Sauk County Library Board

saukcolibraryboard-202301-minutesdraft.pdf (108 KB)

Sauk County Library Board
Minutes
Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Board members present:  Joel Chrisler, Carolyne Kotchi-Aslasken, Joan Fordham*, Linda Kettner, Glen Slaats, Terry Slack

Others Present:  Tamara Ramski, (SCLS)*, Sue Ann Kucher (Reedsburg), Nick Studnicka (Plain), Becky Anderson (Rock Springs), Emily Whitmore (Spring Green), Natalie Jones (La Valle), Jessica Bergin (Baraboo)*, Lauren White (Prairie Du Sac)*, Lisa Thomas (Sauk City), Raina Roloff (North Freedom), Caitlin Opatik (Reedsburg)*

*Attended remotely

1.  Fordham called the meeting to order at 3:30 p.m.  Kucher verified compliance with the open meetings law.
2. Slaats moved and Kettner seconded to accept the agenda. Motion passed.
3. Chrisler moved and Slaats seconded to accept the minutes with a correction to the spelling of Director’s Thomas & Whitmore’s names.
4. Tamara Ramski presented the SCLS report.  The report is on file.
5. Library Directors in attendance presented reports.  The reports are on file
6. Slack moved to nominate Fordham as chair, Chrisler as Vice Chair and Kettner as Secretary and close the nominations.  Slaats seconded; Slack moved to close nominations and cast a unanimous ballot; Kettner seconded.  Motion Passed.
7. Recommendation to seek stronger wording and charge for advocacy under goal 7 of the Service Plan; No formal action taken.
8. Slack moved to have Kucher look into updating language outlining hybrid meeting attendance & participation in County Library Board Bylaws.  Kettner seconded. Motion passed;  Kucher will look into revisions and bring updated document back for review at a later date.
9. Slack moved to adjourn the meeting; Kotchi-Aslaksen seconded.  Motion passed.

Carnegie-Schadde Memorial Public Library – Baraboo Jessica Bergin

General updates: We have deployed our outdoor pick up lockers, so far going well.  Our Programming & Outreach  Librarian Carey Kipp left, we have promoted our teen coordinator Beth VanCurine to the position. We will be hiring a part time Programming & Outreach Assistant specializing in elementary age children soon.

Building Project: Building project is going along, still on schedule (phase one finished May/June 2023, complete Oct 2023). 

Programming:

• 2023 Winter Diorama Contest in process
• Youth Programming Brochure: https://www.csmpl.org/sites/www.csmpl.org/files/2023-01/winterspring%20brochure%202023%2811%29.pdf
• Adult Programming Brochure: https://www.csmpl.org/sites/www.csmpl.org/files/documents/adultprograms/2022programbrocures/2022-12programbrochurehalf-folded.pdf
• Teen Programming Brochure:
• https://www.csmpl.org/sites/www.csmpl.org/files/teentalkwinter2023.pdf
• Most Recent library newsletter:
• https://www.csmpl.org/sites/www.csmpl.org/files/documents/Newsletter/2022/2022NovemberCurrent.pdf

LaValle Library – Natalie Jones

• Despite continued frustration and lack of communication with our Village, one positive result has been a revitalization of our Friends of the Library group. New faces, interest, brainstorming is sparking new ideas for the library. Finding the avenues to best utilize the talents and skills of these new people will hopefully generate a feeling of community ownership of the library.
• First example is the beginning of an afternoon story hour every two weeks. Getting more personal feedback from interested parents, one of the new Friends members stepped forward to say she wants to run a second story hour. It will be on Thursday late afternoons, the day following our regularly scheduled Wednesday morning story hours. She can use the same theme, books and crafts thus making it easier for her.
• We have two new volunteers–actually one is returning from pre-Covid times. Here again, newly sparked interest in wanting to contribute to their library and finding duties that best utilize their skills and interests. 

