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Attendance:
Lynne Personius, Tom Hickerson, Howard Raskin, Diane Hillmann, Steven
Rockey, David Block, Fred Muratori, Elaine Engst, Oya Rieger, Scott wicks,
Linda Westlake, Jim LeBlanc, Zsuzsa Koltay, Susan Currie, Mike Garcia (CIT),
Jim Howell (CIT), Surinder Ghangas, Tim Lynch.
1. Lynne Personius introduced new members to this committee, which included Steve Rockey, Jim Howell, Surinder Ghangas and Oya Rieger. Lynne also Informed the group that mailing list lms-l has been established for this group in order to communicate and everybody is already subscribed to the list. All the committee members introduced themselves to the group.
2. Tom Hickerson opened the meeting by welcoming and thanking the committee for taking over this very important task. Tom explained to the group that we need to open the suspended search after six months to replace the existing Library Management System with a new system. Tom mentioned that he and Lynne will be going to the ALA meeting and they will be talking to the different vendors, which includes Gaylord, DRA, Sirsi, VTLS, Ameritech, Exlibris, and Endeavor. After this initial evaluation Lynne and Tom will decide if there is any other vendor who has made significant progress and should be invited to campus for a demonstration.
3. This team is charged to concentrate on last year's principal contenders. Tom encouraged the group to keep an open mind, consider all the choices, discuss available options with colleagues, build consensus and make the best possible decision in selecting the system. This committee is charged to make the recommendation to the LMS Steering committee (includes LMT and Helen Moharmann from Administrative Systems and Distributed Technologies, CIT) by the end of April 1999.
4. There were several questions asked by the team members. Tim Lynch asked if the team has the option to recommend waiting for another year? Fred Muratori asked if committee could recommend signing a declaration of intent to sign a contact like Harvard University did with DRA. Tom and Lynne explained that yes the committee could do that, but Notis support has been going down drastically in this past year. Mike Garcia informed that the mainframe is scheduled to be terminated permanently in year 2001. It may not be good idea for Library to wait another year for a new system.
After some discussion, Tom explained that we need to make a decision by the end of April 99, sign the contract in June 99 and start working on the Implementation in July 99. To follow this we will need to hire more technical staff to help with the implementation. So it is very important that committee makes its decision. Diane Hillmann suggested that we will need to put some clause in the contract for improvements.
5. Oya (since she is one of the new member) wished to know what has changed since last year? Jim LeBlanc explained that last year the committee felt that there would be some more progress made in development by certain vendors. Based on the information we have now, It is not clear. Tom Hickerson and Lynne Personius will pursue these questions at ALA. In Jim's view there will always be something better coming in the near future and we must be careful not to delay a decision over and over again just because there seems to be something brighter on the horizon.
6. Tom Hickerson also informed the group that SUNYConnect (Digital Initiatives by 71 campuses across the state) team will be visiting Cornell on Jan 26 (Tuesday). Sunny is interested in having Cornell participate in Sunny Connect. SUNYConnect is also looking for new Library Management system and they would like to share evaluation information.
7. Lynne reminded the group that she is collecting questions to build an agenda for the vendor visits at ALA.
Surinder Ghangas
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rev. 2/9/99 dih