The Library Board met 02/23/2021.
They did make a slight amendment to the minutes from the previous meeting. There had been a typo that listed the meeting as starting at 4:03pm but it actually started at 4:30pm.
They welcomed Lisa Nett to the Board. Umika Sivasamy, who the mayor recently appointed to the Board, was not able to make the 02/23 meeting, so they decided to hold off introducing everyone until the next meeting.
They welcomed the Appleton Public Library’s new Materials Management Supervisor, Nicole Casner.
Nicole has a background in academic libraries, most recently at UCLA and at DePaul University in Chicago. She has mostly focused on acquisitions, both in operations and budget oversight. She has also introduced new services like moving from print to electronic and introducing a popular reading collection. She also worked on some larger scale projects. At DePaul University they moved a large number of materials to offsite shelving, did large scale weeding projects in order to make more room for student spaces. At UCLA she helped work on a large project to design, construct, and then move into a new staff space over the course of a year. In addition to that construction and design work they did a lot of backlog reduction so that they could fit into the space when they moved. A lot of projects she helped with focused on moving the organization forward, introducing new services, and supporting the community in whatever way they could. She was really happy to be at APL. She mentioned that this was her first Library Board meeting and the first time she has worked for a public library. She said that everyone has been really welcoming.
The Chairwoman [I can’t tell from reviewing online meeting details what her name is and I did not hear it mentioned during the meeting] proposed that they put all of the action items onto a consent agenda. She said that if anyone wanted to discuss the item regarding the Library Director’s Established 2021 Performance Goals they would need to separate that out from the consent agenda because any discussion about those goals would need to happen in closed session. Nobody wanted to discuss her performance goals so all the action items were placed on the consent agenda and they then went through it and discussed the different items.
Item 1 – The Bill Register
There were no questions, concerns, or discussion.
Items 2 and 3 – February 2021 Budget Amendment and Friends Budget 2021
Colleen Rordvedt, APL’s Director, explained that the budget amendment regarded the Friends’ grant fund for the first half of the year. The next item, Friends Budget 2021, gives the full picture regarding Friends grant funds for 2021. It also includes $21,000 in OWLS funding to help provide additional copies of popular materials. OWLS also provides $3,500 in training and travel support.
She stated that right now, the Friends 2021 grant fund shows a reduction in the second half of the year. That is an estimate. The Friends’ fiscal year does not coincide with the library’s fiscal year so they break their years into halves. The funding being provided by the Friends in January-December coincides with the first half of the Library’s fiscal year and the second half of the Friends’ fiscal year. They don’t yet know what the July-December distribution will be. So right now they’re being conservative and estimating a slightly reduced amount, but they can go back and amend that later if it turns out to be different than their estimate.
Item 4 – Personnel & Policy Committee Report
The Personnel and Policy Committee recommended approval of the Library Director’s 2021 performance goals.
They were also looking at doing a 360 evaluation which they thought would provide more tools and resources to do their annual evaluation.
After that discussion, the consent agenda was unanimously approved.
They then moved on to information items.
Tasha Saecker spoke about APL’s plans to reopen the building to public access. Appleton’s case numbers continue to drop as has the burden. They are looking at March first as the day that they will reestablish public access to the building. Staff is aware of that date and are already preparing. This will involve a large change to the way curbside pickup works. Immediate curbside pickup appointments won’t be available until sometime next week when they have the new system up and running. This will give them a chance to clear out the backlog. They’ll still be taking appointments scheduled a little further out. They’re excited to reestablish public access.
A board member heard from a friend that Neenah is opening their library a bit more broadly than APL is. She wondered if APL was prepared to answer questions regarding how/why they are doing things differently than other libraries nearby.
Per Colleen, during this entire time, every library has had a different set of criteria, metrics, and policies. She speaks regularly with the Neenah director who will tell people their building is a little more conducive to moving immediately into browsing and some of the services they’re been offering. Neenah had a very different process to get to where they are. APL does anticipate that they can move to browsing more quickly and are hoping that they can soon announce at least a timeline for that, assuming the rates continue to look as positive. Curbside and the other services they have been offering have been very time intensive. Anything they can do to allow patrons to have more autonomy and do things for themselves will be a huge relief for the very fatigued curbside staff.
A Board member wanted to know if APL had volunteers back? And was told that, yes, some volunteers are back.
They then moved on to the Building Project update.
