- I'd like to call to order the meeting of the Monroe County Public Library Board of Trustees for July
- 15, 2026. Do we have any public comment? No? OK. I would first like to welcome a new trustee,
- Becky Hill. If you want to introduce yourself, tell us anything that you would like to, and then we
- can go around and all introduce ourselves.
- That was my second foray as a trustee. I used to be a trustee in Zionsville for the Hussie Mayfield
- Memorial Public Library there, so I had done that. I sat on the Dean's Council for Libraries at Purdue,
- and I've served on Indiana, oh my gosh, Federation Library, Federation Boards, and I have a master's
- in library science.
- That's kind of in a nutshell who I am. That's great. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Thank you so much.
- And then we're kind of introducing ourselves. Yes, I didn't want to say more than you meant or not.
- I forgot what my job was for a minute because I'm not there right now. Hi, I'm Nancy Van Allen, and
- I'm the librarian at Edgewood High School. So yeah.
- been here on the board for a little over a year, so I'm a newbie. Hi. Jamie Burkhart, board president.
- I also have an MLS, and I've worked as a librarian. I currently, though, a director at IU in cybersecurity.
- Carson, we met previously to do orientation, so library director here at MCPL. I'm Amy O'Shaughnessy.
- I'm the development director for WFIU and WTIU, the NPR and PBS station here in Bloomington.
- Happy library patron and glad to serve on this board. And I'm Chris Hall. I retired from the library
- in the public elementary schools. So I had been a classroom teacher for a number of years, and I went
- and got my library certification. So I was able to enjoy being on this board for another few months.
- Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? The minutes from June 17th the monthly financial report
- the monthly bills for payment personnel report and the board meeting calendar All in favor say aye aye
- those opposed say nay Okay, and now we're gonna hear from Greer for the directors monthly report Okay,
- some highlights from this month's report
- We hit the 60,000 registered patron mark in June. We haven't had that since 2022. We're usually around
- the 54 to 56,000 registered patrons, pushing up to 58,000 by the end of last year. We are now 60,044
- as of July 1st, so that's really great to see.
- Circulation of physical items reached its current year peak last month. Some of this is due to summer
- reading engagement, because patrons often focus on checking out print materials in June and July to
- complete their summer reading cards. So we tend to see this during the summer months. We also tend to
- see a slight dip in digital circulation around this time, and that was also true last month. But the
- overall trends are still pretty clear. Physical circulation is still a large part of our patrons' use
- of our collections, but it's admittedly in gradual decline from year to year.
- Digital circulation has seen steady and occasionally sharp increases over the past five years, with
- notable increases beginning early 2025 and climbing nearly every month since then. Most important of
- all, total circulation is the strongest we've seen since before the pandemic of 2020, and we are on
- track for a record year in terms of overall collection use.
- We can never conclusively say what's driving circulation at any single point in time, but there are
- some foundational efforts across library departments that certainly contribute to these trends. First
- and foremost, the great selection work on the part of our collection development librarians who take
- the curation of our collections to heart. Second, our public services staff who help patrons not only
- find what they're interested in, but also suggest other titles.
- whether through readers advisory support in depth reference support or the many face to face and virtual
- conversations they have with patrons about their reading listening watching and playing habits. Third
- we are very strategic about how much digital circulation we allow for a given platform. Each of our
- platforms is expensive and the cost is associated in many cases with how many downloads or streams we
- allow per month
- patron. We adjust this as our budget allows and almost always with an eye toward increasing those monthly
- allotments for digital use. Fourth, our circulation services team and branch materials handlers who
- shelve return materials quickly and make sure that our shelves are orderly and easily browsable. They
- also maintain our holds queues so that holds our process quickly and easy to find on the whole shelves,
- particularly for patrons who want more of that self-service type of experience at checkout.
- And finally, our communications and marketing department does a first rate job promoting collections
- and resources at strategic moments throughout the year. There are other factors contributing to overall
- increase in collection use, no doubt, but these are five mainstays of collection development, collection
- access, maintenance, and collection promotion, which result in positive trends in circulation. We are
- doing a soft
- reno upgrade of the vital space, specifically the vital tutoring rooms, the staff spaces, some of the
- meeting spaces and some aesthetic improvements to vital. We haven't done this in a while. We just finished
- the Ellisville staff area renovations, which we talked about a bit last month while out at Ellisville.
- So now we're working on vital. The Southwest branch address is officially changed. We are quote unquote
- moving from 890 West Gordon Pike
- to 865 South Laura Bachelor Drive. The change was made by the Monroe County Planning Department on June
- 25th and goes into effect July 31st. We have a full year to update all legal documentation to reflect
- this address change. And we are currently reviewing what public facing materials warrant immediate change
- and what materials we can afford to leave as is until they need replacing. So an example of something
- we're going to have to change pretty immediately is the address on the front door of the building.
