DEARBORN DEPARTMENT OF LIBRARIES

LIBRARY COMMISSION MEETING

March 11, 2005

 

 

1. ATTENDANCE:

In attendance were: MRS. NANCY ZAKAR, Chairperson; MR. MARCEL PULTORAK, Vice-Chairperson;

MR. ROBERT TAUB, MR. RONALD WATTERS,

MRS. SYLVIA PRESSMAN, MRS.CANDYCE ABBATT, Commissioners; DR. PATRICK COADY, Library Director, MRS. MARYANNE BARTLES, Assistant Library Director,

MS. TARA GNAU and MRS. JULIE SCHAEFER, Administrative Librarians; Excused: MR. DAVE SCHLAFF, MRS. LILA AMEN, Commissioners.  Absent: DR. ALEX SHAMI, Secretary-Treasurer. 

2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES:  

The minutes of the February 11, 2005 Commission meeting were approved. 

 

3. DRAFT VISION AND VALUE STATEMENTS:

Mrs. Zakar stated that in preparation for the upcoming retreat the Commissioners have a set of draft vision and value statements in their meeting packet. The Commission could choose to use one of the draft statements as our own or they could put together our own statement.  Both Mr. Pultorak and Mrs. Abbatt stated that they liked number seven and Mr. Taub stated that he liked number six of the draft vision statements.  Mr. Watters asked if the statements were referring to the Commission itself or the library system.  Mrs. Zakar stated these statements would be for use by the library system.  Dr. Coady stated that at the retreat they would have the mission statement, vision and value statements and longer term goals to consider.  Mr. Pultorak asked what results they would get from all of this.  Dr. Coady stated we would get a complete picture of the direction of the library.  All of these things should integrate well and could be presented to a foundation chair, new employee or City administrators as an example to give them a clear view of the library and what we represent in terms of policies, standards and role statements.  Mr. Pultorak stated that he felt a lot of this type of stuff is jargon and could get in the way of what an average person is going to read and understand about the library.   Dr. Coady stated that we currently have a mission statement and we have role statements.  The Commission has gone through the role statements before.  They give a summation of the role of the library in this community.  Mr.  Watters stated that in his background in the quality field he is used to identifying with a mission statement only.  He asked if this is unique to the library or are their other City departments that have a mission statement, a vision statement, role statements and value statements.  The Mayor brought in a speaker a few weeks ago to speak the department heads about the importance of having these types of statements.  Both Mr. Watters and Mr. Pultorak stated that they felt developing one statement that says it all is preferable to these various types of statements.  Mr. Taub stated that he really did not know what the difference between a mission statement and a vision statement would be.  However, the value statements should relate to the mission or vision statement.  The problem is none of them are really action statements.  Mr. Watters stated that in his opinion your mission statement should encompass a purpose, a direction and it should state who you are and should only be a couple of sentences long.  Some of the vision statements presented are a paragraph in length which is too long.  Mrs. Abbatt asked who the target audience was for a vision statement.  Is it our patrons, our staff, is it other libraries?  Dr. Coady stated it was City Administration.  Dr. Coady asked the Commissioners to email their draft vision and value statements to Carla Eggert before the next meeting of the Commission.  Mrs. Zakar asked Carla to send out the information to those Commissioners not present at today’s meeting.                 

 

4. FOUNDATION UPDATE:

Mrs. Abbatt stated that she spoke with Ann Knopp today regarding the chairperson position for the library foundation.  She is willing to help the foundation but only for a limited period of time because she is planning to relocate. Mrs. Abbatt and Mrs. Zakar will set up a meeting with her next week.  Ann Knopp severed on the school board foundation since its inception seven years ago.  Dr. Coady stated her experience will be helpful in allowing us to avoid some pitfalls with the foundation start up. 

