Correspondence – account statement from Bank of America for the Hawley-Miller Trust, flyer from Albany based company that services lifts, business card from aerial photographer looking to have us buy a print of Corinth.
Personnel – LilyBattista did a wonderful job this summer. She is volunteering a couple of hours a week.
3rd Quarter programs – Story Time, Science Mondays, rocket building workshops, Chasing the Moon showings, Martian Magic Show, NASA 50th, Karen Zhang, Adirondack Place Names, Summer Reading Wrap-up, Corinth History with Rachel Clothier, Voter Registration Day, CCS library card drive. We held 25 programs with a total attendance of 355.
Upcoming programs – We will continue to be available for Story time, Science night, a share your photos day with Rachel Clothier, Gaming Day November 9, Hometown Holidays activity and book sale December 7.
Grants:
- NYS Bullet Aid grant 2018-2019 $4,000 – done – items that had been cancelled were accounted for in our most recent Baker & Taylor order.
- We did not receive any bullet aid this year.
SALS & Directors’ Council – From Sara Dallas – Edits to our State Annual report were accepted. Next year SALS will begin their next plan of service. E-resources and vendors treat privacy differently from libraries. JA & SALS are looking into this and making recommendations on how to deal with it properly so the public will be aware of the differences. Publishers of e-materials are again increasing costs and restrictions to libraries. Prices from some of the biggest publishers already charge libraries 2-3 times what they charge to individual customers and limit the number of times e-materials can be checked out. Now they are proposing not to let libraries buy hot new titles until after a certain time limit has passed. This will effect what we can offer to our borrowers. There are many articles about this online and ALA is spearheading efforts to change the minds of the publishers. If you are asked to sign a petition or write a letter, please do so.
Joint Automation Council / computers – JA fees will increase by 3% in 2020. Our cost may actually go down a bit due to the algorithm of items owned and circulation. This year is $390.92 per month ($4,691.02 annually), 2020 is projected to be $390.86 per month ($4,690.30 annually). Our two new computers arrived August 12. Due to increased security lock-downs on public computers we are having to help out with printing more. There was a Polaris upgrade in September, and in October there will be a shift from servers based at SALS to cloud-based servers.
Friends – The 2019 Book & Bake Sale went well. They made $1686.35.
Maintenance – the Furnace was serviced on October 3rd.
Other – Our library card drive at CCS went well and we hope to repeat this yearly. We targeted the 2nd grade students because that is the grade that has in the past (and hopefully will continue) been bussed here for Board Games in January and February. Michael went to each library period that the second graders have – a total of four classes. He gave a talk about the public library and the benefits of having a library card, read a story, and handed out free books. Students in that grade had a permission slip go home for their parents to sign to allow them to get a library card. We checked our database for duplicates, made cards, and delivered them to the school library to be handed out. To date we have made 13 library cards and one student turned in a permission slip but already had a card so we reminded that student that his Crandall card would work here as well. There is a possibility that a few more permission slips may be turned in as well.
Meetings attended in third quarter 2019:
7/9/19 webinar
8/20/19 webinar
9/16, 18, 19, 20 / 19 Michael at CCS for library card drive.
9/18/19 Directors’ Council @ SALS
Old Business:
- National Voter Registration Day 9/24/19 –This worked out very nicely with two representatives helping people and answering questions. They left a few forms in case anyone needs to register.
- Wooden Display Unit – This unit downstairs still needs to be moved from the basement.
- Minimum Standard changes – Jack Scott from SALS has been helping to update our website. As soon as that change goes live (which should be in the next week or so) we will be able to upload the policies and other information that will be required to be online. Most of these are in digital format already, but there are a couple that will need to be copied from the paper forms that we currently have. We will also need to do our strategic plan differently with community input and goals that are more concretely measured. We will be receiving help from SALS with this (probably in the spring.)
New Business:
- NYLA – is looking to get more library participation by offering bulk organizational memberships to Library Systems. If SALS decides to do this each library in our system could also buy in at a discounted rate. I currently buy an individual membership – that would be pro-rated into our organizational membership. It is very probable that SALS will do this and encourage all the libraries in our system to opt in.
- US 2020 Census – There is a push to have people fill out the census forms online. They will be expecting libraries to provide assistance to people who don’t have home computers. Of course there is no money in this for us, but this unfunded mandate is something we will have to deal with. SALS is encouraging us to connect with our Town and Village clerks to remind them that we have public computers available.