November 17, 2006
Members Present: Kathy Boguszewski, Marc Boucher, Carol Brill, Carla Burmeister, Leslie Christensen, Sally Drew, Karen Grothe, Peter Hamon, Leanne Hansen, Lisa Jewell, Rita Magno, Ed Van Gemert
Others Present: Karen Boehning, Patrick Wilkinson, Kathy Schneider, Deborah Copperud (Guest)
Chairman Peter Hamon called the meeting to order at 9:35am.
Introductions & Minutes
Board members introduced themselves and welcomed Deborah Copperud, a library
student intern from St. Mary's Hospital (Madison) who attended the
meeting to observe. Approval of minutes from July 27, 2006 was moved
by Van Gemert, seconded by Christensen, and passed by voice vote.
Scenario Planning: Hamon explained the history and concept of scenario planning, how it works, and the steps for using it to plan for WiLS. Scenario planning identifies forces of change (eg. disasters, political shifts, technology, societal changes) to brainstorm and plan for organizational change. By developing stories characterized by "what if" this happened, potential impacts can be suggested and responses can be planned. Questions and much discussion ensued prior to and during the development of the attached "what if" statements. Board members selected six statements which seem most likely to happen; individual board members volunteered to provide more information on the six statements. WiLS will seek further feedback from the membership through focus groups during spring 2007. (see scenario planning)
Financials: An annual audit report was prepared by Wipfli LLP in September 2006 with an overall good evaluation. That firm will continue to do an annual report while WiLS staff will do monthly reports as recommended by Wipfli. They also suggested increasing the capitalization level. Schneider recommended a $5,000 level, as other state agencies use, and the Board agreed. The firm also recommended that succession planning occur for financial processes. That work is occurring with the help of the Finance Committee and should be completed by the end of the year. The process will then be updated annually.
Budget Adjustments: The Board reviewed the budget and financial report for FY06. Schneider noted that work provided for the state of Illinois increased the income line as a one-time opportunity. A small project for the State Department of Transportation also nets a small amount of income. Schneider had one budget request which the Finance Committee had already approved. She also wanted approval from the Board. Since this was a Committee motion, there was no need for a second. The budget adjustment request was approved by voice vote and will proceed to the next approval step.
Wisconsin Heritage Online (WHO) Status Report and Discussion: There are sixteen paid members of WHO. Schneider had budgeted for additional members causing budget income amounts to be lower than anticipated. The basic infrastructure requires a base line budget so membership fees will go up next year; sustainability is an issue. WHO needs more visibility to increase awareness about the site and to help historical entities understand the opportunities and help that exist for their digital projects. Getting started and funding seem to be the major drawbacks to participation. In October WHO representatives spoke at the WLA conference and had an exhibit. In November, WHO exhibited and spoke at the annual meeting of the state historical society. Drew made a motion to consider the development of a grant to fund WHO as a sustainable entity. Grothe seconded. After discussion Boucher made a friendly amendment to ask WHO to "pursue" rather than "consider" the grant. Drew accepted the amendment. The amended motion passed on a voice vote. This will be a group effort rather than just WiLS staff.
BadgerCat (OCLC Group Services) Status Report and Discussion: Nicolet Federated Library System and Outagamie/Waupaca Library System are new members and will be using OCLC WorldCat for ILL. There will be no added costs for schools that catalog using OCLC. BadgerCat, a subset of OCLC, is healthy and growing. Because the member threshold level will be reached by the next renewal in July, WiLS can start redistributing costs and reduce membership costs overall. OCLC costs are scheduled to rise 5% annually. The OCLC Group Services license is good for any library in the state.
AskAway (Virtual Reference): The consortium is going well with sixteen of the seventeen public library systems plus a small number of academic libraries participating. Funding will become an issue as money from the LSTA grant, that helps to fund this service, is in the second year of a three year commitment. Costs may need to be distributed to those participating unless another funding source can be found.
Members Council Report: (WiLS representatives Boehning, Wilkinson) Boehning reported on the October Members Council meeting that she and Wilkinson attended. Ian McPherson, the keynote speaker, talked about cooperatives and key values. When cooperatives get large, their organizational structures need to change. OCLC is currently dealing with that process. Boehning reported on the interest groups she is on. The small and rural library group is working towards a definition of what it means to be small and rural. The cataloging/metadata group is exploring social cataloging. Not much is happening in the international discussion group. There is concern in the joint school and public libraries group since their interests are very different.
