North Liberty Community Library
Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes
April 20, 2009, 7:00 p.m.

President Shawn Selch called the meeting to order at 7:00pm at the North Liberty City Council Chambers, 25 W. Cherry St.

Board members present were: Shawn Selch, Melissa Murphy, Shalome Tonelli, Peggy Waters, Cindy Diouf, John Henk and Library Director Dee Crowner.

Approval of Agenda:
None

Public Comment: None.

Approval of Minutes:
A motion to approve the March minutes as written was made by Murphy and seconded by Tonelli and approved unanimously.

Reports:

Budget – Jenny Garner:
We are on track for the year so far. There will be about $2,000 put back into the budget when the amendments are done in June. There was some discussion on several line items.

Youth and Teen Services – Andrew Frisbie:
The 3rd annual 5th/6th grade dance was on Friday, April 17th and they had about 90 kids. TAG sponsored it.

On April 30th they will be showing the movie, “Bedtime Stories”.

On May 9th will be a tea party. This is right before Mother’s Day so something fun for mother’s and daughter’s.

The kick-off for the Summer Reading Program will be May 19th. This year the kids will be able to start reading as of May 17th, rather then waiting until the 2nd Tuesday in June. This will get Rage Graphics time to get all the t-shirts ready rather than being pressed to get them ready at the last minute. There won’t be a finale on the final Saturday this year. Instead, there will be a carnival on the last Tuesday.

The teen Summer Reading Program this year is “Get Your Game On At Your Library” and they are going to do game show themed programs.

There is a pilot program going on with other organizations in town. There has been fights between Penn Elementary and the Community Center. So an after school program has been started. The first one was pretty successful so there will be four more before the end of school and it will probably start up again in the Fall.

Adult Services – Elaine Reitz:
Senior dining is currently two programs a month but we figure that over the summer we won’t do any then start up again in September. The feedback they have been getting is only one program a month would be best.

Greta Reynolds, who does the cake decorating class, donated the sheet cakes for the volunteer luncheon. She is planning on doing a teddy bear bread baking class on April 24th and families are encouraged to attend. The teddy bears actually stand up! There will be a $6 charge for the bread bear that you assemble in class then take it home and bake it. Registration is required.

The Last Tuesday of the Month book club will be on April 28st and this month they will be discussing the book, “The Honk and Holler is Opening Soon.” Everyone is welcome to attend. They will be meeting in May and June then taking July and August off. They will start up again in September.

The weeding is going well. Elaine has started working on the Fiction that were sitting on the cart.

The theme for the Summary Reading Program this year will be, “Find Your Niche at the Library.” There will be one combined program with the teens and that will be a pottery class.

Assistant Director – Jennie Garner:
Jennie report that the budget is at 75.18%, but Dee thinks that it’s more like 74%.

Jennie went to the ILA Legislative Reception in Des Moines on March 25. The State librarian reported that Iowa Workforce Development is hoping for a partnership with Iowa libraries and Jennie was able to tell her that she had already met with the Workforce office in Iowa City about a possible partnership. Jennie is going to get a reference station up and running, hopefully by the end of the summer. She found a $5,000 grant to write for that will help for start up. This will be a computer station some where in the library. This will be exclusively for Iowa Workforce searches.

Jennie and Dee were trying to decide how to find out how many of the magazines are read on a daily basis so they decided to put out a bin with signs asking people to put the magazines they read in the library into the bin rather than re-shelving them. We pulled the titles out each day and kept a tally. From March 3 to April 8, we saw 48 magazines being read a total of 119 times. There was a variety of titles and some that we don’t see get checked out as much. We compared what was read in-house with what was checked out in recent weeks to see which magazines we might wish to replace and which are being read in the library if not being checked out. There were only eight magazines that were not used in some form and of those eight a couple are donated and others have had copies go out in the last year. We decided to stop the subscription for two titles only. They are Outdoor Life and Metropolitan Home. They found out that there are a lot more being read in house then they thought. More people are also putting holds on magazines then before.

They are still working on the records that go into SILO (the state library media database), and and getting them ready to resubmit. They are not quite half done.

Director – Dee Crowner:
The main issue is being able to stay open on Sundays next year. If the same use holds true as this year we would need two staff on Sundays and would to work two to three time more Sundays then presently and there is no money in the budget to pay staff now, let alone additional Sundays since the planned overtime pay was removed from the budget when the City asked for cuts to the budget. Presently staff comp their Sundays, but with their workloads now, it will be harder for staff to take the extra time off through the week.

This year we were very lucky to have a practicum student who helped on Sundays this year But there is no guarantee of this next year. The logical suggestion is volunteers, but there is also no guarantee we would have a volunteer available every Sunday.

There was quite a bit of discussion on this issue. With usage going up the Board is hoping to come up with other options. What was decided was to either find a least popular time for the library to be open, open either later on certain days or other options rather then to close on Sundays. It was decided that first we would track usage in the month of May then discuss it again in June plus write a survey for patrons through the Summer.

Dee mentioned the email that she had sent out about ordering kindles. The response back was that the cost is prohibitive.

The Board then discussed the compliments on the library that Dee had received in the past year.

Friends
Friends sponsored the Volunteer Appreciation Luncheon.

Most of the membership drive is done. She is still getting a few forms in.

Birdies for Charity will be starting.

Policy Review:
Unattended Child Policy – Murphy moved and Waters seconded that the Unattended Child Policy be approved as written and approved unanimously.

Disruptive Patron Policy – Disruptive Patron Policy be approved as written and approved unanimously.

Old Business:
Expansion Committee – The Expansion Committee met in a work session with the Council at the last meeting in March. The Council is willing to contribute a tentative number of two million toward the expansion. There will probably be a combination of TIF funds and possibly bond funds. They are concerned about city hall being built about the same time as the library. However, city hall is not available for TIF funds, so there will need to be a bond issue for that. They are still looking for land. They got go ahead to have informational meetings. There will be a luncheon on Thursday, April 23rd with the people who will be hosting the meetings so they know what will be happening.

New Business:
None

Adjournment:
It was moved and seconded to adjourn and approved unanimously. The meeting was adjourned at approximately 8:10pm.