Library checks out of county IT service contract

By NEAL RENTZ

The Pound Ridge Library Board of Trustees has voted unanimously to withdraw from the Westchester Library Service information technology service contract and instead approved a contract with a private company to provide IT services.

The board, on Sept. 19, chose to hire Right Click Solutions to provide IT services, with the exception of WLS Google email.

The library will pay the firm $960 a month for one year under the contract. 

Libraries in Westchester County have until Oct. 1 to renew their IT contracts with WLS, Pound Ridge Library Director Jennifer Coulter said at the meeting. 

Coulter told the board in August the service level agreement for IT services with WLS is signed by individual libraries annually. The Pound Ridge Library this year is paying about $40,000 to WLS, she noted.

WLS has provided such IT services as Pound Ridge Library’s connection to the WLS mainframe, which allows the library to share books with other Westchester libraries, device support maintenance and e-maintenance support.  

Through the current IT agreement with WLS, the library is leasing seven computers at an annual cost of $1,000 per computer, Coulter said last month, adding that cost will rise annually by $100 per computer.

“That’s why I’ve chosen to investigate alternatives,” she said.

Coulter noted in August that 25 percent of the libraries in the county chose to no longer be included in the WLS IT system. WLS is “not cutting edge” in its IT services, Coulter said at the earlier meeting.

At last week’s meeting, library board treasurer, Michael Clark, said that in August the board reviewed data from companies that could potentially replace WLS for the library’s IT. Clark said a ZOOM meeting was recently held with Coulter, Trustee John Cristiano and himself with representatives of Right Click Solutions, who was Coulter’s “preferred provider.” 

One of the main purposes of the meeting was to clarify questions the library’s representatives had, Cristiano said. The questions were “very readily answered,” he said.

Withdrawing from WLS might be glitchy, he noted.

“They will come in at the end of December and reset all of our technology to default, which would be just days and days of reprogramming our technology,” Cristiano said. 

The default would be to factory settings, Coulter noted. 

“Other than minor tweaking, we were very happy with the presentation Right Click gave to us,” Coulter told the board, and said she was looking forward to the new arrangement.

“We actually had a few pretty big tech problems in the last week or two,” she said. “I’m looking forward to the transition.”

Coulter said $6,600 is the total labor cost. “It is a ‘worst case scenario’ number meaning it could be less but this is what the vendor has budgeted if the equipment has to be reset to factory-settings."

Board president’s farewell

In other bookkeeping, the meeting was the last for board president, Bonnie Schwartz, who has served as leader of the board since 2022. Also not returning to the board are trustees Jennifer Savage and Maryellen Walsh, who Schwartz said could not attend the meeting. 

“I want to thank each and every one of you for your contributions,” Schwartz said. She also thanked Coulter and the library’s staff.

“It’s been a great almost seven years for me and we’ve accomplished a lot. Thank you again for everything,” Schwartz said.  

New board officers will be appointed at the Tuesday, Oct. 22 meeting.