- So I'd like to call to order this meeting of the Monroe County Public Library Board of Trustees on Wednesday,
- June 17th, 2026. Start with introductions and include maybe what you read. Not my name. I'm Nancy Van
- Allen, and I just started the second half after taking a break.
- for a month or two, the House of Sand and Fog, and I don't know why I stopped, because it's really good.
- I think that's Sand and Fog, yeah. Okay, I actually just had to pull up my Luby app. Hi, I'm Jennifer
- Whitley, and I am listening to Mi Pais Inventado, which translates to My Invented Country by Isabel
- Allende. She's one of my favorite authors.
- I just started it. I'm reading The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal. I'm Greer Carson. I'm
- reading auto ranks art and artist and we are playing Planet Coaster 2 in my house. I'm Amy O'Shaughnessy.
- I just finished listening to Ann Patchett's new book Whistler.
- I'm Chris Hall, and I just finished reading The Frozen River by, let me see if I can go back to that
- one, Ariel somebody, and Ariel Lahorn, Han, and I just picked up the silent, let's see if I can find
- that one. Until I start reading them, I don't always remember the names, The Silent Retreat by Sally Quinn.
- May I get a motion to approve the consent agenda from May 20th, 2026, including meeting minutes, monthly
- financial report, monthly bills for payment, personnel report, and board meeting calendar. So moved.
- Second. Any opposed? Motion approved. Next, we're going to hear the monthly director's report.
- Okay, so Summer Reading started June 1st. It runs through July 31st. The theme this year, if you don't
- know already, is Unearth a Story, which of course focuses on dinosaurs. Remember that Summer Reading
- is for all ages now, and so we encourage everyone in our community to sign up at any of our locations
- or online via our website and enjoy the celebrated annual library program. And as always, thanks to
- our Foundation and Friends group for continuing to support this program with their annual financial
- gift to the library.
- Our collection development team is incorporating more digital records into our catalog. Many hoopla
- titles, for example, that we select with permanent licenses are now being integrated alongside physical
- titles in our catalog so that patrons can see more results whenever they perform a search online. Cataloging
- digital items isn't always as straightforward as cataloging physical items, and we certainly can't catalog every
- single digital item we subscribe to across all of our digital platforms. But between the strategic selection
- of Hoopla titles and the careful cataloging of digital item records, collection development staff are
- making it even easier for patrons to find Hoopla titles straight from the catalog search results.
- We're making a change in how we manage digital creativity at the Downtown Library. The Level Up space,
- which for the last 10 plus years has been the home to all of our digital creativity suites and programs,
- and has been under adult services for the last five years since we did a restructure during the pandemic,
- is soon gonna fall under CATS. CATS, of course, which is over 50 years old, started out as the digital
- creativity
- experts at Monroe County Public Library and looking ahead to what CATCH will be doing in the future
- in addition to the public educational and governmental meeting coverage that they provide for the community.
- They will also have a public service component that is much more like it was back in the 70s and 80s
- where they will help patrons come in and use technology to create their own video and audio and now
- we have 3D printing and all kinds of other things in the level up space. So the transition from adult service
- running level up to cats running level up will take a little bit of time. We're gonna do sort of a soft
- transition over the summer and probably by the fall we'll do that complete handoff. So we're excited
- to have cats kind of step out into the public sphere once again and run our level up digital creativity space.
- The auto notification system we've talked about a few times for staff is now in effect. We've tested
- it with some mock messages to staff to just make sure everyone's gonna get the text notification or
- the voicemail the way we've set it up. If and when we have inclement weather and hopefully tonight is
- not one of those times, we work with our IT staff and they send those notifications out automatically
- to staff. It's very much like the school corporations have.
- So we're glad to just finally have that piece in place. I'm guessing we won't have to really utilize
- it until the next winter, fingers crossed. And very pleased to share that the Monroe County commissioners
- have appointed our latest board member. This is one Rebecca Hill, who will be meeting with myself and
- Jamie Burkhardt in the coming weeks to do some new trustee orientation. And I expect will join us for
- our July meeting. So we're very glad to have
- Becky Hill joined the board starting in July. And happy to answer any questions about the director's
- report this month. Just a note to say, I recognize the amount of work that goes into the director's
- report that's provided. I don't always take time to comment on it, but it is a really valuable
- thing to report to the board. I really appreciate that it's organized underneath your strategic plan,
- that it includes patron comments. It makes me feel like I have a good understanding of what all has
- happened in the library, even if we're not all commenting on it. So kudos to you and the team that put
- this together. It's no small feat to do every month. So. Actually, I would say the director's report
- is in a lot of cases, literally an all staff process.
