DEARBORN DEPARTMENT OF LIBRARIES

LIBRARY COMMISSION MEETING

FEBRUARY 9, 2007      

1. ATTENDANCE

In attendance were: MRS. NANCY ZAKAR, Chairperson; MR. MARCEL PULTORAK, Vice-Chairperson; DR. ALEX SHAMI, Secretary-Treasurer;

MR. ROBERT TAUB, MRS. CANDYCE ABBATT, MRS. DIANE PEPPER, 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. DAVID SCHLAFF, MR. RONALD WATTERS; Commissioners.

 

2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES

The minutes of the January Commission meeting were approved as submitted.

 

3. FOUNDATION UPDATE

 At the last meeting the Library Commissioners asked Marge Bryer to add the Commissioners to the email distribution list for the Library Foundation so that they can receive the minutes of the meetings.  She has done that now so all the Library Commissioners should be receiving email from the Library Foundation. The next Library Foundation meeting is scheduled for Feb. 13, 2007.

 

4. BUDGET AND STAFFING UPDATE-

A.   Budget:  City Administration and the City Council will have their first meeting on the budget on Feb. 14, 2007. Mrs. Bartles has been advised that she should be ready to present our budget submissions to the City Council.  She is planning to have benchmarking and statistical data if we are required to present to the City Council.  The largest portions of our budget are personnel and insurance costs.  Mr. Pultorak stated that the Governors proposed state budget has a fifty percent cut in aid to libraries.  Dr. Shami asked if state aid was a large percentage of our budget.  Mrs. Bartles stated that state aid is a very small percentage of our budget but we are able to save the funds from year to year.  The funds do not have to be spent in the fiscal year that we receive them which has allowed up to save our state aid money and use it for larger projects.  Our Horizon upgrade was funded with our state aid money. 

B.  Staffing:  Mrs. Bartles reported that Robert Rea has been promoted from an Assistant Librarian to a Librarian I.  We are unable to fill his old position with a full time person.  We have promoted two staff members, Jessica Theisen and Ben Connors, to part time Department Specialists positions.  They will not have exactly the same duties as the Assistant Librarian had. For example, they will not be assigned project work.  We still have a part time IT Assistant position to fill as well as Steve Smith’s old position though Mrs. Bartles is trying to get that position reclassified. 

5. OLD BUSINESS

  1. By-Laws Review Committee-Mrs. Zakar stated that the by law review committee plans to meet between this meeting and the next Library Commission meeting.    

 

 

  1. QSAC certification-A press release was submitted to the Dearborn papers about

      our QSAC certification.  The Commission was given copies of the articles that  

      appeared in the papers.  We have also posted this on our web site as well.  The

 next level of certification is the enhanced level. The Commissioners were given

 a list of libraries in the state certified at the essential, enhanced and excellent levels.

      Mrs. Bartles discussed the obstacles involved in obtaining the next level of   

      certification for us. The issues that would currently arise for us are:

 

o       Written Strategic Plan, covering 3 to 5 years

o       Offer Reciprocal borrowing with other Michigan libraries

o       Technology Plan

o       International symbol for libraries signs on arterial streets

o       Publishes a newsletter at least semi-annually

o       Library develops a local library slogan and logo

 

Mrs. Bartles stated that we currently will request interloans from other libraries for patrons for a charge of $5 but as our catalog is not part of the union catalog we do not get requests from other libraries.  Offering reciprocal borrowing would require a staff person for about 18 hours per week.  Mrs. Bartles asked the Library Commission to formally declare whether or not they wanted her to pursue the next level of certification.  Mr. Pultorak stated he felt that given the times and the financial situation we are operating under we should focus our efforts on enhancing services to our own residents. Mrs. Bartles stated that she does want to work on some of the items such as the strategic plan and the technology plan. Mrs. Abbatt motioned to table working on the next level of certification until the fiscal condition approves, seconded by Dr. Shami, all approved. 

  1. Coffee Shop-Mrs. Bartles reported that she took Mr. Pultorak’s idea and called some other local libraries to see if they were interested in partnering on the coffee vending machines.  Westland and Dearborn Heights are not interested. The Allen Park Library Director seemed interested and said that she would get back to Mrs. Bartles after she presented it to her Library Commission if they are interested.  Mrs. Bartles did finish the RFP for the vending machines.  She submitted it twice to the buyer who has a lot of experience with vending machine contracts for her review and any suggestions but she has not heard back from her. 
  2. Word Processing-Steve Smith reported that we are not up and running with the word processing yet.  We just received the USB extension cables and need to install those. We also want to change the computer mice over to optical mice instead of the old track ball mice. We also need to segregate the network to allow us to separate the staff traffic from the patron traffic to have better security.  We did find out that we have enough licenses to install PowerPoint on all of our public computers. 

     Mrs. Bartles reported that we have had Internet problems for the last month.   

