##VIDEO ID:5GU-wO0FPBI## [Music] at 6:05 p.m. uh let me see I have the agenda right here we have with us um no not yet yeah I didn't see anything either uh so let me see we'll uh do the minutes um does anybody want to read the minutes from uh last month you want me to read them sure if you understand that would be great okay I [Music] go if anybody else shows up oh oh okay all right I'm reading the minutes I guess Library trustee minutes meeting and meeting minutes July 9th 2024 meeting call to order at 602 too present director Jen Crosby chair Paul abolio benette Arenal Jennifer chauan Denise KY Helen herto Michelle petus and Candace riro absent Nita Abbott and Kate Mercier minutes of last month's trustey meeting meeting were accepted as amended with a motion by Candace seconded by Denise all in favor director's report building update a section of shelving in the ch Gold's room was stabilized due to wobbling also the pump for the fountain in Alice's Garden is not working luberry notified and tried a few things but unable to get it working again Helen detected class grph to see if anyone there can address the issue as they do Market fish ponds and fountains also could check with James White with white Hollow landscaping for possible resource operations up dat summer reading program is in full swing Aris report has started Aris is a report of usage and statistics it is due in August Community survey the survey is almost ready to go live Jen has applied for tax exemption through Survey Monkey to upgrade our plan at organization pricing to get the survey live questions on the survey will cover what direction the patrons would like to see the library moving types of programs facilities it will be available in print form and online through social media and email Jen will send out ahead of time to Trustees for a test run to make sure everything is working the information received from this survey will help to write the library's 5-year plan the new plaque in memory of longstanding Library trustees was presented when May C still is the first and only name at this time friends update book sale coming in September donations are now being accepted in manageable amounts Jen reports the friends have been very active there is an increased fundraising and they have a new PR person for publicity and exposure current statistics update circulation for June 2024 was 5,100 46 total Network transfers were 3,602 557 items received and 3,044 items sent the library saved the town's people 67,000 this is a definite increase over the past months warrants $1,928 40 to Demco Baker and Taylor 3,348 $2 Tech MD derenzi Business Technologies go next speed go next speed Baker and Taylor the Library store Midwest tape motion made by Jennifer chauan to accept and sign warrant seconded by Helen all in favor other review of the duties and responsibilities of the grand Public Library Board of Trustees discussion held on the length of terms of the chair and vice chair presently set at two years with the understanding that the vice chair would move into the office of the chair for a smooth transition pros and cons of the longer term for each were discussed and board voted to accept the present duties responsibilities and terms as laid out with no changes motion made by Candace seconded by Denise all in favor Jen received a phone call or a followup with letter from the chairperson of Gran's Democratic town committee requesting that their monthly meetings which are held at the library be posted on the library calendar which is on the library website up to this point only the library sponsored events have been posted on this calendar discussion held and it was decided that if the library posts this meeting SL event all should be post all should be posted Jen is agreeable to a trial period period is this is extra work on her part and will amend the application for Library use to include the posting or not motion made by Helen to offer outside groups of posting on the library calendar on a trial basis seconded by Denise meeting adjourned at 7:01 next meeting August 13th 2024 6: p.m. expect to be submitted Michelle pet recording secretary nice the anything I saw was uh under other responsibilities um about six lines down missing there were a couple of Rogue um commas in the warrants as well which I can um Can goad and fix for Michelle as well yeah I only saw one um um in the J received a phone call and the followup letter from um that that paragraph the library was used to include the posting or not but with no um um no it was it was the last line a posting on the library calendar on a trial basis and I figured a comma seconded by Denise okay I know it's something trivial it's okay right that's fine right okay uh anybody want to make a motion to um accept the minutes as amended I'll make a motion to accept the minutes as amended I'll second it all in favor [Music] okay so you must have a lot on your director's report to talk about I have a few things to discuss um okay so my building update the air conditioning dehum dehumidifying unit was fixed once again um then the building is freezing now CU it's working really really well um it was pushing out 64 degree air today um um but there's still something a miss seeing as it was 58 in the conference room and 63 in the Great Hall um but Jeremy was able to come in and turn the um boilers on that will'll hopefully assist with that he said it would just take a few hours so we're waiting on that um fire detection systems