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.