Arts in Public Places Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Should we go ahead and just get started? Yeah, I'll keep an eye on the attentions in case Michelle is able to join later. So we'll call the meeting. We're at 5.30. We have in the room for board members Katie, James Gillespie, Ryan Parker, and myself. Any public online? No. No public. So the first item is minutes from our last meeting on April 6th. Is there anyone who would like to make a motion for the minutes?

I will make a motion to approve the minutes.

Okay. Anyone second? Thanks, Katie. All in favor? Yes.

Okay.

which means we get to move straight on to the exciting stuff, which is the staff presentation on summer reading challenges and programs.

Oh, we get to go first? You do! So, we're both wearing our t-shirts. You'll see staff in the library, so two versions. And so all staff members got t-shirts. everybody on staff and desks wearing t-shirts today. I need to keep that up all summer to promote and get the word out. The summer reading program every year, just to sort of talk about the concept and why do we do this, what is this? But it's basically a two month period of time where you take the opportunity of summer where families have time off, kids have time off, to really showcase the full spectrum of what we have to offer in the library. I can't tell you how often we hear, oh, I didn't know you had StreamAid. I didn't know you had a database. In the summer, we really try to focus on just all of the things that we do and take the opportunity to promote for the summer year. The other thing we do with the summer reading program is really up our programming, youth programming and adult programming, too, and really try to address the county council's quality of life by providing more, so just more of everything, things to do, this passive program, activities, things going on. So that's sort of like the overarching goal of the summer reading program. Melissa is going to talk a little bit more about what that looks like specifically for the youth team and for literacy.

Because there's that whole other component, which is so important.

But I want to tell you guys, I got up at 5 o'clock this morning and made the three online reading levels live this morning. And we registered over 100 participants just today. So we had a really good first day. We registered. It was kind of wild. But we registered 40 adults, 12 teens. That doesn't sound impressive. But it is. For those of you in that patron segment, that's really good. We're really happy with that. And then we registered 53 youth patrons. So youth patrons is basically middle school down, no?

Element, sixth grade down to age four.

Okay. And Melissa's going to talk a little bit more about what we do for middle schoolers and for the little littles. But overall, fantastic first day. For the adult program specifically, one asked us to mix it up a little bit last year, and we saw that that was a good strategy. It seemed fresh. We did that again this year. We really wanted to add a sort of a paper logging option, and that was an accessibility component. Most of our patrons really are very quite comfortable with the digital logging, but we do have to be aware that we have patrons who do not want to engage with an app. So the whole Adult Civil Reading Challenge this year also lives on paper, and staff are ready to do all the entries and really support that. And so I hope that's gonna be a nice improvement. We also did with the lesson from last year of mixing it up, we mix it up again. Last year we did a bingo, this year it's a challenge format again. We made it simpler and we did that to maybe cater a little less to fewer power users. Our users always want more and want to do harder and want to read more, are very vocal. But we need to be mindful, too, that there are time constraints for reading adults. And we wanted to create a summer reading challenge for adults that is a little bit more accessible. And then we added a reading log, so if you want to do more, you can keep reading and keep earning tickets. There are registration prizes for everybody.

It's incentivized, so we wanted everybody to come away with something.

And the prizes are really nice, and I think that might have something to do with the success today, so check it out. After you earn your initial registration prize, you earn tickets. All those tickets can then be placed towards five really nice grand prizes. The most popular grand prize every year historically has been the Kindle Paperweight. I did break down and get that one again. The other four prizes are prize bundles that are sourced from local businesses. There was just no way around it.

Well, it's a Kindle Paperwhite.

It's just that there are different Kindles. And the Kindle Paperwhite has a really sort of nice... Oh, I thought you said Paperweight. Oh, no, Paperwhite. Okay. Sorry. It's one of the Kindle series. Okay. Yeah, it has a really nice sort of paper look to it, almost like the texture is... So, off to a great start. I don't want to talk too much about the adult reading challenge.

