Library Board - Regular Meeting

May meeting of the library board to order. Roll call, please.

Here. Laker? Here. Yang? Here. Chair Jones?

Here.

Four present, three absent, one being excused.

Council member Lee just walked

on here. Yep. I got it.

Oh, you did get it. Okay.

Okay. Alright. Oh, go ahead.

Actually, I'm sorry. Five present, two absent, one being excused, council member Kim. The first item on the agenda is the approval of minutes, minutes 26 dash 14, library board minutes for 04/01/2026.

Great. So the minutes are before us for adoption. I'll take a motion from council vice president Yang to approve the minutes. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.

Aye. All those opposed? Five in favor, zero opposed. The minutes have been approved. The next item on the agenda is resolution 26 dash six two one up for discussion authorizing the Saint Paul Public Library to accept $500 gift from the Science Across America program.

Great. So this item is before us for approval. It is basically accepting $500 for this program, and I believe it goes to the West 7th and the Highland Library. Director Hartman, is there anything else you wanted to add about this program?

Chair Jones, no. Thank you. Yeah, we're looking forward to programming partnerships at both those locations. Okay, fantastic.

With that, I'll take a motion from council member Coleman to approve this item. Is there any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed?

Five in favor, zero opposed. The resolution has been adopted. The next item up on the agenda is staff report, staff report 26 dash 74, the MELSA eBook legislation update.

Great. Well, I'm really excited to welcome the Executive Director of MELSA, Sherry Wichitschew, to talk to us about the eBook legislative approach and more about MELSA. So welcome. Thank you for being here.

Yeah. Thank you for having me. I am Sherry Wichichew, and I'm happy to be here. I am a resident of St. Paul, and I am in Chair Joseph's board. Happy to be here. Have been in my position for a little over a year and a half. Originally came from Wisconsin, where I managed a regional system in the Northern part of Wisconsin. So, happy to be here in Minnesota, though. Couldn't be more happier.

So, kind of tell you a little bit about MELSA if you don't know a lot about what we do. We are in state statute created in the early seventies. The whole state is broken out into very large regions, so we can help support library service going beyond what local municipalities and counties can do. So the map in front of you kind of gives you a good overlay. The state is broken into consolidated systems and federated systems.

The consolidated systems manage everything from the buildings and the staff, the whole complete package. And federated systems like MELSA, we are removed from those buildings, the staff, because their municipalities or their counties support them. And so we just help support services on a efficiency scale. So this is kind of like a diagram of how you can kind of think about how city and county funding supports and then state funding. So, MELSA gets all of our funding through state funding.

So, we promote collaboration amongst our over 100 libraries in our region. We make it possible for interlibrary loans and e books and digital resources, which I'll talk about in a little bit. But we really do strive for equity and efficiency across the Metro. Just kind of in a numbers game here, MELSA per year provides over 2,700,000 in direct support to our member libraries. We also provide over 2,500,000 in collaborative purchases and programs.

That's also helped with legacy funding. MELSA does get to speak as one unified voice for the metro, for all the libraries. Sometimes municipalities and counties have their own legislative priorities and cannot speak to some library initiatives that they wish they could. So, gets to speak on behalf of them. And then, Melsa invests over 800,000 into our shared e book collection, an audio book collection. And so, it is the number one most used library consortium collection in the world five years running. So we have the best collection. We're very proud of that. And that collection has it was created five years ago. So for all the years that it was created, we were number one.

And it comes with its own problems. So diving into kind of the state of ebooks and e materials. Libraries pay three to five times the amount to rent we don't purchase, rent the same book or audiobook that individuals pay. So and then we don't own those. We rent them.

There's very restrictive library contracts. And so our rentals expire after two years or 26 checkouts. So we often have to repurchase consistently the same books over and over again. So that directly impacts equity and access. We are limited by our budget, so we can't purchase as many materials, especially since the prices keep skyrocketing and we have to keep on repurchasing the same titles.

So that cost to taxpayers is quite extraordinary. And so when we can't buy more materials, when we're just trying to keep up with demand, it's less access across all of the communities. So we're trying to change that with legislation. So this year, the Minnesota Library Association and MELSA kinda had a new approach to try and solving this issue. We have spent many years trying to work with the big five publishers and the only kind of vendor in the marketplace that helps libraries access ebooks to the public, to try and get better terms, better contracts.

