Minutes FEDLINK Advisory Council Meeting October 3, 2001 FAC Present: FLICC/FEDLINK Present: Bonnie Klein Lynn McDonald Maxine Brown Susan Tarr Judy Bullwinkle (Phone) Mary Wilson Louise LeTendre (Phone) Joe Banks Carla Pomager Cheryl Thomas FLICC/FEDLINK Absent: Denise Lomax - FAC Absent: Fred Rettenmaier Sheila Riley 1. Bonnie Klein called to the meeting to order at 9:10 a.m. 2. Minutes of the July 19, 2001 FAC Meeting approved. 3. FAC Issues and Topics: Due to the terrorist strikes on September 11, 2001, all FEDLINK meetings have been pushed back. This FAC meeting is a rollup of September & October Meetings. "How to use FEDLINK" will now be on October 25, 2001, in conjunction with FLICC Fall Membership Meeting. 4. Revolving Fund and Fiscal 2002 Budget Discussion Susan Tarr Information about the GAO written opinion on the revolving fund for FEDLINK was sent to the FEDLIB listserv last week. A copy of the GAO opinion is in the packet given to the FAC members. Only administrative funds in FEDLINK can operate as revolving funds. In a verbal opinion the GAO attorney felt that unobligated fee revenue from prior years was an asset of the program that could move into the revolving fund. But the attorney did not put that opinion in the written response since that question was not asked in writing. Library of Congress (LC) Financial Services will not agree to transfer the unobligated fee revenue from past years until the LC counsel puts the opinion in writing. The LC counsel is working on that opinion and plans to have it done soon. Cheryl Thomas asked if Public Law 106-481did any thing for FEDLINK. Susan said yes, especially when we get something in writing from the LC General Counsel about unobligated fees. The budget proposal was changed with the email approval of the FAC, FEB, and the Budget Working group. Susan Tarr expressed her appreciation of the quick email response of the members. John Webster, LC Director of Financial Services, has signed the budget. FEDLINK had to cut back the budget to live with 7 % fees. The budget included $140,000 from prior year unobligated funds so that current vacancies could be filled. John Webster added the following two caveats: (1) General Counsel must document the use of prior year unobligated funds; (2) The Business Plan must be complete by Dec 31, 2001. The only changes to the budget were that Capital Funding line was eliminated and funding was cut for the vacant positions to six months. LC professional automated personnel system is not working well currently so positions would be vacant most of the year anyway. Denise Lomax asked if libraries could de-obligate previous year monies, then obligate them to something else. Susan Tarr replied no. Members with one year funds do not benefit directly from the revolving fund, only through FEDLINK's more efficient operation. They will see some benefit at the end of FY02, because FEDLINK will be able to place orders after the end of the fiscal year. This will enable members to put year-end money into FEDLINK much nearer to the end of the Fiscal Year. 5. Business Plan Susan Tarr Susan Tarr asked the FAC to look over the Business Plan Calendar and the Outline. Several dates had been changed due to cancellations of meetings over the past 3 weeks. Mary Wilson is the FEDLINK staff member with the responsibility of writing the Marketing Section. She wanted to get the FAC's comments on the Target Audience and Prospective Services. Susan said that FEDLINK was following a sample business plan that they had found on the Internet. The old business plan document developed by a contractor in 1996 was not a true business plan, just a recommendation on how to set up a business plan. This time FEDLINK is working on a product. Discussion of Target Audience The FEDLINK staff felt that the most important target audience is the current customers. They felt that the greatest potential audiences are the CIO & Procurement Officers. It is important to the current customers that FEDLINK not go around current customers by going to the CIO or Procurement officers. Denise Lomax asked if by going to CIO and Procurement, FEDLINK is hoping to add new customers. Susan said it is a sensitive issue, because it depends on how CIO & procurement would interpret the message. Maybe the message needs to come through the library. Bonnie Klein suggested a publicity campaign. Maxine Brown asked why doesn't GSA put a FEDLINK link on their Schedule on the Web. Susan said that a few year ago they had talked to GSA; it may be the time to revisit a possible partnership with GSA since the new law was signed. FEDLINK could reciprocate by putting a GSA link on FEDLINK. Cheryl Thomas said that offices in her agency are using credit cards for serials and no longer asking the library to renew their subscriptions. That has been less revenue for FEDLINK. Susan had thought books would go down because of credit cards but they did not seem to be going down. Judy said that the use of credit cards by offices has taken the management of information away from libraries. Susan Tarr wanted the Procurement Offices to know that they could use FEDLINK if they need help. She wondered if this kind of marketing hurt the libraries. Carla Pomager suggested that the marketing should emphasize serials procurement officers hate serials. Maxine