City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening, mayor, mayor prom, and city council members. My name is Kathleen Ashmore, library manager for the Oxnard Public Library. Thank you for giving me the chance to share our 2026 annual report. Tonight, I want to walk through the progress we've made, the challenges we've addressed, and the exciting work happening across all three of our library branches. In September of 2023, a vision was laid out for the reinvention of the library. A report was given laying out that vision of what a contemporary library should look like for the community of Oxnard. In that presentation, Renee Raikstraw, assistant director of cultural and community services, discussed the vast changes that public libraries have seen over the last few decades. changes like maker spaces, workforce development, educational classes, and digital resources. Public libraries have also seen the importance of third spaces for community members to converge and meet. Safe places for our teens to explore their world and homework centers for our kids who need some assistance without the cost of a tutor. Public libraries are now a place of mirrors and windows, meaning places where you can see yourself in books or services provided and also safely view the world through another person's perspective. As mentioned in 2023, there is a need to bring these current best practices into the city of Oxnard. The residents of Oxnard deserve a public library that fits the needs of their lives. Oxnard deserves great book collections. and other services. With this in mind, over the last 3 years, the library has introduced new programming, services, projects, and outreach to the community in which to bring the very best to Oxnard.

As we have discussed in this chamber over the past months, California education code requires public libraries to have a library board and that an annual report be given to the municipal body by that board. In lie of that body, that annual report must be given by the library administration. In light of this code, I will be giving the 2026 annual report as the library board gets itself reestablished. With this in mind, tonight we will touch on reestablishing the library board, library units and services, community partnerships, space design improvements, safety and security, and our major projects. So, let's start with reestablishing the library board. In 2024, the process of reestablishing the library board began with seeking guidance from the state. In 2025, in February, the California Attorney General clarified that our library board must be a separate five member body. Ordinance 3055 took effect in May of 2025, officially establishing the board. The five board member appointments were approved just this past month in March of 2026, and we are currently working on getting the first meetings scheduled. Having this board reestablished will allow us to move forward in our reinvention efforts by supporting policy updates, programming, and representing the views of the community to the library. Monthly meetings will begin in April and set new goals for 2026 and 2027. The Friends of the Library continue to be a great partner. They host book sales and fundraisers, run the friends and friends books and things gift shop, promote community awareness, and fund

programs and materials across all branches. We are grateful for everything they do. Now, before I go into details of the different units that make the library run, I want to give a huge thanks to the staff that we have at the Oxnard Public Library. Our staff are hardworking and dedicated to the mission of the library and to the vision of reinventing the library into a third space with thriving hub of activities. Without this staff, none of this work would be possible. As I go through these slides, I want to note that they are the ones that make these happen for the public. So with that said, our work is carried out through several core units. We have circulation, information reference and programming, technical services, and branch services. With circulation, they're the first friendly faces the patrons see. Checking materials in and out, checking the collection, checking holds, making sure the collection is organized. This is the team that manages library cards. They make sure books are on the shelf in the right places and that the li the public has the information they need to navigate the library information reference and programming. This unit helps with research digital literacy and they run educational and creative programming for our information reference. They provide assistance and guidance with reference research inquiries, reader advisory, digital resource questions, and they navigate questions regarding patron accessibility. For technical services, they are responsible for processing all new material entering into the library system. They repair damaged books,

maintain metadata, and they maintain the online catalog and other catalog records. Located at the main library, this unit supports operations and collection management for all three locations. Branch locations allow the library to reach residents across different parts of Oxnard. Each branch serves as a community hub that provides books, digital resources, educational programs, technology access, and safe public spaces for learning and gathering. By distributing these services geographically, the library system reduces barriers such as transportation, time, and cost. So, a quick snapshot of 2026 shows that we had 81,884 registered card holders. 2025 saw 213,383 people come through the library. This averages out to about 820 people a day. And this number is a 50% increase from 2023 and an 18% increase from 2024. We circulated 218,000 items. We saw 5,65 volunteer hours. This is an 18% increase over 2023 and a 3% increase over 2024. The study rooms, we have 14 of those were used 6,214 times. That is an average of 8 1/2 hours of occupancy every day. And we had with our programming 932 programs with 18,086 attendants in 2025. with 932 programs. That is a 97% increase over 2023 and a 5% increase

over 2024. In our attendance, we average over all of our programming an average of 33 people per program. However, this is a very rough estimate, but gives each type of program has very different averages. For example, story times average around 50 people each program and team programs average between 10 and 15. With our attendance, we saw a 49% increase over 2023 and a 40% increase over 2024. The exciting thing about these stats is that with only a 5% increase between 2024 and 2025 in the number of programs we provided, we saw a 40% increase in that attendance. And what this tells me is that we are reaching our community in the areas of interest for them as well as getting that word out. As you can see, these numbers show just how essential our libraries are to our community. With that snapshot, let's take a little closer look at the programs that are part of our services. We offer programs for every age group. We have our special populations. We offer a weekly chill color craft program at the main library and a twice monthly puzzles and play program at our South Oxnner location for that group. through our early childhood programming. We have English story times. We have bilingual story times. These type of story times are geared for our younger kids up to prek and they include stories, music, and crafts. They create social emotional development, gross motor skills, and socialization.

