Library Board of Trustees

The Woodstock Public Library Board of Trustees met on Thursday, January 11, 2024 at 7:30 p.m. MINUTES CALL TO ORDER Robert Laurie called the meeting to order at 7:41 p.m. ROLL CALL PRESENT: Robert Laurie (President), Jim Hurley (Treasurer), Mary Beth Urbin (Secretary), Teresa Flores, Sarah Parisi OTHERS PRESENT: Paul Christensen (Deputy City Manager), Nick Weber (Library Director), Tiara Thayer (Library Assistant II) ABSENT: Susan Gullotto, Christy Johanson (Vice President), Mary Ann Lenzen APPROVAL OF MINUTES Discussion and Vote on approving the Regular Minutes from the December 2023 meeting as presented or corrected. Jim Hurley moved to approve the minutes of the December 2023 regular meeting as presented, Robert Laurie seconded, and the motion passed with unanimous ayes. PUBLIC COMMENT ON NON-AGENDA ITEMS: None. COMMUNICATIONS: None. LIBRARY EXPENDITURES Discussion and Vote on the December 2023 Building Fund and Operating Fund Expenditures. Jim Hurley moved to approve the December 2023 combined Warrant of operating and building expenditures, as presented, Teresa Flores seconded, and the motion carried with unanimous ayes. LIBRARIAN’S REPORT Nick Weber presented the librarian’s report, a copy of which is attached. Highlights include: • December was a fine month, despite frequent closures for the holidays. • The library was lucky enough to host a spontaneous performance by professional pianist Victor Goldberg. • The D200 Winter Art Show was well received, with almost 700 visitors attending the opening night for the show. • Planning for the Summer Reading Program is almost ready to start. • The library currently has an ongoing 18,000-piece puzzle program. It started on January 8, 2024 and will conclude on March 31, 2024. • Tuesday, January 23, 2024 will be the next Friends of the Library meeting. Treats will be available, and anyone interested is encouraged to attend. • February 1, 2024 will be the WPL Groundhog Day story time in the Old Courthouse. NEW BUSINESS • Discussion of preliminary FY24/25 budget o Nick explained that most figures are pretty accurate with only a few items remaining 1  in flux. o Nick is optimistic that the library is on track to come in slightly under budget. o Robert Laurie inquired about the trends of digital materials versus physical materials. o Nick explained that the use of digital materials is increasing, but that does not necessarily mean that the use of physical materials is decreasing. UNFINISHED BUSINESS • Building Update o Office and bathroom remodeling projects ▪ The office spaces are nearly completed with only finishing touches remaining. ▪ The basement bathrooms are on track to be completed by early February. o Plans for future ▪ Details for the Bayton Outdoor Space are being worked on, along with landscaping initiatives. ▪ The city has hired a new arborist who should be able to help ensure the elimination of invasive species from the library grounds. ▪ Next year, the story time room should receive a few upgrades and updates to make the space more functional and inclusive. • Staffing Update o Melanie LoPiccolo has accepted the children’s librarian position, and will be starting January 15, 2024. • FoWL Update o Their next meeting is on January 23, 2024. o The friends are in the process of planning and preparing for the Mini Links event coming up in April 2024. • City Projects Update o Logo ▪ The logo is scheduled to be launched by January 22nd. o Website ▪ The website is scheduled to be launched within the next month. o Nixle and others ▪ The City will be subscribing to Nixle services. ▪ The library management team is closely watching the weather for this weekend to ensure adequate notice for closures. ADJOURNMENT Mary Beth Urbin moved that the meeting be adjourned at 8:27 p.m., Teresa Flores seconded, and the motion passed with unanimous ayes. Respectfully Submitted, Tiara Thayer, Library Assistant II All meetings of the Library Board are open to the public. In compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), they are fully accessible, and if any further accommodations are needed, please contact the Library Director 48 hours prior to the meeting. 