Four challenges, mixed levels. So one of the things that I've noted over the last 18 months or so is an increase in the anxiety level of parents about literacy, and if you, it's hard to believe that people in this town could be even more anxious, but that's my anecdotal observation, and so many conversations with the youth services team and with upper management talking about these things and what that means, and there's a number of ways we're addressing that, but one of the ways we address that is through the summer reading program, and traditionally in public libraries been like the literacy loss program, We don't want them to go backwards over those two and a half to three months. It seems so short now. It feels like three days sometimes. But we don't want them to go backwards. But we're also not in the business of teaching reading. We're in the business of exposing information to people so they can teach reading to their children or to teachers so they can teach reading or to children so they can learn. I mean, we do some education about it. But it's a tricky little spot for us to be in as public librarians and what our role is in librarianship writ large and specifically here in our community. So one of the things we did that I'm going to mention and then set aside is we've done a big collection shift. So if you'd like to come down to Youth Services, I can walk you through that and talk you through why we did that and what that's going to mean for people who use Youth Services. But secondly, and this was, Eva alluded to the power user, I had very much become someone who was listening too much to the people who love logging and the people who love more, more, more. And because it's satisfying to satisfy hungry patrons. But trying to find a middle ground where we could help people be successful at a, maybe even call it a casual level, And we don't do, typically, we have not in my 24, almost 25 years at this library, we haven't done didactic reading lists of this is your summer reading list. The schools do that, and we support that. That's their role. Our role is to be like, it seems like you like books about dragons. Let me get you five more books about dragons. So we have the four levels that Eva mentioned are Zero to Three is a program that comes with iRead, which is the company that we purchase our shirts from. We purchase the art. There are four different artists, I think, who have little kid art, middle kid art, big kid art, and adult art is kind of how I think of it. And this is just a little tracker that we get, and you can come by the library and see one. It is Spanish on the outside and Spanish-English on the inside. They don't offer me other languages. If I could get other languages, I would. And this is just very simple paper only. There's no digital aspect to it. So when I handed out eight of these today, that's not in her stats. Eight of these. That is unprecedented. There have been summers where I didn't get anybody to bite on the zero to three. So I handed out eight of these today. We marked them on a spreadsheet. And they'll just do this little tracker and bring it back. And we have a little gift bag. And they'll get a board book and a ducky and whatever I drop in the back. I can't even remember what all it was. So that's the zero to three. And that is... That's where we want to grab them. And so we also have our 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten, which is digital, available online. But this is something for this, especially for someone who may be new to all this with their kiddo and is not like, I don't want an app. So we got a simple entry point. So then we have, this is the user group that uses, that does this stuff more than any other group, which is the four-year-olds through 11-year-olds, which is essentially your pre-K up to just entering sixth grade. And theirs is digital and paper. And that is deliberate. The parents do most of the digital work for kids still at that age. And the kids need something to be responsible for and something to engage with. So this summer, we're doing stickers. We've done beads. We've done lots of different things over the summers. And this book was put together with the extensive help of adult services staff member Rebecca Redondo, who I want to call out my name because she was instrumental in getting all this put together. This is essentially me pouring my brain out and her turning it into a thing. And so the kiddos can be tracking digitally, and then they are responsible for coming to the desk. We mark it off just like we do in any challenge, and then they put their stickers in. So something for them to hold on to. There's places to draw and things in there. And additionally to the reading part, they're going to programs and favorite books and question of the week, those little things. but we're not telling them what to read. However, the other, the third program in that age group, sort of in that age group, for third graders to sixth graders is our Cover to Cover program. This is our, it's been around since 2017, and it was begun as kind of a response to some of the national reading lists maybe not hitting right where we wanted them to hit for our kids. So we curate this list of 10 books locally. And by locally, I mean in my office with my staff, hyperlocal. And we engage all year long in what's coming out the previous year and the year before. We kind of look to see like just the last two or three years. And we look for books that meet our public specifically. Last year, we had one about bears because bears. Year before that, we had one about fires because fires. It's a mix of genres. So the challenge for cover to cover began technically in January, but it's been kind of a slow roll starting today. They have their little bookmark. This is paper only. Again, trying to find out like where the sweet spot is for responsibility and for engagement for each age group. They read a book on the list. This part is didactic. We do say it is these 10 books. They read a book, they get a little green cat stamp at the desk. They read five of