For our early childhood programming, we also provide baby story time, which is a lap program, dance party story time, and a music story time for our teens and tween. We offer native gardening, steam programming, art programs, teen advisory council, and volunteer opportunities that provide job skill development for our adults. We provide a range of senior social programming, guest speakers, art programs, and crafting programs. Some of the fun ones we have is we have a tiny art club. And this is where our adults can participate in creating works of art on canvas or sculpture, whatever medium they have, and then they are displayed at the main library. We also have a quilting series that is an intergenerational program, a fiber arts program which include embroidery, felting and crochet which is also intergenerational. And we have the senior social clubs which fight isolation in our older patrons. We also have the native garden and other gardening programs that are quite popular. Among our book focused programs, we have multiple book clubs including a silent book club for our introverted friends. We host a writing group twice a month, have open mic night periodically to give that an outlet for that craft. And we also have other talks which we prioritize our local authors for. And our literacy program, we're very excited, is being revamped and rebuilt over the last year. This program did fall to the wayside for several years due to staffing shortage. This program

is now providing ESL classes and groups, cyber senior and tech literacy programs and points um appointments and also English and reading tutoring. some wins out of the last year. We had one participant who successfully went through our tutoring program, our ESL tutoring program, um, and was able to take the citizenship citizenship test and is now a citizen. And we also have a p uh student who went through the ESL tutoring program and is now becoming a tutor themselves. There truly is something for everyone. Some of our special events from last year was our annual garden fest our our annual garden fest. This this year was our second annual garden fest. It was held in March. This event had over a thousand attendees, presenters, vendors, crafts, and more. We have we had 30 volunteers who helped get plants put into our new native garden. This garden is on the north side of the library on Second Street and it will be a program-driven garden to provide outdoor activity, social interaction, and educational elements. We have our annual local author showcase in April and this is to highlight our local talent and to provide networking and social interaction with these authors. We also have the haunted library every October where we have between um 12 and500 participants and we also had a minon with around 1,000 participants at that and we also have our annual summer reading program. In 2025, participation in this program was up 54% and we handed out over 4,000

prizes for those reaching their reading challenge goals. The events bring thousands of people into the library and be build community in meaningful ways. We also do a lot of partnerships. We collaborate with um more than 20 organizations from many mansions, Mercy House, First Five, Family Place, Ventura County Bo, Workforce Development Board, and Autism Learning Center among many others. We are excited to announce that the Ventura County Workforce Development Board now has a mobile job assistant unit. They call it WOW. This job helps will provide services at the South Oxnard Library every fourth Thursday of the month. These partnerships expand our reach and strengthen our services far beyond what we could do alone. So, space design improvements. This is where the public will see see a lot of the changes that we've been making internally. Some of the updates we have made and are making, we have updated our teen spaces to make it comfortable and safe for our teens. We are updating our children's spaces to ensure the collection space and toys are in good shape and works for our families. We're planning out a maker space to give the public a space for tech and analog steam discovery. We are redesigning the main library help center to make it more accessible, inviting and intuitive for staff and patrons. We upgraded our homework centers with furniture that the kids respond better to, as well as working on upgrading their technology. We redesigned the South Oxnard Library

computer lab from an underutilized computer space to a flex space that can be used for study space, computer use, or programs. We are removing outdated material. We are reducing excess shelving. We are creating conversation areas, improving accessibility, and opening up sightelines for safety. These changes make the library more welcoming, more functional, and safer. So, talking about safety and security, safety continues to be one of our top priorities. We have added a security monitor at the South Oxnard Library. We have installed bubble mirrors to reduce the number of blind corners and to improve sight lines. We have added Narcan dispensers that are available to staff and public. We have introduced walkie-talkies and staff code to improve communication and faster communication when needed. We are redesigning the help desk. We have increased guard coverage and we hold regular meetings with security and community partners. We have provided deescalation training for our g for our guards and for our staff. These are some of the steps that help the li the library to ensure it remains safe and a place for everybody. Some additional staff training that we have done is a program called safe and compassionate libraries. We've done multiple deescalation trainings, behavioral well, behavioral health awareness and security protocols. Um, another pro thing we're working on is getting new security c updated

security cameras for the libraries as well. Another large project is our technology refresh. We are working on this with Carson Block Consulting and the Oxnard IT department. We are assessing our current systems. We have installed new firewalls. We have added new wireless access points and we have updated the filtering. The next steps in this process is replacing hardware, updated updating integrated library software, applying for -ate funding, upgraded sec upgraded security gates and RFID systems, and determining next steps for other large projects. As you can see, the Oxnard Public Library is evolving. It's strengthening services, expanding partnerships, improving safety, and modernizing our spaces and technology. And to close, I want to show an example of a regular week at OPL. This is on the right. You can see we stay pretty busy. And I also want to introduce you to Barry the Bear. This is our library mascot, and he was created by some of our very talented OPL staff. Thank you for your continued support and please follow us on our social medias at Oxnard Library and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you.