2  Woodstock Public Library Administrative & Staff Reports – December 2023 DIRECTOR’S REPORT December marks the end of the calendar year, but only the 2/3rd mark of our fiscal year. The library continued to see strong daily use and good attendance at our events, as well as those sponsored by others and held at the library. Our visitation and check-out numbers are all well above 2022 and very close to 2019 totals. At the most recent First Friday staff meeting, we discussed the new website that is due to go live in the next month or so, and discussed Circulation procedures as a group so that everyone could get the basics of what Circulation staff are responsible for every day. For the building, the remodeling began, and despite much getting accomplished, the disruption wasn’t too bad. The new spaces are looking good, and will hopefully be ready for occupancy by mid-January. Staffing was challenging in December, as a wave of illness hit the staff. This combined with scheduled vacations over the holidays, and the lack of Children’s Librarian, and left us scrambling to have enough people in the building on a few occasions. The search for our next Children’s Librarian has concluded, and we are looking forward to Melanie LoPicollo joining us on Monday, January 15. Our in-person and virtual events continue to be well attended, and Austin Nord has brought in some fresh programs and approaches. A professional piano player from Ukraine treated the staff to several impromptu concerts in late December. The D200 Winter Art Show was set-up and available for most of December and the first week of January. Approximately 700 people attended the open house kick-off for the show. The remodeling of our staff space began in early December, and Counsel Construction has been able to finish nearly all of the main level work by early January. Work on the downstairs bathrooms is ongoing and will take another few weeks before it is complete. Discussions have been ongoing about how best to utilize the new office spaces, but a decision on that is forthcoming. HVAC unit #4 was repaired in mid-December and has been operating appropriately since then. The city’s web page conversion is nearing completion. Appropriate library staff received training on the new web site in early December, and also provided CivicPlus with the last few changes and additions needed for the library. The library also worked with the city’s marketing department to create logos for the Rural Woodstock Public Library District that echo the new logo design. That design is set to be revealed in early 2024. The city hoped to launch both the logo and website on January 22, but that date may need to be pushed back as the website still needs quite a bit of work before it goes live. CIRCULATION & PROGRAMMING December 2023 Circulation was up in December compared to 2022, and in-person use of the building was also up from last year. We had 18,575 items, both physical and digital, checked-out, a 14% increase from 16,320 in 2022. 10,515 people came to the library in December, up 13% from 9,341 in 2022. FINANCIALS Spending out of the new fiscal budget is two-thirds complete, and things are tracking well. Salary costs are lower than anticipated because of several positions being vacant during recruiting, and our income is trending slightly higher than budgeted because of larger donations than expected. Work on next year’s budget is underway, and so far, the numbers look good. MEETING/ORGANIZATION SUMMARIES City Meetings/City News The City Council meetings in December were mostly routine. The City Council did not have a regular meeting on the first Tuesday of 2024, but they did have a special meeting on January 2 to consider an ordinance regarding the transportation of immigrants to Woodstock from the south. The city’s contract with the Nixle Alert Notification System should be live soon. Community Outreach During the month, the library staff engaged in several outreach and community support activities, including once again hosting the D200 School District Winter Art Show. Early January saw the kick-off of the library’s Community Puzzle Initiative—trying to get 18,000 pieces of puzzle put together by the end of March. YOUTH SERVICES Youth services celebrated the many December holidays in the Children’s and Young Adult Areas with a variety of displays and activities. They also spent some time with the three finalists for the new Children’s Librarian, providing excellent feedback to the search committee on their impressions and preferences. Planning for the Summer Reading Program is just getting underway, and in the meantime the YS team has a bunch of fun programs and activities planned. Lauren is again holding monthly “50 Things to Do Before You are 11 3/4s” and Sarah Jane is reprising her popular “Artistic Expressions” program. Everyone is looking forward to the arrival of Melanie LoPicollo, the library’s new Children’s Librarian. Melanie will have a few weeks to settle in, then she’ll get to host her very first Groundhog Day Storytime on February 1. Regular storytimes will recommence in March. Kate and Lisa continue to work on weeding the various YS collections, and the whole YS staff pitched in to temporarily move the DVD collection during the office construction. The new offices chewed up a little of the DVD collection space, but there is still enough to work effectively, and the new configuration looks natural, which is great. TECHNICAL SERVICES December was a bit chaotic between time off