those books in any order, they get a free book for that. They read 10 of them and they get a little gift card to, I think we're going to do Sama's Dot in Village Arts this year. So $5 is not much, it doesn't buy much these days, but it'll help you get a little art kit or maybe a boba. So that's the third one. And I should have mentioned in this age group, that's the ages four to sixth grade, Ten hours of reading gets a free book. Ten hours. Well, my kid's going to read ten hours in the first week. Great. You get to sign up again and do it again. Up to eight times over the summer. But it's not a hundred books. I mean, it might be, but it's not in the program as a hundred books. And that was deliberate. And the software doesn't do that, so we had to do a workaround to make it work. But we really wanted to reach that place of accomplishment and then... beyond for those who do want to go beyond. High school, digital only. No paper. Middle school and high school is digital only. They read 10 hours, and they get a free book. And theirs will also repeat as many times as we have weeks, which is, I believe, eight. So it's nine books over the course of the summer. The other high school piece that I will mention, because that's how we got the 12 sign-ups today, and we've been doing this for, I think, since 2014. teen might have been our first year. We do little scratcher tickets for the teens. If you are entering seventh grade or we also let the high school graduates do it. So we kind of stretch it a little bit on the far end. Come to the desk, any youth services or White Rock desk, you get a scratcher. You scratch off a ticket, you win something right there or you don't. No matter if you win or lose, it goes into a drawing and we're giving away these lovely Bluetooth speakers and these lovely tote bags that came from iRead again. And there's going to be a surprise in every one of them. And the surprise is I discovered a stash of gift cards in my office, and it's going to be Target, Amazon. So people give them to me, and I don't use things like, I forget. So my ADHD is the teens game. But the reason that, and that piece doesn't have anything to do with the reading. What that piece does is it opens the conversation. That's what allows me to get 12 teens on a Monday of summer signed up to at least try reading. to do 10 hours of reading to get a free book. And so we're hoping that that conversation has been a big piece of our connection to teens, and I'm hoping that that will lead to a little higher numbers in the reading this summer. So those are our four reading challenges for kids. I have a ton of programming things that I could go through pretty quickly if you are interested in what we're doing for programming. So we... have our continuing White Rock Film Series. So that happens on, and I don't want to, I'm not going to give dates or anything because I will be wrong about everything I say, but that does happen on certain Saturdays and it's all on the public calendar. Creative Studio is in its second year at the library. And this was born out of the idea that we want to do three hours of programming for that group that is using the library most heavily, ages four to 12 or 13. It is hard. to do three hours of programming because you have to set it up, you have to do it, and then you have to clean it up. So what pieces can I remove? I can remove the setup and clean up twice. So we do one three-hour program instead of three three-hour programs. We call it Creative Studio, and it is a mix. Last summer, it was art and science, so it was very STEM-y, STEAM-y. And then this summer, we're adding a nature element because we have a person on staff, Sienna Beatty, who is trained just about to finish. I don't know when the certification finishes in forest bathing, which is a county-sponsored nature therapy. Thank you. So Sienna will be certified, and it's going to be doing some nature pieces kind of right back outside the library and in our library outdoor classroom area. So the three things tomorrow. It's Tuesday. It starts at 2 p.m. We'll be an art piece. We'll do Legos tomorrow because Legos is always an easy, gentle way to move into engineering and science stuff. And then we'll have some outdoor things. And I will be honest with you, I don't know what Sienna's doing because I have a great staff and I don't have to know exactly what it is. So that's Creative Studio. Two of those we run until 7 o'clock because we want to catch some after work people who can't always make it to things during the day. We supersize all our teen programs or most of our teen programs. Instead of two hours of anime... Four hours of anime. I know. And that's my program, so I get to sit and watch four hours of anime. Ask me if I like anime. Don't ask. Then we have four hours of what used to be random fandom, and now it's called Zoned Out. The kids renamed it and rebranded it. It had been a while, so we took a poll of our teens who are currently coming, 7th through 12th grade. That one is games and art and snacks. And some summers we're able to have outdoor fires. We will not be doing that this summer, clearly, unless the rains come. That is, next up we have Read with a Ranger, which is the third year at White Rock, which is Read with a Community Member. Some of you may have even been tapped to be a community member who knows things, but we have forest rangers, we have firefighters, we have police, we have truck drivers, we have somebody who does HVAC, who's gonna come talk about HVAC, because that's an important part of our community, and we wanna talk to all of our community members. We'll do a couple of family nights, and at our family nights, we'll do some familiar, fun things like Box Town, which is when we get every cardboard box we can, and we tear them up and make things out of them. And we'll do some new things that I've been saving on my Instagram for the last two years. We'll do Stuffy Sleepover, as we have for the last X number of years, when they drop their stuffies at the library. That'll happen at both libraries. We will do a new program.

