Draft - Lincoln Township Public Library



LINCOLN TOWNSHIP PUBLIC LIBRARY

BOARD MEETING MINUTES

June 21, 2016

7:00 p.m.

PRESENT

President Dave Bailey, Vice President Marion Maier, Treasurer Nick Sedalia, Secretary Mary Sundblad, Trustee Diane Nye, Trustee John Smietanka, Library Director Mary Hill

CALL TO ORDER

GUESTS

Linda Stocker

Mary Ann Ware

CONSENT AGENDA

1. Approval of minutes from May 17, 2016.

2. Approval of treasurer’s report for May, 2016, with check no. 17645 thru 17678.

3. Committee Reports: Building, Landscape, and Technology

4. Correspondence

Marion made a motion, supported by Diane, to approve the consent agenda. Motion unanimously carried.

GOVERNANCE AND ADMINISTRATION

Finance

Budget Adjustment: Marion made a motion, supported by Nick, to adopt the budget as presented. Motion unanimously carried.

Capital Expense Proposal: Nick made a motion, supported by Diane, to approve the proposed future Capital Expenses for 2016-17. Motion unanimously carried.

Strategic Planning

Donor Recognition: Marion stated that she has ideas regarding naming opportunities. If anyone has any thoughts, we should contact her.

Operations/Staff

Meeting with Brian Mortimore: John and Diane met with Brian and they are looking forward to a positive work environment at the Library and positive/user-friendly relations among the staff and patrons. We want to make is a pleasure to work at this Library and a pleasure to be a patron of this Library.

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Patron, Community and Government Relations

Survey: The website has given feedback regarding the survey that patrons were asked to complete.

DIRECTOR’S REPORT—REVIEW OF STRATEGIC PLANNING ACTIVITIES:

Take a walk in the back garden and see Kaela’s StoryWalk®. StoryWalk® encourages families to enjoy reading and the outdoors by posting a children's book - a page or two at a time - at intervals in a park, hiking trail or other outdoor site. StoryWalk® includes activities like talking, reading, writing, singing and playing to help children develop early literacy skills. Our StoryWalk® is Head to Toe by Eric Carle. The Children’s staff is trying some new activities this summer. Every story time is a family event. The team is utilizing the courtyard and back garden by setting up a play area to be utilized after story times this summer. There is soccer, T-ball, golf, cones to run around, bubbles, play-doh, ring toss, bag toss, whirlee noise makers, sidewalk chalk, and a tunnel to crawl through.

Summer Reading started Monday, June 13th with a power outage that lasted two hours. The staff really stepped up to the plate by taking flashlights into the stacks to help patrons select their books. We have 113 programs planned for this summer and the library is a happening place in our community.

We have hired three new pages for the summer. Ashley Pozivilko graduated this year and plans to attend college online in the fall. Ashley is helping out with the Children’s area this summer, assisting with story times and other children’s programs. Summer Bedell will be a senior at Lakeshore in the fall. Kennedy Myrick will be a sophomore at Lakeshore this fall. Summer and Kennedy will be shelving books this summer and doing other paging activities for the library.

Last month I reported that we had hired Sharyl Freehling to work circulation and cataloging reporting to Eric. We also interviewed and hired Mary Ikala who will start in September. Mary is a former Whirlpool employee and will also be working circulation and cataloging with Eric.

Kaela and I interviewed four candidates for the newly created Children’s position. We jointly agreed that we were not finding the right person for the job. It was decided to repost the position in September and continue looking for the right candidate.

Brian is working on updating our training manuals for circulation. He is also focusing on being more involved in the circulation area during summer reading.

Eric and Brain are attending the Leadership Academy held at Kent District Library by Brian Mortimore. They have gone to KDL for the first session, and the other sessions will be after summer reading.

Brain Mortimore was here June 15th to facilitate an ad-hoc focus group to more thoroughly consider the community survey issue cited of “staff unfriendliness”. The committee (Hollie, Jan, Kaela, and Marie) met for an hour and will be sharing their ideas and thoughts with the rest of the staff and solicit their input on what the staff can do to make improvements. The group will be meeting again in a couple of weeks and will report back to you on their progress. In the meantime our list of commitments to the public from the staff in-service has been placed on the front page of the web site. 

Brian and Eric completed annual reviews for staff members that they supervise.

