Library Board of Trustees

The Woodstock Public Library Board of Trustees met on Thursday, July 11, 2024 at 7:30 p.m. MINUTES CALL TO ORDER Robert Laurie called the meeting to order at 7:33 p.m. ROLL CALL PRESENT: Robert Laurie (President), Christy Johanson (Vice President), Sarah Parisi, Susan Gullotto, Mary Sugden OTHERS PRESENT: Paul Christensen (Deputy City Manager), Nick Weber (Library Director), Gabi Ordóñez (prospective board member), Tiara Thayer (Library Assistant II) ABSENT: Mary Beth Urbin (Secretary), Mary Ann Lenzen APPROVAL OF MINUTES Discussion and Vote on approving the Regular Minutes from the June 2024 meeting as presented or corrected Mary Sugden moved to approve the minutes of the June 2024 regular meeting as presented. Susan Gullotto seconded, and the motion passed with unanimous ayes. PUBLIC COMMENT ON NON-AGENDA ITEMS: Gabi introduced herself to the library board, and each board member – along with others present – introduced themselves to her. Gabi shared that she emigrated to the US at the age of 17, and currently works at the D200 school district. COMMUNICATIONS: Nick banned a patron who was behaving inappropriately towards a staff member. LIBRARY EXPENDITURES Discussion and Vote on the June 2024 Building Fund and Operating Fund Expenditures Robert Laurie moved to approve the June 2024 combined Warrant of operating and building expenditures, as presented, Christy Johanson seconded, and the motion carried with unanimous ayes. 1 LIBRARIAN’S REPORT Nick Weber presented the librarian’s report, a copy of which is attached. Highlights include: • June felt very busy due to staff shortages and the increased library use and patron participation that the summer reading program brings. • This June saw an increase in adult programs, such as author events and various workshops. The author event with Charlie Donlea was well attended and overall a very successful program. • Summer reading is coming to an end in less than a month, with prizes available through the end of July. There has been solid participation across all age groups; however, patron foot traffic has not yet reached pre-pandemic levels. • The reference department has started using a new program to facilitate check outs for the Library of Things materials. The library is working with PrairieCat to still include and promote the Library of Things materials in the library’s catalog. • The annual Railroad Garden program will take place on July 20th. NEW BUSINESS • Review of Board Bylaws and officer duties. o The board reviewed the bylaws and confirmed that the officers must be board members, unless the board is intent on amending their constitution and bylaws. o Robert Laurie requested that the board continue to review the bylaws and consider if any amendments are required. • Discussion and vote on Board Treasurer for FY24/25 o Robert Laurie moved to appoint Sarah Parisi as board Treasurer, Christy Johanson seconded, and the motion carried with unanimous ayes. • Discussion and possible vote on Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment Policy o This policy has been updated to include appropriate protocols for when non-staff members exhibit discriminatory and/or harassing behavior towards library staff. o Gabi asked if the library has their policies posted in Spanish, to which Nick responded that the library is in the process of translating policies into Spanish. Gabi offered to provide some translation assistance. o Mary Sugden noted a minor grammatical error. o Mary Sugden moved to approve the policy as amended, Susan Gullotto seconded, and the motion carried with unanimous ayes. • Discussion and possible vote on Patron Conduct and Library Usage Policy o Robert Laurie moved to approve the policy as presented, Christy Johanson seconded, and the motion carried with unanimous ayes. • Update on Strategic Plan Implementation o The various staff-formed committees continue to work on implementing the strategic plan in their respective areas. Nick intends to provide a bullet point list of projects and achievements for the board to review at their next meeting. UNFINISHED BUSINESS • Discussion and vote on approving Table Space Use Policy o The policy was reviewed by the City’s attorney, and has subsequently been simplified and modeled after the policy used by the Gail-Borden Public Library. o Robert Laurie moved to approve the policy as presented, Sarah Parisi seconded, and the motion carried with unanimous ayes. • Building Update o The library is submitting an RFQ to multiple firms that specialize in sustainable landscaping practices. 2  o Due to recent heavy rains, a leak on the roof was exposed and resulted in water damage to the adult fiction section. Damage was localized to some ceiling tiles, carpeting, and roughly $1,000 worth of books. The cause of the leak is due to the placement and structure of a roof drain. Nick will be working with Public Works to determine the best avenue to prevent recurring issues. o Due to the recurring structural concerns of the auxiliary parking lot, Nick requested that Public Works evaluate the space with the idea of converting it into a more functional nature space. More information to come. • Staffing Update o Three shelvers have been hired and are acclimating well. o The children’s librarian has resigned from their position due to personal reasons. ▪ The management team has decided to post an updated job description that more clearly emphasizes and outlines the expectations of the position. ▪ Additionally, the management team would like to promote a part-time library assistant to full-time in order to immediately fill the needs of the children’s department. This staff member has been offered full-time and will have an answer for the management team by next week. • Friends of the Woodstock Library Update o The fall plant sale is coming up in September. o The library ambassador program is under development. ADJOURNMENT Susan Gullotto moved that the meeting be adjourned at 8:44 p.m., Christy Johanson seconded, and the motion passed with unanimous ayes. Respectfully submitted, Tiara Thayer 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. 