Library Board - Regular Meeting

There you go.

As long as the light comes on, you're good. Who's in charge now? Jane. I figured.

You can be in charge if you want to. All right. What green light am I supposed to be looking for? The one above the TV. That means that we're in session. All right. Well, the Land and Committee of the Coffey County Library Board is now in session. uh welcome so let's see uh everybody has read the agenda yep okay are there any um modifications comments no do we have a motion to approve i'll make a motion second linda can you turn your mic on thank you it's on now all in favor aye any opposed okay There are no public comments because there's no public. All right, did everybody read the April meeting minutes? It is pretty small.

Yeah, it is.

Are there any comments or corrections? No, I don't.

Okay.

Do we have approval? So moved. Second. Any opposition? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right. Financial report. Okay.

We are still taking in a lot of copy money, doing a lot of copies. I'm really hoping that the county approves our budget request for an additional copier. because it is desperately needed at our library. I think that was everything on this one. Oh, I made a note up here. Wanted to let you guys know, this would be actually June business, not May business, but wanted to let you guys know that we received the final estate payment for Patricia Carol Lee. We've received in the past $20,000 and $15,000 towards genealogy.

Um, and that's what we did for the, um, yeah, the digitization. Yes.

That really hard word. We don't like to say. Yeah. Uh, we received a final installment of $5,291 and 84 cents. Uh, Ms. Carol Lee passed in 2021 and she was a big fan of our library and others. There were other establishments that she gave to in her will. So we are very grateful to her and her memory. And we will spend it wisely.

Okay. Are we looking to digitize more of them?

Not at this time, no. I'm thinking I'd really like to add to our local history collection. So I'm hoping to find some, not new, because I don't know that there's much being published in local history. But...

I have been told we have a very good archivist over here.

Yes, we do. I plan to talk to them, Coffey County Historical Society as well, and the Tullahoma Historical Preservation Society.

I haven't had a lot of luck yet, but Marjorie Collier passed away. So that's, she was, but I'll give you another name, Mark Schimp.

Well, I spoke with Katherine Hopkins. so that's dot watson's yeah yeah and i've worked with katherine in the past so i'm hoping that okay maybe once things quiet down i know they're in the middle of stuff right now so but that money is earmarked for genealogy so whenever we purchase materials for that location it'll be there we're not in any kind of time crunch The report that I sent you guys, which is the one that is up here, is slightly inaccurate. We got the statement of expenditures and something in the medical and the retirement lines were just slightly off. It's maybe a difference of like $100 in one line and it's somewhere else. Otherwise, everything is on track. We have met maintenance of effort and we anticipate spending the rest of our budget before the end of the fiscal year.

And the fiscal year ends the end of this month. We've got days left. I can give you book titles.

Yeah, for the books, they have to be in because for the purchase order to be fulfilled, Mariana doesn't like it to go past a certain date, so I have like a cutoff date. Mm-hmm. I have a bunch of lists in Ingram and one says to be purchased this year, to be purchased next year. I know. And then committed funds, I don't think changed. We had some, oh no, we did spend a little bit on summer reading at Walmart, $57 in May. Otherwise, everything is the same as it was at our last meeting. And that's all I have. Do you guys have any questions? Will you send out a corrected financial report?

Do we have any more discussion about the financial report? No. This has to be approved, right?

I think that our notes should say that we're approving with... Like the knowledge that we're having corrections. Thank you. Approving with expected corrections. Okay.

All right. Do we have a motion to accept it? I'll make a motion. Second. Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Thank you.

Summer reading is absolutely insane. I don't know how the staff are keeping their sanity. Alicia is holding it together really, really well. I'm so proud of her. As of yesterday, because the person who does that part isn't here today, we had roughly 725 participants registered. I know I sent out an email last week saying we had 799 It was actually 699. So we have 725 participants registered. That's all ages. That's babies all the way up to grandparents. All people, yes. Everybody. Everybody can participate in our summer reading program, and they are. So we've gotten a huge response. As of 2.45 today, we have logged 154,260 minutes. How much? 154,260 minutes. As of 2.45 this afternoon. And there was a huge crowd when I left.

That's amazing.

