falcons meeting minutes november 2025

FALCONS Meeting Minutes – November 20, 2025

Minutes taken by Eric Franks (FLLS)

Attendance:

Allen Tompkins (FAIR), Amy Lamouroux (PORT), Andrea Tillinghast (OVID), Carla Piperno (UNS), Deborah Geier (FLLS), Elizabeth Helmetsie (SPE), Eric Franks (FLLS), Erin Chapman (NEVA), Fran Miller (BERK), Gayle James (CATO), Heidi Eckerson (FLLS), Jaymie Closson (CIN), Jenny Shonk (FLLS), Kat Savage (TCPL), Kathy Kirk (POP), Laura Mielenhausen (TRU), Martsje Vanderschaaf (HOM), Olivia Wojnar (AUB), Sandra Groth (AURO), Sara Knobel (GRO), Sarah Glogowski (FLLS), Jenny Burnett (SENF), Sophia McKissick (TCPL), Sue Chaffee (NEW), Susie Gutenberger (LAN), Theresa Mekeel (CORT), Tracy Savard (APAL)

Introduction & Announcements:

Tarita Murray from Amazon joined the FALCONS meeting to talk about Amazon’s library pricing offered through Amazon Business accounts. A question was asked about pricing and the first year will be free then the price is based on the size of the library. Tarita’s contact information and a link to the Amazon Business page will be sent to the FALCONS email list. Additional questions can be emailed to her.

Waverly has a new director, Meaghann CampBell-Beard. She started on November 10th and wasn’t in attendance today, but was on the November Director’s meeting where may were able to meet her.

Motion to approve the August minutes: Sandy motioned, Jenny B seconded and the minutes were approved with no objections.

Old Business:

  • eContent Committee
    • On November 10, 2025 Sarah sent an email to members with info about OverDrive contributions. Heidi has a SurveyMonkey form to fill out, the due date is December 19, 2025.
    • eBook Working Group – Heidi is a member and looking for new ways to leverage purchasing power with OverDrive.
    • Heidi answered a question about how OverDrive and the digital collection is funded; FLLS pays the platform fee and the rest is paid for by several methods including FLLS money including from the state, money from member libraries, and contributions from the Friends of the Library.
  • Lost Item Policy
    • Jenny wrote a policy on how libraries should handle items owned by another library that were lost or damaged by a patron.
    • The policy includes information about contacting owning libraries and the definitions for the various book status that can be assigned.
    • A copy of the policy will be sent with the FALCONS minutes and feedback can be sent to Jenny. A final copy will be presented at the February 2026 FALCONS meeting where a vote will be taken to accept the policy.
  • 2025 Bulk Buy
    • Most of the computers have been staged and deployed.
    • Still need some staging info for the last few computers to go out, will contact the libraries to get that info.
  • Princh
    • The Princh dashboards have been created by Princh support after a delay due to staff turnover.
    • Will be working on configuring the dashboard and will send out a worksheet to gather library specific printer information.

New Business:

  • Patron Username in PowerPAC
    • Patrons can set a username in PowerPAC so they can log in with that vs putting in their barcode.
    • Trumansburg discovered patrons were logging into the LibData time management software with usernames that didn’t belong to them (eg 1234, HELLO, and ILOVEBOOKS).
    • This can be a security issue if patrons guess another patron’s username.
    • This is mostly a heads-up, especially for LibData libraries, to be on the lookout for patrons logging in with usernames that don’t belong to them.
  • Polaris Remote Desktop Disconnects
    • A Microsoft update in September is causing the Polaris Remote Dekstop connection to drop after about 10-15 seconds. Workaround is to back out the update causing the problem. Leap is not affected by the issue.
    • Have a possible fix that we need to test and the CNS department will be reaching out to a library to help with the test.
    • CNS department will update our computer staging policy going forward to keep this from happening in the future.
  • Leap
    • FLLS had several recent training sessions with Polaris and all training was on Leap.
    • It was mentioned that Polaris is only training Leap to new customers.
    • Please start to use Leap and become familiar, it’s possible that we’re getting close to Polaris announcing an end-of-life plan for the Polaris Toolbar.
    • FLLS has Leap training info on our website and we may be sending out links to additional training: Polaris Training
  • Discussion of Early Reader/Easy Reader terminology
    • Kat Savage from TCPL working on updating their Early Reader section.
    • Still using Easy Reader for the collection and wants to have a discussion about what terms we’re using (eg Easy Reader, Early Reader, Emergent Reader, etc).
    • We can open a discussion on the FALCONS-L mailing list.
  • Open Discussion
    • Amy brough up a policy about how to handle unclaimed holds.
      • In Request Manager (Polaris Toolbar), can change the Status view to Unclaimed to see holds still in a library that have expired.
      • In Leap, unclaimed holds can be viewed in the Picklist.