Present: Mary Farwell, Chairperson; Mary Leger, Secretary; Mac Broderick, Treasurer; Heather Shumway, Director (by conference call ).
Secretary's Report: Approved and filed.
Treasurer's Report: Approved and filed.
Director's Report: Attached.
Unfinished Business:
New Business:
Items We Are Tracking:
Next Meeting: Tuesday May 16, 2006 6:15PM
Correspondence:
We received a very nice thank you note from Rosanne Beaudoin on behalf the Cawley Middle School for the book donations the library made to the school library.
Circulation:
The monthly statistics report as presented by Jeff, show a nice steady increase in circulation from 2005 to 2006. A new version of Horizon reports will soon be able to show us more detailed reports of our collection's circulation which will be very informative to the collection development process.
Training for Sue and Cindy has reached a level where they are competent and able to run the desk on their own. This has allowed LeeAnn to explore improvement project s and to expand her role as the Head of Circulation. LeeAnn has done a fantastic job with the training and is working on a training manual. In particular, LeeAnn is working on expansion changes as a result of the new shelving and lessons we learned at the PLA sessions. At the May Board meeting, we should do a walking tour through the library to view the changes and improvements.
Children's Department & Young Adult:
Allan Pinney and Jake Desharnais met together to brainstorm a list of ideas for the young adult study room. Both individuals being very creative thinkers, there list has some wonderful ideas. When I return, I will talk with Vickie about the list and present a list of ideas to the board that we think might be feasible.
Vickie attended the CHILIS conference in Laconia this year, where she was able to preview performers for the Summer Reading Program and received great ideas for projects linked to this year's theme of Treasure Reading.
Comic Book Night at the library was a fantastic success! Approximately 40 people attended to explore the comic books brought by Double Diamond Comics, eat pizza and talk comics and graphic novels. The two owners of Double Diamond Comics were fantastic and very helpful in the program they ran for the library. Vickie was later able to attend a Librarian's Night at their store and received discounts on graphic novels for the young adult and teen collection she bought there.
Our new display of comic books donated by Allan Pinney was also on display. Allan will be working with Jeff to review the rather large donation of comic books that we received. There are currently about four boxes in the stack room waiting his review. Our thought is to sell any that are of significant value and to circulate the remaining portion.
Finances:
Guy Beloin will be coming in to reconcile our books on May 2, we will have an accurate standing of our finances at that time.
Staff News:
The New Hampshire State Library released its spring seminar schedule, all staff has been required to attend at the minimum one session, and most staff are attending at least two. I look forward to hearing what they have learned when I return and attend our upcoming staff meetings.
The moving of collections and rearranging of materials has created a bit of extra work for Mark in the technical services department. I will be working with LeeAnn and Mark further this upcoming month to explore how we can best utilize Sue and Cindy on the circulation desk while also providing support to the technical services area. They have already begun this with a few projects which eases the workload and makes things run far more efficiently.
The staff scheduled a list of Hooksett Banner articles to be written during the months of March and April.
Attending the Public Library Association national conference was an incredible experience for Mark, LeeAnn and I. It was the most energizing, exciting, inspiring and educational experience I have had in my professional career. We will each present a report of materials and topics for programs we attended. It is my hope that we will present some of the information at staff meetings and would be happy to have members of the board attend to hear what we learned as well. I purchased an audio recording of the PLA sessions for $100. This will be catalogued and available for anyone to check out who wishes to learn or revisit sessions from the conference.
LeeAnn attended a HealthTrust workshop at the Local Government Center. The seminar was training for the attendee to become a leader in their place of work guiding participants to work towards a healthier lifestyle, the emphasis being on nutrition and exercise. The majority of the staff is planning to participate and we are planning to start around June.
Friends:
The Friends of the Library are moving ahead with full steam. They have updated their flyer and their website to reflect new membership information and officers. They have placed flyer holders in the meeting rooms and the back entrance of the library.
Building:
I purchased a "literature rack" for the front door entrance to hold flyers of library events and brochures for the library and the Friends of the Library. I am hoping that this placement will catch people as they are walking out the door.
I also purchased flyer/poster holder strips from Staples to be used in the Gates lab. The strips are meant to be used in lieu of cork board strips. They can be used by meetings to hold their informational materials that they may need to display, as was requested by several meeting groups. In addition, they will be used to hold posters that we receive periodically that are not worth framing but are library related and will help the aesthetics of the room, I hope and expect.
Collection Development & Acquisitions:
The acquisitions budget is looking strong with 23.4% remaining to be spent. I have approximately 8 journals to place orders from, so that will quickly be expended. It will be an interesting question at the end of the budget cycle as we are tracking our spending now. The question will be how many of the titles that we have on order are to be released at a later date. We participate in a pre-order plan for most of our popular authors and they are entered into the catalog and acquisitions months in advance of their release date. About 95% of these are adult fiction authors, so we know we have extra money to expend in that line in particular.
I have appropriated a line in the acquisitions budget to be spent on professional development titles, in particular titles published by the American Library Association. The line was originally created as $250, but I have transferred from the regular reference line to cover spending on titles that we picked up at PLA at the ALA store where we received a discount. The following are the titles if anyone is interested in reading them:
I personally think there are some fantastic titles which will help us immensely as we proceed. The Technology for Results book was a topic that Mark and I attended a PLA program about and I think will be of particular help when we move forward with our technology spending and planning.
I have created a wish list of titles that the library is looking for. We currently have two lists that Jeff will be posting online and will be available at the desk for people to browse. The first is a list of movies made from books that the library would like to own. The second is a list of series titles which we are missing in our collection. The series titles range from mystery to science fiction/fantasy to general fiction. We are in particular looking for hardcover titles as it is the goal to shelve all of the items of a particular series together, rather than partially in paperback and partially in hardcover. Please feel free to take a copy of the list with you anytime you visit a used bookstore or anyone who is cleaning out their home library.