Building issues: Great Lakes Cleaning cleaned carpets in various heavy traffic areas in the library. Boelcke Heating & AC replaced an exhaust fan for the public restrooms. The Lincoln Charter Township

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maintenance crew cut down a couple of dead trees for us that were along the Roosevelt Street walkway. They will grind out the stumps for us when they do others on township properties.

Eric is working with Northern Micrographics to get yearbooks up on the website.

Kaela had 70 attend STEAM Challenge (55 kids). There were 16 different activities including cardboard challenge, LEGO’s, maze building, catapults, puzzles magnets, rainbow loom, Spirograph, origami, and bead making.

Objective 1.1 We will continue to acquire and make use of at least one of the latest information and entertainment technologies available each year.

• On June 8, Eric attended a product presentation of Plymouth Rocket’s Event Keeper and Event Registration software. This software serves to streamline how patrons view and register for library programs and create a more accurate count and historical reference for statistical purposes. Some of the other incentives to using this product are it is smartphone compatible, it is built on WordPress which is the same platform as our website, it has the ability to search words in the library program list, there is a built in Kiosk mode for the front lobby monitor, and it has the ability to automatically let patrons know if a program has a waiting list. Hollie attended a presentation focusing on setting up parts of the program such as registration forms.

• Eric worked with Northern Micrographics from May 23 thru June 3, 2016 about using one of their products as a platform for the digitized Lakeshore High School yearbooks. The two platforms that are being researched are Pro-Seek and ResCarta. ResCarta is the less expensive of the two platforms and offers the most flexibility for expansion. ResCarta also seems the most intuitive and can be integrated easily into ours. On June 3, 2016, Eric set up the metadata that enables the user to easily locate the yearbooks on the site.

1.2.1 Provide opportunities for staff to participate in webinars

• Brian watched a webinar called, “Engaging Employees in the Library: Keep the Energy Going!” See attached report.

1.2.4 Assure that each current and new technology we offer comes with training in a variety of formats, suitable for either individual or group learning

• Brian’s computer training classes since the last meeting include Searching and Finding Online, PowerPoint Part Two, Beginning Email, Photo Editing with Picasa, Build a Website with Google Sites, eBay, Excel Part One, and Word Part One. We will have to discontinue the Picasa class in the future because Google is no longer supporting this program.

Objective 1.3 We will maintain our current computers and software programs, and investigate new technologies such as mobile apps, laptops and handheld devices as they become available.

Activities 1.3.1 Upgrade computer hardware/software according to the technology plan in place.

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• PC Consultants has installed a new Dell Server to move forward with virtualizing our network. They also installed two new 24 port switches for expansion the staff side and one new 16 port switch for expansion the public side.

Objective 1.4 We will investigate ways to improve library processes through the use of technology each year.

Activities 1.4.2 Provide wireless printing options by 2015.

• Comprise informed Eric on May 24 that Smart Alec (Wireless Printing) has been configured. At that point only android devices and laptops will be able to be use wireless printing. Hollie was not able to print a document from her Android smartphone when testing this feature. Eric is still in the process of determining the correct configuration. This service should be configured by the end of the month.

Goal 2: Collection: We will maintain, expand, and deepen our collection to assure it is appropriate for the needs of our community.

• Linda has started re-cataloging the holiday books according to the new holdings code, LTCH and the new label, HLDAY. This re-cataloging of the holiday books is part of the children’s re-cataloging project and the initiative to consolidate the holdings codes in the children’s department. This consolidation will make searching for items easier for the staff and public.

2.3.2 Contact each school in service area to offer library services to teachers and make teachers aware that librarians are available for special presentations

• Christ Lutheran preschool came to tour the library on May 23. They took a tour, read a book, and played in Rosetta's House.

• All three Kindergarten classes at Roosevelt visited on three different occasions. Dog's Colorful Day was the book read, then had a tour of the library based on the book (each child got a dog necklace and collected spots for their dogs at four different places around the library). After that they played in Rosetta's House and got a drink and a final sticker.

Goal 3: We will offer programs for all ages, both on and off-site, to reach as many residents of our service area as possible.

• Twelve people attended the Elder Law Primer, hosted by Bill Westerbeke on June 8.

• We had 28 people attend June’s Library Book Hounds. Due to the Friends of the Library Book Sale, it was held in the Lincoln Township Community Park’s picnic shelter.

