- I'd like to call to order the Board of Trustees meeting agenda for the Monroe County Public Library
- for November 19, 2025. If we could go around and introduce ourselves, and if you'd like to share what
- you're reading, you may. Nancy Van Allen. And I really enjoyed We Have Always Lived in the Castle by
- Shirley Jackson, novella that's just creepy and clever. I'm Chris Hall, and I finished listening to,
- let's see, where is it, The Four Winds by
- Kristen Hannah. I'm Amy O'Shaughnessy. My book club and I just finished Heart the Lover by Lilly King.
- I'm Greer Carson. I'm reading Galileo's Error by Philip Goff, which is a book about theories of pan
- consciousness. And we are playing Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion Remastered for the Xbox, which needs
- no introduction. I'm Jamie Burkhart, and I am reading Jesus and John Wayne.
- Whitney Eats, and right now, and especially through school, we are rereading some favorites like The
- Monkey's Paw and The Raven, and some of those types of stories. I'm Jennifer Whitley. I'm Jennifer Whitley.
- Can you hear me? And I am reading Praying the Rosary like never before. Is there any Catholics? I highly
- recommend it.
- Can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda from last time that includes the minutes from the October
- 15th board meeting, the monthly financial report, the monthly bills for payment, the personnel report,
- and the board meeting calendar? So moved. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed say no. Ayes
- have it. And now we'll move to the director's monthly report. OK.
- Our digital collection success story continues you may have noticed from the graph charts at the top
- of the report 2025 has been a remarkable year for e library checkouts October saw the highest overall
- use of our digital collection since peak use during the pandemic in January of 21 overdrive checkouts
- in particular reached
- a new all-time high in October, with 52,625 borrows of digital media, including 23,535 e-books, 22,670
- audiobooks, and 6,420 e-magazines, all from Overdrive.
- For comparison, Hoopla patrons typically borrow more audiobooks than e-books from that platform,
- with 7,119 audiobooks versus 2,265 e-book checkouts in October from Hoopla. Patrons also turn to Hoopla
- to borrow other things like e-comics, movies, television shows, and music. And by the numbers, overall
- collection used for October 2025, meaning both physical and digital media circulation, was stronger
- than it's been for the past six Octobers, going back to 2020.
- That's the fifth time that that has happened this year, meaning this year we see monthly totals outpacing
- those months going back that number of years. So that's really, really encouraging. Back in April, we
- introduced a new read-along book format with integrated audio as opposed to a separate audio disc.
- These Vox and Wonder Books have circulated well over the past several months, and all but four of the
- 55 titles that we've acquired have checked out at least once, with many titles having circulated multiple
- times. These read-alongs support the development of literacy skills by enabling pre and early readers
- to engage independently with a book and enjoy listening to a fluent reader while they follow along with the text.
- The library's band Books Month promotional content performed exceptionally well and was among the strongest
- online engagement we've seen in recent years for this annual theme. It was also the highest performing
- web highlight for October with 3,014 views. In comparison, September, our web highlight had 25 views.
- Our teen services staff has worked on refining our teen staff picks list, including reducing the total
- number of lists from 51 to 35 so that patrons can more easily find the list they're looking for and
- so that those lists are better organized on our site. Some analysis of how often these lists are used
- show that many are among the most popular search results when you Google YA plus genre book list.
- And our top teen staff picks book lists, YA novels and verse, averages nearly 2,000 views a year. So
- this suggests that our teen book lists are seeing great use among MCPL patrons and are being seen by
- a much wider internet audience. Special thank you to teen library assistant Fern Salvaggio for leading
- the analysis work.
- And finally, CATS covered no fewer than 62 government meetings in October. Mayor Thompson's traveling
- town hall on October 6th was one of them. Another was the county council budget adoption meeting on
- the 14th and the extended county council meeting on the 28th, which focused on the proposed site for
- the new jail. CATS is also preparing its government meeting archives for eventual digitization. This
- would find us digitizing 670,000 minutes of local government meeting coverage, spinning 10,000 analog tapes.
- a major digitization project which we're hoping to complete so we can enhance access to historical Monroe
- County governmental meetings. We are also looking at a similar digitization project for our locally
- produced CATS content which dates back to the 1970s. All of this content currently resides in our CATS
- physical archives. Happy to answer any questions about the director's report. I was just curious if anybody
- Seeing that there were a lot of people reading the banned books. Did many of them say why are they banned?
- I mean question I'll look into that. I'm not sure but I'm happy to ask. Yeah Keep books from being banned
- in the future Or do you have do the librarians have any idea of what? Drove the spike in digital checkouts
- like that seems like it was a huge
- factor in October in the overall circulation? Yeah, it's a great question. And this is kind of an ongoing
- bigger question we're asking ourselves. I spoke with Lisa Ciampelli today, our collection development
- manager, about this. Typically, we see increases in overall circulation. We say this is a function of
- our entire process, everything from really good selecting practices to good readers' advisory service,
- accessibility for our materials in general,
- good marketing and promotions, great programming, and all that circles back to collection development
- and informs what we do going forward. So that's like the big picture of it, but why are we seeing a
- spike in certain collections now, particularly digital? When we've had them for a while, we increased
- access to digital collections during COVID for obvious reasons, and why are we continuing to see this
- surge? And then more particularly, what we have seen in 2025, we do not know the answer to that yet,
- but we're looking at that.
- We certainly have more titles. I don't know if we have more titles relative to the number of patrons
- than we did, say, five years ago.
- but some of them didn't wanna go digital. And so maybe now they're willing to do so. It's entirely possible.
- So we're actually looking at a brand new collection development analytics tool to start digging into
- some of the use patterns for our system. And we just wrapped up the quote with the vendor now and we're
- gonna launch it in early 2026. So some of these questions will be the kinds of things that we hope we
- can answer a little better.
- This was in your last month's report, but the closing of Baker and Taylor, I've just seen many libraries
- post about it. Is that something now a month or two in that is providing any challenges for the library?
- It's still providing challenges because the backlog in ordering from, say, Ingram, who are absorbing
- most of Baker and Taylor's or a big chunk of Baker and Taylor's business,
- They can't respond as quickly as they typically would, so we see a delay, but we're starting to get
- stuff in from Ingram now as well. So I think over the next few months it'll kind of even out and we'll
- be back at our normal pace of acquisition.
- And this may is maybe as a better question for Lisa, but I'm curious about seeing the lar the increase
- in digital circulation is a great thing for the library in terms of people engaging with the material.
- But I wonder if the cost of providing those digital items is something that the library
- I'm sure is factoring in, but how you think about that moving forward, given just the very
- cursory understanding I have of a Kindle title and what the rules are around a patron using that versus
- a physical copy that the library owns and can have control over how long it's in circulation, some control.
- That's also a great question because it's really sort of a cost-benefit question about digital collection
- development versus physical
- And one of the sort of historic challenges that we have in making decisions about reallocating funds
- from physical to digital is the fact that most digital titles you buy, you actually are only buying
- a license for X number of circulation, and then you'll have to buy it again, which is obviously different
- with physical. The equivalent is, okay, it decays and you have to replace the title, but probably not
- as frequently. So yeah, those are factors that we consider when we're making those decisions.
- Just me as a personal library patron, I'm sometimes like, oh, I have this Kindle checkout. It's great.
