Meeting Summary for Sage User Council

November 18, 2025

Recording Link: https://vimeo.com/1145744931

Attendees: Beth Ross (Sage), Dea Nowell (UCSLD, Chair), Jon Georg (Sage), Perry Stokes (Baker), Rachael Fox (Hood River), Kirsten Wells (The Dalles, Vice-chair), Susan Lewis (CGCC), Carrie Bushman (Cook Memorial), Mary Reser (Gilliam), Kolle Kahle Riggs (Josephy), Marsha Richmond (Lake County), Cheryl Hancock (Harney), Kristin Williams (BMCC)

Request for agenda items:

No added items.

Minutes – The minutes for September are ready for approval, however they weren’t sent out until this morning. A decision was reached to vote by email on approving them so that everyone had a chance to review them. July’s minutes hadn’t been voted on via email yet, so both were to be sent out for a vote.

Financial Update-
Perry mentioned that they were still waiting for the audit report, so he can post the electronic version, but that the result was a clean audit.

A link to the updated Profit and Loss sheet was included in the chat.

Committee Reports

The Cataloging Workgroup met on October 7th.

The main topics were-

• The authority process
• Diacritics.
  • That the issue with Backstage was resolved and no new issues had appeared in the latest batch of records.
• A reminder that when importing records that catalogers need to verify that subfields haven’t shifted upon import. At this point we don’t have enough data to know why it has occasionally occurred.
• Library of Congress’ search page has changed, and so some instruction on its use was provided, as well as a discussion about the pros and cons of the new design.
• 700 formatting was also discussed and when an additional 505 might be needed to ensure that everything is properly indexed in the system.

Beth or Jon will be making sure that the Cataloging Workgroup section of the Sage staff website is up to date. There is also a recording available of that meeting.

Carrie asked a question about the Circulation Workgroup and if it would be resuming. Beth clarified that as system issues are resolved she intends to do so on the months where the Cataloging Workgroup is not meeting so that it’s section of the Staff site can be fleshed out to be a better resource for staff. A chair will need to be nominated for that group so that someone can take some of the work off of Beth’s shoulders; having a core group of staff to help drive that group would be very useful as that is what has allowed the cataloging group to consistently meet.

Systems Update

Equinox & Bibliotheca Self Checkout Kiosk

Equinox is our support vendor again. They were able to determine where the issue was on the Util2 server that was causing issues for the Bibliotheca Self-Checkout kiosks at Pendleton and The Dalles. The Dalles has confirmed the issue is resolved. We’re waiting for confirmation from Pendleton that everything is working.

Anubis

Equinox was able to install an Evergreen patch specifically designed to help with the AI bot issue. At this point we’re holding off on the installation of Anubis to see if it is even needed or not. Jon is continuing to monitor the logs and traffic daily. Equinox has experience installing Anubis, so if it is needed, they are happy to do so.
MessageBee

This is one of the open tickets with Equinox. They have experience installing it and are currently working on getting that taken care of.

Automatic Renewals

For some reason the automatic renewals are no longer working, same with the print notices. Jon has been manually running the print notices. Beth will be opening a ticket to get this fixed after this meeting.

DDoS attacks

Jon had sent a screenshot to Beth showing traffic indicative of a DDoS attack. Thankfully, due to all the new processes that have been implemented the only reason it was noticed is because Jon always has a window open showing traffic. Open sessions stayed within normal ranges; it was only inactive sessions that were excessively high, and those don’t appear to affect performance since they’ve already been closed.
Jon still had a question for Equinox regarding the browser issues staff are continuing to experience.

Hermiston High School

Beth requested a formal withdrawal letter from Hermiston High School in compliance with the council’s request at the last meeting, and received one. Their records have been removed from the ILS.

There was a discussion regarding procedure. Beth will be forwarding a copy of the formal withdrawal letter to the Council so they have a copy of it. There was some confusion about what portion of the fee they needed to pay for 2025-2026 or if the fee was to be waived entirely given the circumstances. Perry moved to accept the appeal to withdraw from Sage and to have the membership fee waived. Kirsten seconded the motion.

