Children's Services Meeting Minutes for February 2014

Date: February 13, 2014

Location: Warr Acres Library 

Attendance: Cheryll Jones – SO, Megan Huggins – BI, Carol Roberts – CT, Rondia Banks – NW, Alma Brown – WA, Annie Emmons – NW, Kelley Riha – OUT, Sally Gray – VI, Emily Williams – OUT, Kristin Williamson – OUT, Mary Sholly – OUT, Janeal Walker – NW, Dana Morrow – OUT, Meghan Attalla – RE, Edie Daniels – AL, Kari Fox – ED, Vickie Saxton –NP, Daniel Fields – BE, Kate Etzkorn – MC, Amy Thomas – ED, Jessica Gonzalez – DN, Jennifer Jones -  CH, Tulin Lafollette – DC

Introductions and greetings

Kristin created a display of some of the award winning books (Newbery, Caldecott, Coretta Scott King, Belpré, Geisel, & Seibert awards) for librarians to look at and check out as they wanted. Kristin is starting to plan for Fall 1-2-3 Play With Me and passed a sign-up sheet for librarians to choose when they would like to have it at their library. For those who did not commit dates at the meeting can let Kristin know their dates by the end of February.  The City County Health Department has resource professionals in Child Guidance available for a fee and Nutritionists which are free.

Infant Crisis Center
Infant Crisis Center presented a reminder of the services they offer. They handed out “referral pads” for the librarians to give to families that could benefit from their services. They are in the process of closing 2 of their branches because they are not frequented as much as the main location. They will be starting a mobile branch that will hopefully bring them into the communities that need them the most. For more info or any other questions contact Meg Standefer – Family Services Coordinator: [email protected] (405)778-7606 or 4224 N Lincoln BLVD, OKC, OK 73105 also you can visit their website at www.infantcrisis.org . They love the library and will be happy to hand out INFO magazines as they have them!

Marketing – Kim Terry
The MLS will be getting a new calendar system called “Sign-up”.  It is an Evanced Solutions program, the same company who is providing the online Summer Reader program.  All of the Evanced Solution products we will be using will be able to talk to each other.  Programs added in “Sign Up” can be added to our Summer Reader site and be able to give customers another level of interaction with the programs and services we offer.  Transitioning to the new “Sign Up” system will happen fairly quickly.  Our go live date  for the public to start using “Sign Up” is June 1st.  We will use both systems for May; this will be like a practice month for librarians and managers.   The workflow will change and now Managers will have the ability to decide when to publish a calendar entry. This is great because it will allow instantaneous changes to wrong dates, cancelled programs etc. Watch MyMetrolibrary and your email for news on training and updated timelines. 

MAC is currently working on simplifying the project request form.  We are planning to add more templates to the MAC resources page. Everybody should consider attending the BLT class. This class is to help you learn how to create little “blurbs” for your programs that are fun, flashy, and informational!

Michael Corley -Magician
Michael presented some of his “older crowd” tricks to entertain the librarians. He has a science theme planned for the summer if anybody wants to hire him for summer programs. All of his info is in the artist presenters database.

Family Builders – Lauren Rivers
Family Builders is a Non-Profit Organization located Downtown. They are working to teach children about abuse and bullying. They have a new program called “Kids on the Block”. This is a puppet program designed to educate kids on what bullying and abuse are and what to do if you or somebody you know is involved in one of these situations. There are a few different shows with different lengths for age groups to different situations. Everyday in Oklahoma, there are 26 confirmed abuse situations. 1 in 3 children have been bullied or have witnessed bullying.  1 in 10 children talk about the abuse/bullying situation and 70% of those are told on accident. The puppet shows are geared toward children Pre-k - 6th grade. May is the earliest they would be ready to present, would like no more than 50 in a show.  For more information you can contact Lauren at: [email protected] or (405)232-8226.

OSU Extensions – Amanda and Maryam
OSU Extension office has lots of great outreach programs that they currently offer to the library system for free, all you have to do is pay for supplies. They have a great number of kitchen chemistry programs planned that would go great with Summer Reading. They have many aged programs from child to adult. For more information contact Amanda Horn at: [email protected]. They also offer bi-lingual and Spanish programs.

Material Selection – Janet Brooks
Janet talked about weeding.  Janet mentioned if you do not have any books on your 24 month list, you can look at what books are oldest in your section and recommend buying newer editions as they come out. Janet received a list of Common Core books. Janet talked about a Common Core 101 webinar that is being offered from an outside source, the webinar is only $14.95. Janet had some suggestions for displays and how to get ideas for displays.

King’s Castle Montessori  - Jeniphur King
Jeniphur presented some information about Montessori school and how this type of learning is a sensory friendly study. Jeniphur would like to present a program that would be a 4 week series on senses at the libraries. Jeniphur does not plan to charge at this time.  She can be reached at 405-420-5726 or [email protected]

Summer Volunteers – Heidi Port
Heidi has not yet sent out the request for returning volunteers. She is going to send the SPOC’s a list of last year’s volunteers for them to pick from the list the who they would like to invite back this year. The current goal is to send those invitations to the teens by Monday March 3^rd. Heidi passed out a list of questions that have been asked and answered them the best that she could. Since Summer Reading is changing this year, we don’t know all that will happen or for sure how many volunteers will be needed. Heidi also handed out some ideas of what volunteers could do at the libraries. She encourages each SPOC to look at the list and decide from there, their needs. There is now a new volunteer welcome website. Please look over these as they are cute little videos that we are encouraging all of our volunteers to view as sort of an orientation.  http://www.metrolibrary.org/volunteer_welcome/  

Sharing

Rondia NW
Presented a rhyme “6 Little Valentine’s” and her flannel board pieces she made to go with them.  She had a special game in storytime for Valentine’s Day. Each child received a colored heart and when the color that they were holding was called, each child got to come to the front of the room and drop their heart in a box. Teaches taking turns and increases color familiarity.

Alma WA
Made puppets to help with the 1-2-3 Play With Me based on language. These were made out of spare parts of stuff from socks, to string. She gave everybody one of her spare puppets.

Jennifer CH
Brought her activity dice to show the rest of the group. These are dice that are rather large and the faces can be changed on them to present different things such as numbers, letters, or different activities for children to do.  She has art programs in the afternoon and did one based on I Love Art and a child made a very cute picture that he gave to the library.

Annie NW
Annie has been doing something a little different with her crafts.  In some programs, she is encouraging the parents to see art time as a launch pad for discussion. Instead of insisting that a child has to do exactly what the craft provided, she is encouraging them to use this time to talk about what was presented and what the differences might be. Annie brought some left over craft supplies to share with the group.

Meghan RE
Did a chromatography program that the kids loved. Will be having Sisters in Motion back to do hula hoop demonstrations and classes. They are also doing a program about Hawaii.

Emily OUT
After School @ your Library starts at 10 different libraries in March. The age range for these programs is 10-16ish so there is cross over between Children’s and YA. This year we were unable to get comics for Free Comic Book Day, but we can still do programming and encourage kids to go to comic book stores to get free comics.

Kristin OUT
We don’t currently have all the details about Summer Reading yet but we are excited about the new sign up process. Please read the ITR minutes to keep up to date on changes and decisions made. We will have a staff preview of the reading program in April so be on the look out!

Thank you for coming today our next meeting is:  Children’s Retreat April 9^th at Downtown Library.

Adjourned