to call to order the Monroe County Public Library Board of Trustees meeting for March 25th, 2026. Can
I get a motion to approve the consent agenda? Oh, sorry. Oh, right, I forgot we moved public comment
to the front. Do we have anybody online? Do we have anybody here?
Thank you so much. May I get motion to approve the consent agenda? Second. It includes the minutes from
February 18th, monthly financial report, monthly bills for payment, personnel report, and the board
meeting calendar. All in favor of approval say aye. Aye. Those opposed say nay. Motion approved. And
next we're going to hear from the director's monthly report from Greer.
Okay so the positive trends in overall circulation continued in February. This includes the highest
use of our digital collections for the month of February since 2021. So that means looking at every
February going back year after year. That's of course when daily limits for hoopla and canopy in particular
were increased in response to the pandemic. And it also included the highest overall collection use
for the month of February
since before the pandemic. So that's overall collection use. I know the big success story for us has
not surprisingly been our digital collection use, but overall collection use is also as strong as it's
been since the pandemic. So those are great, great trends. We launched a new seed library at the Southwest
branch last month. The seed library started here at our downtown library and I believe 2019.
And it's steadily developed into one of the most popular non-traditional collections that we offer.
We have received numerous requests from Southwest patrons over the last year or so to have a seed library
at our new branch. So we're excited to get this one off the ground. We remain open to the possibility
of doing one at Ellisville as well, but there's not as much call for that. So we'll just wait and be
responsive as far as that one's concerned. Katz has taken a big step.
This last month, we began sending archival local meeting tapes to our digitization vendor. That's Memnon
here in town. They will be digitizing the first batch of approximately 1,000 tapes. The entire project
for digitization entails over 7,800 individual tapes dating back to the mid-'80s and will take about
two years to complete. Now, these are just for community meeting
recordings going back to about 1985. So these are all the government and local community meetings that
we have archived. It does not include all the locally produced content like shows and documentaries
and everything else. We do have a plan for digitizing those as well, but we're going to get through
the local meeting coverage archives first, and then we'll take a look at that. The locally produced
content dates back to the late 70s.
And it's probably close to the same number of actual tapes to digitize. So it'll be a similar cost and
we'll kind of take the same amount of time. So it's a big deal for us, big deal for CATS. The Indiana
State Library Annual Report is finally back online.
and with a due date of May 4th. Our team did get an early start last month in compiling numbers and
answers to what the report would eventually ask. As I had shared, I think there was a question of how
much can we prep now before having the report. A lot of things change in the report from year to year.
And this year, it's a whole new vendor, a whole new website. The report looks totally different. But
of course, some of our basic stats are always going to be asked. And so we've compiled all those and
we've gotten a good start.
on the report, we'll have it done well before May 4th, which means we'll be able to share the summary
of that with you all probably at the June meeting. And then finally, the big spring book sale is almost
here. Our friends at the library will once again host a huge book sale in this very room beginning April
16th and running through that weekend. It's a wonderful opportunity for the community, particularly
for those who are interested in identifying one or two really worthy
keepsakes in book form and coming here and getting a great, great price for it. Related to that, the
IDS did an article somewhat recently about local bookstores and included the Friends Bookstore in there
as one of the best in town. So that's worth taking a look at.
But the big book sale takes place April 16th through that weekend. You can check our website for details
in terms of start time and price and everything else, but we're excited to have that happen next month.
It is also the reason our April meeting will take place next door in the auditorium instead of in this
room. Happy to answer any questions about the director's report. Can you remind me after
Katz is having the tapes digitized. What is happening to the physical tapes? That's a good question,
and I don't have a full answer, but I'm happy to get that from Martin and Adam. We've talked about that
many times in planning this project, and I can't recall if we decided we're going to keep all of them
for now, or if we're going to ask Memnon to help us decide what is worth keeping and what isn't. And
some of that might have to do with condition, but I will get an answer. OK. I also just wondered what
if any of those materials could be recycled or if they had a recycling program. And we used to do that
with the government meetings from the late 70s up to about 85 as we would just keep them for a few years
and then get rid of them. And we stopped doing that about the mid 80s, hence the large archive that
we have. But that's a good question. Yeah. Thank you. Does anyone else have any questions?
