Greetings from the road of Town Hall meetings. My colleague, Cal Shepard, and I have been conducting open meetings about the potential merger with PALINET around the region. I wanted to share with you my update and observations from the Town Hall Meetings we have conducted thus far.
So far we have held 8 meetings and have many more to go – dates and locations of future meetings are posted on the Merger page of our Website. I am encouraged by the active participation at each meeting and the open and positive atmosphere of the discussions.
SOLINET members are clearly thinking seriously about this topic and are asking very important questions. The critical questions most often asked of me are:
1. What will the new membership and Governance structures be?
2. What will be our future pricing?
3. Tell me more about PALINET as an organization and their strengths.
4. What are the possible new services/programs offerings of the future organization?
5. Tell me more about the changing OCLC business relationship.
6. Where will be office be located?
7. Future Board composition and a strong desire for library type representation is also a common theme from member’s questions.
Committees of both organizations’ boards are working hard on all of these topics plus many others. I anticipate we will have announcements that answer some of these in the near future. The hard work for some of these others questions is underway and answers will be available soon. One announcement I can make now is that a future combined organization will maintain an office and staff presence in both the existing network territories – the commitment to maintain local touch is something we all take very seriously.
Finally, in a future blog post, I will go into more detail of the changing OCLC business relationship with all networks.
Remember Me