- and certainly all of our public facing information on our website through our social media promotions
- and so on. We're probably not going to order all new library cards that have the updated Southwest address.
- That might be a little premature. We'll run out of library cards like we typically do when we reorder.
- We'll update the address. No one's going to have any trouble finding the branch. Could be a collector's
- item for sure. So we're reviewing what we're going to prioritize in terms of changing.
- To their credit the planning department did reach out to us as well as obviously MCCSE and maybe some
- other groups, I'm not sure, to ask for input on changing the name, so we submitted some suggestions
- which were respectfully declined. So South Laura Bachelor Drive is the name of it. That is the decision.
- That is the, yes. That is the decision. That's the decision. So Laura Batchelor is the person after
- whom Batchelor Middle School is named. One of the suggestions we made had to do with, I want to say
- it was Reading Road or, no, Branch Drive. There are three other roads in Monroe County that have the
- word branch. So I said, interesting idea, but we tend not to do that. So fair enough. So it was a good
- process. Couldn't even go mascot? Mascot?
- No, there was another really good suggestion, though. Bulldog. And it wasn't specific. The pound? It
- had something to do with education and literacy. We try. We came up with a few good ideas, not expecting
- them to take our suggestion. But this is great. So our address actually changes. I can't tell you that
- I fully understand why our address changed when they finished the Gordon Pike project, but they did
- give us a long heads up that it was going to happen, which is fine. So that is our new address.
- Southwest. And you said it takes effect at the end of this month? Yes, July 31st. It officially takes
- effect. I do not know when Google Maps will update that, so we'll have to wait and see. I would expect
- it to be relatively quickly, but I don't think it'll be overnight. Really good news. We have met our
- FTE reduction goal, five FTEs over a two-year period. We announced this to staff last week.
- It's been, you know, a bit of a challenge. This, of course, harkens back to the introduction of Senate
- Bill 1 and the fact that we were going to see three successive fiscal years with a reduction in revenue
- from property tax caps. So our plan, once again, was to look through all of our costs, and
- because compensation makes up close to 70% of our operating budget, that made the most sense to find
- a way to reduce by the equivalent of five full-time positions, but as we've said,
- repeatedly, the key is to do it by way of attrition and not through layoffs, which means we were confident
- that if we let people choose to voluntarily move on to other positions, retire, whatever their plans
- might be, and we were very careful about which positions we filled versus transferring internally or
- what have you, that we could reach the goal of five FTE reductions in two years. So we've done it in
- a year and a half. We reached that goal a little before last week.
- And we're happy to report to you all that that is done. Doesn't mean we're going to turn around and
- fill every single position every time there's a vacancy necessarily. We'll continue to be strategic.
- But it's good for all of us, and particularly for all staff here at the library, to take a deep breath
- and say, OK, we kind of got through that challenge. And we don't have to worry so much about maybe someone's
- going to get transferred. Maybe we're not going to fill a position that we really need or anything like
- that. So that's very positive. Very happy about it.
- Happy to answer any questions about the director's report. Yes, so they did that DNR did that five years
- ago maybe they tried this out and at that time we had as part of our new library of things collections
- these circulating backpacks that were
- basically designed to take out into state parks and do hiking and camping and all kinds of stuff and
- it had a bunch of peripheral peripherals in it and one of the pieces was the state
- Park Pass, and they allowed libraries to more or less circulate these. And it kind of ran into some
- challenges, so they discontinued it for a while. Our backpacks were also challenging to maintain, so
- we stopped offering those through the Library of Things collection. And then recently they've resumed
- the project just for public libraries. So as soon as they did, we kind of jumped on it and said, great,
- let's bring those back in. And they are very popular.
- What was the total amount of savings on that, do you think? I don't know, Gary, if you've got a number
- on that. The total amount of savings we have from the five FTEs, the goal was $350,000. And we were
- taking an average of about $70,000 as the mean total salary for an FTE. OK. Thanks.
- I want to throw one other fun anecdote in there because it stands out. There's a really good story about
- a young patron coming in for summer reading and pretending to faint when they found out that they saved
- $300 by checking out library materials instead of buying them. I wonder, did they go all the way to
- the ground? I should have followed up. That's a really good question. I don't know. You didn't witness it? No.
- As you all know, when you're used to reading the director's report, we try to keep some really choice
- anecdotes in there that kind of stand out. And there are two, at least, this month. One is that, and
- the other is the heartfelt farewell to a library assistant in children's, which a lot of people talked
- about when that happened. So those are great. Yeah, I don't know a lot about that program. I know it
- was successful, but I don't know where they did it and exactly how it went.