And next up we're going to hear about the strategic planning committee and what participation for that
process. So about every three years we work on a new strategic plan and the current strategic plan is
in its final year so that means we're going to form our strategic planning committee this year.
to start work on the plan that will probably be another three year plan beginning in 2027. So it's just
a heads up to you all that we always like to have at least one board representative on our committee.
It's a committee that will probably meet once a month online.
to talk about everything from what we identify internally as our priorities and goals, but also planning
for community discussions, surveys, staff discussions and surveys, working with our foundation and friends
group for input, all the steps that we want to take in order to get as much comprehensive input as possible
before we commit to a new set of strategic goals.
So that work is going to start pretty quickly. I'm going to send invitations out to team members next
week. So just think about if that's something you might want to participate in. And if I can answer
any questions about it, I'm happy to do so. And I'll probably reach out via email and say, all right,
this individual is
volunteered from the board. They're going to be on the committee along with the following other folks.
And if you look at the current plan, which is in the packet and, of course, on our website, one of the
first few pages lists who the board of trustees is at the time and then who's on the strategic planning
committee. So you can get a sense that it's a pretty small team. So it's not completely representative
of every department in the library or anything like that. But a small working team obviously can do
things that a larger team can't.
And this is our formal commitment to strategic goals for a three-year period. So we're going to keep
it a relatively small team. We're going to work pretty quickly. And then the end result of the work
will be to bring a draft version of the plan to you all in November, discuss it, refine it, and then
commit to it in December. And then I send it off to the state library right after the December meeting.
And that goes into effect in January. Yeah. And it's usually a lot of fun, I have to say.
Strategic planning doesn't sound like fun, but we have really good committees and great expertise and
experience on the committee always. And so we feel like we're confident we know what we're doing. We
know what our goals are for designing the plan. And it's typically fun. It's not arduous.
I have appreciated as a board member the director's reports being organized under your strategic priorities.
It just makes the library's work feel really intentional. It feels like from hearing from staff that
the strategic goals came together not as an edict from above, but it is a collective process. So as
someone who's hearing the reports every month, it's been nice to just have that kind of organizational
structure.
Absolutely. And I don't see changing that. I do think there's some things we might want to consider
changing in terms of the format of the director's report and maybe the packet in general. If we want
to sort of condense it and get it down to specific metrics along with the anecdotal info that we share,
there's some things we might want to look at there. But I think ultimately framing the monthly report
in terms of the actual strategic plan just makes very good sense.
Any other questions or comments for Pierre? Okay. Is there a motion to approve the surplus equipment
and items? I move to approve them. Okay, we're gonna hear from Gary Ledler. So we have had a request
to surplus some computer tables in the level up area. They wanna replace those.
And we also have a refrigerator and freezer at Southwest that they wanna replace. And so we're gonna
surplus that equipment. Any questions? Great. All in favor of approving the surplus items and equipment
list, say aye. Aye. Those opposed say nay. Ayes have it, motion approved.
Next up, we're going to hear the update on Indiana law and public library budget impact. So this is
just kind of an informational piece. I know some of you have probably followed this, but there have
been a number of bills in the Indiana State House specific to libraries and library budgets. Two, we've
been watching very closely. One started out as Senate Bill 4 or Senate Bill 8 and became Senate Bill
4 and so on. And the other is 283.
Senate Bill 4 was passed and is now Public Law 102. And what it does is it forces a public library to
seek approval from its fiscal body, so for us that would be a county council, for anything more than
49% of the maximum levy growth quotient every year. And that's important because the growth quotient
determines how much we can grow our budget from year to year. We literally bake it into our budgeting
process, so it's almost like a given when it comes to the math.
This new law means we need to go to county council to ask for 50 percent or more of that growth quotient.
It's unique to public libraries. Other taxable units do not have the same threshold. I think it's more
like 80 percent. So in the packet I included kind of a critical summary provided by the Indian Library
Federation.
