International Falls Public Library Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes
October 13, 2021
Present: Diane Adams – Library Director, Dick Peterson, Paul Nevanen, Mona Johnson, MaryJo Winkel, Heather Weaver and Darcy Sullivan.
Peterson called the meeting to order at 4:26 pm.
Motion by Nevanen, second by Winkel to approve the September minutes. All approved.
Motion by Nevanen, second by Sullivan to approve the October bills. All approved.
Director’s Report – September circulation was down from both August 2021 and September 2020. We are still 10% above 2020 circulation. Given the spike in COVID in the community, I’m not particularly surprised. The library also recommended masks be worn beginning mid-September. Storytime was held indoors the first week and outside since then. As long as we can, I will hold storytime outside. The last two weeks have been much smaller crowds, but again, I’m not viewing as an issue due to high COVID numbers in the community. And I think we have a method of preparing an online story each week as well and will continue posting one story each week online. It took us several weeks to learn the software and get stories ready to post.
Take home Libratory bags have been put out each Tuesday, we are currently putting together ten bags each week and all ten are going out by Monday. This past week all ten were gone by Thursday morning. But it seems to vary from week to week. If we are consistently seeing them all go out in two days we’ll increase to a dozen bags. We are also working with Ellen and Nora to film the unveiling of the bag being put out on October 26th. We can make as many of that project, a catapult for small candy, as we have demand for. We’ll see if that gives us an increase in those stopping by each week to pick up bags.
We are also hoping that Libratory can move to in-house program status soon. The variety of projects we can do will increase tremendously if we don’t have to be able to bag up all the supplies and find projects that could be done unsupervised safely.
Old Business – upcoming programs – storytime continues Thursday mornings, weekly Libratory bags for pickup on Tuesdays until gone, monthly teen and adult craft project.
Fireplace insert – no word
ARPA – applied for subgrant of $4,800 from ALS, would like to recommend using leftover carpet money to get about $5,000 each of Wonderbooks (picture books), and Playaways for youth and then adults. Board agreed with budget change
Strategic Plan – talked through plan, encouraged all to read and submit corrections etc. with approval of final plan in November
New Business – Holiday schedule, will be closed on Thanksgiving Day, open Friday. Close at 1pm on Friday Dec. 24th, re-open Tuesday, December 28. Closed Friday, December 31 and Saturday January 1, open Monday, January 3.
Donations – from Darrell Schmidt – $20 for Bonnie Roberts, $20 for Ralph Awe, and $100 for Mary Lou Pearson, from Tucky Dill $100 for Wally Herman, from Ladd & Onida Kocinski $10 for Wally Herman and $50 for Shirley Kocinski and from Paul & Karen Early $50 for Shirley Kocinski. Motion by Johnson and second by Weaver to accept donations. All approved.
What are you reading? – Darcy is spending all her time filming fall sports, Paul is reading Cloudmaker by Malcolm Brooks, Mona is reading Wally Lamb’s I’ll Take You There and MaryJo is reading Wonder Boy of Whistlestop Cafe by Fannie Flagg – a definite feel good read. Heather is reading Set the Stars Alight by Amanda Dyks, Dick finished the latest Virgil Flowers book by John Sandford and Never Caught by Erica Dunbar and Diane is reading Four Lost Cities by AnnaLee Newitz.
The next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, November 10th, 2021 at 4:30 pm.
Meeting ended at 5:03 pm.