for multiple people in the tech department and a lot of illness running through the staff as a whole. We added a total of 943 items in the past two months, and withdrew a total of 1,659 items. The large number of withdrawals is in line with a heavy cleanout of old, damaged, unused music CDs. Lora has started working through the donated materials we are adding to the Home School collection. The library also received a box of photography books that she is hoping to add before summer. Mary Ann’s project going into the new year is to clean off the mending cart, which has grown into a bit of a monster in terms of the number of items on it. Many of those are waiting for staff to decide whether to actually mend or withdraw the item. Mary Ann also had a chance to catch up on labeling of new books during December because of other staff not being around to pile more on her. Shawn is still collecting his stash of replacement/fill-in DVDs donated to the Friends, but he is also rather inundated in new material that arrived the last couple of weeks. Valeria continues to work on cleaning up the DVD section: new boxes, new labels, etc. for items that are old and/or well-used. She is working with Shawn and his DVD stash. Bailey has moved her workspace while construction happens in her usual desk area, but she continues to catch up on fiction cataloging. The process of moving has given her some insight into how to potentially shift some of her responsibilities to others. Ally has been busy with all the withdrawals. She’s also mending a lot, and generally keeping a lid on a lot of the “hidden” parts of what goes on in libraries. Kirk has been helping with the CD flood, but there has been plenty of other stuff that needs to go as well. We all will be re-examining our work flow as Lora moves to an office and other staff move or rearrange their work space. She expects the move will impact some of her ‘regular work’ but hopes to minimize that. ADULT SERVICES December is a fairly slow month for programs and events at the library, but the library once again hosted the D200 Winter Art Show, featuring students from across the district and in all grades. The show’s two open houses brought in a lot of visitors. The library hosted a special music event in December, featuring WHS Orchestra members performing holiday music by the library’s piano. It was a fun event, and well received by patrons and staff alike. The library was also fortunate to have a concert pianist from Ukraine use our piano for several impromptu recitals during December. He was impressed with the quality of the piano and enjoyed providing some amazing music to patrons and staff. Use of the library's digital archive has seen a boost in visitors with the addition of the Old Courthouse Digital Exhibit. Over 1,000 unique visitors have used the site and explored the historic photographs and documents since August. With the city council minutes from 1852- 1916 uploaded to the site, the next big project will be to have the early 1900s school registries, that the library has on loan from the school district, digitized and uploaded. December Adult Programming Statistics: Technology Assistance Appointments • 1-on-1 Appointments Requested: 15 • Resolutions: 13 • Cancellations: 2 • Most Common Consultation Subject: Computer • Average Number of Days for Resolution: 6 Programming • Total # of Adult Programs: 13 o 10- in-person o 3- virtual • Total Programming Attendance: 251 o 46% month-over-month increase from November 2023 o 43% increase from December of 2022 • Top-Performing Programs by Attendance: o Free Guitars for Future Stars Free Concert- 125 o Experience the Nutcracker- 18 o Outreach Trivia Night (Dorr Township)- 17 Annual Stats The following stats have been accumulated over the last eight months: • Number of Adult Programs Per Month: 12 • Number of Adult Attendees (all Adult programs): 133 • Number of Adult Attendees (in-person): 116 • Number of Adult Attendees (virtual): 17 • Month-over-Month Growth in Adult Attendance: 47% CALENDAR (https://il.evanced.info/woodstock/lib/eventcalendar.asp) Upcoming Events & Dates of Import: • January-March: Community Puzzle Challenge—help complete an 18,000- piece puzzle at the library! • Tuesday, Jan. 16, 6:00-7:30 pm: Young Adult Study Night • Thursday, Jan. 18, 6:00-7:00 pm: Artistic Expressions • Thursday, Jan. 18, 6:30-8:00 pm: Accordion Keepsake Book • Saturday, Jan. 20, 10:00 am – 12:00 pm: Preschool Fair • Tuesday, Jan. 23, 6:00-7:30 pm: Donut Hole Decorating • Tuesday, Jan. 23, 7:00-8:00 pm: Friends of the Library Annual Meeting • Tuesday, Jan. 30, 6:30-7:30 pm: Book Hospital • Friday, Feb. 1, 3:00-5:00 pm: Groundhog Day Archives Open House • Friday, Feb. 1, 5:30-6:00 pm: Groundhog Day Storytime @ Makity Make • Tuesday, Feb. 6: AARP Tax Appointments returns on Tuesdays and Fridays through April 12