They have been unwilling to negotiate whatsoever because they hold a monopoly on the whole situation. So other states have come up with legislation that will try to change things. And so, originally, Maryland was the first state to pass ebook legislation. Theirs was copyright law that was found to be unconstitutional. And so that was a big disappointment a few years ago when that came back as unconstitutional.

It basically forced the publisher to provide access, provide price point. And so when you inflict those laws upon the publisher, that violates copyright, so it was struck down. So then states went back to the drawing board, and they're like, how do we take a different approach? So now it's under contract contract law. So we are legislating libraries' abilities to enter into fair contracts, and we're not legislating the publisher.

So this year, our house bill and senate bill, it removes the harmful restrictions on those contract terms. So there's no bans on interlibrary loan. There's no time limits for those checkouts and use, so no more two years or twenty six checkouts. No embargoes on when we can purchase those items. Libraries get to manage their own collections just like they do physical library books.

So, we're trying to bring local control back and do what libraries do. So it reduces that repeated purchasing by quite a bit, encourages fair pricing models. And hopefully, it'll expand access across the communities because we wouldn't be spending less, but we would have the ability to buy so much more if we had fair contracts. So Connecticut last year was the first state to pass this under contract law, and it has been on the books. It does have a trigger clause, though, in their legislation of, 7,000,000 population. So Connecticut alone cannot start enacting that bill until enough states with 7,000,000 population also enact a similar bill.

I'm gonna pause you for a second. We've a question from councilmember Coleman.

Sure. One of them thank you, chair. Thank you for this presentation. One of the questions was already answered, and you might be getting the second question. Well, I guess, never mind if it hasn't gotten into effect yet. There's no act of litigation over the Connecticut?

No active litigation, correct. And so, I'll get to potential litigation coming up on a future slide. But so this has been thoroughly vetted by copyright lawyers, librarians. And so, it does not affect federal copyright at all, this contract law. So, we think it will stand even when it does become enacted when Connecticut hits that population milestone.

So,

where we are across the nation this year, we have six active states other than us pursuing similar legislation. I wanna talk a little bit about that. District Of Columbia, Washington, DC, they were the first to take a stab at this and introduce it. The lobbyists for the Big Five publishers and for OverDrive, which is the company that provides our access, that's our vendor, came out lobbying against the bill pretty hard, which we were surprised by the veracity. And so the CEO of OverDrive actually testified in person, which was completely unexpected.

But so they have taken the same playbook as when they were trying to defeat the Maryland legislation, and so they have a campaign of disinformation. All of their testimony is all based on that Maryland bill and not the current contract law because they know they don't have an argument to stand on. So it was interesting to hear that. DC and their legislation, they did the one difference they have is that they want 10 states with a 50,000,000 population before their trigger law would go into effect. Theirs is still being debated in their senate and house. We don't know whether it'll pass this legislative session.

Council president Nacron has a question.

Thanks, chair. I'm just curious about

the trigger laws and why those are why those are desirable.

Yeah. That's a great question. It's desirable for different people and different agendas. So one of the things that all states are worried about, if they pass this legislation and they're the only ones, then they are afraid that they might not have enough market capital to force the publishers and vendors to offer fair pricing and then just won't sell to that state. So by making a cohesive kind of blanket across the nation of more and more populous states, if you all have the same legislation, then they can't just walk away because they'd be losing too much money.

So there's that. On the other flip side, trigger laws also kind of benefit the other side of that want to defeat the legislation because they don't have to defeat the legislation in every state. They just have to pick populous states to defeat it there, and that'll stop the trigger from going into effect if they can get enough states. So both sides have interest in the trigger population. That was a great question.

So DC's trigger of population in states is the most extreme that we've seen. In Massachusetts, they have introduced the legislation which in turn they had a lot of conversations, and that state decided to try to get an e book committee to analyze what's going on instead of actually pass the legislation. So they're trying to get an e book commission on the books, and so we'll find out this month if that passes. Hawaii does not have a population trigger at all, but it does have a consumer price index trigger in it to where the legislation says that the vendors have to match consumer price. That is the the carrot that I told you about that I talk about later is that that might get overturned in a federal court.

Those states that do require a consumer price point, that might be found to be unconstitutional, but we will wait and see. New Jersey, theirs is being negotiated between both the House and the Senate there. They do have a consumer price point in theirs. They had no trigger, but the Republicans really want a trigger in there. And so they are right now negotiating whether or not they will have a minimum of more than four states, 10,000,000 population.

