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HomeMy WebLinkAboutLibrary Board Minutes 12.10.2019MINUTES CITY OF LAUREL Library Board 12/10/2019 06:03 PM Laurel Library COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT: X Dixie Feller, Board Chair X Bill Hanson, Vice -Chairman X Nancy Schmidt, Secretary Emilie Eaton OTHERS PRESENT: X Arthur Vogele X Samantha Barnhart —via phone X Clair Killebrew— Foundation Liaison 1. Public Input Citizens may address the committee regarding any item of city business not on the agenda. The duration for an individual speaking under Public Comment is limited to three minutes. While all comments are welcome, the committee will not take action on any item not on the agenda. a. No one addressed the Board. 2. General Items a. Bill motioned the Library Board minutes for November 2019 be accepted as presented, Arthur seconded the motion; motion passed. b. The library foundation received a $100 donation from Robert and Sandra Short. This will be deposited in the appropriate account for use later. c. Circulation Report -Traffic: down 28.9%; circulation: all items circulated totaled 4,456 (including 465 eBooks), book circulation was down 0.4%, media circulation was up 4.4%, eBook checkouts for this month was 13.1% of total book circulation, we circulated 699 items to partners and 131 items from other libraries; computers: internet use was up 46.7%, children's use was down 37.5%, wi-fi use was up 75.1%; patron cards: city registrations made up 61.5% of library users, county patrons 32.6% and non-resident registered patrons 3.7%. There were 36 tech assists in November. 3. New Business a. The library has finally been offboarded from the City IT. We are installing a new firewall and server. There have been some growing pains with the new system, but we are powering through. A patron has offered us some tips on how to enhance what we have so we get the best working system for the library. The 1 Wi-Fi will be set on an automatic schedule of on at 6:00 am and off at 10:00 pm to alleviate people parking in the lot in the early/late hours of the day. Staff computers will be using Office 2019 rather than Office 365 to save on software expenses. Mr. Lowe is helping with our new setup. He is recommending using a virtual network in the future. The cost of this network update is under $600. It includes an Enterprise HP Server with 200 GB SSD, a 2016 Windows Server Datacenter with 3 -year protection software and upgrading all computers to Windows 10 Professional. b. Mike is pulling more website statistics for us each month. We are finding that our website is being "hit" on a regular basis. We are receiving a return visit from 81% of our searchers with 19% being new searches. By studying our statistic numbers, we are realizing that many people are searching for the site by the catalog page, not just the homepage. c. Foundation update — a second print of t -shirts was done to provide smaller sizes for some of the staff. Any extras will be sold as fundraising for the Foundation. With the amount that we have in our account we should think about spending some of it down by purchasing items for the library. A meeting with the Foundation Board will be set up in February to discuss future expenditures. 4. Old Business a. There were no questions about the invoices paid during November. To date over $3,000 has been spent from our library donation money to help meet the needs and wants of library patrons. The Wall Street Journal is up for renewal. The cost is $119.88 for one year. We have several patrons that use the Journal daily, so it may be worth keeping for now. It has been decided to renew the subscription for one more year then reevaluate its use in a year. The Billings Gazette has also been renewed and will be reevaluated for renewal next year. The cost may not be worth the expense if the Gazette continues to decrease in quality. Some of our magazines are being discontinued because they aren't being read by the patrons. We are also considering getting the Stillwater County and Carbon County newspapers for our patrons. We currently have an active subscription to the Yellowstone County News. b. Annual statistics have been completed for 2019. They had been partly completed at the training in Sidney, so they went quickly. We may want to consider discontinuing Ancestry Library Edition and Heritage Quest. We are currently paying over $2 per search for these databases. This is not cost effective to continue with these databases when it is obvious that no one is really using them. We will find an alternative for our patrons. S. Other Items a. Upcoming Items: Library staff and volunteer Christmas pizza party will be held on Tuesday, December 17th at 4:00 pm in the Community Room. All Board members are invited to join the staff in this annual tradition. 6. Announcements a. Next regular meeting is Tuesday, January 14, 2020 at 6:00 pm in the Community Room of the Laurel Public Library. Bill motioned to adjourn the meeting at 7:06pm, Arthur seconded the motion; motion passed. Respectfully submitted, w;. Nancy L Schmidt Secretary for the Board NOTE: This meeting is open to the public. This meeting is for information and discussion of listed agenda items.