HomeMy WebLinkAbout2003-11-13 Library MinutesCITY OF APACHE JUNCTION
LIBRARY BOARD OF TRUSTEES
1177 N. Idaho Road
Regular Meeting
November 13, 2003
A,regular meeting of The Board of Trustees of Apache Junction Public Library
was held November 13, 2003, at 6:02 p.m. at the Apache Junction Library pursuant to
notice as prescribed by law.
Roll Call
Present Absent
Virginia Foat
Beverly Kimball -Wright
Rhonda Jackson
Theresa Nesser
Stephen Flynn
Staff: Pamela Loui, Library Director
I.Acceptance of Agenda:
2.Acceptance of minutes for
October 9, 2003 regular Meeting:
3.Call to the Public:
4.Correspondence and Communications:
5.Librarian's Report:
Joyce Payne
Michael Klatt
-
The question of accepting the agenda for the
November 13, 2003, regular Meeting was
placed before the Board.Theresa Nesser
made a motion to accept the agenda.
Rhonda Jackson seconded the motion and it
was unanimously accepted by .a voice vote.
The question of accepting the minutes for
the October 9, 2003, regular Meeting was
placed before the Board. Rhonda Jackson
made a motion to accept the minutes.
Theresa Nesser seconded the motion and it
was unanimously accepted by a voice vote:
No member of the public wished to address
the Library Board.
None.
There will be a celebration for the City's
25 th Anniversary on Monday, November
24 th at the City Hall Complex.The event
will take place from 5:00 — 8:00 p.m.Pam
reviewed the monthly report.We have been
City of Apache Junction
Library Board of Trustees
Regular Meeting
Page 2
6. Old Business:
a.Migration to Horizon
update and discussion
on our new Horizon system for most of the
month.Statistics are a little different from
previous months due to the new system.
Books, videos, in-house computer use and
magazines exceeded 1 year ago.Audio
materials and AV kits show a substantial
decrease.We are working with Horizon and
believe that this system counts some
statistics a different way than the previous
system.We are trying to get it to count the
previous way.Patron visits continue to be
high.We are adding materials back into our
system and also withdrawing materials.
Programs included 5 babytimes with 112 in
attendance and 10 storytimes with 204
attendees. There were 5 sessions of the NAU
Literacy Project with 206 in attendance and
3 Family Place Parent/Child Workshops
with 48 in attendance.One RIF visit to
Headstart took place with 20 attendees and 4
presentations of the Battle of the Books
were held with 186 in attendance.There
were 2 RIF distributions with 53 attendees
and 1 GAIN night (community outreach)
with 490 attendees.There was 1 TAB
meeting with 12 attendees and 1 Teen book
discussion with 11 in attendance. One
session of the Teen Chat Café was held with
48 attendees.Adult events included the
"Here and There Book Club" event with 5
attendees and a "Dying for a Mystery Book
Club" with 14 in attendance.There were 4
sessions of the Writers Club with 29
attendees, 6 computer classes with 42 in
attendance and 6 one-on-one PIT stops.The
Quarterly Reference Survey was conducted
the week of October 20-25, 2003.There
were 914 requests received with 840
requests completed the same day.
We have gone live,on Horizon. There are
still some :bugs to work oilt:Spencer is
working with Tri4i. Pelletier and Karen
Rauls to address these issue's. 'Both Trish
City of Apache Junction
Library Board of Trustees
Regular Meeting
Page 3
7.New Business:
a.Meeting library staff
member.
b.Planning for Results
discussion, selection
of the Library Boards'
representative to the
Planning for Results
Committee, recommendations
for names of other Committee
members, and approval of the
Committee's meeting dates and
times.
and Karen just got back from the Customers
of Dynix conference.There they were able
to gain new information in helping them
solve challenges with the changes in the way
the system works.
Trish Pelletier — Trish is Head of Technical
Services.Trish oversees the ordering of
materials and cataloging of materials.She
also supervises the Head of Circulation.She
assists at the Youth Services, Reference and
Circulation desk weekly.She is very
excited about the new Horizon system.
Trish arrived here about the same time the
building was opened.She has been here for
17 years.
Steven Flynn asked Trish if she was familiar
with the USA PATRIOT Act and Trish
responded that she was.She told that she
had attended a session at the CODI
Conference with Judith Krug of the
American Library Association who spoke on
the topic of intellectual freedom and
included information on the USA PATRIOT
Act.