 

5. PLANNING FOR RETREAT:

Mrs. Zakar asked the Commissioners to think of some other items they might like to see on the agenda. As was discussed earlier, proposed vision and value statements will be discussed.  Dr. Coady stated we might want to work on the foundation based on the forthcoming discussion with Ms. Knopp.  We had planned a target meeting time of three hours.  Can we work on more than those two items in three hours?  Mrs. Zakar stated that it depends on how much feedback we get on the vision and value statements from the other Commissioners.  Dr. Coady stated that at the April meeting we hope to have a packet for the Commissioners with more information on the strategic planning items.   Mr. Watters stated the Commissioners could also email any potential retreat agenda items along with their draft vision and value statements email.  Mr. Taub stated another possible agenda item could be questions or concerns that the library staff might have. Dr. Coady stated that he is ambivalent about not allowing enough time to work on agenda items.  We also can not make any decisions as motions can not be made at a retreat meeting.  Mr. Pultorak stated we could come up with a list of questions or concerns that the staff, patrons and/or Commissioners have and prioritize that list.  We would then have a working list and could then address the items as time permits at each meeting.  Dr. Coady stated that the point of the staff right now is we are overwhelmed with trying to find a new equilibrium after the loss of so many staff. We have to rewrite, rethink and redo the way we do business very fundamentally.  We have not gotten through that by any means and now we have maybe five times as many capital projects than we have ever managed at once.  All of these capital projects are very critical because we may lose funding for anything in the future for some years. Dr. Coady is very anxious to get these projects into contract mode because that is the only assurance we will actually get them done.  We also have a need to do staff training because so many of our senior staff have left.  It is a very dynamic time, it’s exciting and is positive in many ways but it is also extremely time consuming.  The City has also said we will have three more years of cost cutting and they want us to be thinking about how we will manage that.  Staff feels a sense of uncertainty and discomfort and we can only do so much about that.  We don’t want to give the idea that the Commission can fix these things.  Mr. Pultorak stated that we need to think about these things going forward in setting any specific goals or action plans because as a Commission we want to challenge ourselves but we don’t want to set ourselves up for failure.  Dr. Coady stated that another factor that is a two edged sword is our move to the Horizon software system from Dynix.  Horizon is a new database and we will have a training curve for staff to learn the new system.  It will take about a year to become totally comfortable with the new software.  We are moving to Horizon version 7.4 because there is a price advantage for maintenance for doing so.  There will be an additional change to Horizon version 8 sometime in the fall.   We have quite a long path ahead of us on the Horizon change over.

 

6. GROUP STUDY ROOM RULES:

Mrs. Zakar stated that the Commissioners have an old version and a new version of the group study room rules in their meeting packets.  Dr. Coady stated that we felt that the Commission should see and vote on the new rules because they are policy statements.  Under the old rules there was a three hour time limit for use of the room.  Staff is advocating changing this to a two hour time limit.  We have had some issues with the use of the group study room which is the Ford room and has books on the Ford family as well as computer equipment that is accessible for the disabled so people need to be able to enter the room and we added statements to that effect.  The Commission had also asked at an earlier meeting that we have the library code of conduct available to give to patrons so we added the code of conduct to the back of the group study room rules.  We can give this to patrons who are signing up for the room.  Mr. Watters asked if these rules would apply to study rooms at the branches or only to the Ford room. Dr. Coady stated that these rules would apply to the Ford room at HFCL only.  Mrs. Abbatt stated that we should call it the Ford room group study rules if it only applies to that room.  Mrs. Pressman asked if the books on the Ford family in that room were the only copies available.  Mrs. Bartles stated the only copies are the those copies in the Ford room and the books in the Ford room are in glass cases so a staff member must assist a patron to get the books. The Commission discussed adding a statement that users should check out at the desk when they are done with the room. Mrs. Abbatt asked if that were the only conference room available for patron use.  Mrs. Bartles stated that it was.  Mrs. Zakar asked if the space they were meeting in at, in the lower level of Bryant, would be available to make into meeting room space.  Dr. Coady stated that if all goes as planned the lower level of Bryant will be office space for the Department of Public Information and CDTV as well as a welcome center.  Mrs. Abbatt asked if we had patrons who abused the use of the room.  Mrs. Schaeffer stated we have regular patrons who use the room often.  Dr. Coady stated that we sent a letter of warning to one person who uses the room regularly.  Mrs. Abbatt asked if allowing more than one group to use the room at the same time would be helpful.  Dr. Coady stated that he felt the staff would say if there are two groups in the room at once and they have a problem they will look to the staff to referee the dispute and we don’t want that.  Mr. Watters asked why we did not reduce the time to one hour from three hours if availability of the room is a problem.  Dr. Coady stated that most of the users of the room seem to use it for two hours so we felt that was a safe time frame.  Mr. Taub motioned to accept the group study rules but to change the name of the document to the “Ford Room Group Study Rules”, seconded by Mr. Pultorak, all approved. 