- Managers, of course, are supposed to submit monthly updates for their departments, but what a lot of
- managers do is ask their staff to submit anecdotes, data, experiences, perspectives that they will then
- include and put into the report. So it really starts with staff in each department, and then the managers
- kind of put it together and submit it, and then I go in and clean the whole thing up and add things.
- And so it's quite a group effort. And yeah, it's a 10- to 12-page report every month, so I appreciate that.
- Okay, so the annual report is conducted by the Indiana State Library and it's required of all Indiana
- libraries. We prepare this report every January for the previous fiscal year and submit the finished
- report to the ISL by March. As you know, this year was a little different.
- The vendor who had hosted the annual report for many years, Baker and Taylor, closed up shop. So the
- State Library had to work to find a new report through a new vendor, and this delayed the usual timeline
- for completing the report by a few months. The report helps the State Library understand how Indiana
- libraries are performing and where trends and growth may emerge. This year's report for MCPL is included
- in the packet in its entirety. It's lengthy, and a lot of it doesn't really change much from year to
- year, but here are some highlights.
- Total registered users at the end of 2025 were 56,350. That is up from 55,446 in 2024 and 51,917
- in 2023. So we continue to see more registered users by the end of the year over the last few years.
- number of paid staff is 167 at the end of 25. That is down from 174 in 2024. We all know part of why
- we were doing that and we will have a completed FTE reduction update for everybody in July. But that
- number 167 compared to 174 is in part a reflection of the effort that we made there.
- Total holdings, so total number of items in our collection in terms of physical items which include
- books, movies, music, games.
- things from the Library of Things collection, anything physical you check out from MCPL, we have 391,513
- physical items at the end of last year. That was down from 437,293 in 2024 and 469,143 in 2023.
- And again, following the conversations we've been having about
- over the use of digital collections and the increase in use on the part of our patrons. It's not a surprise
- that we see the physical holdings continuing to go down a little bit each year. Total circulation of
- physical items was 1,373,953 checkouts. That's up from 1,336,947 in 2024. And total circulation of digital
- items for 2025 was 923,000
- 462. That's a significant increase over last year's total digital circulation number which was 667,924
- and 617,147 in 2023. So the digital circulation trend which has been semi-gradual really took off this
- last year and as you've seen is continuing to do for the first half of this year.
- Total programs for 2025 were a remarkable 3,749 in-person or virtual programs. That's up from 2,306
- programs in 2024. That's a remarkable increase and speaks to the incredible work and really passion
- and energy that our staff put into putting on their programs. For a lot of staff, that really is the
- bread and butter of what they do.
- Total program attendance was 56,873, and that is up significantly from 2024's number, which was 33,729.
- And total annual visits to any and all MCPL locations in 2025 was 629,591. That is up
- from 571,438 in 2024 and 583,964 in 2023. So we went down a little bit last year and then we're up quite
- a bit in 2025 with almost 630,000 visits. The very end of the report always asks the library director
- to share a statement or two about an accomplishment that they're really proud of for their library.
- And this year we certainly referenced that we are succeeding in reducing our total compensation costs
- relative to the passage of SB1. We had committed to reducing by five FTEs without laying anybody off
- and just doing it through attrition. So that continues to be something we're focusing on but also very
- proud of because we're doing it and we know we can succeed.
- But also we reference the partnership we have with Heading Home of South Central Indiana, and that is
- the partnership that's resulted in there being a diversion and prevention case manager stationed at
- the downtown library in a specific office helping individuals who might be on the path to homelessness
- and helping them get the resources that they need. So we're very proud of that partnership.
- Shekay, who is our diversion and prevention case manager, will be giving a presentation to you all along
- with Elizabeth Gray as part of the adult services presentation later this year. So we included that.
- And then finally, we referenced not only the Bookmobile project, the fact that we have our Bookmobile
- uh... being built as we speak and we expected in early fall but also chris jackson our outreach services
- manager uh... mentioned something to me uh... and i think he was right he said you know the annual reports
- were great and they have a lot of areas to talk about what we do but they don't really put a lot of
- effort into what does an outreach services department do in a library like ours and we're far from the
- only library that has a robust robust outreach services department. So I said well let's start putting
- some of that stuff into the report and some of the notes field and we we use that opportunity in the
- accomplishment piece to talk a little bit about everything that outreach services actually does. So
- that's what at the very end of the report that paragraph is what you see there.