Pam has met with facilitator, Wendy
Skevington.Wendy recommends Thursday,
January 15 th:and Thursday; February 5th
from 10-3 p.m. and Thursday, March 4th
from 10 -12,-p.m. to meet the Planning
Committee members..Lunch will also be
provided. The following members have been
selected to serve on the committee:Friends
City of Apache Junction
Library Board of Trustees
Regular Meeting
Page 4
'of the Library, ShirleyDewey, Teen
Advisory Board, Adam Kalik and staff
member, Stephanie'Greene.The March 4 th
meeting is optional:It is an opportunity to
review the draft and make any final
comments on it.We are trying to get as
many representatives of community
stakeholders as possible.It has been
recommended to try to get a person that
wears more than one hat.For example a
small business owner who also does
homeschooling.We would like to get a
diverse group made up of men and women.
The committee will be visioning for the
whole community.They will be identifying
needs that they see in the community and
they will be looking at how a library might
address some of those needs.They will be
selecting from a list of service responses
(i.e. information literacy, current topics and
titles, lifelong learning and consumer
information).They will not be expected to
write up any reports.They will be
brainstorming and visioning.There will be
no assignments to work on at the end of the
day.We are just looking for individual
input as to what areas we should approach
and take the input back to the staff and
Library Board.The staff and Pam will
write up the actual goals and objectives
based on those service responses and things
the Committee members think our library
should be focusing on for the next 3 to 5
years. The third meeting is to look at the
draft that has been put together.A Motion
was made by Theresa Nesser that Rhonda
Jackson be the Board member to serve on
the Planning for Results Committee. Motion
was seconded by Beverly Kimball -Wright.
All members present were in favor.Motion
was made by Rhonda Jackson to accept the
dates and times for the Planning for Results
Committee.Motion was seconded by
Theresa Nesser and all members present
were in favor.
City of Apache Junction
Library Board of Trustees
Regular Meeting
Page 5
c.Presentation and discussion
on the Library Services and
Technology Act Grant the
Library has received to offer three
new computer classes to adults.
d.Discussion on a Community
Development Block Grant
opportunity for a Library
rehab project.
:16
The Library applied for a LSTA grant
entitled EMPOWER (Electronically
Managed Portable Online Web Education
and Review).It is designed to increase the
computer literacy of adults.We will be
doing this by having a consultant create 3
lessons for us on using the library's catalog,
accessing the library's databases, and
searching the internet beyond the basic class
that we have offered the last 3 years. The
idea is to create a wireless network that will
allow us to set up 20 laptop computers in
our program room.Our consultant will
present classes.There will be a pretest that
each member of the class will take.They
will have the class and then there will be a
post test.In addition to that, once these
things are in place, we will have a second
person who is a webmaster come in and take
the powerpoint presentation used by the
instructor and turn it into something
available over the web on those same 3
topics.The entire amount of the grant
awarded to us was $38,900.00.We think
that we are going to end up with a project
when we are finished that will be a model
for other libraries. We hope to offer these
classes sometime towards the first of next
year.
At the last Library Board meeting we
discussed the possibility of pursuing a
Community Development Block Grant
opportunity.The Health and Human
Services commission met to review the
projects that had been brought to their
attention through meetings with
Leadership team members from the City
and a public meeting.The City Manager
City of Apache Junction
Library Board of Trustees
Regular Meeting
Page 6
.brought Up the idea bf using a special
grant like this to help us do the rehab for
the Library, the Senior Center, and the
Lobby parts of the library that need to
have renovation.They invited all of the
top projects named and identified at their
meetings to come and do a presentation.
It sounds like they are still looking
favorably at this project.Pam passed
around a printout of her powerpoint
presentation that shows some of the
things that could be purchased if we
receive this grant. On December 2, Pam
has been asked to come to the Council
meeting where they will talk about these
projects again. The Health and Human
Services Commission will be making a
recommendation to the Council at that
time.We are hoping that we will be
recommended.The way the process
works is that the Council will identify a
project(s) to go forward and then
sometime around May or June, they
actually submit the application to the
State.The State has a lottery process in
which they go from the I s' up thru the
point where they are out of money.
They look at each project and if the
project meets their guidelines it is
funded.When they run out of money,
they stop funding.Pam Loui stated that
since our City is more than 50% low-
mod,a project like a library is going to
do something for the whole community.
