North Liberty Community Library
Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes
February 15, 2010, 7:00 p.m.

Board members present:

President:   Melissa Murphy
Vice President:  Cindy Diouf
Secretary:  Margaret Logan
Members:  Shalome Tonelli, Lesly Huffman, John Henk

Library Director: Dee Crowner

Guest:  Jennie Garner, Assistant Library Director

President Melissa Murphy called the meeting to order at the North Liberty City Council Chambers, 25 W. Cherry Street.

Additions/Changes to the Agenda
Melissa Murphy made a change to the agenda.   Under New Business, the Board Training DVD will be Board Relations.

Public Comment:
Brian Wayson, newly elected City Council member, was present at the meeting and introduced himself.

Approval of Minutes:
January 10, 2010

A motion was made to approve the minutes by Cindy Diouff.  Margaret Logan seconded the motion.
 
The minutes were unanimously approved.

Reports:

Budget – Jennie Garner reported the Library is still under budget.  Total expenditures as of January 31, 2010, are 56.01 percent

Youth and Teen Services – Andrew Frisbie:
Andrew Frisbie submitted his “Youth and Teen Services” report. 

The After School at Penn Program has started.  Activities are after school on the first and third Thursdays of the month.  We do the programming at the school and the school takes care of getting parental permission and emergency contacts.  We have fun just doing simple things with kids 4th grade through
6th grade.  We are doing this without the help of Johnson County Social Services and the rest of the library staff are volunteering to help out.  There were 25 kids that attended the first one. 

The Teen After Hours Program has been going well.   There are between five and eight teens attending.  This is on Wednesday evenings from 8 pm - 9 pm.  This gives them time to be loud without worrying about anyone else around and it gives them a little extra time to get their homework done or just play on the internet.

February 18 will be a Fondue Program for teens, 7th -12th grade from
3:30 pm - 5 pm.  We will be doing cheese fondue and chocolate fondue.      

Friday, February 19 will be another family movie night at 6pm.  Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian will be the featured film.  Popcorn and seating will be provided.

Pudding Painting will be held March 5th from 10 am - 11 am for preschoolers up to age 5.  This will be held in Meeting Room B of the Rec Center. 

Crafting Program will be held March 15th from 1 pm - 4 pm for ages kindergarten through 6th grade.   This will be held in the Library Study Room.  We recently had a large batch of beads donated and we will be making little bracelets or book marks.

Pizza Taste Test Program will be held March 17th  starting at 1 pm in Meeting Room B.  We are going to get pizzas from different places in the area and the teens will debate which the best is.

A Lego Program will be held March 18th from 1 pm - 4 pm.  This will be held in one of the meeting rooms in the conference center downstairs.

An Egg Hunt will be held March 26th for preschoolers in the Library.            

Adult Services – Elaine Reitz:

The book discussion of Fahrenheit 451 was postponed because of the recent snowstorm.  The new date for the book discussion will be in the next few weeks.  The movie screening of Fahrenheit 451 was held Friday, February 5th.  There was a small group in attendance.

Last Tuesday of the Month Book Club will meet on February 23rd  at 6:30 in the library study room.   We are reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Ann Barrows.

For March, I am working with Sarah Uthoff to schedule One Room Schoolhouse Program.  Sarah collects stories from people who have attended school in one room schoolhouses.  She will present her program and attendees will be invited to share their stories. 

I have been asked to serve on a committee through Iowa Library Association (ILA) to research online Masters of Library I    Science (MLIS) programs.  I am currently working on research the four programs I was assigned; University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, Valdosta State University, Wayne State University, and the University of Iowa.   Although Iowa does not offer an online program, I was asked to include research of their program. 

I am starting to think about the Adult Summer Reading Program.  I’m going to do a survey asking patrons what they would like to see for adult programming and when they would like to meet.

Assistant Director – Jennie Garner:

Jennie Garner submitted her reported. 

Jennie Garner was present at the meeting and reported. 

