First Focus Group - Data Compilation & Key Findings

Item	Notes	Key Findings
When you look at your invoices from Marmot, is there anything on it you find confusing?	Costs are clearly described in quarterly invoices; for pass-through costs keep them clear and simple time frame being listed is helpful; term start and stop dates is appreciated Marmot is a single line item in the budget for Board review, but the Board doesn’t see the line items question about the reasons for six month billing the “direct services and IT administration” line item is probably the most confusing School librarians don’t actually see the bill nothing. CMC - the invoices weren’t shared across the full group. A listing of everything at one time that the organization is utilizing that multiple people can see. Schedule of fees is fairly clear and self explanatory. having a “glossary” of what line items mean or include eResources in random times and multiple invoices. could eresources take place once at the beginning of the year and all in one invoice memo descriptions don’t load well into finance report. bills in January are difficult, because tax revenue doesn’t come in until March. a once-per-year invoice in January would be difficult to pay. having an all-in-one bill saves the time of her staff, particularly since they have to spend a lot of time navigating city finance. city staff question every invoice smaller invoices like NYT and WSJ. having these sorts of one-offs in the first installment payment of the year. the fewer invoices to keep track of the better.
Think back to a budget meeting. Were there any items from Marmot that stood out as problematic in discussing your library’s budget?	Not for Bemis. Working on staffing levels that take up most of their conversations. Nothing for Aims Cost of Sierra is obviously high, but that is only notable one. Level of support that Marmot staff give is so awesome; don’t know if support might become a separate line item particularly as we transition to more open source systems. resources provided at Council are useful in conversations with finance committee putting on hold the fee increases during the pandemic if mountain community sees a downturn in property taxes, everything becomes problematic every year Englewood has to do a purchase order for the full amount of what they will pay for the year, with some sort of documentation that shows the overall amount. having some kind of document that shows a picture of a grand total will help with PO generation. having eResources reflected in member confirmation documents would be helpful, even if they aren’t included in a comprehensive bill
Are there Marmot fees that draw the (negative) attention of your Board or school/university administrators? Which ones, and what are the concerns expressed?	some confusion about “Prospector” fees going to Marmot and not Prospector Aims: when initially signing onto Marmot, there were some introductory questions about the fees. the fee structure was higher than previous arrangement, but explaining what came with Marmot alleviated those concerns. Since then, no close scrutiny. Not aware that any components of Marmot fees that they haven’t been able to justify with the return. unnecessary transits and random times libraries pull holds nothing is so glaring that the Board questions. the biggest question from the Boards are about the courier fees. having workers who could afford to live in mountain communities is heavily diminished, so having a shared team becomes more important Boards value participation in Marmot for cybersecurity explaining what Marmot library network is and does to powers that be. never concerns about not getting value out of it, just educating people on what the purpose is.
Have you had any new projects or expansions of existing services that have been held back by a Marmot fee that was prohibitive? Please describe, and identify the prohibitive fee.	Digital archive: continuing to expand. Looking to add more staff to scan in materials. Planning to scan in more collections and materials. The storage fee is problematic because it can be unpredictable. Has no frame of reference for guessing or estimating the storage requirement for new collections. Even adding another school, there was no issue with adding new staff sessions. do bounce between 5-6 sessions because of the cost; whatever they feel like they can afford and manage. multiple places have to find workarounds for specific needs. could there be a way to have temporary staff sessions? or staff sessions for a limited amount of time. Alysa remembered years ago trying to maintain a pool of staff sessions that are available for anyone to use, and every library contributes toward the maintenance of that pool. CMC: Digital Archive is something they are thinking about rebooting with some part-time staff. Aims: Researched other digital archive options, and found that every system they looked at was pricey. Marmot’s was much less, relative to other archival companies. Became a positive after review. CMC: Just changed from Skyriver to CatX. Skyriver cost wasn’t justified by the quantity of records. Sometimes the per device/tier structure can be a positive when talking about low scale items. all of the staff sessions being in use; did some internal reshuffling of staff sessions questions about how membership fee is determined new buildings are expensive, but Marmot staff participated in building planning meetings to help generate reasonable costs for network equipment, so that the building budget included those costs. even when some items are reasonably priced (like eresources or camera systems) the city simply won’t provide the funds
Are there components of Marmot’s existing fees that you feel are “just right” and should be left as they are?	simply cost of doing business, so the libraries just look at what is affordable happy with what they are getting for the cost of the service, and expect that the cost will go up. appreciate being able to be part of a conversation like this. as long as the costs we charge enable Marmot to accomplish goals, which are the goals of the libraries, then they are where they need to be. Aims: not coming from a library management background, trusted the perspective of the library staff that wanted to move. Communication and support are spot on and very responsive. overall costs are clear keeping everything as transparent as possible sees this exercise is a form of “right sizing” to ensure staff are sufficient for services. doing a good change management process so that libraries can prepare for changes having information as far in advance as possible. example is budget detail for January due to city in previous May. no anxieties because Marmot staff are always open about cost and finding alternatives.
When you think of the services your library receives from Marmot, are there any that you notice are not reflected on your invoice?	Research and development all the behind the scenes work to push forward innovative new services investigation of open source ILS don’t necessarily want to see a bill for R&D, but it needs to be accounted for question - do we have an implementation fee for large-scale, out of the ordinary projects that require a lot of research? Pika and the software development team Modules of Sierra - individual libraries having instances of things like the ACQ module The service and support role isn’t reflected. cybersecurity E-Rate consultant Pika Training and continuing education MUG and Council costs Help Desk support. Is there a fee that is included in general membership, or should this be something that is billed for separately? don’t necessarily need to know or see it visible, but wants to make sure that the level of support is financially planned for return on investment statement in conjunction with the first invoice of the year. something to take to their board to show benefit of being involved. what are libraries are saving on ILS costs? or other system costs comparison? cost avoidance isn’t as important to boards or city councils as direct comparison data. IT model is another example: internal, outsourced, cooperative. Board’s don’t understand the difficulties, and seeing the direct comparison data of having internal or outsourced options vs. the cooperative model.
Do you understand the categories of all the services Marmot provides your library?	what might make the bill clearer is perhaps color coding into sections. seek ways to make it easier to visually group line items that are part of a specific service program. perhaps each line item starts with a code for the service program? question about what staff sessions are; also Expresslane clickable invoices that describe categories and what is included can a link to a glossary of line items be included in the electronic invoices? probably not…don’t understand all of what the library actually receives or could receive.
As we talk about restructuring Marmot’s fees, are there any anxieties you feel about the outcome? What are they, and what would help alleviate those anxieties?	if there was something that the library didn’t realize they used a lot and the realignment would make them have to pay significantly more could we send quotes before sending the new invoice? making the option available for library directors to review new invoice structure. no one would be thrilled if the outcome was higher fees well organized efforts in the past help alleviate anxiety; there is a high level of trust based on past projects nothing other than raising fees really high formulas are difficult to understand objectively if they are fair. the formula is invisible. trying to explain a category they don’t understand having enough heads up to be able to implement the changes in their budget. letting people know as soon as possible. recognize that everyone’s different budget cycles makes it difficult to provide everyone enough information early enough, but still prioritize that.
Marmot staff have outlined specific problems they have observed with Marmot’s current fees. Do you have anything to add to these that this project should address?	just keep communicating Increased effort around statistics. Stats are a really valuable piece to take off of individual plates. Might be something to consider as part of a service, or to have as a line item. Curiosity around open source options. keeping options open. providing libraries options for when/how they are billed communicating issues that Marmot staff are seeing as a reminder on why this project is underway and to keep focus on those items as the driver of this project.