Parks and Recreation Committee - Regular Meeting

5 o'clock, so we'll call the meeting to order. First thing to do is pledge allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, HAB-Masyn Moyer- roll. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Not yet joined up. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Without areas. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Next item on the agenda is the approval of units from our previous meeting a motion so moved. HAB-Masyn Moyer- You have a second two minutes. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Any discussion amendments anything questions. In favor of approving the minutes from our previous meeting, please say aye. Aye. Okay. Anyone opposed? Great. All right. Next up is public hearing, and we do have time reserved for speaking. Nobody has signed up to speak today. Okay. So then we will move on to our introductions. We have some new board members. We have Abhitesh.

Hey, everyone. I'm Mitesh Shmera. I'm an Appleton native. I have a small entrepreneurial business here. This is my first board meeting, of course. I've served on OWL's board for a few years, so a few familiar faces here. B, of course, we've all met virtually, never in person. And yeah, I'm happy to learn and contribute and serve in any way I can. Thank you for having me.

Happy to have you on the board. Nice to meet you.

You have Shola? Yeah, my name is Shola. I work for the foundation for the region. I'm a scholarship manager there. This is my first board membership ever. I actually just finished a board-run program today. That was the right timing. I'm excited to come in.

Welcome. And we have a new materials management assistant supervisor, Megan.

My name is Megan. I have been working at Appleton for four, five weeks. A little bit of a pre-planned vacation in there, but I have a Bachelor's degree in accounting, and then I switched over to public service. I got my master's in library and information science with a focus in public service. And I, in that time, worked at Middleton Public Library, as well as a couple of academic libraries, and I'm very happy to be here. And my door is always open. Okay.

And then Colleen had the excellent suggestion that maybe the other board members should do some introductions for the new board members. So I'm Bastia, I've been on the library board since 2011 or 2012 and somehow avoided being in this president role. I do also have a master's in library science and that's, I feel helpful just to I'm obviously not up to date on everything libraries are doing, but that grounding in the values and ethics, everything I think is helpful in the real world.

Yeah, absolutely. My name is Brian Vargas. I'm an attorney. I was at Peterson, Burke & Cross, but I guess for marketing purposes now. I'm at a different firm. I'll be working at McCarty Law. Still in Appleton here, but I do personal injury law. I'll be doing some general litigation. Some fun facts. I have a wiener dog named Hope. She's tiny, 10 pounds, ferocious. Other fun facts. I like running. So if you see me running downtown, it's probably me. I'm not And yeah, I have been a part of the board since I believe March of last year. It's very exciting to be a part of this particular board, a part of a couple of others, but I've always found that the library is pretty cool and it's awesome to be a part of something that's just a couple of streets down from me because I live relatively close by. So I'm excited that we have some new faces and yeah, I'm loving it so far.

Denise?

I'm Denise Benton. I am the older person who is luckily assigned to be on the library board this year. I've been lobbying for it for a few years. Big time library person. And I tell everybody my very first volunteer job when I was a child was reading a story hour in our local library. So I'm really excited to be part of it for my year.

I'm married. I also trained as an attorney, but I'm not practicing currently. I'm working as a contract grant writer for a social service company or social services organizations through a company that's based in Georgia. And I have a couple of adult kids, one graduated from college, one in college. and raise them to be library kids, since I was a library kid myself. We spent a whole lot of time here. And all the books back. So it's a real pleasure to be on the board. A couple of years, 20, 24.

We have two virtual members. Jason, would you mind going next?

Sure.

I'm sorry that I can't be there in person to welcome you. I'm Jason Brozek. I teach at Lawrence. That's actually where I'm sitting right now. We are doing summer advising for incoming first years. And I have been on Zoom all day up until three minutes ago with my last student. So I couldn't make it over in time. So welcome. Glad to have you.

And John? You can see that John has called in on his iPhone. It's possible that the app mute is maybe interfering. I'm not sure. Is it possible it is?

He's just driving.

Hands on the wheel, John.

Then we can introduce the staff and others that are here.

present. So I'm Colleen. I'm the library director. I've been here for almost 30 years in various ways. So thank you for joining the board. I'm super excited to have you.

I'm Peter. I'm the community partnerships advisor.

Hi, I'm Anne Cooksey. I'm the head of children's here at the library.

Tasha Saker, I'm the assistant director here at the library. I'm Jade Cain Salazar, and I'm the admin support specialist.

I'm Darren Glad. I'm an assistant city attorney, and I am a parliamentarian for several boards and committees and commissions and whatnot.

I'm Bradley Ships. I'm the director of the Outagamie Waupaca Library System. I'll talk more later.

I'm the materials management supervisor here at Appleton Public Library, and our team handles essentially the entire life cycle of the book, so from selection to ordering, receiving, paying, and cataloging, and then returning. Yes, Megan. And getting everything back on the shelf and ready for future.