- So the new report is, in many respects, more intuitive from a data entry perspective. We expect that
- the state library will make a few changes to the report going forward, because they typically do. But
- on the whole, we're kind of glad to see the new interface. It was a little easier to complete for a
- lot of us. And we're glad to see so many positive quantitative trends in terms of CPL patron engagement.
- Happy to answer any questions about the annual report.
- speaks a lot to the services and the staff that you have here, so congratulations. Now I almost feel
- a little silly. Is this possible? Is it the 100th year for the bookmobile coming out? It will be in
- 2029. Okay. Yeah. Because I started saying that, I thought, well, maybe I'm way off, but I thought that's
- what I read in there. We're a few years away, so we'll have the new vehicle in time for it, yeah. I'd
- like to see a picture of the first one.
- Oh, we have it, Downtown Library. And it's on our website, too, under MCPL History. But yeah, it's like
- an old Model T or Model A, yeah. At this time, can I get a motion to hear about our ADA compliance and
- policy updates from Josh Wolfe?
- Thanks, folks. The reason we're looking at this today is because Chris Jackson, my colleague, has served
- as our ADA coordinator for well over a decade and has been beyond excellent at that work. But he made
- the difficult decision at this point to ask if he could step back from that role so we can really just
- focus on outreach services and locations.
- It's tied in many ways to bringing on this new bookmobile and the expansion of those services. So we
- talked about it for a while. I am going to step into that role and probably
- with the transition period and get a lot of help from him. He's already put me in touch with Council
- for Community Accessibility and some of his, it's such a supportive community for this. I've already
- gone out on a site survey and started to work on my own ADA coordinator certification. But the policies
- do need to be updated, primarily just
- There are boilerplate policies that we've tailored for MCPL, but one of the things you have to do is
- identify the person to reach out to. So on the Americans with Disabilities Act notice itself, we removed
- his title and put my own in and my own contact information. You always want to do that. One thing we
- also decided to include at the recommendation of our legal counsel,
- The sentence, as far in advance as possible when you're making an ADA accommodation request, but no
- later than 48 hours prior to a scheduled event. In all reality, in the very moment, our staff will scramble
- to make an accommodation. It's just part of our service model and what we do. But we should be covered
- by the policy. So they asked us to do that.
- and that's substantively the only change in the ADA Act notice that we have. We also had to do pretty
- much the same update in the grievance procedure, excuse me, under the Americans with Disability Act,
- and really just change his former title, which actually hasn't been his title for a little while, so
- we're probably out of date on this, to mine, Director of Public Services, ADA Coordinator.
- And that's really it. It's mostly just a name change for who to reach out to if you have questions.
- And how many hats do you wear now? I'm sorry? How many hats do you wear now? How many? I have one of
- those hats that can change shape. I'm very excited about this. It's been kind of a while since I've
- had the opportunity to dig into something that's not only really cool, but that I have a very,
- little understanding of. So I'm excited by the runway. I've already met some great folks in the community.
- And so that's kind of a gift for me, for sure. Yeah. Any questions? I'm sure you'll do great.
- Thank you. All in favor of the described ADA compliance and policy updates, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay.
- The ayes have it. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. And next up, we'll hear from Chris Hossler, the Ellisville
- branch manager. Good evening, and thank you for coming out to the Ellisville branch for today's board meeting.
- I'm going to be updating the board on a renovation project that we just wrapped up in the last month
- here at the branch that has been underway and I'll take any questions at the end about that project
- or the branch in general. In 2024, our department discussed possible improvements in several areas of
- the branch. These included the public service desks, the staff office spaces and addressing shortages
- in storage space.
- Then replacing one carpeting around the perimeter of our main public service area as you come in got
- added to the scope of the project at a later point. Our department staff identified challenges with
- the existing location of our public service desks. If you don't know or you're just thinking about what
- you saw as you came in, they used to be out in the main central atrium area and we have just moved them back.
