[Evergreen-governance-l] FW: Be sure to do this

Mon Aug 30 09:43:07 EDT 2010

> One issue that I think has not been settled upon is the membership
> status of libraries in a consortium. My proposal is that if a
> self-governing library uses Evergreen via its membership in a
> consortium, that it would qualify as a contributing member, as would
> the consortium itself. However, to prevent potential for problems, I
> would also suggest that:
> 
> (a) All members have to explicitly apply for membership; while a
> library using Evergreen would automatically qualify for membership,
> they have to at least go to the effort of applying.
> (b) Voting by proxy is forbidden; in particular, a consortium or
> employer cannot register a vote on behalf of its member libraries or
> employees.
> (c) A consortium is forbidden from *requiring* its members to vote in
> any particular way via the member's agreement with the consortium or
> through undue contractual pressure. A consortium is also forbidden
> from contractually requiring that its members show up for votes. This
> does not rule out a consortium lobbying its members to establish a
> unified voting bloc, but raises the bar sufficiently to prevent abuse.

I won't speak for other consortia, but I can tell you that PINES is not really set up to work this way, with each of its member libraries having individual Evergreen Foundation memberships.  "PINES" as a whole consists of its member libraries, who are represented by a governance body called the "PINES Executive Committee", which represents libraries by size of population served.  The PINES Executive Committee speaks on behalf of the entire consortium and so would be in direct conflict of point (b).  The PINES staff of GPLS facilitates the business of the Executive Committee and would bring development needs approved by the Executive Committee on behalf of the full consortium.

I think that the finer points about the ways consortia are managed can't be part of the by-laws.  I would suggest that a consortium would have a single "agency" vote and that the Evergreen Foundation would leave the polling of individual member libraries to the consortium's internal governance structure.  Maybe someone else has a better solution for this dilemma?

Chris Sharp
PINES Program Manager
Georgia Public Library Service
1800 Century Place, Suite 150
Atlanta, Georgia 30345
(404) 235-7147
csharp at georgialibraries.org
http://pines.georgialibraries.org/