I'm Diane Forsyth. I'm from Waterbacca. I'm a trustee on the Owls Board. I do everything IT. I've been here for just shy of five years now.

You're here as an observer, but you're welcome to say.

Sure. I'm Mike Gadzik. I'm an employee at the library.

I'm here doing homework for my master's degree in library science.

And same. You're welcome to introduce yourself, but you don't have to.

I'm Jen Engel, and I like reading.

And I am Missy Silicki, the financial specialist here at the library. And I will be completing my 20th year this year. So I've been in a couple of different roles here. And Tina, would you want to go last?

Can you hear me? Hi, I'm Tina, and I'm the communications coordinator. I don't have my camera on. My hair is real bad.

All right, okay, thank you, everybody. So we'll move on to item six, establishing the order of the day. And at this point, I ask if any of the board members want to discuss any of the items under the action items separately. So each item is associated with this number. If there's anything in the action items that you would like to discuss, you could indicate so now. Otherwise, I would entertain a motion to put all five of the items onto a consent agenda that we could approve all of these. So moved. Benton?

Second. Brian Vargas?

Motion and a second to put the items onto a consent agenda. Any discussion in favor of creating this consent agenda for these five items, please say aye.

Aye.

Is anyone opposed? Right next up now, we need to prove all everything on this consent agenda. So I start that with the motion as well.

So moved.

Second. Sure.

Within the library of that rental fee schedule. Just to make sure that everyone is the same way. we are proposing reducing the minimum amount to accept a rental from four hours to two hours. And so that means on that schedule, there's a reference of that higher up that I think right now still says four and then lower, we had made a markup, except you couldn't see that there was an X through the four. So it looked like we were proposing 24 hours. So, two hours.

29. Maybe other people could say, I couldn't, and I was like, 24?

Nothing.

Makes sure everybody knows what they're voting for.

Happy to take any questions. Any other questions or discussion? All in favor of approving? Say no. Aye. Anyone? Okay, this moves us on then into information items. The administrative report starting with the library recruitment status.

So that will be the one with the very small table that you see. So this is a report we received from City Human Resources. And you'll see that at the top, really the important piece is the top part of it. The bottom piece is everything that we have currently on hold for some reason. So we, uh, have an application deadline of July 26th for our public services, sub libraries, public services, library assistance, sub position. And then we have a, uh, top candidate, uh, who is going through the process right now for our library page clerk sub position. So our sub positions are positions that are less than halftime. So they're usually 10 to 15 hours a week. And then we also have the library assistant public services halftime position where we have an accepted offer and a start date set for the 27th. And I'm happy to answer any questions.

Strategic planning update.

Yeah, so things are going to start rolling. So we are kind of winding up the learn part of the learn, dream, new three-phase process that our consultants use. And so we have an internal meeting with our leadership team tomorrow morning with our strategic planning firm. And then next week, the planning team will be meeting virtually with talking through the full learning report, have a little bit of time to provide some feedback on that. That learning report includes demographic data, some kind of basic information about the city. It includes the survey that the board and the staff responded to. It includes, as well, the community survey, of which we had over 1,000 responses, which was a great response. a response rate we're very happy with. And then after that planning team provides feedback, that'll give us enough information to move into the in-person workshops. That is the closure that you just approved for August 14th. So in the morning, the consultants will be working with the staff and then in the afternoon, that'll be a board workshop. So really excited to get through into the dream phase of Learn, Dream, Do.

based on any question that's just a month away that's from one to five afternoon for the board probably

Ready for the integrated library system migration? So I'm going to read from a sheet because this is not what I do at the library. But Owen is on vacation right now. If you have questions, we're happy to have Bradley sitting at the table just in case.

I'm the wrong person too, but I will do my best.