installed a new M2M on the fire alarm we were getting constant trouble signals on this this is the unit that relays the alarm information from the building to the companies involved so like the the monitoring company um and it was tripping constantly so they just replaced that so now you should be sending constant trouble signals to the fire department uh the town has a new IT company called entree Technologies they are out of West Springfield they came in and replaced our outdated firewall and our Wi-Fi routers the company workers are super nice very ible when it comes to public libraries which I found very helpful they understood what CW Mars was um that was really comforting to know that I didn't have to explain this to um people when their job is to know more than I do about these things so I'm very grateful for them they were super nice um we'll be working with them in the future um our operations update our summer reading programs are ending this week if you have any adult summer reading um Bingo sheets out you can zoom them in um by Friday our book sales gearing up we're taking donations until the 29th of this month and that starts on September 3rd the library has been getting some press recognition which is wonderful we had our messages from the other side program here last month with leis salano which we had an article about that I did an interview with a reminder about our book sale they're going to do an article about that and they're also going to run an article about the school supply drive that we have been hosting here run by our local NHS student Austin Smith he's been doing um a supply drive and he asked to have a spot here for people to donate and um representative Mindy Dom came in with donations for it so we had a little photo op me and her um oh that was nice I sent that over to the reminder too so they're going to do a little something about that as well and then um gcam visited um when we had our book group night and did an interest piece on it including an interview with me I don't know what it sounds like I don't know if it's any good but it's out there it's out there in the world if um whoever watching Hollywood's [Music] calling I have no idea if I sounded like a bumbling idiot but did it it's all that matters um the community survey that I've been working on so hard um we're actually putting it on hold I reached out to the nblc to talk about dates and you know the long range planning and everything and he called me and he was like Jen that's not due until 2026 okay it starts 2026 so it's due technically in 2025 so I wasn't super far off but I was about a year early in that so it's still in the works we're still planning on doing the survey we might just put it on hold for a little while so we can get more accurate information closer to that time for oh nice yeah I guess I was ahead of myself which is sometimes nice to hear um oh Nita is joining us beautiful We'll add her in Via actually library right now awesome um let me see and then the ethics training I spoke with Kathy she said it's due every two years our new members who aren't here tonight will need to get on board and do it right away everyone else can sign up with a login and password with that info that I sent you um and then every year at this time you'll get a reminder to log in either to complete the training or to verify that you received the ethics information for that year hopefully the send all the reminders so that Kathy doesn't have to keep reminding us oh so the reminder is going to come every year so you'll probably get like an email every year that says hey here's the updated info well it says that you need to complete something every year and then something every other year it's kind of like a receipt that you got the information every other year and then the opposite here you would have to actually take the training so if we go in log in they should know where we're at cuz I can't remember when I okay it should have the updated information if for some reason it doesn't let me know and I can have Kathy send me the date of when you last completed yours she has that on one file so this should be done within the next month or so yeah the next month um don't try to get it done did anybody else get the email it it didn't say you need to do this it was just kind of like an Ethics training and I thought it was one of those kind of just junk mail kind of things so I reached out to Jen this was a bit ago oh I don't know cuz I've done this when I so if ran again just thought in May whenever it was so then you're all set that's the same thing I guess yeah so you're all set this makes it easier CU now you don't have to print it and fight with you know getting that document over Cy it'll just automatically update your your state and it's very useful information too yeah yeah it's really really fun that's where they ask you questions right and then you have to choose take a test yeah did that I took a copy of the thing s i don't imagine the info changes a whole lot year to year but then again I don't know that um okay so I've got that out if you could just make a note to try to get yourself logged in and figure out where you're at if you have any trouble with it let me know um my friends update our book sale is coming I already said that donations being accepted until August 29th we have quite a bit now so that's good everything is brand new everything from the last sale was taken away so this will be an all fresh brand new book sale um