There's plenty of stuff out there about this. The worry a lot of public libraries rightly have is that
you're putting the budgeting process in the hands of elected officials and thereby potentially making
it a very political issue, whereas traditionally the library board, like with us, has been autonomous
when it comes to reviewing and approving the annual budget. We have reached out to county council to
talk about can we put our heads together and make sure we're all on the same page and following the
law and all of that and we're going
schedule a meeting with them very, very soon. So they're aware that this is going to fall on their shoulders
to that degree. But it's just an update for you all. It does not mean we're not bringing our budget
to the board. We're not going to change anything about the way we prepare, review, approve, and hold
public hearings for our budget every year with you all. But it's an extra step we're going to take in
working directly with county council. So that did get passed, and that will be our new reality for annual
budgeting.
Gary, did I leave anything out that's worth? No, I think you covered it well. OK. I do have questions.
Yeah. With this new law and these new procedures to be followed, can there ever be restrictions put
on what money is allowed by county council as far as spending at the library? Oh, like on a line item
level? Mm-hmm.
Theoretically, yes. The other bill we're watching, I think Senate Bill 283, that one is about
that specifically. It is the entire review process of the library's budget falls in the hands of the
fiscal body rather than its board. So that would find us going to county council and saying, this is
why we spend this much on wages and benefits versus
programming versus utilities and contracted services, and then that discussion would happen there in
a much more political sphere than it does here. That bill has not seen any traction since late January.
This one is just about, if your maximum levy growth quotient is like for us 4%, and you want to claim
2% or more, you're going to have to go to county council and ask
Does anyone else have any questions? Okay. Next up we have a department update from teen services and CMO.
OK. It's all there. Perfect. Hello everyone. I'm Sam. I run the teen services department here downtown.
I'm just going to share some updates on what we've been working on over the last year. But first I want
to make sure you can see my staff. Two of my staff weren't here when I took this photo so I included
their staff photos there instead. But without them none of the work would be possible. They do such
phenomenal stuff for the community the teens and everybody else that I want to make sure you know that
they're the ones to do many of the events.
So fewer highlights than last year because last year we did so many furniture upgrades shelving upgrades
and things like that but we did have one big.
space edition that I wanted to make sure I highlighted, which is this arcade cabinet. We had the shell
donated by an IU professor who had had it for years sitting in his garage and just couldn't figure out
what to do with it. And I was able to partner with our IT department and our marketing department to
redo the whole thing and our facilities department, who he was able to get a whole bunch of specialized
wood and cut all of it to be exactly the size, which was great. Without Tom, this would not have been possible.
But the wrap that you see on that and the team space arcade, that was designed by our marketing department.
So it was all done in house, which was great. And the cabinet has a hundred games on it that the kids
can scroll through and it's all free, which is great as well. And we started doing arcade cabinet tournaments
once a month with the kids and the winners get gift cards and little trophies that are printed with
their names on it and stuff like that. But it's been really cool to be able to provide older retro games
for them to play. A lot of them complain that the controls are laggy or don't work right. And I'm like,
no, that's,
This is accurate. It's not like a modern system. But that's been really fun. We have expanded our collections
again. Manga has proven to be just incredibly popular with our teens. And we were able to work with
Martha Odier up on the third floor to condense our graphic novels down and add a whole extra bay of
manga. And that's already full. And we already could try to add more. And we've even condensed our collection
so that we provide just the first
five or 10 volumes of a lot of series, so we can provide more different series options and have less
depth, but then that also encourages the kids to go up to the second floor, where the whole manga collection
is, so hopefully they can make that connection, because a lot of them have no idea that there's more
up there. And I think, Grier, do we have 8,000 manga? Something like that in the collection? Yeah, there's
a lot. There's way more than we have down there. Again, space upgrades for the arcade cabinet.
Greer worked with me to get new seats for the video game area because the seats had been there for 10
years and we're very much showing a lot of love is probably the best way to say that. After school snacks
have still proven to be very popular and we've been able to work with Lorraine because she runs the
Sam's Club membership there so we've been able to get a bunch of stuff shipped in. I probably spend
a quarter of my monthly budget on snacks because they're so popular every day and it's just amazing
to be able to provide that but it's something we're committed to and been really happy to see the kids
utilize every day. We refill all of them like three times in an afternoon because it's just so popular.
