Minutes March 2003
Central Arkansas Library System—Darragh Center
Little Rock, Arkansas
March 4, 2003
Jennifer Chilcoat made welcoming remarks on behalf of CALS.
Susan Goldner opened the meeting at 10:35 a.m.
Previous minutes were accepted as distributed electronically.
Introductions of new attendees were made. Thirty people were in attendance.
A sign-up sheet for the listserv and an attendance sheet were circulated.
Dr. Bobby Roberts, Director of the Central Arkansas Library System, discussed the INN-Reach proposal presented to the Legislature. He distributed copies of Senate Bill 537 and a document containing questions and answers about the proposal that can be used as talking points. (The document is available at http://library1.ualr.edu/aiug/innreach.htm.) Due to the budget situation, the bill requests funding from the General Improvement Fund. If passed, the challenge will be to get the funding released from the GIF. Legislators need to hear from librarians and their patrons. The bill has several sponsors are from Central Arkansas and strong support from Northwest Arkansas legislators. It is particularly important that legislators in other parts of the state hear from their constituents. We need to educate our institution's lobbyists so that they will contact the legislators. Individuals should contact their local legislators and members of the Joint Budget Committee. Email is not a recommended contact method. Phone calls, printed letters, and most especially handwritten letters are more effective in getting legislators attention. Letters should always mention the bill number. It is important that legislators know that any library in the state could participate if the library signs with Innovative or uses a compatible system such as Dynix. The fate of the bill should be known in a couple of weeks.
Dr. Roberts answered questions regarding the Digital Arkansas Project. Dr. Carolyn Allen, Dean of Libraries-University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, presented a request for nine million dollars annually for database purchases for statewide libraries. Speaker Herschel Cleveland met with Dr. Allen and Dr. Roberts for one hour on the Digital Arkansas project and then introduced a bill for five million dollars annually.
Susan Goldner commented on the Innovative Users Group Annual Conference being held April 25-28, 2003, in San Jose, CA. Susan discussed the excellence of the conference and the learning opportunities available to participants. Powerpoint presentations are available on the http://innopacusers.org website after the conference.
Possible locations for the next meeting were discussed. No decision was made during the meeting.
Katja Moos, III Sales Consultant, presented on the Media Management and E-journal Management packages Innovative now has.
Nathan James, III Sales Support Consultant, presented tips and tricks for utilizing Millennium to the fullest with an emphasis on Release 2002-2 .
Respectfully submitted,
Lynnette Jack