Review of representative apportionment among classifications

Beth reached out to Hood River Valley High School and Klamath Falls Community College for information about why their staff members who were also council members have not been able to attend council meetings, and if replacements needed to be found to fill those seats. HRVHS indicated that as expected the schedule is too intense for them to be able to serve on the council and they asked for someone else to take over their seat. The person from KCC who was serving on the council went on leave, but they weren’t sure if she was coming back or not. At this point they want someone else to take over their spot, but do want to serve again on the council in the future. Beth reached out to Kristin Williams at BMCC to see if she would take over KCC’s spot, and she agreed to do so.

Since a motion was needed to approve Kristin joining the council [as it was someone from a different institution], Cheryl motioned to accept the change, and Carrie seconded it. No one opposed the change.

In regard to representative apportionment among classifications, the bylaws state that they need reviewed annually. Several ideas have been presented such as regional representation rather than the current population served, and library type groupings. There was a discussion about sending out a survey to members to see if they want to stick with the system that is in place versus changing to another. It was suggested that it be sent out in advance of the annual meeting, and perhaps include a satisfaction survey of Sage in general as well.

Since Sage is currently not in line with the bylaws in regard to representative distribution by member type and population density, the bylaws themselves may need to be updated, and potentially remove the resource sharing seat which has been difficult to fill. These potential changes will need to be discussed soon, so they can be presented to the council in March prior to the Annual Meeting in May where it will be voted on by the members.
The plan is to send the survey out after the holidays in January, so that responses will be received and discussed at the January meeting in preparation for the March presentation.

Dea was asked to send the notes referenced earlier in the meeting that outlines the distribution of members to Jon Georg.

Courier

There was a continuation of the prior discussion about how the Sage Courier needs to be made to be self-sustaining in light of the fluctuations that are occurring on the Federal level with funding. Given that this will impact the budget discussion, this essentially needs to be treated as ‘new business’ by the council and may require a special meeting.
The last word was that the Appropriations Committee has allocated funding for IMLS but it’s still working it’s way through Congress.

At this point the members seem optimistic that the money will continue to be there, so at this point we will be keeping this as an agenda item, as it may take bad news in order to spur moving that item to the forefront as a critical need given the amount of local funding issues others are currently facing. There was a brief discussion about the foundations that pledged to assist if that funding disappeared, so it wouldn’t be like we were starting from scratch like when this issue first surfaced.

Perry had previously made a presentation of adding a fifth year to the four year plan of gradually increasing membership rates. That option is still on the table if it is needed by the budget committee, but it is not currently being pursued, as the timing is not right at the moment.
This conversation is currently tabled for later, but being kept on the agenda for further discussion.

Server Replacement

The need to replace our servers was again brought up so that it could be tabled again. The budget committee will make sure to take it into consideration as they work on the new budget.

Someone had asked about EOU virtually hosting all of our servers. Jon talked to them about it, and they do not want to virtually host the database servers, so physical servers will need to be purchased to replace the existing ones. We will also be setting the bar a little higher in regard to server hardware requirements, since we ran into some unexpected limitations with this latest hardware migration, as no one was expecting the issues caused by AI. Equinox will be assisting with that recommendation.

Budget Committee

The budget committee will need to start meeting soon, so that it can be voted on at the March Council meeting so Members can get correct figures into their budget cycle for the next fiscal year.

The budget committee members are not limited to council members only, any members can participate. Dea, Beth, Perry, and Carrie will be on the budget committee. Anyone else that is interested is supposed to reach out to Dea.

The Librarians (Documentary)-

Perry added a link to a documentary entitled The Librarians so that libraries and local theaters can be added as screening partners. It’s also going to be shown on PBS, and highlights intellectual freedom issues. The film site itself is at https://thelibrariansfilm.com/

Dea said that she was willing to entertain a motion to adjourn. Perry moved to adjourn. Rachael seconded the motion.

Meeting adjourned at 10:59 am Pacific Time.

Next Meeting will be January 20th