Sage Council Meeting Minutes

January 21, 2025

Recording Link: https://vimeo.com/1049877714

Attendees: Beth Ross (Sage), Dea Nowell (UCSLD, Chair), Jon Georg (Sage), Perry Stokes (Baker, Vice-chair), Carrie Bushman (Cook Memorial), Rachael Fox (Hood River), Delia Fields (Hermiston High School), Mary Reser (Gillam), Marsha Richmond (Lake), Maggie Pando (The Dalles), Cheryl Hancock (Harney)

Request for agenda items: No additional items

Approval of November minutes – The November minutes were not yet ready for approval.

Committee Reports

Cataloging Workgroup- The committee met on December 3rd. The majority of the discussion centered around the new software upgrade. We discussed bugs that had been found, mostly with the Enhanced MARC editor, as well as the other ongoing issues that were being worked on.

Additionally, we went over the differences between series and serial records. In this case we’re referring to monograph serial records, or books that have periodic, usually yearly, revisions that are sent out. An example is Kelly Blue Book, which has a new version every year versus books that are part of a series, like a fiction series. The monograph serials document is going to be updated to help clarify these distinctions for staff.

We also talked about self-published works as they’re becoming more common, and we want to start identifying some guidelines for how staff catalogs them, so that we’re consistent.

Systems Update

While the Evergreen upgrade process this time has been an ordeal for all involved, we have made a lot of progress. One of the major issues we ran into was reports were not working, which we ended up resolving by upgrading Evergreen from 3.13.5 to 3.13.7, which contained bug fixes for that issue.

The end result is that report templates are going to need to be redone given the large change in database tables over the last many versions of Evergreen, as some of the report templates go all the way back to the desktop client, which was programmed in a completely different language. We’re in process of recreating and cleaning up the shared report templates. If staff have report templates in their personal folders, they will need to test those templates to verify if they still work or if they need to be recreated. The easiest way to recreate the templates is to pull up a clone copy of the existing one in one browser window and then a new report template in another window and use the old one as a template for what fields and filters you need in the new template.

Another issue that we’ve been working on is lost items. We’re still trying to track down the cause, but it seems to be specific to particular org units rather than to all libraries.

The staff has been very patient during the process and helpful by providing us with examples to help us identify and troubleshoot the issues. An additional bug has been located, but it is minor and also affects the Enhanced MARC editor.

Financial Report-
Sage Financial Reports
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-qZMLbV9wBxa3YyUlFPZnpNSzg?resourcekey=0-xRHGKIsbViTndFygJsO0Jw&usp=sharing

Budget Draft
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yop2ZeMZwmoyPR1-e_PC-KMdj8BMQhSaLUvYX4dIDSQ/edit?usp=sharing

Member Fee Schedule https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yVqIYsNngNfVwE8JGU31sQ4zYQ39nMDfhkrbun-O17s/edit?usp=sharing

Presentation of 2025-26 Budget draft-

Perry presented the 2025-2026 budget draft.

We’re operating under the 4-5 year plan that we previously agreed upon where we would draw down our reserves by approximately $10,000 a year.

Perry, Dea and Beth met on December 19th to get the draft ready for this meeting.

Personnel-

Some refinement was needed for personnel numbers, but membership dues remain unchanged. It does change the amount that will need drawn down, but it was thought that it was not significant enough at this time to adjust everything else.

The cost of living increase is projected to be 2.5% this year for Beth, Jon and the Accountant [listed as Business Manager].

Courier-

The courier costs are expected to go up by about $5,000. The additional costs will be taken into account for the upcoming courier grant proposal.

Technology-
Miscellaneous revenue are the reimbursements Sage receives from the libraries for CatExpress, Wowbrary, and EZProxy.

There will be big changes to the Technology line given the increase in costs to Emerald Data as part of the Evergreen upgrade. Perry is going to change how some of those categories are broken down and defined to make them more clear and easier to understand.

We discussed the costs for Backstage for Authority Control in lieu of MARCIVE. The upfront costs to run authority control on approximately 560k bibliographic records [not including electronic resources] would be approximately $7,500 [the estimate is good through the end of March], and then the annual ongoing costs would be approximately $6,155 per year.

Previously with MARCIVE we had avoided sending the entire database for review, as it had been done through LTI, but Backstage does not offer that option.

We will be receiving a small refund from MARCIVE due to the early termination of our subscription with them due to them going out of business.

Money has been allocated for MessageBee for the next fiscal year. A bucket of 100k text messages was $3,500, and implementation of MessageBee is $995, with an annual cost of $675, for text messages only.

Streamline costs for implementation was under $3,000.

Operating contingency was reduced by $13,000 so requirement and resources match.

Library Fees-

Since library fees have not changed for next year’s budget, we will generate $277,000 in member fees. It’ll be year 2 of the projected 4-5 year draw down plan.

We’ll likely have to increase the draw down as a result of the extra unexpected technology expenses, but as long as we’re above $180,000 by the end of the plan, we’ll be fine. We have $217,000 in reserve now.

Backstage-

Beth had already covered this during the budget discussion. It was verified that the plan was to proceed with implementing Backstage this fiscal year, and that there were no obstacles preventing that.

Once a timeline is available for both MessageBee and Backstage, it will be shared with the council.

Perry voted to proceed with Backstage and allot expenses to cover it, and Delia seconded it.

MessageBee-

Money had already been allocated in the draft budget for MessageBee for the next fiscal year. No vote was needed at this time.

Staff Intranet-

Sagestaff.org no longer exists. All data had already been migrated to Streamline under SageLib.org as the staff intranet. A group staff login was already created and sent out to staff. No issues have been reported by staff at this time.

Meeting adjourned at 10:41 am Pacific Time.

Next Meeting will be March 18th