Director S Report s1

Director’s Report August 2008

Unicorn / iBistro

Our plans to schedule the software upgrade to Symphony in late August are being revised and we hope to announce an upgrade date soon. Staff have now successfully completed the upgrade to the test server and we are testing the new software in that environment. We are reviewing the nearly 600 pages of release notes, identifying enhancements of most interest to our members and experimenting with how these enhancements work on the test server. We believe that time spent now in testing will pay off with a smooth transition to the new software.

SmartPort training continues to be very popular. 17 libraries have now participated in SmartPort training.

Administration

Elisa has completed setting up the new chart of accounts in our new version of Peachtree. We are revising the chart of accounts to make sure we have revenue and expense accounts for all regular activity. We are also trying to use the software for all financial reporting and analysis. It will take us some time to complete the transition but I really believe that moving away from double entry into Excel spreadsheets and creating all of our reports without the need to edit out data will lead to more robust reporting and will greatly reduce what is now a laborious process. Elisa is doing a great job in learning how to use the budgeting and reporting modules of Peachtree and I am sure we will be very pleased with the results of this migration.

We are continuing our upgrades of office equipment and purchased 4 new computers. Some replaced staff computers and some replaced computers in the training lab. All but one of the training lab computers has been replaced within the last year. InfoLink has expressed their gratitude that we have upgraded our lab and indicated they were much more comfortable continuing to use our facility now that they know we are on a regular equipment maintenance path.

Drupal Workshop

InfoLink sponsored a two day workshop on Drupal, an open source web content management system that is becoming popular among libraries lately. I was very impressed with this software and will be asking the technology committee to consider whether LMxAC should invest in a server and training program for libraries that wish to use Drupal. The state is not able, at this time, to provide a server version of Drupal for us to use so I think we need to be looking at doing something ourselves.

Activity Report

In July we made 23 troubleshooting visits to 12 different libraries. Other measures of activity include:

System statistics July 2008 1. New Items Added 22,040 2. Bib Records Added by LMxAC 671 3. New Bib Records Added (Total) 4955 4. New User Records Added 5707 5. Records Upgraded to full MARC 413 6. Duplicate records merged 661 7. Inventory Reports 54 8. API reports 5

Meetings

I have participated in the following meetings:

Public Policy Committee July 18 NJLA Leadership Day July 22 MURAL Meeting July 23 JerseyClicks Advisory Committee July 25 Piscataway Director Search July 28 Piscataway Director Search July 30 Finance Committee Meeting August 13 Drupal Workshop August 14-15 LMx Meeting August 22

Respectfully Submitted,

Eileen M. Palmer Executive Director