She believed what the Board wanted to
see happen was building more space as
well, but we are trying to identify how
we can expend and have operational a
part of the overall project.We want to
break out a portion that we can do for
this amount of money.She then went
through the powerpoint handouts. Some
things that may be included for the grant
are carpet replacement, 3 security gates
and self checkout equipment.She then
encouraged Board members to attend the
December 2 Council meeting.
City of Apache Junction
Library Board of Trustees
Regular Meeting
Page 7
Steven Flynn then stated,"With the self
checkout,Home Depot already does this
and so does Fry's and some people really
enjoy it, and others, they like the face to
face.People have been buying food over
5000 years face to face.There's a school
district in Ohio and there are others that now
require digital thumb scanning.To me
that's creepy.And when I talk to people
about that they agree.I've never heard of
someone who says I want to get my thumb
scanned. That makes me feel all warm and
fuzzy.I just hope I never see that here."
Pam Loui replied,"What they do is scan
your barcode and then scan your book and
it's true, some people won't ever enjoy this.
But, as you look at our statistics and how
they're growing every year, it's either add a
lot of additional staff to accommodate this
or figure out a way for people who are
comfortable checking out their own
groceries or checking out their own books or
whatever to use that technology.I agree
with you.I personally like to hand it to
somebody and let them scan my groceries."
Steven Flynn added, "Also, I would hate to
see someone lose their job over this.Pam
Loui responded,"No one would lose their
job.We are so in need of additional staff
that that is not an issue.We need so much
additional staff and that cost keeps on
mounting and mounting that if we can get
some technology in there and take some of
the load off the existing staff, so they don't
quit because they are too overwhelmed, that
it will be a benefit for everybody.There
will be a learning curve on it too.There will
be a time that staff will be showing people
how to use it.Just about every library out
there has this.Go to Mesa, go to Chandler
they all are using it."Virginia Foat stated,
"Well, it's not an either or."Pam Loui
replied,"They may choose which they wish
to do.If they are comfortable going to the
person, then they still have that opportunity.
Some people just don't like waiting in lines
City of Apache Junction
Library Board of Trustees
Regular Meeting
Page 8
and if they can do it themselves, they would
much rather do it."Virginia Foat replied,
"It's just like gas stations, you can stay in
the car or you can go in or go out and so
forth and so on." Theressa Nesser added,
"You learn to do that from those long lines
and you learn to do a lot of that when there
are long lines.I find myself going to the
regular grocery line except this time a year
when there's a lot of winter visitors here and
the lines backed up. I'll go down there and
scan it myself, stick my dollar in and try to
follow the instructions and not screw it up."
Steven Flynn responded "I'm also
concerned about the picking up catches.
When you're dealing with the federal
government, the devil's in the details times
at least 10.At least in public education, I
can't speak for public libraries but in public
education.Is that thing on?I hate the feds
ok, so... and I gladly say that. It's just they
cause so much trouble for what little money
that's ours anyway.So, I just hope you'll
advise me of any catches you think might be
present." Rhonda Jackson said,"It's really
like your regular checkout.As soon as your
stuff is checked back in, the record of that
disappears so it's not going to change the
way that the library operates.It's not going
to allow anybody to come in and get your
record because your record is disappearing
as your books are checked in. It's basically
the same system except that the only thing
that's really changing is that you're doing it
yourself"Steven Flynn added,"Right, it's
not just the technology, it's how many...in
education we keep track of race.To me
that's racist.That's just an example.
There's so many catches and again here, I
don't know, because I've never worked in a
library, never ran a library, so I can only
speak about education and research I've
done in other areas."
City of Apache Junction
Library Board of Trustees
Regular Meeting.,•
Page .9 „.,_
Determine Whether or not a
•special meeting will be
_needed in December.
8.Request for future agenda items:
9. Adjournment:
PresA ent
Secretary,
/Jhig4
Pam mentioned that at the last meeting it
was decided not to hold the December
meeting at the regular time due to the
Arizona State Library Association
conference.The decision was left for this
meeting to determine whether or not a
meeting would be held in December on
another date or whether the December
meeting would be skipped.A motion was
made by Rhonda Jackson to hold the regularLibrary meeting on December 4th at 6:00
p.m. instead of December 11 th due to the
meeting conflict.Motion was seconded by
Theresa Nesser.All members present were
in favor.
Old Business.
Selection of committee members for the
Planning for Results committee.
CDBG Grant update
New Business.
Meeting adjourned at 7:31 p.m.