News:

• Just an update on HB2644 (Public Meetings). Larry has been tracking HB 2644 that would have extended the date to which a public body may hold meetings by teleconference or videoconference to March 31, 2024. It apparently died in committee, so there will be no extension for the use of virtual meetings.

Notes: May 27, this bill died in committee, so there will be no extension for virtual meetings, so public meetings will be in person. (Staff may continue to have virtual internal meetings.)

• DVS would like to briefly discuss in news that we plan to take donations/circulate black bins again on July 1 (already cleared with Chris/RDs and Dennis); but we will not largely communicate this until Aug. 1 in concert with all other ‘re-opening’ messages. Our intention here is to not overwhelm staff or volunteers in the first month of circulating the bins as we slowly continue this community service.

Notes: on or before July 1, black bins will be placed in libraries so that we can resume taking donations from the public at all locations. A message will be sent to all correspondents reminding them of processes and guidelines for collecting donations. We will not publicly announce that we are taking donations again until August 1 to allow employees and Friends volunteers to acclimate to the shift.

• Southern Oaks Library, Susan Stinson announced her retirement, after 40 years working for the library. Susan has been a Circulation Clerk/Access Specialist for most of those years, at SO. She will be greatly missed by her co-workers and all who knows and has worked with Susan.

Notes: Susan retirement party was last week; she had a nice send off for her 40 years at MLS.

• Humidity troubles at DC are getting worked on, dehumidifiers are removing water. We will continue to monitor this situation and the weather, as the humid outside air is contributing to the situation.  

• Federal money is sent to the state library (ODL) for OK, we can apply for up to $200,000 for purchasing technology to help with our Covid response. We will get a proposal to ODL in the next couple of months. ODL reports will ask for other information they have not requested before. It may turn out that we are not required to report this year, but rather volunteered information, but it will be required next year.

• Just under 8000 people have signed up for Summer Reading, so far. We have already surpassed 2020's Summer Reading enrollment numbers for the entire summer in the first two weeks this year. 

• Edmond Kiosk is running late, we will not move forward until we know when they will pour the slab for the kiosk to sit on with awning. We are hoping by the end of July 2021, this will be concluded. 

• Edmond II, Anthony & Larry met with assistant City manager, shared information back and forth. They let us know they wanted a “palace” with all the bells and whistles, and we let them know that we would need to review our options for providing services and collections given our limitations of resources. 

• Almonte, has been reduced in size from 24,000 to 20,000 sq ft, due to the increasing expense of building materials, causing the project to go over budget.

DOES Updates Notes:

• Farmer’s Markets at Scissortail- info table every Saturday starting last week. First one very successful.
• Neighborhood Arts programs started this week. Few hiccups but going strong.
• North Care: The RD’s wanted to start at SO & DN; Kimberly will send updates when she can.
• Palomar, Breakfast Club Meeting in August to update services, SR bookmarks/Pride/Summer Feeding info shared with them and other partners.
• Grant for (Folk Arts) Traditions of Oklahoma from Arts Council to bring folk traditions to OKC, likely to include an Artist in Residence type program over fall 2021 and Spring 2022. Potential artists include Francisco Trevino, unique LatinX folk songs/stories, and Beverly Kirk, quilter of original African American Oklahoma cities. May be able to add additional artist, please let Kimberly know if you know of any Vietnamese, Indigenous lesser-known artists as possibilities.

Visits:    NW 06/02/21

Action Items:

• Procedure VG 400.1 review (Sent under separate email) Approve at 6/23 meeting.

Provide feedback over the next week or so for VG 400.1, give feedback by Wed. Jun 16, to Larry

• Peer Data Review

We discussed the data review with our peer libraries, sent out by Larry after last meeting. There were some comparisons to Tulsa City County Library System, discussion about differences and comparisons with us and the 58 library systems reviewed, looking at where we rank and our comparison to Tulsa, the only other library system in Oklahoma that made this report.

• Internal Data review

We will review this information from Larry at our next meeting. See email from Larry White, 5/26/21 Subject: Requested Data sets

• VH 110, asking to be eliminated. This request is going to Commission.

• Anne & Risa have been working with TLC to get our 3-year library card process started. The overdue fines forgiveness pilot project will begin July 1, 2021. The library card process is to clean up the database of cards that haven’t been used in three years and then create a system to have a primary and reciprocal cards expire every three years.  On those, if they are in good standing and have been used in the last year, they would autorenew.  We would let the customer know that they were going to expire but tell them that we were going to auto-renew it since it was in good standing and had been used in the last year.  We would also ask if any of their information had changed to please go to “My Account” in the catalog and update their contact information.
• BI construction is running a little late, so may have to stay in our temporary location longer than we thought, and Anthony is working to see if we can extend lease, month by month, starting in January 2021. 

  Our lease at the temporary site is set to run out in December so we are trying to negotiate extending it month to month since we know we probably can’t move into the remodeled building by December.

   

Next meeting: 6/23 – LT / SMG Meetings