August 8, TO: RAILS Board of Directors FROM: RAILS staff ABOUT: RAILS service and operations report August 2013

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1 125 Tower Drive Burr Ridge, IL T: F: August 8, 2013 TO: RAILS Board of Directors FROM: RAILS staff ABOUT: RAILS service and operations report August 2013 Administration and Finance The Finance staff s major activities have been preparation of the final FY2013 financial information for the auditors review, both for RAILS and the four LLSAPs. They have reviewed the year s results, incorporating expenditures made during July and August that were for FY2013 services and making any necessary adjustment entries. The RAILS financial information will be sent to Sikich LLP for review by August 9, and the annual financial statements will be presented to the board at its September meeting. The auditor (Sikich LLP) for SWAN and MAGIC visited RAILS on August 7 to review the FY2013 financial materials. Communications The next RAILS Member Update session will be held on Thursday, September 5, from 9:30 11:30 a.m. In addition to hearing the latest news from RAILS, members from all types of libraries will have the opportunity to provide input on RAILS programs and services (current and future), as well as challenges they are facing at their libraries that RAILS might be able to help with. This information will be of great value to RAILS as we proceed with our strategic planning process. RAILS will have an exhibit booth at Reaching Forward South in Springfield on Friday, September 20. We are looking forward to meeting members and talking to them about RAILS programs and services and how to get the most out of their membership in the system. RAILS will send out a consulting and continuing education needs assessment survey to all RAILS library directors in mid-august. The survey will help us identify priority member needs as we add the consulting services outlined in our FY2014 area and per capita grant application. Brian Smith, RAILS Applications & Web Developer, gave two presentations at the recent On the Front Lines Statewide Library Practitioners Conference in Springfield: Library Websites: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and Write Grant Applications that Get Funded (with Karen Egan from the Illinois State Library). He also moderated the panel discussion session, Google Took Our Jobs! The Future of Reference Services. The RAILS Member Advisory Group (MAG) will meet on Tuesday, August 13. The agenda includes a discussion of the future structure of the advisory group. Member needs have changed since the group was first formed in August 2011, and RAILS wants to work with MAG members to determine if any changes to MAG s charge should be made as a result. Delivery Three proposals for outsourcing Burr Ridge delivery and sorting were received in response to our request for proposal. At its meeting on August 5, the Delivery Committee approved the executive staff recommendation to outsource both sorting and delivery using nondedicated routes (routes that carry 1

2 other packages in addition to library materials). The committee s recommendation will be brought to the RAILS Board at the August 16 meeting. On July 30, Mark Hatch gave a presentation on the RAILS delivery labels to the Illinois State Library Delivery Advisory Committee meeting in Springfield. Mark is also chair of a subgroup looking at holiday schedules for delivery. E-Books for Illinois Grant Project On July 29, RAILS received a payment of $889,685 for the two-year e-book grant. The total contract amount is $985,219. E-book project team staff at RAILS and Illinois Heartland Library System (IHLS) collaboratively developed the job description for the e-book trainer/coordinator positions funded by the grant. One position will be at RAILS, the other at IHLS. The RAILS position has been posted on the RAILS website and various library and training job sites; applications are due August 17, Appointments to the Illinois Statewide E-Book Project Advisory Committee were made by the IHLS and RAILS executive directors. The advisory committee members are: o Marian Albers of Mascoutah Public Library (IHLS representative) o Anne Craig, Illinois State Library (Illinois State Library representative) o George Kalinka, Woodridge Public Library (RAILS representative) o Nalini Mahajan, MarianJoy Rehabilitation Hospital (RAILS representative) o Brittany Osika, Illinois Central College (RAILS representative) o Jill Pifer, Fairview Heights Public Library (IHLS representative) o Lynn Schmit, Mahomet Public Library (IHLS representative) o Rebecca Scott, Downers Grove North High School (RAILS representative) o o Diane Yeoman, Mason City Public Library District (IHLS representative) Veronda J. Pitchford, project director and RAILS Director of Membership Development and Resource Sharing, and the two e-book trainer/coordinators will serve as ex-officio members of the committee. The advisory committee s first meeting is scheduled for Thursday, August 22 at 1:30pm at RAILS East Peoria. First up for the advisory committee will be establishing collection development policies and procedures and a membership fee structure for participating libraries. The membership fee structure should be affordable for libraries, fair, easily explainable, and transparent; rely on easily accessible data by libraries; and support a sustainable project after grant funding is no longer available. Project staff and the RAILS finance staff are working on potential membership fee scenarios to present to the advisory committee. RAILS has received the first draft of the Baker & Taylor Axis 360 contract and had their first call to discuss the contract details and clarification with the Baker & Taylor team. Project staff from RAILS and IHLS will hold a conference call on August 12 to discuss the project website, project branding, membership fee scenarios for the statewide project and the status of the hiring process for the trainer/coordinator position for both organizations. Facilities Bolingbrook: Build-out of the Bolingbrook facility has been completed, and PrairieCat staff moved in on August 2. The move went well, thanks to hard work by many RAILS staff, including the PrairieCat staff, Mark Hatch (Delivery and Facilities Director), Wesley Smith (Information Technology Manager) and other IT staff, and Brenda Roman (Coal Valley Delivery Services Manager). An open house for members is planned for October 2 from 2:00 4:30 p.m. Burr Ridge: Painting, carpet cleaning, network cabling, and cubicle installation have been completed in office room C. The refurbished cubicles are more functional for staff and have increased the capacity of RAILS Operational Report August

