CLAN's Steering Committee met on January 18, 2001, at the Cranston Public Library. The meeting was convened at 9:55 by Chairperson Deborah Barchi. Those in attendance were:

Jon Anderson, JOH; Debbie Barchi, BAR; Judith Bell, JAM; Peter Bennett, PRO; John Carney, EPL: Ann Crawford, CHA; Donna DiMichele, OLIS; Fran Farrell-Bergeron, WWA; Joan Hackett, HAR; MaryEllen Hardiman, NPR; Paul Holliday, CRA; Connie Lachowicz, SKI; David Macksam, CRA; Leslie McDonough, SCI; Ginny Moses, CLAN; Barbara Neri, NPR; Rick Payette, CLAN; Skye Pennington, COV; Doug Pearce, WAR; Susan Reed, PAW; Jane Schweinsburg, COV; Regina Slezak, NPT; Karen Taylor, EGR; Lisa Walling, TIV.
The minutes of the previous meeting were unanimously approved.

Executive Director’s (Ginny Moses) report:

We have been approached by Citadel Communications regarding participating in a program for distributing donated books to children through CLAN libraries. Their representative would like to speak at our February 8 meeting to explain the program which would include gatherings, refreshments, distribution of books and more.

• Judy: should OLIS be involved in this?

• Donna: Melody is too busy right now.

Discussion ensued, with the upshot that CLAN will welcome a speaker at the February 8 meeting. He will need to be prepared to answer specific questions regarding the program, its sponsorship, etc.. If the directors like the idea we will then arrange to have someone from Citadel meet with children’s librarians to proceed.

There are tremendous problems still occurring with the Unique Debt Collection. Even with new forms and instructions not all the money is making its way to the CLAN office and we are around $5,000 in the hole.
Also, Ginny has been getting irate phone calls from patrons whose credit has been affected, could not get loans, etc. and this is not a comfortable situation for her. We either need to stop using this service or find a different way—perhaps charging libraries that want to participate based on their percentage of usage from the fee schedule.

• Doug: I am convinced it does get materials returned

• Connie: SKI doesn’t take in much money but we do see materials being returned.

It was agreed that at the February 8 meeting we will propose that any library that wants to participate in Unique will agree to do so on this basis: 1. all money collected will be kept by the library; 2. CLAN will charge participating libraries a monthly fee based on that library’s percentage of usage.

There is a new director taking over at WRR—his name is Edward Surato, he is from Texas and Anne will introduce him at the February 8 meeting. Anne, we will miss you!

Since may items are on the agenda that would usually be discussed in this report (DBS and HarvardNet, UCITA, filtering, funding) Ginny stopped at that point.
Systems and Network Administrator’s (Peter Bennett) report:

Harvardnet and DBC, our internet service providers, have both gone out of business.

9 libraries have been "hot cut" over to IDS/Conversant (the provider we chose to replace the above) so far—and that is good news because it means Verizon doesn’t have to come install new lines. There are still 5 or 6 to go. There is ongoing uncertainty about some cut overs because of whose is located or co-located in which central offices, but Peter is trying to get them all to do it the easy way.
Almost all our lines will now be though IDS/Conversant.

We are looking for the fastest transition possible.
We are doing a 1 year agreement with IDS/Conversant.

CLAN reps spoke with George Loftus of OSEAN and reps from RINET/DOE to discuss possibility of upgrading our 56K lines and keep them covered by the tariff. We are trying to find out how much money is still available to CLAN from the tariff pool—and this time we may get a real answer.
CLAN may do something in the future with OSEAN—we may end up with them, in the long-run, for internet service.

• Rick: one advantage would be that all RI calls would then be local calls, so it would make internet traffic in RI much faster.

A major reason Peter does not want to get involved with RINET is that since the CLAN network runs full-time and RINET does not, we could be at the mercy of their short hours if we had trouble and be unable to get help, service, etc.

There is no schedule for the hot cut’s, since Verizon is involved. We may get a day or 2 notice before they show up.

• Fran asked if directors could do anything to help speed the process (the squeaky wheel theory) but Peter and Ginny explained why there is nothing to be done in that way.

Peter reminded us that telecomm is a "sleazy business."

BAR’s telecomm is posing a problem and Peter is not sure who will do BAR.

• Debbie: can we have a COX Cable internet connection?
• Peter: yes, it is an option, but

The price is very high
You’re never sure, because of the nature of cable, whether you’re on a sort of crowded "party line"—which would mean the line would be very slow. They cannot guarantee the speed. Still, it might be an option for now, but NOT for the long-term.