- Hey, do you want to tell us more about the AI statement? Sure. So needless to say, artificial intelligence
- is on everybody's mind these days. It's probably the hot topic in our country and beyond right now in
- terms of the way it affects everybody's work and personalized use of technology, communication norms.
- And there's no different here at MCPL. There's a lot of talk about AI, both positive, negative, ambivalent,
- nervous and we've had some staff conversations particularly with some departments that maybe have some
- immediate concerns about whether or not the library is going to fully adopt certain types of tools or
- a policy with respect to collection development and of course the overall concern that everybody has
- these days about how long am I going to have my job? Is it going to be made redundant by AI at some
- point? So we decided to issue a statement to staff that basically says
- This is our position with respect to three areas of library operations. We're not going to get into
- the larger societal existential questions because that's not really what we do. What we do is we employ
- people for purpose. We establish expectations and norms for communication, collaboration, use of workplace
- tools, and we select materials for circulating collection for the
- public which is first and foremost a popular collection which means it responds to popular need and
- demand and as far as those three areas go the statement basically says number one nobody is forced to
- use artificial intelligence tools in the workplace. You are more than welcome to do so. We have plenty
- of staff who do that particularly for email communications. You're not expected to use it but you're
- also not prohibited from using it. The third piece is
- really about goal number five from our current strategic plan of being an employer of choice and really
- being a great employer, which means if we're going to hire people to do a job, we're going to hire people
- and we're going to take care of people. And that's just part of who we are. It's part of our internal
- ethos. And that is not changing in the face of potential automation solutions or anything like that.
- It's not anything we're really looking at right now. The second piece in there is a little more complex.
- And it has to do with not just what do our collection development librarians look for, what do they
- try to avoid, what makes a good piece or a good book versus a not so good book, but it really gets down
- to the question of what is authorship? What is creativity? Is it exclusively a human endeavor? And all
- kinds of things that on a philosophical level do go quite beyond what we do here at a library, but the
- question of how do you select
- good pieces for the collection and what criteria do we continue to use and perhaps add in an effort
- to make those choices is very relevant to the collection development department. So we've had those
- conversations and have decided as we often do, just because there are new tools, just because there
- are new questions or even new threats does not mean we're going to rewrite our collection development
- policy. In fact, our collection development policy is
- is, I think, very, very well written such that our collection criteria do not need to change very often.
- And the introduction of AI-assisted content and even AI-generated content does not necessarily warn
- a change to the policy.
- The best example I can give, maybe two, one would be we have AI-assisted content in the collection whether
- we know it or not. And there are no clear mechanisms within the industry for identifying whether or
- not something was partially created or largely created by AI. But more importantly, if we have a patron
- who says, I'm really interested in this title, and it's a popular title among libraries or it's popular
- on book lists or whatever it is, whether it's AI-generated or not shouldn't really determine
- our decision to buy it or not. Now, there are various, I say, complex and nuanced exceptions to that,
- and we do use our own intuition and our own research skills to determine whether or not an item is worthy
- of being in the collection, and that's a different issue. But the fundamental question for us with collection
- development in AI is, if and when we get to the point where publishers are relying on AI tools to generate
- original content, and so it's not created by a human being,
- if our patrons are interested in that content, we should purchase that for our collection. So that's
- basically what this statement says. Two things I want to issue as caveats. The first is, in the beginning
- of this statement, it says this up front, this is where we are now. This is a very dynamic issue. So
- we're gonna continue to pay attention to it and have conversations. We will likely shift in one respect
- or another
- when it comes to figuring out AI in libraries or at this library in particular. So this is where we
- are right now. The second is I do want to acknowledge this is far from consensus among MCPL staff. We're
- not going to have a consensus among MCPL staff about
- a statement like this. There are plenty of staff who feel very uncomfortable with AI in any aspect of
- their work. There are plenty of staff who want AI tools as a part of their work. So we're not trying
- to represent a consensus among staff. This is more of an institutional statement on where we stand today.
- So I'm including it in the packet just to put it out there and so you all can see it and talk about
- it and ask questions about it, but also so the public can see that we are
- very aware of this. We're careful and thinking and talking about this. And this is the library's position
- right now. It's your library in Monroe County. This is your library's position today. So that's why
- it's in the packet today. I have a question. I don't even know if this makes sense. But like Hoopla
- and Libby with the e-books, have they sent out any kind of statements or anything yet about
- AI selections that they would have? I don't know if those in particular have. I know that a lot of libraries
- have done something like this. And I know that Ingram and some other vendors that we use have issued
- statements saying, you know, just reassurance that we're very careful and we're not going to let slop
- into what we offer and things like that. I don't know that the digital platforms you're referring to
- have issued any statement like that, but I can certainly check.