Colleen did not have much to share outside of what was in the memo. They’re at a very exciting phase and have received a robust number of high quality proposals. They had a meeting with their internal review committee and have interviewed finalists and will be moving forward with the timeline that was detailed in the request for proposals. Everything is on track for the schedule that was shared in the memo.
It was confirmed that the next step in the timeline will be the Finance Committee meeting on March 8 followed by the Library Board meeting on March 16 and the Common Council meeting on March 17.
They moved on to APL’s Hiring Processes
Tasha mentioned that the Board already got to meet Nicole. She started on Monday, so this was day two for her. She mentioned that APL’s network services supervisor had resigned for a new opportunity that he was very excited about. His position is currently open and they have interviews for it happening on March 12. They’re also hiring for a very part time administrative library assistant position. The person who had formerly held that position left back in the spring of 2020, but they had not filled it because they weren’t actively in the building at that time. However, they’re now looking to replace that position and have interviews for it on the 18th of March. They’re also hiring for a full time clerk. The interviews for that have concluded and there’s an offer out and pending.
They then moved on to the Libraries Step Up and Library Advocacy Report
Board members had been given some postcards and a memo about the post cards. Colleen had also emailed everyone with supplemental material on how to find their representatives.
The Library Advocacy Day happened 02/26/2021 and was held virtually. The Library Board chairwoman attended that along with Colleen and Bradley Ships from OWLS as well as some other people from the OWLS system. They had an opportunity to attend some virtual training as well as meeting with some Senate and Assembly representatives to talk about libraries. Their real ask was to increase funding for library systems because funding took a big dip in 2011 and hasn’t regained the amount that was lost since then. The state funding is for the OWLS–for the systems themselves–and then individual libraries are funded by their local counties and cities. They worked to really clarify to the representatives that while the front doors have been closed the library hasn’t been closed. They’re still providing significant services; it just looks and feels very different than it has in the past. That’s kind of what the premise behind what Libraries Step Up means; when people need libraries the most it may appear that they’ve locked their doors but they’ve stepped up in different/other ways and they’ve had to do so on really tight budgets. She encouraged the Board members to send a note to their representatives letting them know how much libraries have been impacted and the services that they have provided during this time. She thought the offices she talked to were really surprised about what it is that libraries do. They’re not just repositories for books.
Colleen chimed in. In general, she thought that representatives always enjoy speaking to library people, and that was true for those on either side of the political spectrum. Representatives have been really helpful providing advice on what library people are saying that is resonating. Colleen touched on the platform that has been especially important right now during the pandemic–literacy, supporting workforce development, and information technology. Per Colleen, the digital divide has become blatantly clear during the pandemic, so they really emphasized to representatives the ways libraries are helping their communities in that area.
In general, they had very positive meetings. The representatives were very optimistic about the state budget. Colleen said the representatives had just received revenue numbers that day and were kind of giddy because, she thought, they expected those numbers were going to be much worse.
One of the Board members wanted to know if there was someone on staff he could talk to about what the record of support was for his particular assemblyman.
Per Colleen, library funds come through in an indirect way. Locally, in general, they’ve had very supportive legislators. A lot of times it’s several steps before it gets in front of those representatives, and it may have been altered before it gets in front of the full body. But she can talk to him and see what kind of information she can provide.
Another Board member thought that communicating with one’s legislators is extremely important. It helps those legislators do their job. If you can’t do it or don’t want to do it but you do know others who might it certainly would be helpful.
The Board Chairwoman said even something as simple as the number of curbside requests that we’ve had was something worth mentioning to representatives. APL has filled 26,000-27,000 curbside requests–not individual items but requests, so the number of items was even larger. That was an astounding number to everyone they talked to.
Colleen said that another thing is the American Library Association has an alert out that there is a movement in the federal Senate for a Build America’s Libraries Act. That is an attempt to provide federal funding to support long term improvements to library facilities. Per Colleen, it has been decades since there has been any federal funding directed toward library facilities. It’s something that could be incredibly important and timely for APL in addition to many other places across the country. This is an opportunity to potentially advocate on the national level for funding that would then get directed by or funneled through state agencies and then allocated based on whatever the terms of the bill are.
Finally, they touched on the Books Build Community report. They had a hard endtime for this particular board meeting so Adriana McCleer had submitted a written report ahead of time in order to save time. She didn’t have anything to add to her report.
One Board member said that she recommended reading “George” if you haven’t yet and added that it’s a very quick read.
The meeting then adjourned.
View full meeting details here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=827703&GUID=A64630D7-AEA0-4D57-A70F-E64854BAD9D9&Options=info|&Search=
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