• Debbie: Cox at Home isn’t in Barrington yet anyway.
• Peter: go ahead and get the free Cox line if your library wants to—WPO and CFA already have it and it includes the free line and service, too.
• MaryEllen: can we put pressure anywhere to help out?
• Peter: No thanks, that would be counter-productive. It tends to slow things down.

DBC hot cuts will be starting this week—but nothing yet.

The tentative date for installation of the new DYNIX hardware is 3/26/01 and we will be down for about 1 day. We’ll keep you posted.

Technical Support Specialist’s (Rick Payette) report:

2 systems are being offered. Be aware that the mini-tower comes with Windows 2000.
Rick will be available for setup. If you will be using these PC’s in a public setting, upgrade to Fortres 4.1 and Norton Anti Virus 2001.

Dell models are: Dimension, which comes with Windows Office, and Optiplex, which does not.
Norton Anti Virus 5.0 is sufficient if you have W95 or W98. BE PREPARED: W2000 is different.

The mini-towers CLAN purchases will have 256 megs of RAM to deal with W2000.

OLIS representative’s (Donna Di Michele)report:

Dorothy Frechette’s position has not been filled—perhaps it will be in April.

Erate deadline is today (1/18). Sheila is compiling a list of libraries that get direct erate money.

The was a 20 minute or so break at this time)
epixtech and TelcircII

Ginny told the meeting about her letter to and response from epixtech regarding the voice on TelecircII and noted that some directors, including Karen, Judy and David, had also written letters. A copy of the response from Lana Porter, epixtech’s president, was distributed. In it she assured us that changes were being made and the new voice will be intelligible and more pleasant-sounding. Ginny and Peter noted that if an upgrade to TelecircII is on the epixtech product plan that is due out in the spring we’ll know the change is really happening. Debbie thanked Ginny and all who had written for getting things moving.

______________________________________________________________________
UCITA

David told us that UCITA would not be coming to RI this year. Insurance companies as well as libraries are opposed to it, and the legislature will not be considering a UCITA bill.
Library Board of RI’s request for CLAN’s support for library linx funding bill:

Advocacy Task Force report (January 8, 2001);
Library Linx Project—FY2002 Version (1/8/01);
Advocacy Task Force Legislative proposal (1/09/01);
Information Express]

David Macksam of RILA explained that the Library Board’s funding request to the legislature of last year went nowhere. That request was based on figures generated by Blue Ribbon Committee recommendations. It was thought that the reason it was not funded was because the legislature needed money to fund the RiteCare program and education.

RILA thought last year’s request was too high and had too many separate pieces.

This year the Advocacy Task Force of the RI Library Board upped the request from last year’s figure of $995K to $1.25M. Part of the request is to be for moving OLIS operations funding onto state money rather than LSTA money, a move that needs to be made.

At the January 9 meeting of the Advocacy Task Force the figure was raised from $1.25M to $1.75M.

RILA is opposed to requesting $1.75M because it believes it represents an incomplete package, based on the Blue Ribbon Committee’s research and findings.

RILA had wanted 2 bills to be presented so that at least partial funding might be obtained. One bill would ask for money for the new components of the proposal and the second would cover the costs of moving OLIS funding onto state monies.
Dick Olsen of the Advocacy Task Force had suggested that we could promote the idea of the second bill by telling the legislature we will use the LSTA money no longer being spent on OLIS operations to fund clusters 2 and 3 of the BRC.

• Donna: I want it on the record that David represents RILA and since Peter and Ginny were at the Advocacy Task Force meeting they should be speaking.
• Peter: I was uncomfortable at that meeting and should not have been there.
• Donna: I understand you (Peter) requested you be there.
• Peter and Ginny: Absolutely not—the request came from Joan Reeves to Ginny that Peter be at the meeting and when asked why she indicated the Task Force wanted another knowledgeable CLAN representative there.
• Debbie: who are the actual members of the Advocacy Task Force? Why is Peter listed as a member on the report (minutes) of that 1/9 meeting if he was merely asked to come to this one meeting?
• Ginny: when the vote was taken about the funding bill I understood we would be voting on whether or not to take it to our respective organizations and ask if they wanted to support it. That is not the same as recommending it to our organizations. (Groups represented besides CLAN were SLA, ARIHSL, COLA, RIEMA, HELIN, RILINK, CRIARL, RILA)
• Debbie: the phrase used in the meeting report is "…called for a vote, in principle, for the fy2002 Library Linx Project" and this means those voting agreed with the amount to be requested. That should be clarified with the person who wrote the report.
• Donna: Bob Aspri of HELIN said that $300K will not be enough to cover the cost of statewide databases.
• Ginny: the bigger question was that the BRC’s task force that dealt with technical issues (which was chaired by Dick Olsen and included Peter and Rick) found $95K to be a realistic figure for the cost of acquiring and starting up OCLC SiteSearch. Both Peter and Dick said the cost had not increased, to the best of their knowledge. Yet members of the Advocacy Task Force made up the figure of $250K to replace the $95K based on their sense of the figure needing to be higher. No actual data was used to determine this figure.
• Leslie: Are there no figures to backup this request? I want no part of this request/bill unless there is supporting data to be referenced.
• Regina: Massachusetts undertook a similar project for statewide catalog access with multi-type libraries participating and did so for $200K, and Massachusetts is a much larger state.
• Peter: I wish it to be on the record that I do not think Ginny or I should have been the CLAN representatives at the Advocacy Task Force meeting. Discussion ensued.
  
