HomeMy WebLinkAboutLibrary Board - Minutes - 09/17/1998City Clerk
LIBRARY BOARD MINUTES
Regular Meeting - September 17,1998
6:00 p.m.
Council Liaison: Chris Kneeland 11 Staff Liaison: Brenda Cams
Phone 221-6670)
Chairperson: Jack Steele
Phone:225-0877)
A regular meeting of the Library Board was held on Thursday, September 17, 1998 in the Ben
Delatour Room at the Main Library. The following Library Board members were present:
Rudy Maes, Mary Robertson, Jack Steele, Jacqueline Wallace, and M. Madeleine Wawro
Library Board Members Absent:
City Staff Members Present:
Friends of the Library Liaison:
Ed Jakubauskas, Anne Ostrye-Macdonald
Marty Heffernan, Brenda Cams, Marjorie Teklits,
Lu Benke, Barbara Crandall, Dean Willms
Larry Webber
The meeting was called to order at 6:00 p.m. by the Chairperson, Jack Steele. The minutes of the
August 20, 1998 Regular Meeting stand as written.
A copy of the August 24" letter from Nancy Knepel of the High Plains Regional Library Service
System was shared with the Board. Nancy is taking a three month sabbatical and will return to
the System as a consultant December 1, 1998. Nancy's reassignment will allow her to
concentrate on consulting and special projects, and a search for a new System Director to replace
her is underway.
Brenda Cams congratulated Jack Steele on the interesting article about him which appeared in
the September 13`" Coloradoan.
A copy of the September 2"' peer review team's report on the Library Services and Facilities
Public Relations Project was distributed. The team gave accolades for the project's success as
well as recommendations for more staff training which the Lead Reference Librarian and
Business Resource Librarian will explore.
REPORTS
A. Library Director - Brenda Cams
The City Manager included the Library's request to move Technical Services in his
interim budget recommendations. Staff are looking at available properties, and it is
hoped to complete the move in January or February if Council approves the
recommendation.
Brenda Cams was invited to speak at the Sertoma Club this week where she received
positive support for the Library.
Systems Administration is examining the Library's computer system, Dynix, to make it
Y2K compliant. As the Library's hardware may not be compatible to accomplish this,
upgrades are being considered. 1999 is the last year Dynix is making improvements.
Other systems will be reviewed to see if they would better suit the Library's needs for the
future.
B. Friends of the Library - Larry Webber
The Friends annual book sale will take place at Foothills Fashion Mall October 2-4.
Avogadro's Number will be the location of a benefit which will include poetry and music
for the Friends on September 26" at 7:30 p.m.; bring a book for admission.
The Friends are participating in Charity Day at Foley's on September 29"; they are one of
the non-profit organizations who are selling tickets for $5 which will include two 25%
discount coupons for items purchased at Foley's that day. All ticket proceeds will go to
the Friends, and the charity selling the most tickets receives a $2,500 bonus.
The Friends presented a check for $2,000 to the Library for adult programming.
The Friends present Board will remain in office until December 1999.
Larry said they are seeking space for storage and sorting after October.
OLD BUSINESS
A. November Planning Session - Jack Steele
Tentative dates for a Library Board Retreat in order of preference are November 5, 19 or
2
12. Jack Steele will advise Chris Kneeland's availability as soon as he can contact her. If
none of these dates are acceptable, other options will be explored.
B. Schedule for October - Jack Steele
The Library Board's sub -committee (Jacqueline Wallace, Madeleine Wawro and Rudy
Maes), which was formed to review County contributions for Library services, will
present their findings at the October 8" meeting.
C. Statement from Council on New Downtown Library - Jack Steele, Marty Heffernan
Jack Steele asked Marty Heffernan to explain the current status of what the City is
supporting with regard to a new downtown library. The direction received from Council
is to identify sites in the downtown area that would be suitable for a new library. After
sites have been identified, staff will return to receive Council's direction on acquisition of
a specific site. The Board agreed that the downtown site must be large enough to
accommodate a new main library of approximately 100,000 square feet. New library
options will be discussed at either the November or January Library Board meetings.
NEW BUSINESS
A. Update on Status of Library Programs
After a brief introduction, Lu Benke, Barbara Crandall, and Dean Willms updated Board
members on their areas:
Lu Benke Lead Librarian. Children's and Media Services
Lu began her position as Lead Librarian eight months ago. She spent time evaluating the
collection and services at Main and ensuring the Harmony children's and media
collection were ready for the grand opening. After Harmony was up and running,
streamlining efforts were necessary to make sure Children's desks at both libraries were
adequately staffed. Summer Reading Program registration procedures and programs were
simplified and time -intensive procedures were eliminated. Programs were performed
with fewer staff and same programs were repeated. Despite these cutbacks, registrations
increased 8%, the number of prizes given out increased 7.26%, while the increase in the
number of programs was 6%. Overall program attendance increased 25%, thanks to
Harmony Library. There was wonderful program participation, showing a high demand
for Library programming for children. Especially popular were the puppet shows which
were each repeated 12 times. After the Summer Reading Program was completed,
Children's staff began a weeding project to eliminate worn out picture books and are now
in the process of ordering new items for the collection. As we move into the fall season,
cooperative efforts with the Poudre School District, Rotary READ program, Connecting
Community Resources, CSU, Readaloud, and the Northern Colorado Storytellers Guild
are underway as well as special programs, such as "Mother Goose Time" for infants and
their parents, and Week of the Young Child. Bilingual storytimes, not only in Spanish,
but Arabic and German, are also scheduled.