3  Woodstock Public Library Administrative & Staff Reports – July 2024 DIRECTOR’S REPORT We wrapped up summer reading at the end of July, and this year’s Summer Reading Club was the busiest since before the pandemic. We also had more programs this July than in the previous few years, and several large building projects were initiated. Staffing remains a challenge, but there are some positive things happening on that front as well. Outreach and collaboration with other agencies remained a focal point for the staff. Summer Reading Club is always our biggest, and longest, program of the year, running for all of June and July. This year, we had over 600 children participate in the Club, amassing nearly 11,000 hours of reading. 137 adults also joined the Reading Club fun this year, completing over 600 books. Other summer programs were also successful, with the Illinois Arts Education Association art show returning for July, and several new presenters joining us for presentations on a variety of topics, including avoiding food waste, dementia care, and babysitting training in collaboration with the Recreation Department. Staffing was tricky in July and early August, with Sloane, our most recent children’s librarian, leaving us for personal reasons. Additionally, we lost Jessica, one of the Library Assistant IIs to a full-time position at Menards. The rest of the staff, and particularly the Youth Services staff, stepped into the breach to cover all the things during our busiest time of the year. Our new shelvers are working out great, and we are rearranging the organizational chart a bit to provide better coverage in the Children’s Department until we can hire a new Children’s librarian. That position has been posted, and we’ve broadened some of the requirements to, hopefully, get a larger, deeper pool of candidates than the last few searches. Things are moving forward with the landscaping project, with submissions for our Request for Qualifications for a landscape design due on Friday, August 9. At least two firms have expressed an interest, so hopefully we get a good range of proposals to evaluate. The library continues to move ahead with eliminating its old pneumatic control system for the HVAC units in the old building, replacing them with modern, digital controls which can be monitored and changed remotely. A plumber was out to evaluate the problematic drain in the fiction area, so hopefully we can resolve the occasional leak in that area. Some additional notes—we have been experiencing some small frustrations with PrairieCat recently, so I am exploring the possibility of moving to CCS. That consortium is still likely too expensive, but it is good to evaluate the options every few years. We have been getting a lot of brand new, but already broken, books in the last month—a result of really lousy production quality at the printers. We’ve been able to work with our distributors to swap out the bad books for better ones, but the process is time consuming and frustrating. CIRCULATION & PROGRAMMING July 2024 Circulation was up in July compared to 2023, and in-person use of the building was also up from last year. We had 24,466 items, both physical and digital, checked-out, a 10% increase from 22,201 in 2023. 11,821 people came to the library in July, up 4% from 11,322 in 2023. FINANCIALS Spending out of the new fiscal budget is underway, and we have already surpassed our budgeted donation total thanks to a generous $20,000 from one of our longtime supporters. The new budget includes raises for all staff, ranging from 3-5%, with most of the other budget lines holding steady, or getting small increases. MEETING/ORGANIZATION SUMMARIES City Meetings/City News The City Council meeting in late July was mostly routine, though there was a lot on that agenda since the Council does not meet for the usual first Tuesday meeting in July. The August meeting included the adoption of a new Comprehensive Plan for the city as well as the approval for a new downtown hotel. The city has hired a new Economic Development Director who will be starting soon. CIRCULATION SERVICES In the throes of Summer Reading Club, checkouts and visitor counts were up and kept shelvers and circulation staff very busy. Our three new shelvers are almost fully trained, just needing to get up to speed in the Children’s and Young Adult Departments. Our Gallery showcased blue ribbon winners from previous McHenry County Fair exhibitors. This great idea came from Katie and was extremely well-received, helping to pique interest in the upcoming fair. Our large display cases featured a multi-faceted display celebrating Woodstock Garden Club’s (WGC) 100th anniversary. The Library and the WGC have had a long and close relationship through the years which has resulted in floral arrangements, a dedicated table, book donations, and various other collaborations over the years. In July, Katie participated in both the PrairieCat Training Committee meeting and the WILIUG Steering Committee meeting; she is a member of both. Carrie and Katie each took a turn assisting and mentoring Jessica Winship during the Teamwork Tuesday programming with the departure of our Children’s Specialist. This provided Jessica with the opportunity to see different programming styles and adapt that into her own style. YOUTH SERVICES Summer reading ended on July 31st. We had 608 participants read 10,810 hours. While we’re still about 2,000 hours less on reading than we had in 2019, the number of participants surpassed the number of participants we had pre-COVID. Since we track reading differently now than we did in 2019, it is entirely possible that we surpassed the reading amount too, but it hadn’t been logged in Beanstack. We lost Sloane, our new Children’s Librarian, towards the end of July, but the rest of the Youth Services team finished the summer programming off strong with two of our favorite programs: The Garden Railroad and Touch-A-Truck. Many repeat families attended both programs. Our