Wilkinson reported that the Members Council will meet outside of the United States for the first time when they meet in Quebec City this coming February. That location and the first Members Council President who is not from the United States reflect the growing international flavor of OCLC. More European representatives are attending meetings. Their involvement may change OCLC since Europe OCLC does things differently than stateside OCLC. Wilkinson will chair a new task force on the integration of e-books and how libraries and OCLC should handle the growing number of them. Non-standardization of e-book readers is the big issue that needs to be addressed. WorldCat and the Discovery Interest Group discussed how OCLC has wanted to make data work harder. They've done this in steps through FirstSearch, group catalogs and scopes, WorldCat and open WorldCat, and WorldCat.org. The next step is a pilot in spring 2007. OCLC is working with ILS vendors to move quickly towards using WorldCat.org as the front end of local OPACs with connections to some inventory control (circulation). OCLC is getting back to basics – decrease duplication, promote efficiencies, and control costs – but they are applying it differently to be better and faster. More products will be put out in beta since they are changing so rapidly.
WiLS Director's Report: Schneider reported that there are currently two halftime positions open. One position is being tweaked while the second position will remain vacant for now. OCLC ILL online training this fall was well received. The ILLiad server is no longer being hosted by WiLS; OCLC is now hosting. Although OCLC's charges are reasonable, funds will need to be found to cover these hosting costs.
Other Business: Van Gemert discussed the Google book project that UW Madison and the State Historical Society have joined. They've agreed to have not less than 500,000 items digitized, concentrating on historical documents from the Society, government documents, patents, and other public domain materials.
There being no further business, the Chair adjourned the meeting at 2:15pm.
Respectfully submitted, Leanne Hansen, Secretary
SCENARIO PLANNING FOR WiLS
Statements developed by WiLS Board November 17, 2006. Number in parentheses indicates the number of votes. Statements in bold received the most votes and so will be fleshed out first.
What IF:
The gap between have/have not libraries and library users grows ever wider (1)
E-rate disappears
Population growth and shifting demographics intensifies with impact on library services and use (8)
Tenure in academic institutions is eliminated
UW Madison re-assesses the value of lending (reduces the priority currently placed on role as lender) and the current level of lending services provided through WiLS (1)
Libraries stop or significantly reduce interlibrary loan lending
OCLC stops working with Networks, such as WiLS, as their partners in delivering OCLC services (5)
Major growth in online education continues and builds – what does this mean for libraries, library services and WiLS (10) [Sub-group: Boguszewski, Burmeister, Magno, Jewell]
WiLS begins to provide services directly to end-users by-passing libraries; WiLS begins to provide services to markets outside the library community (1)
More (most) information is available on open web; web 3.0; Google takes over information access (16) [Hansen, Jewell]
OCLC begins to provide services directly to end-users by-passing libraries; OCLC begins to provide services to markets outside the library community (4)
Libraries close (1)
Technical services and other "back room" activities in libraries move to the network level to achieve an economy of scale for reduced costs; OCLC WorldCat replaces local OPAC (14) [Sub-group: Boehning, Wilkinson, Van Gemert]
OCLC allows more enhancement of master records (reducing redundancy of local customization)
Public services, particularly reference services, are centralized to achieve an economy of scale for reduced costs (5)
Library services are re-defined with a shift from traditional services to libraries taking on an expanded role within their community (serving as local government webmaster, handling voter registration etc) (10) [Sub-group: Brill, Grothe, Boguszewski]
Libraries become geographically based rather than type of user focused (schools, publics, technical colleges etc merge into one library organization) resulting in new structures of funding and governance (4)
Local library consortia merge (10) [Sub-group: Boehning]
WiLS takes responsibility for coordinated approach to funding across library lines (2)
WiLS takes on advocacy role in area of digital rights management (1)
Fair use is eliminated or re-interpreted (5)
WiLS becomes much more involved in scholarly communication issues and contract negotiations for electronic content (2)
Tenure within academic institutions becomes possible to achieve through publication in peer reviewed open access publishing (1)
WiLS provides "scan-on-demand" service - "good enough" rather than preservation quality - based on ILL requests to UW Madison
Libraries flock to new WISCAT and away from OCLC
DPI resource contract, supporting interloan services from WiLS to public and school libraries through Reference & Loan, is eliminated (11) [Sub-group: Boucher]
WiLS and R&L merger, or, one takes over the other