- some point yeah I think they're going to have to have to do that maybe ten years from now but I think
- so yeah because our catalog does not well you find all those things on those two apps especially through
- our catalog but you can also have the apps and not go through the Monroe County
- catalog, is that right? And so that would be interesting to see if there's ever a problem with that
- or what happens there. It's almost too crazy to think about right now how that could be solved,
- but yeah, okay. But no indications yet from that. Not just those, but any of the other platforms we
- subscribe to to see if they've issued statements. I just had a quick question about whether or not,
- you know, if we decide to add AI generated
- materials to the collection, whether or not in the catalog or, I don't know, will there be a description
- that it's AI generated? It's a great question. We don't know yet. Okay. Some of it depends on the tools
- that the publishers and distributors offer so that it's easily identifiable on our part. So that's more
- of a mechanics kind of question. Can we actually do that if we're going to say we'll identify AI content
- if and when we have it, are we able to do it consistently? That's one question. The other question is
- almost an ethical question. Do we want to do that? Do we want to say, all right, if we have
- enough AI-generated content, whatever your opinion may be of it, do we want to section it off and say
- that is a separate thing? That's a much tougher question. I actually thought when you were speaking,
- I thought, whoever thought that AI would be a genre sticker? Yeah. Right? I mean, it takes this topic.
- out of libraries specifically and into higher level issues like almost immediately. It's fascinating
- and a lot of uncertainty. So it's a great question, yeah. We'll just keep learning. That's right. Keep
- learning. Like the AI does. I'm glad that the library has this, the organization I work for.
- Folks who are donors or patrons of our organization are like, do you have a policy on AI? And IU does
- kind of generally, but it's not up to departments and schools whether they have a philosophy about it.
- And I think it's nice that, in general, the library is very proactive about saying, this is not forever,
- but this is where we are right now, to be able to point people to that. So thanks for that thoughtfulness.
- And that sort of reminds me. The other thing I want to share as sort of an acknowledgment is that,
- The peer libraries we've looked at who have statements are not saying the same thing about collection
- development. We are seeing more along the lines of we are about human creativity and so we will endeavor
- to focus on human authorship however possible and so on, which is totally understandable. The biggest
- issue that we've had with this is
- I'm not sure how you can do that. I'm not sure what the steps are that you can commit to that ensure
- you're doing everything possible to keep AI-generated content out of your collection. If it's possible
- to do so, we'll see an example of it. But I don't know of mechanisms that allow for that right now.
- So I don't see it as reasonable to commit to something like that, even if we wanted to with respect
- to popular demand and all of that. I don't know how we could ensure that at this point.
- good at media literacy to maybe part of that is educating patrons from a media literacy point of view
- about artificial intelligence and where it's cropping up and where they might see it and how they can
- distinguish
- It's a great point, and it's one that a few of staff have brought up very, very quickly, that maybe
- our role is less about, do we buy the thing or not, and more helping patrons understand what it is they're
- getting, which is really not that different from what we always do. I can imagine a teen program of
- spot the AI generated, and both the facilitators and the teens being very good at that. Yeah, I can
- see that too.
- Other questions before I move on? OK. Do I have a motion to hear from Gary about the resolution to surplus
- items, CATS equipment? So moved. So the CATS department has requested to surplus a lot of equipment.
- They must have been cleaning house recently. But that's what this is about.
- Are there any questions about any of this other than the spelling? It's a lowercase L. I was like, is
- this code for something? I almost looked up the terms. That's what I said. I asked. I was like, is this
- code for something I don't know? I think I had asked previously about recycling, and we try best we
- can. We do. Right? OK.
- to state that for those who may be concerned. They can have to recycle equipment whenever we can. OK.
- Any questions? OK. Next up, we're going to hear about our 2027 draft budget. And a lot is new this year,
- but Tom brought up a good point. Oh, sorry, sorry. Yeah. That sounds good. I moved that.
- Motion to approve the resolution to surplus items. The CATS equipment, all in favor say aye. Aye. Those
- opposed say nay. All right. Resolution passes. We'll sign it now. Becky? Thank you. Sorry, Gary. Oh,
- no problem. Please keep going on the 27 budget. We're very eager to hear. So normally, the 2027 budget
- agenda item in July is not an action item.
- but it is tonight. So Tom and I were kinda talking about this. It would be good to have a motion to
- approve the county budget form for the 2027 budget, which we will then submit to the county. Okay, we
- would like to have a motion right now to hear the 27 draft budget,
- County budget form from Gary, all in favor say aye. Those opposed say nay. Ayes have it. So tonight
- we'll go over the 2027 budget. Looking back to last year at this time, Senate Bill 1 was the main topic
- because of its reduction to the library's planned revenue increases.
- To manage the revenue reduction, a goal was set to reduce operating fund staff by five FTEs over two
- years. The staff reductions would be done by managing attrition rather than layoffs, and we've reached
- that goal. 2026 is shaping up to be a pretty good year financially.
