In attendance:  Becky Boragine (LIN), John Carney (EPL), Dorey Conway (PRO), Lisa Davis (OSL), Joan Gillespie (OSL), Celeste Dyer (CUM), Mattie Gustafson (NPT), Julie Holden (PAW), Mary Ellen Hardiman (NPR), Chris La Roux (GVL), Deb Rock (WAR), Lynda Ross (CRA), and Karen Taylor (EGR).

The meeting was held at the OSL office in Warwick and called to order by Chris La Roux at 10 a.m.  Dorey Conway reported on the Web Design Committee telephone meeting with Laura Crowe that took place on January 24.  

Official spokespeople-Laura wants a list of those she is allowed to talk to.  Only a limited number of people can talk to her on behalf of the OSL E-Zone.  Currently the spokes people are Joan G., Lisa D., and Chris L.  The committee can appoint another one or two as required.

Web Design--There are two ways that titles are changed on the website, manually and database driven.  A software program selects the database driven titles automatically.  Automatic selections can be made for New Releases, Most Popular, Recently Returned, Maximum Access, and Least Popular (lost in the stacks).  We can select how often Database Driven can be updated.  New Arrivals can be selected by format or media type.

Browse Categories-Laura Crowe gave the committee a list of subject headings that are currently being used for selecting titles for categories.  The list can be expanded, reduced, or names changed.  We can limit type by genre:  such as, fiction can include science fiction and mystery.

Changes-The group agreed that titles selected automatically will change daily, the heading Juvenile will be changed to Children, Always Available will be changed to Available Now, and Mystery and Suspense will be added as a subheading under Fiction.  Lisa Davis will convey these changes to Laura Crowe.

Subdivisions-We need to determine what subdivisions to put in the division dropdowns.   Mattie Gustafson mentioned a Wisconsin library that has seven subdivisions in dropdowns under Fiction and it doesn't look crowded.  It was decided that the Web Design Committee will meet again before the OSL meeting and the entire E-Zone committee will meet after the OSL meeting and vote on subheadings.  

Lynda Ross asked that Help on the web site be renamed Easy Instruction or something that users will recognize easily as assistance.  The Jefferson Point Library was used as an example.  The web design committee will discuss this at its meeting.  

Available Now-Lynda Ross handed out the two selection lists her committee made for the two Available Now accounts.  Each account contains fifty titles that can be borrowed by an unlimited number of simultaneous users.  They cost $3,000 each and are accessible for one year, like a lease collection.  Providence Public Library has agreed to pay for the plans this year using grant monies.  One plan expires this month and the other next month.  Lynda suggested that Providence extend payment for the subscriptions to the end of the fiscal year (June) and that would give the group time to find out if OSL members would support one or two sets of titles to be paid through their OSL dues next year.

Publicity--Mattie G. wants E-Zone members to purchase the kiosk software and share it if possible.  She suggested that we have a staff person or volunteer placed near the kiosk to show people how to use it.    Lisa D. mentioned that the OSL support site has PR materials in PDF format for members to use.  Chris L. said that advertising Overdrive to the public is important and we need to find ways to do this.  We can advertise from within our libraries and outside them.
 
Chris offered to put together something to send to library directors to educate them about Overdrive and the need to budget funds for content, even if that means simply moving funds from tangible audio materials to the E-Zone.  He also stressed the need to fund the Available Now collections beginning in 2009.  The two current subscriptions cost $6,000.  An even split of that amount between the 49 libraries in the OSL would amount to $122.45 from each library.   We need comparative usage statistics from when the original thirteen libraries founded the E-Zone to today to show the increased usage.  The collection is only as good as the content on the E-Zone website.

Collection Development-Deb Rock and Mattie said it is about time to think about collection development.  How many duplicate copies do we want and how many holds should trigger the purchase of another copy of a title?

Mary Ellen mentioned that we need to think of support from outside groups, such as trucking companies and realtors, whose members use audio books.  Joan G. offered OSL to have training classes for librarians to make them more comfortable with using the E-Zone, so they can better instruct the public.

Survey-At the last meeting Deb Barchi suggested conducting a survey to find out how people are using the Overdrive materials.  For instance, are most people listening to audios on their computers, or are they burning to cds or are they downloading directly to mp3 players?  We decided to put the survey on the E-Zone website.  Lisa D. is to check with Laura to see if Overdrive has surveys ready to put up, and if they have a mechanism to tally the results.  If not Chris will look into using Survey Monkey.

Cataloguing E-Zone items-Lisa D. got the pricing from Overdrive and OCLC for cataloguing.  OCLC charges $1.50 per record for each unique record.  Cataloguing can be provided immediately for records that are in the OCLC database, otherwise it takes up to two weeks for original cataloguing.  The records include subjects, LC & Dewey call numbers, and the 856 field customized to take users directly to the E-Zone item.  There are no ISBN numbers.  Lisa warned that a dedicated OPAC would not be able to go to the Internet to access the item directly.  This may not be a problem since most libraries will probably not allow patrons to download audio books via OPAC stations.  Lisa and Rick Payette are looking at different methods of obtaining the OCLC records and transferring them to the Millennium catalogue database.

Lisa mentioned a potential problem with the E-Zone materials being in the catalogue, and that is that when the items are removed from the "collection" they must be removed from the catalogue.  The leased Available Now titles pose a particular problem since they are leased on an annual basis and somehow those items that are not kept need to be submitted to OSL for removal from the catalogue.  Lisa is looking into methods to keep track of these items, and will be discussing this with Laura Crowe from Overdrive.

The Steering Committee took up the issue of having OSL catalogue E-Zone items and, it was reported at this E-Zone meeting, agreed to pay for cataloguing on items in the collection currently.  Going forward was unclear.  Cost is the main problem.  There are currently 2,327 unique titles available through the E-Zone.  For the current year to date there are 80 titles.  The records that are purchased from OCLC for E-Zone items need to have subject headings and authorities verified before putting the records into Millennium.  Retrospective cataloguing of the E-Zone materials and verification of those records will be time consuming and expensive.  The cost was not budgeted in this or next year's OSL budgets.

Overdrive Community Reserve-Mary Ellen H. asked if members were interested in utilizing the Community Reserve feature of Overdrive, which allows for sharing content between member libraries nationwide.  Items to be shared must be formatted according to a protocol that is set by Overdrive.  There is no charge for storing or using content.  Chris mentioned that he had spoken to Joe McGovern quite a while ago about possibly uploading LTV material to the Community Reserve.  Other suggestions were also made.  This idea will be discussed at a future meeting.

Chris thanked Joan G. for the use of the OSL room and refreshments.

Next Meeting-The next meeting is set for February 14 following the OSL meeting at the Warwick Public Library, if the room is available.

Respectfully submitted,
 
Christopher La Roux