Library Advisory Board – March 2024

Video Description:
Library Advisory Board – March 2024

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from a video recording. Although the transcription, which was done with software, is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or [software] transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the meeting, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Read along below:

Speaker 1 0:00
sorry to see is still not able to sign for December in January, but I’m really hoping to make it in person to the next time I’m looking over February 26. I see no need for actions. However, does anyone else see needed corrections from last minute theme last month? who filmed it last month?

Unknown Speaker 0:24
minutes?

Speaker 2 0:30
Who said Yeah, yeah, yeah, just just wanted to mention this real quick. If you have time in between meetings to just pop in during the day or whatever is convenient to sign that. The meeting minutes even before the next meeting, kind of get the city clerk feeling a little bit better. And those signs.

Speaker 1 0:49
Yeah, I can definitely do that. And actually, you know what, Tracy? Whatever cuz I did that tomorrow, for you. would be fine. We just need to clear my calendar. I’m working from home and Mario. And I could stop in between 10 and 12. Is that That’s because that works. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you. Yeah, for sure. Definitely do that. Hey, do we have a motion to approve the minutes from February 26. Motion? Perfect. Do we have a second? Second? Date? Thanks. All in favor? Okay, that’s minutes pass as written. Um, I will just make sure since I’m on Zane, are there any members of the public? The meeting today? No. Okay, then we’ll move on to new business. Monthly icebreaker did anyone comments here for this last time?

Unknown Speaker 2:02
I thought it was I thought it was useful.

Unknown Speaker 2:05
Okay, see?

Speaker 3 2:08
What if anybody if you are prepared just whoever they got one. No, no, I

Unknown Speaker 2:15
got one. Remember? I

Unknown Speaker 2:21
think that’s correct.

Speaker 1 2:28
You had to describe yourself today as you’re feeling right now in terms of a potato. How would you feel so I will go first. Right now it feels like mashed potato very slight. Personally, because I really wish that they created these three groups the lines

Speaker 3 2:51
don’t even live in their three day weekends for in service days. One does Mondays, Wednesdays Fridays yesterday completely out of sight. As you hold a rally rally rally Oh,

Speaker 1 3:04
so good colleges fully see you in Boulder Valley have the same one. I feel like a mashed potato today to share all right.

Speaker 4 3:22
So like a scalloped potato because I’ve been traveling a lot so I feel like I’ve just like one slice just talking to people here and then I’ll be on another column to collaborate like different places scalp the hands. This is

Speaker 2 3:51
Kathy Oh, you are? Yeah, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 3:54
I’m here for a second here. Sorry. I don’t figure that I got behind. I’m making my family dinner. So I’m making these videos I’m multitasking.

Unknown Speaker 4:06
So I feel like a fried potato.

Speaker 5 4:11
My spring break is not till the end of the week. Yes. And so it’s like the last death march to the brain. So we’ll proceed but we’ll make it

Speaker 3 4:26
I’ll go with seed potato. Just because it’s gardening time and yes, I feel frazzled and hectic right now with I work from home and nine year old thinks she should be at home this weekend. It’s hard to vend everything and then this is the time of year to start my biggest hobby and that just doesn’t seem like a good time a year for that

Speaker 2 4:56
Well, I update is my answer off just today really, that I feel like a sweet potato. Because over the weekend, I received an email from a patron about some books on a display. And I thought her email while I disagreed was very logical and reasonable. And we had a good email interaction. And it’s, it’s a case of having a dialogue where you can still not agree. And I felt like, you know, I was sweet, I guess. And so wishy in that sense. So I felt pretty good about that, even though, you know, we’re not going to be an agreement, necessarily. Like, a decent conversation. Doesn’t always happen. Potato.

Unknown Speaker 5:54
No, no, no, not that way.

Speaker 6 6:04
Yeah, it’s. So we had a meeting earlier with our city manager, city attorney around I guess there’s a group that for a ceasefire, and they’re going from municipality to municipality. Last week, we had NLC and I was talking to some folks from Boulder and Fort Collins apparently approaches spirits into their hands for wall. So I like I don’t know, maybe Friday just

Speaker 6 6:43
waiting for like, it’s just part of the business in this day and age. To not be that way. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 6:53
That’s intense.

Unknown Speaker 6:56
So we’re preparing for tomorrow.

Unknown Speaker 7:05
Tracy,

Speaker 7 7:07
thank you for bearing it. parboil. Yeah, like I really, there’s some really good things going on in my personal life, but just also having that like, really. So fun.

Unknown Speaker 7:31
That was fun. Cynthia.

Unknown Speaker 7:36
Didn’t need to make less than I did come prepared.

Unknown Speaker 7:40
I’ve been making this data. Yeah,

Speaker 3 7:42
seemed very prepared. That’s really, that’s really clever.

Speaker 1 7:50
Can you read what’s a volunteer for next month?

Unknown Speaker 7:59
Catherine said I am perfect.

Unknown Speaker 8:05
Sorry. She corrected herself.

Speaker 1 8:10
All right. Um, so we have a couple of new business agenda items. Really, this next one, I think will take up the most time the other two are pretty quick. But let’s go ahead and dive into it. And just as a as a catch up. So the board will be presenting on the job library director thinking and report to Council. Thank you, Susie. Property and facilitate that. And the date in my understanding right now is TBD. But I thought especially some stuff in the final report, it’d be nice to go over again. Maybe hear from John, some of the changes in the comments or questions from the board. And then if there’s anything that we want to make sure it really draws Council’s attention during this presentation. I think this would be a nice place to discuss that. So Josh, if you don’t mind okay, given it to you to start if you just want to maybe share some of the updates that you’ve done and anything that you think is really pertinent that we want to make sure to highlight in our presentation.

Speaker 2 9:25
Yeah. So let me bring up the the current those of you online can see my screen. Okay, thank you. So since the last time I was

Speaker 2 9:54
I may have talked a little bit this last time but in between the two meetings I have done Little bit of editing on some of the explanations and data points of the report. I think I put this in a packet too today. So hopefully, even either if you didn’t see it, you’ll have a chance to or whatever. But I’ll just walk through a little bit of how we structure this. So it’s kind of in sections. Community engagement, library use is really referring to patron interactions that we have. So the numbers you see here, it gives you a little explanation of what that means. So when you see this, it’s all defined. And it’s split out between basically our four departments. So these are reference questions or directional assistants or some combination, basically interaction. So do we have a total number here? 123,000 means basically, the song more or less, okay. I have a lot of the numbers in here as far as how we interact with patrons. And then, so that’s what that is. So that includes reference questions, directional assistance, tours, anything like that. And then the next section is broken down into what we call checkout. So you know, it’s us and library Lanois called a circulation. But that’s not really a common term. So we’re calling it checkouts but checkouts is that but it also includes some other things. So if you’re wanting to check out books, and you would know that this library auto renews for you, or you could do it yourself, but the renewal councils checkout too. So that’s that’s how this stuff is added. But so we have some the first number here, digital downloads, that’s both like ebooks and databases, databases is little. It varies. This is a detail you have to go into a presentation, but it can kind of vary depending on the vendor, right? So but more or less, it’s someone comes in and searches in a in a database that’ll count or in other cases, it’ll count because they opened up an article or something within that resource. It kind of just depends, but it’s counted within. And then the E materials for Walmart library, this is ebooks and the IU books checked out through living more or less, there’s there’s a couple other things but it’s pretty much living. And then we put in here the 1.2 million because it’s a nice number to show. But as you all know, we partner with what was formerly known as the Front Range. Well, it still is the Front Range Digital Library Group and it was it was a consortium. We don’t share anything anymore except for the digital eBooks and audiobooks so we all contribute to that which is great because it expands what we have access to. So collectively between Longmont Boulder, Broomfield Lewisville, Lafayette and Loveland gets the 1.2 million checkouts. So with our 225,000 that’s what about a quarter? Not quite. So we have a heavy use of the algos I guess is the main point and then coming down into more of the physical checkouts so and by the way, if you didn’t catch it, this is all 2023 numbers. This is the total year of last year. So over 900 physical items checked out number 1000 Sorry, holds picked up almost 70,000 volts so there’s a lot of use on that. And then it’s broken down into areas so children and teen books adult books, you can kind of see how this gets broken out. The disk discovered passes I think is worth pointing out as far as people taking advantage of those museum visits and things like that that are free 100% Friends afforded same with library things. We’re all familiar with that little bit but that’s the the tools the yard games the devices, radon meter or whatever car auto detect meter everything. So this isn’t the full list of everything we check out but it’s it’s the highlights and then we issued over 5000 new library new member basically by this membership yeah Wow. Yeah. And then my marketing person took out the five top digital downloads, which I thought was interesting because it’s, this is Livi is what you’re seeing here. So you basically have three magazines, book and then another magazine. Interesting to me how that worked out.