We have the gallery behind us that we can turn to. So now through late July, staff are training on the new system. So we are replacing our core ILS. So that is the computer system that is the brains of the operation. It remembers all the books, all the materials that we have, and then also keeps track of all of the patron information as well. So it's one big system. Everything we do is on that system. And so we're replacing it. We are doing work to clean up the database so we're not transferring unnecessary data right now. For example, we've purged about 17,000 very inactive patron accounts right now. We are revising processes and working with vendors to assure a smooth transition. And then I'm going to head into a series of dates for you. So July 27th, we are suspending holds for patrons. So that means... that any hold you are waiting on that isn't already on the hold shelf waiting for you or on its way to you will be paused until we start back up with a new system. Your holds and your place in line are retained and you can continue to place new holds in our app or in the catalog. until August 6th. So on August 6th, access to your account through the app and the online catalog will be paused. For visiting the library, this will mean that our catalog computers will be down so you can ask our friendly staff to help you locate any items and it will be a test of whether we remember the Dewey Decimal System or not. August 8th, after we close that day, the current system goes entirely offline and we start to transfer data. From Monday, August 10th, self-checkouts are down. All checkouts have to happen at the service desks. We won't be able to check any items back in. So all due dates will be extended until we go back online and patrons will be encouraged to hang on to their returns, which means you get them for longer, Denise, if you can get your holds in. During this time, account expirations are also extended automatically to reduce issues when we are back up. we will still issue new cards, but with some limitations to reduce our manual data entry load upon going online. Exact details are to be determined, but examples of potential limitations are not issuing replacement cards, discouraging families from signing up for multiple new cards for all of their children. We will not be able to resolve account issues such as paying for billed items and we'll handle that on a case-by-case basis and prioritize providing access. Normal curbside service, it will be paused. Those in need of the service can call and we will set something up. increased potential for some disruption to the public internet and printing services. They will be available throughout the closure, but may require the occasional staff intervention or workaround. And happily study and conference room bookings will continue without interruption and Libby and Hoopla should continue to work for folks. Then we talked about the closure on August 14th for staff training. So we'll be doing strategic planning, but also have time for staff to play with the new system before it comes up the next week. So it comes back up on Monday, August 17th. Staff gain access to the system and begin uploading and manually entering data from the offline week. Patron access from home, sorry, it will still be down, both the app and the catalog. Catalog computers in the building will still be offline as well, and self-checkouts will likely be offline. We will start checking in items and transferring items between libraries will resume. Holds will be unpaused if it's possible at that time. And we will regain access to create new and replacement cards without limitations and resolve any account issues that happened during the time that it was down. August 19th, which is Wednesday of that week, the system will be fully online. Yay! Patrons will be able to access the new online catalog to manage their accounts, place holds, and catalog computers will be back up in the building. There is still some potential at that time for issues and delays with the app, returns, holds, etc., but resolution should be fairly quick. Some notable changes in our processes will include new patron hold pickup aliases. So your beloved little slip with your code on it is going to change entirely. We'll walk you through that. We'll have people there to help, I promise. And we have a revised curbside process that people will need to use. So some benefits, look at the positive after I gave you that litany of being down for a bit. Some positives and benefits that patrons will notice with the new system. We will have improved holds management. You can place a hold on any edition of a book rather than having to look through multiple editions in the catalog. We will have improved account management. You'll be able to pay bills online without logging into that separate catalog anymore. We will have improved reading history functionality. So it'll be easier to find the function to turn it on for yourself. It will be searchable and it will be sortable right in the catalog. And finally, we will have easier family management in the catalog and we can connect accounts. You'll be able to do that as a patron yourself and then we'll be able to do it on a staff end as well. So I can try to entertain questions and pass it to the gallery behind me if I can't answer that.

I do have a question. I didn't see much about it, but I'll probably ask. So I think we've talked about notice about this stuff in previous meetings, but just to remind me, will this be posted on the website or social media? Just a

Yes. So we've already done some initial pieces of that in social media and on the website stories sort of thing. And we'll continue to update folks as things develop and change. So we have a plan. Chad at Owls is their marketing person, and he's involved in setting up the schedule. And we're following primarily his schedule, but using our own images and things like that.

Sounds good. I answered the question. Thank you, Brian. Exciting. Hearing no other questions, we could move on to the next item, the ALA's guidance on use of AI in libraries.

Sure. So a couple of months ago, we had a little bit of a conversation about AI based on some public comment that was presented during the board meeting. And I appreciate your patience in bringing this back. About two months ago, I learned about this guidance that was coming up to be approved at the ALA conference this summer, American Library Association conference this summer. And so this was approved about three weeks ago at ALA, and it provides guidance on the use of artificial intelligence in libraries. And so I wanted to be able to face this kind of foundational springboard, I guess I'll call it, on something that is rooted in libraries. So this was attached to the agenda, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to take a cue from our previous board member, Nan Bono, who used the notice wonder kind of discussion framework in talking about this. So hopefully you had a little bit of a chance to review this. I'll just say a couple of things. One is that this is not a manual. It is not a checklist. This is guidance. ALA is not the bosses of libraries. ALA provides important things like the core values that this entire framework is kind of And so it's, I think, a really important document, especially for the board. You don't work in libraries. And so to even start thinking about like, oh, all of the tools and data tools, like all of these systems that will ultimately be effective and decisions will be made and the end result. Patron integrity and privacy will need to be ensured. That's all work that in some ways, some of that we already do. Like when we're working with third party vendors, like we need to make sure that your data is protected and that it's private and that we're providing confidentiality, but I thought this was a great way to kind of like show you like this covers so many things. So just as kind of an introduction, it's not a checklist of rules, it's guidance. So what did you notice? What did you wonder? What kind of future work can we do here to help give you the information you need to make future policy decisions for the library?