In Rhode Island, since they're so tiny, they are kind of scared, and they're trying to figure out, you know, which way would be the best way. So, right now, they have a hybrid legislation. So, it's half of the Maryland legislation and half of the Connecticut. So, it still includes problematic language like publisher shall do this and that, which we think might get struck down. But theirs also has a like a severance kind of clause to where if any part is struck down, it's only that tiny part.

The rest of the legislation still stands. So that'll be that's a good kinda fallback position to be in. And then we have Illinois, which has gotten the most notoriety. Are really doing a fast track on theirs. No trick or clause, but in the state of Illinois, how things move through the House, they had to do consumer law instead of contract law.

And so they do have that consumer price point in their law. But about two, three weeks ago, their house passed it unanimously. It's expected to pass the senate. Illinois would be enough population point for Connecticut's to trigger, and Illinois would also be on the books from day one. So we're excitingly waiting for that, which brings us to Minnesota.

So we have had really great success here in the state so far. We've gotten farther than we thought initially we might with the, you know, one vote more in the senate split house. In the senate, every single committee has passed it. And so it is bipartisan on both sides, in the house and the senate. So we have the bill in the education policy omnibus in the Senate.

It is likely to pass if it actually gets heard. There is some internal politics in the State House right now, and the house is playing hardball and doesn't wanna hear anything that isn't a stand alone bill. The stand alone bill in the house side, there was a argument made by people on a certain side that it did not make it in front of some deadlines, so they're using a procedural kind of loophole to try and block the passage of said bill. It got as far as commerce and then was defeated on that technicality in commerce. It was still bipartisan supported by the majority, but you need a certain percentage for that to pass that committee, and it did not.

So there's still some maneuvering behind the scenes on the house side to try and get it still to be heard. And then if the senate does pass that omnibus when they go to reconcile, they're hoping that there will be political pressure for the house to accept that reconciliation, and we still get it passed this year. But we only have less than a couple weeks before legislature closes. And so if we are not successful this year, we are definitely bringing it back next legislative session. But so that's the kind of quick overview of where we are with ebook legislation. So I'm happy to answer any questions.

Councilmember Spitzley Yang.

Thank you, Churchill. So I want to say thank you for educating us about this very important piece of legislation. It's I'm very supportive of it at the table here within the library board. We've been having the same conversations year after year about the challenges with the licensing on e books. And so I believe that this will be a huge puzzle piece in resolving that.

I'm wondering, Director Hartman, is this legislation on our current city legislative agenda? And if not, it's I'd be very supportive of adding it on there, especially I mean, if it's still meaningful to have it on there now before the end of session, I would be very interested in that. If there is an interest in adding it for next year, if we're unsuccessful in approving it or getting it approved at the legislature, then I would be very supportive of that too.

Yeah, Chair Jones, Councilmember Yang, thank you for that. E book solutions was on the city's legislative priorities and platform this year. And I've been keeping General Rourke updated on this. And certainly, if it doesn't go where we hope it'll go this year, we'll bring it back again next year.

Thank you.

I had a similar question, so thank you. Oh gosh, I don't know who was first. Councilmember Coleman. Thanks.

I'll keep it quick. The litigation coming out of the Maryland law, has that been appealed?

Is do

we know where that stands?

No. That was just it was found unconstitutional. Nobody's tried to appeal that decision. That was just everybody accepted that that decision was fair. So they just wanted to go back to let's rewrite legislation and try a different avenue.

But other states are still introducing similar hybrid So

the Connecticut one, not the Maryland. Only Rhode Island has the hybrid of the two. Yeah. Interesting. Thanks. Councilmember

I'm sorry. It's a matter. Councilmember Bowie. Got it. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Joseph. Thank you so much for the presentation. I just want to echo Councilmember Vice President Kim's words in terms of how priority high priority this is. I know Director Hartman hears us grapple with this frustration of how can this type of practice happen. Is very harmful and seems very extractive.

So I did all in terms of wanting to support this legislation. But my question is more so not on the public sector, but really on the private sector. Because one of the things, as I'm listening to some of the inflexibility with this business model that really just has a monopoly, has there been any investments or explorations around new businesses or entrepreneurs who may want to create a fair e book practice? I'm just thinking about just if the public sector is not able to solve the problems, maybe there could be an entrepreneur out there who champions reading and having access to books in public libraries in the same way that can help just putting it out there in terms of if the market is creating ways for a new business to actually create that type of system.

