Library Board

MORGANTOWN PUBLIC LIBRARY Approved May 9, 2024 Minutes of the Regular Meeting April 11, 2024 Present: Absent: Also Present: Others Present: Linda Durfee Sue Carpenter Sarah Palfrey Meredith Hartery Kelly Funkhouser Amy Loomis James Spears, V Alexandria Svolos Call to order The regular meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Morgantown Public Library convened on April 11, 2024. The meeting convened at 9:02am, Linda Durfee, called the meeting to order. Meredith Hartery, Vice-President presiding, Kelly Funkhouser, secretary. Approval of the Minutes  Regular Meeting March 14, 2024 - The minutes were approved as corrected. Meredith Hartery moved. The motion passed unanimously. PUBLIC FORUM – None CORRESPONDENCE AND COMMUNICATIONS - None REPORTS  President – None  Director – See Director’s Report – Additional information – o Other personnel changes include Kate M graduating and Emily S moving out of the area.  Treasurer – o Financial Statements – The financial statements were reviewed. Linda Durfee moved that the financial statements be filed for audit. The motion passed. ○ Approval of Checks – Alexandria Svolos moved to approve checks as presented. The motion passed. REPORTS OF COMMITTEES A. Investment Committee – None B. Facilities Committee – Sarah Palfrey applied for a WVLC Facilities Improvement Grant which is a 1 for 1 match. If awarded, the ground floor public restrooms will be renovated. UNFINISHED BUSINESS - None NEW BUSINESS -  MPLS Connect – Sarah Palfrey shared the new MPLS Connect webpage authored by James Spears and Emily Spears. MPLS Connect is a staff only hub for all library related information, resources, and news. The goal of this resources is to enhance communication, collaboration, and efficiency between all MPLS staff so that we can better serve our patrons. Board Minutes – April 11, 2024 – Page 2 BOARD COMMENTS – Sarah Palfrey - On behalf of the staff, thank you for the gift cards for Staff Appreciation. It means a lot to them. Thank you very much. Meredith Hartery – Meredith said that we (the Library Board) really appreciate the hard work that they (the library staff) do every day to take care of our community. Meredith attended the Aloud event organized by the Vote for the Library Levy Committee. The committee did a fantastic job. There was a ton of music and raffles. People were having a really good time. She thought it was well planned and a pretty big success for the first time to have that type of event. Sarah Palfrey reported that the committee earned approximately $1,300.00 + additional checks that came in after the event. 123 Pleasant Street was very generous with what they donated for the Aloud event. Alexandria Svolos – called our attention to recent legislation in Idaho regarding libraries. Discussion followed. This Saturday is StoryFest from 11-4 at the Farmer’s Market Pavilion. Abby C. has put so much work into this. All of the branches will be closed on Saturday so that they can participate. Morgantown Public Library will be open though. ADJOURNMENT – Linda Durfee moved to adjourn. The motion carried unanimously. The meeting adjourned at 9:41am. NEXT MEETING – May 9, 2024 9am APRIL 2024 BOARD MEETING DIRECTOR'S REPORT Sarah Palfrey  APRIL 2024 BOARD MEETING MARCH 2024 HIGHLIGHTS Cheat Area Public Library continues to see great success with their weekly storytime and playgroup programming. Strong and consistent attendance is great, but what’s even better is the word of mouth that bring in new families. I wan tto amplify Ryne’s comments in his report, participants speak so highly of both of these programs I hear it regularly. Well done to Cheat on the whole and to each staff member that brings a unique set of skills to the team. WVLA’s Spring Fling was held virtually March 20-22, 2024. Kaylar and Emily presented a session on writing event descriptions. Sarah Palfrey presented a roundup on the legislative session and answered questions about the overall process, specific bills, and plans moving forward. Both sessions had more than 100 attendees. Many thanks to all the staff that helped sort, pack and organize the books that were weeded from the Book Sale space. Multiple carloads of boxes were donated to the Mon Preston County Literacy Volunteers Book Sale. Public computers at MPL have been updated to allow the use of flash drives. The Office of Technology limited the access years ago leading to frustrated patrons and staff. James was persistent in finding a viable solution to providing a basic service. Emily and Kaylar participated in a 50 state library card video spearheaded by the St. Charles City-County Library (MO).  