okay and then I have my ays report was due I submitted it last week we got it signed and sent out between me and Paula um so I wanted to give everybody I didn't want to send it out because it was 25 pages and it's a lot it's not really like the most reader friendly um so I figured I would write some Trends and read them to everyone to kind of give an overview and if you had any questions we can talk about the form um um so basically this is the um report that I send to the state every year of all of our statistics it shows what we have in the building what we circulate what programs we have like the number of people that come in the building the number of reference transactions basically our usage and our Holdings for the year the adult print Holdings was slightly increased our print periodicals which are our magazines was slightly down um um due to less magazines being purchased people aren't really taking out physical magazines as much um audio and video were both slightly down due to weeding and less demand and our ebooks and our downloadable audio both went way up because people are really super big into the um online stuff our Young Adult and Children's Holdings went slightly down due to our weeding project where we got rid of all of our what we call Dusty books that haven't circulated our ebooks and downloadable audio both went up also in those categories the circulation of adult print books went up by almost 1 th000 checkouts this year our print periodicals was down audio circulation was up about 180 circulations not a timeon the video circulation was up by about 466 our ebooks went down slightly since last year but the downloadable audio took off with 518 more circulations than the previous year and our miscellaneous stuff our Museum passes our hotpots those all went up by 50 circulations so for the most part everything trending upward um young adult print circulation went up by 487 print period periodicals went from 17 to 62 due to us offering more this year than we did the year before our audio circulations went up to 78 from 31 so not a lot lot but um better our ebooks and downloadable audio stayed about the same for teens the children's print circulation went up by 1,149 circulations print per periodical was down audio circulation went up by 169 video went up by 278 the ebooks were slightly down but downloadable audio for children also went up so it's kind of interesting to see like the ebooks are becoming like a little less popular but the audio downloadable audio has seemed to really the people are listening to a lot these days which is kind of cool to see that Trend happening on the usage of our databases and online learning platforms went up from 2,800 to 15,000 almost 16,000 um this includes our mango language learning the hoopla which is a big one Scholastic teachables ancestry and Heritage Quest so all of the things that we pay for here on our local level went up by a ton um was really exciting to see that happen um I think hoopla is our biggest our biggest one there we went um when we first started using hoopla it cost the library between 50 and $75 a month and it has gone up to about $350 per month with the usage we've had it's been incredible to see a little scary sometimes but we have the grant funding you know the money's there so yeah it's not that big of a deal I want to kind of watch it and make sure it doesn't go much over that because then we probably have to tap the brakes a little bit but for right now we're kind of I'm just glad to see people using it so we're okay yeah it's nice to see people utilizing uh things that the library has to offer yeah can I ask about Libby is that part of yes Libby is part of the let me see so the adult circulation the ebooks and downloadable audio in our network is um the Holdings on that went way up because they have purchased a lot more the circulations that's the one where the ebook circulation was a little bit down but the audio circulation was a lot up um that came from CW Mars and those statistics as all from the Libby app so Libby app also still getting a ton of usage I find that because there are a lot of really long wait times people would rather go over to hoopla because you don't have to wait so oh that's the only down part of liby is that people do get kind of frustrated when you find out your number 76 in line for you know a book that see that D Mars only has two copies of in the system um gets a little disappointing you know so you go over to hoopla and theyve got it right away and he oh okay and so it makes sense that people would be um kind of gravitating toward that one the um inter Library lending went up in both borrowing and lending probably between 600 and 700 items each our non-resident circulation went from 24,000 to 27,000 so we're definitely servicing a lot um outside our community which is okay because we get an offset cost um an offset grant for that so I always tell you people you know don't worry too much about other patrons from other libraries using us because it's a good thing for us we get more money we get better books we get you know we can afford to pay for the hoopla that way so it's it's all you know we're we're doing really great in our community try to remind everybody it's CommunityWide um overall everything is looking up our Trends seem to be leaning toward online usage but our print materials are still going strong people are using the library like never before yeah it's it's is exhausting but it's amazing so the one