- Oh, I didn't have a chance to read it. If it's a physical item, I don't really think like, oh, other
- than it not being available for another patron to use, it's not an issue. But I have started thinking
- about like, what is this costing the library for me to potentially check out this title and not read
- it? So. That's a great question. And I'm going to take a note on that for
- further conversations with Elisa. It's more just a curiosity thing, but looking through the financials
- and things and being aware of spike in digital circulation, just something that I want to have a better
- understanding of. So thank you. Yeah, thank you. I want to add to that, too, because you figured we
- also have the cost analysis of the physical space and the deterioration of books.
- As a former librarian and other former librarians here, you're right to think of those concerns. But
- there's also some trade that goes with that. So the other thing I wanted to talk about, if you had mentioned
- the spikes in the digital circulation, how granular can you analyze that data? Are you able to see by
- weeks, by days? Because I've noticed the spikes may coincide with travel times. For October, we had
- a school break.
- Spring Break March, and those are big spike months. I'm pretty sure we can get at least down to the
- month and probably the week on a lot of these digital collections. It does depend on the vendor on the
- platform. It might be interesting if, you know, when we are hitting those school breaks, if people load
- up on their movies and books for travel. Yeah. That's great. Thank you.
- Any other questions or comments for Greer before we move on? OK. Motion to hear more and hold our vote
- on the annual benefits renewal. So moved. Second. OK. Becky's going to come up for any questions we may have.
- should have the paper copies in front of you. I have them up here as well, but I don't expect you to
- be able to read them up on the screen. So I just wanted to go over the renewal of our review of our
- benefits that we offer. I think this is a good opportunity to do that. It is one of the more expensive
- things that we do as a library. And so I think it's important to go over all the benefits that we offer.
- I'll do that really briefly. And I'm happy to answer any questions that you guys have on the benefits
- that we offer.
- I will go into our renewal changes. So we had two or three plans that had slight changes. And so that's
- all outlined in the packet itself. But I won't read that to you word for word. So we'll go through it
- this way. And please feel free to stop me if you guys have questions as I go through. You can also ask
- at the end.
- So this is our table. This is the way that we look at benefits just as HR department. We have different
- hour classes that get different benefits offered to them. So we have full time 25 hours a week, 20 hours
- a week, and 15 to 18 hours a week. And so they've got different benefits that are offered to them just
- depending on a number of things. So our health insurance is offered through Anthem. We do have three
- plans that we offer to staff.
- And that is paid 100% premium by the library for employee only plans. And then 80% of the premium is
- covered by the library for employee plus. So if they're covering themselves and a spouse, child or children
- and or family, that's how that's broken up. Our dental insurance is through HRI Paramount Dental. The
- premium cost on that is shared between the library and the employees. And that's offered for folks that
- are 20 hours and above.
- And then our vision insurance is through HRI IMED and the employee pays 100 percent of that premium
- if they do want vision insurance. And again that's offered for folks 20 hours and above. These are all
- guardian plans that we offer. So this is our life insurance and then our long term and short term disability.
- So the library does cover 100 percent of the cost for the group term life.
- So that's offered to any of our full time staff, and the benefit amount is two times their annual salary.
- And then long term disabilities also covered 100% by the library for those full time staff that cover
- 60% of someone's pay if they fall unable to work beyond 12 weeks. So illness or injury that would put
- them out of work for more than 12 weeks.
- Voluntary life in ADND is offered for folks who are 20 hours and above. That's a plan that folks can
- elect if they want it. We offer employee, spouse, and child or children life insurance plans. And then
- we have short-term disability, which pays 60% of someone's pay if they fall injured or ill and unable
- to work for up to 12 weeks. And so that is offered to folks who work 25 hours or full-time. And the
- library covers the first $150 of that premium.
- And those were on a rate hold for this year. So we won't talk any further about those. And then we also
- offer a health savings account. That's through German-American and that's offered to folks who elect
- one of our high deductible health plans. The library contributes an amount and then the employees are
- able to contribute up to the IRS limit if they want. And then flexible spending account and dependent
- care flexible spending account. Those are options that folks can put money into pre-tax.
- and use the money for whatever it's appropriate to use it for. So FSA is for medical expenses and the
- DCFSA is for childcare, summer camp, those kinds of things. And then our last one that we offer is the
- Marathon Health Clinic. So this was formerly Everside and before that it was Activate. We have access
- to the clinic location in Bloomington across from the old hospital.
- We have one in Bedford and we have one in Martinsville that our folks have access to. There's also virtual
- appointments that are available. And we offer this to all of our staff and anyone in their family. So
- it's a really nice benefit that our folks are able to use. While we can't offer health insurance to
- everyone, it is kind of a nice opportunity to make sure they have access to preventative care and prescriptions.
- them because I know some of them are stopping yeah no we're continuing with ever so or with marathon
- and then these are not included in our open enrollment but just I wanted to note some of the other benefits
- that we offer we have perf employee assistance a program employee assistance program which is part of
- our guardian offerings that we have and
- That includes mental health resources. There's three free counseling sessions for up to three different
- topics. There's tax assistance, those kinds of things, and our staff have really appreciated having
- access to that. We also have obviously paid holidays, personal leave, sick leave, contagious illness
- that we added for our 15 to 18 hour folks, and then paid parental leave, remote work repiloting, and
- then parking options, which include
- Also bus passes and indoor bike storage for folks who work downtown So those are not part of our open
- enrollment, but I think it's a nice opportunity just to go through everything we offer Before I get
- into our anthem renewal, do you guys have any questions? I know it's a lot of information So ja presented
- last month at the board meeting they are our broker and so
- They went back and forth with Anthem on our health insurance renewal. So initially, it came in at 16.05%
- increase. They were able to get it down to a 9% increase. Given everything going on elsewhere, we were
- really thrilled to have a single digit increase for this year. We still are offering the same three
- plans that we have offered. So we have a $500 deductible PPO, mid-tier,
- a high deductible plan and then a $5,000 high deductible plan. So to be able to offer those three options
- to our folks and only have a 9% increase I think is awesome. And the only notable change on our plans
- for this year is gonna be that the deductible for our mid plan goes from $3,300 to $3,400. That's just
- an IRS update. So we kinda knew that was gonna come and happens every year. And that was the hours that
- they work? Is that, that meant?
- 33,000 to 3,300 to 3,400 is just the deductible amount. So it goes from a $3,300 deductible to a $3,400
- deductible. I guess I was thinking that when I was reading in there, something about the hours that
- the employee worked. Is there a change of that? No, there's no changes in the hours. I apologize.
- So then the next slide here is you guys have the table that has all of our rates in that handout that
- you have. We're not proposing any changes to the way that this is structured. So the library is still
- going to cover 100 percent of the premium for employees who cover only themselves and then 80 percent
- for employees who cover themselves plus family members. And then the HSA contributions remain the same.
- So we've not made any changes to any of that. The only increase.
- Only change that we have is really the increase kind of getting split out there. So all of the rates
- go up just a little bit. And for our staff, it means a $10 to $15 per paycheck increase on one of our
- most expensive plans for their out-of-pocket cost. So trying to keep things affordable for folks. And
- I know the summary that I put in the packet includes the overall numbers.
- for the library increase. So the library's cost of health insurance will rise about $79,000. So it goes
- up to just under a million dollars for our health insurance cost as the library. Yes, up for that $100
- deductible. Yes.
- And then I'll move on to dental insurance. But if there's questions on the health insurance, I'm happy
- to go back to that slide. No? OK. Dental insurance also had a 9% increase. We've been with HRI for quite
- a while. Our dental and our vision plans renew every other year, and they're staggered. So vision is
- rate locked for two years, and then our dental insurance was up for renewal this year. So we did see
- a 9% increase, which we have not seen in a very long time.
