Eaton Public Library

Board of Trustees Nov 2, 2016

Meeting Minutes

Present:

Jenean Huckaby - President

Dave Sloan - Vice President

John Isbell – Secretary

June Gustafson - Trustee

Marlene Richter – Trustee

Julie Finn - Trustee

Staff:

Brenda Carns- Director of EPL

Guest: None

1.Call to Order. Declaration of a quorum.

President Huckaby called the meeting to order at 5:31pm., November 2, 2016 and declared a quorum.

2.Approval of the agenda. M/S - Trustee Finn moved to approve the agenda and Vice president Sloan seconded. Motion passed, no opposition

3.Report of the President: President Huckaby Gave a summary of her experience at the CALCON Conf. The president gave a vision for the next three months. Nov (Director Review) Dec (Board meeting and Christmas Plans) Jan (Implement where we go from here)

4.Report of the Friends of the Library: Vice President Sloan let the board know that the friends plan on making Christmas baskets this year. Sloan discussed the timing of programs, and the Friends suggested 6-7pm is not a good time for programs. Vice president Sloan presented some insight on the basket process. Vice president Sloan proposed possibly adding some small book cases in the gallery area, to hold excess sale books. June suggested moving the art gallery bench discussion to new business. It was decided not to add the book shelves in the exhibit area and add two benches in the gallery, to match the one in the entry way.

5. Director’s Update: The Director mentioned that the new homework club had a great turnout (18 kids). Many of the children not present have their homework stored on the cloud and do not have access except at home. After discussing a recent presentation, several board members recommend using a microphone for speakers so they can be heard, regardless of size of the crowd. Director Carns mentioned that she is looking at setting up aHispanic advisory committee for the EPL. Carns is signing up the library as part of the Eaton Historical Society. The next Historical Club meeting is on November 12th at the Eaton Country club. Trustee Finn volunteered to attend Historical Society meeting. EPL Staff attended the Eaton Truck or Treat (Jess & Betsy), there were over 600 local children present. The first BITSBOX session will be on Dec 1st. Discussion on meeting room and revisiting the policy to increase weekend usage.

Approval of the Consent Agenda: M/S- Trustee Finn moved to approve the agenda.

Trustee Gustafson seconded. Motion passed - no opposition.

a. Meeting Minutes of Oct 5, 2016

b. Director's Report

c. Financial Report- A copy of the report was passed out to the board members for review.

d. Invoices

7.Items removed from the consent agenda. None

8.Old business:

High Plains Library District Update: Vice President Sloan gave an update on the status of the HPLD lawsuit. Vice President Sloan stated that the deposition will be in February and that Greeley denied mediation.

Where do we go from here? President Huckaby prefaced future plans in the president's update. President Huckaby is currently seeking out two consultants to develop a plan.

Currently looking to replace various lights and move some to other parts of the building to keep uniformity. Director Carns has ordered six additional lights and the replacements will be moved to the gallery. Vice President Sloan mentioned that staff should be able to move lights as need be without paying an outside contractor to save on money. Eclipse proposed a new solution for the Kitchen window divider with fabric. The representative said the new price should be the same or less than the originally proposed solution. There is no new info on the window cushions project.

1. Trustee Gustafson moved to move the fence replacement to another board meeting after some samples are available. Trustee Richter seconded the motions. M/S

d. Report of Budget Committee-none

9.New business:

Director's Evaluation Process- President Huckaby passed out a very comprehensive Evaluation process. She requested that packets are returned to her NLT 14 November 2016. Once the packets are received they will be reviewed at the evaluation board.

Donations Policy/Better World Books/Thrift Books- Director Carns recommended using Better Worlds Books to get rid of excess books that are building up. This process is similar to what the friends is doing with the current book receiving. Some board members recommended that the Friends look into the Better World Books program. Vice President Sloan will take the idea to the Friends. President Huckaby recommended moving discussion on the current donation policy to the December meeting to allow more time for board members to read and make notes.

Laptop computers for instruction and in-library use- Vice President Sloan, Sheri McCaskill, and John Isbell will re-work the laptop proposal and will build a requirements list and select units that meet those requirements. Current proposal could be sufficient. Recommendation will be made to the board in the December meeting.