I can start. I noticed that, as you mentioned, that this is enormous. It looks like it's going to touch every single program and an aspect of the library. And the guidance is helpful. I liked seeing all of the considerations. And what I wondered is how library staff, these trustees are going to use those guidelines to kind of go through all the things that this touches. I mean, when you've got a vendor, that's one thing, but if you've got something that is existing that comes online that isn't necessarily a vendor, how is it going to work, for example? Does this touch the online access that people use on computers? That's one piece of it. And then how does it come into play for public access, public programming, like our commenter at the previous meeting I guess, how does it pull it in when it touches absolutely every aspect of it? And what's kind of the plan for moving forward?

And so, by the way, I'm not going to have a lot of answers for you.

Yeah, I mean, that's, that's right. Yeah, like, you know, it's like, I appreciate how this, how this builds on ALA policies. It isn't starting again for the whole plot, but I would assume it would be similar here. But, you know, what's the thinking currently? How do you even get your arms around the project?

and so I'll just kind of sprinkle in a couple of things one is that the city and this board a couple of years ago so depending on when you joined you may have been a part of this decision or maybe not there is a generative AI policy that the city has adopted and we adopted here and that is really more staff guidance and so really having public AI, a public AI policy in terms of programming, elements of collection development. You know, there may be an entirely new policy of AI, but there also may be inclusions in other policies like collection development. So how do you do, it's like how you eat an elephant. Yeah. But having having these discussions and then having the ability to have kind of overarching guidance and direction from this board is gonna be really important.

Back to collection development, do you see vendors I mean, books are one thing, right? But databases or anything like that, do they provide any information about how much of their material is developed or generated, generative AI?

not reliably. Yeah. Um, so that is a challenge that we're seeing cataloging is cataloging AI generated materials, especially when perhaps the person who purchased it didn't know it was AI generated materials. Um, but there's a lot, there's a lot around collection development because it, it will be helpful and unhelpful both. So yeah, I think that, um, that's the piece that we are seeing with our vendors right now is on online bibliographic database side, but it is It's everywhere. So that's just where we've generated the most discussion so far is because you can go on Amazon and buy all kinds of AI-generated stuff, and sometimes the libraries don't know that's what they got until it arrives.

I'm seeing on page 15 of the PDF, so there's an appendix, and it's talking about an AI ethics framework. So the only thing I commented and noted is just looks like the ALA recommends that library workers should consider intellectual property issues from data harvested at scale. So it sounds like that's being addressed. From what I remember with the previous comments this year, among many things was IP issues and theft of creative work. It sounds like the library is dealing with that and staff are being trained on those particular issues.

Well, I think So what we have done so far in terms of public education with AI has been kind of piloting programming around technology and AI related topics with our technology and innovation librarian. And that technology and innovation librarian approaches this from the standpoint of explaining the risks, explaining the potential and also the responsibility in the output that you are responsible for the content you generate in AI. And this is very similar to like early days of the internet where we spent a lot of time explaining to people, it doesn't matter on the internet, you're still responsible if you've used that information in another source. So I think the question of what can libraries verify in terms, I mean, a lot of AI is like black box. So where you can trace where that source came from is not something the average person or the average library is going to be able to do. And so libraries are in a place like we often are, where we are the source for perhaps the actual access to the technology in our public computers, our public access internet stations, where people are coming in because they want to use these tools on our devices. Some are asking for how to use these tools because they're out them from their work or through your school so from like a digital literacy standpoint our role is to help educate the community about digital literacy and this is one major piece of digital literacy so that has been kind of our current approach right now and so we have had some We've had some third party presenters also present about AI as well. But I think we're kind of in early days of that work.

John, I see your hand is close to the phone. I don't know if you're trying to unmute to ask a question or anything.

No. Any other questions or comments?

I know that a lot of folks are probably using it in various ways in own work. It's popped up probably in data tools you use as well. So, page after that page that you referenced, I think, maybe it's the page before. The page before, on page 14, actually, I thought there was a really interesting list that was like a nice summation of kind of quick takes on guidance for different products and system library uses. But again, it's one of those things that as folks who value the community's access to information, this becomes a place where you're trying to figure out the trade-offs, the community value, where all of those tensions are. And then there's all sorts of political pieces that are also. And I don't want to put you on the spot, but I would ask you to think about, think about this document and even connect with me directly so I can start to kind of develop a path for how we can work through the various ways that this board would then have oversight over AI in terms of policy, strategic plan, things like that.

Never a dull day these days. I'm sorry about that.

I appreciate it. I like it. It had so much information in it. It's very, like, concisely. It's super useful. It's cool. One of my thoughts I had while reading it was just give this to other professions, and they could attempt it for their own. It really is.

And so there is a National Institute of State Science and technology standards that has a risk management framework that predates this and it's actually there's it's a lot of overlap, so this is just lovely because it focuses on the library tools that greater. direction but guidance, I guess, to use that word. But I don't think in the end it's like, it's not like totally rogue from the other things that exist out there around kind of risk management and how AI should be looked at and balanced in terms of benefits and challenges.

All right.

Mr. Springboard, thank you, everybody. Do you want to bring it back next meeting? Because I know you have some questions.

