Library Commission - Regular Meeting

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, with liberty and justice for all. Right. This is before public comments, right? Public comments? You don't want to read it. Okay. Any public comments? Awesome. Any... Maybe two considerations? No. All right. I'm moving on to the approval of minutes from May 18th.

Motion to approve.

I second. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Any opposed? Motion passes. I think we also need to do attendance.

True.

Yes. Commissioner Felix? Absent. Commissioner Navarro? Present. Commissioner Porter?

Present.

Commissioner Purcell?

Yes.

Commissioner Ramos? Present. Commissioner Whitener? Present. And Council Member Roach? She's out. She's out. Okay.

All right.

Moving on to new business. Report on outreach and marketing services.

So I was going to ask if I may, you know, we have our... the president of our Friends of the Library, and if it's okay, can we change the order?

Okay, all right.

All right, okay, so I'm going to introduce our president of the Friends of the Library. This is Eric Hernandez, and he recently became the president of the Friends. He has been on our board for a while. Eric is a veteran who was a cryptologic linguist with the Marine Corps. After his tour of duty, Eric returned to Hayward, and he will be attending San Jose State University in the fall. Eric says he was drawn to the Friends as he wanted to volunteer and help the community after leaving the military, and since he also likes reading. When Eric is not reading, studying, or working on Friends projects, including the book sale, you can often see Eric taking his dog, Chloe, for a walk all around Hayward. Well, welcome, Eric. Yeah, well, should I stand? Yeah, kind of.

I like to see everybody, usually. Hi, everybody. Hello, all commissioners and chairwoman. It's good to meet all of you. So, as Jen T. said, I'm the newly appointed president of Friends of Labor Association. Friends of the Hayward Public Library. And she invited me here to speak to you all just so I can kind of update you on what's going on with the Friends, some of the changes that I would like to see implemented, as well as some of the things that we've accomplished in the past year or so since I've been on. Just to add on to what she said for me, so she mentioned I was in the Marine Corps. I joined after high school. I joined mainly because I wanted to, even back then, I wanted to contribute something to the public good. And they decided the best way for me to do that is to translate Filipino. So if you ever want to join me to Seafood City so I can kind of talk with the lolas and lolos over there, you're free to join me. I do have a dog. Her name is Chloe. I like to take her on walks. Usually, we just go to the park. She's getting kind of old, so she can't go on the big hikes like we used to. In terms of what's going on with the Friends, we've made some great progress. Recently, we've been able to sort of help the library in terms of some of the deficits that have been going on due to the monetary constraints that the city has imposed recently. And ever since, and sort of the work I've done before I got into any kind of official capacity, I started helping them on more of a... I guess you could say IT basis by no means. I'm like no expert, but I think just my generation, uh, in general has some kind of, uh, you know, fonts for technology. So we usually help them out with like setting out, um, confirmation emails, setting up some of like the more technological side, like setting up the square on iPad. And I guess because of that, I kind of stuck around and they, uh, really valued my help in that regards. Um, Something else I'd like to add, one thing that I have really been passionate about recently is I talked to some of the other friends of the library from other cities, like Berkeley, Oakland, Livermore. By the way, Livermore has a great library. I'm not cheating or anything.

I don't like to.

I've only been there once, I swear. So in terms of that, I want to form a strong connection with them, kind of see what works for their programs, especially now that I feel is a pivotal moment in public libraries. I'm not sure how many of you are on social media, but I Admittedly, I use it maybe a little bit too much. But I've seen growth there in terms of reading has become more popular amongst the young generation, especially things like cafes, bookshops, some libraries I've seen on there. But I really want to sort of tap that demographic. Jesse didn't mention this, but I'm an econ major right now. So I do kind of have a more analytical brain where it comes to, okay, how do we get these numbers of these statistics? What can we learn from them? So I'm trying to kind of push us forward in that way. So going in the future, I have plans to implement sort of a stronger social media presence. I know that the library itself has an Instagram account and we have a Facebook page, but I kind of want to take advantage of some of the more younger based platforms to reach out to that younger crowd and draw them in more and hopefully do some marketing. On top of that, I actually did start updating our recruitment process for volunteers. Recently, I created a Google form and started digitizing the process because before, believe it or not, when I decided to volunteer, I Apparently, I kind of got lucky where I reached out to Chris. She's our volunteer coordinator. She responded immediately. She was great. And that's why I was able to start so fast and hit the ground running. Whereas I did apply for other positions somewhere. And they kind of took a while to get back to me. And from what she told me, that's kind of not the norm. I guess I just got lucky where she was able to reach out to me super fast. And that's something I want to be working on because One problem that a lot of other Friends groups I've been facing that hurt from them is their aging volunteer population. They need younger people. They need sort of the people who can kind of handle some of the heavier. And thankfully, I've been able to handle a lot of that. Some of the other younger volunteers that have been able to be part of our group. But that's something I want to focus on too. Let me just kind of wrap this up. Sorry, I wrote notes on here.

Okay.

