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.