• Regina: I want to be able to back up the figures in any proposed bill in front of the legislature.
• Regina: I would also like to address the idea that libraries are now being funded at 25%, as is claimed by OLIS. Newport is not getting 25%. >
• Donna: There is a formula that shows the figures equal out to 25% among the libraries. I don’t have that formula with me.
• Regina: My point is that if the legislature believes we are now getting the 25% then it does not see the whole picture. Shouldn’t we pursue getting the 25% first and then move on to other requests?
• Fran: However much we want to add to the items in the Library Linx Project, it will be hard. The problem is, we are asking for more than we asked for last year—and at that time we got nothing.
• Fran: There is no plan in place to mobilize and get this thing going—it should have been started last fall rather than now.
• Donna: The Library Board is waiting to see if all the library organizations involved will support the legislation before it proceeds.
• Fran: It is too late. It needed to have been underway in October or November at the latest. It takes time to get things lined up, and there is currently no structure in place.
• Donna: The 25% Regina was talking about applied to public libraries only. This year’s effort includes multi-types of libraries.
• Debbie: Who will spearhead the effort?

MOTION 1:

• Leslie: I would like to move that we recommend to the CLAN membership that we not support this package AS PROPOSED.
• Fran: A friendly amendment: that we not recommend CLAN support this package because we have no details or documentation.
• Judy: Second.

Discussion:

• Ann: Following up on Fran’s knowledge, if we don’t support this legislation it will wipe it out and there will be no possibility it will pass the legislature this year. CLAN doesn’t want that.
• David: We have an alternate idea—the Information Express, as an alternative. (see attachment)

VOTE:

1 abstention
All the rest were in favor—

MOTION 1 CARRIED.

MOTION 2:

• Connie: I move that the Information Express be proposed as an alternate for the previously-discussed package.

There was no Second to the motion.

Leslie: I propose a friendly amendment—that the Steering Committee recommend to the membership that the Information Express package be supported, with dollar figures added. Discussion

• David: $$ were originally included in the proposal but RILA passed it with the figures excluded. RILINK is not included for funding because it was not in the first cluster of the Blue Ribbon Committee recommendations.
• Leslie: Would it "Deep 6" the proposed funding bill if CLAN doesn’t support it?
• Donna: Support from all quarters is vital.
• Leslie: I’d rather support the RILA proposal (Information Express) based on past experience. The Advocacy Task Force’s proposal is a mess. Let’s go with RILA.
• Fran: Those of us at this meeting seem to have a fundamental difference of opinion with the Library Board of RI’s philosophy. We can’t accomplish anything with 2 differing plans. What is the authority of the Advocacy Task Force? If we end up with RILA vs. Advocacy Task Force we will be defeated.
• Leslie: Where did the numbers in the Advocacy Task Force’s proposal come from?
• David: The Advocacy Task Force is a creature of the Library Board of RI. Some individuals on the ATF came up with a shopping basket full of unsupported figures that will be very hard to justify with legislators.
• Fran: Who is actually on the Task Force?
• Donna: Why didn’t you (Peter and Ginny) refuse to go if you thought it inappropriate?
• Ginny: We didn’t know until the meeting was underway that it would become so.

• Leslie: I would like to move the motion to a vote.
• Joan: Second.