Yeah, so just to kind of close things off a little bit. Yeah, so I guess for most of the things that I want to bring to the table is having a more digital presence, try to reach out to younger crowds, and over I'm streaming the process of getting volunteers, getting new people into the library, casual readers in the future. And I guess that's pretty much it. I should, can I do Q&A now or should I? You can do Q&A now if our chair says, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. If you guys have any questions, comments, I'd be more than happy to hear.

I was curious about your last comment about getting more casual readers into the library. And who are those people? And how do you get them into the library? What's the pull of it?

Yes. What is it that you are going to put out there? Yeah, so when I define casual readers, I'm saying that more as people who have one or two book series who they started reading or that's their main kind of thing. Something, even along the genres, I know... Manga and anime are really big right now. And I've seen, at least from like the bookstore perspective, I've seen when we put those out for sale, usually about like a dollar, like near the teen section, those sell out incredibly fast. And I'm like, well, this is like, I know this is like not like the typical, like, like the classics with the sort of paperback books that, you know, my other volunteers have you know those are the books that they've been reading and from like my perspective i'm okay well we have a younger crowd usually they don't really tend to gravitate to those like classic books or even some uh some of the more like novel types but they'll immediately grab onto like those um like comic kind of uh manga style um times that we offer okay And just to add a little bit on to that point, there's also kind of like, at least from what I've seen, this is a completely back and forth, but there's also been just like a trend of like how this is like the, I guess you could say like flavor of the week book that I'll see trending. The last one I saw was like Song of Achilles and my friend actually, she bought out that book just because it was trending on TikTok. So that's kind of the crowd that I'm trying to, that I refer to when I say casual readers.

does one get them into the library by offering more of those books and letting them know they're available or

ebooks or what yes absolutely so that's part of it um i don't know so much about the ebook part but just kind of um drawing them out on social advertising on social media not directly like using uh like say instagram you have to like pay ads for them but just pushing out um videos on those platforms saying hey look at this space it's kind of like it's more casual by casual i mean it's I'm trying not to use too much of lingo, but I guess you could say more chill or an easygoing space that they could enjoy going into just to, I guess you could say, check out the environment.

I'll talk to somebody about it later to break that down for me. Because when you say a space, I think of a physical space, but you're not talking about physical space.

So no, it could be an actual physical space. So one of the things that I see, like I volunteer at the store, is because we're located right next to the cafe, I'll often see people, okay, they'll go to the cafe, then they'll stop by. So that in itself is also kind of, you can see as a more casual reader. or just as someone who's trying to experience the environment. One of the things that I can say is one of my first experiences going to that library specifically was I got invited onto a date. So I wasn't as big of a reader as I am now. And she just recommended it. It's like, oh, this place is like, yeah, it's beautiful. You should check it out. And the whole time we were just studying, we weren't actually even consuming a book or anything like that. So those are kind of like the Listen, there is that I kind of want to build upon. Okay. Sounds good.

Is that a little better? Yeah. I think we're around the same age bracket, I think. So when you're talking about flavor of the week and chill spaces, I understand. And I was wondering, when you talk about expanding our digital presence and stuff, what exactly are you envisioning?

So in terms of actual specifics, one of the ones that I want to tap is TikTok. I spoke to one of the library workers at the weeks branch. and I got to talking with her about specifically like what's her like online presence and she said oh this uh our Instagram page and she was like really proud like showing kind of uh some of the more like light high light-hearted like yeah goofy like videos that she's made.

I saw one viral too.

One when yeah that's uh the one she showed me I'm like this is amazing it was uh well for those who know it was just like a little video of uh they were emulating like a scene from a tv show um But she showed me that video. I think it had, like, 1.3 million views, something like that. So that was, like, 1.3 million people that we reached out to. I was like, that's incredible. Like, why aren't you on, like, TikTok? Because, like, TikTok is the main presence I've seen. Has been, like, a good... sort of way to reach out new audiences for everybody. And I asked her about it. It's like, so why can't you? And she says, there's like specific limitations on TikTok just because they're kind of, I think moderation on there is a little wonky, but because we're not directly tied to the library, we have a little bit more liberty on advertising spaces like that. So that's like the first one I could tell you. Besides that, I don't have any major plans right now.

Thank you so much for sharing your vision. Excited for you to start your new role and kind of see how it all goes. I think understanding is the... do you see an opportunity to monetize the TikTok digital space if you do get those types of views? Is that end goal? Because I know part of your primary function is fundraising. Fundraising. Yeah. And even when you're talking about those casual readers, I think that's also an opportunity for them to call to action, for them to donate those hotspot books and whatnot. And I know that's not... Don't make a ton of money off of that, but I think just... hearing me talk in your passion, I think that's also an opportunity.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I did think about monetization on like just through videos in terms of like a goal. I wouldn't say specifically just because I know from the metrics that I've seen, it's like cents for every few thousand views and also takes into account retention time. For me, the main use I have for it is just outreach and advertising for the library and the store as a whole. But monetization is an option as well. I think they have a store on there specifically. So maybe we can do some online sales on there, but in terms of any revenue acquired from that platform specifically, I don't see it being a main source in any way.

