- I'd like to call to order the meeting of the Monroe County Public Library Board of Trustees for April
- 15th, 2026. Do we have anyone here for public comment? And no one online, public comment, correct?
- Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda from March 25th, 2026, the monthly financial report,
- the monthly bills for payment, the personnel report, and the board meeting calendar? All in favor say
- aye. Aye. Those opposed say nay. Ayes have it. Next we're gonna hear the director's monthly report from
- Greer. Okay, I'll start with a quick note. The program numbers at the top of the report are incorrect.
- The real numbers for March of 2026
- are we had 217 programs last month with 3,235 attendees. We saw a huge increase in the use of Loat for
- Kids, which is our newest children's ebook platform, with a total of 238 stories viewed. That's a remarkable
- monthly statistic given that the total number of stories viewed for all of last year was 258.
- We introduced this resource in January of this year, and it was the e-library resource of the month
- in March, so it's likely that the web highlight was the driver for such a sharp increase in use, and
- that's often the case. Mango languages also saw significant use
- increase in use last month, nearly doubling the numbers that we saw in March of 2025. We believe this
- was due at least in part to the temporary loss of Rosetta Stone. So Rosetta Stone, which is a very popular
- language tool, has been a part of the Indiana State Library's Inspire suite of resources for some time.
- It was dropped in July of last year during the State Library's renewal with EBSCO, which is the provider.
- And partly due to the cost saving measures they took associated with the discontinuation of the IMLS
- funding. Once that funding was restored, Rosetta Stone was added back to the Inspire collection in February
- of this year. And it is very popular, so it's quite possible that Mango Languages sort of took the place
- for Rosetta Stone for a little while.
- And Freegal once again saw a record month in March with 14,043 streams, 2,054 downloads. This tops the
- previous record of 14,412 streams set just a few months ago, and actually I have that number incorrect
- because 14,043 is less than 14,412. But we set another record that was set a couple of months ago, and
- then I think back in December we had a Freegal record as well.
- Freegold has been a quiet resource for us for a long time, so this kind of came out of nowhere and it's
- gaining in popularity right now. We're looking into why this is the case, but we are very thrilled to
- see our patrons making great use of what was previously an underutilized music collection.
- We introduced blu-ray discs to our branches in March. The popularity of our downtown blu-ray collection
- has grown over the two years that we've offered this, and now we're starting to order branch copies
- of some blu-ray titles so that Ellisville and Southwest both have browsing blu-ray collections.
- For some context, we often pilot a new physical collection at the downtown library before expanding
- it to the branches. This allows us to gauge demand for browsing collection before investing and expanding
- its holdings across the system, which, of course, can be quite expensive. While we pilot a collection,
- we watch the patron holds queues for downtown materials to see how many branch patrons request the title
- to be sent to the branch for pickup.
- And this gives us a sense for when it's appropriate to go ahead and invest in expanding a physical collection
- to the branches. Our new collection and circulation analytics tool, which is called Library IQ, makes
- it a lot easier for us to track circulation trends across locations and then to decide when it's time
- to expand something like the Blu-ray collection to one of the branches.
- There are a number of lovely patron comments and thank yous included in this month's report. Rather
- than single any one of them out, I'll just say that each and every one of these comments we receive
- is read by us, shared with our staff, and so we want to thank our patrons and some of our out of town
- visitors for taking the time to reach out and compliment and thank the library for all that we do.
- And finally, we encourage everyone in our community to come and check out the Big Spring Book Sale.
- This semi-annual book sale is organized and run by our Friends of the Library group, and it's a great
- way for the community to support MCPL through browsing and hopefully purchasing some books from one
- of the very best book collections in town. The sale starts tomorrow for Friends members and runs through
- next Monday, and information can be found on our website, our social media accounts, and our newsletters.
- Happy to answer any questions.
- Maybe for members. That was a question. Starts tomorrow. It starts tomorrow for Friends members. They
- get sort of early access. And then it opens up to the public Friday. And it runs through Monday. I believe
- Monday is when they do grab a box and help us get rid of the stock kind of stuff. So we've had successive,
- incredibly successful book sales. I think the last three in a row have just gotten better and better
- and better. So yeah, it's a great thing.
- And the reason why we are in this space tonight, because they're setting up next door. I don't think
- people realize how many books go in that book sale. There is a lot to choose from. So I have been promoting
- that a lot with my students. They're very excited. And they became very excited when I said that the
- flyer said maybe one of the cheaper prices was around $0.50.
- And one of the higher prices would be around $2. Yeah, and I think they may have adjusted their prices
- this year. But regardless, it's like $3 max or there about for hardcovers. It's an incredible deal.