Unknown Speaker 15:23
With people still like magazine.

Speaker 2 15:26
Yeah, yeah. So that’s physical checkouts and we go in into marketing. This is how we’re engaging with the community via the newsletter, website and social. So E newsletters and marketing person wrote this down really well, as far as how many emails we’re sending and what the categories are. Open Rate is the open the email, if you didn’t know that, and then click rate is a big click within the email to somewhere. And I appreciate it for putting some numbers up industry standards, you can see we have a higher click rate than is generally happens within emails. So that’s pretty good response rate. New subscribers for 570 versus the total that we currently have. And this is a variety of all these

Speaker 2 16:28
top newsletters that we’re open with, no. That’s, I mean, if that’s indicative, right, like, when are you opens, yes. Even the entire newsletter anyway, that’s, that’s fine. They’re opening. But we do send a good variety of users every month, and then website, the 300 plus 1000, pageviews, pageviews, if you don’t know how web analytics are captured, it’s more of a how much time someone spends on your site versus whether they just land on it and leave. And I’m not quite sure how that’s determined. Within this statistical software that’s used. But that’s what that means is the views are more of someone who’s spending time on your website. And then the 10 most visited pages within our site are here makes a lot of sense of what you’re seeing here, the library homepage and account I would expect there. And then also, just to point out out of the entire cities website, the library is the third most. And that is behind the city’s homepage, which makes sense. The second in case you’re curious is utilities, because people Yeah. So you know, in that aspect where the time it goes to. And then events and programs. How many events we uploaded to our website, event sold out, sold out, of course, we don’t charge but when we do require registration, this is how many have we’re at capacity. And that’s pretty good. We mostly don’t have reservations for programs. Either notification is sent through the website, that’s something that you can sign up for within the website, which is separate from the E newsletters that we send out. In the press releases, which we get out of this help a lot. Social media, top engagements of the year going fight free in the sense that that was the top one, and then you will see some others down here that had the most hit Facebook results. Which you see some down arrows, but you’ll see down below. I mean, there’s still good engagement. But as an interesting Instagram, which is more engagement, so but

Speaker 3 19:16
you would also expect to see some down because 2022 is still active pandemic. Yeah. So there was still a lot of in and out of school, a lot of people like not going out and expanding their event calendar, right? This this is a would it’s, you’d have to go back to 2019. To really

Speaker 2 19:35
Yeah, and that’s the whole you have the pre and post COVID. There’s that and the fact that the people keep leaving Facebook for other platforms, which you see at the bottom, my marketing personally acknowledged and that a goal of this year will be engaged more on Instagram. As far as the other platform that we use. I realized it was on the platform so we’re not on Okay. So that’s in essence, the report. Cynthia everybody. Of course, if you’ve read through it, or based off what I’ve shown, if you have questions, I’m happy to entertain those.

Speaker 1 20:18
Thanks. Thanks, Chad. My question I had right away was when I looked at meeting engagement looks like they’re 207 events. But then when I look under marketing at the Benson program, there’s a lot of good stuff uploaded to the website. So when I guess I’m confused, like, what did this mean? What else is being uploaded to the website under that category?

Speaker 2 20:54
Okay. So when you said community engagement, are you referring to this to hurt someone? outreach events?

Speaker 1 21:02
Yes. Yeah. I guess I guess I, I guess really, the question is, how are you? How are you? And this is not a huge question. This is more my curiosity. And how are y’all defining events in different in outreach versus

Unknown Speaker 21:16
marketing?

Speaker 3 21:37
Oh, I see, oh, it’s says community engagement outside of the libraries, what the outreach events are?

Speaker 2 21:43
Yeah. So Gotcha. Yeah. So the 207 is Jolie outreach as a department not full library. So this is the collective This is 1055 as the 207 plus everything else.

Speaker 1 21:59
That seems like an infinite number to highlight in our work, just the scope, like the number, and I’m sure it’s focus on other things. Yeah.

Speaker 2 22:09
If you think of this town, 55. Like, I mean, 1055 events uploaded to the website is every program, we upload everything to the website. So we basically provided over 1000 programs in the year.

Speaker 1 22:32
All right, so the thing that keeps it in, and I would love to hear from the board members, that the thing that keeps coming to me from this airport is our Patriots are engaged. You know, there’s a number of libraries in the consortium, and we’re one of six but we have almost a quarter of that unit turtles checkouts. You know, third website, under Utilities in the city on site, it’s just what we are in essential service. Are we the library is essential service in my mind. So that really this report three was that to me very strongly.

Unknown Speaker 23:16
other board members,

Unknown Speaker 23:17
but what do y’all think? Questions, comments

Unknown Speaker 23:19
about this report?

Speaker 4 23:25
It’s kind of scary, this looks fairly great, it’s helpful to have all these numbers put together to kind of get an idea of all the work that goes on. And this might be too soon, if you haven’t discussed it yet. But I like seeing kind of the social media numbers near the bottom that showed kind of the year before and then the changes to now. And so I know, this is the first one. But I just kind of curious if moving forward, if there’s been discussion on kind of where we might want to have this kind of information in other parts of the report is called just to show kind of like maybe like, Oh, we’ve served this many more patients this year, or maybe it goes down or just kind of like what areas were showing that change or having more activity up, up or down might be helpful, as

Unknown Speaker 24:15
well for future years. Yeah.

Speaker 2 24:16
So you’re right. And what I can tell you is you’re right, this is the kind of our first stab at this right. So you know, with with the social marketing person was able to easily grab that with the other numbers, we probably could but going forward, that is the plan. So we have been working internally here as far as capturing numbers of putting it, we’re entering it into one common, like spread basically that Tracy created, and it has a column for percentage change. What I can do with that and what I’m going to start doing going forward is probably taking out on these numbers, I don’t know if I’ll make it is pretty fancy as this report, but something that can show on a quarterly basis like this is where we are now in comparison to where we were at last year. And that data that we’re gathering will help do that previous to the way we’re doing it. It was a little sporadic, if I’m honest, is kind of isolated. Everyone was capturing numbers in their own way, it was a little difficult to, to pull that together. So that’s the plan is the short answer.

Speaker 4 25:34
Don’t worry, that was helpful. And mostly just out of curiosity to and that doesn’t. This question doesn’t necessarily have to go into this report either. But just kind of seeing these types of numbers. It made me curious about kind of what the long lat website for the library that like make a suggestion page looks like you’re like what folks are asking for or like how many events they’re looking for suggesting versus books or just Yes, this was kind of curious what folks for the library were asking for online. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 26:18
Thanks. That’s a really great comments. It looks like you repeating yourself. Maybe maybe not quite the right. Other comments or questions?

Speaker 3 26:35
Library, getting their own Instagram account? Is that offensive this year?

Speaker 2 26:40
I think we have one, we’re just not really engaging in it. Okay, so we oh, I guess that says I’ll see ya.

Speaker 2 26:54
Oh, I see. So we don’t have one that just read. I read this for the first time. So that’ll be the plan. Yeah. But I

Speaker 3 27:05
will point out, though, that there’s 10,000. There’s 1000 followers in all city, Instagram, and 1000 followers on just for Facebook. So yeah, hopefully, it won’t take you long to build up those numbers. Although I know it is frustrating. A lot of city departments don’t have their own account. So I’m really glad that the library finally does because not all city departments get there, the senior center would love to have their own. And you don’t get Yeah, it’s a process. So it’s really nice. Yeah. So So yeah, it’s a I wonder how much of a process it is for you guys to get your own Instagram account. And if you kind of have to kind of start all over,

Speaker 2 27:45
you know, we’re I mean, we’re lucky that we have our own marketing person. I mean, she doesn’t work for me, per se, because she’s a part of the city’s communications department. But I would say 85% of our time is only on the library, and then a small percentage for city wide activities. So I feel like we have someone that provides good points for us in that respect. And given the library’s engagement on the website alone, and just recognizing that I think it would not be a hard argument to say that we need our own.