- to the edge of that public service area. So these challenges we were talking about included difficulty
- hearing ourselves talking to each other and patrons because it's a big atrium area that has an echo
- effect. So that was a difficulty in providing quality service to the public and focusing on our work
- when we weren't dealing with the public. I also felt that having the public service desks located in
- a high traffic
- public area was creating situations where patrons were forced to use the space behind us at the desks,
- which made keeping patron information that we would be looking at on the computers, keeping that confidential
- when you have the public walking behind you. Also, it's disconcerting to have somebody
- walk behind you as you're working. So the decision was made to relocate these desks to the edge of the
- non-public area. And we've placed them outside the range of the acoustic problems that the atrium has
- and removed public access to the space behind that service point. So as part of the relocation of the
- desk, we've moved our hold shelves, which had been right behind us, out to just outside the children's room now.
- And then the other major component of the renovation project was re-carpeting the staff offices and
- workspaces. These were parts of the building that hadn't really been touched in the 2019 major renovation
- that Belt the Wing were in right now and did a lot of other changes to the rest of the building.
- and then increased usability and volume of storage and program preparation spaces. So we had a fairly
- large non-public staff area, but it was a big open space. And it wasn't really conducive to doing a
- lot of program prep or focused work where you needed to tune out the noise of everything that was going
- around you. So we did focus on those areas in the renovation.
- Also adding that storage space to that part of the building frees us up from having to use these closets
- that you see behind you, which of course is a challenge when these rooms are in use and you need to
- get to something in there. There's a lot of unnecessary planning ahead that we no longer will have to
- deal with because of that. So the new carpet was selected and installed this past January of 26.
- In February, we essentially created a new work room in the open,
- non-public space by putting in two walls. And they have formed a new discrete basically staff work room
- that's just separate from our staff office space. So it's a place for our staff when they're programming
- and prepping for that, particularly for the craft programs where you have a lot of components you need
- to assemble and you don't always get it done in one day. We now have a space that you can spread out
- prep your stuff and leave it overnight if needed without having to pack it all up. Then in this March
- and April, we added power and data ports to these new walls that would service the new location of the
- public service desks. What else do we have here? Oh, so we do have shelving.
- identified for both sides of those walls to increase the storage, which was one of our main goals that
- will be coming at some point shortly down the road. Then we had our marketing and communications department
- create a fantastic mural for this new workspace. So if you ever want to stop by and take a look at it,
- just check in at the desk with us and we can show you. I didn't do slides tonight, but we're happy to do tours.
- Then a little bit tangential, but during the course of that renovation, we had the opportunity to address
- some plumbing issues that had been ongoing for quite a while in the staff break room and restroom. We
- had a replacement of a failing mounting hardware in the staff restroom and we got a new sink and cabinetry
- in the staff break room and we're able to add a wastewater clean-out access point
- in that same space, which is going to save us a lot of work and money on plumbing contracting down the
- line. So overall, our staff have been very pleased with this renovation, especially the relocation of
- the public service desks and the workspace. Patrons have generally responded so far enthusiastically
- to the service desk location and the resulting open space in the atrium.
- Uh, it's allowed us to move some high volume collections like new arrivals more front and center. Uh,
- and we're, we're thinking about moving our kiosk that we have out in the front lobby with, um, programming
- brochures and stuff kind of into that big atrium space. So that is my update for the Alex Hill department
- tonight. Thank you again for your time and I'd be happy to take any questions now.
- done in the public space area. But tonight when I walked in, I don't know why I especially noticed you
- had more room for displays, new fiction, new nonfiction. Like at the downtown library, I always enjoy
- looking at those as I'm coming in. So it's a really good feeling. I would have never thought those desks were the
- It's not like it was a problem to patrons, but it's a very different feeling coming in now. That was
- the focus before and now it's the space itself and the collections that we have. Thank you. Thank you.
- Yeah, I'd love to have a tour maybe right after this meeting to peek around. Yeah, since we are likely
- to wrap up early, that would be great to just take a peek.
- We've seen some of the proposals and some of the in-progress work, but I didn't really peek around when
- I came in today. Sure. I'd be happy to. Great. Do you feel like the storage, the lack of storage space,
- which someone told me several years ago, they felt like it would be nice to have more storage space.
- So it may have just been an individual's opinion, but you feel like that's
- been helped a lot and then the shelves will really- It has, yes. I'll let you in on a secret. Programming
- librarians are hoarders. Not just because we want to be good stewards of public funds for the supplies
- we buy, but we're going to use it at some point and it's very hard to let go of stuff and you do have
- to, of course, deal with the space you have. But yeah, this will give us a lot of leeway and
- help us stretch our money, yeah. Thank you. Thanks. Do I have a motion to dismiss? Second. All in favor
- say aye. Aye. Okay, we're adjourned.