- There was this really cool article in the IDS a month or so back that went through what the local bookstore
- culture was like here in town. And the Friends of the Library bookstore was listed as one of the really
- great bookstores we have. And it is.
- and incredible value for the materials. That's great. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Okay.
- We do not have any old business tonight. Do I have a motion to hear about the resolution to transfer
- funds to Lerf? Second. And next up, we were going to hear from Gary. The library has received the third payment
- of a pledge for $215,000 that was used to build the Hain amphitheater by the woods at the southwest
- branch. The payment of $53,750 is currently in the restricted gift fund. So this resolution will allow
- the funds to be transferred to the Library Improvement Reserve Fund
- The original construction cost came out of the LERF fund knowing that it would be repaid over four years.
- Are there any questions? Nope. No one has questions? Okay, all in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed
- say nay. Ayes have it.
- Next up, we're gonna hear from Josh Wolf, the Department for Public Services and Programming. Oh, and
- I'm sorry, and Dana Duffy. Thank you, my apologies.
- Hello, my name is Dana Duffy. I'm the program coordinator for the library. And the 2025 program stats
- are not available right now. We switched over to a new programming platform called Communico. And it
- records things a little differently than we had before. And so the numbers are a little bit different.
- And so we have to kind of look at them and interpret them so that we get the correct kind of numbers.
- So we are working on that. So as a program coordinator, a good portion of what I do is I arrange for
- staff to participate in outreach events. So I am separate from the outreach department. So outreach
- events are a little bit different than what the outreach department does. So basically what happens
- is we'll have a
- Oh and also the other thing that I do is I work coordinating with the partners who get a hold of the
- library and they want to do system wide programs. So I'm going to talk a little bit about that first.
- So basically what happens is we'll have a partner that will reach out to us and they will want to do
- a program at the library and my job is to make sure that they understand what
- what partnering with the library means. And so, for instance, we don't take money. I'm gonna stop you
- just a second. I think our audio cut out. I wanna make sure that everyone can hear you. Okay. Okay,
- so people online and for et cetera can hear. Okay, I'm sorry, thank you. Can you hear me all right?
- Yes, we can hear you. Okay, all right. So basically,
- We try to explain to them that we don't take money, we don't partner on partisan programming. So it's
- just things like that to help people understand what the public library is. And then I basically try
- to move it through the system after that. So I work with the library staff to make sure that if it's
- a system-wide program, that we have all of our dates set and that the partner understands
- each of these different locations and how different the setups are there.
- Then also, I try to make sure that people understand that these are partnerships. So a partnership is
- a little bit different than if you just want to use the library space as a room reservation, which is
- completely fine. So if you want to just do something where you want to do your own thing and you don't
- want the library involved, that's really more of a room reservation. So I do help people through that as well.
- And then the other thing that I do is that I work helping to do outreach events. And so not only do
- we have partners contacting us because they want to do programs here at the library, they also want
- us to go out and table at events. So that's a lot of fun for us. We've had a lot of different places
- that we partner with or that we have gone out to do these events with.
- IU is probably our biggest tabling event. And we do first Thursdays. We see a lot of students there.
- And basically when we table, we're doing a few different things. We're promoting our services. We're
- promoting our resources. And we're promoting our programs. But we're also signing people up for library
- cards. So we take our library cards with us.
- and we sign people up and that goes very well. A lot of times, sometimes at first Thursdays, we might
- sign up 50 people for a library card. So yeah, it's really great. We've had some other partners that
- have done programs here as well as us doing outreach events and Lotus is one of them. We just did Lotus
- Blossoms where we go over to Fairview School and we stay there for two days. And we basically,
- have set up a printing press for the kids and they made little bookmarks and we explain to them what
- the summer reading program is. So it's a lot of fun and then the next day the families come and we really
- try to promote our summer reading program and to explain that it is not just for children it is also
- for children teens and adults. Then also our partners that we've had this year we've really reached out to
- work on some of our health and wellness. We've done a health net is a partner for us. We've done some
- partnering with them to help people in the homeless community to get resources, especially medical resources.
- We have also worked with
- Tandem, and they have come to our baby programs, Tandem Birthing Center, and they've partnered with
- us as well. We've had the state health insurance assistant program that has come to give free information
- for people who are going to sign up for Medicare. And then we've also partnered with Wonder Lab and
- Wild Care for science-related programs. So that has been a lot of fun as well.
- So we have done a lot over the years to try to get our name out there, but to also work with our community
- partners so that they can better understand what it is that we do, that we're not just books and reading.