thing you said that we were down in was the young children's magazines uh I forget what you ter magazines aren't really so like what kinds of magazines are the young children's we get the um like the National Geographic Kids Ranger Rick Ranger Rick Geo little kids okay um I think the the main drawback with those is that they're very Y and they are prone to getting ripped torn you know ruined very easily and I feel like a lot of parents of younger children aren't going to gravitate as much to those because they don't want to have to then owe the liary money because their little kids ripped it or whatever it maybe um but like the teen circulations went up and we we've been offering more um in the way of the Teen ones so sometimes it's just kind of like the E and flow of what people are looking for I found that the the beginning of like opening after Co nobody was looking for audio books anymore because everyone found Libby and HLA and they were like oh this is great I don't even have to get CDs anymore and it was like wait but what about our CD collection um and so that kind of took a little bit of a nose dive but um it has since come up so really not that much of a worry CU I find whenever something is kind of lacking we're increasing in other places so it really um how do you track the number of people the number of people we do monthly uh quarterly surveys so I have basically like a piece of paper at the desk and everyone basically counts all week how many reference transactions how many people came in the door how many programs you had how many people came to this that how many people used remember that yes we did but that thing it stopped working unfortunately and we have not re it but we we do it manually and we do it once per quarter so we do it like in the busy time in the summer we do one in the fall one in the spring kind of you know makes sense to then take those numbers and you know make an approximation for the year based on mhm on those numbers and it's it's fun too it's kind of cool to see it in real time um and get everybody on board with helping with that which is kind of fun um jumping to our current statistics just to give you an idea I thought this is really kind of funny so last month our circulation where are our minutes our circulation last month in June was um 5,146 our circulation for July was 6,391 so we went over a, more than the previous month our Network transfers were 4,265 and we saved our Community approximately $80,000 in the past month it's been a busy busy summer but it's really cool to see you know getting to kind of compare everything over just you know month to month and then getting to see that whole year as compared to the whole year before uh people are definitely using the resources I think people need the library now especially more than ever to save some money MH um I know I can't go to Barnes & Noble without dropping at least 50 bucks so I can imagine but that's like for families of young children yeah well that's why they depend on the library too yeah you know absolutely is there a place where you have a list of all the passes that are available through the library do it's on our website there is a drop- down menu where you can um pull that up on our website I do have a paper form of it also that I need to update but I do have paper forms and on the website because we do have some really great passes we just added Mass mocha and the Emily Dickenson house now has a pass so you can check that out um yeah so we've got a lot of new stuff M that I said that already um what's the other one Norman Ro we have him too Carl Museum Children's Museum all that stuff Historic Deerfield we've had them forever so there's a lot um that people can take advantage of that definitely helps offset costs for them um any questions about the statistics sounds like um this past month was like the highest that's been yeah this past month definitely I'd be interested to see what August is um in comparison to what July was that was definitely Ely it's been busy we've been keeping on our to I noticed there was tons of cars in a lot of because you guys had some great program yes you think the programs really draw people in and get them getting more books out definitely I know like having the children's we have the nature story times we have had bug hunt lots of fun stuff um and then we even had like some of the adult programs too brought a lot of people that don't normally come to our library which is nice people getting new library cards which can be insane all the program is happening like everyone's getting library cards at the same time but it's um it's worth it it's it's a lot of fun to get new people in the door that are like oh well I've never even been here before well where I have you been you're here now but yeah it's been it's been really good it's been definitely a good summer um I will be holding a staff meeting to discuss those stats with my staff to kind of give them a little bit of feedback and give them some ideas about where they might want to take their collection or um you know if they like want to add more magazines or whatever they might want to look at that we'll be talking about that the importance of pulling those holds that come through um because that number the non-resident number has a lot to do with the the holds that we pull for people to come in and to go out um and then also I will make sure that they also do their ethics training because that's a requirement for them as well