Speaker 3 28:22
Great, yeah. Yeah, so hopefully, it’s not too much of a process to Yeah, to get your own Instagram.

Speaker 1 28:34
So what some of the things that when we do present, I mentioned already, the website, came the third most viewed website that really impressed me the eBooks and audiobooks. I think that one of the issues that the libraries ran up against or that all libraries do is people don’t realize how much of the activity is virtual and the support needed for that. So really, making sure you clean up the number of material checkouts, downloads and opens

Speaker 2 29:07
Yeah, digital digital use is huge as far as presenting because I think there’s an even just kind of thinking back to the election and some of the comments I saw from some citizens was feeling like well, I come to the library it’s not busy so why do you need more? Well, why we need more is because we have all these people that are exclusively using our services online. And just because they’re online doesn’t mean we need to support that better through staffing and collections.

Unknown Speaker 29:40
How much time will you have to present? Do you

Speaker 2 29:43
know? I don’t know about this process. I have to check in with my boss Jeff about this to see. Susan ya know, I mean with presentations I feel like it’s a little more wiggle room. It’s not like a public comment where No,

Unknown Speaker 30:01
no, there’s no time. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 30:09
I was just gonna say that deserves discussion. But I think that’s a really engaging with that potential continue to turn the tide on the library. Yes, it is about this little space in the actual footprint library branch library.

Speaker 5 30:37
And there’s also a school we knew this side, liver science that novice probably understand that is the virtual side of it and what that takes not just paying for services about that aspect that I never thought about that. possible and you have the time, I guess I would encourage without a whole slide on it. Whatever, especially.

Unknown Speaker 31:12
So I think it’s worth mentioning that. However this took out because for all the lecture of the process, the process and format of this

Speaker 1 31:23
the notes have already done really try to emphasize it’ll use the Netflix number patriots were explicitly using these services online. And I think maybe emphasizing channeling, you know, if I’m not aligned with what the library’s doing, but it seems to me that they’re taught what we really strive to provide equal service to all patrons, those who use the materials, spaces and resources in person as well as those who are only digital. And that, that, you know, that that doesn’t mean staff needed to support that. They’re really stressing that like equal that all are viewed as patriots of the library equally, whether or not they can make it in person. Right, correct.

Speaker 1 32:10
I asked him for 900,000. I mean, that’s almost an item per person of the city’s population. On it’s pretty, it’s not, you know, nine tenths of it. So it’s pretty impressive that items that are circulating are at that a level as well. And I think speaks to the strength of one offs collections.

Speaker 1 32:38
What else are people seeing that are done that you think is important as well, or Susie that you think would really speak from this report?

Unknown Speaker 32:50
What’s the population of Walmart right now?

Speaker 6 32:53
That’s right over really went up the

Speaker 2 32:57
last the last life not an official sentences, but it’s about 100,000.

Speaker 3 33:05
I think it’s kind of important to up to this point to kind of have that in perspective, because I’m just blown away by 5000 the library cards that means that, you know, 5% of the population of Longmont and obviously can also be people outside of the limits of Walmart, but still like that represents 5% of Walmart, new library card that just is mind blowing for one year. Yeah.

Speaker 5 33:34
Especially when you think about the fact that we got better. Our students just automatically,

Speaker 1 33:39
right. Yes.

Unknown Speaker 33:43
Yeah, true. True. Yeah, I think.

Speaker 2 33:52
I don’t know that. I mean, there’s wood with the engagement with the library of feet, people are visibly here, I think is a huge part. But I think also, but when it comes to the community engagement part and just seeing the number of people we’re interacting with, because a lot of these numbers are largely in person numbers. Some of them are digital, because we receive a lot of text messages and things through email and are asked the librarian form, but there’s just, that’s a lot of engagement of people interacting with library staff. Which I think it’s important as well.

Speaker 6 34:39
Is even like, I don’t know how you can get this data or if this is something readily available through other cities, annual reports, but just comparing some of the numbers as far as patrons served or events and programs, to be able to compare with other municipalities are sighs let me know. If it’s happy if it’s not to get that you’re gonna have to be digging for it.

Speaker 2 35:09
Don’t Don’t bother. No, I mean, there’s through through the State Library, you can you can run, you can look at anyone’s library numbers. And in fact, I’ve done that. And I’ll even address it a little bit in this meeting when we talk about our budget requests coming in the next year, because a lot of what I did was point out of libraries of similar size, how much more they’re devoting to library services that we do. My point being that we need to catch up. Yeah, so that you can get the numbers Cool.

Speaker 1 35:47
Well, your public also does, hair is not able to find it. This is a very quick minute, guys, I think that again, they do list there is pretty easily found on their website. So that would be an easy one as well.

Speaker 2 35:59
And boulders want to you know, it’s a little more realistic, just because the population, it’s more than Longmont, but it’s closer, but then you get an interesting thing with other neighboring towns and populations are half of all, although some of that can be telling, like when I looking at what we’re spending on collections and things like that, you know, within our own consortium, like Loveland do smaller, but the amount of dollars are spent on collections programs, is the same reward the law

Unknown Speaker 36:35
as a data point.

Speaker 1 36:41
I don’t think they’re too far outside the numbers. And it’s always tempting to read too much in there, per se. But think about that. It’s just been out the high number of staff interactions, I mean, 70,000, like reference slash information, it’s so easy. I think that that has to speak to the word like the friendly nature of the library staff. So I think that’s something to to add as well. I don’t think you get that if people are not comfortable with the approachable nature of the library system, because I don’t think you’d get that people are not comfortable approaching that. That’s

Speaker 1 37:25
cool, okay. Other that’s all I can think of for this other questions or comments for this report before even on?

Speaker 1 37:38
It, you guys will let us know, once you hear from your boss, kind of what the timeframe looks like, for presenting for this, that would be great.

Speaker 2 37:47
Yeah, I think it would be in April. As far as I could guess, but I just not sure which which day they will. So I will follow up. And then, you know, of course we have a date. Whoever is planning to present we can certainly talk through this in more detail.

Speaker 1 38:13
Great. As chair, I will be happy to have that works with my schedule, and it should. So I’ll prioritize this. But if not, I’ll reach out to Katherine as I stare at it to their support numbers and see what the interest is. Okay, moving on to our next library agenda. You’re right hexameric screen. We had I struggled. I talked about putting this on there. If we wanted to consider moving the meeting a little earlier. However, I did remember that we have to set the meeting times and digs at our annual leak. So that denial really is a non starter, but maybe something we consider for the next general meeting, which we’ll get to the next bullet point. If people would want, you know, 630 meeting time. I know we all such busy schedules to seven so make sense. Is that recruiting sooner? Okay, that brings us to library board membership under new business. Hopefully y’all saw the email from Tracy and both my Marianas turn are indeed in June 30 2024. I will not be eligible for reappointment to the sport it will be turned out Yeah, no, you will be is my understanding as well. So I think that’s just an interest and we hit that is of interest or use me to consider. So we will definitely have at least one vacancy. And I’m wondering to see or John do you know when her Susie, when we when the new appointments will be where it works, I can look it up

Unknown Speaker 40:20
I need it up,

Speaker 3 40:21
I got that email from several different people. So the city’s marketing is on point, but

Unknown Speaker 40:32
I saw a number of places. So

Speaker 6 40:35
the deadline is Friday, April 21. And we will be interviewing applicants on Saturday, June 17,

Speaker 3 40:43
to April 20, versus the deadline to apply

Speaker 6 40:47
deadline to apply. And then they’ll come to council on June 17. And then that following Tuesday is when we make our decision in

Speaker 2 41:01
between applying and June 17. I think we, at least in the past the board, does our conducts our own interviews and then passes those on to your Yeah, sorry for that meeting. So there’ll be a longer time

Speaker 1 41:21
I can so I’m not sure if I need to look back and see what happened last time. But I’m just assuming that those names are passed to us from the city. I guess you’ve probably Tracy to the city. And then we’ll set up there’s interviews with those candidates. The

Speaker 2 41:37
city clerk will send them to Tracy and myself. Right. And maybe the board, I don’t know, but at least to us. Yeah. And then we’ll pass them on. And then the board can can come up with a panel and a decision on interview dates. And then whoever that is, you know, those names then get passed on back to the city clerk, and then to city council for that interview.