- And J.A. benefits looked at it helped us determine that it's because our folks are using the benefit,
- which is what we want. And so we went out and shopped all the market or shopped the market to see what
- else was out there and what the other rates were. Everything else was very comparable to what we got
- back from H.R.I. When we looked at everything, the network change for the plan that would be a little
- bit less expensive.
- was significant for our folks. So we get the list of the top 25 providers that folks use. Of that, about
- 20 of them would have been a network change. And so we felt like staying with HRI was the right thing
- to do. So does this mean they have a choice of who they want to use? Or is that something they only
- can go to certain dentists? So HRI has a really robust network in Bloomington. And so our folks won't
- see any change because we're not changing providers so they can stick with their dentist.
- HRI is also really great about letting people add their dentist so they can just call and say, hey,
- I want to be added to the network. We've had several folks do that, and it's done within an hour. So
- they've been really strong, and folks have really appreciated the benefit. So the only change that we
- see on this table here for this year, then, is just with the rates increasing, the way that those costs
- kind of split out. It increases the cost for the library
- right around $3,500 for the year. And then employees will see anywhere from $0.07 to $4 per paycheck
- increase depending on what they're covering and how many hours they work. So trying to keep that minimal
- as well. And then the last one, I didn't put a slide together for this just because Marathon
- doesn't have any rates for our staff because the library pays for the cost of Marathon. But we did get a 4.3%
- increase with Marathon. They do that every year, so it's pretty typical. But it is about $240 a month
- or $2,800 for the year for our folks to have access to the clinic. The only change that we have there
- for this year is that there won't be a co-pay. So folks who have a high deductible health plan
- Previously, we're paying $32 per visit and $2 per prescription. And changes on the federal level mean
- that we don't have to do that anymore. So our staff get access to all of that for free. So it's a nice
- little change. And we did have just under 300 folks use the clinic visit-wise last year. And then we
- had 380 prescriptions filled.
- Our folks are using that and that's helping to keep our health insurance costs lower too. So they give
- us some usage data. It's helpful to make sure our folks are engaged in using the clinic. So. Our staff
- who are like a single covered by the plan, are they able to like take their dependence to a marathon
- center or is it only for the folks who are covered by the library's plan? For health insurance. Can
- they can only
- The folks covered by the library's plan use the marathon benefit. So the marathon benefit is for any
- of our staff. So all the way down to 15 to 18 hour folks. And they can elect to enroll any of their
- family members in the plan. The employee has to enroll themselves. But then they could add like a child
- or a spouse who's not covered. So it's a separate plan election. Yep. It's totally separate from our
- health insurance. Cool. OK. Thanks.
- So that's all that I have. I know that's a lot of information, but do you have any questions or is there
- anything I can explain further? No, it's thorough. I'm glad to see the library providing this benefit
- for staff. Well, I know I hear from staff on a regular basis that they really appreciate all the benefits
- that we offer. And I know it makes a big difference not only to them, but also to our strategic goal
- number five in being an employer of choice.
- appreciate the support to be able to offer these great benefits. Thank you. All in favor of the annual
- benefit renewal, say aye. Aye. Those opposed say nay. Ayes have it. Thank you, Becky. Next, we're going
- to hear from Gary. He's going to talk about the resolution for revenue from
- commercial vehicle excise tax and financial institution tax motion to hear and vote on this. So moved.
- So this resolution is on page 52 in the packet. And this is the result of a change as part of the SB1
- legislation. They have said that financial institution tax
- and commercial vehicle excise tax can be accounted for or received into a fund that we choose. And so
- the advantage for that is for us is that when we get the payment for our debt fund levy,
- We also get commercial vehicle excise tax and financial institution tax. It has to go into our debt
- fund, and we have to leave it there. And then the DLGF comes along, and they look at what we have requested
- to make our debt payment. And they will not pay us any more
- than what it takes to get our balance up to cover that debt payment. So the financial, these taxes that
- go into that fund, we can never use them because they always cut our debt levy because we're over the
- cash limit in that fund. And for 2024, we're not talking about a lot of money. For 2024, it was $8,300,
- but it's still,
- It's going to be good for us going forward, because we can put that $8,300 in the operating fund where
- we can actually use it. So that's what this is about, and I'd be happy to answer any questions. I do
- have a question. How will that fund be determined? Because I noticed in the paperwork that we're signing,
- it says any fund.
- Okay, I'm looking at just... In any fund. So you're saying we're just putting it into the operating?
- Yes, we're putting it into the operating fund. Yes, we could put it in any fund, but operating fund
- is where we need it the most. Okay, that was my question. But the second line says it will be in the
- operating fund, therefore. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
- Choosing that wondering rationale like other funds like we're always flexibility with that fund. Some
- of the other choices would be rainy day but that wouldn't help us so much. I don't know just the other
- footler that that's for future library improvements and that's we don't really need it there. So yeah
- the operating just made the most sense.
- All in favor of approving, say aye. Aye. Those opposed say nay. Ayes have it. Next up, we're going to
- hear from Outreach Services and Vital with Chris Jackson and Bethany Fairtime sharing information. So
- Chris first.
- Hello, my name is Chris Jackson I am the outreach services manager and I really appreciate this opportunity
- every year to talk about what we do in the department generally and specifically what we've been up
- to in the last year. So our mission as a department is really to mitigate barriers to library services.
- three great buildings for library services, but not everyone in the county has easy access to them or
- to the services that they offer. There are barriers such as age and mobility, things like socioeconomic
- status, literacy, all sorts of reasons why somebody might not be able to make use of the things that
- you've been talking about earlier and the things that we offer.
- We address those barriers with seven different service points. We have our vital program, which is volunteers
- and tutoring adult learners or adult literacy program.
- I'm going to leave details on that to Bethany Turrentine. I'm pulling rank and going first, because
- as you'll see, no one wants to follow Bethany and her amazing work that she does. So yeah, you'll forget
- what I talk about once you hear what she's talking about. We also have a van service. We have a service
- we call House Calls. We have a service to Head Starts and Daycares. We have a jail library program.
- We have general programming that we do. And then we have our bookmobile. I'll go into each one of those with
- a little bit of detail. There is a lot to talk about. I could easily go on for hours, so I'm gonna try
- to keep, my wife says I go too long in these, so I'm gonna try to keep it briefer, but if you have any
- questions either now or at any other point, I'm always happy to talk about what we do.
- The thing I really want to emphasize this time around is our staffing, which is so crucial. We are a
- relatively small staff. We have 10 staff members total. Nine of us are full-time, one part-time. We
- have two librarians, and there's Bethany and myself at the managerial level. And then the rest are outreach
- associates. There's job classification. We do get some help from other departments who fill in on the
- bookmobile specifically. And then we do use volunteers and Vital as the
- name implies uses volunteers extensively but we are so lucky Bethany and I to have such an amazing staff.
- The people who work in outreach deal with some ergonomic and environmental factors that are a little
- bit less than the ideals that Becky tries at
- to create in the buildings, totally beyond her control. But we're out in the cold and the heat. We're
- over at the jail. We're out in the summertime in parks. It's not always the most comfortable. But the
- people who do it always rise to the challenge, make it a really happy, engaging, fun experience for
- their coworkers and for their patrons, and are so dedicated that I have to tell them, no, you're going
- beyond what the job description and what we pay you for.