and um yeah so I'll be having a nice little meeting little end of summer meeting I think with the staff to make sure that I touch on all those points with them too is it just your just the staff or is it include the volunteers probably just do the um main staff and then maybe do the volunteers on a one by one basis it's really hard to get them all in it once yeah yeah those volunteers they stagger which is good that's what how we want it um I'll probably give them all a little rundown and and explain it to them too so that they kind of understand the importance of pulling the paging holds um getting those items out um but yeah we'll be doing all that that's on my agenda for the next week um what about the um the air conditioning are they going to yes so they fixed the dehumidifying unit which was why the air conditioning wasn't working it was just like all that condensation was getting trapped and then it was raining in the building they've since fixed that as of last Thursday SL Friday um and now they just um have to reopen the it's kind of confusing but you have to like turn the boilers on to keep things from getting too cold um so that should be Jeremy's going to keep an eye on that he said he get back to me to make sure that it all works properly oh okay it's a saga it's an ongoing saga always it will be swing and told by the time we get it fix I'll have to turn the heat on again and you'll be ready to kill me J N Out um I'm leav he's back yeah he is back he's not I don't think at full capacity but he's back you know kind of getting things going again goodar desk work yeah basically coming in and out but not heavy lifting or anything manual so that's been really good having him back it's nice to know what they're doing yeah and I did want to speak about um the solar pump um James White I spoke to him and he said he's going to come out and check it out we might have to just buy buy the pump and then just have them replace it I asked him to make sure you know that he knew we had a budget and we want to pay for it so hope you know and I said it's you know nothing that's really pressing so it gets to it okay thank you for doing that it's another great resource they've been wonderful to us yeah awesome okay well keep us posted keep me posted um let me see oh so we want to do the warrants your your director's report is all yeah my director's report's done um we have three warrants um one for 9646 for fire detection systems Baker and Taylor Bay scan and demo there's one for 17982 for Baker and Taylor Blackstone publishing and Midwest tape and then the third one is 23908 to goet speed Baker and Taylor HW Wilson Scholastic and the horn book anybody want to make a motion to accept the warrant make a motion to accept the warrants as presented by the director no second it all in favor I I I realize we get go we have goet here yes that is actually for the copper wire phone lines that are um fire detection system runs through oh so that's the only thing we there's no internet through that or nothing like that internet's all through um Comcast and um this new company you just spoke of didn't you say they're the IT company that Services it all okay but they don't provide the ser this that's um Comcast and Crocker through mask Broadband um we have a lot happening this they know what they're doing yeah it's a lot okay um can I mention something about this um this is from Jean because we ended up um talking about uh getting her a gift card or certificate for over well Class Grass for when her sister passed away so um she ended up giving sending something for the trustees for [Music] us um just a thank you card your thoughtfulness means much more than words can say thank you for so much for your kind gift it means a lot to me and my family we will be purchasing a tree for our yard in memory of my sister with much appreciation Jean so that was very nice and along those lines I wanted to see about with Lauren McIntyre who passed away who was our um president of the friends committee to see if there's something that we could do for her in her memory I was trying to think of something but I didn't know if we could all think of something I think you had a few ideas however not in a sense of what you're suggesting I think yes so we had um talked about it at our friends meeting um oh okay gosh and it was something about she had a list of books she wanted to read yeah so she um I spoke with her best friend Colleen and in speaking with her she said that um Lauren did have wishes that any donations in L of flowers be made to the Friends of the library so that that's setup that's um happening now um and uh she also wanted her entire book collection donated to the library which I told colen not to rush to take her time with that um that we would take them and put them to use either in the collection or to the book sale which will go to the friends um and then my idea was to go on um Lauren and I are friends on Goodreads and on Goodreads you can see someone's Tob red pile we call their TBR pile so there books that they had intended to read um and I thought well wouldn't it be kind of cool to have like a community shelf like a community table or shelf for Lauren that had those books on there that people could come and take one and help us finish Lauren's TV our pile um it's like a a little not plaque but like a sticker inside the book like when you do a in memory of somebody exactly um and then have kind of like a something people could sign that said