Our parking lot is never empty. I am hearing that people are parking across the street. Some of my friends are coming to the events and talking about the parking. I recommend if you're planning on coming to any events that you come early so that you can get prime parking because otherwise you're going to park across the street or next to seniors or at the park or at the ball field or at DW Wilson.

Cause that's about, but even if there's not a program going on, there's a lot of people there.

Oh yes. Yes.

Really are. I mean, I've been interested in that.

Even our passive programming. So on Tuesdays we do scavenger hunt and there's a different kind of scavenger hunt each week. I'm telling you, my staff did such a good job this year. So it is very impressive what they have done, and it's so fun and inviting. And we have so many people show up for the scavenger hunt, and it's all day. It's 8 a.m. when we open until 7.30 p.m. when we close. It's jam-packed all day. We were standing around like, man, are we missing? Is there a program happening? We are full. And it was just scavenger hunt, which throughout the rest of the year, we pull in pretty good numbers for Friday scavenger hunts, but y'all this summer, everybody's at the library.

That's wonderful.

I'm really happy to hear that. I just wanted to point out that summer reading doesn't just happen. this is months and months and months of planning and hard work and preparation staff spent months planning programs creating decorations preparing materials coordinating schedules working through all the details to make sure that everything would go smoothly and so that everything would be as foolproof as possible for everybody We had a staff meeting before kickoff where we went over all the materials, everything you would need to be able to sign up a family for summer reading, everything that they would get for whatever their logging minutes, programs that they attend, various prize structures, where to go to get refills for the worksheets like They really thought of everything and made it just as idiot-proof as possible. I'm very grateful for that. I'm happy to hear that. I don't get to be as hands-on as I would like to be, which is kind of the point. You know, you have good staff. They do. what they do best and you get to focus on your job. But it is nice that when I do need to fill in, I can very easily. They have done a lot of really hard work and I just wanted to commend my staff for that.

Great job. I mean, I was over there a month earlier, and they're sitting there cutting out the little prize thing that you fill out after you read your hour, minutes, or whatever. And, I mean, they were always busy. Yes.

I mean, we started prepping stuff in October. We had Alicia, Lindsay, April, and Courtney were there. all planning, working together on what is it gonna look like? When are we gonna have programs? What's the best time for families to be here? What kind of prizes should we do? They worked really hard on all this and yeah, they've been, cutting stuff out and making sure every little detail, just little details are so nice. If you haven't seen our decorations, it's very impressive. Yeah. Yeah.

Considering they're made out of cardboard.

Yeah.

They're three dimensional. Paper. Yeah.

Paper. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's... It's very impressive. They did such a good job and the patrons are loving it. We had on kickoff day, we had a lot of people and they, about half of them had Manchester cards. and let us know that they had never been to our library. That was the first day they had ever stepped foot in our building and they just loved it and they thought it was so cute. And then patrons who have no idea what's happening, they're like, so do you do this like all the time with all the dinosaur stuff or is this something special? And it opens up that conversation about, well, summer reading is a thing. So how about we sign you up? So it works. That's wonderful. Yes, they've done a very good job.

What a happy accident, too, to get some of the Manchester people to come by and visit. Yeah. I'm happy for you guys.

And that you've been able to rise to the occasion of having all the participants from both libraries.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a bit overwhelming, if I'm being honest. It's... Our library is not suitable to serve... the entire county these numbers are not maintainable right with with the the building size and the structure that we have we are set up to serve uh 20 000 people a 20 000 person community not a 60 000 person community and that's kind of what we're facing now so we're we're hanging in there but just right is is there any way that you can tell about after the end how many patrons came from the manchester lottery no just anecdotally there's no real way to measure that we kind of but we can see it yeah and we can say like these are manchester people and when they check out their cards are manchester cards so we kind of see it firsthand so we can give a rough estimate. But as far as like actual hard data, no, not really.

I didn't know when this card was scanned, if it would, it might not keep track of the books you check out, but it might keep track of the numbers. Right. Yeah.

I wouldn't want details about patrons, but like a number of these numbers, not where they're from.

No, it just shows like we have a, a daily total of how many checkouts we had, but it won't tell us who checked out what, which library they're from, or anything like that. That's okay.

I wasn't meaning, the material per se, just knowing that Lanham is what, two?