• The Teddy Bear Picnic was attended by 101 people. This year it was held indoors, as the weather was calling for thunderstorms. We had a fun time at story time and had games set up in the Community Room for play afterwards. Surprisingly, the bad weather held off and many families were able to enjoy their picnic lunch outside.

• Story Times: Starting on May 26 and lasting until June 10, Sherri and Kaela took a story time break. This gave them a chance to get some planning done for our SRP story times.

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• LEGO Bricks Club: Opening up the LEGO Bricks club to younger kids was a great success. Many more kids attended and most of them were in kindergarten-2nd grade. Kaela thinks that this program works much better when it’s run for all ages rather than as a tween program, and she will be brainstorming (and gathering information this summer) to develop other tween-only programs for this fall.

• Bookworms Book Club: We had a great time discussing Stuart Little and playing games in the courtyard. There were eight attendees.

3.1.1 Sponsor at least 2 programs a year that do not require visiting the building

• Magic Carpet Story Times in Baroda has attracted a couple of new families who have been faithfully attending and say they are looking forward to bringing their older children when school is out.

• Fifteen people attended the May meeting of the Tales You Can Taste book discussion. The featured book was The One-Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Swedish author Jonas Jonasson.

• Mary Ann and Kaela participated in Read Around the County. Kaela read Touch the Magic Tree, which is a wonderful book about the seasons and very interactive. It was a rainy day, so we ended up reading in the children's room at the Maud Preston Palenske Memorial Library.

3.1.3 Sponsor at least one program each year to reach unregistered nonusers who have never registered for a library card

• We welcomed three newborns this past month with Books from Birth packets, two from Baroda and one from Lincoln.

• On June 4, Kaela and Mary Ann attended a Maker Faire hosted by Berrien County Regional Educational Services, where they spoke with over 200 people about activities and services at the library including the upcoming Summer Reading program.

• On June 11, Mary Ann represented the library at Stevensville Liberty Day, making 172 contacts. Attendees were offered cold water in LTPL “magic” cups which promote a variety of library services. We highlighted our Summer Reading Program and the Friends of the Library Bag Sale.

3.2.1 Maintain attendance and quality of the summer reading program

• Kaela and Mary Ann visited the three elementary and two parochial schools in our service area to promote our Summer Reading program and activities. In total, they reached approximately 1458 children at the schools (Lakeshore elementary schools, Christ Lutheran, and St. Paul's). In addition, Mary Ann delivered over two-thousand flyers for distribution at our seven preschools, The Lighthouse Learning Center, Lake Michigan Catholic, Grace Lutheran, Lakeshore Middle

School, Lakeshore High School, Michigan Lutheran High School, The YMCA, The Saint Joseph-Lincoln Senior Center, and the offices of each of the three townships we serve. A copy of the flyer was sent to

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Saint Joseph Public Schools for posting on their website and Mary Ann emailed the local homeschool groups, asking them to include the information in their newsletters.

• Hollie, Kaela, and Brian decorated the large display case for summer reading. Vicki and Hollie decorated the teen announcement board near the New Teen Fiction for summer reading.

• We have 42 Junior Friends volunteering this summer to help with our summer reading programs for children and teens. Hollie trained the Junior Friends June 1-3.

• We had 43 teens sign up for the teen summer reading program on the first day.

• Fifty eight adults signed up for Adult Summer Reading during the first two days, despite the fact that we were without power for much of the morning on the first day of the program.

3.2.6 Investigate outreach programming for children in service area

• Seventeen people attended the May’s Wonderful Wednesday outreach program at Spring Lake Mobile Home Park. The kids were introduced to the Makey, Makey!, a device that lets you turn electrically conductive materials into computer controllers. The kids played Pac Man on bananas. We’ll use the devices in future Wonderful Wednesdays to expand this lesson on electrical circuits.

3.3 We will continue to offer innovative programming to tweens (kids ages 9 through 13) providing a bridge from childhood activities to teen programming.

• Ten ‘tweens attended Tween Tomes Book Club in May. The kids discussed Robert Lewis Stevenson’s ultimate pirate tale, Treasure Island.

3.4 We will maintain and expand programming that engages teens and allows them to participate in the library in ways that entertain and educate.

• Twenty one teens created their own Dragon Eggs with Vicki and Hollie at a popular and fun event on May 20. Mary Ann found this exciting craft on Pinterest. Photos of the eggs are available on the Library's Flickr page. The teens were thrilled with this craft and requested more events like this one.

