DEARBORN DEPARTMENT OF LIBRARIES

LIBRARY COMMISSION MEETING

OCTOBER 13, 2006

 

1. ATTENDANCE

In attendance were: MRS. NANCY ZAKAR, Chairperson; MRS. CANDYCE ABBATT,

MR. RONALD WATTERS, Commissioners;

MRS. MARYANNE BARTLES, Library Director; MRS. JULIE SCHAEFER, Deputy Library Director; MS. TARA GNAU, MR. STEVE SMITH, Administrative Librarians;

MRS. MARGE ECKERT, AAUW.

EXCUSED:  MR. MARCEL PULTORAK, Vice-Chairperson; MRS. DIANE PEPPER,

MR. ROBERT TAUB, Commissioners.

ABSENT:  DR. ALEX SHAMI, Secretary-Treasurer; MR. DAVID SCHLAFF, Commissioner

 

2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES

The minutes of the September Commission Meeting could not be approved due to lack of a quorum.

 

3. FOUNDATION UPDATE

Mrs. Bartles reported that the next Library Foundation meeting was on Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2006.  Marcel Pultorak, Steve Roberts and Bill Irving have been scrambling to prepare the draft service agreement between the City of Dearborn and the Library Foundation.  The document was presented at the agenda meeting for the City Council which did not go very well.  There were a lot of questions at the agenda meeting so Mrs. Bartles asked for a briefing session with the City Council before the Committee of the Whole.  Mrs. Bartles and Mr. Pultorak presented the document at the briefing session with the City Council and it went well.  The document will be presented for approval at the Monday, Oct. 16, 2006 City Council meeting.  If all goes well the Library Foundation should have its initial payment of $10,000 by the end of October. 

The initial payment will allow them to purchase their insurance and order their office furniture and computers. A draft copy of the service agreement was given to the Library Commissioners.

 

4. BUDGET AND STAFFING

Mrs. Bartles introduced Steve Smith to the Library Commission.  Mr. Smith is the new Administrative Librarian.  He officially starts his position on Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2006.  Mr. Smith’s old position as the Automation systems administrator will be reevaluated.  This Librarian II position was created in 1993 when all we had was one server and the Dynix computer system. This position has changed greatly since that time and requires a great deal of computer technical expertise. We may no longer require an MLS degree for this position. 

The budget is due sometime in December normally. This year we must submit the entire budget except for capital by November 1st.  The personnel portion of the budget is due today.  We are in the process of hiring part time professional staff to help manage our staffing shortage.  However, a grievance against these positions has been filed. 

 

 

 

5. OLD BUSINESS

1.   QSAC CERTIFICATION-We have submitted documentation to obtain our initial QSAC certification.  The next level of certification is the enhanced level and we hope to be able to submit our documentation for that certification level in about 30 days. 

2.   INTERNET USER CARD INCREASE- Mrs. Bartles reported that the increase from $1 to $10 for the yearly Internet uses card has gone pretty well. We have not had many complaints. The $1 day pass for Internet access is still the majority of Internet cards being sold. We are averaging about $900 a month in Internet card fees. 

3.   COFFEE SHOP- There are some concerns about establishing a coffee kiosk in the library particularly the need for hot water and having it available to hook up to the coffee kiosk.  Where ever we decide to put the kiosk in the library there is not hot water easily available.  We also have to check what type of health regulations are in place for running this type of kiosk.  Mrs. Bartles plans to talk to the director of the University of Michigan-Dearborn library about their experience with the coffee kiosk they have in their library.  Mrs. Bartles has done some checking and it seems that the coffee kiosk seem to do well in college libraries but not as well in public libraries.  Some libraries with kiosks let the vendor operate with out any revenue to the library, some charge rent to the vendor, some charge rent and a percentage of sales and some just charge a percentage of sales.  Mrs. Bartles checked with Greg Orner, Director of Recreation, as to how Shields pays the City for running the restaurant at the Performing Arts Center.  Shields pays the City a percentage of sales.  Mrs. Bartles has spoken with the Purchasing Department about the possibility of adding vending machines with coffee service for the time being and see how they do. The City currently has a vending machine contract with a vendor for other City facilities. This would give us some idea of sales volume and whether it would be worthwhile to pursue establishing a kiosk.