That's a great question. So right now, the only competitor really that is trying to make headway is Lyricist. But they are coming up against those big five publishers. They want to keep their income levels the way they are, and so they are refusing to sell to competitors. They want to keep their one vendor where they have these strict contracts with to get the most money.

So big five publishers are unwilling. Smaller publishers are making deals, and that's why Lyricist is the one that's trying to lead the way into other ways of doing ebook business with libraries, but they just don't have the popular titles that everybody wants. And so it's it's a struggle. Speaking of what everybody wants, just to give you an idea of the demand here in the metro. When we did a study a little over six months ago, we looked at how much holds that we have.

To fill the current amount of holds, we would have to spend an additional $21,000,000 here in the metro. And then that would disappear after those books got checked out within the first year, and we would have to have an equal so it's just astronomical how much demand and then how much they're charging to to meet the demand of the public. So

Thank you. Council president Naker.

Thanks, Jojo. I have a question, and then I have two, suggestions for campaigns related to this because the sort of injustice monopolistic bullying just really gets me going. But my question is, do does our state does our legislation have a trigger?

Yes. It does. It is that 7,000,000 population.

And that's not till ours is that till our state gets to 7,000,000 or until 7,000,000 people are in states that have adopted this law?

Other states. Yes. Okay. And

would we be right at that as soon as we adopted it, or how far would we be from that? I guess that was three questions.

Ms. Us and Connecticut would not be enough. We're just under that 7,000,000 right now.

So we said one more. Ms.

But if Illinois does pass, they are beyond that 7,000,000 with Connecticut.

Okay. Well, my suggestions are, one, maybe lower the trigger amount. No. I'm just kidding. It's been thought through.

I think it would be it's really interesting to to think about the fact that our dollars would go three to five times further if we just had a grant program to individuals to purchase e books. And so I don't know if any systems have piloted that, but it seems like to just give people the money to get the e book at three to five times less of a rate than we pay, and that could actually be a targeted program, maybe something to consider if this legislation isn't successful. Or it seems like it needs additional pressure to be successful, because there's also a lot of messaging you can do about why we're doing that and switching to that model. And the other idea is just, I don't know if there are states that have considered or systems that have considered sort of a blackout period of time where the last six months of the year, we don't have e books, and this is why. And make sure you contact your legislator.

I just think it's really important we've talked about this at this table before for people to understand the costs and the fact that it's not the same as just checking out a physical library book and to be kind of mobilized and engaged in the campaign with us because it's just not it's just ridiculous. So that's my soapbox.

I'm off

of it.

Constance McCormick, and then I have a couple questions too.

Thanks. And I'm sorry, all my questions were at lawsuits. But I have one more question about lawsuits, which is, has there been any antitrust litigation against the big five publishing companies for this?

Since this is a public meeting, there is nothing currently public about investigations or anything into the big five publishers or OverDrive, but it's certainly out there in people's thoughts.

Cool. Thanks. That was actually my a similar question I had is, like, with the nature of this monopoly and how high these prices are. Is there anything, like, the attorney general can do about this or anything like that? So I don't know if you know if that's a similar response. But it seems like our state and states across the country are in a really difficult situation. And these prices are just, like you said, astronomical. And it it doesn't feel fair.

Yeah. I will say that a few years ago, there was a federal senate subcommittee that did get overdrive and the Big five publishers to testify in private. So there is no open access to the information they divulged, and that was their they only agreed to the meeting if they could be off the record. But there's new pressure on the new chair of that subcommittee to release those documents. And so I think it would be a different ballgame if we did get to hear that actual testimony.

So we're gonna hope that that also there's many different avenues we can go on trying to get better contracts and better services, and so it all will be a patchwork of moves and counter moves.

Yeah. Absolutely. I have one more quick question. The on this page here, it says that what the library is paying. It says, for example, e audiobook $60. So is that you pay $60 and that gets you, like, the two year license or the twenty six checkouts and then you have to renew again for $60. Is that basically how that works? I just wanna make sure I understand.

Yeah, that's an average, those numbers. Most of the popular e audio books are over $100 per copy, but that's not what the public pays. But so, yeah. And then, I didn't bring it with me on one of the slides, but also the increase of costs over a year are going up extra, just off the charts, even though there's no extra cost to the provider, the publishers. The authors are not getting paid more. It's completely absorbed into the publisher or the vendor. And so our costs go up, at least for most of the major five, about 4.9% each year.

