The Ainsworth Library Board held their regular monthly meeting on July 10, 2014. This meeting was advertised in the local newspaper, over the radio, on the library website, and posted at the library. President Kara Welch called the meeting to order at 5:05 p.m. Notice was given on the posting of the Open Meeting Law. Roll call showed four members present: Mandy Evans, Todd Flynn, Phyllis Leach, and Kara Welch. Member Mark Kovar was absent. Library Director, Gail Irwin, was also present for the meeting.
Mandy Evans made the motion to approve the minutes. Todd Flynn seconded this with all members voting in favor of. Phyllis Leach moved to approve the claims for payment. Mandy Evans seconded this motion and all voted in favor of. The Board spent time doing a review of the spending on the budget. The Monthly Library Report for June was presented as well as a list of titles purchased.
An update was given on Phase Two of Library Improvements. It was noted that the lighting project has been completed at a cost of $15,356. Half of this project will be paid for by the Library Foundation. The LED lights are a big improvement and we now have lots of light. Director will contact Travis to sign his name on the applicant form for our energy rebate. The new seating for the fireplace area has arrived. People are really enjoying the new love seat and two gliders. The Library Foundation will be paying for this with memorial money. In the Teen Area, the rug and café table/chairs have arrived. We are still waiting for the seating by the window. These will be paid with a grant from the Brown County Foundation. Discussion was held on the flooring project. We will start to raise funds for this project with a Garden Walk to be held the end of July. Instead of a Saturday morning walk, we decided to try holding an evening walk. Board members will need to bring food to the Garden Walk.
A review was given on the “Fizz Boom Read” Summer Reading Program held in June. See the monthly report for attendance numbers at the Toddler Time, Preschool Story Time, K-4th Grade Summer Reading, and the Middle School Lunch Bunch. An ending picnic was held on July 3rd. Top reading the K-1 st grade group was Olivia Beel and Ben Flynn in the 2nd-4th grade group. All the readers completing the program will have their names submitted for the state wide NEST 529 College Saving Drawing in August. It was noted that photos from all the programs have been posted on the library’s website. A special thank you cards will be sent to Pam Bauer and Katie for their help with the K-4th grade Fun Hours.
An update was given on the Smart Investing @ your Library grant. It was noted that Laurie and Gail have completed the staff financial on-line training. The post-test will be taken next week. It was noted that the promotional material has arrived. Each new resource item has a comment card inside for patrons to fill out after using. These cards will be sent in to the Library Commission once a month for their record keeping on the grant. Our next project is to do a display of the new items and promote them. We will start to plan our public training in the near future.
Information was shared on OverDrive. Our library participated in the challenge to increase circulation in June. We should hear soon if the challenge was met and if our Nebraska group will get the increase in free ebooks. The results of the Kids/Teen eReading Rooms ballot were shared with the Board. It was noted that the majority chose a combined Kids and Teens eReading Room. OverDrive has started the process to set this up and we will be contacted when it is ready to use. Notice has been received that OverDrive removed the Disney Online Books from our digital collection due to problems accessing them. Disney is working to restore the service and will be notified when access is restored. They will extend the annual subscription by the total number of days the service was unavailable.
The Board worked on the upcoming budget request for 2014-2015. Buddy Small had called the Library Director and stated that the Commissioner’s did receive our request for funds and the request was noted at their meeting. They will let us know about the funding request after they complete their work on the county budget. The City Clerk did sent the requested amounts for the items that we needed help on. The board decided to ask $15,000 in capital improvements for the flooring project. The Board will finish the budget at their next meeting.
It was noted that Gail has been asked to be on the library system consolidation committee and to attend a meeting on August 1st at the Lexington Public Library from 10 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. We will be discussing how we can establish a governing board for the new Region (i.e. how to get board members seated—elections or appointments—and how representation of all libraries will be ensured), the name of the new Region, and how we can provide services to this large region (in the beginning we will have 2 professionals, Denise Harders and Sharon Osenga—will we split counties or will we determine specific aspects of service each professional will be responsible to accomplish). We will also need to discuss which system will dissolve into the other.
Under correspondence we had information on a service that a library does call Glasses Half Full. The library has a glass at the checkout desk full of reading glasses from the dollar store. They buy different magnifications and sticks a label on the frame with the 1.5, 2. etc. along with the word Library. No more “I forgot my glasses, could you read this to me?” Information was shared on the Pilger Public Library and how the tornado affected it. The roof was gone but the books were ok. The library is requesting people not to send any books to them as they currently have their collection in a pod right now. Merri Schneider from Northeast community College has been in contact with our library to set up some dates for some classes in the fall. Intro to Digital photography class will be at our library on September 18 & 25 from 6:30 – 9:30 p.m. A Windows 8 class will be held in the evening on November 18th. Various articles of interest from library newsletters and journals were also shared.
The next meeting date was set for August 7th at 5 p.m. Since there was no further business to come before the board, the meeting was adjourned at 5:45 p.m.
