Library Trustee Meeting Minutes

Meeting date: 
Monday, January 11, 2021

Richard Sugden Library Trustees’ Meeting

January 11, 2021

In Attendance:

Cheryl A. Donahue, Director

Katie Smith, Children’s Librarian

Mary Anne Slack, Chair

Lynn Dobson, Trustee

Alyson Russo, Trustee

 

The meeting was called to order at 4:30 PM.

Mary Anne made a motion to accept the minutes from the November 16, 2020 meeting. Lynn seconded the motion.

The December Trustees’ meeting was cancelled due to an increase in the Covid 19 cases in town and no immediate action was needed by the Trustees.

 

Children’s Room:

 

Community Connections continues to provide monthly kits for distribution, both for the months of December and January.

Several craft kits including snowman puppet kits and Q-Tip snowflake crafts, mosaic Gingerbread crafts and doily snowman crafts have been made for distribution. Chenille Stem icicle crafts and Plastic spoon penguin puppet crafts will be distributed at the end of the month.

Katie bought 6 titles of 30 books each with themes of kindness, self-esteem and positivity to create kits and then give away in February.

The grades 5-8 book club did not have any takers this month so it was decided to take a break from offering book clubs.

Amy has created light sculpture kits, light challenge kits for grades K-5 for December

Amy made bride and waterwheel kits for January. She used Zoom for grs K- 5 for the bridge challenge kit. It was successful.

The luminaries were a success from many different age groups.

Katie is ordering 16 different Apps for the new IPad.

Katie continues to hone her library skills by continuing education classes via webinars.

Katie applied for a grant for a multi-generational virtual programming. She asked for 12 ukeleles and a leader to teach how to play them.

 

Director’s Report:

 

Cheryl attended a department head meeting Dec. 16th, and a Zoom Directors’ meeting on January 4th.

Cheryl met with Town manager to go over budget for next year. Cheryl will send budget to Trustees to review. The budget is level funded. There is no capital request submitted this year.

 

Programming:

We continue to connect with our patrons through Constant Contact and remote programming. Wendy O’Leary continues her Pause Meditation classes, she also held a Zoom book discussion on Dec. 17th.

Denise Farmosa did a Zoom book discussion in January, 2021.

Sixty luminaries were brought back to the library to celebrate the winter solstice. All ages participated.

 

Staff:                    

Staff continues to provide Curbside delivery and phone services. All six staff members are working in the library using Covid 19 precautions.

Staff attended staff meeting via Zoom on Dec. 7th and January 4th.

Updated library website started on January 4th. It is still a work in progress.

Our Library Page has not been working.

 

Building:

There have been more boiler problems. The temperature of the library dropped into the 50s and staff was sent home to work.

Only one boiler is working. Town administrator and MPC are working in conjunction with the library to address this problem. MPC will address the water problem by testing the water, cleaning out the system by flushing. Piping must be redone and the water must be filtered to neutralize iron and other particles to protect the boilers.

Town manager was able to get a new boiler through an insurance claim.

The engineering company, Fuss & O’Neil have completed an evaluation of the drainage issues at the library.

Work on the library’s gutter project is on hold as the town is requesting more information before work can begin. The highway department and Steve Tyler are now involved working on the drainage problem.

 

Next Trustees’ meeting will be Monday, February 8th at 4:30PM