- The Senate Bill 1 reductions to the library's property tax revenue have turned out to be less than the
- projected impact. So this is the revenue and expense summary for the 2027 budget, showing the 2027 figures
- along with the 2026 budget.
- And so last year, we had the Senate Bill 1 to deal with. This year, we're faced with new legislation
- that changes the budget approval process. To summarize the change, after the library's budget is approved
- by the Library Board of Trustees,
- It must go through a process of a binding review by the county council. We talked about this approval
- change at the library board meeting last month because it changes the process for approving the public
- advertisement, the public hearing, and the adoption of the 2027 budget. So this is a look at the county
- budget form.
- It has the same numbers in it that the information in your packet has. It's a little different format.
- It shows the current year budget, last year budget. And then it goes to actual results for 23, 24,
- So those are actual spending numbers. And this whole form is just budget spending. There's no revenue.
- So this is the county budget form. County units are using this form to enter their 2027 budget into
- the county budget system.
- I've completed the form except for the approval signature from the library board. The county requires
- that the budget form be signed by the president of the library board of trustees. Then it has to be
- scanned and uploaded by the end of July. Next year, I can provide some budget estimates at the June
- meeting. I can use an estimated growth quotient in June
- And we want to avoid seeing the budget for the first time in July if that is when it has to be approved.
- Keep in mind that the employee count, there's a column for
- that keep in mind it's only operating fund employees so it's a lower number than you would expect to
- see. So the library has to submit its budget in the state gateway budget system by the end of August.
- The final library budget approval steps happen at the county level starting in September
- We'll keep the library board updated every step of the way. I have a budget workshop scheduled with
- our Department of Local Government Finance representative on July 21st. The purpose of this meeting
- is to make sure that the information I've entered into the state gateway budget system complies with
- all the budget rules.
- Yeah. So you mentioned that you have to have it scanned in by the end of July. But then you were talking
- about, is that the state gateway you're talking about when you mentioned August, this is the same scan?
- No. That's why, yeah. The state gateway form has to be, it's a different, I think Greer will actually
- submit that. OK. So. And I'll submit the county form to the county.
- So that's the scan for July? Yes. OK, I just missed who that was going to. I just wanted to clarify.
- Thank you. Sure. So this is the revenue and expense summary. The 2027 growth quotient is 6%. This means
- the total budgeted spending and all the library funds can increase
- by 6% of last year's total budgeted spending. It also means the library's revenue from property taxes
- will increase by 6% before the tax cap adjustments. The 2027 library property tax revenue increase will
- still be subject to Senate Bill 1 reductions.
- This is the second year out of three years that the Senate Bill 1 reductions will be in place. I am
- basing the Senate Bill 1 impact for 2027 on what we have seen for 2026. So on this schedule,
- looking at 2027, the second line is the SB 1 impact, and I'm estimating 225,000.
- for next year. So this slide shows the 2027 budget for revenue and spending for the operating fund,
- debt fund, and rainy day fund. The 6% growth quotient for 2027 is a relatively large increase.
- The growth quotient calculation is based on personal income increases for all Indiana residents over
- a six-year period. For 2024, 2025, and 2026, the growth quotient was set at 4%, and the actual calculation
- was not used. But for 2027,
- The actual calculation is being used, and it was done based on the average increase in personal income
- for Indiana residents over a six-year period. Looking at the revenue estimates, total operating revenue
- for 2027 is estimated to be about $12,485,000.
- It's a 6.69% increase from 2026 revenue. Revenue in the debt fund is estimated to stay fairly steady
- at about $670,000. Then moving down the page to the operating fund spending for 2027,
- There are no plans for major increases to the current level of library services. There may be some slight
- staff adjustments, but there are no dramatic changes in service planned for 2027 that would require
- more staff. For the 2027 budget, we're using an estimated wage increase of 2.75%
- or 75 cents an hour, whichever is greater. When we get to year end and we know what healthcare related
- costs will be for 2027, then we will make the final decisions on the wage adjustments. We have had some
- indications that healthcare costs for 2027 could rise by more than we've seen in past years.
- This slide has operating surplus data on it. So this shows actual operating fund revenue and expense
- for the years 2022 to 2025. And for 2026 and 2027, it shows estimated projections.
- For the budget year 2027, the report shows an estimated surplus of about $347,000. The bottom line on
- this report shows that the actual operating surplus for 2022, well, it shows the actual operating surplus
- for 2022 to 2025. So the 2022 surplus
- which was over a million dollars, was used for the construction of the southwest branch. The surplus
- for 2023, 2024, and 2025 is accumulating in the rainy day fund to eventually be used for library service
- expansion. The rainy day fund balance as of the end of 2025
- is about $3,365,000. So looking at the long term, the library borrowed about $6 million in 2021 to build
- the Southwest Branch. There are about 15 more years left to pay on the loan. The total cost for the
- Southwest Branch project was about $14 million.