So when we just attracting and keeping the messaging out there to eventually turn into opportunities for people to buy in and to love Hayward Library and want to support it in that way.

Absolutely. Awesome.

Perfect. Thank you. Any more questions? Anyone else?

Yeah. Well, yeah, I was kind of kind of asked the same thing because besides TikTok, I mean, this is for other reasons and other spaces. Where are the younger people? Like, we used to have newspapers a long time ago. Now this is a perpetual question. Where do you... Where do young people go?

Besides TikTok, which... For information, it's TikTok. For anything. It depends on the age bracket, I feel.

That's what I'm asking. And certainly it does kind of depend on the age bracket. I know people have mentioned things to me that I've never even heard of before.

Yeah. No, I've been there too. But in terms of... sort of piggybacking on what you said, in terms of my general plan. So what I've seen is usually the old generation tends to go to Facebook and then you kind of get into more of like a mixed crowd between Instagram. So for Instagram, I'd say people more like around my age. I'm 27, by the way. That's where they tend to go to along with some, I'd say some younger people around like the teen or I'd say like the teenage. And then TikTok is the primary source for, at least from a social media platform for younger people. I'd say like teen, preteen to maybe around like the 10 and nine mark, depending on.

And I'm not 100%, I just found Instagram. And I find it really annoying because you have to watch a video to find out. I just want to read it. And I think TikTok annoys me the same way, which is a little antithetical to libraries and reading. But are there other spaces that are coming around or is it just those are the real options?

So as far as like... social media is concerned.

Yeah.

But I've seen that as, like, the main option. Okay. Unless I want to get more into, I guess, like, very, very niche spaces.

Okay.

Which I, I wouldn't even know where to start specifically. Um, actually, no, I guess I, there, but that's way down the line. Um, but I, in terms of one thing I will add, uh, I'm trying to step up, uh, high school volunteer recruitment a little bit more. So that'll be, like, a more, like, in-person, um, avenue that i'll try to pursue in the future i was right now it's like summertime i don't think any of them are required to have any volunteer hours right yeah yeah some are for graduation oh yeah yeah yeah so in terms of that but i think that's more of an old school way of hey you have to volunteer anyway but look at how cool it is maybe you can invite your friend or a friend of a friend or maybe your cousin to come over here and check it out so that would be a more um What's the analog way to go about it?

Yeah. Well, and be nice to instead of spending the summer doing this, come to the library and help out or whatever. There's a video for you.

Are you spending your summer doing this? Do scrolling. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you so much.

Well, thank you for having me.

I I really, really, really, really, really am happy to see younger people. Because I thought I was younger and I'm not anymore. So, you know, but yeah, it would be absolutely wonderful to get younger people involved in everything. No, absolutely.

I was looking to say that I'm actually 63. Yeah.

I didn't even believe that. Congratulations.

Thank you. And if you have any questions for me offline, please feel free to ask.

Moving back to report on outreach and marketing services. Okay, all right.

Thank you, and our outreach and marketing person who actually Eric had referred to, she was at Weeks when he met her, that's Kat Tong, and she unfortunately couldn't be here this evening, so I will report further.

She was here before, though, right? She did a presentation before?

Last year.

Okay, yes. Last year.

Okay, so, you know, outreach and marketing, it's obviously one of our biggest ways of doing outreach. On the ground outreach was Kirby and then we just got Moby. And unfortunately, they're both on hiatus now. And Kirby had already, we had stopped in last fall because we were having some problems. We had to fix some things up and also just the contracts with the schools. We were doing just regular treatment, but it wasn't at the level. Moby has never actually been able to get Moby out. So part of it is the huge operational impact that our budget cuts had on this. It's kind of unfortunate, but we're looking for ways possibly to bring them back. It is very expensive. The city council had asked us to give them, you know, like a proposal what it would cost to bring it back. And it's just really prohibitive at this time. Okay, so this is our outreach statistics. And so this is really just the visits to different events that we've done recently. We haven't done a lot. These are not actually the bookmobile visits. But we've had these mainly three main events at which we got 205 people. The reach is really good when we go to events, but unfortunately it's not. We're not able to go. We're not even able to just go table at events because we are so, so short-staffed right now. And so though, like Kat gave me some statistics. So we did three events in May, like the Cinco de Mayo downtown event. And that she actually talking with people, it's like, you know, you talk about views and people who are actually engaging with us. So you have the people who walk by and look, yay, there's a lot of people who actually come and engage with us. And so that at the Cinco de Mayo event, we had 47 children and 91 adults actually come and stop. So that's a pretty significant number. And then the Palmacia Elementary School, we had a library card drive for parents. And so we got 15 adults to come and get their library card with us. And then we had the Community Without Borders event. Again, we had 22 children and 30 adults actually come and talk to us. So but, you know, for class visits, we used to be about 30 children per visit. But I don't know when we'll be able to restart that. Okay. Marketing stats. So this again, to go back, you know, we were talking about the, about the social media and we use social media very significantly. We use obviously it, Instagram is probably our biggest reach, but also a lot of library users, especially the older users, use Facebook. So we really are trying to make sure we keep both going very significantly. And you can see, actually, in terms of reach, we like Facebook. Instagram is growing much faster. But when we talk about reach in sort of Instagram, this is for the last year, we had over a million, close to 2 million people actually reached and engaged and engaged as people who actually stop, who pause, click, all of that. It's close to 200,000. And on Facebook, we got quite a few new followers, but we reached 2.4 million people but actually engaged people who actually stopped and clicked on it, there was close to 74,000. And the difference between Instagram and Facebook is Facebook, actually, when it pops up, you can read it without actually clicking Instagram. Now, I've said some of it is, you know, but Instagram, most of the posts are maybe very short, they're quick, you have to, if you want more, it always says, go click on our bio kind of thing. But it is, it's sort of a difference and we feel it's important. Okay.