3
Mary Robertson had questions concerning what part of the budget is used for bilingual
materials. Lu Benke said that this collection has increased with the help of the bilingual
Library Assistant efforts and will continue. Dean Willms also added that grant money
was used for the Adult and Juvenile Spanish book and media collection at Main and that,
while the Harmony Spanish collection is still small, it continues to grow. Rudy Maes
would like to discuss the bilingual collection and services, and Brenda Cams will make
arrangements for a meeting with those involved in the process.
Barbara Crandall. Outreach and Volunteer Coordinator
Barbara explained her typical day in providing outreach service. Barbara selects library
materials based on customer requests, checks out and delivers them. Her sixty-five
homebound customers are located in nursing homes, board and care facilities and private
homes. She often distributes special holiday treats made with the help of Girl Scout
Troops with her deliveries. 516 items were checked out for these customers last month.
Besides delivering to the homebound, Barbara also services twelve yellow shelf
collections around town, and elsewhere in Larimer County.
Barbara's duties include updating customer databases, developing volunteer ads,
processing background checks on community service help and homebound delivery
volunteers, research for homebound customers if requested, volunteer interviews, PALS
publicity, supervising groups who come to the Library to provide volunteer help on a
routine basis, preparing timesheets for teen volunteers, and compiling monthly outreach
statistics. There are currently III Library volunteers; they provided 3,770 hours of
volunteer work through July 31", and approximately 475 hours of help during the month
of August alone.
Barbara currently serves as the President of DOVIA and attends Colorado Libraries
Volunteer Managers Council and Continuum of Care Coalition meetings. She said
volunteer management is a challenge due to time constraints, and the favorite part of her
job is serving the homebound. She hopes her contractual position, which is paid for with
funds from the Library Services Agreement with Latimer County, can one day be
expanded from the present 30 hours.
Dean Willms Program Administrator -Technical Services and Collection Development
Although Dean's two main responsibilities are Technical Services and Collection
Development, one of his personal priorities is to promote cooperation and support
between the various departments. He works closely with the Volunteer Coordinator, and
has ten valuable volunteers working in his area; Circulation staff assists with maintenance
of the collection and shifting of books; he works with the Harmony Manager who takes
responsibility for the media collection and a Librarian who orders Children's materials.
The goal of Collection Development is to provide the biggest variety of materials
possible with funds available. There are approximately 89,000 Library Card holders on
record in addition to other users who do not have cards. There is a demand for every type
of material, and the challenge is to try to have something for everyone to read and check
out. Circulation statistics, now at 1.2 million per year, have increased dramatically each
13
year, and it is hoped they will reach 1.5 million in the not too distant future.
Technical Services has seven staff who do the ordering, mostly electronically, receive,
unpack, catalog, and process materials in sometimes as little time as one week. Best
sellers are a priority, and staff often gets them on the shelves in as little as two days.
Dean credits our efficient Systems Administrators for their help in the technology area
which makes this possible.
It can also be a challenge to work with the flow of donations. A bookstore that recently
went out of business donated 55 boxes of books which had to be sorted, cataloged and
processed for the collection. Collection maintenance is always an ongoing project;
attempts are now underway to weed older, less popular materials that haven't been
circulated in the past 12 months to determine if they should be phased out of the
collection. Jack Steele asked if some of the discarded materials that are in good
condition could be moved to Harmony Library; Dean said that some have been moved
there, especially if there were multiple copies, to see if they circulate better at that
location. He added that many of the discarded books were quite dated, such as some
about political matters and computer instruction books.
The collections at both libraries have improved considerably this year: Harmony Library
holdings started with 58,000 items at the end of January and have reached 80,798 as of
the end of August; the Main Library's holdings are now at 232,612. Growth of the
collection at Main is limited by lack of additional shelf space.
Relocating the much overcrowded Technical Services/Collection Development
department is a high priority at this time, especially with the impact fee money that is
available to purchase more materials.
B. Nominating Committee and Election of Officers
A memo from the nominating committee (Anne Ostrye-Macdonald and Ed Jakubauskas)
recommending Jack Steele be reelected as Chair and Jacqueline Wallace as Vice Chair
was distributed to Board Members. Madeleine Wawro made a motion to accept these
nominations, Rudy Maes seconded the motion, and they were unanimously approved.
The meeting was adjourned at 7:45 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Marjorie Teklits
Library Secretary
Minutes approved at the 10/8/98 Library Board meeting.
5