Wow. And I have one

more one more. It made me think of another question. And then what what do authors think about this? I mean, you mentioned, like, the impact on them. Like, what where where did they say? What is their stance?

Yeah. There are two competing authors, alliances, that testify for this legislation depending on who's representing them. For our most recent, hearing in the house, we did have William Kent Krueger, one of our famous own Minnesota authors, come and testify that he supports this legislation. So we do have quite a few authors that support it because they would actually get paid more if we bought more copies. If we had more money to buy more copies, they would get paid more because it is a flat rate that they get paid. So

Any other questions from my colleagues? Well,

director Witichu, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate all this information, and I think it's got a lot of us, you know, thinking about this, fired up about this. And so thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

The final item on the agenda is staff report 26 dash 76, the Friends of Saint Paul Public Library Books for All campaign update.

And we've got Diana Kanoka with the Friends, who is going to present the results of the Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library's Books for All campaign.

Great. All right. Good afternoon. Hi, chair Jost. Council members, my name is Diana Kanaka. I am the senior director of development for the Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library. I am so grateful to be in conversation and community with you all today and with my colleague, our senior director of communications and marketing, Kim Horton. We will jointly present the results of this very successful campaign. Spoiler alert, there's good news in here. And I will admit, I'm a little nervous to be in such a formal setting.

So, I'm going to break the ice that way. But let's get started. So, just a little bit of background to ground us in this effort. This campaign really is an excellent example of the public partnership that we here at the Friends enjoy with SPPL, really working together to see how we can lift up the excellent work that they're accomplishing on a daily basis. So as you know, last year the library identified a one time challenge in funding the 2026 library collections budget.

This inspired a series of really robust conversations between the Friends and library leadership and identified this as a really good opportunity for the Friends to step in. Sort of three motivating reasons behind that. One, really immediate need. We need to get this done so the library can do that really good work. Two, it's a good fundraising opportunity as professional fundraiser, always looking for that hook and that message that will inspire that giving.

So, opportunity to leverage what really is like a passion and a love of SPPL's extraordinary collection. So, books, yes, but also e books and music and movies and all of the resources that are available to check out for free on a daily basis. And then third, last but not least, it's really an opportunity for us to test strategies that we will use in the public phase of our capital campaign that we're currently running in support of the transforming libraries initiative. So that public phase is really the community based effort where we will invite the whole of St. Paul to participate.

And this is a chance for us to hone in some of those strategies so we make sure we're able to do that best work. So the goal for this campaign, dollars 62,000. It is a fundraising campaign so revenue is going to be the primary goal. But we were able to develop a strategy that really tailored to the specific opportunity. So it is time bound fundraising campaign, includes a really strong hook and that's why my colleague Kim is up here as well because this is in addition to a partnership a fundraising partnership with SPPL, a partnership within our organization around really excellent messaging. You can't have good fundraising without good messaging. And so, with that,

I will turn it over to her. Thanks, Diana. Chair Jones, council members, thank you. This was such a pleasure of a campaign to work on. I just have to say that obviously there was a really clear directive from our library. There was a really clear directive from my colleagues and the development department. And so we really needed clear messaging to match it. So, as you're all familiar by now, the name of the campaign that we chose was Books for All Saint Paul. This was a succinct title. It was hopefully very clear.

But it also represented a belief. A belief that there should be books for all Saint Paul and that's why we chose this. We wanted the name but also the rest of the messaging to feel friendly, to feel motivating and upbeat and to be welcoming so that people could see themselves and be ready to participate in the campaign. Obviously, we wanted to welcome current donors to participate in this special, you know, one time opportunity in addition to their regular giving, but we wanted to welcome new folks in. And as Diana mentioned, you know, capitalizing on that love of libraries, that love of books was a really perfect way to welcome people in.

So Diana just mentioned the hook and I love me some alliteration. So our call to action was donate, dedicate, deliver books for all Saint Paul. So we included here a few examples, suggested giving amounts that help people to understand how much these materials actually cost and what their money could actually do. And then our hook, as we called it, was just a special way of making this a little bit fun, a little bit different than our normal campaigns. And that was the opportunity to dedicate your donations.