Unknown Speaker 42:06
All right, so I’ll add that to the later agenda. Well, April 17. There is no later agenda. That’s our next our next meeting, isn’t it? Yeah. Okay, so, um, let me I did all the questions that we asked last week.

Speaker 1 42:30
And I was thinking, a couple of things that we need to look at then who is interested in interviewing that I will be, but there’s one or more, I think that’d be great. It’s not coming up to decide right now. But once we know the dates, maybe, hopefully, we can have at least one other volunteer for one or more of those dates.

Unknown Speaker 42:54
And then

Unknown Speaker 42:56
the the questions we shared last time. I’m gonna put them in the chat. Hopefully that works.

Speaker 1 43:09
But I like these questions. Sorry, Mike. I didn’t want my mouse today. So Mike, I’m trying to go from one screen to the next to my cursors like all face

Speaker 1 43:29
this is what I have written down as our questions from last time for new board members who are interview.

Speaker 1 43:45
I mean, there’s a little words that mean I might do. Can you share a little about the impact you believe public libraries come to community, and maybe rephrase that you share about the importance with community rather than the impact. But that’s a very small thing. Otherwise, I’m happy to continue with these questions. But John, I wanted to ask you and I wanted to also ask the board members.

Unknown Speaker 44:13
For my perspective, they’re perfectly good questions.

Speaker 5 44:19
Do we want a question about do you have as a library user interactions with libraries to be more specific to our library like this person?

Speaker 1 44:36
I think that’s a good point. In my mind, I find a teaching abroad because I think that people do the community. That basically I don’t mind where that experience is coming from. I think that if somebody does have experience with another library to add, perhaps like the richness of conversation,

Unknown Speaker 44:58
the nice means

Unknown Speaker 45:17
Any other questions or points or about that?

Speaker 1 45:29
Was let’s go ahead and just keep those questions. If I work with everyone, and then we’ll wait you get those names and figure out some dates, I believe we can do that every email since it is like calendars, logistical business was my understanding. There’ll be nothing shared about content or discussion. And I also would like to encourage all of us to share this vacancy with people you think might be an appropriate fit for him his strong interest, I tried to scholars to be, you know, listservs inside, and I did not hear about this or anywhere else, which may see me, I should sign up for more listservs. For people that have not heard about this either.

Unknown Speaker 46:27
Other Other, there’s

Speaker 1 46:28
another piece to this agenda item that we need to discuss. But anyone else have have comments on the data, sharing the word or the process for interviewing new board members? Right. So here’s the other piece. The annual meeting is where we set the date time is the second meeting of the board after a new appointee. So I will be stepping down before that, if that makes sense. So that means there needs to be a special election for the chair before the for the new members come on. And so I just wanted to throw that out. No need to rush to volunteer right now. But my understanding, and I’ll double check this is that that will be

Unknown Speaker 47:34
the meeting

Speaker 1 47:36
after like the first meeting after I’m not on the board anymore. And city and election. Yeah. Yeah. And then the annual meeting we need to sit in on when the new persons appointed. It’s the second date. It’s not their very first meeting. It’s their second. And that is for other elections. DVD. Yeah. Yeah. But the other elections of officers, I guess. I guess technically you could like elect a chair for a month. I don’t think that’d be worth it. But do action and other officers such as the vice chair, the principal library liaison, would happen at that annual meeting. The second meeting after the new member joins.

Speaker 2 48:32
Cynthia when when marks terminated though he was the chair. I feel like the election of you being the next chair happened before he was done. Yeah, it did. But I don’t. It did. I mean, that doesn’t mean we did it. Right. Oh, I just was pointing out that we it was all settled before he was off. And we have new members. We can all we can check into this.

Speaker 1 49:05
Yeah, let’s check into that. Because that makes way more sense. Have you seen yes or no election for one thing? So I think my understanding is basically from hearing that because that it makes much more sense to elect somebody, you know, to have a peace of mind to be hand off.

Speaker 2 49:23
I think Tracy Tracy, and I can look into that. And then maybe in the next meeting in April, to talk about that. And then even in May there could be an election if I’m right. Before,

Speaker 1 49:39
right. That would be great. And then I would be there for the June that’s what Mark did. I would be there for the two one, but somebody else would be leaving takes time. Other concerns for that are interpretations. Goodbye

Speaker 1 50:03
I am happy to answer your questions about what the chairs responsibilities would be winning that Mark and I did after I was elected didn’t meet and he just kind of shared his approaches and procedures and stuff on I found that really helpful so I would of course be happy to do so whoever whoever takes this position and actually Maxine don’t feel like you would just be thrown on it

Speaker 1 50:43
Alright, well let’s move on and the other thoughts on this agenda item?

Speaker 5 50:47
I just want a quick question we already done the person like we need to

Unknown Speaker 50:59
it’s a five person isn’t five or

Unknown Speaker 51:01
I thought we

Unknown Speaker 51:05
want to think we had one spot vacant but I Okay.

Unknown Speaker 51:11
I feel like we might be getting to the website it’s only really half

Speaker 1 51:20
we apply right now I think the question of Katie is well I think the question is whether it’s supposed to be a five or six person board

Speaker 3 51:27
right? If we’re losing both Briana and Cynthia at the same time, then we would have two vacancies coming up. Well, we have

Unknown Speaker 51:35
is the term limit. No. Okay, good.

Speaker 2 51:37
I can stay it’s just a matter of or however that works.

Speaker 3 51:43
Cynthia can’t Yeah, she’s so she’s coming up on her limit. Yeah, okay. Really? Okay. I’m just because you’re gonna have to reapply if she wants to do a second trip every

Speaker 2 51:53
telephone can answer that sorry. We can laugh about it. There’s a little communication error was Catherine sampling. by little I mean, it was bigger than anyway. Yeah, so she has to reapply. But I mean, we can look at that too. I thought it was a five person I don’t know

Unknown Speaker 52:21
when I will come to the wheeling one meeting where

Speaker 4 52:24
they have more vacancies and things there’s just a general application

Speaker 7 52:29
like meaning that there’s a vacancy and indeed haven’t filled or if it’s just if there needs to be an extra person

Speaker 2 52:36
because the last time there were boarding commission you know, the process for doing this the library wasn’t in there because we had our whole lit roster that will fire standing so I feel like it’s five but

Unknown Speaker 52:52
at one point we had

Unknown Speaker 52:59
literally ready to go Yeah. Because and Katie p as well. I think Tinker Bell guy replace P Oh, that’s right.

Unknown Speaker 53:18
Yes. Converse commerce

Unknown Speaker 53:21
system is currently watching. Yeah.

Speaker 1 53:27
Yeah. Expected replaced. So I guess Tracy’s shopping clarify for us. How many people? Yeah, there’s a whole board.

Speaker 3 53:38
I don’t know why the downtown Long Month website has it and but I don’t know why it would be wrong but when they because they have the library board meetings on the downtown Long month calendar. And in the details it says the library board consists of five members appointed to serve three year terms. Oh, wow. I don’t know why they know that on their website. But why would it be wrong though to somebody provided that information

Unknown Speaker 54:06
so but when I googled it there, they came up

Speaker 3 54:08
before the city website did but since there’s so many still gave them that information.

Speaker 1 54:14
I think and I’d have to go back and look there is some confusion when Catherine and I first were on this board about the membership and so he said it might have been brought two years ago but he’s right now is kind of like my big memory of this so yeah, to see if you could if you could check that that’d be great.

