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Home My WebLink About~Master - Ames Public Library Board of Trustees Minutes of the Regular Meeting 09/19/2019Ames Public Library Board of Trustees Minutes of the Regular Meeting September 19, 2019 The Ames Public Library (APL) Board of Trustees met in regular session on Thursday, September 19, 2019, in the Dale H. Ross Board Room, with Barchman, Butler, Glatz, Kluesner, Looft, Marshall, and Myers in attendance. Raman was in attendance via conference telephone. Briese was excused. Assistant City Manager Schildroth, Director Schofer, and Youth Services Manager Heid were also present. Call to Order: President Kluesner called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. Consent Agenda: Moved by Glatz, seconded by Butler, to approve the following items on the consent agenda: 1. Resolution approving donation: A. In memory of Ella Marten from • Carol and Eric Weber .................................................................... $40.00 • Cynthia Marten and Dallas Theis ................................................... $20.00 B. From Kay and Roger Berger in honor of Mark Harris ....................... $50.00 2. Minutes of the regular meeting of August 15, 2019 3. Payment of the claims 8/1 /19 -8/31 /19 Vote on Motion: 8-0. Approved unanimously. Resolution No. 2019-L024 adopted. Public Forum: Schildroth introduced herself to the Board as the new Assistant City Manager. Schildroth began with the City on July 1, and will be working with the Library, Parks and Rec, CyRide, Fleet Services, Water & Pollution Control, Legal, and Public Relations as well as serving as the staff liaison for ASSET, the Human Relations Commission, and the Campus and Community Commission. She let the Board know that the City is working on updating the Personnel Policy. The Director will have the opportunity to weigh in on recommended changes. The Library Board of Trustees will then need to review the Library's Personnel Policy and see if changes are necessary. Administrative Staff Report: A. The Director gave a report to the Board. • The Director started a weekly staff newsletter to foster communication, promote awareness, and instill a collective ownership of what's happening at the library. The newsletter highlights programs that have just passed, things that are coming, relevant city news, staff changes, and comments that are received on comment cards. We did have a contest to name the newsletter; the winner received a small prize for the name "Director's Cuts". • We ended the Summer Reading programs with a bang as some 555 participants attended the Dance Party on Friday 8/23! Dancing, face painting and pizza were among the fun activities. • APL hosted a Genealogy Fair in partnership with the Story County Genealogical Society on August 25. It was humming with sixty plus attendees and served as nice kick off for our Genealogy series that started in September. Megan Klein Hewett and ISU Librarians guided participants and shared resources. • APL partnered with the India Cultural Society of Central Iowa on a two part series called "Cultural Diversity of India". The first program featured dance forms; the second program featured food and clothing of India. Both went well. • Pridefest went well. Tanvi Rastogi had served as the library representative on the Ames Pride Board. They had planned for months and it paid off as it was a well-organized and well attended event. We hosted multiple workshops for various ages, some just for fun, some educational, including a teen author. We had over 80 people at the drag king story hour which received good reviews. We did not receive any negative comments, but did receive several positive comments: o "Thank you for making this event so family friendly. I worked our booth all day, but my kids had a blast. The library events were amazing for them! Please keep doing that! It is fun to see so many young persons enjoy themselves. That is one thing that make Ames Pridefest so special." o "The library programming was superlative. What a wonderful way to support our Iowa community!" o We also received a letter from a family in Ames, signed by the entire family, supporting Pridefest and saying what a difference it would have made when their child was in school. • We were host to two Maximum Ames Music Festival events. Elizabeth Zimmerman and Mark Haugen performed on Friday evening September 6, and Iowa Women of Rock on Sunday September 8. Both of those went well. • Signal Poetry Festival was also collaboration the following weekend with after hours programs on both Friday and Saturday. Saturday was a little tricky as it was a game day, so it was not as well attended. There was a Children's Poetic Theater Performance on Sunday of Not Now, Navid written by our very own Roger Kluesner (APL Board President) and Kay Marner (Small Talk Coordinator) with Sarvinder Naberhaus. This also had an interactive component with blown up poetry with watercolors responses. The Poet and artist were on hand to have conversations and had video playing in background. Students were encouraged to attend and write about it as part of their coursework. There was a steady flow of people rotating through. It was a nice variation on programming. • Coming up on September 28 is Step into Storybooks. This is in partnership with Raising Readers in Story County and the Ames Morning Rotary Club. Various stations and activities will be set up throughout the library as well as people in costumes. While it is certainly fun for a wider range of children, every child 0-5 years of age will get a free book. • • • • • • • • • • • In terms of outreach, we participated in Welcome Fest where students go through a scavenger hunt learning about the city overall and winning some fun swag in the process. The library partnered with ISU Athletics for a fun family literacy night at the ISU Volleyball game on September 10. Families with children 2-12 completed a reading challenge activity and went online to claim two free tickets for that night's game. The Bookmobile, Jerri and Smyles were there and had a story time. The Library logo and information was featured on the big screen. Kudos to Jerri for jumping on this great opportunity to partner and promote .the library in a fun and visible way. We have some Ames High School