Board meeting tomorrow in Montesano (feasibility studies for Oakville and Morton)

The two most interesting to read documents for our meeting tomorrow are the feasibility studies for two possible joint use libraries in Oakville and Morton.

We’ve been discussing the future of Oakville (study) for a few years now, hopefully this option of moving into and improving the current high school library is a good option. It sure is nice to see some real words on paper about what exactly the facility would look like.

The facility situation would be much the same in Morton (here’s the study for that facility).

Now, I may be reading this wrong, but the total cost of making over both school libraries into public libraries is included in the studies. For Oakville and Morton, the costs would be $76,000 and $83,000 respectively. The seems like a very reasonable and doable cost for both. I’m very excited.

Here’s the entire meeting packet.

New Olympia library manager coming in June and meeting the public services manager tonight

One important note from the materials for tonight’s meeting posted on the TRL website, there’s a new library manager coming to Olympia. Donna Feddern, who currently works as the Digital Services Manager for the Escondido Public Library in California, will start in June.

Our current executive director, Cheryl Heywood, was the last Olympia manager. But, last year she became the interim public services manager for the entire distirct and then we (the trustees) hired her to be director last fall.

We’ll also be welcoming our new public services manager, Kristine Tardiff, at the meeting tonight. She most recently worked at the San Luis Obispo County Library.

I’m not ashamed to say that California’s loss is Timberland’s gain!

More on maker kits

During the trustee meeting tonight I asked some questions about the maker kits mentioned in the department reports.

The back story is the staff is trying to fit the idea of a makerspace into what TRL calls “programs in a box,” which is a set of supplies a particular library could request and have on had to hold an event. For example, a small rural library could get the knitting “program in a box” delivered and the staff could get acquainted with the program and supplies. Then a week later, they’d hold a program/training on how to knit.

Of course, a knitting kit would qualify as a maker kit.

So, they’re trying to figure out what exactly they could “fit in the box” for maker kits for libraries that don’t have the available space for a permanent makerspace. Tim Mallory, the adult services coordinator, said that their timeline is to have some maker kits deployed by the end of the year.

Entering into negotiations with Cheryl Heywood for the library director position

Earlier tonight the library board voted to enter into negotiations with Cheryl Heywood for the library director. Heywood was one of three candidates that participated in public forums and interviews with the board. She’s currently the interim public services director at Timberland.

The media for tonight’s meeting should be available here soon.

I myself was impressed by the diversity and overall quality of the final candidates. Each had unique qualities and strengths that would have benefited the library. You can read more about the candidates here.

Tracking down an old buddy (other services story and other materials for the next meeting)

Our next meeting is coming up in Salkum this Wednesday. Here’s one of the always awesome service stories (this one from Hoodsport):

A husband and wife stopped into the library and asked how to locate someone in Potlatch, WA. Since there is no official Potlatch city, we asked more questions. The husband was trying to locate a buddy who had served with him in Vietnam. They were split up during the war and he did not even know if his friend had survived. He gave us his name and we looked in the phone book with no success. However, the last name was uncommon and they had the phone number of another family with the last name. We knew them as regular library users, so suggested they call them. The couple walked out into the parking lot, placed the call, and found information that could lead them to Florida and locating his long lost, but not forgotten buddy. We have yet to hear the rest of the story, but hope someday we will.

Where else in the community would someone have been able to drop in an have an experience like this?

You can find the rest of the meeting materials here, including the meeting tentative agenda.

Internet filtering discussion and director search (from the last meeting)

Of course, you can always watch the meeting itself here, but there are two items from the last board meeting (just about a month ago) that are worth mentioning.

1. The Policy committee will take up the topic of internet filtering in the library beginning in June. We’re taking this up now because the federal court in eastern Washington recently ruled on Bradburn v. North Central. The decision allows for more a more stringent filtering regime than what we currently use, basically all filtering all the time.

I don’t have strong feelings about this, other than wanting to at least clearly spell out what our current policy is. Right now, we have defacto all filtered buildings and some with a mix of all filtered and non-filtering internet machines. This isn’t clearly spelled out in our current policies, which are vague enough to allow the current practice.

Also, I’d like to bring together the three policies that cover internet use (computer use, internet use and internet use compliance measures).

In the short term, the policy committee will start out with a broad discussion in June before getting down to more specific options during a later meeting.

2. We also discussed how to approach hiring for the library director position. We were shown options for how to deploy staff and board time during the process, and we settled on a mix of a consultant, some staff involvement and a small group of board members.

Agenda for this Friday’s special meeting

Here is the agenda for the special meeting this Friday at the Service Center.

Termination of agreement with the Timberland Library Foundation

I suppose the only other action worth noting is a letter that will be sent to the Timberland Regional Library Foundation, giving notice that TRL is ending financial support of that organization.

Here is some background on the topic and here is the actual letter that I signed to the organization.

Most directly, this is in reaction to a state auditor’s finding late last year that found the relationship between TRLF and TRL to be unbalanced. In the longer term, this termination is a continuation of a theme we started in the fall of 2010 when we started to distance the district financially from the foundation.

I don’t want to recap the issues between the foundation in this post, reading the links will fill you in. I just want to say I hope there is still a long and fruitful future between the two entities.

Documents and agenda for today’s special meeting

We’ll mostly be covering the final agreement for the Yelm building today in a special board meeting. Here are the documents.

Agenda for today’s special board meeting

Here is the agenda for the special board meeting to finish up the budget related work for last year.