Discussion:

• Fran: We have a basic disagreement and no strategies.
• Regina: We need to build a consensus.
• Fran: We should have been past that point long ago.
• Debbie: There seems to be a lack of leadership to get this moving.
• Karen: it should have come from the LORI Board.
• Debbie: LORI meets on January 20. Is there a consensus I shall tell them that CLAN’s Steering Committee does not support the Library Board’s Advocacy Task Force’s proposal?
• Fran: Historically, we have never asked for this much. We were not mobilized last year to help and I’m afraid it will happen the same way this year.
• Debbie: The legislators will go to their local public librarians and ask their stand on this bill. If they get negative responses.…..
• Donna: I don’t agree that the legislators will necessarily go to their local librarians.
• Judy: Wasn’t there controversy about the common interface?
• Peter: The recommendation for the common interface came from the BRC’s task force on technology. Dick Olsen, Rick and I were in favor of the common interface. The price tag of $95K is based on OCLC Site Search. They were the only ones doing it the way we wanted. The bulk of the $95 is for a one-time setup and there would then be lesser on-going costs.
• David: The interface would need on-going funding.
• Ginny: Some of us at the Advocacy Task Force meeting suggested presenting our proposal to the legislators with the original figures and indicating we would be seeking future monies for on-going costs. The ATF did not pursue that idea.
• Regina: Can we achieve one voice on this?
• Ann: Last year we got partial funding so there is some hope.
• David: No, last year we got no funding for this.
• Peter: Is there a chance that RILA and the Library Board to work out a single position?
• David: RILA tried last October but our suggestions were rejected.
• Regina: We should advocate that the "we/they" position be broken down.
• Ginny: Joan Reeves asks that CLAN give the Board an answer by January 22.
• Ann: We cannot expect that OLIS be solely public library directed.

Back to the Motion:
(That the Information Express proposal be supported with dollar figures added)

1 abstention
The rest were ayes, no nays.

Motion 2 passed


Filtering:

• David: As per ALA’s attorneys:

The good news is that under the CIPA legislation, libraries that receive LSTA and/or erate money must filter. BUT—RI’s libraries don’t use erate money for telecommunications and/or computers, only POTS, so they won’t lose based on that.

The bad news is that CLAN does use erate money for telecommunications and so probably makes member libraries liable to filter as per CIPA.

At the ALA Midwinter meetings they were not certain about the consortium participation piece of this puzzle, but it appears we will have to filter.

However, it is interesting that the word "network" doesn’t appear in the legislation.

Unless this is declared unconstitutional we will have to comply. We must comply by the end of October.

• Fran: If a bill is passed and then a lawsuit is filed to challenge it, does it still go into effect?
• David: As soon as this passed challenges arose. The national ACLU is pursuing a suit with a variety of library associations as plaintiffs: Maine has said yes; possibly Texas, Minnesota, RI, Connecticut. But to stop the law from going into effect and injunction would have to be granted. ALA’s attorney thinks CIPA will be declared unconstitutional, but only after a couple of years, and in that time we will have to comply.An Ad Hoc committee has been formed to draft a position statement on why we support the lawsuit. There is also a meeting planned to discuss talking points for librarians and library staff. There has been nothing on local tv regarding this legislation, but once/if RILA becomes a plaintiff that could change. ALA may join the ACLU suit or may file one of its own. It is thought that it may be wiser to stay separate from the ACLU for publicity reasons. If ALA does file it will be necessary to decide how RILA wants to proceed—with both? With either? The ACLU pays all costs. If RILA joined the suit we would have to:

• Tell the ACLU which libraries get the LSTA and erate monies
• Tell them what it is used for
• Provide internet use policies from member libraries
• Provide affidavits regarding current practices in libraries

• Peter: Any library could opt out of CLAN-wide filtering if they so chose. They would then just not get any erate refund/reduction to their CLAN fees.
• Karen: EGR might opt out rather than have to filter.
• Fran: I would recommend we join the suit with ALA rather than the ACLU, given the choice.

It was noted that some libraries already filter and would perhaps not want to participate in a lawsuit.

• David: We would want to use the point that there is no filter that will filter graphics ONLY as specified in the legislation.
• David: Also stress that this federal mandate is overlooking the issue of local control.
• MaryEllen: Aren’t internal library connections considered to be telecommunications?
• Peter: No, internal connections only support telecommunications. BUT—the government may disagree!

No committee reports.

Ginny reported that RILINK asks that CLAN house its switch. There would be minimal work required on our part and there would be no cost to us.

Motion 3:

It was moved that CLAN agree to house a server for RILINK at no cost to RILINK. (person who made the motion unknown)

Second:

Paul Holliday

Motion passed unanimously.

Other:

Ginny said that Library Legislative Day is coming April 30 and May 1. Volunteers/Nominations may be sent to Debbie or Ginny. Judy Bell represented CLAN last year.

Judy: JAM had a busy December, circulation-wise.
Regina: Perhaps because Newport was closed?

The meeting was adjourned at 12:55 PM.