touch-a-truck event didn’t have as many people as last year, since the rain dampened the first 20 minutes of the event. Once the rain cleared, the kids had a great time looking at all the different vehicles. The Garden Railroad continues to be a great success, and the Dreyer family has even made it more accessible so those with walkers, wheelchairs, or wide strollers can travel the walkways around the trains. TECHNICAL SERVICES In June we added 515 items and withdrew 199 items. In July we added 327 items and withdrew 171 items. We were a little less focused on collection maintenance the last couple of months, just trying to backstop Circulation and Youth Services for the Summer Reading Program (SRP) . Now that SRP is over, we can turn back to adding all the new stuff, and other projects. The other main influence on the lower numbers is that quite a few books we received from our supplier arrived with problematic bindings. Shawn has sent back or ‘destroyed’ approximately 100 books for replacement (some of them have arrived multiple times with the same damage) and Ally has been “pre-repairing” a lot of books that have holds and we want them to check out as soon as we can. This is a problem from the publishers/printers, not our supplier. The other half of this is that Ally has noticed an uptick in repairs on materials published very recently that we’ve already checked out a few times, so this issue has been going on awhile before we caught on. It’s really frustrating, and Shawn has had to slow down his accession duties to diligently check the inside of every single book. All of this has meant that Mary Ann is seeing daylight in her workload of providing labels for new materials. She is also keeping busy with relabeling thanks to our eagle-eyed staff finding mistakes! Valeria continues to be busy with audiovisual processing, as well as relabeling/repairing damaged materials and creating new book-covers for old/damaged books and media. Austin has completed a project that we have had on our to-do list for years: cleaning out the donated and duplicate DVDs we have in storage. We now have ONLY duplicates and a complete list of what’s there. What a great help! Bailey has caught up with all the Fiction and Large Print cataloging, except the Really Weird™ stuff, but in compensation, there are several big orders incoming under which she will disappear in August. She is also diligent about checking through donated material and pulling out possible additions to the collection. Lauren is currently in the final phase of achieving her Barcode Certification for PrairieCat. This will give her access to more of the database making it easier for her to work on series, and other projects in the future. She has mostly worked through all the training and project- work on her own over the last month. ADULT SERVICES Summer in adult services tends to be quieter, but we did have 137 participants in the Adult Summer Reading Club that logged over 600 books and completed 364 reading challenges. Fifteen winners were drawn from the participants who were rewarded with donated gift cards from local businesses. The grand prize winner received a $75 Read Between the Lynes gift certificate. The library received fifteen sets of lawn tickets from the Ravinia Festival to various concerts this summer. Three sets were retained as prizes for the summer reading club and the rest were given away on a first-come, first-served basis. The giveaway was very well received and all the tickets have been distributed. On the upper level of the library, the Illinois Art Teachers Association put up a display of over 40 pieces of art by Illinois students from across the state. The display travels around the state and this is the second year the library has hosted it. The month ended with the Senior Services Expo which featured sixteen area service organizations and businesses. The expo was very well received with over 90 attendees during the two-hour afternoon event. Shifting in the adult non-fiction section is under way to ease overcrowding in the middle of the non-fiction ranges utilizing the space gained by pulling the travel books out to the low shelving units. Technology Assistance Appointments • 1-on-1 Appointments Requested: 5 • Resolutions: 2 • Cancellations: 3 • Most Common Consultation Subject: Computer • Average Number of Days for Resolution: 25 Programming • Total # of Adult Programs: 12 o 11- in-person o 1- virtual • Total Programming Attendance: 170 o 5% month-over-month decrease from June 2024 o 75% year-over-year increase from July of 2023 • Top-Performing Programs by Attendance: o Senior Services Expo- 96 o Japanese Herbarium Bottles- 14 o Quilter's Discussion Forum- 14 Misc. Stats • My "Build Your Business" book display had 3 checkouts. Next month's theme is Repairs & Renovations. • The library hosted an outreach table event from NISRA. • Round 2 of my PrairieCat-themed word search was completed 30 times over the course of a month. LIBRARY OUTREACH The library continues to create and reinforce our collaborations with other local and regional agencies. This month, we worked the McHenry County Health Department, the Illinois Arts Education Association, the Woodstock Recreation Department, and the local Memory Makers group. Additionally, we continue to work with MCC on a variety of projects and outreach efforts. CALENDAR (https://woodstock.librarycalendar.com/) Upcoming Events & Dates of Import: • Friday, August 9, 12:00- 5:00 pm: Bull Valley Garden Club Flower Show • Saturday, August 10, 9:00 am-2:00 pm: Bull Valley Garden Club Flower Show • Wednesday, August 14, 6:30- 8:00 pm: The A, B, C and Ds of Medicare • Saturday, August 17, 1:00 pm-2:00 pm: Rescue Readers at HAHS • Monday, August 19, 1:30-6:00 pm: Versiti Blood Drive • Saturday, August 24, 2:00 pm-3:00 pm: Local author Kathy Spaltro and the Barrymores • Monday, September 2, all day: Library Closed for Labor Day • Friday, September 6, 9:00 am- 12:00 pm: Library closed for First Friday • Sunday, September 8, 2:00- 3:00 pm: An Afternoon with William Kent Kruger