- Becky again will have to come in if you overstep your bounds so I'm super fortunate and just an amazing
- crew that we've got and I can't thank them enough. I'd love to introduce them all on slides but again
- I'd go on too long. I'm going to talk about each one of those service points if you have any questions
- feel free to interrupt. I will go kind of quick but I want to save room at the end for the big project
- that we're working on so I'll save
- the most visible apart from vital to last. Let me start off with the van service. This is something
- we started in 2004. Van is sometimes called bookmobile. They're both vehicles that go out into the community
- to deliver books and other physical media. The distinction with the van is that it was bought specifically
- to serve relatively low mobility patrons in nursing homes, assisted care centers, and senior living
- centers. And we kind of flipped the model from a bookmobile where their expectations
- that you as a patron will come on to interact with with staff and to browse the collections for van
- we're assuming that that doesn't work for you so we're taking the collections off of the vehicle the
- van has a wheelchair lift on the back and six rolling library carts so we take those carts with the
- media and our workstations roll them inside an assisted care facility or a senior living facility set
- up what we call a lobby stop that's the model for this service because we're usually in the lobby we
- do a half an hour service at 11
- different senior living locations around the county on a two-week basis. Many of them are very busy,
- and they're a really fun hive of book lovers who come together to say, this book, this book stunk. Don't
- ever read this one. This was the worst waste of my time. But more often, they're raving about a book
- and saying, you need to check this one out. So there's book swapping that goes on. We're all book lovers,
- of course. So it's really a fun way. One of the great perks of my job is that, as a book lover, I get
- lots of readers
- advisory advice that I'm supposed to be dishing out, but I'm taking in more than I give from the community
- of book lovers. Van is a great resource for that. A lot of these folks in these centers, and we go to
- a lot of the lower income ones where there's a lot of Medicaid rooms, really do appreciate the social
- engagement that we have and having high quality access to not just books, but magazines and movies and
- the other media we offer is a big quality of life thing.
- We are hoping to add a couple more sites in the future, and as the baby boomers age, and I'm one myself,
- just sneaked in in 1964, we do see this service growing as there are more older people living in Monroe County.
- Next service I want to talk about is house calls. This is also geared towards older members of the community.
- This is for Monroe County residents who don't live in one of the sites served by the van, don't live
- in a place served by the bookmobile, and don't have easy access to the branches for a variety of reasons.
- So if you're not able to get to any of our other service points, we will come to you with our house
- call service. We used to call it homebound, which was maybe in some ways more descriptive, but bound
- has some weird connotations.
- I'm trying to get away from bondage, and it just doesn't sound right. But House Calls is a monthly visit
- to anyone in the county who qualifies. We will drop off as many circulating items, whether they're housed
- here or Ellitsville or downtown or off of the bookmobile. Anything that checks out from the library
- can be delivered to a House Calls patron. Like I said, we do it on a monthly basis. And people get anywhere
- from two to we have one patron who gets 60 to 70 books a month and reads them all.
- because she's even more voracious than any of us. So whatever makes it work for you, we try to do. We
- don't sell this feature, but for many people, these are often people living still at home, and aging
- in place is a goal of many and a worthwhile goal in my opinion, and this is something that aids that.
- But a lot of these people are very isolated. They may have a family visit once or twice a week. They
- may have a home health aide who checks in on them. Some of them don't. So this ends up not being just
- a delivery service,
- but a social engagement for a lot of them. We don't advertise that. We don't promote it. We can't spend
- a lot of time, but it is sometimes a really meaningful chance to sit down. We are offered tea and cookies.
- We do sometimes do some off-the-book things like find a lost remote or configure a new phone. I have
- a House Calls patron I work with who's basically blind and has a small cat.
- Who needs her nails clipped so it's easy it takes me five minutes to clip the cat's nails. I don't mind
- doing it. It's a little weird that I'm doing that on the job but it is a value added service that really
- means a lot to a lot of residents and we get a lot of satisfaction from it and they do as well.
- Let's see. Next up, I wanted to talk about our jail service. So this is started back in the 80s. It's
- a partnership with the Monroe County Correctional Center, which is run by the sheriff's department.
- And the partnership works in that they provide us an $8,000 budget annually that we then spend on their
- behalf to build and maintain the collection at the jail. So they have their own library with their own
- books. We do the collection development, and we also do the circulation and readers advisory. So a member
- of the outreach team is over there.
- Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons for about two hours. Inmates come sometimes one at a time,
- sometimes in small groups. They only have about five minutes per visit to browse, so there's some very
- intense readers' advisory that goes on there. We don't do any cataloging or online access, because frankly
- we just don't have time, but the staff who works there know the collection really well. We're also able
- to supplement that $8,000 budget with donations from our Friends of the
- bookstore and we do occasionally check out books from the collections here at downtown if it's not something
- we can purchase or that it makes sense to purchase. The service not surprisingly is extremely popular
- with the population over there if you can imagine what it's like to have not much to do in an environment
- that is not friendly or frankly all that pleasant to be in having access to high quality books can be
- a real game changer for what is a very unhappy experience. So the inmates do love it
- it. Staff and jail administrators love it as well. Previous jail administration has told us that that
- eight thousand dollars is the
- best possible use of a small amount of money to increase the safety and security of the facility. As
- you can imagine, with people spending a lot more time reading than they would if they didn't have access,
- there would be more behavior issues that they would have to address. So it's a win-win across the board.
- We really enjoy doing it. We get so much heartfelt thanks. Unfortunately, we have some comparison shoppers
- who have compared our jail library to the other jail libraries they've experienced. So unfortunate that
- they have the opportunity to do that, but we had somebody
- last week say, of all the jails I've been to, nobody compares to your jail library. So we'll take that
- praise if they're able to offer it. With the upheaval regarding a new jail facility, we had actually
- made plans and actually came up with drawings and specifications for what we would like to see in a
- new jail library if there is a new jail. As I'm sure you all know, that process has been ongoing and
- long and just hit another major
- turn or you turn or I don't know what it was we're not sure what's going to happen but we do look forward
- to keeping the service going and improving it if and when there is a renovated or new jail facility
- in the county sure
- a good amount of money. It is a good amount. It was $6,000 originally back in the 80s. That was a grant.
- That was before my time. I don't know who the grantor was there. But at the end of that grant period,
- everybody loved it. And the jail continued with that $6,000. I think it was about four or five years
- ago we asked them to up it because it had been a long, long time. And they happily agreed. I was like,
- are they going to give us $2,000? Maybe I should have asked for $12,000. And maybe they would have said
- yes. But it is, I think, adequate.
- given what we can supplement with the donations from the bookstore.
- We do coordinate with other entities. We have a takeaway rack for guides upon release for housing and
- jobs and other things. So we distribute things other than books. We also distribute discarded magazines
- from this building when they're leaving this building. We have to take the staples out if they're stapled
- and make some changes, but it is really solely spent on books. The supplies and other things just come
- out of our normal operating budget. We provide the labor and the supplies, and yeah,
- to the materials.
- Let's see, up next is Head Starts and Daycare. So this is a service that started back with the van.
- We realized with a new vehicle, we could provide materials to another end of the, the other end of the
- age spectrum that the van was serving. We used to try to do some daycare visits with Bookmobile. That
- was before my time as well, but those were difficult in a variety of ways. So we now do, for Head Starts,
- we do a monthly drop-off of
- early literacy materials to each of the Head Start classrooms in the county and there are 17 of those
- we also do that at the three classrooms at the nest which is the daycare associated with the the new
- Hope Center for for families with without housing and at those locations Head Start and the nest we
- do a monthly story time our early literacy librarian Libby Pennington does story times and activities
- that all emphasize the critical early
- literacy skills both for the benefits of the kids in those programs but also to model best practices
- for the teachers and the parents and Head Start parents are required to spend time in the classrooms.