This is effective.

What?

What is the CVS?

Stuffy Sleepover. So Stuffy Sleepover is when you come to the library, you drop your stuffy off for the night, and we sign your stuffy in, and we make sure we know their allergies and their likes and dislikes and what their favorite book is. And then you go home for the night, and your stuffy stays overnight. And when the library closes, the shenanigans begin. That's the outside piece of it. The inside piece is the shenanigans is us just taking photos of stuffies in here. This summer they're going to, we haven't picked the book yet, but they're going to fall asleep reading a particular book. Last summer they fell asleep reading a bunch of books and we had scenes from all these classic children's books. This year it's going to be one and there's going to be something on every page. So it'll be an adventure inside, maybe Harold and the Purple Crayon or something like that.

Melissa, I don't know if the library has a copy of this book. It's an Australian book. It's called Dougal the Garbage Dumper.

I have that one personally. It's a family friend of ours who is the author. Oh, my God.

Yeah, all of the book is photographs of stuffies. Yeah. And they were actually, so Matt Dre, who is a family friend of ours, he was working at the dump at the time and started like collecting all of these stuffed animals. And then the story of Doogoo came out of this. It's so great. The second book, my sister and her friend were the ones who helped like set up the stuffies.

It takes us hours. I've worked a lot to make it simpler through the years. But as I was making it simpler... Cameras and green screens were getting cooler, so I want to do more cool, so I've got to figure that balance out. But that's a great suggestion about Google because the next day you come back and you're going to see what did your stuffy do overnight. And we give them like a Pop-Tart and a juice box, and then we watch a little slideshow of what the stuffies did. And what we're going to do this year is they come back on the morning of the normal story time. And so story time will be all these stories of stuffed animals and libraries, of which there are many. And now I'm going to see if I can add stuffed animal and garbage dump. But I got the bunch of bunny pirate books from Australia, and I came across that one. It's in my personal collection. I didn't know that was a friend of yours, though, Beth. So the other new program that I want to lean into a little bit and tell you a little bit more about is called Music and Movement and More. Some of you may be familiar with Music and Movement, which is our 9.30 to 10 a.m., veteran program that just does numbers for us no matter where we do it. We're going to be at Ashley Pond. We're not moving outside at White Rock because we weren't sure how the park... It's open, but it turned out to be open, but we didn't know it was going to be open. We will be at Ashley Pond on Thursday mornings and Saturday mornings at 9.30. We will do our usual music and booboo program, and then it's time for more. So from 10 to 11.30, we're going to have water toys. We're going to have story time outside. We're going to have the bubble machine. We're going to have balls to play with. We've invited Las Cumbres and FSN and Firstborn and some of our other collaborative education partners to just come join us. Paul Santa from the animal shelter is going to come have a table and make balloon animals one morning. So it will be more, whatever more amounts to, and it will be blankets and snacks and picnic things. So that's the more piece. So that's part of the stuffy sleepover too. Wonders on Wheels is coming from the State, not State Library, State Museum. Department of Cultural Affairs. What she said. Department of Cultural Affairs. She is correct. And they have a big RV that is fitted out as a rolling museum. They will do two hours at White Rock one morning. That afternoon they will do two hours in the parking lot at Mesa. And the curated display is about banned books in New Mexico. and the History of Democracy in Banned Books. I'm not getting that title right, but you have the flavor of it. And we can look it up. And then two more new programs, not really new, kind of, I might even think of them as zombie programs because they're kind of rising from the dead here. Cover to Cover, another way to meet that literacy marker of how do we get kids to read these books that we love? We are going to read them aloud. going to spend for four Wednesdays every other Wednesday starting next week for one hour we are going to be in the zone and we are reading aloud from chapter books hopefully the first and second third chapters of several of them that is for third through sixth grade particularly but if you are able to sit and listen please do come you can bring your lunch and sit with us and then we are piloting um Following the successful adult silent book club, we are doing one of the few silent book clubs for kids in the country. And there's details on the calendar about what this will look like, and we are registered with the silent book club group nationally. And that will be literally what it sounds like. We sit and read together. The nuance for us in the kids' department is that we are going to give them free popcorn. And then we have our usual munchkin volunteers and teen volunteers. And I had the number. I was trying to look it up in my phone. But that is all in addition to our usual story time and our usual teen books and banters. So this is like kind of extra programming. And it is, I think, something like 126 hours of extra programming over two months. So you guys can hear, we could keep talking about this.