APRIL 2024 BOARD MEETING MARCH 2024 ADMINISTRATION For the second year Bonnie and I Facilities Improvement Grant were invited to the American request was submitted to renovate Library Association Congressional the two public bathrooms on the Fly-In. It’s a wonderful opportunity ground floor. The grant requires a 1 to meet with other advocacy and to 1 match for funding. legislative coordinators from other states and share lessons and Work continues with Align HR on the strategy. ALA provided a brief salary schedule and updating training about relationship building personnel polices. with federal officials and scheduled meetings for us with At their request, Sarah maee a Capito, Manchin, and Miller’s presentation to the Morgantown offices. NAACP about the library and how levy funds are used. I attended the WV Public Education Collaborative’s event Focus The Levy Committee organized and Forward on the future of a digital hosted a fundraiser event at 123 WV and the challenges and Pleasants. The event raised over opportunities of AI. It was a great 1,000 to be used for newspaper ads event highlighting a number of and yard signs. West Virginian's working on digital literacy, equity, and workforce issues. PERSONNEL - Austin-David R. - resigned PT MPL WVLN is investigating new Lourdes V. - hired PT MPL additions to our catalog to help Facility Updates - patrons find relevant series, read- Pump alarm has been replaced. a-likes, and encourage more circulation. A demo was held with NoveList.  APRIL 2024 BOARD MEETING Digital Highlight OVERDRIVE/ LIBBY Overdrive continues to be our most heavily used digital asset. We share our collection with the member libraries of the WVDELI consortium. In January Kanawha County PL made changes to who can access their digital materials and the change in checkouts has been drastic. The average wait time for holds dropped from nearly 70 days to 57. Overdrive has discontinued the Universal Class offering. WVDELI is discussing continuation of ArtistWorks and LawDepot as part of our consortium offerings. The cost is low, but so is the use. March 2023 March 2024 Morgantown Public Library System March Visits 2024 11,202 15,962 ITEMS BORROWED 40 PROGRAM ATTENDANCE PROGRAMS 722 COMPUTER SESSIONS NEW CARDS 825 230 884 18,211 ADDITIONS TO THE COLLECTION DIGITAL 260 WITHDRAWN BORROWS Arnettsville Public Library March 2024 Branch Report March came in like a lamb and went out like a lamb but had a little bit of lion mixed in the middle of the month, I guess. This year has just sped by and I can’t believe March has come and gone. Lots of friendly faces visited us this month to check out books and movies. I especially enjoy it when my “band of brothers” homeschool patrons come to pick out their Reading Dragon cards each week. They keep me on my toes making sure I have the cards that they request and the oldest brother keeps me busy getting books from other libraries for him because he loves to read. We had 15 folks for our Senior Lunch and Learn in March. We had a ham dinner luncheon and we discussed memories of Easter and talked about looking forward to Spring. We had 8 folks in attendance for our Craft Night where we made St. Patrick’s Day Gnomes and they were so cute and admired by all. We had our little crafter Easton with us that night and he even made 2 gnomes, one for his little sister. Movie Night was attended by 6 folks and they enjoyed the latest Indiana Jones movie with Harrison Ford. We were in the mood for Easter Egg Hunts this month. Starting Points held their Easter Egg Hunt in the gym of the Arnettsville Community Center on the Saturday before Palm Sunday and Cathy was on hand to represent the library and hand out a free book and a stuffed animal(Thank you PBS for providing us books and stuffed animals)to the children who attended. There were about 15 in attendance and 25 or more adults there. The next day at the annual Indoor Easter Egg Hunt at the Morgantown Public Library, there were about 70 children and over 50 adults getting in on all of the fun. Things went well except for the missing goats who were having a bad day and didn’t get to come to the library. But we still had a live bunny and lots of fun. Slowly working on weeding and making more room for new books. Working on adding a Keuring Corner(Thank You Janet N.) for staff and patrons in non-fiction/computer room. Goals. –Keep weeding, just keep weeding! -Plan for Summer Reading events at Arnettsville -Plant sunflower seeds in early May by library and in front of building by Farmers Market area -Paint exterior doors of library end of building and ceiling of roof area this summer to freshen up the entry area. Morgantown Public Library Monthly Report March 2024 This month in Public Services seemed to fly by. The most apparent priority for staff was helping prepare for Summer Reading. Outreach Coordinator Emily S. and the entire SRP planning team has put a lot of work into planning the SRP this summer. Public Services staff have had the opportunity to get more involved this month by helping prepare SRP craft supplies. Emily has worked closely with several staff members to cut, fold, and assemble the many needed supplies for craft kits this summer. Additionally, this