Hooksett Public Library
Board of Trustees
December 13, 2005 9:00 AM
Minutes

 

Present: Mary Farwell, Chairperson; Mary Leger, Secretary; Mac Broderick, Treasurer; Heather Shumway, Director.

Secretary's Report: Corrected CIP HVAC amount requested to $105,536. Approved and filed.

Treasurer's Report: Approved and filed.

Director's Report: Attached.

Unfinished Business:

  • New Telephone Company
    • Town Hall is investigating a new telephone company for the town offices. The library is interested and would like more information.
  • Roof Leak
    • MF to call John Karpinski for advice on urgency for repair of roof leak. Need to know if this can wait until the town hires another maintenance person.
  • CIP-HVAC-Phase 2
    • Now complete. Final payment will be sent to Central Aire. Copies of manuals will be with John Karpinski, Library, and Central Aire.
  • Shelving Options-Ed Comptois
    • HS received adjusted estimate of $9250 for shelving units minus the end caps Voted to authorize funds to place order.
  • Payroll Issues
    • MB to call Tracy for first and second quarter breakdowns. Copies will be sent to HS, Treasurer MB and Tracy.
  • Wireless Internet
    • To be put on January agenda.
  • Newsletter for Town Council
    • HS to write up a newsletter to serve as a year end review. It will encompass many different topics. Copy to be sent to Trustees by email for review before copies are sent to Town Council Members, Budget Committee Secretary. Copies will be available at the library.

New Business:

  • Donations for 2005
    • Heritage Commission is providing a portrait Governor Head Photo to be displayed at the library.
    • Target grant of $1800 for the Books for Babies program was accepted
  • Target Grant
    • MF started a press release and thank you letter highlighting Books For Babies. Will invite Target rep to January meeting.
  • Kindergarten Sign Ups
    • HS would like to hold kindergarten sign ups at the library. She will discuss with school board member Joanne McHugh.
  • Saturday Hours
    • HS did a report on the last 2 hours of Saturday business to see if employee staff could be better utilized elsewhere. She felt that the numbers were strong at this point but will take a look again in the future.
  • New Copier
    • Ron Miller had scheduled 12/16 delivery (which HS subsequently cancelled due to closing the library because of a snowstorm). We compiled a list of questions regarding lease terms, usage, purchase terms, etc.
  • Computer Pricing
    • Tabled until January meeting.
  • Charter Amendment to Increase Number of Trustee Board Members
    • MF to check with Dave Jodoin on deadline for submitting amendment to increase the number to five. Other questions need to be answered as well as far as timing/voting is concerned.
  • Engineering for Phase 2
    • We discussed the possibility of paying for the engineering, in which case we would be ready for bids. End of first week of June we could get to work. We will continue discussion at another time.

Items We Are Tracking:

  • Grant Opportunities-Walmart
  • Volunteers
  • Recruiting
  • Criminal Background Checks
  • John Queenan's WWII Plaque Publicity
  • Insurance for Library Contents-MF
  • Vacation Policy
  • Other New Business

 

Next Meeting January 10, 2005 9:00 AM

 

 

Director's Report November 2, 2005

Correspondence:

Eric Masterson, Vice-President of Development for the Audubon Society of New Hampshire wrote to thank us for our donation of books to the Audubon Society for their book sale. We allowed the Audubon to have the first pick of our left over books at the end of our book sale.

Kristina Aaronson, Henniker Community School librarian, and frequent library user wrote a delightful email after our first library book discussion noting how much she enjoyed it and that she was planning to be a regular member.

Circulation:

Circulation numbers for November look strong. We continue to add new borrowers daily. Lee Ann and I are working to create a new cardholder's packet for all new patrons. Each packet will include information about the library's resources and programs.

Staff:

One of the topics we covered in this month's staff meetings was the database Novelist and Novelist K-8, both are made available through the NH State Library. Jeff has created a new full page dedicated to our online databases on our webpage to allow for easier access to all of our materials we have available.

Our volunteer, Jane Potter is continuing her work with Rosanne to identify which series we have in our fiction collection and which items in each series we may be missing.

I have begun working on weeding the young adult non-fiction. This will help me to identify the areas we need to update as well as create space to place a number of the books which are currently in the YA reference. Once I have created space, I will separate the YA reference materials into regular reference to be interfiled with the adult reference and regular circulating materials for YA nonfiction. In addition, we will interfile YA nonfiction videos with the YA nonfiction books, similar to the adult nonfiction videos. We will also be creating a new collection code which will be circulating reference. This will allow the materials that would be useful for patrons to use at home to be circulated for one week at a time, rather than staying in the reference room. These materials will be interfiled with the reference materials so as to be available for ready reference.

Jeff Scott attended two workshops at the state library this past month. They were hosted and sponsored by the state library and presented by New Horizons of Nashua on Relational Database Design and Microsoft Access 2003. Jeff learned how to create a database that could then be used in Access.

Programs:

Our first library book discussion group was a great success with eight attendees at our first meeting and a great discussion.

The Feature Film series continues to have a low attendance, but relatively regular attendees. As this is a low-cost program, we will continue to provide it with continued advertising.

Children's Department:

The NH State Ladybug Award for children's books was a fantastic success this year with participation occurring at the elementary school, local preschools and here at our storytimes. We submitted 154 votes, our top choice being Knufflebunny, one of the younger titles entered.

The Children's Holiday party was also a fantastic success with about 75 children attending to have breakfast with Santa and create fun crafts. Kiwanis will again be generously sponsoring our program.

Building Maintenance:

We have a roof leak that appears to be caused by a separation in the flashing next to the furnace chimney. As it is a very slow leak, I have been waiting for the town to hire a new building maintenance employee to fix it, rather than hire a contractor.

John Karpinski completed his final walk-through and signed off on the HVAC installation. It continues to be rather toasty in the library at times, although I have been working with the thermostats to find a happy medium where we are comfortable and not wasting oil.

Our shelving quote came through from EMC Installations. Ed informed me that he was able to order our steel framing but will need to order our end-panels separately after the holidays when the company reopens.

 

Respectfully submitted,
Heather Shumway
December 12, 2005