 

7. BUDGET UPDATE:

Dr. Coady stated that all budget information for the libraries has been submitted to City Administration.  The City budget is still in an overage of 6 million dollars at this point.  City Administration has asked department heads to think about ways to save additional money and Mark Guido will meet with each department head to try to think outside of the box and come up with some ways to cut an additional 6 million dollars from the budget.  The budget is due to City Council on April 15th so there are only a couple of weeks left to come up with these savings.  We don’t know at this point if we will lose more staff or not next year.  Mr. Pultorak stated that the he feels that if further cuts are made on a City wide level there will have to be service impacts. 

 

8. NEW BUSINESS:

The November Commission meeting is currently scheduled for the second Friday in November which falls on Veterans Day this year which is a City holiday.  We need to change the meeting to either the week before which is Friday, November 4th or the week after which would fall on Friday, November 18th.  Dr. Coady stated that in the past when we have had to change the December meeting due to holiday commitments we have usually moved it earlier in the month.  If you move the meeting to the week before Veterans Day and then the December meeting ends up being changed it will keep the time frame between meetings the same.  Mr. Pultorak motioned to move the November Library Commission meeting from Nov.11, 2005 to Nov. 4, 2005 due to Veteran’s Day, seconded by Mrs. Abbatt, all approved. 

 

Library patron Liz Leduc spoke to the Library Commission.  She stated that she is a teenager who lives about two blocks away from the Bryant Branch and walks here from her home.    She stated that the current branch hours, particularly being closed on Fridays, are very difficult for her.  She heard the discussion on value statements and she feels that the library should value the needs of its community.  Mrs. Zakar stated that the reduction in staff and library budget has made it necessary to reduce hours.  Mr. Pultorak asked Miss Leduc what she was specifically looking for at the library on Fridays, specific materials or a quiet place to study.  Miss Leduc stated that mostly a quiet place to study without distraction.  Dr. Coady stated that we know with the reduced hours that some patrons will not be served well and some people maybe inconvenienced.  Our marketing studies show that 50% of the people who responded to our study stated they will adapt and come to the library when it’s open.  Friday is a traditionally slow day in the library field throughout the entire country in general. To keep Bryant open on Friday we would have to sacrifice hours at another location and we do not have the demand here to do that.  We continue to struggle with staffing at Bryant.  The demand is down but we must staff the building in order to keep it open.  This continues to be a struggle for us.  It’s a terrible thing because we have someone saying we want to be here and use your facility and we are unable to accommodate you.  Dr. Coady thanked Miss Leduc for coming to speak with the Commission and stated he was very appreciative of her taking the time to come but unfortunately we do not have a nice answer.  Mrs. Zakar also thanked Miss Leduc and stated the Commission would take note of her comments and continue to look at the issue. 

 

Toni Tront, the volunteer coordinator for libraries, spoke to the Commission.  She asked if the Commission had any further in sight into the parking issue and how it would affect the library.  Mr. Pultorak stated the Mayor has said there will be some type of validated parking which would apply for volunteers.  He understands that bad weather has delayed the completion of the parking deck and the paid parking program will not go into effect until the parking deck is completed. 

Mrs. Tront stated that, in looking at the statistical report presented in the meeting packet, traffic and circulation is reduced at all libraries from this point last year but especially at Bryant.  Ms. Tront stated that there are few children’s programs at Bryant and those that are here are not well advertised.  Why are children’s programs not being held at Bryant and what do we attribute the loss of circulation and traffic too?  Dr. Coady stated we are currently doing an analysis on Bryant now and we hope to have some answers on Bryant staffing and programming.  We did an experiment with bringing children’s programs to Bryant but turn out was low.  That may be because we did a poor job of planning and advertising it or it may not.  It is likely that there will be further moves with the staff at Bryant in the future.  Mrs. Zakar and Dr. Coady thanked Ms. Tront for her work with the volunteer program and for taking the time to come and speak to the Commission. 

 

The meeting was adjourned at 5:23pm.