month we’ve seen many WVU students coming to the library to get library cards as extra credit for a class this semester. While many have just applied for a card, many others have let us know how excited they are to use the public library. Staff have enjoyed answering these student’s questions and showing them all that we have to offer. Also this month a new family has become a memorable and regular fixture in the library. This family’s mother shared with Library Assistant Rob M. this month that her young daughter has been playing “Librarian” at home by pretending to scan and check out her own library books. All the staff was excited to hear that and Rob had the wonderful idea to share a custom MPLS name tag with this young patron. MPLS now officially has a “Library Fairy” in our ranks and in the community. Staffing This month Interlibrary Loan Coordinator Crystal L. and I held interviews to fill the vacant library assistant position. Given the short time between our last hire in late January and now we chose to review those candidates before posting this position publicly. Luckily, three promising candidates were interested and we interviewed two candidates in mid-March. We were excited to offer the position to Lourdes V. in late March and she will begin in early April. Looking forward, I am hoping to get a head start as Library Assistant Kate M. will be ending her time with MPLS in late April. Kate has been a wonderful member of the team and I will be sad to see her departure next month. Programming Youth Services Specialist Jenean S. reported a slight increase in the number of teens using the teen space this month. We are always excited to see teens and tweens using this space. This group of patrons has proved pretty elusive and we have struggled to bring patrons in this group into the building. We are still working towards expanding the Teen Area and hope that expanding the space would make it more inviting to our teen and tween patrons. Jenean also reported this month that one of her teen patrons approached her to ask if she could be a Dungeon Master (DM) for our Teen DND program. This is very exciting news as Jenean has long sought teen volunteers to DM the Teen DND program but none have been willing to take on that role. We are continuing to see strong interest in the Reading Dragons program among patrons at MPL. It has been great to see children retain their enthusiasm for the program as we are nearing the end of our first season. Public Services staff have enjoyed helping children pick out their favorite dragon cards and fill out their card desks. Projects and Other Updates We made consistent progress on several smaller projects this month. I continue to work on the MPL Addition to the Public Services Handbook. This document is a supplement to the Public Services Handbook available across the system and contains information relevant specifically to Public Services at MPL. Concurrently, ILL Coordinator Crystal L. is creating an Interlibrary loan resource guide to include in the MPL Addition. The overall goal is that everything a staff member would need to know to work in Public Services can be found in the Public Services Handbook or the MPL Addition. This month I also published a survey for Public Services staff to collect information about our experience with library security over the past year. I am interested in learning more about how staff feel about security in the library and their experience. Staff were given just over a week and a half to complete the survey and I received a response from each member of Public Services. I have yet to review the responses very thoroughly but a summary review of the responses shows that the staff experience with library security has been generally positive. I am planning to more thoroughly review the responses in early April and share them with Director Sarah P. We made two small changes to different areas of the library that we think will have an outsized positive effect on the patron experience. First, it has been a long-running challenge for patrons to access documents on a flash drive, open files downloaded from their emails, and do other similar tasks on our public computers. This month we have finally solved that challenge by configuring our public computers to automatically open a flash drive when inserted into the computer and installing shortcuts to common folders on the desktop. Patrons can now, for example, use our computers for word processing, save their work on a flash drive, take it with them, and resume their work the next time they are at the library. While this is a small change it makes our computers more user-friendly and meets the basic expectations of many users. Second, the nonprofit community bulletin board has for a while now been so full of flyers and pamphlets that it has been almost impossible to use both as a group wanting to post information and a patron seeking information. It