Unknown Speaker 54:38
All likelihood. I

Speaker 1 54:41
know, there was there was a there was confusion over the membership a couple years ago for sure. Definitely bear that

Speaker 3 54:49
out there it is. Okay, I finally popped it. I found it on the city of Walmart code. It is five numbers. It’s two dot 60 dot zero to zero.

Speaker 1 55:02
Right. Thanks. Pepsi’s, great. Great. Other comments before we move on to old business? Great, well, next time is just a budget update. And we have that on there. Because I think it’s going to be something I really want to communicate our sorry, my dogs are barking art support or the budget to consult.

Unknown Speaker 55:41
Practice here to go over.

Speaker 2 55:46
By the way, I mean, I can’t hear, but I can tell that you can. Okay, so what I thought I would do is kind of walk you through is, you know, basically the way this all went out last year, you know, I put in and we talked about it here, at least for one meeting of the budget requests I was going to do, in because of last year, with the decision of I, none of my budget requests that I put to the city were approved because they went to the election. So my intent this year is to pretty much put it all the same pleasure plus back with some modifications, you know, either so the numbers themselves, and there’s a couple of items I will put back in there. And I can kind of talk through that. So I can share again and kind of walk through this is basically the presentation I did last year with the city, so.

Speaker 2 57:01
I’m going to skip through so that the budgeting process, they have what’s what’s called level one and level two requests. Level one are things that you can’t control. Right. So think of like utility rates going up, like you have to have the budget to cover it. So you put it in there. But it’s something that more or less has to be approved. And I have a few of those because increasing costs, right. So we always get a percentage increase, usually to like database subscriptions and things like that. So that’s how that’s calculated. Those will be in there, again, like this. And it’ll probably be a different number. But those will be in the level one I got approved last year, but it just wasn’t real significant to what I was asking for. The real meat of it is level two. And you call it was kind of think of it as this is what we would like to have, right? I mean, so I had requested a pretty substantial increase to staffing, staff training and professional development. And my justification for that, again, comparing to other libraries, who spend significantly more than we do, our current budget for this is only 5004 75 people. And so that’s, that’s what that is. I don’t think I put this in the packet. But I could next time I think that way people, or I can play with some version of this, but let me let me just get through. So mileage, that’s because of outreach, we didn’t really have a mileage allowance. And we need to. So it’s not real sexy, but it’s there. Actually, this one got approved this year. Same with telephones, because we have more people with cell phones. So uniform, I put in more we have a very nominal amount now. But I like us to be presentable if we’re out doing events or things and have coordinated uniforms and such, but we don’t have a budget for it. So I have to basically pull it from somewhere else within our budget. You think about other departments that we’re facing within our own division of recreation, who you will never not see them in a polo shirt or a hat or something that shows where they’re from and the library doesn’t have. And then we get into collections. So this was my last year request to increase our adult book collections might this doesn’t mean a $36,000 budget. This means adding 36 to the existing amount of 100 and some 1000. So the justification here again, this bottom paragraph gets into comparing us to other communities that spend substantially more than we do on collections. And this will be reflected throughout. So that’s adult collections. Children, same thing, right? A different amount. But same logic. And this is a lot more because we currently spend a lot less. Ebooks in E audio. That’s adding to the current budget of which I think is like 95,000. So spending about 20,000 More would put us more in the ballpark of what somewhat of acuity the size would spend on the content. And then same logic for children to be audio and ebooks, programs and events. So this gets into a budget that is non existent currently, in this library that almost any other public library has, we’ve talked about this before. We are right now 100%, funded by the Friends of the Library, or we don’t do programs and events of this library. So this gets into adult, what would it take. So in again, the numbers may change. But basically, last year, I was asking for 10,000, that would be a combination of supplies, and then the ability to bring in presenters of some sort, you know, contract people, an author, maybe in like a big author event, that’s where the friends will come in, right. So something larger than our standard budget would have. But this, this could absolutely be a part of our operating budget set it as essential as collections. And so same for children and teen same logic, almost the same explanation. And again, I get into what other libraries spend on programming events. And then we give them some personnel. Temp wages, you know, don’t worry too much about the language there. Because that’s city leaders was basically our part time staff. And so they kind of come out of a bucket of money and read increases to personnel across the board. But temp wages is a way to I mean, it’s the existing part time staff we have, but what we don’t have is the ability for any of those part time staff to work maybe extra hours because we have a need for them. Like, can you come to this outreach event and help? What happens now is if they do that, they have to trade on hours for regular shift, which then shortens the library. So the increase is both a need and in a way for us to be able to say, well, I want to use the word pad, but it’s like a contingency, you know, so that you can afford for somebody to work a few extra hours that week, because there’s a need for it. Right now we’re so unaligned that no one can work an hour more than we hired before. And that’s I just don’t think that’s reasonable. Outreach is the big ass I had last year will be the same this year. So we have outreach department have one as you all know. So the additional staff would be an amount of money that could hire either the part time and or some combination of part time enough in three quarters or full time.

Speaker 2 1:03:19
I know I’m going through, but I’ll get this out, if you’d like justifications, a full time librarian to support our current outreach librarian, so my current route outreach librarian would become basically a division head and then have a full time out librarian supporting that. That’s what that is. This is the coordinator of what it would take to my existing person up to a level of being a division head with a library. And then they’re on the supplies budget. You know, just support that to think of outreach right now as I refer to it as a department just like we have adult children, teen circulation, tech surfaces, outreach ism, consider a department right now. I’m thinking of it as department. That’s why you’re seeing all these numbers. We need to make it a department basically. When we get into more collections, so new digital projects, I’m sorry products. That number would get us more in line to get what we should be spending on digital materials for a population of the size. And if I’m asking 100,000 You can see how far under we are which this paragraph explains some spending as much as five or 600,000 a year we spent less than 100.

Speaker 2 1:04:57
dues, dues and subscriptions it’s it’s I have a combination of things, but so some of it’s like maintenance agreement and things like that, but some of them are new. So that’s why it’s under a level two.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:13
That’s exactly what I was wondering why that was not what I want. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:20
I’m actually trying to do this quickly.

Speaker 2 1:05:27
Although I indicated a one to 2% increase. So I wonder if this actually should be. That’s something I’ll probably change this year. We have the computer lab coordinators three quarter time, our computer lab is busy. We added teaching classes twice a month, this person is responsible for all the staffing schedules and coordinating in of these classes and coming up with the topics and scheduled staff and doing the trainings for it. So be good to have that position to be a full time, which honestly doesn’t cost that much. More temp wages or circulation department same reason, as everybody else, there’s just no way for anyone to pick up an hour or two because someone is sick instead when you’re short staffed. The storefront library we did last year, and I doubt I’ll put it in this here. This was sort of to go in there along with having a branch library and to kind of show what having a different type of library would look like. I still want to talk through that with my boss and some others of whether I put that in. But the amount it would take to staff a storefront library of being 1.3 million. I don’t want that to over that. It looks like I’m asking for millions of dollars, no budget. It’s not realistic to do this, this year, I need to get some of these core stuff done. So I made up put that atmosphere here. I wanted to hire a consultant do strategic planning, I may or may not put that in this year, we have some resources here that can help with that. The VA will still like to do so our outreach department has a vehicle instead of doing mileage allowance and having them do wear and tear on their own car. This was never to come out of the budget, I was going to use our promotional funds just to support that. And so that would still be my intention. So there’s actually no budget impact on us other than it coming from a fund that we can spend from which does take library or approval of. So I haven’t brought that back here yet. But that’s it. That’s a quick run through the budget request.

Speaker 1 1:07:52
Thanks so much strategy. I’m sure we’ll continue this discussion in the next two meetings. I was looking at what we had shared with council last year in terms of the board’s support for the budget, as well as some specific items we mentioned, most of which are already covered up besides outreach, programming, boosted collections. One of the things that I remember going to be mentioned last year was the increased cost for materials to write good process. Is that still

Speaker 2 1:08:27
Yeah, so that that’s included and I know I went through the explanation as fast but within any of the budget requests, I have them for collection increases, that’s in part to not only increase our collection allowance, but to account for the pre processing charges to base to get our material shelf ready when they arrive that comes at a cost of over $4 per item. So that those numbers of collection increases is both right is to account for those processing charges as well as to increase the collection budget in general that we need

Speaker 1 1:09:09
any questions or comments about Kennedy’s top level budget requests and I know sounds like well receive this in a packet or another communication so people to read the details later. But any other questions for right now?