I'm happy to talk about the adult programming too, including the silent book club, if you want. But we should mention that it runs from today and through July 26th. Take a little break, and then we go into Atomicon mode. So don't miss for the weekend. But the summer reading program really is the busiest time of the year. I think that I'll... Circulation typically goes up somewhere around 20%, sometimes 25%. And so that duplicates in everything that we do. So activities, programs, we're just churning it out for the next two months. So yeah, what else do you guys want to know?

The adult reading program, White Rock and Los Alamos?

Everything's everything. We're a library system, so there's no branch-specific anything. We do it all together.

Because it's mostly online, or it's mostly important. You don't have a meeting spot for use.

So there are many activities, and they're sort of set up so you can choose your own path to completing this, and And one of the things you can do if you want interactive ways of collecting your challenges is to come to the libraries and be part of the programs. But most of it is online. It has to do with interacting with databases or using a streaming service to watch movies. So there are a number of ways that you can collect your challenges and it is put together to cater to a lot of different inclinations. And so if you want to be outgoing and social and build community, you have an opportunity to do that. If you would rather just read peacefully at home and the folks around you, that too. And that's the whole point. The whole point is to show everything that the library can do. Whatever your inclination is.

And I think I noticed that Silent Book Club is going to be in White Rock fold.

Yes. And so we are an official chapter of the worldwide Silent Book Club nonprofit. And we've been successful enough that we now hold two meetings. This summer we thought it would be even more special. So in June... The second book club is going to be outside, so we're going to do a silent book club picnic at Ashley Pond. That's based on something incredibly wonderful I saw in Copenhagen. I went home some years ago and there's like hundreds of people on picnic blankets on the park in the middle of Copenhagen, and I wanted to duplicate that since then. So we're going to try that. And then in July, the second book club is going to be Girls Silent Book Club in White Rock, and we'll see if that takes and if people show up for it. If they do, we really need to add another chapter.

What space will you use in the library for that White Rock one? Will it be in the fireplace corner?

Yes, it is going to be in the fireplace corner. We try to not use that corner for programming because we want the space to be... But it's silent, right? It's going to be just a bunch of people sitting around and reading, and then there's going to be that sort of one-minute to half-an-hour discussion at the end. But that's going to be right towards the end of the day. We won't inconvenience. We wanted the vibe of the podcast. Yes, absolutely.

And then the other big...

program we're tapping into this summer robustly is the puzzle competitions, which is another one of those things that I saw out there and thought, oh my gosh, this is amazing. And we tried it, and this community really took to it. So we're going to do one up here in June and another one in July in White Rock, and that one is going to be in conjunction with a second annual puzzle exchange. That was a really big success last year.

Any other questions?

So sign up.

I did this afternoon. Anything else you want from us? No, that's great. Thank you very much for talking about the wonderful plans we have. It's going to be an exciting summer. So you are welcome to stay, but don't feel like you have to.

I know it's been a long day. Thank you so much. Thanks. Thank you.