- $6 million came from issuing bonds, and about $8 million came from years of accumulating operating fund
- surplus in the rainy day fund. The 6% growth quotient for 2027 is relatively high compared to previous
- years. The library does not plan to make dramatic increases in library service in the next several years.
- Any operating surplus for future years
- will be accumulated in the rainy day fund. If we see growth quotients in the 5% to 6% range going forward,
- then we should be able to accumulate a substantial cash balance over the next 15 years. At that point,
- the Southwest branch loan is paid off, and we should be in a position to make a substantial service
- expansion of library service.
- Are there any questions? Are there any restrictions on how much you can have in the rainy day fund?
- No. OK. I say that, but if the community is not getting good library service and there's a lot of money
- in the rainy day fund, that's the situation that could develop.
- different than building services? Because we're working on the elevators here, right? So is that part
- of the budget? Yes. And since you bring that up, the elevators, it's a big investment in this repair
- and overhaul.
- We originally planned on using general obligation bond money. We still have a balance that bond money
- was supposed to last us through 2027. And we could have used that for the repair. But given that the
- Senate Bill 1 reductions were not as
- as much as we thought they would be. So for the first six months, we have more revenue than we expected
- and probably enough that we can pay for elevator repairs out of the operating fund versus using bond
- money. So good question. Can I ask you one more question? This may be a really dumb question,
- We have lots of time. You're the expert, so I just really want to know. So if we have a high rainy day
- fund, does that impact the growth quotient for the library? I mean, is there no penalty? I mean, the
- legislature doesn't look at it and go, OK. You've got a lot. The rainy day fund is not part
- of the calculation for the growth quotient.
- Still, the county council looks at the growth quotient. They look at our rainy day fund. I think what
- we just have to be aware of is that as long as we have a good plan to deliver the best library service we can,
- you know, we're okay, but if we turn into a bank and start trying to build our cash up at the expense
- of service, then that's a problem. So is it beneficial to show the county that we have plans for the
- Rady Day Fund or portions of that Rady Day Fund? Yes. Is that important to show? Yes. We don't know
- exactly how much
- we will be speaking during council meetings or the adoption, because it's kind of our first time through
- it. So not really sure if I would have an opportunity to talk to the county council about our long-term
- plans. If we do, I can tell them about that. If the question comes up, that would be our opportunity
- to let them know that we do have a plan. Thank you so much. Oh, sure. Can you customize back to January?
- at our finance committee meeting, which we do every year at that time, we had talked about the idea
- of further expansion at some point in the future. We even specified perhaps on the east side of the
- county, but it was all sort of, this is where we may go in the future. We do not have public feedback
- at this point that says we really wanna see a new branch here. We just opened a new branch. So this
- is all early days of, as we continue to be,
- Responsible with our service plus and our rainy day balance every year We're going to start to formulate
- plans for what MCPL service expansion might look like down the road We're about to do our public survey
- for the strategic plan and this will probably be the first Time we have an opportunity to gauge public
- interest in further expansion But it's certainly not something that we have even a draft plan for that
- We could share with County Council or anybody else in the early stages of thinking basically is what it is
- Rainy Day Fund, there's not a penalty for using the Rainy Day Fund responsibly as a savings for the
- library to fund future projects. Correct. Yeah. We did it for the Southwest branch and it's a way to
- plan with your cash. Okay. Thank you. I think just I need a reminder if you don't mind. Didn't we discuss
- replacing elevators here?
- Or less getting the elevators. We're not replacing the cars, but we're replacing pretty much everything
- else because they've hit their life expectancy. So yes, we are in the process. In fact, we got our draft
- RFP from our elevator consultant just this week, and we're ready to advertise it next week. And we'll
- put it out for, we say, five weeks, five or six. And then we'll receive the bids, and we'll open them
- at a public meeting.
- know exactly how much we're going to be spending, but it is going to be expensive, and they need more
- or less total replacement. What's the term that you used, Gary, for that? Or what is the correct term
- if I were to tell someone, oh, the public library?
- Overhaul, okay. Okay, keep them in working order from week to week. Whatever term you were using I was
- thinking, oh, I guess maybe we aren't overhauling them. We're just
- maintenance or something, I guess is what you said. So that is maintenance, yeah. It's fixing the broken
- parts. We've been in maintenance mode with our elevator maintenance vendor for many years. And that's
- basically the spot treatment approach to fixing the issues we have. They're so frequent at this point
- that we're like, it's just time. So it is proceeding that we're doing major maintenance or overhauling?
- We are going to do the major overhaul of three elevators at the downtown library within this year.
