Sauk County Library Board

saukcolibraryboard-202311-minutes.pdf (114 KB)

Sauk County Library Board Meeting
Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Present:  Joan Fordham, Glenn Slaats, Linda Kettner, Carolyn Kotchi-Aslaksen 
Absent:  Joel Chrisler, Terry Slack

Others: Sue Ann Kucher(Reedsburg), Nick Studnicka (Plain), Emily Whitmore (Spring Green)*, Lauren White(Prairie du Sac)*, Tamara Ramski (SCLS)*, Rebecca Anderson (Rock Springs), Cathy Borck (Wisconsin Dells)

*Participated remotely

1. Call to Order:  Joan Fordham called the meeting to order at 3:35 PM.  Sue Ann Kucher verified compliance with the Wisconsin Open Meeting Law.
2. Adoption of Agenda:  Slaats moved to adopt the agenda, seconded by Kotchi-Aslaksen.  Motion carried.
3. Approval of the minutes of the July 25, 2023, meeting:  Slaats moved to approve the minutes of the July 25, 2023, meeting, seconded by Kotchi-Aslaksen.  Motion carried.
4. Public Comment:  none
5. Discussion and decision of 2024 budget disbursement:  Kettner moved to divide the technology money equally among the 10 libraries and the other money in the budget be disbursed as allocated, seconded by Kotchi-Aslaksen.  Motion carried.
6. SCLS report – Tamara Ramski:  On File
7. Librarians’ Reports – Directors in attendance:  On File
8. Set 2024 meeting schedule:  In 2024 this board will meet at 3:30 PM on Tuesday, January 23, Tuesday, May 28, Tuesday, July 23, and Tuesday, November 26.
9. Adjournment:  Slaats moved to adjourn the meeting at 4:30 PM, seconded by Kotchi-Astaksen.  Motion carried.

Linda Kettner

November 2023. Sauk County Library Board/Director Meeting
SCLS Report –Compiled by SCLS consultant staff

Personnel

• Martha Van Pelt will be retiring in early 2024. A new System Director Search committee was formed.
• SCLS Delivery is hiring full and part-time delivery drivers.  

Grants

• Federal Emergency Connectivity Funds (ECF) Grant Deadline has been extended to June 2024. Contact Vicki Teal Lovely with questions.

Projects

• Drupal 10 Migration (Rose Ziech)
  • Library websites: All library websites are upgraded to Drupal 10.
  • SCLS website migrations in progress: SCLS.info and LINKcat Help.
• Program Kits Temporarily Unavailable (Shawn Brommer)
  • All program support kits will be unavailable December 22 to January 15 while SCLS prepares for the Delivery Services move to our new building. 
  • If you have arrangements to have kits at your library during this time, please hold onto them until January 16^th and then return them to SCLS Delivery as you typically would do. 
• Library Innovation Subcommittee looking for new members (Rose Ziech)
  • The subcommittee is a proactive working group that responds to innovative library service and program ideas from all SCLS Member Library and System staff. 
  • Six virtual meetings are held annually.

New Building Update

• Delivery will move into their new space January 11 and 12, 2024. Delivery to libraries will continue as usual during the moving days.

Meetings and Events

• 2024 All Directors Meeting dates and locations will be announced. (March, May, July, November)
• Watch for Top 5 emails and Online Updates for information on services, events, CE opportunities, upcoming meetings. Committee and meeting minutes are available on the SCLS website.

November 2023 - Sauk County Librarian Reports

Ruth Culver Community Library, Prairie du Sac – Lauren White

     Programs and Other:  

• •  Teens enjoyed caramel apple bites, carving pumpkins and making masks in October.  We gave out 60 teen bags this month as well.  Meagan has ordered colored tape to begin coding the teen section to match the middle school/high school genres. 
  • We had 38 adults come to John Armbruster's presentation about his book Tailspin October 18, and the audience had very positive feedback.  Diane Matzke's free drop-in mindfulness sessions will end December 11 (she has opened her own business now and will be focusing on that).  
  • The 3^rd Annual Community Read is officially over and we had 115 people collectively attend our book discussions, lecture, and film screening, which I think is very successful compared to years past. The most popular event was the Janice Rice lecture, which had 58 attendees—I don’t know that I’ve seen that many adults attend a program since I’ve been here! I’ve encouraged Meagan to pursue additional offerings from the indigenous community since many folks said they attended the events because they were interested in the topic.  
  • I, Lauren, attended the WLA conference in October and had a great time. One of the most interesting sessions was on Annual Report trends that we’re seeing. As experienced at PDS, we see a lot more people using our Wifi than our computers, but we still have a very healthy group of after-school users here for recreation. Another session I really enjoyed was on employee evaluation and the presenter shared that he prefers a continuous feedback model for staff rather than an annual review—this is something I’m thinking more and more about and it was nice to hear it discussed. I also attended an expansion/renovation session, but because one of the presenters was absent, we were really only able to hear from a library that did a renovation (Lake Geneva). I would have liked to hear more from someone that’s gone through an expansion, but I still found the session useful.  
  • We continue to work hard on the strategic plan—Our community conversations are scheduled for December 12^th—an afternoon session will be at RCCL and an evening session will be at GCCL.  
  • We had a lot of fun at our Monster Makerspace. Kids were able to use air dry clay, cardboard, tubes, paper, plates, and lots of other materials to make whatever monster they could imagine. We saw a lot of creativity and troubleshooting when things didn’t quite work as they’d hoped. 
  • There were a lot of cute costumes at our Halloween storytime. We did three books, several rhymes and songs, and then a quick costume parade in the library. Kids were able to try out some carnival-like games afterwards in addition to normal playtime, and we gave out felt animal and superhero masks as well as some temporary tattoos. 
  • For early release Wednesday, Bethany hosted a program where attendees could make their own bristlebots and use our LEGO kits that were recently donated.  