Staff fix book list you might have seen this I think in October of last year but Fern did an analysis
of all of our book lists and found that if you type in YA followed by like National Native American
Heritage Month or some of our other cultural lists we are the top
one through three results in Google search for those lists. And some of our lists like YA novels and
verse have actually had close to 6,000 hits in one year, which is great. So we're really excited that
our lists are that popular and are reaching so many people. But it also shows that the curation that
we do, we worked with Paula to figure out why. And she said one reason might be that because we consistently
update them, like every year to two years, the secret Google metric realizes that it's actually being
worked on and isn't just stagnant. But we're really excited that it's reaching so many people.
And then Ali Fletcher, the new teen librarian, just put together a new life after high school list and
pivoted away from being more of a like school and collegiate focus list to be just really focused on
life skills like car maintenance, how you do budgeting, how you do cooking, can you sew your own clothes,
stuff like that. So there's a lot more resources for the kids instead of just assuming that everybody
is going to go on to do post-secondary education.
And then last year, it was actually our most successful teen summer reading game ever at MCPL. We distributed
665 guides and we're hoping to break that record this year because it's dinosaurs and I mean,
that's all. Yeah, it's dinosaurs. I pity the children's department. They are going to be so, so busy
for the first two or three weeks over there because the guides are amazing. Marketing did a great job.
I'm so excited for the Jurassic Park theme stuff that we're getting. It's going to be great.
Programs, I normally don't include photos but these were too cute not to. We found that our kids over
the last year really enjoy plushy making events and so they're very simple to do where you just cut
out the design from felt and you hot glue around the edge and you stuff the material in, you hot glue
around so it doesn't require any type of sewing skill. But we do one of those about every quarter and
we've also started running them on some of our outreach visits as well because you don't need that much
setup for it.
Role-playing games continue to be incredibly popular. This year, we were able to partner with the Children's
Department and Adult Services Department on helping hands, which is where we assembled dignity kits
to give to Beacon in town. We made over 200 as part of that event, which was great, particularly because
we were able to really expand the amount of stuff that was offered in every kit. So it also included
thermal blankets, sanitary supplies, and everything else like that, which was great.
Teen Social Club has been a really cool event that we were able to start in November of last year by
partnering with two local historical costuming experts and YouTubers in town where they come in and
actually lead events for the teens and talk to them about how they can grow their own skills. And it
just happened because she reached out to donate something to us and then it ended up, I brought the
sewing machine. Yeah, she's the person that donated the sewing machine last year that I trundled in.
But it's been great to be able to work with them.
And then circus week was a themed week of programming just around like circus events and other things.
And Josh Wolf actually came and did like a juggling workshop and other things like that. And the teens
really enjoyed those events. Community partnerships is something we're really trying to expand. We still
go to MCCSE schools every month and then we participate in many of these larger scale fairs. But we've
also seen our special education class visit program double since last year where now we also have the
North classrooms coming twice a month and that's
all three of their special education classes. So it's somewhere between 20 and 30 kids every visit plus
eight to 10 adults, which has been great to see. So we host both Try North twice a month and North twice
a month. And then in the fall of last year, we had a staff turnover and
I worked with Greer and Josh to retool one of the teen library positions to focus specifically on school
outreach and to serve youth serving organizations. And so she's really hit the ground running this semester
and is trying to reach out to as many schools as possible and just had a meeting today with the Academy
of Science and Entrepreneurship to help figure out how we can assist them with one of the projects they're
working on where the students are looking at
Immigration through Ellis Island and trying to turn that into a board game. I'm not sure how that is
going to work, but we've had some really successful meetings and we've already reached out to several
people internally to try to set that up. But we're really hoping that we can like get to the point where
we're instead of doing like four visits every month we're doing closer to 10 to 12 every month, because
there's so many places that we can work with.
But it's been really cool to see the response from the community to that and how excited people are,
especially considering how busy teachers are this time of year and how difficult it is to get into the
schedule when you're already partway through the spring. So we're hoping to continue to see growth as
we move into the fall. And that's all I have. What questions do you have for me? Awesome. Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks for your report and for your work. Please send thanks to your team, too.
I'll let them know. I appreciate it. Thank you.
wish for a successful summer reading program again this year. Any other questions or concerns before
we dismiss? All in favor of adjournment, say aye. Aye. Meeting adjourned.