     Our Internet traffic was dragging down the City’s system so we had a T1 line     added for library traffic only but we are already exceeding capacity for that line.          We will need to add another T1 line. 

  1. Computer Classes-The Microsoft Word class will be this coming Tuesday evening.  The classes are very popular and the current group of classes are filled.  We are going to trying offer as many classes as we can. 
  2. New Commissioner- Mrs. Bartles reported that the names of the two potential Library Commissioner have been submitted to the Mayor Pro Tem. Mrs. Bartles spoke to the Mayor Pro Tems secretary and she advised that he will probably not do anything with the Library Commission appointments until after the election. Mrs. Bartles advised that we received a grant from the Henry Ford II to restore the statue of Henry Ford in front of HFCL.  Mrs. Bartles approached Mr. Kirk, one of our potential new Library Commissioners, to assist her with this project since his back ground is as a preservation architect.  He was able to put Mrs. Bartles in touch with companies who could do the restoration work and he will work in the capacity of contract architect for this project.  This could be a possible conflict of interest if he is appointed as a Library Commissioner.  Mr. Pultorak stated that Mrs. Bartles should contact Corporation Council regarding that issue. 
  3. Capital Project Update-Fire Stair Enclosure-Mrs. Bartles reported that the contractors have begun work on this project.  They have run into a few problems but nothing that can’t be overcome.  Their work in the building has caused the fire alarms to go off.  We are working on a solution to the problem. 
  4. Terrazzo Stairs- Mrs. Bartles reported that this project is about 98% percent done.  They are coming back tonight to finish a few spots on the stairs.  Mr. Pultorak stated that they look very good.  Mrs. Bartles stated we will have the same company do annual maintenance. 

6. NEW BUSINESS-

A.   Volunteer Update-Ms. Gnau reported that we have had our annual winter decline in volunteers.  We have a lot of volunteers who are snow birds and go to Florida in the winter. We also have fewer volunteer opportunities in the winter as FOLD does not have a January book sale and we have less programming.  We will have two new volunteer orientations on Feb. 22 and March 3rd at HFCL.  We have advertised these orientations in both Dearborn papers and on our web site.  We are still interested in using volunteers for assisting patrons with word processing but until we get the program up and running we do not know how many volunteers we will need for this. We had hoped to use high school students for this but it does not look like that program is going to work out for us. Mr. Pultorak stated he might be interested in volunteering in this capacity. 

B.  Library Column- Mrs. Bartles reported that she spoke to Mary Laundroche, the Director of the Department of Public Information.  She was very helpful and contacted both Dearborn newspapers.  Both papers have agreed to a 500 word monthly column.  The Dearborn Times Herald column will run in the Wednesday edition of the paper and the Dearborn Press and Guide column will run in the Sunday edition.  The same column will run in both papers.  The Administrative Panel will meet and discuss a plan for writing the columns.  We do not want to burden one staff member.  The Marketing Committee will probably manage the column and the task of writing the column will go to a different staff member each month.  We will continue to submit press releases to the papers separate for the column.  Whatever information we put in the column we will also post on our webpage. 

C.  CDTV Schedule- Mrs. Bartles reported that the CDTV schedule is on the City web page.  There is a TV icon on the City web site and if you click on that icon you will get the schedule for CDTV.  The print is small but the document comes as a PDF file in Adobe so you increase the size. 

D.  Circulation Changes-2 pieces of ID- Mrs. Schaefer reported that we want to change the way our Circulation policy is stated.  We want to reserve the right to ask for two pieces of identification if needed.  We won’t request this of every patron but if there is a question of validity we will be able to ask for additional proof of eligibility.  Mr. Taub motioned to approve changing the circulation policy to allow asking for two pieces of identification and to remove the language allowing a non personal piece of mail to be used as identification, seconded by Dr. Shami, all approved. 

E.   Charter Commission- Mrs. Bartles reported that the statement relating to the library that was voted on by the Charter Commission at the January meeting is exactly the same as what the Library Commission recommended in April of 2006. 

F.   State of the City, February 12, 2007, HFCL Auditorium, 6:30pm-The state of the City will be held in the HFCL auditorium.  The Mayor Pro Tem wanted the event to be a lower key affair than the normal state of the City address. Mrs. Bartles reported that we have been working to get the auditorium spiffed up for the event. 

G.  Donations-We received a donation from Janice Shaw for $500 and from Mr. and Mrs. Wade for $200 for Bryant Branch Library. 

We also received a grant from the Henry Ford II fund of $28,500 for the restoration of the statue of Henry Ford in front of HFCL.  A vendor that we have worked with who knows Edsel Ford approached him about the statue and he agreed to fund the project.  We are hoping to present this donation to the City Council at the next Council meeting to acknowledge and appropriate the gift. We are hoping to start on the project in the spring and have a rededication of the statue in the late summer or early fall.

Finally, we received a memorial donation for Megan Soroka from her classmates from Dearborn High School for $625. 

 

The meeting was adjourned at 5:25pm.