- So we can say overhaul. Yeah, that's appropriate. Yeah. OK. All in favor of approving the 27-county
- budget form, say aye. Aye. Those opposed say nay. Ayes have it. Next up, we're going to hear from Information
- Technology, Ned Ball, the director of IT.
- I'm Ned Baugh. I'm the IT department director, and this is my annual IT department update. The IT department
- is a relatively small department. We're made up of five people, including myself. There's Paula Gray
- Overtoon, our web administrator, Vanessa Schwegman, our Polaris and phone system administrator,
- Cody Mullis, our network administrator, and Dakota Erickson, our tech support.
- Together, we support library staff and patrons in all things technical and computer related. That includes
- maintaining the database of our library collection and our patron accounts. That includes our staff
- computers, phones, the public computers, our internal network, and our Wi-Fi access for both staff and
- the public. I presented to the board with a department update around this time in 2025. And in that
- update, I covered our implementations of Vega and Communico.
- and the work we started on website accessibility, particularly with getting our PDFs cleaned up that
- are on the website. So tonight, I'm gonna follow up on those projects and mention a couple more.
- So first, going live with Vega. The library's database of our collection is called Polaris. That's the
- vendor, and it's also the name of the database. It stores our patron data and all the collection data
- that we store and manage.
- related to books, magazines, movies, games, connections to other databases, and that sort of thing.
- Patrons can access all this through the web. Vega Discover is the latest iteration of the Polaris website.
- And that's how patrons can search for materials in the catalog, place holds, see what they have checked
- out, that sort of thing. Polaris describes Vega as a user-friendly discovery platform that enhances
- the public's experience with our online catalog.
- by rolling all formats into a single display, integrating e-content and more. I think of it as sort
- of a wrapper that goes around the catalog and presents it in a way that makes it easy for people to
- find things in a web format. And when we went live with it last year, we included updates to what's
- called the account portal. It's basically a way to look at your profile and see what you have checked
- out. This was an update to the patron profile display.
- But we soon discovered after going live that it wasn't yet ready for prime time, and we ended up rolling
- it back. Polaris has made a lot of improvements to it since then, and as things stand now, it looks
- like it has evolved to the point where we'll be able to bring it back, hopefully this year. That's the
- plan. But when I was talking to my staff about this, I was told I cannot announce a go live date yet.
- But we want to make sure it's really ready to go this time before we roll it out. But I do expect that to be
- Well, I'm not going to say this year. It's going to be this year. Related to Vega, we also implemented
- a new backend system for delivering texts and automated phone messages if patrons requested that as
- a type of notification. This gave us more compatibility with network providers as the method we'd been
- using had been deprecated by several phone companies. So hopefully that's been an improvement. I don't
- know if patrons would have noticed that unless they were having a problem with messages before. It's
- definitely a backend thing, but it's
- It's been a big improvement for us, and it's definitely the way moving forward we'd need to make that
- change. Related to that, we've also upgraded how messaging works with Author Alert using similar technology.
- And that, again, is not something patrons will necessarily notice, but the connection between Author
- Alert and the Polaris database was improved. And we're sending those texts through a more modern process
- as well. Again, it's the sort of thing that people
- probably won't notice, but it was a big improvement for us. We're continuing. We will be upgrading the
- Polaris backend this year, updating the catalog database. This year's update includes new features,
- but most of them are staff-facing. So the patrons shouldn't see any big changes due to that, but it
- is another big project for my staff. Vanessa and Paula, working with Christine Sneed, our ILS coordinator,
- have both put in a lot of work on making the transition to Vega Discovery a big success, and they continue
- to work to improve it. Website accessibility was another one I wanted to cover. Website accessibility
- is an ongoing process. It's not something you can say you ever really finish. Paula has done a lot of
- work along the lines of making our website more accessible, both in the pages created in-house and in
- working with our vendors to ensure their products meet web standards as well.
- We've always strived to make the website as accessible to everyone as we can. Last year, the Department
- of Justice updated its regulations for Title II of the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, with
- specific requirements about how to ensure that web content is accessible to people with disabilities.
- And Paula has been going through those requirements for the past year and seeing how we can improve
- it. And as I said, this is ongoing work. It's not something we really can check a box to say we're complete.
- always needs to be reviewed. So that's what Paula is doing. She's constantly reviewing the website with
- accessibility tools to see how and where we can improve accessibility. Among other things, she's improved
- functionality for patrons with visual disabilities or for those using screen readers to access our site.
- That includes things like adding proper alt text for images, updating form labels, and maintaining tab
- structure for navigation within a page.
- An example that comes to mind is the skip to links on the library catalog. You might see them if you're
- using the mobile version. It's not something you see unless you're using a screen reader on a computer,
- but it gives the option to skip past all the menu structure to get right to the main elements of the
- page. So if you're using a screen reader, you don't necessarily want to listen to all of the menu options.