Brown suggested comparing GSA prices and FEDLINK prices and time. More library type products are available through FEDLINK than GSA. Cheryl suggested that FEDLINK use the Library of Congress name heavily. Non-librarians are more impressed with the Library of Congress name. Bonnie Klein said FEDLINK needs to help the libraries market to help their higher management understand databases and that everything is not on Internet. Cheryl Thomas suggested explaining how the library saves money by purchasing centrally. Susan Tarr was at a meeting where GAO librarians talked about the organizational location of the library. GAO took libraries out of the CIO's organization because the CIO was pulling resources from libraries. GAO decided to keep information technology (IT) and content separate. Cheryl Thomas brought up the OMB regulation "Quality of Government Information." Cheryl said that the IT people appreciate it if librarians take over the knowledge management requirements such as "Quality of Government Information," "enterprise architecture," etc. Carla Pomager suggested that in marketing we should use the current buzz words. Susan Tarr said Mark Forman talked at CENDI yesterday and used knowledge management terms, for example "communities of practice" and "enterprise architecture." Bonnie Klein suggested talking to professional marketers from large vendors like Lexis/Nexis. Since they are such a large FEDLINK vendor, perhaps they could give FEDLINK some marketing tips. Prospective Services Susan Tarr asked which of the prospective services listed in the Basic Concepts for FEDLINK Business Plan would bring in quick revenue. Members of the FAC felt that the following services would be useful: 1. Digitization, library automation, consulting similar to the NIH Image World contracts with PTFS, & SIRSI ( Lynn McDonald) 2. Preservation (Susan Tarr) not a major revenue maker 3. Accepting Credit Cards for Training not a major revenue maker Additional prospective services were suggested: 1. Commercial Reference Services (Cheryl Thomas) 2. Online Librarian and Library Technician training offered by Universities, Commercial, and government organizations. (Judy Bullwinkle) 3. Ebook Content (Carla Pomager) Cheryl Thomas asked what is currently the biggest revenue producer Susan Tarr said serials and online services. 6. FEDLINK Membership Meeting The FAC looked over the agenda and suggested adding talks by Kathy Earnest from the Pentagon Library and Ann Parham, the Army Librarian. Lynn McDonald or Denise Lomax will call them. The following Working Groups will report: Content discuss results of combining the two working groups Education discuss FLICC meeting in December Personnel discuss their work on recruitment & Dept of Labor Wage Grades 7. FEDLINK Update Susan Tarr The online registration system is now back up and working. It had problems during the middle of September due to the shutdown. Susan Tarr has signed IAGs for FY02. Denise Lomax said she was having a bit of a problem with her office that signed the IAG. They worried because the Economy Act was not mentioned. Susan said that the FLICC web site has an explanation of changes in IAG and a model decisions & findings. It is linked from the welcome page of online registrations. The FLICC Awards application is on the website; brochures are behind in publication. Applications are due November 13, 2001. FEDLINK monitored OCLC deficits closely this year. Patrick Miller called members who were deficient. Only three libraries finished the year in deficit, as of August activity. Susan asked the members to help with consortia development for database contracts. Negotiating consortia agreement is very complicated. FY2001 Budget Status Joe Banks Joe Banks said FEDLINK may send a form to libraries to ask what they want done with their un-obligated money from previous years. Do they want a refund or should FEDLINK send it directly to U.S. Treasury. Some libraries do not want it back. Joe Banks then reported on the FY01 Financial Status as of September 24, 2001. He did not expect it to change. The $158,281 that is projected as remaining should cover annual leave accrual in FY02. FEDLINK has to take actions to improve the revenue plan, because in FY01 there was not enough revenue to meet the budget, although there was enough to meet actual expenditures because some positions were not filled. FEDLINK revised the planned expenditures during the fourth quarter. Susan said that FEDLINK needs to bring in more revenue in 2002 to meet budget target. FNO Update - Lynn McDonald Lynn McDonald is working with vendors to add new service on the contract renewals. FEDLINK has reopened the online request for proposal (RFP) process. Other networks are now showing an interest in setting up training accounts. Lynn is currently working with Amigos and Solinet. Lynn is also working on part of the Business Plan. She is doing research on how much federal business FEDLINK represents and would welcome suggestions on where to get information. The INSPEC consortium agreement is not yet complete, because third party pricing was not finished. 8. Committee Reports: Covered in the discussion of the FEDLINK Membership Meeting. 9. Old Business: None 10. New Business None The meeting adjourned at 12:10 p.m. Next meeting at November 8, 2001 9:00- 12:00