that they read this book in honor of Lauren whatever even have like a little shelf named after her um where we could have that going because I didn't realize at the time that Lauren had like 9 something books oh well okay of course she did because she was Lauren and she loved reading and um you know I kind of feel like that's going to happen to me too someday I'm going to have this epic list of books that I never got to finish and I think that's just going to happen and okay um but I thought it would be kind of neat to have that be a way that the community could help us in M you know remembering her one thing I was thinking if the trustees wanted to have like a contribution or a part in it I was thinking about maybe having like a little plaque just like a tiny one put on one of the shelves to say like Lauren shelf we could call it Lauren shelf and that's something that the trustees would like to do to fund that part of it so that there's kind of like a collaboration you know we could do that I think it's a great idea I do too I make a motion that we um fund the purchase price of a bookshelf plaque in Lauren's name I'll second that all in favor I I that would be a nice way to honor yeah yeah okay I'll get some pricing and things but they're they're typically not um super expensive so I'm sorry who seconded that uh Helen okay thank you too many hats on on here okay I think that would be that would be really nice then we can have it just be an ongoing thing you know kind of a cool way for people to to remember her so you know which book she has on her list yeah got the whole list on my good reads yeah yeah she she so incredible she read so much like I was always so jealous of how much reading she got done um what did she like she liked a lot of like the summary books historical fiction she she loved a lot of everything um I'm probably not going to be able to find her really quickly on here but she was just amazing how much she read and um it always had to be like the first one on the list for the summer books here here She is um is that an app to be read it is it's well it's um the Goodreads app is the the um I'm still trying to figure it out right I know she she had a book on here that she was currently reading and her want to read list is 999 book and I'm guessing that's only because they probably C it at that that it probably would have been more if it allowed her to have more um but she was really big into like alen hillbrand all the summary light books Light reading yeah I actually even got her into good reading like a dragon you know fantasy she just read everything she just so cool so I will have that kind of ongoing and I have one to donate toward it but I got a signed copy of um Catherine Newman's sandwich I got it from the Barnes & Noble in um Hadley she's actually from ammer the author that wrote that and I wasn't going to read it and then I picked it up because it was on Lauren's list and then were crying and I was like of course of course this is the one that makes me cry um yeah so just I think it would be a really fun project yeah great I met her um at like the first book group when it started here at the grammy Library what was it back in 201 12 maybe somewhere around there yeah um and and I just remember like coming in and we would have our book group and she would say uh I kind of kind of can't remember the finite details because I end up reading like four or five other the books in in like the course of the month and I'd just be like like what yeah incredible I I can't do that either like I have to read that book right before book grou otherwise yeah yeah yeah she she was fantastic and intelligent yeah oh did anybody have any other to add for tonight's meeting not that no look at us we didn't do to too bad tonight we didn't freeze in this building right my feet are cold though say my feet are cold and my nose is cold it's a little chilly but we survived you put a winter jacket um I know well do we still have policies that we wanted to like kind of go through for uh like starting I don't know maybe in September October I will take a look I'm sure we do on that may be use policies we can get back into um I'm working on going through the policies yeah working on our financial report so there's the statistical report to the state and then like immediately before it's even due they put out the financial one which isn't really fa um that one's due in October but I'm going to start it sooner than later to try to knock it out of the park so that we can get that discussed and then we can start on policies um but I'll definitely yeah when when when it's not overload for you awesome yeah definitely I think um we we were in the midst of working on a disaster preparedness plan that we never really got that finalized so um we can start there okay I'll put on here September October yeah and um we can get started on that I think it's it's it's probably time yeah be a fun yeah we can hold off till October to so that you know you can get the other stuff buttoned up perfect sounds good it us a fun little project to do for the winter okay uh would anybody like to make a motion to adjourn the meeting I'll make a motion to adjourn the meeting at uh oh 648 49 648 I don't yeah okay anybody want a second I'll second all in favor hi hi hi excellent well thank you Nita for joining us remotely Oh no you're good thanks for hopping on we're glad to to hear from you thank you Happ good night all right bye bye all right two last tomatoes