3 the room from four staff to nine. This additional space will be needed later this year, as both SWAN and RAILS will be adding positions in the next few months. RAILS plans to hire an e-book trainer/coordinator (funded by the e-book grant) and someone to manage outsourced consulting services. East Peoria: Dee Brennan has signed the sales listing agreement with Coldwell Banker Commercial Devonshire Realty following review by Erik Thompson, RAILS real estate attorney. A walkthrough by the potential buyer went well. Geneva: The prospective buyer has canceled the contract within his 30-business-day due diligence period, stating that the property was found unsuitable for its intended purpose and the value closer to the $1,250,000 range. This is consistent with the range received from two other potential buyers who valued the property between $1.1 and $1.4 million. Human Resources HR staff worked with Rose Chenoweth, Illinois Talking Book Outreach Center (ITBOC) Director, to fill the second of two clerical assistant positions during July. The one remaining open reader advisor position should be filled on August 12. The open HR assistant position was filled in July. Recruitment is underway for the Director, Technology Services and for the E-Book Trainer/Coordinator. During July, there were four new hires and one termination. The global benefit tables for Paychex were successfully implemented during July, allowing HR the ability to make global adjustments to insurance premiums rather than make changes to each individual record in the payroll system. New deduction codes for benefit premiums were also added. At the start of FY2014, benefit accruals for vacation, personal, and sick time were not calculating properly in Paychex. HR worked diligently with Paychex to correct all employee benefit balances that were displayed in the Time and Labor section of Paychex, as well as on each employee s pay stub. The Board-approved 3% pay increase was input into our payroll system for staff below their pay grade maximums, with an effective date of July 1, Information Technology The VOIP phone system and copier/printer projects are nearing completion after months of planning and implementation by Wesley Smith, Rudy Host, and Justin Schmidt. Copier training was held at Burr Ridge on August 8 and is being planned for other RAILS facilities. LLSAPs and Other Consortia General The Consortia Committee held its first meeting on July 17. A smaller working group was appointed to begin the overlay project by selecting a consultant. Working group members are: o Carol Dawe, LINC Consortium Manager o Paul Mills, Director, Fountaindale Public Library District (Pinnacle Library Cooperative) o Jane Plass, RAILS Associate Executive Director o Robert Moffett, Director of Technical Services, Gail Borden Public Library District (LINKin) o Aaron Skog, SWAN Executive Director o Jill Sodt, LRC Coordinator, Black Hawk College, East Campus (RSA) o Wesley Smith, RAILS Information Technology Manager Jane Plass wrote the request for proposal for a technology consultant for this project. The RFP was posted on the RAILS website on August 8; it was also distributed to various consultants and will be posted on other websites and the Daily Herald. Proposals are due August 29, and a consultant will be selected by the working group at its meeting on September 11. Cataloging staff from MAGIC, PrairieCat, RSA, and SWAN met on July 30 at La Salle Public Library. The LLSAPs shared their cataloging policies and procedures, which highlighted both similarities and differences in integrated library system vendors, staffing, and cataloging standards. Some shared RAILS Operational Report August