- However, we have partnered with that as well, where we did have Ashley Hope Perez came back and she
- did a program with us about censorship. And so that was pretty special for us. We had worked with the
- Friends of the Public Library to do
- of power of words and Ashley had come and talked as well and then she mentioned that to IU when she
- was going to IU to talk to them and she said that we were a good partner and so she came back and it
- was great. We really enjoyed it. So that's all I have. Do you have any questions for me?
- on their phones, their residence hall, or their address, and then that's how they get the... Yeah, so
- it's really easy now because they... And our marketing department made this fantastic little sticker
- with a QR code, so they just hit that QR code with their phone. It takes them straight to applying for
- a library card, and then they have
- all of that stuff on their phone. They'll have a lease. They'll have something that was delivered to
- them from Amazon. So it makes it really quick and easy. It takes about three minutes for them to get
- their library card. It's great. Every now and then though, we will disappoint somebody because they'll
- say they commute from like Green County or Lawrence County. So we feel bad, but we can't help them unless
- they want a plaque card. And usually students don't want that. It's a little bit too much for them to
- afford. Anything else?
- Thank you so much for connecting our community. This is someone you want to partner with. It feels good.
- It's effective. The staff make it very easy to do and make it tailored to an event. So kudos to you
- and your team. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.
- I got to run tech for the Ashley Hope Perez gig, and it was very inspiring. I don't know if anybody
- or any of our audience got to see that, but it was really something. So I'm the director of public services.
- Yesterday, I had the pleasure of joining Greer and a couple of my colleagues for a meeting with the
- superintendent of MCCSC, Dr. Winston. She asked what I do at the library. When I told her I'm the director
- of public services, she responded very politely because
- That's a title which always needs a little defining. I realized that enough of you are newer to the
- board that I probably owe you an explanation as well. So I threw out all my planned anecdotes for tonight
- and I decided to talk a little bit about our structure and my place in it. I've been in this position
- for almost five years. In brief, I supervise the public services managers, children's, teens, adults,
- two branch managers, outreach.
- Also the managers of collection development, CATS, and circulation. If that sounds like a lot, I can
- say it's much easier than you would think, because they're all incredibly strong leaders of their staff,
- they're passionate about their audiences, and endlessly creative in their approach. In practice, I meet
- with each of them regularly. I help with many aspects of their work, from developing new services, like
- our new circulating Adobe licenses, to developing their staff with new training and mentorship opportunities,
- to coordinating with other managers and administration on system-wide projects and partnerships with
- the help of folks like Dana and some of our other operational directors. I'm not the expert or the driver
- for most of these initiatives, I just support them. But I was a department manager for about 13 years
- and I'm intimately aware of the unique position they're in. Somewhere between frontline staff, who they
- work alongside of half their time in administration, who they work for and with as well,
- The middle managers are the central conduit for all of our initiatives that we have here. They're really
- part of our big picture goals. But I'm also incredibly fortunate that when Greer and his predecessor
- stepped me into this position, they allowed me to continue to take on frontline shifts as needed. I
- fill holes on evenings and weekends on the desk. Sometimes I even get to do a program when a presenter is sick.
- This was not the practice for MCPL admin for a long time. And I've been able to keep at it even as our
- system has expanded. It's important and instructive because we in administration regularly have to make
- decisions that impact the entire system. And at the local level in a single department on the desk,
- those decisions can feel very remote. I've been there. In those situations, it always falls on those
- department managers to explain the system-wide context,
- of any of our tough decisions. But it helps, too. If I can say to folks, while I'm on the desk, I work
- with you here, I know on Saturdays what it's like. I also know what it's like over there and over there
- and over there. And my understanding is really based on those touch points, not the halcyon days of
- my children's librarianship. When I used to do pratfalls off of this stage, actually. I could finish
- with one, if that would.
- Probably not a good idea at my age. So that's why, even though I spend most of my time in meetings or
- drafting proposals, you still might run into me on the desk sometimes, or writing shotgun on the bookmobile,
- or even once in a while doing a story time. I'm grateful for that, partly because I love it, and I don't
- think this type of structure could have come about in any of the other libraries that I've worked in.
- MCPL is somewhere along the continuum between a small library and a large library. We've experienced
- tremendous change in the last six years.
- And our tendency is always to experiment. We tinker a lot just to see if things will work. Our current
- structure that we have now is a reflection of that. We spend a lot of time trying things out, and I'm
- really grateful to be part of that. And that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your leadership.
- Thanks. Any other questions or comments from the board?
- to dismiss.