Two COF?

Yeah. it's um is it two cof yeah it is or two six oh no and then there's a number that comes after it yeah i had and then all the zeros i had to type it into my computer today oh so you would know i would know but yeah summer reading is so crazy when did they announce the uh theme for for the next year's

We've known for a couple years. The CSLP website has the next couple of years already picked out. I think in September or October we were looking at helping pick the theme for 29, I think. So they're that far ahead. Oh, wow. So we've known this was going to be dinosaurs for like four years. We've just been counting down the days. And saving dinosaur stuff. Although I think next year we might veer away from CSLP and do iRead instead, which is another national summer reading program that's offered that is just not as common in Tennessee. Tennessee mostly does CSLP. But there's plenty of libraries that veer off and do something different. So we may do the iRead theme for next year, which is space. Oh, cute. Well, that's appropriate. Yeah. And very exciting. We have lots of fun ideas for that. I'm sure you do.

There's also, this is a good area to draw from to have people come in and do things.

Yes. I think the last time we did space was 2019, and it was very successful. We had a lot of really good opportunities with local people, the base. It was good.

Well, if you plan this far ahead, you might be able to get some space and rocket center. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, summer reading planning starts like August. We take July to just kind of compress.

Alicia's taking two weeks off. Yes, she is. She said no, she's taking two.

Yes, yes, and I'm very glad she is. The first year I was like, no, really, you want to take the time off. Please. I know an education coordinator over at the Space Institute.

I will look. Okay, great. Like, through homeschool. I think that we've done a field trip through an education coordinator. Awesome. And they did, like, a dome and stuff that you could go in. Yes.

We had a dome. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. What is her name?

I don't know. Let me... Yeah. Let me text you. Mm-hmm. Like, when I find it. Or I'll email you.

So we might be thinking of the same person.

Okay. I bet we are. Miss Riddle? No. I have no idea off the top of my head. I'd have to go back and check emails and lists.

I don't know.

Sounds wonderful. Amazing.

Yes, it is. Good job to the staff. Very proud of them. That's understandable. I'm very lucky. Thank you for the update. All right. Is there any new business? I don't have anything. Who's got time for new business? Yeah. Not me. Not this month. Okay.

Going back to old business for a minute. Sure. Any update on the roof?

our roof i have that well i actually don't have that um no okay um okay so we had we have engineers come out i talked about that at the full board meeting rick and i met with the engineers we have plans drawn up and you're welcome to come to the library and look at the preliminary plans see what we have So far, it looks really good. We're happy with what they've come up with. And I think they're opening bids very soon. They were supposed to be putting the finishing touches on it. We had some lighting questions in the back of the building for the backyard. So they're just, I think they've, they're either finishing that up here pretty soon or going, or they already have. And then they'll open that for bids. So that's happening pretty soon.

Thank you. Thank you. All right. Director's report. Director's report.

So that first page, you have a bunch of numbers. The highlighted portions, those are specifically summer reading program related. okay who's cc um the other courtney staff courtney okay it's easier than writing up courtney starting maybe in september are we going to be invited to come to the um your staff meeting as we discussed july in july i didn't know if you'd be recovered by that time yeah it's going to be the end of july it's looking like We may push it to the last Friday in July. I don't know yet. I've had a couple of people let me know that they actually can't make it on the 24th. So it may be, whatever that next one is, the 30th, 31st, something like that.

The following week. I mean, we've just discussed it off and on.

Yes. But no, it's going to be the July meeting that I invite the board to. Okay. If everybody can make it, it would be really nice.

I want to... Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They know you or at least most of them know you, but you guys don't get an opportunity to know them. Well, it'd be nice for you to kind of see.

Yeah.