As a new Instagram person, I've tried to do that every time I says, go look for more info in the bio. I go look. I've never been able to find it. And it's not just on you. It's anywhere.

That's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

Well, I can work with you. I'll show you.

We can, because I try to share stuff. So I'm like, okay, where can I grab this and share it? And I can't. Yeah.

Okay. Well, what we do, or maybe, maybe Angela right next to you. Okay. And anyway, then we get comments. So that one of the comments says, Hayward Library makes me so proud to live here, which is really nice to see we have. And the library is probably the most iconic building in Hayward and is probably the best known location for people to come to. So we have a newsletter that goes out every month. And so we have now recently broken up our newsletter to the adult mailing list, the children's mailing list and the teen mailing list. And the teen one is very recent, but you're getting, you know, but when teens sign up for the newsletter, they are really engaged and that's sort of pretty significant. So our adult mailing list goes out to close to 29,000 people. Our children's mailing list goes to close to 17,000 people. And our teen mailing list, again, which is very new, has 224 people signed up. And since February, we've sent out three newsletters. And they're completely separate. We realized it works better. So if you're targeted, then people are more likely to open it, look at them, and sort of read. And so we have the number sent out and the actual opens. And opens is what is very, it's really important to us that is the real reach that we go for. And yeah. So with that, and again, you know, our focus is really on marketing and because now that is the biggest way we are doing outreach for now.

Yeah.

And, you know, we have a very successful social media person. All of you have seen, she really gets the draws people in for us. And that's really nice. Yeah. Questions. Yeah.

How does on your emails that's, the total number of opens exceeds so drastically the total number of email addresses. So if I go in and look at the newsletter twice, you get two opens?

No, no. So this is the total open. So we have 28, like 29,000. This is the total number of, so we've sent out 29,000 emails seven times and counting all of those seven times, that's the number of opens we've had. So, but it is a very good actually open rate. Yeah.

It's really good.

Yeah. Quick question. What is the minimum age for the children? I don't know that we have a minimum age. We really expect the parents. It's the parents. I was just wondering about that. We expect the parents to. But it is all very, you know, it is definitely G-rated.

It's curious. Like, how young are they actually?

And there aren't, you know, the kids who sign on themselves. Oh, yeah. Thanks.

I have a question about the teen stuff. Because before I joined the commission, I would see the events. And I would have probably signed up for the newsletter if it had come out earlier. But my main thing with teen events is the age grouping. Because it could be like 13 is a very different type of person from someone who's about age out of the teen bracket. And also with a lot of the events, it kind of feels like isolating in a way because like it'll be like 18 plus or like 18 like and under right for most latin events but you'll still have the same interests like right now i'm 19 and the one of the events is like doing like perler bead stuff and i'm still interested in that but it feels kind of like Do I still join it?

Yeah, you definitely are welcome to join. No one will ever tell you, no, you can't come in. And we realize that we have to just put some age limits. And some of it helps us also. So, for example, the way the teen room is run, we'd say adults cannot be there, just hang out. You can come in and pick up books and all and leave. If we don't actually specify an age limit, it's very hard to enforce it. But if you were there, we wouldn't come. You know, it's when someone's obviously not close to that age group, then we can go enforce. So really, that's one of the things we do. And generally, it's sort of a guideline rather than an actual hard and fast rule.

It's kind of hard to like express that over like a flyer or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. One last question. You said the cost of reinstituting the book mobile services was so great. It was prohibitive. Is there any, I mean, given the cost, is there in the city's financial situation, do you anticipate we'll be able to institute the book mobile again next year? Or do you really think it's going to be a long, it's a long time for really

So, you know, the city's budget situation is not good. And even next year, it's going to be pretty tight. So my goal is to try to see if we can find other sources of money, not depend on the city. So I'm actively looking and talking to people. So that's my goal. that even if you can get it out for three days a week or even or get it out occasionally to events to find a way to do it, getting out occasionally to events does become a little bit expensive, just keeping it running and maintaining it and having staff. But I am looking. And so if you know of anyone who might be willing and has, you know, half a million dollars sitting around in their pocket, I would be happy. And I really am always, I'm not afraid of talking to anyone. Just if you give me a contact, I will go talk to them.