My branded bag. Okay, so...

up to the uh report section chairs report for this i i really just wanted to uh focus on outreach and i know in the last summer we uh the library staff were at summer concerts in the farmers market and so i wanted to see if that was something staff were thinking of doing again this summer and if that would be an opportunity for the library board members to join in with them, or if there were other ideas that you were thinking of trying out.

Absolutely. So we are planning to attend a couple of summer concerts this year. I don't have those dates just yet, but I'm looking forward to that.

If anybody can help with that.

We are also, again, looking for volunteers for our Atomicon weekend coming up it is the last Saturday in August which is not Labor Day weekend so that might make it a little more manageable for folks and Farmer's Market or is that I think maybe I don't know if the library staff went to that or if last year we joined council yes I think you did I joined counselors last year. We typically don't do farmer's market because that's a programming morning and we're usually right there at Ashley Palm or across the street.

And so for the summer concert, I think to share for you both as new members, the one that I went to last year was a lot of fun. So there were a number of staff members and they had activities set up. So it was where all of the vendors are that they were set up. I think it started with Melissa leading some fun songs and stuff with kids at the stage before the concert started. And then at the library's booth, they had activities so people could come and do the activity, there were a couple of prizes that people could win. And it was just a fun way for people to see the library staff and for board members and events like that, it's an opportunity for us to just chat to people and let them know that If they have feedback that they want to share, one way to do that is by talking to a board member or they can fill out comment cards in the library. So it was a lot of fun last summer. So I think that will be a good one. Once we have dates, we can let everyone know and check in with availability. And for Atomicon, how soon would you need volunteers for that? Because I know it's a lot of planning. Are we still enough of a ways out? We are enough of a ways out.

Probably by mid-August. Yeah.

Okay. And Atomic, have either of you attended Atomic Con? Yes.

Stacey, she looks forward to it every day.

Brian, it's really fun. It's a whole day, one or two days? A whole day, yeah. A whole day of events. People dress up in amazing costumes. Atomic Con, but very selfless. It's super fun. Last year, I think there was the CSA demo. No, SCA, Society for Creative Anachronisms. So they had a demonstration. There were vendors at Fuller Lodge. There were tons of different events in the library. And so board members have the opportunity to help out with that by being at the table in the lobby of the library. I think we helped out with making popcorn at Fuller Lodge to hand out to people. and a number of other things. So it's a really fun day and a great way to support the staff because it's a lot of work. What is the date for that this year?

It is the last Saturday in August.

Oh, a long time away.

Yeah.

Don't worry about the date. That's all I need. Okay.

29th. Great.

And any other summer volunteer opportunities that we should sort of keep in mind that maybe hadn't been on our radar?

Yeah. Well, I think that the Tabletop Game Day is always a great opportunity to come and participate in not so much that we necessarily need the volunteer help, but it is a good way to meet people and talk with people and get that feedback about library service in a more kind of casual way. So I would say that is a good opportunity to get that feedback. And really, of course, any of the other events that we have going on. Yeah.

Excellent. So yeah, once we have the dates for summer concerts, I'll let everyone know. But everything, all of the library events are in the library's calendar. So if there are things like the tabletop game days where We know you would be available to stop by for half an hour even or an hour and chat to people. Just let us know and then we can coordinate to make sure there's not going to be all five board members there. So, yeah, that's the only thing that I wanted to address for the chairs report. So the next item is the boards and commissions committee luncheon. Michelle actually attended on my behalf because I wasn't available that day, and she had said she would give us an update, but since she's not here tonight, we'll do that at the next meeting then. And she also said that there hadn't been a Friends of the Library meeting since our last one, so she didn't have any updates on that front. Any questions for me as chair or before we move on? Great. So that brings us to the manager's report.