- She also does some workshops occasionally for the Head Start teachers too. So that's what we do for
- those locations for daycares. We're not able to do the regular story times we just don't have the capacity
- but we do have 13 of the larger daycares in the county getting a monthly delivery of
- of monthly delivery of early literacy materials, picture books, early readers, audios, and sometimes
- DVDs as well. Music is also very popular for nap times. A lot of those materials are selected by the
- Children's Department Information Assistance, where we then do the delivery, and we do some of the selection
- ourselves.
- So I talked a little bit about Libby's programming with the early literacy groups. We also have another
- librarian, Jen Hoffman, who does programming at the other end of the age spectrum. She goes to senior
- nursing homes, some of which we visit with a van, some of which we don't, and does book discussion groups
- and craft programs. Again, we emphasize the ones that
- Don't have as vibrant a an activities department. Some of them have great activities going on all the
- time. Some of them frankly don't and don't have the capacity to do a lot. So we augment what they can
- do with regular visits and she does two or three of those per week on average. So again a kind of value
- added service to our to our delivery of materials.
- And then last up in terms of our service points for me is the most visible one outside of the library
- and that is our bookmobile. We've had bookmobile service in Monroe County since 1929 so we are coming
- up to an exciting centennial in just a few more years. Our bookmobile makes 30 stops a week on a weekly
- schedule. It goes out every day of the week except Friday and we actually run two routes on Wednesday.
- We've got really four categories of bookmobile stops. We're trying to get to those areas
- that are geographically distant from the branches. So the small towns like Steinsville and Unionville
- and Harrodsburg, Smithville, we go to all of those locations. We go to low income neighborhoods regardless
- of where they are in the county. We really do focus on low income communities for a lot of reasons.
- We know that they tend to use library services less than higher income families for a variety of reasons.
- By pulling up into their neighborhoods with a big friendly green truck when the doors
- are open when the weather allows and really friendly staff we're hoping that they'll come and check
- it out even if they've had negative library experiences before or maybe we're intimidated by libraries
- with its specialized jargon and its assumptions about what you about catalogs and searching and all
- of that we're trying to eliminate those barriers in those low-income neighborhoods we also go to some
- senior living sites still with the bookmobile even though we have the van service when we launched vans
- some people said that's great but we still
- I want the Bookmobile. Bookmobile is a larger browsing collection. It has about 6,000 items, which is
- far more than what we carry with the van. So our Wednesday morning route, which I just filled in on
- this morning and saw for the first time in a month or two, is great, going to some of those locations.
- And finally, we have a couple of convenience stops, especially before the Southwest branch opened. There
- were daily complaints about this building's parking situation and how difficult it was to find parking
- and come in. So at that point, we launched
- some sites at places that were a new category and we're continuing with the YMCA, the Southeast YMCA
- in the College Mall area. Those are places that people are going anyway for other reasons and parking
- there on the weekends. They're actually two of our busiest stops serving whoever is out running errands
- or going to the Y or passing by those locations on the weekends.
- One of the things that makes Bookmobile really special isn't just the convenience of being
- in your neighborhood, being close by and easy to get to, but we work really hard to curate the collections
- so that they're very high interest materials. If you're a regular visitor to my Tuesday Bookmobile route
- and I know that you're interested in your
- getting launched on exploring vegetarian cooking, I will work hard to get new vegetarian cookbooks on
- the shelf every time I come out and expect to see you so that even though it's a small cooking section
- that we have, there's new stuff every week and we definitely read our audience and adapt to their particular
- needs. Even though we go through that effort, a lot of people just use us as a place to pick up their
- holds conveniently. So they go online, they place their hold, they pick their
- Bookmobile pickup location, we find out which stop they're going to use, and then it's a quick two-minute
- visit to the library rather than finding parking, coming in, wrangling the kids who want to be downstairs
- versus the parents who want to be upstairs and coordinating all of that. A lot of the people who use
- us for holds pickups do use our branches as well, but that's more for coming to our program or a weekend
- afternoon rather than a quick trip on a Tuesday when we just want to get some new books. So we're happy
- to provide that service. So Bookmobile is great.
- it's going really well except that we have a 15 year old bookmobile that is slowly and actually not
- so slowly anymore dying the bookmobile has been in the shop for almost two weeks now this is its second
- extended shop visit this year it is
- almost on its last legs. So that's the sad news. At 15 years, 15 to 20 years is the life expectancy.
- So we're in that range. It was not unexpected. But it's difficult. The crew is out there now using our
- van to try to do bookmobile service. So there's no browsing. It just holds pickup and returns. And once
- it starts getting colder, it's going to get even less comfortable. So that's the doom and gloom part.
- The really positive part is that we do have a new bookmobile on order. We signed a contract.
- back in June after going through a competitive bid process. We're working with what I feel is one of
- the top two vendors out there who had the bid that best met our specifications and came in at a price
- that we could
- barely afford. Bookmobiles are shockingly expensive. And Bookmobiles also don't exist anywhere on a
- lot where you can say, I want the blue one and I want you to add these features. They're all built from
- scratch. So we signed the contract with this vendor whose name is TechOps Specialty Vehicles back in
- June. They immediately placed the order for the biggest crucial component, which is the chassis, which
- is coming from Freightliner with a Cummins engine, but that takes about six months. So we've been in
- a holding pattern, even though we're under
- contract with them but they do expect to take delivery of the chassis themselves in about six weeks
- so starting in the new year they will be building
- it out by adding the shelves and the electrical and the HVAC and the cabinetry and workstations and
- everything that turns what's basically a big UPS truck into what is a cozy, friendly library that happens
- to sit on four wheels. It is a long process, but they're still saying they really do expect, even with
- the unforeseen delays that always creep into these projects, delivery in second quarter, which I'm assuming
- being somewhat pessimistic. Having been through this before, they're always a little bit later, but June is
- what we're hoping for. We don't have any HVAC in our current bookmobile. So we can make it through the
- winter. We did last winter with minimal heating.
- going through the summer with no air conditioning was really rough. And we did have to cancel when interior
- temperatures were reaching the mid-90s, really hoping by June we have not only a brand new vehicle that
- doesn't break down, but a brand new vehicle with air conditioning. But they are a top vendor. I've talked
- to many, many libraries with vehicles from the same producers. They're all really happy with them. There's
- always a few little glitches because they are completely custom vehicles. We will find some stuff that
- isn't quite right and we'll make some tweaks and there's ways we will address that. Happened with all
- three vehicles I've purchased for the library previously. So always a few little hiccups, but I'm really
- confident we picked the best possible vendor to do that. So those are our service points. Any questions
- about those? I've got one other topic I wanna talk about besides outreach services, service points.
- Not about your services, thank you for doing all that. Is there any way, like for a car, you trade in your car
- So you can offset some of the price. Is that something that for the bookmobile they can
- When you finish with the old bookmobile, is there any way to get money for that, too? Yes, we will absolutely
- put it on the market. We did this 15 years ago. That vehicle was actually in worse shape than our current
- vehicle, believe it or not. Its engine was barely running at the end. It was bought by a food truck
- vendor in the Detroit area. So I'm hoping it's out there delivering tacos or whatever somewhere.
- This one, it needs a completely new generator system, which was more than we wanted to invest
- in a 15-year-old vehicle.