has also been challenging for staff to maintain the board as many of the items posted lacked dates to inform us how long things had been posted or when they should be removed. As a team, we devised a simple procedure to help us keep track of how long items on the bulletin board have been posted and when items should be taken down. This is another simple change that will do a lot to improve the patron experience using this resource. It should make the board more available to groups wanting to post information without having to cover up another group's flyer. Also, it should make the board easier to use as a viewer and ensure that the information posted is more current and accurate. Goals ● Continue weeding in adult fiction to produce more free space and move the paperback collection. - in progress ○ Shelby is resuming weeding in the adult fiction collection this month after a longer than expected hiatus due to the elevator and other recent projects ● Coordinate with Ruth Godfrey to reorganize the children’s area into a more distinct and open area within the library. - in progress ○ Ruth is continuing weeding in the easy books to make it easier to move shelving when that point arrives. ● Replace existing public computer furniture on the 2nd floor and better organize PACs - in progress ○ I have received a quote from J.P. Jay & Associates that will be review in early April MONTHLY Clay Battelle Public Library REPORT MARCH 2024 March has been a month of finalizing and prepping summer reading plans. We are all so excited for this years theme. We have also been planning the end of story time party. Our story time sessions follow the school schedule. So we will take the summer off to make room for all of the exciting summer reading programs. Molly has been making plant displays with facts about each plant as well as books availbale for check out. Sam has been spring cleaning the branch and will soon be painting the bathroom and Darrin is replacing the floor. Facilities Update Book Return- repaired Bathroom-paint and new flooring Planning and Organizing Summer Reading Fairwell to storytime Goals Summer Reading All of the following goals we are continuing to complete. Continue to grow my partnership with community involvement Weeding  Storytime kids playing games and making clay elephants. Kelly attended Game Changers meeting with guest speaker from Jabob’s Ladder CDPL Monthly Report March 2024 Manager’s Report ● Pre-School Storytime - You Can’t Kiss a Bubble by Karen Wyle. We had a little bit of a challenge when the bubble solution didn’t work out as planned, but we were able to adapt and purchase bubbles for the kids to take home and had a bubble dance party. It was a GREAT time! We will also be able to use the containers purchased during SRP. We can definitely consider NOT having a craft every story time but possibly incorporating an activity. ○ We had 8 kids, 6 adults and 2 staff ● Library Lattes and Laughs ○ This month's book was Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. Caleb led the discussion and was a bit concerned about the reaction to the book, but as usual, our book club was open to the complexity of the story and issues within the book. We had a really great discussion. ○ Caleb made Ghanaian donuts which he finished at 1am - and they were worth the effort! ○ We had 10 adults and 3 staff. ● Angela recorded for Dial A Story General Administration ● New to our Collections ○ Adult Fiction 23 ○ Adult Non-Fiction 1 ○ YA 5 ○ Graphic Novels 3 ○ Childrens 4 ○ Children Non-Fiction ○ ER 3 ○ E6 ○ Boardbooks ○ VOX Books ○ DVDs 7 Planning, Organizing, Processes, and Evaluation ● CDPL has a working, still being developed, social media spreadsheet ● Reorganize the front corner of our building to better highlight our new shelves ● Angela is in the final stages of having the artwork printed and then she will frame and complete the wall. ● Caleb has begun redesigning 1KBBK and we have set an April 30th deadline for completion  ● With instructions from James we have begun going through our BWB boxes and moving titles to the appropriate groups: ○ Go to BWB ○ Paperbacks for recycling ○ Hard covers to be disposed of ● Items completed: ○ 2024 SRP activities and purchase order submitted (than you for Emily for catching logistics Janet missed! ○ Created a new bulletin board with books from different states “Read Across America with CDPL” ○ We put our newest audio books on the green bookshelves and they were immediately checked out. We moved some of our book budget into audio books to see if there would be interest in new titles, there seems to be! Personnel: Community and Professional Development (3 CEs required yearly for all staff working more than 20 hours a week) Top Three Goals for April 1. Increase communication to get more input for programming, internal displays, and social media postings 2. Look at VOX books to be deleted and delete them 3. Create a new