The meeting at BAR was convened by Chairperson Deborah Barchi at approximately 9:45 AM. In attendance were: Debbie Barchi, BAR; Peter Bennett, CLAN; Becky Boragine, LIN; John Carney, EPL; Fran Farrell-Bergeron, WWA; Jim Giles, NSH; Joan Hackett, HAR; De Johnson, JOH; Ginny Moses, CLAN; Elsie Oltedale, WGR; Anne Parent, OLIS; Rick Payette, CLAN; Doug Pearce, WAR; Ed Surato, WRR; Karen Taylor, EGR.
Executive Director's report:
Atrion is now handling our WAN.
The ad hoc committee on database licensing has finished its work and Fran will tell us about it later in the meeting.
We currently have Cyberpatrol and WebSense lined up to talk with us about filtering and CIPA compliance.
Ginny will be off in September and early October for carpal tunnel surgeries.
Systems and Network Administrator's report:
Atrion is now in charge of our WAN-they have replaced Dimension Data. A number of Dimension Data's previous employees are now working for Atrion. Atrion is doing our network monitoring-they now are dealing with Verizon-and that's great! We are pleased with Atrion's competency, attitude, etc.
PRO is now doing wireless at the circ desk, through Atrion. It works and is quite impressive.
Debbie asks that we have a workshop dealing with wireless, to be presented by Atrion. We will arrange it through Atrion.
Q.: What does it cost?
A: $2300 per access point, plus $200 per network card.
Debbie asked Peter if he thinks Champlin will fund wireless.
Peter said it is possible, since it good and inexpensive.
Rick: remember that wireless is not a panacea, nor cheaper than wiring. Modern buildings would find wiring cheaper. But older, difficult buildings would perhaps find wireless a good alternative. Wireless is not the solution to replace wiring.
Fran: can wireless go down?
Rick: get a backup so there is less chance of downtime.
Ed: can people get into your system with their own PC's?
Rick: yes-we would need better security.
Fran: will Atrion do LANS?
Peter: no, not LAN hardware. They will do operating systems, troubleshooting, setup.
If you are buying a server go through Rick. He gets Dell's with maintenance.
Aegis in Watertown, Mass. does PRO's server maintenance. Matt Sheehan, formerly of Dimension Data, works for Aegis.
Contact Peter for information
Verizon has been installing ATM lines for OSHEAN
PRO's lines will be up on Sept. 21, then we'll bring up the other 19 sites on OSHEAN's T1's.
DNS is changing. After everything is up on OSHEAN's we'll phase out the 56K and Conversant. NOTE: OSHEAN is up at NKI and has been for 6 or more months. It is reliable.
The T1 at NKI, even with 45+ PC's on it are using only about 30% of their bandwidth.
Peter is a bit nervous about our Champlin request because of difficulties in the market.
CLAN has realized no money from erate requests. We had applied for about $80K when DBC and HarvardNet were our vendors, and now we need Conversant to go to the erate people so we can get our credit.
The new Release for TelecircII is out. We need to upgrade toR182 (we are at R180) to be able to use the improved Perfect Paul. We will upgrade around October 1. There may be a very small amount of downtime.
After that we will need to load TelecircII II-maybe a day or 2 later.
Perfect Paul's voice is supposed to be natural and not garbled. We haven't yet heard it.
Technical Support Specialist's report:
Rick Payette reports that his next PC purchase will be in October. He'll be posting the specifics within a week. The deadline will be October 5. He'll be offering a choice of a small form factor PC with a 15" monitor or a regular PC with a 17" monitor. They will be GX150's. Dell will soon have Pentium 4's available in the Optiplex line. He hopes to be ordering Pentium 4's in January 2002.
We are expanding CLAN's hardware ordering to include:
- Network servers from Dell on an "as needed" basis. Contact Rick for advice.
- Laptops and specialized PC's on a modified "as needed" basis - he will limit ordering to the 1st and 15th of the month.
Debbie asked if there would still be a price break on the above items.
Rick: not on such small quantities. State pricing is still good.
CLAN admin offices asked Champlin for an exchange email server to replace CLAN.MESSAGE. Our internal mail system would be gone-yes! The new server would have more functions. It would cost about $30K for the server, licenses, setup…
OLIS Representative's report:
Anne Parent spoke about the continuing education program.
There is a lot of interest in developing websites-what does CLAN recommend?
Rick: I recommend FrontPage-CLAN offers space for libraries to mount websites. NOTE: FrontPage 2000 has problems, FrontPage 97 is okay.
De: RILA offers that kind of training.
There were some real problems with the Annual Report this year. Ann Piascik will be at the next Director's meeting to answer questions.
An apology was offered to all who had problems with the report.
Thanks to Rick for volunteering to serve on a SMALL committee to revamp the report for next year.
Karen T: Ann Piascik ought not to go on vacation during August if she is in charge of the Annual Report. If she does, someone else should be there to help with problems.
Doug P.: close supervision and oversight are needed when the report is prepared and sent out-it was nowhere near ready to send to the Directors.
Joan H.: I would like to have Director's meetings moved to Thursdays. I will broach the subject at the next CLAN meeting. If not on Thursdays, then at least scheduled farther in advance.
Ad Hoc Committee on Database Licensing-report by Fran Farrell-Bergeron:
Handouts were presented showing library fees if various database licenses were purchased CLAN-wide.
The Committee chose Gale because :
periodicals are CLAN's 1st priority
Gale provides help with homework and research
we like their health information
Gale's pricing makes it possible
The Committee recommends that CLAN include access to online databases in the next CLAN budget, FY 2003. This would not be replacing what the state may be able to offer, but we want to proceed now rather than waiting.
Fran noted that it might be possible for some libraries to justify the added cost as a CLAN cost if it is included in the budget.
The Committee agreed to use the figure of $217K for database licensing.
Next CLAN meeting to be on November 8 at LIN.
The meeting was adjourned at 11:30 AM.