So why don't I ask folks to get back to me in the next like two weeks, like maybe by the end of the month, get back to me just directly so I can incorporate some individual like and bring something else forward. Are you comfortable with that, Darren? Okay, I'm not making sure I'm not creating any kind of walking form or anything like that.

Okay.

All right. Next up, we have upcoming committee meetings. New committee, 1.30, August 3rd, here. And then we have our strategic planning retreat, which is gonna be in the big room in a month. expect.

Hey, that's the older ground should be more than enough. So again, my name's Bradley Shipps. I'm the director of Out of the New Opeca Library System, aka OWLS, which is a lot easier to say. And I've been the director of OWLS for nine years now. I worked at OWLS for, there are extras, some of you are online, folks behind me, if you want one. I've been at OWLS for... 16 years, 16 and a half years. And so 12 of those years, I worked in the basement of this building before it was cool. It's good to be back. And I have some OWLS trustees and former OWLS trustees in the room as well. So that's always fun at this meeting. There's always some overlap. I, my consulting librarian, Kristen Loffenberg, and I try to make sure we visit every member library board at least once a year. So here I am. And partly that's just, we want you to know our names and faces. We want you to know that OWLS exists as a resource for you. There's always new trustees who haven't encountered OWLs before, and so we want to introduce ourselves. And that's kind of what the materials in this folder are about. So what is OWLs? We are one of 15 public library systems in the state. They are all regional systems based on county boundaries. We are a two-county system, which makes us small. But our OWLsNet consortium extends beyond our borders to include 30 libraries with 49 locations in northeast Wisconsin. So In your folder, there is a map of OwlsNet somewhere. Let's see here. It's sort of in the middle. It looks like this. So the two dark brown counties are Owls, and the light brown counties are counties in the Nicolet library system that are members of OwlsNet and thus part of our ILS, which Tasha gave us a great summary of earlier. And so that means our resource sharing extends to all of those libraries. So you can place a hold and get a book from Florence and Appleton because of that OwlsNet consortium. So systems provide a variety of different services. We have some services that are mandated under state statute. Systems were created under state statute in the 70s. But our statutes are rather out of date because they mention nothing whatsoever about technology, which has become sort of our core service. I would say we're about 80% in IT operation over at Owls. But we also do delivery. So we move the materials between the libraries and we provide a variety of other services, including professional consulting, other types of expertise. We work with our libraries on advocacy at the local county and state level and sometimes federal level. And we provide a lot of services where we feel we can generate economies of scale and save the library's money by doing them in a centralized way. So that's in a nutshell kind of what systems do. In your folder is a much more detailed document that talks about almost all of the services that OWLS provides, and I will not take you through that today, but I wanted you to have it. Some of the services are provided at no cost to the library because we use our state aid to provide those statutorily mandated services, right? The statute says we have to do this, so the state gives us money to do that. And then there are some services for which we charge a fee because they're not mandated, but they're a service that the library provides, but we don't receive state funding necessarily to do them. And so this sort of breaks that down. So each library has at least two agreements with OWLS. There's an OWLS membership agreement, which does not have any costs attached to it, which just sets up the relationship between the owl. Every library in the state is a member of a system and it sets up those membership parameters. And then we have our owls net agreement, which establishes membership in the consortium. And that is the part that does come with a fee. And then for Appleton, you just approved, you have a resource library agreement because that's another statutory designation as the largest library in the system. You are officially the resource library for owls and that has some statutory mandates and within it. And then we have a services agreement because Appleton also provides some services to the system for which there's some exchange of either in-kind services or funds. So Owls and Appleton have, I think, actually five agreements between us. And we keep those. And we're required by statute, for instance, to renew that resource library agreement every year. And so that comes up on your agenda every year. And sometimes I'm lucky enough to be here when you vote for it. The OWL's office is now, we moved out of this building in 2022. We're now located in Grand Chute in some county-owned buildings over by Fleet Farm, just south of Brewster Village and the Technical College, if you know where the Outagamie County Extension is. We're in that office park there. And we love it over there. It's great. We're above ground for the first time in 40 years. Okay. And we have a lot going on this year. So as Tasha detailed, we have an ILS migration happening. That is a massive, massive project. And when I said I can't really answer the questions, that's because that project really belongs to our OwlsNet manager, Amanda Lee. I can answer a lot of the questions, but I am not the expert. And then we are also in the process of a merger exploration with our neighbor to the north, the Nicolet Library System. So that's the final item that's in your folder. And this is just an overview of what's happening with that right now. There is a joint committee of the two system boards. Colleen is serving on the committee. And they have met twice. And then they identified some key research questions that Nicolet Director Tracy Vrieke and I are digging into this summer. So we have big homework, lots of research and writing to do over the summer, and then we will turn those documents back over to the committee in August, September and have a few more meetings. And at the end of that process, the committee will vote on whether we should proceed to implement a merger of the two systems. Um, there have been in recent years, other system mergers in the state, the Prairie lakes library system was created by a merger a few years ago. Um, And Owls and Nicolet have had the OwlsNet Consortium partnership for 30 some years now. So in fact, we've actually already done the hardest part of a merger, which is merging the ILS. We don't have to do that because we built it together. So it'll be interesting to see where this process takes us. But as I said, we are currently in the exploration phase. So it is not a done deal that we will merge. We will have a vote on that. The committee will vote to make a recommendation to two system boards late this fall, if all goes to schedule. So there may be some questions about that, and I will do my best to answer those. But like I said, we are very, very busy this year. 2026 is a momentous year. I'm very excited about the ILS migration. We are in the home stretch with Go Live just a little over a month away. And knock wood, it's going well so far. We're really happy with how it's going up to this point. So are there any questions for me?