So, we created a public dedication wall and people, when they would make a donation, they would also write lovely notes to library staff, to their hometown libraries, and also to people in their lives who had inspired their love of books and reading, which really made it feel like a special community effort. And, this is just a quick snapshot of our visual identity. Obviously, we wanted this to feel like a friend's thing. So, it represents our friend's brand standards and all of that. But, we included this special illustration, a special logo, again, to make it feel like a little something different than we normally do. So, I'll turn it back to Diana. Yeah.

Thank you. It was a, you know, it is a fundraising effort and a friends driven fundraising effort. And so, we are going to do all of our friends fundraising things. And being in communication and inviting our donor community and our broader friends community to participate. And so, you know, on this slide, you have a nice snapshot of what our general individual giving efforts are.

That includes personal solicitations as well as broad based appeals to existing donors, folks who are in relationship with our organization through our e news that might not already be giving. And then providing both mail, printed pieces, leveraging social media, as well as e communications. We're kind of always doing all of that and leverage all of those tools for this effort. One of the things we really wanted to do, as Kim mentioned, was provide some education. Could not be more timely after this last conversation, Good fundraising is about relationships.

It's not just transaction. And so providing people some information to come into deeper relationship with the work that the library is doing and that the Friends is doing, Providing some background material on why this campaign is necessary and giving some information that might inspire not only further giving, financial giving, but giving potentially in other ways in the future, specifically around our advocacy efforts. But also such an exciting moment, as I mentioned before, to be in conversation with SPPL and SPPL patrons for fundraising.

I have a quick question. I was just looking at this last slide. And I really interesting to see the presentation on the cost of e books and then also communicating that to the public, because I think they probably don't fully realize what the cost is. I was reading the second part down here. It says print copy, large print copy, e book, book on CD, play away, e audio book. What is play away?

Oh, I might defer to Director Hartman to answer that question.

Okay. Thank you. A play away is an audio book that plays from the thing you check out. So you just plug your headphones directly into this. I want to say cassette. I know that is dating me. But it is like a cassette. And you don't have to listen to it on your phone or listen to it in your car. You plug it in directly to the Play Away.

Do I have that right, Jessica?

Okay. Yes. Oh, Okay. I'll bring one next time so you can see it. It's pretty cool.

Do you check them out sorry. Do you check them out at the library then? Or how does this work?

Yeah. Okay. Check them out at the library. Funny how you ask that. You check it out at the library. And yeah, it gets checked out for three weeks like any other book. It would be like a CD except it's like you know what I'm saying. It's all packaged in there. You don't have to. Normally, you would check out like a you would borrow online an audio book and then you'd play it on your phone. This is you don't need your phone. You just plug your headphones right into it. It's pretty groovy. I'll bring it in.

Let's

see. Okay. I learn new things every time we have these meetings. I didn't know about that. That's fantastic. And so And money raised from collections will help support more of

those.

That's great. I

thought it

was a babysitting service.

Somebody asked. I was getting really excited.

So, in

addition to those channels that Diana mentioned, we did a few other things as well.

We

contacted local authors to ask them to be ambassadors for the campaign. So, William Kent Krueger, who Sherry mentioned, Mona Susan Power, and Calculia Yang all agreed to be ambassadors for the campaign, which meant that they shared testimonials. They shared the campaign on their personal networks and they each made a gift, which was really meaningful to the campaign. But as Diana alluded to, I think one of the most important parts of this campaign was our partnership with our lovely library colleagues. We spent a lot of time, Diana in particular, listening to library staff to talk about what they need and how this could work for them.

And what we developed was, first of all, a library activation kit, we called it, with materials that we delivered to all the branches for them to use and help promote the campaign. We worked really closely with the communications staff at the library to develop and share digital content through their channels. We actually did a takeover of their e newsletter, which was a first for us. And library staff, again, the communications team did some really nice social posts on their own as well. And so, this is what contributed to, again, spoiler alert, the success of the campaign.

But as Diana mentioned earlier, it's really a model. It's a model of how we can partner. It's going to be the way that we work for this upcoming capital campaign launch and for future campaigns. So, that was something that was hugely important as part of this campaign. So, as you can see here, this is just an example of the library activation kit.

We gave the library's flyers and bookmarks and pledge cards and pre stamped envelopes to send it all back to the friends, talking points, all that kind of stuff, really to prepare them to help promote this campaign. And the picture on the left here is the display that Highland developed on their own. They used our materials, they curated a section of books, and this again is just an example of that incredible partnership that helped make this campaign successful, which means I'll turn it over to Diane to tell you how much. Good

news.