- You just want to get to the main data.
- That sort of thing helps with screen readers as well as with improving the experience of patrons using
- a keyboard to navigate the website rather than a mouse. Part of those rules also involved requirements
- for making all published PDFs accessible as well. Paula's converted many of our existing PDFs to HTML
- for better accessibility. She had done that last year. She's also deleted obsolete PDFs in preparation
- for converting the links, or excuse me, for converting linked PDFs
- to accessible documents. Sometimes we make an HTML version of it. If we can't do it, make the PDF accessible.
- The next phase is then to update or upgrade how we produce PDFs for public consumption in the future.
- And it might not seem like we do that many PDFs kind of seem like old technology at this point, but
- our board packets, for instance, still go out in PDF.
- We're working on that this year. We've just begun to work with some new software that we hope will make
- it easier for staff to create accessible PDFs to begin with. We're starting with a small number of staff
- getting training in that software, and hopefully that will improve the accessibility of PDFs we create
- from here on out. I'm not going to get into exactly how that works, but you could think of it as being
- like having templates that start out with all the accessible features
- and make it easy for staff to just populate that with the data that they want to provide via PDF. On
- the board website, we made that change late last year, maybe? Yeah, that sounds right for the agendas.
- Yeah, the board packets are more of a challenge because they've got all the charts and everything. OK,
- and then some new things I wanted to share involving IT in the CATS department.
- The IT department has always worked with CATS in various computer-related projects, but in the past,
- CATS has always been very self-sufficient when it comes to setting up their servers and the equipment
- they use for video production. If you go down there and look at master control, all that equipment and
- stuff that CATS, in the past, has pretty much done on their own. They've asked IT for help when they
- need it, but they've done that mostly on their own. Moving forward,
- We're hoping to play a more active role I.T. is in supporting them. One of the first projects our department
- worked on with cats this year was the expansion of their storage capacity. As you know they try to record
- every public government meeting at the city and county level and that creates a huge amount of video
- data to manage and store.
- to help prepare them for their needs in the future, we increased their network drive space and made
- it redundant across two locations. So they have data storage here at the downtown library that's been
- greatly expanded. And we've also set it up so that that data is replicated out to the southwest branch.
- This gives us fault tolerance and redundancy in case of failure. That was a project that was good for
- IT to be involved with from the beginning so we could add our input and be aware of how it fits in with
- our overall IT
- infrastructure, and it makes us more familiar with the CATS workflows. So moving forward, we can hopefully
- help them more in the future with what they're working on. And then the other thing that's related to
- CATS as well is something we just presented to the board recently. I was gonna cover it briefly here.
- That's the creation of new apps for patrons to access CATS recordings. So all the CATS recordings and
- live streams are available on the web right now at CATSTV.net.
- We also put some content on YouTube, but that's just a subset of everything that we have. Cody on my
- staff had been toying around with the idea of putting together an app for Apple TV to make it easier
- to view on his television. And this year, he had a breakthrough with it. So after putting together a
- working prototype, we discussed it with the Katz folks, and they were very enthusiastic about making
- it available.
- And we presented that to the board in the context of the app privacy policy aspects of publishing it
- to the Apple App Store, basically. They want you to point to your app privacy policy. This was our first
- app, so we didn't have one. Now we've got that online. Since then, Cody's ported it to Roku, iOS,
- and Android, so it's available on all of those platforms as well. We're hoping that makes it easier
- for patrons to access cast videos on those platforms. And he was just showing off
- It's a... yeah, I'll just go ahead and say it. He continues to work on it, and we hope to have better
- search functionality released to those apps in the near future. I mean, like, very near future, because
- we were just looking at it upstairs. By default, it started out with just streaming videos and basically
- duplicating what's available on the website, except for the search function. It was a first prototype.
- You could see, like, the last 10 meetings of every meeting that was available.
- So we knew that we wanted to add search to it, and I think Cody's got that perfected, so I hope to see
- that very soon. And then in addition to those larger ongoing projects as a department, we're typically
- responding to between 60 and 80 help desk requests every month, the bulk of which fall to Cody and Dakota.
- Vanessa and Paul and I respond to those as well, but Cody and Dakota get the lion's share of those.
- include replacing PCs, fixing printing issues, installing software, troubleshooting public computer
- issues, that sort of thing. So those are some of the projects we've been working on since I spoke to
- you last. But I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Very easily accessible. And it doesn't
- seem like you guys are having to do anything. So thank you. Yeah, believe me, they do a lot. But thank
- you. Because you make it so easy. Thank you so much.
- Yeah, thank you. Thank you for sharing. All right, thanks. Thank you. Any other questions? No? OK. Is
- there a motion to adjourn the meeting? So moved. Second. OK. All in favor say aye. Meeting adjourned.