4.   WORD PROCESSING-Mrs. Bartles reported that it does not appear it will be as difficult as we originally thought to offer word processing to our patrons.  We would like to begin offering the service at HFCL first and see how it goes. We will offer word processing patrons unlimited use of the computer unless others are waiting.  If others are waiting users will have to save their work, log off and get back in the queue.  We want to offer patrons the ability to save their documents to a disk or flash drive.  We just have to set our machines up to make the USB drives easily accessible for using the flash drives. We will offer these items for sale at both our Adult and Children’s reference desks.

Google is offering a new service, Google Docs, which is free online word processing and spreadsheet service. It is still a beta version so it is not bug free.  Our staff has tested it and it seems to work well in creating new documents that are not too complex but there are some issues in uploading documents.  It does not convert documents from Microsoft Word very well, particularly if they are complex documents.  You also must have an email account of some sort and a Google account to use the service. You are able to save your documents to your Google account. We will offer this service as an alternative for patrons for now until we get our software up and running. Mrs. Abbatt asked if we would have to pay Microsoft for licenses in order to install Microsoft Office products on our public machines.  Mrs. Bartles stated that we have most of licenses we need except for PowerPoint.  We have to check into those licenses. 

We still hope to have National Honor Society student volunteers help patrons with word processing.  If a patron needed in depth help with word processing we would ask him to come back when the student volunteers were here. 

We did not have a quorum of Library Commissioners present at the meeting so the word processing proposal could not be voted on.

5.   MLA CONFERENCE-Mrs. Schaefer and Ms. Gnau both attended the MLA Conference and found it to be very worthwhile.  Mrs. Schaefer discussed a new type of audio book that was shown at the conference called Play Away which has a player built into the book so that you do not need to have any outside equipment to be able to listen to the book.   Steve Smith also attended the CODI conference in Salt Lake City, Utah to find out about the next upgrade of our Horizon software. We will not upgrade to the next version of Horizon right away.

 

6. NEW BUSINESS

1.   BY LAWS REVIEW COMMITTEE-It will be necessary to postpone establishing a committee to review the by laws of the Library Commission as we did not have a quorum of Library Commissioners present at the meeting. 

2.    LOAN PERIOD-DVD AND MUSIC CDS-We would like to change the loan period for compact discs from 7 days to 14 days.  Large box sets can not be listened to in the 7 day loan period.  CD’s with holds would still only circulate for seven days.  Also, we would like to change the loan period from 2 days to 7 days for movies that do not have holds on them.  Movies with holds would still circulate for 2 days only.  It will be necessary to postpone voting on these changes as we did not have a quorum of Library Commissioners at the meeting. 

3.   COMMISSION MEETING-DAY AND TIME-At the last Commission meeting we had a patron present a document regarding Library Commissioner attendance. This has become a problem in recent months and is a problem again today at this meeting where we have several items to vote on but are unable to do so due to a lack of a quorum.  The Commissioners present discussed the attendance rules that are listed in the Commission by laws.  Mrs. Zakar stated that she would send out a letter to the Commission advising them that because of a lack of a quorum important items could not be voted on.  Mrs. Abbatt stated that we need to address this at the next meeting as it is becoming a big problem. 

4.   CODE OF CONDUCT-We have some proposed changes to the Code of Conduct but we will have to postpone this to the next meeting due to lack of a quorum. 

5.   CHARTER REVISION-Mrs. Bartles stated that City Administration would like to see the City charter revised to a functionality level rather than the current departmental organization.  The Charter Commission seems to be leaning this way as well.  The Library Commission voted in April 2006 to revise the libraries portion of the City Charter to read:

“The library system shall be under the general management and control of a Library Commission consisting of nine members appointed by the Mayor.  The commission shall determine the policies of the library system and shall select the Library Director who shall be a member of the classified service and who shall administer the activities of the department and be the appointing authority for all other library employees”. 

The changes currently proposed by the City Administration give much more control over the functioning of the City government to City Administration but would invalidate the above statement.  Under this plan the libraries would most likely fall under Culture and Recreation which would include Recreation and the Historical Museum as well. 

Mrs. Abbatt asked when the next meeting of the Charter Commission would be held and Mrs. Bartles advised her that it was scheduled for Oct. 17, 2006.

 

The meeting was adjourned at 5:55pm.