I am happy to announce that I did get a computer from Brenda Dodge, the Director of Iowa Workforce Development (IWD) in the Iowa City office.  It was just a computer so Janet has ordered an operating system for it. 

Ms. Dodge and I met along with another staff person from the IWD, Cary Stowe.  Mr. Stow will be coming to the library to present an Iowa Advantage Workshop on March 10th from 9 am - 12 noon with time afterwards for those who would like to work individually with him or have questions.  The workshop covers a variety of information including resume development, job searching, thank you notes and more. 

John Langhorne, an organizational consultant who has presented for the library before, has written a management/leadership book called Beyond Luck.  He has agreed to do a book talk and provide some leadership points related to job searching at a brown bag lunch April 8th.  More details will be announced.

I had 16 sign up for the resume workshop on February 24th.  There is a wide variety of people signed up and the instructors will be gearing the workshop slightly to try to help all of them.

I have gotten a brochure for the fund-raising campaign together and I am working with Dennis Tallman at Alphagraphics for us to get them printed.   He was kind enough to offer some “in-kind” work.  We are waiting for the architect to send a rendition of the front corner of the expansion for the cover of the brochure. 

We did receive several different very creative logos for the community logo project.  We will be using that logo to “brand” the library throughout the community.  We should have one picked out by the next Board meeting for you to see.

In an effort to get some of the fines paid off we have sent out letters to about 300 patrons with fines between $25 and $150.  We are offering the fines can be paid all in Food for Fines for a certain amount of time.   We have had some results with this.  We are finding who has left the area and we have no current information.  It helps update our files

Director – Dee Crowner:
Dee reported that recently 77 DVDs were donated to the library.   Of those we were able to use 50 immediately and put the other in storage as replacement copies.  Most of the DVDs were ones that we had in the past but had “gone by the wayside”. 

Assistant City Administrator has announced that the lighting fixtures will be replaced in the Community Center for more efficient ones.  She said that it is possible that the rates for electricity will be going up about ten percent within the next couple of months.   With the replacement of the lights we should be able to save enough money for most of the increase in rates.

We are getting donations for the expansion and we haven’t even begun the fundraising campaign.

There is an amendment before the house to have the Library Service Areas fall under the aegis of the State Library.   This would save the state around $600,000 a year.

We now have the new databases in place; Hobbies and Crafts and Home Improvements.  You just need to go to Ebscohost and use their passwords to get into the databases.  If you don’t know these, contact the library.

We have purchased a database to help with the fundraising.   This will allow us to keep track of who has donated to the Community Center building projects in the past and also for upcoming campaigns.  Information will now be stored in one place.

Jennie and I met with Ryan and Tracey about the library budget and Ryan has presented the City Budget to the Council.  There has been no word.

We are without a library page.  An announcement of the position has been posted.   We already have nine applications and it closes in March.

Friends
The Friends are getting ready for their annual membership drive.  Due to increasing costs of mailings we will probably not do a mailing to all patrons this year.   We are looking into other ways of publicizing the membership drive.

Bill Montgomery, who has been on the Friends Board for many years, will be on the Board for the library fundraising. 

The Friends Volunteer Luncheon will be held April 16th.

Policy Review:
Long Range Plan – There was discussion on this policy.   It was decided to table this until the next meeting.    

Old Business:
None.

New Business:
Report from Board Training Session, Lesly Huffman and Margaret Logan

Lesly Huffman and Margaret Logan reported on the Board Training Sessions they attended.   Both found the training very informative.

Board Training DVD

The Board reviewed another segment of the DVD titled “Iowa Public Library Trustee Training – Board Relations”.    

Getting to Know the Assistant Director, Jennie Garner

Jennie introduced herself to the Board.  She told the Board about the duties of her position.

Other Business:
None.

Adjournment:
There was a motion by Margaret Logan to adjourn.   John Henk seconded.   The motion was unanimously approved at 8:05 pm.