How many owls are you?

Owls. Oh, thank you.

Owls and I are the same age. Owls. So now you've just outed me, but yeah, owls turned 50 this year in March and we are having a big party in October. So the owls 50th anniversary party is in October, but we actually turned 50 in March. Not me, just owls. Nicolet also turned 50 this year. They already had their party. Ours is going to be way better. It's only a tiny bit, only a tiny bit competitive. So yeah, we're excited. We're excited to be, to be 50. Go Owls. Yeah. And, and we'll have, we have 17 member libraries and Owls, and like I said, 30 overall in the consortium. So we're hoping to have, All of the libraries represented. They've all been tasked with making a poster for their library for the party. And we gave a whole bunch of librarians a craft project. So we're excited for the results. Yes, I can see. You'll find your trifold board from Elizabeth.

You'll have something wonderful.

So our party committee includes Elizabeth Timmons, who is the director of the Mule Public Library in Seymour. And she is... A Miss Frizzle style librarian. She has, she's making, it's, this is going to be so fun. But she is the one who came up with giving the libraries craft homework. So, so yeah, she's going to be entertaining. There will be photos. Watch our social media.

Are you able to hear me? So I do apologize. As you could tell, I was driving back from Racine, and I was hoping to get home in time to start this on my computer. I could not figure out how to get off of mute on my phone. So I do apologize for that. But I do have a question, and it's kind of a corny one. But if Nicolet and owls merge, would it be called knowledge?

That's a good one. There have been lots of suggestions. My favorite so far, these are all just – is somebody, Claire Ellen at Winifox, which is the system in the south of us, said that you guys should be called Loon Libraries of Owls and Nicolet. So there have been a lot of name suggestions. We're going to need, when it gets, if it gets to the point of branding, we're going to need those suggestions. So because we can't, we can't be owls anymore and we can't be Nicolet anymore. We're going to have to be something new. Yeah, but not new. Yeah, not in Northeast Wisconsin. There's too many. There's too many of those. I'm sorry, I just want to recognize my trustee, Diane Forsythe, who comes to a lot of these board visits with me. We always invite OWLS trustees to come on the board visits with us just to also say, hey, we have a board of trustees just like yours, citizen volunteers, Bastia's on my board. Mitesh was on my board. Diane comes to a lot of these. She's a trooper and road tripped here from Wapaka to be here and just represent the OWL's board and make that connection with our member libraries.

So thanks, Diane. Yes.

Owl's meetings are, we have our board meeting this Thursday. We meet on the third Thursday of every other month. And it is a hybrid meeting. You can come to the Owl's office or you can join online. Occasionally we have it at a member library. So check that agenda.

And we have a member of the public come to one of our meetings.

We did. It's pretty exciting. We are what one of our board members likes to describe us as an obscure organization. We don't get a lot of public participation, but it is very exciting when we do. And so, yeah, our meetings and also the committee, the merger committee meetings, those are open meetings as well. And there's a page at the bottom of your sheet here. Actually, it's not there. This is a web page. You can't click it. But if you go to our web page and click the about menu, you can find the merger page and that has the upcoming meetings and the materials so that it is an open process and those are public meetings. So please come join us if you're curious about it. And feel free to email that address if you have questions, if you come up with questions later that you'd like to know about the merger. Or you also have my business card. If it's not about the merger, just email me directly or call me. Thanks, everybody.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Do you want the Owls report or the Declaration Committee? We can move on to the President's report. It's the discussion of chapter 18 of Trustee Essentials and composition. So this is, just ask Colleen if she wanted me to come up with any discussion questions. I thought the ones they had at the end were pretty good, but I did kind of reword them. So if you had a moment to read this over. At the end, it describes making sure that your board is representative of your community. So if anyone wanted to speak up, any groups you feel like you present, not that you are the official spokesperson of any groups, you're welcome to share. Also, it notes the different expertise that people bring from their professions, their personal lives. So what expertise you bring to the board and want to use on the board. That could be helpful for me when it's time to do committee assignments again. I wouldn't mind hearing about that.

Like me to say a little bit about how we find.

