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.