- It wouldn't have been prudent. But especially if somebody wants to try out a bookmobile and maybe in
- a place without the weather extremes of Indiana, this might be a way. Or if their bookmobile died and
- they don't have funding, they might want to make do with something that still runs. The mechanical systems,
- although it's in the shop now, are not at the end of their lives completely, unlike our last bookmobile.
- It was the generator system and the HVAC. Somebody could take a gamble and invest a lot of money to
- get that running again or do
- something like a generator off the back, like the food trucks do, with minimal air conditioning that
- would allow them to explore Bookmobile or maybe last a year or two. But yeah, we've worked with a consultant,
- and he does list used Bookmobiles. We also put our last one in Truck Trader and other online sites.
- So I would imagine we'll find a buyer. Last one went for peanuts. I hope we can get at least walnuts
- out of this one.
- I just want to say thank you very much for all of these services. Whenever I have seen your presentations,
- I just feel like it's the outreach. The efforts of the outreach team are such an expression of the human
- dignity that the library tries to provide. So hearing about house calls and jails and preschools and
- stuff is just really, really wonderful. So thank you to you and your team.
- That's great to hear. Thank you. We really like that ourselves because it is really rewarding knowing
- we make those quality of life different. I mean, everybody who works at the library does. It's not unique
- to us, but we sometimes see those impacts more directly because we're working with people who have limited
- availability or limited access to things that brighten their experience.
- Can kids sign up to get a or anyone sign up to get a library card at the bookmobile? Absolutely. Yep.
- Yep. And on the van as well. Yeah And one last thing I'll see you after the meeting but I work for the
- local PBS station So the house calls piece of like getting these things running It would I'll just coordinate
- because we often have people who are like, oh, I can't quite get this, you know
- thing working, so it would be nice to connect your team with some folks at the station, because I imagine
- there might be some overlap there. Are you talking about technology type stuff? Yeah. Bethany may be
- talking about a renewed initiative that's here at the library with TechAlp, something we've done over
- the years but have recently relaunched in a more formal way. But yeah, we're absolutely able to do that,
- especially with library technology, the e-books you were talking about before. We're not really experts
- in all technology, but if you're on
- service we we we do what we can now and I more just mean like collaboration so that you know we feel
- the same the same service mandate yeah make sure that people have access to our services so even if
- it's just a hey I know somebody over there who can come troubleshoot this for you yeah would be looking
- forward to talking about that cool you had a question at all
- collaboration is really key so I collaborate in part by sitting on a couple of boards that I was actually
- going to talk about next I'm on the area 10 agency for aging advisory committee so that's our
- primary local service for elders in the community, and I meet with them and coordinate with them regularly.
- I'm also on the Bloomington Council for Community Accessibility, so a way to get the word out there.
- We have our brochures distributed by others who are serving that same community, like Meals on Wheels,
- Community Kitchen. We'll collaborate with anyone. Honestly, promoting the service is somewhat difficult,
- and house calls in particular that is
- So life enriching and app, I mean, all of our services are completely free. But we have some people
- who say, oh, I don't need that. I have some books or my daughter buys me books for Christmas. And we
- have too many old people are just too dang nice, especially when it comes to library stuff. I've had
- elders say, I'm sorry, I lost a book.
- I want to pay for it and I'm going to turn in my library card because obviously I can't be trusted and
- I've failed you." I'm like, I lost two books just last week. So yeah, getting the word out and getting
- people to say, yeah, no, this is for you regardless of your socioeconomic status or your ability. So
- anything we can do, we have a great communications and marketing department and they promote our services
- through their social media and newsletters. Word of mouth,
- is frankly what works best of all. So somebody who's successfully on the service becomes our ambassador.
- And you are, of course, all ambassadors as well, as is everybody in the room. So you folks talking about
- it and encouraging people who could benefit to make use. And the people you know doing the same is what
- really works. Flyers and publicity and social media posts are great, but it's a friend telling a friend,
- hey, this is cool. You should do this.
- Getting into my last bit, in addition to outreach, I am the library's ADA coordinator so I deal with
- any barriers that somebody might have in using any of our service locations. So a couple of things there.
- been busy with grants lately so last month we got a grant that's funded through the city of Bloomington
- but we applied for it and as a result are getting a free survey from a group called access able USA
- they're fairly new in the states but really established in the UK and what they do is develop really
- detailed accessibility guides for businesses and museums and universities really anybody who's serving the
- public can pay to get an access guide published on access able and what it is is a detailed look at
- the physical facilities what the parking is like the accessible parking and all the parking what the
- paths of travel to the building what barriers you might experience when you're in the building what
- accessibility amenities the building and services the building offers so we worked with their vice president
- who came with Greer and myself
- couple of weeks ago actually was on Halloween of all days and took I don't know how many photos and
- wrote down descriptions of every positive and negative because there are some negatives this building
- part of it was built in 1970 before the ADA which was established in 1990 and we have things like our
- silent reading room that are not now and will not ever be without drastic renovations accessible but
- we do a lot to make it accessible and want to get the word out so hopefully these guides will be
- useful. They've done Princeton University, almost all of their buildings. They're currently big and
- doing other New Jersey state institutions. But hopefully this will grow into a resource that many people
- with disabilities are aware of. And before coming to the library, they'll be able to see what we've
- got, what we don't, and how to make it a successful experience. And fortunately for us, it was no cost,
- completely free. So looking forward to that. I don't have an end time for when they will deliver that,
- but I'm hoping by the end of the year we'll be able to point people to
- And we'll have a link on our website in the description as we do for accessibility issues generally.
- But this will be somebody else hosting it. We'll be able to update it as we make changes. Unfortunately,
- this was a City of Bloomington funded initiative. So it is, we tried, we asked. But they said, no, it's
- just for Bloomington. But we will use it. Once we see the end product, we may be able to do our own
- version of something similar that we would host ourselves on our website.
- And then just on Monday, I did a proposal to the Bloomington Transportation Commission for a grant they
- were doing to enhance walking and cycling in the community. So we applied for a local motion grant and
- fortunately we were one of the recipients. We got $2,000 for a new group of Rolators that we will add
- to our library of things and specifically our mobility aids collection. Has everyone seen that upstairs?
- It just moved.
- last week to a new space. But this started in 2022 as sort of an outgrowth of my work with the Council
- for Community Accessibility. A group of local wheelchair users realized that they had all these accessibility
- aids that they used to use, but they moved on to different devices. The old ones were too valuable to
- throw away, but they didn't know how to get them out to somebody who could benefit. So they formed an
- organization, a nonprofit called Mobility Aids Lending Library. I heard the word library and said, ooh,
- library, and realized that offering mobility aids is a good fit for our library of things. As you know,
- we circulate ukuleles and iPads and pickleball kits and binoculars, all sorts of cool stuff that's not
- library media. Well, we also now do canes, crutches, walkers, and rollators. Unlike those other things,
- these are all donated. So there are people who needed one for a while and no longer do. We're accepting
- donations of those four categories and giving them out.
- And we're actually getting more crutches and walkers than we can store. So please, if you have crutches
- and walkers, do not bring them. I do not have space. We've got enough to serve us for the next two years.
- Rollators, however, which are kind of fancy walkers with an integrated seat and handbrakes, we can't
- keep in stock. So we now have money from the Transportation Commission to buy 22 more that will augment
- that collection. We give them out, and not only do we get them at no cost, we give them out at no cost,
- and people can keep them for as long as they want.
