Director's Report

Medway Public Library

Director’s Report

April 2, 2011

Building Maintenance

DPS received quotes from TnT Energy and Keyes for replacement or repair of the two HVAC units that are in bad condition. Replacement of both units is included in the capital plan for FY13.

An electrician is installing cable equipment in the Cole Room from April 2^nd – April 4^th.

The thermostat installers set up remote access to the thermostat controls on the computer in the director’s office and Bill’s computer. The controls should also be accessible from outside the library. It is still possible to change the temperature setting at the thermostat.

Programming

A local attorney would like to present an estate planning seminar, sponsored by the library. The law office is for-profit, of course, but there would be no charge for the program itself.

The MBLC is sponsoring the second annual Library Snapshot Day on April 12^th. Libraries are asked to take photographs and to highlight all the activities that happen at the library. Photos can be taken on a different day that week, if preferred, and will be displayed on Flickr. I will be working with the Friends and with Tammy, who attended the MLS Flickr training session, to coordinate this.

April is National Poetry Month. We are asking for submittals of poems from patrons of all ages, which we will display.

Registration has opened for the Astronomy program, funded by a grant from the Medway Cultural Council, and by the Friends’, on Thursday evening, April 19^th.

Once again, Pat Gipps has kindly offered to hold an additional Paws to Read session on a Saturday during April, to accommodate children who were wait-listed for the session on April 4^th. A question arose as to whether we should restrict registration to Medway residents only. I emailed MBLC to ask whether this was actually allowed. The library can give Medway residents preference in registration, but we cannot prohibit residents from towns with certified libraries from registering for our programs.

Amy Kaufman, a librarian at Framingham/McAuliffe, is interested in offering (at a very reasonable price) a six week summer series of music and stories aimed primarily at babies and toddlers under 3 with a parent. Older children are also welcome to attend. We are planning to offer this series from July 13^th – August 24^th.

I have also talked to a librarian about possibly running the Summer of Science six week program, in conjunction with 4-H, and also a summer YA book group/advisory council.

I gave a tour of the library to an enthusiastic troop of Daisy Girl Scouts. The tour included a library scavenger hunt (for example, finding a book about dinosaurs), which they enjoyed.

Meetings

All department heads were asked to attend a Selectmen’s meeting on March 19th to discuss the budget requests and warrant articles. The Selectmen asked several questions about the Tuchinsky Fund. Suzanne explained that the $20,000 that the Selectmen are proposing to allocate to the library will not affect the Municipal Appropriation Requirement because the money is not in the library’s operating budget, but in a proposed article.

Thanks to a generous donation, I was able to join the American Library Association/Public Library Association, and attend the virtual PLA Conference. This conference included many of the most popular programs, including Engaging with Teens on a Shoestring Budget, Social Media and Your Marketing Strategy, Q & A with Nancy Pearl, iPads in the library: From Tech Programming to Staff Productivity, Program-Palooza: Sixty Programs in Sixty Minutes, Library to Go – Putting Your Library Virtually Anywhere, Combating Negativity Nellies in the Workplace, and several others. The Virtual Conference was very informative, and I heard a lot of great ideas, both from the presenters and from the other listeners.

I attended the Membership meeting of Minuteman Library Network library directors on March 21st. Several changes have been made to the Overdrive digital catalog. The children’s and young adult books will now appear as ribbons separate from the adult books, at the top of the page, and the “recently returned” ribbon has been removed. However, the search box searches the children’s, young adult, and adult collections. In a few weeks, we will have a new, improved version of the Overdrive digital media catalog web site, which Susan McAlister demonstrated. There are other e-book vendors marketing to libraries, and a task force will look into what they offer. Meanwhile, there was a consensus that the amount invested in Overdrive per year should not increase. The members were polled on whether they thought we should keep 39 controversial titles that are currently in the Overdrive collection, and the majority said yes. However, when polled as to whether the collection development committee should be continue to purchase titles in that subject area, 16 directors said no, and 15 said yes. Shared collection development is a new area for Minuteman. There was some discussion about whether a digital version of a controversial book that is on the New York Times bestseller list, “Fifty Shades of Grey,” should be purchased. (Currently that title and the other two books in the trilogy are numbers 1, 2, and 4 on the Combined Print & E-book Fiction NYT Bestseller list). A task force is working on revising the collection development policy. The Membership Committee has scheduled an extra meeting on April 25^th to discuss this issue further.

Overdrive

The staff has been familiarizing themselves with the Kindle, the Nook, and the Sony e-readers. The Sony e-reader allows the user to use the digital catalog, download books, and read them without needing access to a computer. The Sony reader is available at a discounted price, similar to the price of a low-end Nook.

Friends of the Library

I have ordered the Museum of Fine Arts pass, which we have been able to purchase thanks to a generous donation from the Middlesex Savings Bank to the Friends.

The Friends of the Library have made a lot of money from the books which are sold from the cart near the door. They asked for additional space so they could display more books for sale. The display shelves which formerly held Friends’ information and displays on one side, and Graphic Novels and Large Print books on the other side, will now be used exclusively for Friends’ displays and their book sale.

-Margaret Perkins