Speaker 2 1:09:26
One thing I’ll point out to real quick Katherine before you go is that just on the pre processing and I think I’ve said it before but it because we already embarked on that and effectively means we have a collection cut this year because we’re still paying for that but we didn’t get the increase to account for it so we’re buying less materials Sorry to interrupt.

Speaker 5 1:09:55
I know more of like a sort of strategy question. School into this. I’m curious, you know, Suzy, and you have any insight into how you might be more successful this time if there’s any way of getting these things funded last year? I mean, I think it’ll be enforced. But

Speaker 6 1:10:20
well, and I think a lot of it was really, we were hoping that I think we put our eggs in the basket of falling was going to pass or that ballot measure would pass. And so I think we were just too, on the side of optimism

Unknown Speaker 1:10:41
fully planned for putting that socking money aside, and really, you know, funding these in the event that the ballot measures?

Speaker 2 1:10:54
Yeah, I mean, I think, Kevin, that the timing of all that. I mean, when I was presenting this budget to the city manager, it was that conversation that came up that this would go into the ballot initiative, not as a budget request. So effectively, council really never saw this. Not in any meaningful way.

Speaker 5 1:11:18
So you don’t feel like it were any, like huge sticking points or like something that was just such a sticker shock?

Unknown Speaker 1:11:26
You know, no,

Speaker 6 1:11:27
I don’t think so. I mean, at least from the council perspective, I don’t know, you know, as far

Unknown Speaker 1:11:33
as well, my perspective is all very reasonable.

Speaker 5 1:11:41
Possibly cause people to not support this. I’m trying to be angry. Maybe, like, use my anger in the strategic way, like gonna be angry.

Speaker 2 1:11:54
I mean, I think what the opportunity this year, Catherine, that this will be, there’s no election that involves a White House here. This will be a budget request that comes through the city manager, and then on to council. So I mean, I think having these conversations and having the board and opportunity to either come to council, right to counsel or what in between now and budget time and kind of, you know, get in their radar and in their ear about the importance of this, that timing is now.

Speaker 6 1:12:30
Well, and I’m going to jump into a couple of things that I heard, and this was prior to being on the board with our last director,

Unknown Speaker 1:12:39
Nancy

Speaker 6 1:12:43
is, I would hear from a couple of council people who said, Well, we didn’t know that the library was under budget, we didn’t nobody came to us and, like, Well, okay, but if I have issues with that, but you know, so like you had suggested, you know, come I think with the ACA, you know, presenting the annual report is a good venue and an opportunity to insert, you know, what the needs are? And, you know, to keep a robust and system then, you know, is that is equitable, that is sustainable. And, you know, we look at it as a, you know, at our goals and objectives, we have places and amenities. This is an amenity. So there are several components of our the library hits as far as what our priorities are. So I think finding a way to, to combine those two make connect the dots for counsel, as well, as you know, keep keep reiterating. You know, this is a need this is, you know, this is what we’re asking for, if we want to, you know, to have a robust system, this is what, you know, this, these are, this is what needs to be allocated for, for the library. I hope that answered your question.

Speaker 3 1:14:06
Do you have to when you meet with city manager office do is it? is, are they like partners in trying to help you come up with a budget to present to council or they kind of the final is discounsel kind of rubber stamp that comes out of the city management office or, you know, is it city manager’s office trying to help you prepare for city council?

Speaker 2 1:14:36
So, I mean, that’s actually a good question for me, because in my somewhat short time here, I haven’t experienced that process. Yes. But the way I understand it, as you know, I work with my boss and then the assistant city manager that oversees external services, which is recreation and culture, on a budget request, and then I have an opportunity to present that to the city manager, the finance, Chief Financial Officer, all those people and everybody else. And I believe that then the city manager and others will look through that. And then they will present a budget budget packet to council. Right. So by the time this gets to council, and maybe some of this or all of it ideally, or like last year, they didn’t present anything. So that’s kind of the way the process works.

Speaker 1 1:15:42
So that actually the other question in question, thanks for asking that. Okay. So we will be presenting the annual report and Suzy, based on what you just said, it sounds like it would be appropriate to to share about the knees at that time, or at least to mention the name, they have communicated by email, this board’s support of budget items in the past, or other boards communicating in terms of budget needs with counsel a different manner.

Speaker 6 1:16:15
I have not seen anything from Parks and Rec or planning department. I’ve had heard things from public safety, but that’s those emails really came from the union. So the FOP so it’s, it’s a different. It’s a different structure there. So, you know, they’re advocating for their officers. So it was that. But I think as far as sort of hearing from other boards, board members, I have not.

Speaker 3 1:16:53
But actually, that might be kind of a good role model, because, you know, board stewards are professional at this. And so that it might be good advice to kind of take what you’ve seen from the police stewards, as kind of what what the options available to us are to communicate to council.

Speaker 1 1:17:26
So, right now, we’ll be taking a pencil net report, we’ll be emailing counsel. It sounds like not yet, but maybe after next meeting, we can assess that. We sent out communication gene last year, I’m not sure if that timing should have been earlier read last year, it didn’t matter. But I’m not sure that I deal Well, with that timing should be earlier in May rather than jam it, are we missing anything, in terms of strategically communicating this?

Speaker 6 1:18:06
Sure. I don’t I can’t think of anything different. I mean, I see. I see this board is very active, compared to other I don’t hear. I think it’s for the museum advisory board. I think their biggest thing was they all contributed to the what is in front of the museum for their capital campaign. Right. I mean, that’s that, you know, they were pretty adamant about wanting to play a role in that regard. But as far as you know, what, what the rest of council hears? It’s, it’s, I think this board right here is really active in the sense of vocalizing concerns. Think,

Speaker 1 1:18:57
excuse me for that context. I think that’s helpful. Well, I think then, next, let this we’ll come back to the agenda. Next month, most likely, and maybe at that point, we can discuss as a board, what our recommendation to council v. And what we want to emphasize was in that recommendation. Other comments or questions for this agenda item before you move on? Let’s move on to reports. Journalists can get right back to your three characters report. Okay.

Speaker 2 1:19:32
A couple of things here. I think in the interest of time. I won’t go through the highlights of programming since that was in the packet and you’re welcome to look through that and ask me questions is the same as I’ve done in the past as far as sort of pointing out some of the events we did this last month and the impact we’ve had. But what I will address here are a couple of things. One is that We have planned our annual all staff in service day, which is going to be based 17. On Friday, we do this every year is the last three years before that. And so I have arranged with a couple of presenters to come in and do a one session on what we call trauma informed care, which some of you may be familiar with that. And so it’ll be a session on that on working with the public each other and a little bit of self care kind of a theme this year is a little bit of self care and concern this year about staff morale. So I want to have a day that kind of focuses on, you know, yes, how do we still take care of the public with that? How do we manage ourselves in doing so. So that’s a big theme in that presentation, the other presenter I’m wanting to bring in will be more on the EDI realm, or di role, however you like to say it and that one, we’re really focused on ally ship and supporting each other through experiences that staff can face and have faced such as microaggressions and blatant racism, or other things, either from the public and hopefully not from each other. But we still need to have a better sense of this to support each other. So big, two big themes there. One of the reasons I wanted to bring this up to the board here is my hope for these presenters is to pay for that or presenter fees through our motion fund. Because they, I don’t have the budget for it in my standard budget. And I think it’d be appropriate disclosure funding outline of how we can spend that is very broad, it’s just basically for any library purposes. So there’s really, there’s really no rules about as far as a fund in how they’re structured. Sometimes they can be very specific on what you can spend it on. So I actually have two things there. One is very specific to staff day. The other is I want to use some Moser funds to help support our summer reading program. This would largely be in support of getting back into the temp wages category. So right now, we don’t have enough hours to support the summer reading program you do. I hope that minimally I would have gotten the temp hours I needed within children’s to support summer reading. And I didn’t obviously it wouldn’t take that much it would maybe be about I think I say not that much. But when you think about multiple staff for three months, I’m looking at to pull out about 20,000 from the most refined, and then another 6000 for the presenter fees for staff day. For so for summer reading that allows some of these part time workers to work extra hours during the summer and really support that program at the level with that we would like to support. And then the presenter fees are what they are, which I explained. Because it’s the most refined. I can spend from that. But it does need a board motion that that says for what I’ve explained the board and for each that we’ll be pulling from that fun for these things.