Do you have a proposal or like a one pager that you could share?

Of the cost? Yes.

And then I think in that same vein is, I don't know what the insurance policy looks like, but is there an opportunity to potentially rent out The bookmobile for other events?

Yeah. So, you know, this has come up. It comes up. We cannot rent out. We will not rent out. And to me, it's like, would you ask the police if you're not using the car? Would you rent? So we don't do that. It also is intended for the libraries. It's very specific. And we have actually got that question. But we need to send it out with our drivers, with our staff. And so that's the insurance issue is definitely there. And it says library, so we have to have it work within our standards and with our expectations.

I do see that even with all of those requirements, there is an opportunity for a company or an organization to sponsor that. a day of library services even still using all like your staff and everything and that's their give back opportunity yeah so like people that are trying to do corporate responsibility and are looking to do something good in their in the bay area they can sponsor a day of service i'm happy to talk to anyone i will say it's very difficult in fact what we are even now we are saying even if you give us half a million dollars to run the

bookmobile three days a week we want you to commit to three years so that's one and a half million dollars you have to commit to continuation yeah because it's for us to hire staff to run it and then say oh it's just you know for three days and we don't know what's going to happen after this year so definitely one of our asks is you have to commit to three three years yeah and what is the contingency plan if you're not able to find

yeah the funding for it like i'm sitting there so what do you by contingency plan like if you're not able to raise the funds in the next two years and is are you going to sell it are you going to keep it part how's it gonna keep on you know like because then yeah technology and things wear and tear even from sitting there well corby is already pretty worn out yeah i would say that and so but uh

I'm hoping we will be able to get back on the road in a couple of years at least. At some point, we'll have to make the decision. My hope is that we will get it back on the road soon, or at least over the next couple of years, if not just right away. And, you know, one of the things I do want to say, like the Martins Foundation, Mr. Martins gave it to us, and to not put it out is very disappointing for them. Yeah. So, you know, but we are definitely, I'm very actively looking, but the situation is pretty dire for the city. Yeah.

Thank you. And give Kat a big round of applause. I really want to say Kat is amazing. She is just amazing. I'm a fan. I giggle every time I see stuff pop up from the library.

She's so creative. She's one of those people, you're walking and she'll stop you and say, okay, now quick, you know, just 30 seconds of your time. And she'll use those 30 seconds to produce something so amazing. She'll be good.

And I know that that is also a very popular avenue amongst other libraries too. Like the Anaheim Library has a huge social media following as well. And there's a few other libraries that I follow that do similar stuff. So it's super cool to see that work.

We're in it. Thank you.

Moving on to business summer activities and planning for the September meeting. Since this is our last meeting of our... What do you call this? Cycle year? Fiscal year. Fiscal year. We're off up until September, and then the agenda for September will be the new commissioners and... nominations for chair and co-chair and whatnot. So definitely wanted to add it as an agenda item around things that we can stay active during the summer. And also what should we be thinking about up until our next meeting?

Can I just do one thing? I just want to say, since we, you know, we used to take you along to lunch, I mean, dinner, usually in July. And since we're not doing that anymore, we have these very cool magnets for you as a thank you. You know, I mean, I don't want to not thank you at all for what you've done. You've been so good. You've done so much work for us. It does stick. It really does. It's a true magnet. It's a true magnet. Yeah, but it's just so pretty. We made this picture during the strategic planning. We had the, what was it called, journey mapping. And this was our journey map. And so it was just a really nice picture. So I thought we should share it with all of you. Thank you. Thank you.

Is that bus stop really there?

There is a bus stop right here. Well, it's on this street. It's on C Street, yeah. Right there, yeah.

How ironic.

The unity part is just... Well, we believe in it.

But, you know, when you did this and when you did the whole library, how ironic that this is, you know, just where we are with it, you know?

We will fight the good fight. We will continue to fight the good fight. Yeah. So if I can just say also for all of you, you know, I've sent out the information on summer reading. I hope you all are, you know, registered. Please do register and log your reading days. or books, whatever you want to. And also come just if you can take the time to attend at least one of our programs. It's really lovely. It's, you know, it's very nice. You can introduce yourself if I'm not there to the staff. Say you're a library commissioner and just come by. We are doing lunch at the library right now. It's just so nice to see the children there and eating and just reading and events.

I did go to one and I had a suggestion. I don't know if it's been implemented, but I came with my three or four grandchildren, however many I had that time. And I didn't really want to get a free lunch because I could afford to pay for lunch. So I suggested to the staff, why don't you put a collection box just for donations? And I don't know if they have implemented that because I think you could collect a lot of donations from a lot of parents who Appreciate the program. And I mean, there was a wealth of books. All of my grandkids came home with at least one book. And they had a lunch and lots of fun. And I would put some money in if there was a donation box. So why not have a donation box at that table?