display for the green shelves and display in front of the desk CAPL Manager’s Report March 2024 March was another fantastic month at Cheat! The month flew by, with (too) many things happening! We did sensory space work, our weekly events were once again strong, and we fixed a major traffic issue with our parking lot! We also had our highest patron count for the month of March dating back to 2017, which is really exciting! Between last month’s report on the sensory space and this month’s report, we finalized our list of things to order and received a lot of them! Lauren, Ayric, Abby, Jessika, and I all worked together to finish a list of items to be ordered for the space, which we combed over multiple times. While there were a few straggler items that we needed to finalize, our list was mostly everything we needed! As items have come in, Lauren and Ayric have worked on deciding where everything will go in the space. In addition to that, Lauren and Ayric worked on creating some weighted stuffed animals! They actually sewed beans and rice into some well-kept stuffed animals that Lauren had, and even sewed a heart onto them so we would know they belong in the sensory space! I really appreciate all of the dedication that Lauren and Ayric have shown towards the project. They have gone above and beyond what any of us could have expected while working on the space. I cannot wait to present pictures of the completed space in my next report! As always, I wanted to dedicate some time to talking about our weekly events. In my past reports, I’ve said how great they are, but I feel like it bears repeating while also acknowledging what the weekly events do for our patron count and community. We see new families each week during our events, which is always incredible, and means that word of mouth is spreading in our community about what we do! I think that our consistency with events each week has led to a loyal following that shows up each week, in addition to others finding out about how great the events are through people that come every week. Michelle’s storytimes, in addition to happening every week, are also just fantastic. Anecdotally, I heard two moms at playgroup talking about the Wednesday morning story time. One of the moms had been before, and one had not. The mom who had attended was telling the other mom how engaging and patient Michelle is, and highly recommending for the other mom to bring her son to story time. This is the most recent example I have, but one that has been common since we started doing storytimes consistently, with Abby initially doing them. I am very proud of our storytime, and also proud of what we provide with playgroup, which is essentially very easy to put on and is a great use of our children’s space every Friday morning. Giving children opportunities to become comfortable in the library leads to them coming back each week (even as they get older), and that’s the best thing you can hope for! A major issue at Cheat for as long as I have worked here is the parking lot traffic that would occur during pickup and drop-off at Cheat Lake Elementary. It would often block in staff when it was time for them to leave after their shift and keep patrons from coming and going as they would please for over an hour during pickup in the evening. I’m please to say that this will no longer be an issue! After a particularly bad parking lot evening where parents wouldn’t let one of our employees out to leave, I emailed the Cheat Lake principal to discuss a potential fix. It took a bit, but we finally reached a solution! The principal sent out an email to parents letting them know that the Cheat Lake community is very proud of our library, and in acknowledgment of that they should not be using our lot to line up for pickup or drop-off so that patrons can access the library. Now, during pickup, only patrons and staff can use our parking lot, with a traffic guard using cones and speaking to people to let them have entry to our lot if they are going into the library. It was immediately a huge help, as the first day of our parking lot not being blocked, a family could stay longer without the fear of being blocked in! I really appreciate the kindness of Belinda, the Cheat Lake principal, who took care of the issue and let me know that communication was totally open in case we needed anything else! I’m glad that we could come together to create a solution that makes our library more accessible! General Administration - StoryFest is almost here! Abby has worked extremely hard and we can’t wait to see her plans come to fruition! - Jessika and I finalized the list of things to order for our Summer Reading Program events! We had a really great time planning and working through what to order! Goals 1. Decide on our grand prize contribution for the SRP! 2. Attempt to shelf read and organize before May so we are prepared for summer. 3. Finish sensory space installation.