Speaker 1 1:23:43
Great. Thanks so much, John. Well, it sounds like there is a motion that the board needs to make. I’m happy to make that motion. I’m very much in support of both of those items. So I knew that the board permits use of the motion funds for staffing up support summer 2020 for summer reading program and for presentation fees for staff development during an annual in service day. And chasing happiness per set. Kevin set a second for it right and we do have a second. At this point, we could also discuss it as well in my understandings through rules of borders. So all the motion is made and seconded and I’ll open the floor for any discussion at any comments

Unknown Speaker 1:24:48
No

Speaker 1 1:24:52
thanks. Well then at this point, let’s let’s go ahead and move to bed All in favor. I see three hands instead of assuming. She said,

Speaker 3 1:25:09
I’m not showing up on it right now. It’s not connecting with me to camera, but that was an eye. Oh, there

Speaker 1 1:25:13
we go. So the motion passes unanimously. And John, you have the board’s support for the use of those funds. Casey, do you need me to repeat any of that? You got it. Jake, you’re here. Awesome. Great.

Speaker 2 1:25:33
Thank you. Certainly help us a lot with these couple of initiatives.

Unknown Speaker 1:25:39
What is that word?

Unknown Speaker 1:25:41
Moser? Oh,

Speaker 2 1:25:43
it’s the name of the person? Or people the family? Most Sure. Is there is there? Yeah, it’s something that I wasn’t aware of. When I first started, I found that out by accident. Someone says something about the motion or fun or like, wait, what? What is that? That sounds like money I have. So basically, this family committed a certain amount to the only the library. And we can spend only on the interest accrued. In this particular setup. However, since no one has been spending on it. There’s a sizable amount there. Which makes it a little bit easier to pull from it for these things and not feel like I’m going to delete it. Right. So even what I’m asking for as a fraction of what six Yeah, I just say No, sure. I didn’t

Speaker 3 1:26:39
care. Obviously, that sounds like a minut detail to whether or not it was a yes or no me but like this curious.

Speaker 1 1:26:50
Just to jump in, I’ll tell you to a couple years ago, the cord cutter might remember more detailed, kind of revamped and step procedures for approval of use of those fun switches. Right. So that, that that is also kind of newer process as well.

Speaker 2 1:27:15
Okay, and then the last thing I have in my director update, I wanted to update the board on some work that a committee within the library and I have been working on to revise our regular request for reconsideration. Also known as challenges to the collection, or programs or displays or the civets. And I’ve wanted to revise this part, partially because it’s outdated. And also, in part because I think I might have mentioned in the last meeting that the state was working on aid. Our legislators were working on legislation to basically have a ban on book bands, well, that that’s been died that died in committee. It’s it may resurface in a different form with different sponsors at some point. But some of it made sense. And in the past that made sense, or what’s informed some revisions that I want to make here that I just want to share here in case there’s any questions or concerns, which I would like to walk through with you here as quick as John.

Speaker 2 1:28:36
So if you’ve seen our request for reconsideration form, some of this will look familiar, mostly the form part. So this is all we have available right now. And this is not on the website, nor would it be I’d like to keep it where people have to come in and get it. But we’ve been talking about this. So we’ve reserved revise some parts of the form itself that someone fills out. The important things to point out are, you will notice in the form that you don’t say what city you’re from, because it’s assumed you’re in Longmont, and if not, then you don’t get to fill out this form. You have other part is a library card number. This is new. What a shame. What I should say is this would be new, we haven’t implemented this yet. So staff agree between residency and the fact that if you’re a library user, you should have a full access library card. And then you have the right to challenge or fill out a reconsideration for me so something that you object to many libraries to it this way. So I’m not inventing something. In it kind of it helps eliminate groups and others from outside. This is what happens in a lot of other places around this country where people flood the system because they just pile challenges. because there’s no policy in place to prevent it. So there’s really no need for that. It’s kind of setting ourselves up for something that is unlikely here. But I want to make sure we have it in place

Speaker 3 1:30:12
is not part of the library tax.

Speaker 2 1:30:19
Yeah, our service area, as we call it, in library land is the city of one. And then a minor revision, I say minor, we used to just ask what they’re requesting, let them free tested, but now we have options. So you can choose one of what you’re challenging. If that’s the case, and then all the other questions are the same. I think that we ask now. A little statement at the bottom, we’ve revised a little bit that it will be reviewed by myself and as needed professional staff. And I, this used to say that it will go to us a committee. And sometimes that will be warranted sometimes. You know, so I didn’t want to have it there that we formally have a committee that someone wants to see minutes from such a committee. Because I don’t always need a committee. Sometimes it’s very clear to me what the responses so I usually confer with staff, but that might be more informal. Particularly if someone is the selector for that area of the library. That’s something that’s being asked to eat. And so that’s one change there. Otherwise, I think the rest is the same. So if they’re, if they’re challenging a program or a display or collection, the program isn’t cancelled, the display stays up, and our item stays on the shelf until this is resolved. That’s always been the case. By the way. I shared these with the library advisory board, I think, when I was new here, I didn’t do that I shared with you after the fact. But make sure before I respond officially to a particular patient that may do this. And then My decision is final, and you will hear within a month. So that’s the form. And then all of this appears new. And so we never had any explanation of requests for reconsideration, we have a collection development policy, which kind of outlines a little bit of this and how we go about it our philosophy, we have a display program policy, which explains that so people know how we come up with displays or programs and how to comment on that. So I’ve added we as a as a committee here in the library and a lot of information here as far as how does this come about? So what do we do here? This is kind of a summary of our collection, development policy and display, explained some things as far as things that are obviously critical to us, right First Amendment freedom to read. free access to library materials for minors, intellectual freedom, all these things that inform how we operate as a public library. So people have the opportunity to hopefully look at that before they might reconsider. To understand where we’re coming from that would be the ideal situation.

Unknown Speaker 1:33:30
Will that be on the website, that document

Speaker 2 1:33:32
this document will be on the website? And then it will say at the end, if you still want to form come into the library? Yeah, no, I do want this.

Unknown Speaker 1:33:43
Because I was looking at the links and

Speaker 2 1:33:45
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, so the some other items in here. So just because we have in our collection, or it’s a program doesn’t mean that, you know, it represents our viewpoint of something which is which is true. We have a statement in here about a public library not being legally responsible for children. Well, in the library, which is really important for us. I think a lot of times we get complaints as people feel like, you know, we weren’t protecting their child. Well, that’s also not our role. That’s the role of the parent and or guardian or whoever is in charge of that. That child learning the library. That’s always been the case of a public library.

Speaker 2 1:34:35
Let’s see. Get down. Did I put this in the packet?

Unknown Speaker 1:34:41
Yes, yes.