And have to be extremely explicit here. It's been implied throughout. But this could not have happened without the partnership of our library colleagues. And just want to offer real gratitude to folks from leadership on down to the frontline workers for their partnership in bringing this to life. So thank you so very much.

Really good news. We were successful in achieving the fundraising goal, so actually exceeded it a bit. It continues to be right sized with that dollar amount there. But, you know, raised gifts from two twenty five donors, including 36 new donors. And while you had folks we did have gifts in the 5 figure range.

We did also receive a $1 donation from a very young patron who wanted to support this fundraising effort. And that I think is a career highlight for me and will be remembered for always. And I think really speaks to the breadth and impact of libraries. Wanted to end by sharing this slide as well that in addition to the partnerships we've already discussed today, it is really partnership of our city coming together to support libraries. So here's a map of donors by locations.

All seven wards participated in Books for All. And each ward had at least one new donor supporting this fundraising effort. So I want to offer gratitude to the fullness of the city. And just really looking forward to what this means for future fundraising efforts. Thank you.

Thank you. Well, let's just come here. I have a quick question on the last slide, then I'll open it up for other questions. I I didn't see it until I looked it on my screen, but there are numbers inside those little circles. What is that? What do those mean? Okay.

Numbers of individuals.

Oh, okay. Okay. Yes. So each dot, some of these dots represent more than one person. Yes. Okay. Cool. Thank you.

I was like, I had eight people?

Council Vice President Yang. Thank you, Chair Joel.

So I want to say thank you so much for the presentation. It was energizing, rejuvenating, everything, like all the adjectives that you had on the slide there. You really did it. And I just wanted to say overall congratulations and thank you so much for all of your hard work. To me, you really set a high bar for the level of enthusiasm I want to have whenever I'm out fundraising too. And I just really love how spread out it is in terms of the donors that you have throughout the city. Did you have any donors who lived outside of St. Paul as well?

Yes. Thank you, Chair Gellis, Councilmember Yang. Yes. I think it was something like 86% of donors to this campaign live within the city of St. Paul.

So

and that's a slightly higher tick than our usual geographic spread of our donors. But there's a handful of people, you know, who are living outside the city. And I think that, you know, that does speak to, if I may, to like the regional impact of the work of SPPL, that even for those who are outside the city limits, you know, really see themselves connected to the work of the St. Paul Public Library.

That's great. Well, honestly, this the partnership between the friends and the city here, it's one of my favorites. And so I really look forward to the work ahead and how we continue to partner and champion all that we want for our libraries and our residents. So again, thank you for everything that you do.

Thank you.

Any other questions from my colleagues? Councilmember Johnson. Not

a question, but also just really wanting to say, well, kudos to you all as well for telling a wonderful story. I found myself sitting at the end and wanting to know what the ending would be. And so thank you. You've got us hooked. But also just really great to see the map and that it 's reached all across the city.

And especially just that it was able to kind of take on the Friends was able to take on a new fundraising piece, a new fundraising aspect, and really turn it into what we know to be true, which is like the message behind our intent and why we're fundraising. It's really to make sure that folks have access to books here in St. Paul and that no one's turned away from that. And that's really pivotal and vital. And I think just in general, I know it was a new path that's been chartered.

But I think that that just really shows the pulse of our city right now and what we find as values. And so that to me also is a values piece. So I'm actually kind of glad that we have that point to look at. And we wanted to raise 62,000, actually raised 70,000 in a relatively short period of time to ensure that people in our city, the kids in our city, families in our city had access to books. And I think that that's really incredible.

So I hope that that actually is something that, you know, can be used as future reminders or just that folks really still care about what our kids and our families have access to, and we still care about our library. Especially for the $1 donor, that's really cute.

Any other questions? Oh, well, I'll also just really express my gratitude to you all and the friends for, again, being there for us and stepping up to support library collections and then going above and beyond in, again, in everything that you do. I'm really excited about this campaign. And I also just appreciate, you know, all of the the like, the wide range of donors, like that wide range of how Mount donated and all across the city because that just tells me that everyone really values the libraries, and they care about them. They care about each other.

I think that that's just so important and says a lot about who we are as a city. And so thank you so much. And I really look forward to all of the work we'll continue to do together. So thanks for being here.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks. Alright. Well, with nothing else to come before us, we are adjourned.