Yeah. And for you guys to kind of see behind the scenes what goes into like staff meetings, which usually involves like training and. discussions planning planning yes yeah so they asked if we were going to have name tags for that meeting and i was like well i don't know i hadn't thought about it yet they just really don't want to do icebreakers and i said okay i promise we won't do icebreakers uh okay so that first block story times and then we have children's programs the adult programs special events take home crafts so on and so forth. So in May we held held 11 storytime events for the total attendance of 252. We had an additional 10 children's programs with the total attendance of 740. That's amazing. Yes. Amazing. Congratulations. Thank you. The big draws were field day where we had 124, the science guys with 142 and East Tennessee dinos with 264. Wow. it was insane I'm telling you I took a picture of the crowd and I sent it over to the mayor and I was like full house it was it was crazy Rioters group met twice in May, and they had nine people in attendance. Lyle Russell presented history of the U.S. flag and had 47 people attended. That was, I think, a homeschool event coordinated mainly by Jodi McGregor, and she coordinated with Alicia and Lyle to make that happen. And it was really good. We love Lyle. He does so many great things. I enjoy him so much. He's just a wealth of knowledge and great asset in our community. Our summer reading kickoff was a huge success. We think we had around 331 people. That's the best that we can calculate, but it felt like thousands. There was popcorn, final games, and, of course, rain. The games were supposed to be outdoor, but due to the weather, all activities were moved inside, which we had that contingency plan because, like I said, my staff are all brilliant and think of everything. We gave out 187 take-home crafts, and Lindsay held one one-on-one tech class in May. There were 97 long visits to the Story Trail, 20 for Friday's scavenger hunt, and 249 educational worksheets were completed. There were 17 participants for Scrabble and two for the puzzle. Building update, as I said, there are no roof updates at this time, except what I mentioned earlier. During her security checks this month, April discovered that one of our security lights had died, so we're replacing that one and the one other one that's left from the originals that we had We're going through and replacing them a couple at a time. So this one and those are the last two, and then that will complete our collection of new security lights. Circulation, as I mentioned in my financial report, there were funds received for genealogy, so I plan to invest in additional genealogy materials, hoping for good finds to add to our local history section. And finally, staff update. Lanham Library has resumed participation in Imagination Library. We are grateful to their new leadership for making the effort to resolve the issues that led to us leaving and reaching out to reconnect. Congratulations on rejoining. Thank you. And that is my report. If y'all have any questions. Oh, last thing. Our summer reading finale is June 26th. It is from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. If y'all are interested, if y'all can make it, it's going to be a really fun party. I think that's where we're having our... water slide we moved the water slide from kickoff to finale and I think that's gonna work out really well for us yes yes well in last year when we had a kickoff it was it was not hot enough it's gonna be warm it'll be so nice you'll get all the kids I think you'll get a great turnout at the end of June yeah then they're also not trying to pick between playing in the water and picking up their books

yeah now they're done yeah yeah what a great great idea yeah I think you have to a motion to the directors report do we have a motion to accept it so moved second I second yeah are there any trustee comments oh I'm sorry I Are there any trusty comments that we haven't commented on?

I'm really proud of you guys. What a great, great turnout for summer reading. I'm really happy to hear that. It sounds like you're getting a lot of new people coming in and exploring the library. So I'm really happy for you guys. If you find that you need additional resources, please make sure that you reach out. You know, if there's something that you need that we can help with or push to somebody else.

yes and it shows because there's so many people showing up to our programs they wouldn't be showing up if the staff weren't putting in all this effort I hope they do too when is our next meeting

Sorry. Full board is supposed to be July 9th. I will be gone.

Vacation. I know.

I'm sad. Take me with you. Our next committee meeting is supposed to be August 13th. Okay.

And we're planning on continuing them here for both? I think so. Okay. Yes. Please let me know if something changes. Oh, yeah. And we're still planning them at 4?

Mm-hmm. Okay.

So both of these will be at 4 instead of 4.30?

Well, it's kind of going to depend on who has the room booked. So we booked it on a Wednesday at 4 because nobody else had it. But Thursdays at 4, which our meetings are usually at 4.30, so if we move it back to 4... We can.

I have no preference.

I just wanted to make sure I was on the same page. We'll send out notice beforehand. I'll see what we can figure out. But it'll be sometime probably the second week.

And are we going to shoot for Wednesdays or Thursdays? What was the decision? You don't know. We'll just have to see.

Yeah.

Keep us in the loop. I'm flexible.

Actually, Wednesdays are better just for me.

Yeah.

I'll ask her if we could not meet on Thursday because I'm leaving town Friday for two weeks. And I need to pack. Understandable. Are we adjourned? Yes, among other things. Okay. And we are adjourned for 428. Thank you. Yay.