So our circulation, total circulation for the month of May was 31,830. 29% of that was digital. In May, we had a total of 73 programs with an attendance of 1,396 across that spectrum of programs. Highlights included several visits from local and regional schools, participation in Senior Appreciation Night with 200 attendees, or graduates I should say, and the fourth White Rock Discover program on gardening had 25 attendees. This month, I heard about our upcoming programs from Melissa and Eva, so I'll just take that section of my report. But I did want to address the outdoor classroom project with you tonight. And so we've had what I would consider a bit of a setback. And so our original designs included sort of built-in infrastructure with concrete stage and built-in seating. And unfortunately that cannot happen because of the utility lines that were discovered. And so it's pretty code that any sort of built-in infrastructure has to be five foot clearance of any utility lines. And there is just no way to fit the type of structures we were looking at in that space. So we are looking at moving forward with a similar type but it's much more scaled back than what the original designs called for. So plan B, if you will, is a flat space with crushed gravel that will allow for some programs, musical events, story times, concerts, that sort of thing. And then with the shade structure over that, So this will be a shade structure from a third party, possibly a shade sale that can be taken down in the wintertime and then put back up in the school. So again, it's really not what we had hoped for, but I think it'll still be a useful space that will still allow us to expand the way that we do our programming and events. to have those programs outside that are maybe a little messier or a little louder than what you would want inside library walls. We also are still planning on installing multiple groupings of outdoor furniture that are accessible as well. So we have just a couple of picnic tables, some sort of Adirondack furniture type groupings for folks who want to come and enjoy that space. So yeah, so that's the news I have on that project. We're hoping that this could actually happen this summer.

And because this is scaled back, are you still thinking of doing listening sessions again or because of this smaller scale? it's not as impactful, I guess, and we would necessitate that.

We will certainly solicit feedback. We'll let the community know and solicit feedback on our plans, but probably not in that way. We didn't get great participation the last time, and so there may be other ways that we could get some feedback on those.

And has the Senior Center had any... input about how they could use the space in this new format.

We'll meet with them tomorrow. So, yeah.

Any questions about that? I don't know if, did you both get a chance to see the outdoor classroom plan?

I had kind of followed it a little more, so I knew, yeah.

That's unfortunate. Yeah. But it's good that at least something can go in the space. Yeah. Useable for programming. Yeah.

And really, the extent to which we're using it now, it's going to make it a lot safer. There's also a project to install EV charging stations at Mesa Public Library. That project resumes next week with two fast charging stations being installed. And then we are well in the midst of migrating the library software to a new system. And so that will mean a public-facing catalog as well. And we go live with that on September 30th. Prior to that, we'll do a demonstration on the catalog. So it will be, I think, much more user-friendly and a little bit less exchange. And I'm sorry, I am remiss in introducing Rochelle McElderry. So Rochelle is our senior librarian in charge of digital services, and so she will She's leading the charge for the replacement of our public-facing catalog, and so she'll probably be giving the demo in a few months on that new product. Let's see. Some patron feedback. We have a patron who has said that he has read or listened to 67 books since we helped him sign up for Libby and Hoopla back in February, and he said it's changed his life.

That's awesome.

Let's see, a patron said, you guys recommend the best books, as he was checking out two nonfiction books. Another patron expressed that the main display was gorgeous. This was a display that was celebrating Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and that display will probably come down in the next day or two. Another patron told us how much she loves the White Rock Library. It's so beautiful and bright. She usually goes to Mesa and was pleasantly surprised by the space. That's it for me, unless you have questions.

I have a couple questions. First, this is purely personal. What is the big pro of the new catalog system? When you say it's more user-friendly, I'm sure it is, but is there a specific feature you're excited about?

Yeah, so I'm excited about what's called Ferberized Results, and Ferber stands as an acronym for something. But basically, it means that all of the editions of a particular title will appear together in the catalog. So whether it's digital, whether it's large print, whether it's an audiobook or a regular print book, they'll all appear on the same record in the catalog, so you can choose which format you're interested in. So for me, that's the big one. So one more modern feature that we're looking forward to. We will also be able to take credit card payments online for lost items. That's been huge. We've not been able to do credit cards at all over the last number of years. Any others that I'm forgetting, Rochelle?

It's got some built-in marketing features. We can do some marketing within the pack. Depending on the keywords we use, it'll pop up if somebody's searching for something. So that's a really cool tool that that has built in for us. It also has the ability to build some web pages in the part of the pack. So that is going to give us some good opportunities for showcasing some of our digital stuff. And that's just another thing that we're really looking forward to.