visits set up and will be exploring another opportunity that is more of a career day. The Octagon Art Festival is Sunday, September 22. The Bookmobile will be there along with Smyles. Jerri and other Youth Services staff will there sharing science experiment type of activities and promoting Step Into Storybooks. We installed a separate cooling unit for the server room. This was a solution that came out of a recent energy audit where we learned that cooling the server room was triggering the larger chiller to come on at a higher frequency than the rest of the building demanded. We are starting to look at potential Capital projects we may want to consider including carpet replacement, furniture replacement, and doors in the vestibule. As far as staff news, the Youth Services team participated in an informative training workshop focusing on Autism Spectrum Disorder which you will hear about shortly. Two aides on-boarded but two just left . We did hire an Adult Services Librarian which we are excited about. We interviewed four candidates in a thorough process, including a peer interview, team interview, and coffee. Mary was the lead on what was a lovely process. The Director feels like it really allowed Mary and her to deepen what is already a strong working relationship and resulted in a great librarian. The Director is reviewing the Library Assistant position in Youth Services. We are looking at our structure to better provide coverage for program services and outreach and to build on the investments we have made with existing staff in the grade below. We are realizing that the Clerk title does not fully meet our needs for coverage of the teen space, more people for program and outreach and more options for customer service desk coverage. We are having discussions with the Assistant City Manager and looking at budget impacts. We are working on Strategic Planning. We are reviewing past content, timeline, and engagement opportunities. We submitted a request to StatsCom to work on a community survey and already heard back from them. We will be setting up an initial meeting with them soon. The Director will be meeting with Brian Dieter from Mary Greeley to discuss their strategic planning process along with some key staff. We will be working towards creating a more solid timeline for the Board but at this time we are looking at sending a customer satisfaction survey out mid to late November, with a finished product in place by July. • Barchman asked the Director how the recent incident affected our staff. The Director gave a brief review of the incident at the Des Moines Public Library where a person entered their facility and started themselves on fire. Staff there did extinguish the person, but the person did later pass away. This incident has triggered conversations amongst our Safety and Management Teams. Staff appears to be handling the incident ok. We do have resources available for anyone wishing to utilize them through the Employee Assistance Program. The information is in the breakroom and will be included in the next "Director's Cut". APLFF Report: • The Pub Fiction was very successful with 152 participants however some establishments will not be allowed to participate in the future due to them not following the rules. • They are planning more Author Cafe events. • Liz has a lot of presentations going on. • TAG has a Menstruation Celebration event planned for May. They are trying to partner with Planned Parenthood. In April they are planning an Eco event and focus on individual footprints of people during the City Eco week. They have a lot of crafts going on in the teen space. They are talking about other events that are not as pinned down including a donation box, black art festival, a gala, and murder mystery. • The finance committee reviewed and accepted Form 990. • Literary Grounds raised $3462 last month. • The next lobby sale is going to be about woman, written by women, about suffrage. • The next book sale is going to be November 7-10. • The fundraising committee is being split into two groups. One group will organize the Author Cates, the other will organize the Pub Fiction. • There are two new APLFF Board members, Jennifer Garst and Cheryl Langston were appointed at the August meeting. • There was a very nice article in the Ames Tribune on September 16, 2019 about Malika Davis as the recipient of the 2019 Robert Mannheimer Youth Advocacy Award. Malika was very involved with TAG. Board Education: Youth Services Manager, Jerri Heid, gave a presentation to the Board about the recent Autism Spectrum Training that her staff attended. Before they attended this research, one of her interns had researched the topic and worked with ChildServe to look at our space and come up with some suggestions. Some key points from the presentation included: • Visual Schedules so child knows what is expected • Dim-able lights and/or curtains covering windows to reduce sensitivity to light • Fidgets, weighted lap pads, or items of different textures to explore during seated activities • Build in movement breaks for structured activities • Headphones for sensitivity to noise • Picture cues should be used to support verbal directions • Keep language simple and use appropriate rate of speech • keeping the kids integrated with others but making it possible to remove the group from the room as opposed from the child from the group, if the need arises. They will be starting a story time geared towards individuals with sensory sensitivities as well as looking at other options such as sensory bags to check out. A Board member did suggest asking local quilting clubs to see if they would be willing to make fidget quilts. Trustee Comments: • The Board members went around and briefly introduced themselves to Schildroth. • Butler added a welcome to Schildroth and stated again that she was excited to hear about Heid's work and all the things coming our way. • Marshall also added she was delighted to have Schildroth with us. Adjournment: Moved by Glatz, seconded by Barchman, to adjourn at 8:23 pm. Vote on Motion: 8-0. Motion approved unanimously. The next regular meeting will be on Thursday, October 15, 2019, at 7:00 p.m., in the Dale H. Ross Board Room, Ames Public Library, 515 Douglas Avenue. Melissa Johannes, Library Secretary J~ Mllr;ha[ Board Secretary