryl Thomas asked about the FAC suggestion regarding awards for different sized libraries, large and small. Susan Tarr responded that the decision was to wait on this. The Awards program is only 2 years old and they weren't sure they would get sufficient nominations in both categories if split by size. They also weren't sure of the definitions for large and small. They will revisit this suggestion again as the program grows. 4. Committee Reports None apart from those given above. 5. Old Business a. Legal resources training for library technicians FEDLINK is looking into Denise Lomax's concern that there are insufficient legal resources training opportunities geared to library technicians. Cheryl Thomas echoed this need saying that she has looked into legal training courses offered by area universities but they are rare and prohibitively expensive. In the case of the University of Maryland a course is offered every 2 years and costs $1500. Lynn McDonald noted that the loss of USDA courses left these kinds of gaps and also said that the FEDLINK week-long Federal Library Technician Institute slated for August is already filled. b. Soaring to Excellence: can video travel? Susan Tarr informed the FAC that this is not FEDLINK's video to send out. Although FEDLINK paid for the downlink, the question remains whether they need to pay additionally to loan the videos. She will find out and answer this on the listserv. c. Forum's RealPlayer pilot results Susan Tarr reported that they did broadcast to a select group of people the cybercast of the FLICC Forum. Some loved it and some had trouble. There were some technical problems which they now know about and can work on resolving. They will try other sessions later summer or fall. We could think about doing this for a FEDLINK membership meeting and "How to Use FEDLINK" in August. Susan Tarr asked if the FAC had any program suggestions if they do cybercast the FEDLINK Membership meeting. Louise LeTendre suggested a program where we could invite the boss and have presentations aimed to them. Cheryl Thomas said we could market what FEDLINK really is and what it gives to them and focus on money saved. Other sugggestions were to include interactive material or have Winston Tabb do a cybercast presentation. Fred Rettenmeier offered that the program could ballyhoo the whole LC Bicentennial - FLICC history (1965) and FEDLINK (1974); have libraries call-in their treasures for digitization - do a parade of Federal libraries (give minutes to the awards winners from this year and last); call-in service suggestions. Ken Nero asked for reactions on the speaker at the FLICC Quarterly meeting who talked about evaluation of libraries. Susan Tarr said she was disappointed because when he got to each of the 4 models he always ended up talking about the bottom line and this is not applicable to federal libraries. Fred also did not see a relevance to our libraries. Susan Tarr said that studies in the corporate sector rely on return-on-revenue models. With federal agencies it can be the case that even the people the library is serving don't have a sense of their own value. She wants to look more carefully at his published document. Fred Rettenmeier offered that we can collect anecdotal information and see if that can be validated. What does dissemination to desktop save? It saves times which translates into salaries. We can make changes and talk about what that saved; get credit for new things you do. Cheryl Thomas expressed the frustration that upper management seems only interested in what they can report to Congress. Susan Tarr said that her inquiries with a private consulting company indicate that a study in a federal context would cost @$45,000. Lynn McDonald offered that we need someone like SOROS to fund this study. Susan Tarr mentioned the consultant OUTSELL (in California). When she gets their presentation slides, she will send them out to the Federal community and she will give us the website. She described one of their charts: It asks active users, moderately active users, and non-users of libraries to estimate how much time they spend getting information. The interesting result was that the active users spent significantly less time. Costs can be figured then by factoring in salaries. 6. New Business Louise LeTendre asked if the Brown Bag tapes are on the network. Susan Tarr said these forums are the most difficult to tape and mike because of the diffusion of the discussion. Having people come up to a podium stifles the discussion. She could investigate having a multi- directional microphone. Susan Tarr said she has wanted to provide either written reports of these or do audio or video tape, though audiotapes are tough to discern. Fred Rettenmeier said that even providing a list of the attendees would give contacts. 7. Announcements Susan Tarr reminded the FAC that this is our 4th meeting this year and that we are required to have 6. The FAC always schedules 12, usually have 10 per year, and almost always calls off the August meeting. The FAC decided to check with its chair, Maxine Brown, and decide on whether to hold the August meeting via listserv. The meeting adjourned at 11:15 a.m.