Meeting Minutes for 04/12/2022

• Abbey received a promotion to be the team lead of the OverDrive public library account managers. She will no longer have direct partners, but she will be working very closely with the person who takes her place as the Marmot OverDrive rep. Her replacement will be a new account manager, and Abbey is in charge of the training program.    

Weeding Expired Metered Access OverDrive Titles Update (Tammy, Marmot)

• MA Expired Titles (1st tab is expired titles without holds - 2nd tab is expired titles with holds)
• Tammy talked about the MA expired titles spreadsheet. The 1st tab is all the titles that would be weeded. They have expired metered access titles with no holds and do not have other formats currently purchased. 
• The 2nd tab on the spreadsheet is any expired metered access title with a hold. Tammy told the group that she would not weed any titles with holds until the library had been contacted.
• The 2nd tab has over 900 titles with holds that have never been purchased. This means your patrons have been waiting for days, months, or years for someone at your library to purchase these titles.
• You can delete the holds from your patron’s account that were placed years ago yourself, or open up an OverDrive technically support ticket with the title and the hold you would like removed.
• Weeding cannot happen at an advantage level. If something is weeded it has to be done at the administration level using a consortium level account.
• If there is an active advantage title it is not eligible for weeding and will not show up on the weeding report. 
• When a title is weeded, you cannot unweed it. A weeded title can be unweeded using the Marmot account or by contacting OverDrive. It can take up to 24 hours for a title to be unweeded on the patron-facing site.
• At this time, only Tammy at Marmot has the ability to weed and unweed titles.

Discussion:

• Someone asked Is there a grace period from the time that an MA title expires to when it is weeded from the collection? Tammy looked at the “Last Copy Expires” column to see that some just expired in March and April. She asked if the group wanted a grace period before the title is weeded?
• Someone else suggested that the last check-out should be relevant when looking for a grace period before titles are weeded. Tammy asked if the checkout date is relevant would be the cutoff date?

Action Item: Tammy will continue the conversation on expired metered access titles to see if the group would like titles with a certain “Last Copy Expires” date or “Latest Checkout” information to have a grace period before they are weeded.

Shared Gaming Platform (Sean, Marmot)

• Recording 
• The shared gaming platform purchasing might work similarly to the OverDrive shared platform purchasing.
• Any shared collection needs to be talked about. Is it big enough that we need to have rules in place for participation?
• Steam PC Cafe is a platform where you can purchase PC games. They have a cafe platform where some publishers offer a commercial license that allows the license to be used for people using the physical library.
  • People can bring their own devices and connect to the library’s WiFi and use their own Steam accounts. There is a small server that advertises the licenses. While they are in the physical building and a license is available it will appear in the list of their games. They can install and play the game using their account. The game is saved to their account as well.  When they leave the premises, they relinquish the license.
• The best way to set this up is to have licenses purchased under the main Marmot account and each library has its own login that can be shared.
•  There would be a desktop computer in a library that would be logged in and it would be sharing the license for their patrons who connect to their WiFi. 
• Each library can have an account where they can shop and look for games. The purchases will need to be made under the master account to make them available to the entire group  
• The physical server does not have to be anything expensive, but the more storage the server has allows you to do some game caching so that it does not put as much strain on the broadband having to download a game each time.
•  The account is not a normal Steam user account. There is something called Steam Works. Not all games have a commercial license. Sometimes you have to watch out for what a publisher is doing with a commercial license because instead of being a flat one-time rate it may be a monthly rate.  
• Basalt is using this gaming platform through Marmot. Soon, Mesa County will be using it as well. The technical part is going to be setting up a device that is visible on wireless. If Marmot is doing your IT they have that portion all sorted out. If you are a library that has its own IT then Marmot can work with them to help with the instructions.
• Anyone interested in learning more can email Sean at sean-at-marmot.org or email the Help Desk at helpdesk-at-marmot.org

Q & A

• Q: What is the experience for people using a public computer?
• A: Sean would recommend that if it is a library-owned system that it be highly monitored because when you install a game it requires administrative rights. For Marmot, they do not give those rights to a computer that a patron uses because this would allow them to bypass a lot of security measures. You can preinstall but there are some maintenance issues. Sean is working on a way to give people access to the games without admin rights. When using a library computer, the person would log in with their own account and play a game. When the system reboots it would not save their credentials. This same thing would happen on a person’s device where they would be logged out of Steam. 
• Q: So, to preload on library computers, every game would have to be downloaded separately? Is the game progress saved on the computer?
• A: It would be transferred to a computer. The caching would be on the server. The game progress is tied to a user account. If someone downloads and plays the game then it is usually a cloud save. If it is their own device it can be a local save. When they come back into the library the game save would still be there. Also, if they purchased the game on their own that game save would still be there. On a library-owned public computer, local saves will not be there if you are using something like Deep Freeze. You would want the patron to use their Steam account so there would be cloud saves. It could be case by case if some games do not use cloud saves.          
• Q: Do these games have usage stats?
• A: Yes, there are some historical site usage statistics associated with a game. It is not automated at this time. 
• Q: Would the commercial licenses be procured by Marmot or would a library have a say in developing their own collection?
• A: With the shared collection a library would open up a ticket with Marmot to purchase games. You can also ask for more licenses to be added. Marmot would purchase the games and licenses on their account and invoice the library. Having Marmot purchase the game means the license is available to the group of participants.
• Q: How are players vetted so they can play more mature games or be stopped from playing mature games?
• A: Access depends on their Steam login. When someone goes into a mature game it will require the person to put in their birthdate and that is often the extent to which the players are vetted. 

• Tammy has been in touch with vendors about filling out the vendor questionnaire form and setting up demos. She will be updating the ECC Vendor Voting spreadsheet and sending out emails when a new vendor has been added to the list.