FEDLINK Advisory Council Meeting July 19, 2001 Minutes FAC Present: FLICC/FEDLINK Present: Bonnie Klein Susan Tarr MaxineBrown Lynn McDonald Judy Bullwinkle (Phone) Joe Banks Louise LeTendre (Phone) Carla Pomager Fred Rettenmaier Denise Lomax FAC Absent: Cheryl Thomas Sheila Riley CALL TO ORDER Bonnie Klein called the meeting to order at 1:10 p.m. APPROVAL OF MINUTES The minutes of the June 21, 2001 were approved with editorial changes. FAC ISSUES AND TOPICS NONE REVOLVING FUND UPDATE - Susan Tarr, FLICC Executive Director Susan Tarr & Joe Banks met with attorneys from GAO June 25, 2001. Susan asked the attorneys to give a written opinion on the use of member's previous years' annual money by the middle of July. GAO said that they could not provide anything in writing by the middle of July. They said that they might be able to give an oral opinion. Susan explained, as she had to the FLICC Executive Board, that she had the impression that the unofficial opinion in April would hold, not allowing members use of prior year annual funds. As of 19 July, the Library of Congress (LOC) legal council has called GAO, but had not received an oral opinion. During the discussion about previous year's money, a question came up as to whether or not LOC would be able to refund the previous year's economy act monies to the libraries, or if the money must stay with FEDLINK. Fred Rettenmaier asked if members should be told that they could still recall their money before October 1, 2001. Susan said the cutoff for requesting money back is July 31, and that FEDLINK managers had discussed what might be done. Joe said reconciling accounts for refunds may take longer than 90 days. Fred wanted to make sure this question is on FEDLINK's checklist to ask the attorneys. Susan Tarr said that she will be sure to ask. Susan clarified GAO's role. Library of Congress will be only using GAO for advice. The legal opinion rests with the LOC attorney not GAO's attorney, but because GAO audits the Library, the LOC OGC wants to be sure that GAO will concur with the practice adopted. The LOC counsel says that the FLICC membership vote is only advisory, that if necessary, the Librarian of Congress can change items in the budget. That means that if necessary, the budget vote can go forward without the written opinion from GAO. Susan suggested that the way new deposits from members will be treated in the revolving fund might receive a different opinion from GAO than their opinion on previous year's monies. BUSINESS PLAN - Susan Tarr, FLICC Executive Director Susan Tarr discussed changes to the Business Plan since the last staff meetings. The lists had not been merged or purged. Susan wanted the FAC to see if anything was out of line. - Future of Federal Libraries and Information Centers, 2002-2008 Under the "More and more digital " Louise LeTendre recommended changing " librarians must maintain efficiency in inefficient environments" to " librarians must maintain efficiency in inefficient unorganized environments". - Target Audience FEDLINK staff felt that they should market to other offices other than the library, for example General Counsels or Personnel. Denise Lomax worried that office would skip the library. Lynn McDonald said that FEDLINK should market to these offices about going through the library. FEDLINK could act as a clearinghouse. Louise Letendre said that FEDLINK should market to Procurement Offices and tell them to talk to their library. - Marketing message The marketing message should be effective so that when people in the acquisition fields of agencies see an information request they will think "library" and "FEDLINK". This message should be covered in the VISION? It is a good starting point. These messages also fit in target audience. - Competitors Bonnie Klein asked about DTIC as a competitor. She said that DTIC does not feel that it is a competitor but a partner of FEDLINK. Lynn suggested that we be sure to address the issue in the business plan, to find ways to improve FEDLINK's partnership with DTIC, and help clarify the partnership for the libraries. FEDLINK has competitors because it does not sell everything. The librarians may not be in control of which method of procurement to use. Louise Letendre said that libraries might be forced to use competitors because it appears that FEDLINK is more expensive. This is because the money for the FEDLINK fees comes out of the libraries budget and not the agencies overhead account. Government Credit Cards are also a competitor. At this time FEDLINK cannot take credit cards but in the future they may ride on Copyright office infrastructure. Fred Rettenmaier said that Naval Research Laboratory Library is out of the business of purchasing books for offices. These government employees just use their credit cards. - Vision The FAC purged and merged the ideas that were compiled in various staff & FAC meeting. The FAC each voted for their favorite six ideas form the list. The six below received the most votes: Cost effective solution for content and services Facilitator of information access by all federal users of information Helping to make libraries the central information hub for agencies – e.g., "portals' Leader/spokesperson/lobbyist for federal libraries Promoter of best practices/standards/benchmarks in systems and training Strong centralized focus on business of federal libraries Fred Rettenmaier mentioned that Leader/spokesperson was more appropriate in the FLICC vision. - Prospective services The FAC added two more ideas for prospective services: - Credit cards - both accepting and issuing. - Marketing both surveying and promotional FLICC/FEDLINK UPDATE - Susan Tarr, FLICC Executive Director Lynn McDonald, FEDLINK Network Coordinator Joe Banks, FEDLINK Business Manager FLICC Update (Susan Tarr) Content Management Working Group will be meeting July 31, 2001 with the Special Interest Group on Content Management for the Knowledge Management Committee of the CIO Council, to determine if the two groups should merge. Denise Lomax asked if there would be disadvantages with proposed merger. Susan said that since the CIO group asked for the merger, it should be a good marketing move for libraries. The risk of the merger might be loss of training specific for libraries. Sharon Hogan,University of Chicago, had suggested that Senate Committee for the Lieberman Bill, Senate Bill 803, might want to work with FLICC. Therefore on August 6, 2001, Susan will meet with Kevin Landy, the counsel on committee. The September 13, 2001 FLICC meeting will focus on education. Joanne Gard Marshall, chairman of SLA's competencies committee, will address the FLICC. Volunteers from education working group will facilitate small group discussions. FY2001 Budget status (Joe Banks) FY2001 registration is now ahead of last year. Online registration for FY2002will start around August 14, 2001. FEDLINK Network Office (FNO) Update (Lynn McDonald) The FNO staff is working with vendors to include Section 508 when renewing contracts. They have invited vendors to "How to Use FEDLINK", August 14, 01. They are still working with Inspec. They have completed a 20% discount for FirstSearch consortium subscription price. Members with blocks remaining may use them to pay for databases usage. However the Air Force found a problem with statistics reporting when mixing subscription and search block usage, which OCLC has worked around manually. COMMITTEE REPORTS Nominating Committee has found eight members to run for the 5 open positions on the FLICC and six members to run for the 3 open positions on the FAC. OLD BUSINESS No old business. NEW BUSINESS The next FEDLINK Membership Meeting, October 25, 2001, will be mostly a business meeting. Denise Lomax will host it in Bonnie Klein's place. Susan Tarr will explain the revolving fund and the Five Year Business Plan. A Report on the FLICC meeting, Senator Lieberman's bill & the Content Management Working group discussion with CIO group will also be on the agenda. Denise Lomax mentioned every one liked highlighting federal libraries at the last FLICC membership meeting. Since PTO won Federal Library of the Year, Denise thought it would be appropriate to highlight their library. Maxine was agreeable. Carla Pomager asked if the Veterans History Project could also be added to the agenda. NEXT MEETING Thursday, Sep 13, 1:00-3:00 pm. ADJOURMENT The meeting was adjourned at 3:40 pm.