I will bring it up. I know we've talked about it. We don't like to put pressure on parents that are... And I realize there is a difference, but it does become a pressure point for people that are coming in. Even like you're at the literacy dinner saying, oh, can you donate? It really puts pressure on people. So we try to keep it separate. But it's a good point. We can try to find a place that's not right in there, but to encourage people to donate.

Just so they know there's an option to donate. I'm not saying encourage them to donate or even ask them to donate. Just a box that says donation somewhere in that area or somewhere in that room where you're having a free lunch. I think a lot of people would look and say, oh, wow, my kids have probably $30 worth of books here at least. And free lunch. And they've had an amazing time. The time I went there was something from the Lawrence Livermore Lab. They were doing a science thing. And I would have donated some money because I think it was a great presentation. So I just think you could put a donation box somewhere without asking.

Just making it more accessible.

Yeah. Even a QR code. Yeah. Still, I'm so happy to take your money. Just like right here.

Somewhere. Anyway, that was my suggestion on that. Yeah.

I was going to mention that, like Hasha mentioning a box and you don't want it to be like too in your face. You can always just like put up a QR code flyer at like the parents eye level, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Good, good idea. Thank you. Yeah. Certainly, that's a way for you all to support us. And there are all the volunteer opportunities anyway, if you really want to do something during summer. But just come by. I think the biggest thing is what you do. Come, join us, be present, be visible. And come buy books at the bookstore, at the book sales, because that's really one of the big ways we get money from the friends, the first and third Saturday of each month.

Are you accepting book donations right now? Yeah.

I know sometimes depending on space and inventory, I would say no to you, but if you say bring, you know, don't go with anyone.

You know, maybe you need to stop for a while.

Bring a box at a time. Don't bring too much at a time. If you're planning to bring a lot, call ahead and we can work with you, but one box or one bag of books and it

good condition they are like well just really good condition yeah i have a question um i visited the friends of library like shop a while ago and like a lot of the books are like random various things you know people donate i'm wondering what your guys is like cd collection is like because i know when i went visited it was kind of like smaller and stuff and like with a lot of like I got, like, a CD of, like, Andean music, which I like. I just really wish there were, like, more CDs, because, like... You take CDs? Yes.

With them in the garage? Yes, we do. Yeah, there was a point, and I'm just going to jump in, that they weren't really selling very well, but now, again, we have...

i know they're cool now man it's more physical media like it's less about old school and more being able to own it because online i'm sure you know about like how there's always paywalls and like you could lose like your like thousands of liked songs you know and it's really good to have like physical media again yeah i have a question do you take vinyl um donations we were trying to set it up but we just don't get enough you don't get enough yeah

But I mean, if we get into it.

I know. Downtown, sorry, Stack, you know, Stack, the record store, they really support us a lot. So, yeah, in fact, they're doing a DJ program for us. They're awesome. So, yeah, so if you give it to them in the end, you know, I think these are all community things that support us. So that's probably all, right? It's practically all, yeah. They work in conjunction with us. So, yeah. Yeah, no, I'm saying, sorry, not taking away your thoughts. Yeah. But feel free to reach out to me and ask if you have any questions.

Are we looking at the proposed agenda for next year?

Yes. I think that's at the end, right? Agenda, agenda.

More so just trying to get it on everybody's radar that we're going to have a long break and what we're coming back into will probably be either some pre-work or some decision-making that we'll have to do.

Okay. Old Business Letter Writing Committee. I assume that letter that I drafted for the last meeting went out, right? Okay, so we did have additional information from the American Library Association about ways we could help promote or make sure that there's funding for libraries in the next congressional budget. And instead of us hammering our senators with letters, we thought, myself and Shereen, that it may be more effective to have our beneficiaries from our programs write letters as part of their educational process. I've already asked my learner to write a letter, and I will review it. I mean, not a letter, but just a couple of paragraphs saying what the Literacy Plus program has done for you and how it's changed your life. And, you know, that That won't require much. And then I'll help her discuss what we're sending and who we're sending it to. Send it to our senator. I'm sure she's I know she's never done anything like that before. So for her, I think it'll be a real educational opportunity. And Shereen felt it might be exactly the same for ESL.

I mean, I think it's just I think everybody. I mean, yeah, I think. Even the most, the lowest level learners, I think it's just an invaluable thing for them to do in so many ways. Just communicating, but also let you have a voice here. You know, this is how you do it. Just how to format a letter. Maybe some of the kids need to do that too, because maybe they don't know how to do that anymore. I don't know.

I think the younger generation, I know how to do it. Yeah, I think they do that.

I think it's a great idea.

I was going to ask Jayanti, could you like send that out to the powers that be?

I can work with the literacy group and have the newsletter and really talk about it. Yeah.