• Voting for the Thumbs Up! Teen Book Award through the Michigan Library Association ended May 31. Hollie collected 25 votes from teens at our library.

• The Teen Advisory Board met on June 3. We had 28 members in attendance. Hollie trained the T.A.B. members who are also Junior Friends for the summer reading program. At the same time, Vicki led the rest of the group in an activity to prepare life-size Jenga game pieces for an upcoming event.

• The Super Smash Bros. Brawl Tournament will be held on June 17. Statistics will be in next month's report.

3.5.3 Increase participation in the Doorstep program and local nursing homes delivery by 2% each year

• We made Doorstep deliveries to three residents at The Willows and eleven at Pine Ridge, the latter up from nine the previous month.

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Goal 4: We will offer patrons and visitors a place of comfort, convenience, and attractiveness where they can easily find what they want.

• Eric and Kaela continue to work with the rest of the re-cataloging team to get projects done. Holiday books nearly done. This summer Emily is going to be trained on how to do both the cataloging and the processing side of our project, and will work on re-cataloging the Easy Non-Fiction. This will be especially helpful in freeing up space on those shelves. We hope to begin the CDs starting after SRP is over in August.

• Rosetta's House: Anything with animals is always a hit, and this proved to be true with the Zoo exhibit in Rosetta's House. We started off with general zoo animals, and then switched to Australian animals later in the month. There were lots of fun and educational opportunities.

Activities 5.2.2 Configure the Web site and customize the monthly program calendar.

• On May 24, Eric, Mary and Hollie met with Wendy Bedell to re-evaluate the library website. It was decided to move the website to a new, secure platform managed by GoDaddy. The website will also be re-organized to provide easier access for locating information.

Goal 6: Staff: (Internal) We will recruit, hire, train, support and use our human resources (staff and volunteers) to provide quality service.

6.1.2 Cross-train staff so no area of service is without competent staff any hour the library is open

• Brian offered training to the staff on assisting adult patrons with this year’s summer reading program.

• Hollie trained the staff on procedures for the Teen Summer Reading Program.

6.3.3 Continue to send staff to workshops and conferences

• On June 2, Brian and Eric attended the first of five sessions with Brian Mortimore at Kent District Library as part of KDL’s Leadership Institute training. Several other library professionals also took part in the program. Brian and Eric were asked to provide a list of colleagues to take an assessment test – the LEA360 – to help identify their strengths and weaknesses in the workplace. They also took this test to evaluate themselves. At the meeting, Mr. Mortimore led the group in discussing the “22 Leadership Constructs” of the LEA360 that fell under these categories: Creating a Vision, Developing Followership, Implementing the Vision, Following Through, Achieving Results, and Team Playing. The participants predicted where they would score on each of the constructs. There were not necessarily right or wrong answers, but the purpose is to identify strengths and to start learning how to compensate for weaknesses. They then talked about emotional intelligence, which is the ability to perceive, evaluate, control, and monitor the emotions of others. As “homework” Brian and Eric were asked to think about and document scenarios where they experienced emotion in the workplace.

Objective 6.3 We will improve staff productivity through technology deployment and process improvement practices.

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• We have migrated our traditional Amazon account to Amazon Business. Amazon Business was necessary because the Delegated Purchaser model we were using is being terminated by Amazon. Amazon Business also has some other incentives. These include offering over 2 million more items and making the cost of Amazon prime unnecessary.

Children’s Re-Cataloging Meeting – Eric and Kaela

June 9, 2016

Eric and Kaela held a Children’s re-cataloging meeting. The topics discussed were the status of the re-cataloging project and projects for Emily to work on over the summer. Emily will work on transferring the Easy Non-Fiction to Junior Non-Fiction. The sections of the re-cataloging project that have been completed are the True Books, Easy Biographies, Beginning Reader, I CAN READ, Rookie Reader, Holiday Books, and Board books. The remaining sections are the Children’s Music CDs, Fairy Tales, and Easy Series. The consensus is that the CDs will be the next section and this re-cataloging will begin starting in August. Eric gave a list of the Adult Music CD classifications to Kaela to analyze for the Children’s CD Music classifications.

Engaging Employees in the Library: Keep the Energy Going!