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Galen Charlton" <gmc at esilibrary.com>
> To: "Lori Bowen Ayre" <lori.ayre at galecia.com>
> Cc: evergreen-governance-l at list.georgialibraries.org
> Sent: Monday, August 30, 2010 9:20:09 AM
> Subject: Re: [Evergreen-governance-l] FW: Be sure to do this
> Hi,
> 
> On Aug 27, 2010, at 9:07 PM, Lori Bowen Ayre wrote:
> 
> > 2) expanding the concept of "contribution" such that it isn't
> > limited to writing code
> 
> As Dan had suggested, the Sugar Labs model is a good basis for
> defining contributors. Quoting
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Members:
> 
> "Any "significant and sustained" contributor to Sugar Labs is eligible
> for membership. Although it is difficult to specify a precise
> definition, a contributor generally must have contributed to a
> non-trivial improvement of the Sugar project or Sugar Labs activity.
> Contributions may be code, documentation, translations, maintenance of
> project-wide resources, running a Sugar deployment, or other
> non-trivial activities which benefit Sugar Labs. Membership
> eligibility is an individual determination: while contributions made
> in the course of employment will be considered, they will generally be
> ascribed to the individuals involved, rather than accruing to all
> employees of a "contributing" corporation. The Membership and
> Elections Committee (MEC / MembCom) will oversee membership
> applications (Please apply by sending email to members at
> sugarlabs.org)."
> 
> Applying this to Evergreen, a significant contribution could take many
> forms:
> 
> * running an Evergreen system that is in production use. I would
> suggest defining "running" as broadly as possible, so that a library
> whose Evergreen catalog is hosted by another party or is part of a
> consortium would be eligible for membership. Since "running" is an
> institutional function at most libraries, the library could designate
> the individual (be it the systems librarian, the director, or someone
> else) who would be that institution's representative.
> * writing documentation
> * creating translations
> * hosting Evergreen project resources, which would include things such
> as the website, public test servers, continuous integration servers,
> and so forth
> * writing code
> * providing significant funding for any of the above activities
> * employing (and explicitly supporting) an individual member's
> contributions
> 
> If an individual or institution contributes in more than one way,
> however, they would be entitled to only one membership.
> 
> One consequence of the funding clauses I'm proposing is that a library
> who employs a direct Evergreen contributor would thereby be able to
> count on at least two memberships, one for the contributor and one for
> her employer. Another consequence, to put it bluntly, is that no
> vendor is going to be able to have more members than the number of
> contributors they employ plus one (for the vendor itself as employer).
> We all want and expect Evergreen's usage to grow; even now the
> potential membership among libraries simply running Evergreen is
> greater than the total employment (of current or potential
> contributors) among all current vendors.
> 
> One issue that I think has not been settled upon is the membership
> status of libraries in a consortium. My proposal is that if a
> self-governing library uses Evergreen via its membership in a
> consortium, that it would qualify as a contributing member, as would
> the consortium itself. However, to prevent potential for problems, I
> would also suggest that:
> 
> (a) All members have to explicitly apply for membership; while a
> library using Evergreen would automatically qualify for membership,
> they have to at least go to the effort of applying.
> (b) Voting by proxy is forbidden; in particular, a consortium or
> employer cannot register a vote on behalf of its member libraries or
> employees.
> (c) A consortium is forbidden from *requiring* its members to vote in
> any particular way via the member's agreement with the consortium or
> through undue contractual pressure. A consortium is also forbidden
> from contractually requiring that its members show up for votes. This
> does not rule out a consortium lobbying its members to establish a
> unified voting bloc, but raises the bar sufficiently to prevent abuse.
> 
> > 4) agree members should approve members (but perhaps the Oversight
> > Committee could have a role in the case of an appeal of the
> > membership decision???)
> 
> An appeal process is a good idea.
> 
> > 5) agree that membership has to be for individuals because otherwise
> > what happens when those individuals change affiliations? Seems like
> > we need individual members plus institutional members but somehow
> > ensure that an institution can't pay for a bunch of memberships in
> > order to take over a vote.
> 
> In my proposal above, no institution (be it a consortium, library, or
> vendor) would be able to have more than one institutional membership.
> The only way for an institution to gain (influence over) additional
> members would be by employing more contributors or by expanding its
> consortium.
> 
> > 1) does it make sense in this day and age that you have to be
> > present to vote? seems like it could be hardship for an
> > international organization. Couldn't there be accommodations for
> > absentee ballots?
> 
> We're already pretty geographically distributed, so I am in favor of
> structuring the rules so that foundation business is expected to be
> conducted electronically. Even now, the only events where we could
> expect a sizable number of members to be physically present would be
> the Evergreen Conference and (for the moment) ALA Annual. I fully
> expect that there will be multiple large Evergreen installations in
> Europe in the next couple of years, which would make a physical
> presence requirement even more untenable.
> 
> > 2) 10% of members have to vote in a "Member requested referenced."
> > Does this mean 10% of the people present at any given membership
> > meeting? or 10% of all registered members? Seems potentially low or
> > too high depending how you interpret it.
> 
> In general, I am favor of structuring the rules so that
> 
> (a) showing up (physically or virtually) to vote is rewarded
> (b) if a member cannot be bothered to vote, they are ignored
> 
> In the case of referenda, I would suggest going with an lower
> threshold, say 2% of all registered member is sufficient to float a
> referendum. For other votes, I think a combination of long notice
> periods for formal votes (say, a minimum of two weeks) would allow
> votes to be conducted with a relatively low quorum threshold.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Galen
> --
> Galen Charlton
> VP, Data Services
> Equinox Software, Inc. / Your Library's Guide to Open Source
> email: gmc at esilibrary.com
> direct: +1 352-215-7548
> skype: gmcharlt
> web: http://www.esilibrary.com/
> 
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