Yeah. So we can do something. It would just really be mainly to the tutors to encourage their learners as an option for the learners to participate. take advantage of to express how this program has helped them. And I think that's so much more invaluable for a legislature to hear from people who have benefited from the program as opposed to me, someone who's a tutor in the program or someone who has an interest in seeing any point. So I've read some fabulous things written by people, at least in the Literacy Plus program and the ESL program about how the programs have changed their lives and how important it has been to them And there's no way I could express that gratitude or that convey that message as clearly. So I think that instead of us writing, well, actually I encourage all of the commissioners to write more letters to their senators. Because I guess this summer is the time that the Senate will be considering the appropriations bills from the House. So this is our opportunity to once again get a foot in the door. And there's a fairly, I guess, from what I gathered from the ALA, a fairly, at least a couple of months period of time within which these letters could be written and sent. Yeah.

And, you know, just maybe even because the stuff goes out to the tutors all the time, just sending out here, you know, here's a lesson on how to write a letter, you know, and format it. Everybody could do something like that.

Yeah, I can welcome that with Jessie. Yeah.

I think there's also an opportunity to do a call to action on social media, if that is appropriate. I would ask that, though.

Yeah, I think it's a really good thing. Yeah.

Everyone's public also submitting letters.

One other question for the bright young man right here. Is there a way to do an online petition?

Yes. Yes.

And send it to our doors.

I got to go check.

There's a petition that we could have people sign and then the library staff could sign.

So there is, so especially for libraries, there's a group called Every Library. And they are very active in that they are constantly setting up these. So I can share them if you want as they come out. I have to be a little careful with what I, you know, how I do advocacy. I'll send you a link to the group because they do a lot of things that here's your sign now, here's the petition. And basically that's their job. That's what the group does.

So you think it would be better to work through them as opposed to having

our public library petition? You can do it all. I would say for us, it's much nicer to do it individually so that, you know, where we send you, say, the template, like, and then you use it rather than us. I mean, it's fine to do it as a group, but the impact is much more when it's individual. So from, like, the learners and from the end users.

Yeah, but I'm talking about as opposed to a letter, in addition to a letter, a petition signed by library users. Please fund our library petition. We want to keep this community center open with this community learning center. Something very basic and straightforward that we could have users summon.

I think that's a great idea.

Who could implement it?

Well, I think we'd have to give us some time. Give us some time. It's something we planned. We're just getting on our feet. So we can try to do something.

I think he's a great resource. I keep looking at him. You have all the answers that I don't have.

I also want to say, don't want to burn Eric out. He's doing a lot for us.

I'm sure there's other Erics in the... in our employment. But I'm just looking to him because he's right here. And he has so many bright, bright ideas. I will say I'm on summer break right now.

So I got two months free. Yeah. The two months that you guys are out though.

Okay. Oh, no.

We get to move on to report from Budget Support Committee.

People just don't have one.

Do we need to nominate someone else to the committee or are we going to let it lie?

I think you could wait until the New York. And that leaves all onto our agenda. Report from Community Outreach Committee.

Well, being on the community outreach committee, the only idea I had was this petition to reach out to the community about the need for funding for libraries. So that was my contribution for outreach.

Any recommendations? Any other commissioners?

recommendation to add the budget support committee to our agenda for for as the chair could just make appointments and announce what you have to do.

Can I also make a recommendation that we define what they want this person to do this budget person what he's doing me and writing some bullet points, but this is what the the committee would take. This is what being on committee would require. This is what we'd like to hear from you. This is how you get that information to give them some guidance and understanding as to what they would be volunteering for.

Definitely. Anything else?

so you know largely we've been just focused on summer reading it's been really really busy really crazy so but one of the one bit of really good news is we have a youth poet laureate so typically we announce the youth poet laureate same time as the the adult poet laureate but this year we didn't get enough enough application so we waited we have just an amazing young man His name is Santino Torres. He goes to the Leadership Public Schools in Hayward. And, you know, usually we'd introduce him at Lit Hop, but of course, since it's so late, so we're going to try to find a time when we can introduce him. Also, we would typically introduce them at the City Council meeting, but the next City Council meeting isn't the longest day. So we'll probably find an event where we can introduce him. But he's just like outstanding, very good. I also want to say thank you and to continue on what Crystal was talking about to all of you who reached out to our legislators in Sacramento and wrote letters and called and all of that. Unfortunately, we didn't get ESL money, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work. And hopefully in the mid-year, if they do any kind of mid-year adjustments, we can get something. But it's good for them to hear our voices. So thank you all. I know a lot of you did reach out. And a reminder, we are looking for commissioners. The last day to apply is July 31st. So please help us get the word out. I have been, sorry, I've been leaning on Eric. And as I said, the last meeting for the city council was last week. And so next meeting will be August 8th. So they are on recess and we'll also be on recess at the same time. And that's pretty much it, a short report this month. then our city council liaison is absent she's absent but she did say hello and so but basically she was also going to talk about that the you know they had the final budget approval that was all done and then now they're on recess okay just heard from friends of hayward library no additional like i got one thing yeah uh in terms of uh

So in the future, I know the Rosary Club is having a back to school event in the beginning of August, first of August. And we decided to make a contribution of 200 books so that each kid gets two books. And we have just sent out the card to see what books we'll be able to purchase for that.