Kraemer Library, Plain – Nick Studnicka
Library is doing a staged lighting conversion.  Also purchasing new office chairs for the Board Room.

Offering a mid-morning matinee: Monthly movie and a meal from Sept through May, with average attendance of 15.  Tuesdays at 4:30pm is afternoon storytime.  Offering tech help day 1 day per month for 3 hours.  Programs include a pumpkin paint night, Elemental movie and pizza and pine-bough. Gnomes & a cookie walk.

Reedsburg Public Library – Sue Ann Kucher

Library has been busy.  Youth Services Librarian recently resigned to be closer to family; have been busy covering schedule & programs, while recruiting for position.

Planning for summer 2024 is underway.  With Youth Services position vacant, Kucher & Assistant Director Opatik are doing the bulk of the planning and coordination.

We’ve been working with Tamara at SCLS on several digitization projects via Recollection Wisconsin.  Have also been working with Ancestry.com/Newspapers.com for digitization of newspaper microfilm collection.

Rock Springs Public Library – Becky Anderson
Becky is working on last Library Management class.  Building repair issues are still underway
Programs include a honeybee program by Joy Carroll, Meditation program by Andrea Jaquish.  North Freedom maintenance and fire departments gave a program. 
They are adding info to their digitization projects.  Staff began RFID tagging of items and added a new printer.

George Culver Community Library, Sauk City  – Lisa Renier Thomas.
Read into record by Kucher

Strategic planning process (with PDS) well underway.

We have five new staff. Held an all day in-service on November 7.

SKC Village Board meets tonight and we are hopeful that our budget will pass as presented, with a substantial increase in Village appropriation. Will bring our starting wage to $15/hour and wage increases for all positions.

Event highlights since last meeting:
Solar Eclipse Party.
Community Read (with PDS as SPCAN partners): William Kent Krueger's This Tender Land.
Holiday Card Buffet for Adults.
Stuffed Animal Sleepover.
Art Journal Take-and-Make for tweens and teens.
Two Storytimes per week.
Music and Movement weekly.
Book Club monthly.
Bingo twice per month.

Spring Green Community Library, Emily Whitmore

• We started a new program called, “Moving Senior Bodies,” which is an exercise class that is meant to help with balance and strength building. It is a joint effort between the Library and the Upland Hills Health Clinic. We have two instructors from Upland Hills that come in every Tuesday and lead the class. It is also very popular with our community. Based on the size of the room, we limited the space to 15 people, and the spots filled very quickly.
• The Library also partnered with the Morrill Lecture Series to participate in the Wisconsin Science Festival. On October 17, Tom Eggert came to the Library and presented a talk entitled: “Sustainability and the Coming Decade.”
• In September and October, we had a very popular program on the history of Spring Green, which was presented by Sauk Country Historical Society Executive Director Paul Wolter.
• I have a new Youth Services Librarian, who started in September. She has jumped right into programming with lots of craft programs as well as fun family events and events for the homeschool families in our community.
• We are looking into getting a new roof. We have not yet sent out the bid, but will do soon, and are hoping for work to get started in the Spring of 2024. 

Kilbourn Public Library, Wisconsin Dells / Lake Delton, Cathy Borck

We have a new library assistant that started on October 9.  He is doing great job. We have reposted our Youth Services library assistant position.  So far we have 3 qualified applicants.  The posting closes on December 3.

We were closed for inventory the week of Veteran’s Day.  We had a good group of volunteers and we were able to inventory our entire collection. We also held our annual volunteer appreciation luncheon on Thursday. We did something a little different this year and had the Hot Dog Avenue food truck come here to the community center.  We also had author, musician and storyteller, Stuart Stotts come and speak. It was a nice afternoon.

Our Friends group held large book sales for the WoZhaWa festival in September and an Autumn sale in October. They are using the Historic Carnegie library for their book sales now. For the large sales we also have 3 tents out. Last weekend they held a Thanksgiving Saturday sale inside only and they will finish up the year with one more holiday sale this Saturday. 

The library held our annual ornament making event Saturday. We have holiday card making next Saturday and one on December 11 for seniors at the Frank Fischer Center. We will also be holding a holiday lego day with building contests, a cookie decorating event, holiday movie days, and parties for our Euchre players and book club members in December.

Our book club is discussing the UW Go Big Read book selection: How Minds Change by David McRaney. Those discussions will be held this week.

The City held their annual employee appreciation luncheon last week. This is the 3^rd year of the event.  This year all employees were also gifted a sweatshirt or fleece.