Speaker 2 1:34:44
All right, because my marketing person format in the form. Yeah, but this part of here is the same. So that was okay, so you might have had a chance to look at her, but at least you have it in. We can always follow up on this if you can Meeting if that’s warranted. And then after all bad businesses, okay, now that you know all this, if you still want to file a request here, here’s some other things to consider. You have to get the forum from here, only. It won’t be removed or cancelled just because it’s under review. And then the statement which would, which would be new, that you have to have a full access card and via the way we phrase it is living within the law, my public vibrate tax payments service. So that would not include that. And other neighboring. And then some of these are new. And some of these I think are good and a lot of libraries do. And also, this was a little bit informed by some of the legislation that might have gone through, in part, right. So you can only have one request for consideration active at any given time. So we can’t get people putting in one person putting in for multiple things at a time. And an individual or group can only put in two per year. After that, you have to wait. Once it’s upon resolution, either the item will display exhibit or program cannot be challenged again for three years. So we’ve we’ve instituted the statute of limitations in some way. How did I come up with three years? Because that’s what a lot a lot of other libraries do. So history or ask that question. You have to fill it up completely. So if it’s anonymous or complete, we just basically won’t review the form. And you have to do a separate one for each of your material display. That’s why we used to out these separately so that you can’t check them all and put in one request. So that’s me talking through that let you know, outside of this advisory board having any comments or concerns about it, my next step would be probably I have to look this over. It’s not necessarily an official policy. So I don’t know if I need to send this to city attorney’s office for review or not, it kind of gets into some legal whiteboard. So I might just do that to make sure I’m checking all by, you know. settling in,

Speaker 5 1:37:36
I guess, you can talk offline, too. But I don’t have any idea. I was like, can you just any? Do you have you already read these policies? Because I could definitely see what you’re saying

Unknown Speaker 1:37:51
is that it’s good to have the

Speaker 5 1:37:56
city backup. Somebody’s feel and I support them. 1,000%. But I can see some of this is pretty recent.

Speaker 2 1:38:08
Yeah, we talked about a lot about that as the committee. Basically the committee I’m referring to is all these selectors in the library. So professional librarian, staff and myself that I have responsible for the responsibility for the collection. And we we actually had some good discussion about that, you know, it’s like, well, just because you don’t have a library card, but if you live in the city, you’re still a taxpaying resident, and therefore, you’re contributing to the library on some levels. So should we restrict that? You know, at the end, that consensus was basically it made more sense to do that.

Speaker 5 1:38:47
I agree with everything you have. Okay. I just want to make sure that if somebody challenges your authority to set these rules 100% with the city attorney’s office behind

Speaker 2 1:38:59
it, that’s a very good point. And I think that will be my next step is to send this off to the city attorney that way is reviewed and basically stamped in that way. Yeah, I agree. We

Speaker 5 1:39:14
know like from the city’s relationship to you and your role. This is within the parameters of your job description, because I only asked this because I’m researching stuff in this paper right now. And there’s all these crazy city council’s in places that are basically replacing the library director with some kind of puppet director who like do their bidding, you know, so I just want to make sure nobody who is that kind of minded person might try to undermine their authority. Yeah, I

Speaker 2 1:39:50
appreciate that. And I think in some of the places where that kind of activity happens, in large part it’s with different governing bodies. So they have a board of trustees or a decision making board. And so that’s where it can get muddy. And then they’re making the decision to overrule the director or over library staff in the case here with an advisory board. It’s it’s obviously it’s not set up that way. So, but but it’s a good point. Okay, so outside of that, who sets it? Well, I am as the director, but you’re right, with the city legal review and approval, I want to make sure it makes sense.

Speaker 5 1:40:34
Right, I think you shouldn’t have done pretty easier to treat people.

Unknown Speaker 1:40:39
Yeah, I totally agree.

Unknown Speaker 1:40:44
Yeah, I could follow up with.

Speaker 2 1:40:48
Yeah, I would appreciate that, you know, if you want to, since you have it. I appreciate any feedback. It’s, I haven’t moved anything forward, except for getting this draft completed for receiving.

Speaker 1 1:41:05
Thanks for sharing. John, I think the goal seems to be the types of interactions that you described at the beginning of the meeting. You know, dialogue of respect. Even if ultimately the site’s putting, there’s still disagreement, and in my mind, is this this headset, where people still have the right to request reconsideration. But I think it makes a lot of sense that it’s the taxpayers supporting library that those requests would come from that body of people. So I don’t have any comments except those support. Thanks for that question happen. I think that’s a really valuable one as well. Any other comments or questions on this?

Speaker 1 1:42:00
And if first of all upside is people can also request materials for consideration as well to actually flexion.

Unknown Speaker 1:42:10
Nicely.

Unknown Speaker 1:42:15
Thanks so much, John. Anything else to your directors report?

Unknown Speaker 1:42:21
No, that’s, that’s all I have.

Speaker 1 1:42:25
Okay. Well, Jamie, I will skip the principal library liaison. So put that next month. And we’ll we’ll move to our city council member liaison. Oops, sorry. It’s like I’ve been Lucia will move to do these reports. When I get to say,

Speaker 6 1:42:43
I know I had to go back. So council was canceled last Tuesday, because we were at the National League of Cities in Washington. And it was it was great. It was phenomenal. I I felt like the theme. You know, the overarching theme in all of the sessions that I attended was around apprenticeship and building workforce. So what you know, so one of the sessions, I went to really talked about, you know, collaborating with your school district or with private industry, on building those internships and your workforce for the 21st century. As we’re moving towards EVs, renewable energy, there’s new types of technology, and skills that need to be learned because of new types of jobs that will be coming out in the near future. Additionally, and it was interesting, because this is something I hear from residents around, you know, we’re losing a lot of trained plumbers, electricians, electricians, you know, different people that work with their hands, and welding, I think, auto mechanic. And so it seems like, and this is not just in our district or in our area, we’re really nationwide, there’s this big push to get all the kids in before universities and going down this this path. We’re we’re kind of leaving behind a lot of those important mechanical and trade skills. So how can we we build that back up? And, you know, there’s all and then we’re in having conversations with the Department of Labor. There’s a lot of opportunities for grants. And so few and even another one I’m going to kind of change course here. So I attended a session on after school and summer learning. And this one was really cool in the sense that you know, so there’s like they have AmeriCorps there’s different agencies that that special, you know, that focus on programming and for youth. And there’s also a lot of federal dollar that we could tap into when we coordinate, you know, maybe we work with a school district or we work with your library, in this case, the library, you know, the different departments within our, our city. And depending on how we word our grants, or who we bring to the table to collaborate with, we embrace our opportunities to acquire funding for this. So yeah, I picked up all you know, their numbers, and you know what, to do a little bit of homework on that, to see what what opportunities will be there. If a city we wanted to expand, and especially now with microtransit, I’m gonna go off the filler, we approved and received money for micro transit. So really, it’s just the smaller buses, you know, like you see via and, and you would operate are still working out the logistics of it, but it would operate kind of like Uber, where they wouldn’t go right to your house, but you go to a pickup area call and then within 15 minutes or so they’ll come pick you up. That’s a great opportunity to we have this available for middle schoolers, maybe you don’t have access, you know, to get to some of our youth programs or programs to the library or museum, that we can actually have this type of transportation to get them to school to these places, you know, so it’s just kind of throwing ideas out, you know, I know councilmember Yarborough and Councilmember McCoy and I all went. We were just like throwing ideas to each other. There’s all these neat, neat things that we could that we could do if we we pursue. Yeah, so that’s, you know, that was that, that piece. I’m trying to think when I was going back to the last Council meeting, you know, I did look and see if the sustainable sustainability and climate action action committee did come up and do their annual report. So it’s not unheard of for the library to come up and do you have a sustainable sustainability advisory board? So they came up and presented so it’s not unusual that y’all are doing this so I saw that I’m trying to think what else? We are getting EB stations so we recently passed one of our ordinances that would get the ball rolling on having city EB stations Yes. So we’re going to move into moving the needle on that one for renewable and electric vehicles

Speaker 1 1:48:18
great well thank you so much for that. Always appreciate the added context. Any questions or comments? Were very quick so far well, I don’t have anything for library profession is we did just learn that that those coding committee but I don’t know if anyone else is making me want to share but the greater world of library took right now

Speaker 6 1:48:49
not library but I forgot to mention we were on the I rode the train with I was one of the ones that the train did Denver Union Station to get here to Longmont. Yeah, so as part of that front range passenger rail, a bill will be coming forward to the state to approve movie forward and funding. So it’s very much gonna be in our near future. How could I forget that?

Unknown Speaker 1:49:27
That’d be amazing.

Unknown Speaker 1:49:32
Any other comments? Library Board comments, any other comments from library board members?

Speaker 1 1:49:41
Okay, well, our next meeting will be April 15. And I will adjourn us at 852

Transcribed by https://otter.ai