- There's no return date on these, so if you need it indefinitely, that's fine. We ask if you're done
- to bring it back or to pass it on to somebody else who can benefit. But a really cool, neat thing, I'm
- not aware of many other libraries, a couple other libraries have done this, but formally incorporating
- it into our library of things has been a nice thing that we can offer to the community and use is really,
- really starting to pick up. Those 22 new roll letters will probably be gone by May in my estimation.
- besides the roller aids or whatever that you're thinking, oh, we could really use these two. Right now,
- no. So the mall partners handle the other mobility aids that are either too big for us to house or too
- complex. So if somebody wants a wheelchair or even a motorized wheelchair or a mobility scooter,
- Other things like shower chairs, commode chairs, they've even done lifts to hoist somebody in and out of bed.
- Those can sometimes be, and often for wheelchairs, are available through our mall partners. And I work
- with them closely. Their storage facility is actually just a block away currently. So we can coordinate
- with folks to get either donations that would go to the other organization or things that they can offer
- that we don't. I end up being a conduit between library users and those mobility aids that we don't carry.
- So my wife is going to say I still went on too long. But thank you for the opportunity. I'm happy to
- talk about this more at length whenever it's convenient for you. So feel free to look me up in the library,
- give me a call, send me an email, or I'll stick around for a little bit, Amy. And I'd like to talk to
- you then. All right. Thanks so much. Any other questions? Thank you. Appreciate it. Now we're going
- to hear from Vital. I brought show and tap.
- It worked. So thank you for having me. I am Bethany, the vital coordinator, part of the amazing outreach
- team. It is a lot of services. So thank you for sharing this moment with us so we can let you know the
- work that we do. I also want to say thank you to a couple of our vital volunteers who are here tonight.
- So Jamie Burkhardt, who's an ongoing vital volunteer, and Nancy, who's newly joined us. Thank you so
- much. I know you are in line waiting for a learner. So you'll be hearing from me soon.
- love having that representation here. I also want to take a moment to say thank you to the two vital
- associates, Mick Breeze and Kyla Wargle, who are just really an incredible small team. They really make
- it possible for us to continue to offer the work that we do with dedication and professionalism and
- some really creative problem solving. So I'm just so grateful to have them to work with.
- I actually just this past week met with Literacy Nimbus. That's our database partner that is responsible
- for the data I'm going to be sharing with you tonight. And they let me know that some of their other
- library literacy partners across the country are closing their doors, largely due to financial issues.
- So I am incredibly grateful for the continued support of this group that allowed me to assure them that
- that was not our future.
- So these are some numbers. These were actually compiled. It's our first annual report. So thanks to
- our marketing team for making us look so good. We pulled this together in September as part
- of our International Literacy Day celebration. But it's also just an excellent representation of the
- work that we've done in the last year. So in terms of our services, we continue to offer, as we have
- for many years, adult basic literacy.
- English as a new language or services for adults who are studying for the driver's license, high school
- equivalency or citizenship tests. And the way that we provide those services varies. Folks often get
- to choose depending on their timing, their schedule, their flexibility. One-on-one tutoring continues
- to be like the gold prize standard. It's such an incredible opportunity to have that personalized experience
- with someone.
- Our English as a new language groups are also very, very popular. Those run on kind of a session-based
- schedule, so volunteers offer those for eight to 10 weeks throughout the year. Currently, we have eight
- sessions running. That means there's eight times every week, morning, afternoon, and evening, where
- people can come in to practice their English language skills in just a very flexible, comfortable, supportive
- environment. We certainly encourage people to
- make as much use of the services as they can. So there are also some people, if their time allows, will
- also do both. But across other services we had about 300 people participating last year. So this is
- kind of a closer look in at who those learners are and what kind of their area of focus is. Over the
- last several years we have continued to see this trend of a larger and larger increase in our English
- language learning services.
- That very much mimics national trends that we're seeing as well. The United States is actually the largest
- international support network for immigrants. We actually, in this country, house one in five of the
- world's immigrants. And of that population, only 53% are proficient in English.
- So that's a large national population. Locally, census tells us that about 13% of our households are
- foreign born. So we would assume that they might be able to potentially participate in vital services.
- We also do still have a smaller basic literacy and high school equivalency population. Those numbers
- are actually moving in the right direction. Currently in Bloomington, about 5% of the local population
- has less than a high school equivalency diploma. About 10 years ago, it was 8%. So we are seeing some
- gains in our adult education. And I do also appreciate our partners, the Excel Center and Monroe County
- Adult Education.
- MCCS, the Adult Education Program, for the work they do to support as well. This is, I think it's a
- very cool heat map that represents where the majority of people come from around the world. Last year
- we represented 47 different countries. The most common countries of origin
- are Venezuela, China, South Korea, Turkey, and Colombia. And the United States is number six. So that
- is represented here. This includes a mix, visitors, refugees and asylum seekers, as well as native born
- citizens of the US. So this,
- looks a little bit more closely at, when someone comes to Vital for the first time, we do a basic skills
- assessment to figure out where to begin and what sort of teaching activities would be most helpful for
- them. This is also where we have been seeing a shift towards a lower level over the last couple of years.
- If you look at the numbers, about half of the learners that we serve who are English language learners
- are level zero, one, or two. That means that they are beginners. They have a lot to learn. And so because
- there is such a long learning curve as you're beginning to learn a language that's as complex as the
- English language, those students, those level zero, ones, or two are at the highest priority for one-on-one
- tutoring. So we try to match them as quickly as possible. The good news is that currently our wait list
- for one-on-one tutoring is the lowest it's been
- since I can recall. I think a couple years ago, I had to tell you that I had 90 people on my wait list.
- Right now, we have 20, which is kind of shockingly low. And of that population of 20, about half of
- them are level zero and one. It is kind of the most challenging demographic to teach, and I'm gonna
- share some of the work that we've done to help make it a little bit more accessible to some of our volunteers
- who are working for the first time with some beginning English language learners.
- I think some of the reasons for that lower number of wait lists, there are some positive things. We've
- moved our tutor training to Canvas, which means that it's much more accessible in a rolling,
- ongoing basis, so volunteers can join very frequently. We offer orientations every month, and we currently
- have about 75 active volunteers who are working with us.
- Recruitment is also going well, so we continue to have a good number of new volunteers joining us. So
- that's very exciting. Unfortunately,
- We've also seen a pretty steep drop off in the number of new immigrants and refugees coming into the
- country. So some of that is just based on federal changes in terms of policies, who's allowed to come.
- We've also seen that the loss of work permits for people who are here has made it incredibly difficult
- for people to sustain themselves. So they're having to figure out other ways, sustain themselves, and
- so learning English is no longer a priority.
- So I do think that that probably also does account for some of the low end of our wait list. And all
- we can do is leave an open door and let folks know that we are here. If someone does have to drop out
- of vital or take a pause, we have a very flexible attendance policy. We try to be as realistic as possible
- and just let them know that we are here whenever they're able to participate. The little silver lining
- I can offer there is that with this
- bit of a slowdown, it's allowed us to kind of catch up and put some energy into some other services
- that kind of meet the needs of this early beginner population. So I mentioned this kind of shift in
- terms of we're seeing, but previously we were, for a long time, we offered a lot of conversational practice.
- Well to have conversation you need to have at least intermediate skills. That's not where we're at.
- So currently we're seeing looks like about a little over about 60 percent.
- of adults who are participating have reading levels between preschool and first grade. So that is a
- huge area of focus. And a lot of what we've been doing this year is updating our resources to make sure
- that our volunteers and our new readers have really high quality access to reading materials. So, show
- and tell time. I'll pass these around.