That's pretty good. Did you have a question?

um i had looked into joining melody club before um i tried to participate in their poetry uh or their like speech competition before they had one a couple years ago um it's an event on the first of august where exactly will it be So I'm now on the Rotary Club.

I can get you the information.

I can tell you. The 1st of August event is for the kids. And it's a distribution. They do the backpacks and they buy. I've done that before, yeah. Yeah. So it's in the morning. It starts about 8 o'clock or so. You know, it's at Southland Mall.

Mm-hmm.

And so they give out, they do the backpacks. They assigned a person to go with each kid to do shopping. They buy clothes for the person. They have a backpack full of school supplies. And then the Friends of the Library gives out books also, free books. That's in the morning.

That's cool. Yeah. Any reports or comments from our library commissioners?

I went to the event this past Thursday out in the street. And I saw the table from this was all the commissions were being represented at one table as opposed to anything from the library. And I was wondering if you had thought about having volunteers at that table or a volunteer from the library commission to sort of maybe interact more with people than the two persons who were at the table were able to do and to maybe be able to have more one-on-one with the people who are members of the public who are walking by. So I was told it was a budgetary issue and that's why they only had two and all the commissions were consolidated one table, but it's really difficult for two people sitting behind a table to do much of interaction with the public.

So, you know, that's a summer activity. If you want to do the third Thursday of each of June, July, August, they have, we have the street parties. We do not. We have zero staff available to go. So we actually partner with the other groups. And in fact, all of the city departments, we used to each of us have a table. Now we're all just there are two tables and we're all consolidated. And so they had our library staff over there also. And so if you want to come and join them, you're welcome. I can send the information out. but we don't have a separate library table at this point.

No, I understood. But if you sent out the notice about volunteering to help man the table, I think you might get somebody on our commission or other commissions to volunteer.

Yeah, because I was at an event on Saturday and it was a commission table.

It was the same way. Yeah.

It was someone at that table and they put all the commissions into one. Yeah, it's the city clerk's office. They really are very, they try so hard at this time of the year. Yeah.

It would be great to know that this is coming up. Does anyone want to volunteer to help man the table? Because I think you could be a lot more effective in reaching the public if you had more than two people. And they were mainly standing behind you. Because I actually helped that table Saturday. I stood there. Did you? Okay.

Well, I will send you the invitation. I'll ask the city clerk if she's If she's open to that, to having people from the specific commissions come and speak and join. And you don't have to be there for the whole thing. You can do a couple of hours or one hour or whatever. So I'll send you the information.

I have two links that I will share with Chianti about nominations happening in my office. work life outside of this for teacher of the game and student of the game. Um, so you may nominate either a teacher or a student to be the teacher or student of the game and get, um, recognition at a home 49ers game. And, um, both both student and teachers get tickets to the game as part of that nomination. Student nominations are rolling and that's more STEM STEAM focused. But I will say it is someone applications are for students that are improving in those subjects as well as that have aptitude. So it's very flexible and that's open until What is it? January 2nd of 27. And then the teacher nominations close July 30th. So I will forward that for you. And we all know that we had. Follow your bliss, but that's also something that you can share with your networks. Yeah. Thank you. Right. Moving on to agenda building.

So I just want to say if you can take a look at the agenda we planned for next year, we really tried to consolidate and not have a lot of repetition. We tried to make it a little more, what should I say, informative and useful for everyone. So if you can take a look at it and you don't have to give us your input right now. You can give it also later. I want to just say one correction on September 28th and September and October, we have review welcome packet. We'll probably do it just in September and that's actually reviewed the appointed officials handbook, which the city now has.

Aren't the new commissioners going to be at the meeting on September 28th?

They are, yeah.

So wouldn't it be better to discuss the commission goals at their first meeting?

It just is very new usually. And because we do so much in that first meeting of the Brown Act, we're going to do the appointed officials at handbook. It just is a lot. And that's why we wait till the second, give them a chance to just... But, you know, it's up to you. Take a breath. That's why we do that. And we also do the introductions twice because we do the elections in the second meeting. And so the new commissioners get to know people. And if they want to sort of participate or stand for election, they can also reintroduce themselves. So that's why we do it twice.

So it seems like the committee doesn't have a lot other than introductions and elections. Yeah, maybe we could add a more substantive topic to the October meeting.

We could. Yeah, I thought you just said review the appointed commissioner's handbook in October.

We start that in September, but if it doesn't finish, we can, you know, some of it is just rolled over also, but I'm completely open if there's a specific topic you want to add there or we can move something up. I think I completely agree. I think it might be a good idea.

And everybody will have the handbook. It's not like we have to read it and regurgitate what's already in the handle.

No, but I think it's been a real issue for the City Council that the Commissioner is not quite following everything. So, in fact, I talked to Council Member Roach and she will kind of go over some of the relevant, like talking about attendance and some of those things that are really important for the City Council. Yeah, but feel free, just send your ideas and your point is well taken. I'll try to see what we can do, how we can move things.

That is our last agenda for today. So the meeting is adjourned.