4 challenges were also discussed: OCLC training; continuing education for library cataloging staff at all levels; RDA training and compliance. (RDA Resource Description and Access is the new cataloging code.) In addition, an internal group has been created to enhance communication among LLSAP cataloging staff. LLSAPs MAGIC The MAGIC Technical Services meeting was held at RAILS Geneva on July 10. During the meeting there was a conference call with MARCIVE to discuss issues related to the RDA conversion service, including hybrid records. The MAGIC Circulation meeting was held at RAILS Geneva on July 17. On July 18, SirsiDynix upgraded MAGIC s Enterprise discovery layer to version 4.3, which includes the consortium-friendly ability to copy profile parameters. Work continues on configuring an initial profile for each library. MAGIC staff visited Messenger Public Library of North Aurora and Oak Brook Public Library. LLSAPs PrairieCat PrairieCat celebrated one year on Innovative's Sierra software on July 5. The implementation team is still hard at work implementing the last of phase II items from the migration, but expects to be completed by fall. The Kid's Catalog was launched in July. Work continues on implementing the ILL and Program Registration modules. PrairieCat staff handled 2,739 help desk calls from PrairieCat member libraries in FY2013. Work began on PrairieCat's OCLC reclamation in July. This process will update the OCLC holdings of PrairieCat libraries by removing all holdings and then re-adding them from a current PrairieCat database file prepared by John Slanicky (PrairieCat LLSAP Coordinator) and Ron Chesko (PrairieCat Technology Services Coordinator). This project has been in the planning stage for several months and is expected to be completed by September. PrairieCat is scheduled to update to Sierra version on Wednesday, August 14. A rebuild of the Telephone Notification System (TNS) server is planned for Tuesday, August 20. LLSAPs RSA RSA is building the new discovery version of its online catalog. This searches much differently than the traditional catalog. RSA will invest well over 100 staff hours into modifying 225+ individual and group profiles. This will prepare for a new product (eresource Central) that will integrate OverDrive and other e-book/e-audio holdings into the catalog and eventually become the one-stop shop for all RSA items and e-items. RSA s server move to Springfield is on hold due to ICN s inability to move the RSA block of IP addresses to Springfield. We had been told several times this was possible, but it s not. RSA is experimenting with various fixes, but all will require all RSA vendors, libraries, school IT people, etc. to change settings, firewalls, and other things to work with the new IP addresses required in Springfield. This will take several months to finish and requires one-on-one work with every RSA member and lots of coordination with IT staff at about 60 school members. RSA cataloging staff is dealing with how to work around about a dozen automated libraries dropping OCLC, largely due to concerns about OCLC costs and pricing inequities. RSA held its two Back to School workshops for new and returning school librarians. Special thanks to Veronda Pitchford for attending both sessions and presenting two different blocks of information. RSA is alpha/beta testing SirsiDynix s new BLUEcloud Analytics software, which will eventually combine two reporting products into one. RSA is currently the only consortium in the world testing these newest setups and software. RAILS Operational Report August

5 RSA staff conducted site visits to ten public, one academic, one special, and four school RSA member libraries. Staff conducted 14 training classes/committee meetings for RSA members, working with 67 library staff members for 59 contact hours. LLSAPs SWAN SWAN and RAILS staff are beginning changes to SWAN s network; work will be done over the next ten weeks. Changes include implementing new IP addresses for SWAN s internal and external networks, moving the SWAN network away from the RAILS network into its own segment, and designing the network for greater flexibility. SWAN has retired its old website. The new support website for SWAN members is The request for proposal for SWAN s next integrated library system has been posted at Proposals are due August 28, SWAN expects to select a proposal in November following an extensive evaluation process. Resource Sharing and Membership Resource sharing staff answered member questions on OCLC WorldShare, developmental plans, nonresident policies and other nonresident issues. Staff completed member visits to New Lenox Public Library District and the College of DuPage Library, as well as to two potential members, American Islamic College and Ungaretti & Harris LLP (a law firm). The Library Learning (L2) agency consolidation project continues in collaboration with the Illinois State Library and the Illinois Heartland Library System. Work also continues on finalizing FY2013 (precertification) and FY2014 (postcertification) RAILS membership lists. Veronda Pitchford gave several presentations: o Resource Sharing Rocks presentations on July 24 and August 8 at RAILS East Peoria for the RSA Back to School workshops for school librarians o On the Front Lines conference presentation entitled Creating Delight in a Difficult Customer Experience in Springfield, Illinois o Introduction to Illinois Library Systems and What s New at RAILS presentation to the Serving our Publics LTA class taught by Carol Sturz at the College of DuPage Strategic Planning RAILS is scheduling nine in-person member focus groups as part of our strategic planning process. The focus groups will be conducted by Nancy Bolt and Liz Bishoff beginning on Monday, September 9 and ending on Thursday, September 19. Sessions are scheduled at the following locations: Freeport Public Library, Princeton Public Library, Western Illinois University (Macomb), Kankakee Public Library, Ela Area Public Library District (Lake Zurich), Quincy Public Library, Moline Public Library, Peoria Public Library, and the RAILS Burr Ridge service center. RAILS invited members to indicate their interest in participating in a focus group and received an overwhelming response. We will also be recruiting other members to get a good cross-section of different library types and sizes, as well as differing levels of familiarity with RAILS programs and services. In addition to the nine in-person focus groups, three separate focus groups will be conducted via webinar for academic, school and special RAILS member libraries. The plan is to hold these webinars during the same two-week period in September. Member recruitment for these webinar sessions will begin soon. RAILS Operational Report August

6 Talking Book Centers The Illinois Talking Book Outreach Center continues to organize the Burr Ridge office. New assistants Karen Goyer and Romi Pekarek Smith are taking on more of the support services. They are sending out packets to new patrons, scanning and sending applications inputting patron requests, and learning more about the program. Fay Hutchings designed and prepares the reader advisor schedule so everyone has periods to answer phones, answer and messages, and enter data. The reader advisor team is working well together under the new advisory outreach center model. Talking Book staff discussed and created a new list of statistics to collect to better represent the work of the new organization. ITBOC staff members are also preparing for the major outreach season of September and October. RAILS Operational Report August