What is the vendor?

I'm sure this has been since I'm new.

So it's the software that's in the catalog?

So the catalog will be the Aspen Discovery. Our support for those, for both the new ILS and the new PAC, will be iWater Solutions.

So Koha is the staff side, Aspen is the patron side, and those are the open source suppliers. But iWater is providing the support for those products.

And when you say built-in marketing, is that supposed to be like book recommendations or recommendations for programming at the libraries?

It can be both of those things and kind of tailored to how we do it. I was looking at some stuff before the end of the day today, and some of the digital stuff is a big thing, like Mango Languages, language learning. There it is. But there was some that were doing, like, if there's a really hot book right now, so like the Correspondent, there's probably some odd holds or something. So you can set it up to where if somebody searches that, you know there's going to be a hold on it for the next several weeks. And so you can have this pop-up that's recommended while you wait. So like some similar titles that would be. But it really just is available for pretty much anything we can think of. Okay.

It's exciting, yeah.

Really good. I already forgot the acronym. FERBO? Does that tie in digital assets as well? So if I search for a movie and you have it on DVD and it's on Hoopla, it will be combined? That's sweet.

It's a rad school acronym.

And then I had a second question. I know many months ago there was a discussion of Independence Day art contest that subsequently got canceled. Is there any kind of programming, any kind of thing around Independence Day with the library?

So we are doing a display in July, and this was actually based on a list that the Brooklyn Public Library developed. But it's 250 books that represent America. So it's quite an extensive list that's got representation from the segments of society. So it'll be... available for display and we'll have some handouts as well. That's kind of what we could do. We're also developing a Southwest component of that list. So sort of those books that are representative of life in New Mexico, life in the Southwest.

Yeah.

Great.

Any other questions or questions? Okay, so I think that brings us to Council Liaison. Questions and answers by Councillor Rico.

Oh, I just have one little thing to add. I think the gate is in place. It's the only part of the outdoor area is the gate to the back of the senior centre. I think that's been done. That was a project that was completed just last month or so. Because they had a big effort out there. And that's about the only library news we've had at the council. I think we got a lot of news about other things. Highway rebuilds and zoning potential changes and all that stuff.

Does anyone have questions by council?

Sometimes there isn't much library stuff at Council. No news is good news, right? I should say the budget passed. A modest increase for the library. That's what we did in April because it's been so long since our last meeting.

You're right, it has.

We had our budget session in late April.

The Council, as Councillor Rieger debated, that the Council did pass... $30,000 increase for our digital collections.

Where does that put the total budget at?

Total digital or total collection? Total library.

Total library.

Wallpark. Over $2 million.

But it's just a few percent more than that.

One follow-up question out of curiosity. How much content does 30,000 in digital get you?

That's a good question. I can't answer that off the top of my head. Would you like to hazard a guess, Rochelle?

It really depends. The models that we're buying things on digital right now, so Overdrive, most of the big five publishers have gone to metered access, so you're buying... 24 instances of a book, and the prices just vary dramatically. Sometimes you can get stuff for 99 cents, and sometimes stuff is well over $100, so it just depends. The most popular digital format here in Los Alamos County is audiobooks, and those are also the most expensive to buy in digital. So that does, that changes that a little bit, but yeah, it just depends.

Prior to this additional $30,000, this fiscal year, we're spending about $100,000 on overdrive titles, and we're at about $65,000 on hoops. Yeah. They will do a presentation in September or October on our annual report, and that has got some financial information on it.

Okay, informational items. I'll just make a note, our next meeting is July 6th, so it's Zoom and in the Municipal Building. If you know you'll be away for that holiday weekend, just let us know. We can keep an eye on that for you. Any other informational items?

July 6th, right at the 4th of July weekend.

Yes, yeah.

What's the proper word for that, the quatricent? Quatermillennial.

Quatermillennial.

Quatermillennial. Quatermillennial. So you're having a meeting in July, July 6th.

Yes. Skip August.

Skip August, okay. Okay.

Well, if that's it, I think we can adjourn the meeting at 622 p.m.

Thanks, everyone.