Christmas plans-staff/board- Trustee Gustafson presented several options for the Christmas meeting. The board determined to have a dinner with staff on the 14th of December. The library would be closing early.

e. Vice President Sloan will work with the friends to getting gift cards for staff for the holiday.

f. Approval of purchase of two benches. M/S- Trustee Sloan moved to approve the purchase two benches and Trustee Finn seconded. Motion passed no opposition.

M/S to adjourn was made at 7:27pm.: Vice President Sloan and Trustee Gustafson. Motion passed no opposition.

Next board meeting: Wednesday, Dec 7th, 2016

Report to the Library Board

Brenda Carns, Library Director

December 2016

June has invited Eclipse to the Dec. board meeting to show the proposed fabric and plan for the kitchen pass through. She asked that the Board go ahead and approve the project and the fabric if they like the option.

The window cleaning has been completed and the windows look much brighter. I am still waiting to hear from the town administrator about our insurance claim on the south fence. I still haven’t been able to get a landscaper to bid on the front bedding drainage mitigation. The phone company activated our second voice line. It will roll over to line 2 when line one is busy. Both lines will show the main number on caller ID.

Delaney’s installed the additional track lighting and replaced the overhead fluorescent bulbs in the gallery with LED lighting. They explored placing an electrical outlet to power laptops in the window seat room but determined there could be significant damage to the plaster if a plug is installed so I decided to keep the arrangement we currently have. The cushions were installed and look and feel fantastic. I have received some nice compliments from patrons who have used the area.

Our current gallery exhibit is by the Peaceable Quilters Guild in Greeley. The contacts I had with the Eaton quilters were no longer available so the local quilters referred me to this guild. We have 9 different Christmas quilts. Staff enjoyed creating a festive atmosphere by bringing out the symbols of the holiday season, Santa, a snowman, ornaments and a beautiful tree. Young library patrons are contributing their artful cutout snowflakes to grace our windows and display areas.

Sheri homework club every Tuesday and Thursday after school is drawing a regular following. We had 99 teens attend the homework club in Nov. Sheri and I met with John and Dave about the new laptop library that will be used to provide additional resources for this group and to use for other programming and public internet uses. I would like to update our existing EPL-owned laptops with more current software. We are experiencing difficulties in moving between devices.

Sheri started her Japanese Culture Club last Friday. The first activity was watching an anime movie; this means that the animation is the style popularized by Japanese art. The UNC Japanese Language Club and the UNC Cosplay Club both volunteered to assist and attend meetings regularly. Sheri has also implemented a Teen Advisory Committee to help us better understand the needs of this group of patrons. Applications are available at the circulation desk and in the teen room. We hope this will stimulate more teens to be more involved in their library.

The Fantastic Animals program was very popular with the children and their parents. Thank goodness we had volunteers to help cover the display tables by assisting the kids with their experiments. Over the 5 days, 242 people participated.

The library is participating enthusiastically in the Chamber’s Old Fashioned Christmas. Sheri, Liz and I are staffing a craft booth at the Old Fashion Christmas event on Dec. 10. Liz will also host a high school and grade school choir program at the library from 11 – 12 that day. Sheri also volunteered to decorate a library Christmas tree for the hall of trees at the event. We are also helping out with photocopying and laminating some materials for the event for the Chamber.

The English for Spanish speakers’ class will be wrapping up in December but will start up again after the new year. We also have received inquiries from non-Spanish speaking moms about including their children in the bi-lingual story times so we are working out the details to expand that program. Our new volunteer, Terry has a background in bilingual education.

The use of the AWE computers remains up. The new station for ages 5 – 12 had 11 uses in October and 172 in November. The older computer for younger children had 161 uses in October and 170 in November. These figures are not part of the data reported on the graphs each month.

We held an all staff meeting Friday. Topics under consideration were: staff schedules in case of illness; 2017 Summer Reading Program planning; ways to improve internal communication; brainstorming future technology needs including training. Several great ideas to better manage the busy times during programs and after school were identified. Staff also shared what each is working on.

A patron gave me a suggestion which I acted upon; she asked for a suggestion box. Since its implementation we received 25 requests to provide a vending machine or some small snacks (cider or cocoa and chips). There were also 2 compliments about staff and a suggestion to buy more Manga titles and other teen high interest materials.

Finally, a holiday item…a very generous anonymous donor gave Miss Judy 16 Dr. Seuss board books to hand out to our baby lap sit patrons. What a great gift to a new generation of library readers!

Happy Holidays!