All you wonderful. So the mayor uses a public application process. and committee appointments and so um that doesn't mean we don't have to kind of like pound the pavement and make sure people are paying attention and know when there's an opening because you can't just join the library board at any time there has to be a vacancy uh and so when there are vacancies and that application portal becomes an option like i kind of just like work the community. And my goal is to find people that aren't necessarily in our kind of little insular circle of some kind. So I have, I have found all of you in different ways. And some of you found the board in your own ways by, by kind of like reaching out beyond kind of just the kind of like group around the table. So I know like, you know, a lot of boards, a lot of nonprofit boards, a little bit different, but there's a bit more of a who knows who kind of situation for a board like that. Whereas these being statutory boards, appointments and units fully appointed bodies. We really do make an effort to make sure that this body is representative of a broad swath of the community. And that is included in the makeup of specific representatives. So our council appointees. our county representative who is not able to be here tonight. We have an AASD appointment from our school superintendent. And with Nan's retirement, we have a new person who is going to be appointed next month. So there's those specific roles that then also help create that diversification of the board membership experiences, backgrounds, all of that.

I can add something too. So I think we do a pretty good job of representing a pretty broad array of demographics. One thing that I think is really important, what makes this board work so well is specifically occupational diversity. So being on other boards, I mean, A lot of the times it's CEOs, doctors, lawyers included, obviously. But I think we do a really nice job of having different occupations. And I feel like other boards sometimes can really struggle with the perspective of, well, You're an employer at that point, most likely. So I think that is super helpful. And I guess that's one thing that I would highlight of different jobs and different occupations. It's really great to have that on this particular board as well.

Your mention of demographics reminded me, was it in this agenda? You noted somewhere about a process in place for perhaps bringing another team member on board.

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes. This board has had a teen advisory representative, a non-voting member. It's not a statutory role. In the past, it's been a little while. Just the pandemic wasn't really a good time to be recruiting. new folks. But I have met late last week, I met with a really wonderful candidate, somebody who's very engaged with the library, which I think is especially important just with our history. Like those are the most successful team advisors. So I'm going to be working with the mayor through the approval process for that individual as well. And so that would be a person who would sit, be a part of these conversations would not have a vote, but certainly would be invited and I know you would welcome to have the input of a teen who is engaged at the library as well. If there were to be, say, like a closed session or something like that, they would also leave for the closed session, but otherwise they would be a part of the conversations.

I would say, as we move forward, just with the discussion that we had on AI and we look at board members, trustees that have different backgrounds, maybe somebody that has a background in AI.

questions, we can move on to the final report of our meeting. We do children's first or community partnerships first? Hold on, I've got to back it up. I think maybe it's both. It was children's, not babies.

So today I wanted to give you a little bit of an update on Bouncing Babies. So we do a lot of talking in general about library programs. And once in a while, we like to do a bit of a deep dive into kind of what it looks like and what we're doing and some of the whys. So that when you hear those names pop up or you see the overall programming numbers, you have a sense of some of what we're doing. So Bouncing Babies is a story time for pre-walkers and their caregivers. It consists of 15 minutes of singing and rhymes, stories, teaching bounces, and followed by about 45 minutes of structured playtime. By structured, I mean that Miss Karen puts a lot of careful thought into where she'll put out. We have a floor piano funded by Friends. We have a kind of an unbreakable light table, also Friends funded. And we have special toys that stack and roll and bounce and she'll strategically place them around the room with the goal of encouraging our pre-walkers to crawl. And so she has these adorable stories where she'll come out and tell us that, you know, all the babies had crawled to the piano and they don't like to sit on it, but they like to sit next to it and bang, you know. And so she'll kind of strategically place things to encourage them. to encourage the movement. And it's very, very, very cute. So why have infant story time? It's right. Some of these kiddos sleep through the whole thing. Some of them, their eyes aren't even open yet. And we all know that they may not even be really seeing colors until they're a couple months older than they come. But there's kind of a dual purpose to a lot of the children's programs and especially when they're really young. And some of it is for the children and some of it is for the adults. So for the kiddos, free walkers, as we all know, are developing at an incredible, incredible rate. And so for something like rhymes and singing, when you sing and do rhymes, you slow down speech. And when you do rhymes, it breaks the words into smaller parts. So they will hear and learn the smaller parts of speech, right? And a lot of those kids rhymes that you know, head, shoulders, knees, and toes, you're teaching body parts, you're teaching colors, you're teaching counting. And then there's variations. So in the winter, you do hat and jacket, pants and boots, right? so you're teaching a lot of vocab and it also hopefully provides some tools for parents because kiddos don't like to have their hats and jackets put on right and so if the parents have a rhyme in their head then when they're kind of talking them through it it becomes a little bit more fun it's also a very social experience some kiddos have a lot of other children in their life and some don't and either way we all need to learn to work together right So the babies, sometimes they see another baby for the first time and their parent will tell you, you know, they have no siblings or no family close by and they come into story time and they're like, there's somebody there. Hi, sitting. And then they'll try and figure out how to communicate. Right. Really young. They'll take toys. You know, they do all of those behaviors that we see and they're learning how to communicate and how to navigate back and forth, which is also adorable. And then there's just a lot of the movement and the clapping. And sometimes the kiddos will see other kids do something and then you see them trying, right? It's like when you wave at a baby and the baby looks at you and then the parent tells you that they waved on the way home. It takes a while. So they're learning and they're seeing and they're gathering all of that in. And then stories, we talk about this for all stories, but there's a lot of vocabulary words that we don't necessarily use just in everyday conversation. So even if you're reading a book and the baby isn't maybe picking it all up, right, they're hearing words that might not come up because when you have small ones, it's so much of the necessary things of life, right? And so you may not be pausing to admire the colors of a sunset or you might not be saying other words. Magenta, you're probably not, you know, casually mentioning that while you're feeding them. So some of those are the words that can come up when you're doing stories. And then also, of course, for parents. So it can be very isolating. for a lot of caregivers and just exhausting and there's so much concern right and so they're all together in the room and so many conversations pop up about your kids crawling mine's the same age should they be crawling you know and a lot of parents will encourage each other and what we have right now is a really beautiful community group where I asked Miss Karen that I told her I was going to um and asked her what some of her favorite things were and she said that right now especially they just have a very welcoming group of parents and caregivers and so when somebody new comes in somebody else will often ask like oh how old is your kiddo and they will talk back and forth we have one grown up who will just come in and he'll say, I'm here to talk to the storytime moms and whatever question has come up to kind of gather feedback from everyone. And then Ms. Karen also does a lot of trying to teach rhymes that can be done at home, like we mentioned earlier. So right now we have a really good group. Average attendance is like 35 to 40 people. So that's like 15 to 20 infants. So if you want a dose of cute, Wednesday mornings at 11 a.m., wanders your children's peak in the storytime room and Ms. Karen doing absolute magical things and all the babies.

