DEARBORN DEPARTMENT OF LIBRARIES

LIBRARY COMMISSION MEETING

APRIL 2, 2004

1. ATTENDANCE:

The meeting was called to order at 4:03PM. In attendance were:

MRS. CANDYCE ABBATT, Chairperson; MRS. NANCY ZAKAR, Vice-Chairperson;

MS. SYLVIA PRESSMAN, MR. ROBERT TAUB, MRS. LILA AMEN,

MR. RONALD WATTERS, MR. MARCEL PULTORAK, Commissioners;

DR. PATRICK COADY, City Librarian; MRS. MARYANNE BARTLES, Assistant City Librarian; MS. CAROLYN HOOK, MS. TARA GNAU, Administrative Librarians; MRS.CARLA EGGERT, Recording Secretary; MS. MARGE ECKERT, AAUW.

Absent: DR. ALEX SHAMI, Secretary-Treasurer; MR. DAVE SCHLAFF, Commissioner.

2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES:

The minutes of the March 12, 2004 Library Commission meeting were approved as submitted.

3. VOLUNTEER STUDY UPDATE:

MS. GNAU reported that the first draft of the results of the volunteer study has been completed and they are currently working on the second draft. She hopes to have the final report to present to the Commission at the next meeting. DR. COADY reported that one of the things that he noticed in looking over the data is that it appears that most of the respondents have volunteer policies that are similar to ours in that they do not give their volunteers access to their database because of privacy issues. MR. PULTORAK stated that he felt that in order to use volunteers to extend hours would require the ability of patrons to use self-service checkout. DR. COADY stated that we have reliability issues with our self-service machines, which would be a problem. Another problem with self-service machines is that if there is a problem with a patron’s account they want to be able to talk to someone to resolve it. MR. PULTORAK stated that in exchange for using volunteers to extend hours there is likely to be reductions in the service offered to patrons.

There was a meeting on the city budget presented by the League of Women Voters at Henry Ford Centennial Library on Saturday March 20, 2004. A large number of the attendees at that meeting were there regarding the library. At that meeting Mayor Guido stated there would be an additional meeting solely for the purpose of discussing the Bryant Library situation. DR. COADY stated that the League of Women Voters would sponsor a meeting on the Bryant Library on April 13, 2004 at 7:30pm at the Police Department training room. Also, in an article in the Dearborn Press and Guide on March 31, 2004, which was copied for the Commission, Mayor Guido stated that he had heard from many residents who were interested in volunteering at Bryant Library and that he was interested in working these volunteers into a program that would be useful in maintaining hours at Bryant. Library Administration is currently looking at what type of proposition can be put forth to use volunteers to staff Bryant, at least for a trial period, in order to maintain 33 hours a week. They will put together a presentation for the April 13 meeting in which the issues and trade offs in using volunteers, the need for a volunteer coordinator and how many hours of volunteer time would be needed will be discussed. Library Administration feels that in order to maintain 33 hours of service but to not have volunteer staff in the database there would need to be three full time staff members assigned to Bryant in addition to the part time and volunteer staff. MRS. ABBATT asked when the plan was to implement this program? She does not feel it is a good idea to rush into anything without proper planning. DR. COADY stated that we have a group of people from the Bryant neighborhood who are coming to these meetings consistently saying you need to do something with volunteers so while the high level of interest and publicity is there in the community we need to capitalize on it. MR. PULTORAK stated that if the commitment is there from the community they could make it work. MRS. ABBATT asked if budget cuts occur again are we going to be asked to run additional buildings using volunteer staff and asked if other departments were being asked to run their operations with volunteer staff? MR. PULTORAK stated that in his opinion with the state’s financial situation being what it is we could find ourselves three or four years down the road asking what buildings can we afford to keep open. MRS. ABBATT stated that she understood that but she did not want to rush into something and see it fail. DR. COADY stated that we do have experience with our current Friends of the Library volunteer program, information from our volunteer study and volunteer manuals that should help us in establishing a structure and offering support. We would provide orientation, training and background check for the volunteers but the volunteer coordinator would have the burden of recruitment, scheduling, interviewing, hiring and firing volunteer staff. MRS. ABBATT asked if at the next Commission meeting more information about the volunteer coordinator position could be provided. She would like specific information on how they will be chosen and what their duties will be. MRS. GNAU stated she would be developing a job description for the volunteer coordinator as well as looking at the types of duties the volunteer staff would have and what type of orientation we would provide for new volunteers. MRS AMEN asked whom we would be targeting as a volunteer source? Many companies and colleges in the community require their employees or students to do volunteer service in the community. DR. COADY stated the Bryant neighborhood association would be the primary source of volunteers.

4. CHILDREN’S STUDY:

Julie Schaefer, the head children’s librarian at HFCL, presented the completed children’s study that the Children’s Committee, Carolyn Hook and consultant Charlene Ezell have been working on for the past several months. The study is an analysis of the current children’s services as well as a three year implementation plan for the future of children’s services given the premise that the library will be experiencing budget reductions and downsizing. They created a mission statement for children’s services. Working with Charlene Ezell they examined what a mission statement does for an organization. They did exercises with all of the children’s staff to determine what programs and philosophies are important and what staff felt are critical services. The mission statement they developed is “The mission of children’s services is to create an exciting place for children and their families to visit so that they will become lifelong users of the library and all of its resources.” Using the mission statement as a guide they created a service grid. The service grid serves to clarify our priorities and gives us the basis for our future programming. The columns along the top list the key areas of the mission and the rows list the key audiences for children’s programs. On behalf of the Children’s Committee Mrs. Schaefer thanked Carolyn Hook for all her work in the coordination of this study. Ms. Hook stated that many parts of the children’s study are already being implemented and we have made some changes to our summer reading program for this summer based on information gathered during the focus groups and from the surveys conducted as part of the children’s study. We are continuing to look for ways to do children’s programming with less staff. Instead of each agency doing something different we are coordinating programming among the children’s agencies. Ms Hook stated that it is a long report and that once the Commissioners have looked it over they may have questions. Mrs. Schaefer will attend the next Library Commission meeting to answer any questions that may come up. MR. WATTERS asked if an executive summary could be prepared because of the size of the document? DR. COADY stated that the blue pages in the front of the report were intended to be a summary but a shorter one will be put together for the next meeting. DR. COADY thanked Julie Schaefer for her leadership and work on the children’s study.

6. BRYANT UPDATE:

DR. COADY stated that he felt that the Bryant Branch reductions would be the prototype for many City service changes. We have had three years of flat budgets and three years of cutting back in ways that will not impact the public. It has now come to the point that it is not possible for the City to make the necessary reductions without impacting the public. With continuing revenue sharing loss in the coming years there will additional impact in the future and services will have to change. It will continue to be necessary to be flexible and to find new ways of doing things.

7. BUDGET/STAFF REDUCTION UPDATE:

DR. COADY reported that more City employees continue to retire causing the projected staff layoffs to continue to go down.

8. NEW BUSINESS:

MS. HOOK will retire at the end of April after 35 years of service. MRS. ABBATT stated that she would be greatly missed and asked if she might be interested in the volunteer coordinator position? MS. HOOK stated to ask her again after six months. DR. COADY stated that MS. HOOK is the last original Administrator left from when he began working here. She was always a person who said, “Why can’t we do better”. She was the lead person on many projects including the Esper addition, marketing projects, as well as the switch to a full bibliographic record.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:10PM.