North Freedom Community Library Raina Roloff

• North Freedom under new Village management; thus far have been very supportive of library and funding
• Newly minted Friends of the Library group has taken over some fundraising.
• Bringing in some additional programming in 2023
• Easter egg hunt is back Saturday of Easter weekend.  (25,000 eggs; 500-600 attendees expected)

Ruth Culver Community Library – Prairie du Sac Lauren White

• We had two weeks of dinosaur stories at the beginning of November! The first one had a fun 3D dinosaur craft, and the second we did sensory activities. Since the latter storytime was more fossil focus, we brushed away sand in the sandboxes to find dinosaur bones, and we had two gel bags that they could squish the gel around to find the fossils underneath.
• Early Release: Dinosaur Day: We had a variety of different dinosaur activities for kids to try including ice egg hatching, fossil digging, fossil making with salt dough, and t-rex footprint tracing. It was great way to end out our Dinovember theme before Thanksgiving.
• We participated in Holly Jolly Sauk Prairie on Saturday, December 3^rd giving out take and make craft bags for children and adults. We went through 102 adult Take & Makes for It's a Holly Jolly Sauk Prairie December 3.  We’ve received a lot of positive feedback about our winter window display as well. 
• Our new circulation supervisor, Jazmin Cybulski, started on Thursday, December 1^st. She comes to us by way of Florida and recently relocated to the area with her fiancé for his job. She previously worked within the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library System as a technology guide and library clerk. She holds her Master’s in Library and Information Science from San Jose State University. 
• Library Legislative Day will be held on Tuesday, February 7 and because it is a budget year, it is important for library staff, trustees, and advocates speak with their representatives about the importance of their support. In the next months, the legislature will focus on the next state budget, part of which will be determining how much funding will be available for library systems, library contracts, and Recollection Wisconsin. I have registered to attend and anyone else who is interested is welcome to attend as well. 

• Adult Craft Program: Charlene had 17 adults for painted porch signs December 12 (original planned capacity was 16).  It was very popular and well-received event sponsored by the Friends. We've had requests to do it again. 
• We are on track to give out over 500 Teen bags this year. In-person teen event attendance is now higher than school year programs pre-Covid. 
• December movie and cooking decorating: Instead of popcorn, we got cookies to decorate as a snack for this special holiday movie event! After setting out pillows, mats, and other floor seating, a few of the kids opted to watch the Grinch from boxes after finishing their cookies (to make it more like a drive-in movie experience).
• We have officially launched our Kanopy service. Kanopy is a streaming service that allows you to gain instant access to hundreds of movies on your computer or mobile device. Kanopy has a strong collection of independent, international, documentary, and early films from providers like Criterion, PBS and Kino Lorber. Patrons must have their home library set to ours to be able to take advantage of the service and they will have 6 credits per month for free. Once a title is borrowed, it must be finished in 72 or it will be returned (and the credit is consumed. The library pays anywhere from $2-$4 per title and we have set a monthly budget cap of $125 and are confident that we won’t exceed that. However, should we cross that threshold, service will be suspended for everyone until the following month. While a valuable service, Kanopy’s pricing model is untraditional and hard to manage, so our solution was to implement a monthly cap.  

Kraemer Library and Community Center – Plain - Nick Studnicka

• Re-title Senior Movie to Mid-Morning Matinee.
• Started working on Annual report.
• Held a family movie night in both December and January.
• Will be holding a trivia night adult program on February 11.
• Had a hard drive fail on the copy machine at the library.
• Order and received about 50 Playaway titles

Reedsburg Public Library - Sue Ann Kucher

• Assistant Director Kris Houtler retired at the end of 2022.  We recently welcomed new Assistant Director, Caitlin Opatik.
• An additional full-time retirement is planned at the end of February.
• Director Kucher will be out of the office in February on leave.
• Friends fundraising efforts continue with 3 scheduled book sales and our annual Pi€ day to be held March 14.
• Library is planning to expand myRPL on the Go outreach efforts with participation in additional events with the support of Friends of the Library.
• We’re celebrating 25 years in our current building and will have events and giveaways later in the year.
• Summer planning is underway.