Any questions about the Bouncing Babies program? It's really cool. All right, then next up is partnership with the Appleton Historical Society.

Yes, the Appleton Historical Society and the Appleton Public Library have a long-standing partnership. and some of the defense we do with them. First of all, the Appleton Historical Society is an affiliate of the Wisconsin Historical Society. If you haven't been there, they're on Franklin Street, just one block over. And they also have the Vulcan Hydroelectric Replica on North Island Trail. So those are their two buildings that they occupy. Their mission is to preserve and share the history of the city of Appleton. So APL's partnership takes place I guess, four modes. First, we have a specialized equipment loan agreement with them. So at the library, we have some special equipment, like an overhead scanner, some different audio recorders and digital cameras that the Historical Society can use to help in the preservation process. Also, our local history librarian, Katie Stilps, Katie's role on the board is as a librarian. She supports the exhibit research. She advises cataloging and inventory processes of the museum collections and aids in the modernizing of reference practices. So as the Appleton Assortment Society, they receive a lot of questions from individuals who were from for Appleton generally, and Katie comes in here as a librarian tonight. Also, there's collaborative programming with Appleton Public Library and Appleton Historical Society. There are two primary programs that AHS runs. They do monthly presentations. Those presentations are organized by AHS, and Katie lends a hand in finding presenters for them. They're hosted at Appleton Public Library. They take place the second Wednesday of each month. Just to give a few examples of some of the topics that have been covered. In March, they brought in the Markov Ballet to share about the history. And then July, so just a few days ago, the Appleton Fire Department's Old Engine 5 had a presentation on the history and the refurbishment of that. Then also on Thursday nights, they do Thursday nights at the Appleton History Museum. Those are generally held at the History Museum, but when they have topics where they think or expect a larger crowd, they'll hold them here. We've got three programs coming up that we expect will have larger crowds. I'm going to share with you now. First, the Find Your Ancestors series, which is a recurring series that Keystone organizes for the library. They're taking over the Thursday Historical Museum, and participants will learn about researching their family history, or excuse me, their house history. Then on August 6th, there will be a special book launch for Lambo Ladies, the Boundary-Breaking Women Behind Lombardi's Packers. So both authors will be there. Both authors are grandchildren or children of Packer wives. And so they'll share the research that they did to create the book and then be there to answer any questions. And then the last program I want to pitch to you, we will have Super Bowl champions. place most Thursday, July 23rd at 6 p.m. And then the final way that we collaborate with AHS is through our Explore Fox Cities. So AHS provides some admission tickets

Any questions about the partnership with the HS? If you were here last month, then, Peter's presentation, you should have signed up for the adult reading program. Hopefully, you brought your card with you today. And also, if you brought your copy of the confidential colleague's review, please hand it to Jay to be shredded. Last, as adjournment, we need a motion.

John Keller, second.

All in favor, adjourn. Please say aye.

Aye.