Webinar viewed by Brian

This webinar explored how to help library staff feel more “engaged” in their job. What this means is that employees should be excited about their job and find meaning in it, as opposed to just going to collect a paycheck and then leaving. Studies have shown that, in general, managers tend to be more engaged in their work than other employees are, since they have more of a personal stake in the success or failure of the organization.

It is important for employees to feel engaged at their jobs, both for their own benefit and for that of the organization. If the staff feels engaged in their job, they will enjoy it more and therefore feel more motivated to do their best. This is especially true if they feel that their actions are contributing to the organization in a positive way. It’s also good for employees to be happy about their job so they can feel better about themselves in general. This is especially true when we consider how much of their lives employees spend at work. That, in turn, will allow employees to be even more productive and to get along with coworkers better.

The webinar explored what supervisors can do to allow employees to feel more engaged in their job. It’s not something that comes easily, since for most people, the most important reason why they have a job is to provide for themselves and their family. This could be done by adding variety to the tasks that each employee does or allowing an employee to share an idea for a new service or to increase productivity, even if it’s outside the employee’s normal job duties.

At one point, the speaker talked about how effective incentives are in employees doing their job well. She said that incentives – rewarding a good job or disciplining someone for failing to do their job – tend to work when employees are doing “routine” tasks. However, they don’t usually encourage creativity when that is required on the job. This made sense to me, since routine tasks are often a matter of physically working faster while creativity requires more brain power and coming up with ideas when not prompted. Showing

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trust in employees, rather than trying to “control” them, will create more goodwill with employees and therefore help them to care more about their job.

Another aspect of employee engagement addressed here was the “autonomy of time”. This is the idea that it is more important for an employee to get their work done than it is to have a set time that they should be doing it. The speaker addressed the possibility of some employees changing their hours to better suit their schedule, if the work they do doesn’t require them to be at the library at a specific time. She also talked about how employees can work from home for the same reasons. We have to forget the idea that time at work equals productivity, since no two employees work at the same pace. I would add that it’s hard to measure an employee’s “routine” work against someone who uses creativity in their job. These were interesting points, though they didn’t seem to fit into the overall theme of the rest of the presentation. This is especially true when we consider that libraries need to be open during certain times and that at least some employees have to be there during those times.

Related to the autonomy of time is the idea that employees should have a certain amount of time at work devoted to tasks of their choosing. The speaker used the example of 3M, which allows employees to spend 15% of their work time on such tasks. It is during this time that many innovations have taken place. Libraries, by their nature, already do this for many of their employees, since it is up to them to come up with programming ideas and other innovative ways to serve patrons. When employees come up with successful ideas on their own time, it allows them to feel more personal success in connection with the success of the organization.

The last main point from the presentation was the idea of “Flow”. The speaker defined this as the merging of action and awareness. When these two come together, an employee becomes completely engaged in the task at hand. When employees feel this way, they will be at their most productive. It is important for all employees, regardless of their position or their personality type, to work in solitude for at least some of the time. This is where reflection and creativity can take place. No matter how much of a “people person” someone is, this is still important.

After the presentation, I thought about what I could do to make the employees that I supervise feel more engaged. One way is to make sure that I offer praise when one of their ideas brings in new patrons or excites patrons we already have. When an idea doesn’t work out as well as the employee hoped, I can thank them for making an effort and encourage them to learn from the experience. I could also be asking for their input when I am about to make a decision. In this case, I need to remember to ask open-ended questions, as opposed to presenting a solution to a problem and asking whether they agree with it or not. Making employees feel respected and appreciated is always important.

This webinar was helpful to me in understanding what motivates employees to do well in their job, along with how to create an environment where employees will feel more meaning in their job. I will remember some of these points when interacting with employees in the future.

BOARD ACTIONS ON PLANNING ACTIVITIES

Dave created a Planning Draft Calendar for 2016-2021 that includes suggestions for future strategic plan activities.

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FOR THE GOOD OF THE LIBRARY

Reviewed Chapter 3 of Trustee Manual regarding policies.

PUBLIC COMMENTS

Mary Ann Ware had some questions regarding staff issues. Dave told her that staff questions aren’t addressed directly by the Board. Procedures are in place for handling staff issues; the Director will assure the questions are addressed through those procedures.

ADJOURNMENT

Meeting adjourned at 8:01 p.m.

Next meeting is July 19, 2016, at 7 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Mary Sundblad, Secretary

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