Rock Springs Community Library Becky Anderson

• November/December/January Library Story/Project Themes: Thanksgiving, Holiday Stories, Seasons, Snow, Mittens, and Ornaments. Homeschool projects included a corn watercolor page, corn husk dolls, and Thanksgiving Circle Time. Both Littles and Homeschoolers made Christmas Lights cards. They also made Snow globes and ornaments. We did a few STEM projects: 1.) Take-Home project for crystallized  2.) Joy and Dave Carroll did a homemade vanilla ice cream presentation and tasting in December 3.) In January, we did snowflake projects. The Monday morning coffee hour still meet and craft as does the after-school time. New assistant, Judy Polkky, is a great addition to our library.
• 3^rd grade Book Tasting: at St. Peter’s in Reedsburg in November. For a one-time event, we helped set this up.  We used the online Accelerated Reader system (AR) and look through our collection for a variety of books that ranged from picture books to Beginner Readers to Graphic Novels. It was led by the teacher using our materials and other parent volunteers. We learned a lot and so did they!
• December Fundraiser/Bake Sale/Book Donation: Our Saturday event went well and gave people another opportunity to visit the library.
• Furniture: Shane has been in to work on the Digitization some and a History display shelf. The Village Board voted on it to go in the hall between the Library and Village Office. We also spoke up for a shelf from Spring Green and intend to use it to display a featured adult author.
• ADCI (Lake Delton) Meeting with Harmony Construction (Madison), Wolf Gordon Commercial Materials (Milwaukee), and us to go over what will be done to fix the cracks above the Circulation Desk area and above/next to the Director’s office door. This is due to a rafter not be secured properly. An elastic plaster cover with commercial grade wallpaper was talked about to cover the cracks and dry joint extensions will be used to fix the cracks above/next to the office door.
• Numbers were slim in December but picking up in January. 2022 saw the highest numbers for our Circulation in 5 years. 

George Culver Community Library – Sauk City - Lisa Renier Thomas

Ongoing Library Events:

• Two Storytimes per week
• Weekly Music and Movement Storytime
• Friends of the Library Bingo: Twice per month
• Monthly Book Club
• Read to a Dog Program: Twice per month
• Family Storytime and Craft: Once per month (Upcoming themes: Building Forts, Birdfeeders)
• Lego Challenge Days: Once per month

Special Events:

• Countdown to Noon on New Year’s Eve was popular; had 100 people attend.
• Puzzle Swap held all of January. (Take a puzzle, leave a puzzle). May extend as has been very popular.
• Friends of the Library Open House: February 8 at 3pm
• National Gumdrop Day Take-and-Make: available beginning February 15
• Wings of Fire Party: Monday February 20 at 1pm
• Scrappy Cuff Bracelet class for adults: Thursday, February 23 at 6pm
• Sauk County’s Native Landscapes & Where to Find Them with Mike Mossman: Tuesday, February 28 at 6:30pm

Other

• Closing at 4pm for Staff In-service on Monday, February 20
• Have a new full-time Administrative Services Coordinator: Morgan Miller. We are now fully staffed with four full-time and four part-time staff and one sub.
• Added $2000 in new conservation-related books for children, teens, and adults to collection through “Rooted in Conservation” grant. Also have a speaker series starting at end of February.
• Received $2500 grant from Sauk Prairie Healthcare for a Dramatic Play and Literacy Area in our Storytime Room. Bulk going toward modular furniture from Community Playthings. New theme quarterly, with our first being “Hungry Caterpillar Café.” Expected rollout in February.
• Received a $500 “Good Idea” Grant from Sauk County Extension for a Local Art at the Library project. Funds going toward a case which will house a rotating gallery of patron art.

Spring Green Community Library
 Emily Whitmore

• Grace Moran's last day as the Youth Services Librarian was December 22, 2022. 
• I have a new Youth Services Librarian starting on Feb. 8th. 
• Spring Green started 2023 with lots of programming. We kicked off with weekly Storytimes on Wednesday mornings at 10:30am and a new weekly program on Tuesdays at 1pm called, " Movies, Munchies, and More."
• We have a newsletter again! 
• We also launched a monthly Mindfulness program, "Mindfulness: Discussion and Practice." Our first meeting was very successful with 12 people attending. 
• We are hosting a Winter Reading Program. Kids, Teens, and Adults can participate. They just come in to register, get a bingo board, and a small prize, then work toward bingos. 
• Our Teen programs, a game one and a craft one, continue to be popular as well.