- some kits that we've been developing. The ones we have currently, this is the citizenship kit. This
- was the easiest because it's a standardized test. But the citizenship test includes several parts. There's
- a reading and writing component, as well as the 100 civics questions that they have to study for to
- prepare for the test. There's also an interview portion that assesses, first of all, their eligibility
- based on their application, but also their speaking skills. So this kit has study materials for each
- of those topics.
- got flashcards for the civics test as well as specific teaching activities so the volunteers know how
- to use these materials to support their learner's goals. So these are currently available in the vital
- classrooms. There are four classrooms upstairs. Another new addition
- teaching kits. So we've done these so far with letters and numbers. And we figured we would start with
- those, because those are very foundational concepts. Everyone's going to need them. But we wanted to
- leave a little bit of time to see how they were received, what was helpful, before we add more on. So
- the goal is to also add additional kits that these two are currently available. And these kits have,
- when you're at the beginning level, you need a lot of repetition. You also need a lot of hands-on stuff.
- So these include physical teaching materials like dice. These are not just typical dice. These are RPG
- dice. So there's a variety of different number combinations that you can play with as you're learning
- numbers. Flashcards for the ordinal numbers, as well as learning the number of words. There's also additional
- teaching activities. And again, a sheet in here so the volunteers know how to use these materials effectively
- with their learners.
- I love these. These are called Easy English Readers. This is just one of the nine. The other topics
- include actions, food, drink, community places, a couple of other topics that I can't remember. Colors,
- feelings, some of your foundation concepts. But they have beautiful pictures, simple words. So the book
- introduces just very practical everyday language.
- But then follows up with simple sentences and questions and answers, which is what you need to do when
- you're getting started. So we have a series of these. Each one is accompanied by a worksheet as well.
- And again, to help out our volunteers, a teaching sheet that explains what it is, why it's important,
- and how to use it. So those are also available.
- So the challenge now that we have these to get started, the great news is we've heard really good feedback
- from the volunteers about how useful the materials are. We would like to get them out of the classrooms
- and into the community. So our next step is to work with the library of things to figure out how we
- can get these circulating. There's a lot of parts. There's a lot of worksheets. So we kind of have to
- figure out logistically what makes sense. But we know, as Chris mentioned, there are populations who
- it's not really realistic for them to come into the library. But we do have friends.
- and family members who want to work with people in their homes. So we're trying to figure out how we
- can create resources that are accessible for people who'd like to do tutoring outside of the library,
- and that's something we'll be looking at. Chris mentioned the movement of the Library of Things and
- the mall. Library of Things is now located just outside the Vital Collection, so it will be very convenient
- when we are ready to add things. It'll just be a really nice supplement to the space that we already have.
- stay with you? Oh, that's a great question. So the goal, we commit when someone begins tutoring that
- they can stay for at least six months with their tutor. Many stay much longer than that. Our current
- record is 20 years of the longest match ever. That's a very, very high bar. More typically is going
- to be anywhere from about four months to two years. And we have about an 80% success rate. And what
- that means is, of all the matches that I make,
- about 80%, you can tell within the first month if it's gonna go well and they're gonna keep going or
- if there's gonna be some sort of barrier, scheduling communication, something that's gonna fall apart.
- So about 80% of the matches that we begin do continue on past that four to six month mark. I have one
- other topic, but are there other questions on this topic? Yeah. I just had a quick question. Are there
- certain limitations or rules or certain,
- the I don't know if I'm looking for like age range that they are allowed to be a part of this group
- or the or the classes not as a volunteer but sure yeah yeah yeah so we do ask that students be 18 and up
- So they're usually outside of the school system when they come to us. And then the other kind of limiting
- factor is that we don't do services for IU students simply because when you're enrolled in a university,
- you're usually kind of beyond the scope of what a volunteer tutor can do. But we do see people who are
- using that as a, that's a goal. That's something they want to work towards. So occasionally we will
- have somebody who started with a vital tutor who's now attending classes at Ivy Tech and is still getting
- a little bit of support in that way.
- have a new initiative that actually spans bigger than just vital. So a couple of years ago, we pulled
- together a really interdepartmental interlocation team of staff to start looking at digital equity with
- the goal of bringing back those services that actually have not been offered since before COVID.
- So we are very excited to be offering one current and one new program coming up next year. These are
- both partnerships with IU student groups. So in August, we were able to start providing drop-in tech
- help. So that is a partnership with Serve IT out of IU. So there are four volunteers who are available
- weekly on Tuesdays from one to three. The drop-in tech help is really exactly what it sounds. You can
- bring your personal device, you can come with a question,
- get really nice hands-on one-on-one assistance with a variety of topics. We've heard really positive
- things so far from patrons that they're pleased that we're able to offer this service again. The exciting
- thing about this model, we've done tech help before. Previously, it was a very staff-intensive model.
- It made it really, really difficult to sustain. But with the support of our community volunteers, it
- makes it much more possible for us to do it on a weekly basis.
- So that program is currently running. Digital Skills Saturdays is new and will start in January. That's
- another IU group, Binary Heart.
- Our primary mission is actually refurbishing and recycling electronic devices and getting those out
- to the community, but they want to start building an education component, so they reached out to us
- as a partnership. These are gonna be more structured, skills-based classes. So every Saturday, you don't
- have to attend sequentially, but they will be focusing on really a lot of internet safety and security,
- data privacy, avoiding scams. So they will be offering classes weekly from January through April.
- And we just are really thrilled to be able to, once again, be offering those services. It's been requested
- a lot. It's a hard service to tackle because there is so much. So a big part of this is this team is
- also evaluating attendance and topics and feedback to make sure that we're kind of honing in on what
- is the most area of interest and need for the community. And that is all of the services, I think.
- Do you have any other questions for me? Yeah. And this might, I don't know if you're gonna think this
- is a strange question or not, but with the reading levels, okay, and this is what prompted my question
- about the age range, starting at 18 and older, and then we're looking at a lot of the reading levels
- being at that beginner reading level. Do you or your team, do you struggle with finding
- material to use with adult students or maybe where you find material that's not too childlike. Does
- that make sense? Absolutely. The vinyl collection is actually designed to support that exact audience.
- Certainly there are children's materials that are sometimes really effective and appropriate.
- not everybody is interested in children's materials. So we have a collection of what we call high-low,
- so high interest, low reading level, that are going to be more geared towards that adult audience, but
- it has limited vocabulary, larger font, bigger space, so there's still going to be, now I will say,
- we do have those, but a lot of those, they're still in that intermediate level. So when you're talking
- about the more beginner level, it's a struggle, and I think there's a balance where we have, we work
- with a skill level that we have,
- but we also support the comprehension level of the adults. So I think a really good lesson plan is kind
- of a mix of these basic skills, but also meeting the person where they are and talking about daily life
- activities and using that as a tie-in to teach additional words or support whatever life skills to really
- respect the background experience that they bring. But it is difficult.
- are you seeing any kind of trends in terms of people who are coming in with very minimal literacy skills?
- That is a newer population for us and it's really difficult.
- no prior experience in your own language than having to add English on top of that. So that is, again,
- kind of the goal of these kits is to demystify that a little bit. It is a lot for a volunteer tutor
- to take on. And so we've worked closely with Exodus to try to figure out what are some of the best ways
- we can offer that. We've tiptoed into some in-home tutoring for that population that comes with
- a whole other lot of baggage in terms of challenges. But it's an area that we are struggling but trying
- to support. Yeah. Amazing work. Thank you. Thank you all so much. We are now at a time for public comment.
- Is there anyone here for comments?
- This time we will adjourn. Thank you.