Town Hall Meeting Notes, December 2008

Director Barbara Gubbin welcomed participants and announced that town hall meetings will be held quarterly this year and that she will invite senior staff to participate. Keith McLaughlin, Assistant Director for Partnerships and Communications, will make a presentation at this meeting.

Ms. Gubbin reviewed FY08 successes:

Annual Statistical Report
Circulation 8.8M (+3%)
Gate 4.9M (+6%)
Web Site Use 4.6M (+16%)
Reference 1.3M (+15%)
Meeting room use: 21,991 ((+30%)
Volunteers Hours: 39,000 hours (+6%)

DESTINATION:leadership
Number of staff who attended by 9/30/08 – 245
On track to complete training of all full-time staff by February 2009
Average increase in confidence level on 23 leadership measures -18.3%
Over-all percentage of students who Agreed or Strongly Agreed that the content of the class would be helpful to them in their jobs – 92%

Some highlights from the comments:
· “The class helped me see how we can all be leaders because of our different strengths in different areas.”
· “I liked the fact that everyone from the Director to clerks will be required to attend - If we are using this content to change our culture, we all must be involved and we all must be held accountable to adopt these principles to the best of our ability.”
· “I enjoyed the challenge to become a better person.”

Service Area Profiles - Congratulations to Main, Westbrook, Northwest, Maxville, Regency, and Pablo Creek for completing their service area profiles. Mapping the service area and learning more about the people and organizations that we serve is an essential step in collection management and in becoming actively engaged with the community. The profiles themselves are located on the Portal and are very much “living documents” which will be updated and changed. Seven additional branches will complete the service area profile process this fiscal year.

Youth Services Retreat – The retreat was actually held in November, but has been in the works for some time and so I will count it as a success for FY08. Kudos to Kathy Graw and her team for a great day of team building and learning focused on “tweens” (10-14 years), and ways to keep them engaged in age and developmentally appropriate activities in the community. This was the second annual youth services retreat and I have asked my staff to consider retreats for other groups too.

The Board of Library Trustees held a planning retreat in November to evaluate strategic direction for the library. Board members, senior staff and representatives from the FOL and JPLF attended. The participants engaged in a SWOT analysis to identify strengths, challenges, opportunities and threats to the Library. While a great deal was accomplished, the Board did not complete the process and will meet with the retreat facilitator again this month.

Ms. Gubbin complimented staff for the focus on positive customer service outcomes this year as part of the performance measure process. She also complimented staff on the decision to develop:
a. Individual action plans to improve upon leadership practices
b. Select branch specific Customer Satisfaction survey results to meet over the year

Ms. Gubbin recognized staff achievements:
a. Theresa Barmer, Robin Cumby and the Webb staff are routinely doing 80% of their circulation on the self-check machines!
b. Lynn Jacobson and Karen Walker led the charge to teach staff about Web 2.0 technologies for communications with JPL Learning 2.0 classes. 47 people graduated from the first class and another class has begun.
c. Daniel Kibler and staff at Maxville, and Laura Minor and staff in Special Collections/Genealogy have customer blogs; the Main Teen Department has a MySpace page; and Mathew Moyer writes a music blog for Library Journal.
d. Mark Hohnadel has been selected to participate in the Sunshine State Leadership Institute. Laura Minor is a recent graduate of the SSLI.
e. Sharon Hastings, Karen Wishart and the CAL staff had been featured in the FTU and on TV for a new adult literacy program being held at the jail.
f. Richard Mott, Kate Holmes and each of you helped JPL win NEFLIN’s coveted “Golden Apple” award for the largest number of participants in NEFLIN training.
g. The Main Library received two awards from 904 magazine for “Favorite Public Space” and “Best Off-Site Meeting Location”.
h. Conference Center Manager Mitesh Sangani and his staff exceeded their revenue goal this past year. Our Conference Center is one of the most popular places to meet in Jacksonville, especially in May and June.

Dr. Keith McLaughlin, Assistant Director of Partnerships and Communication, discussed the structure of his department. Jenny Mooney became the Community Education and Enrichment Program Supervisor in September. She will coordinate, develop and structure JPL’s adult programming, which can be defined as programming for age 18 years and over. Ms. Mooney and Kathy Graw, Youth Services Coordinator, work together to coordinate and develop programs that are family oriented or are theme-based for all ages, such as JaxReads and poetry. Ms. Mooney has been putting more structure in the program planning process and will include a program proposal for adult programming. This spring we will focus programming efforts on JaxReads, Investor Education, the Library Awareness Campaign and an adult component to summer reading. Ms. Mooney is developing a timeline and structure for annual program themes with input from public service staff. We plan to include a few key outside experts yet to be identified in a program advisory capacity.

Margaret Smith, who recently retired from JPL, was hired through a Big Read grant from NEA to the JPL Foundation. She will help us coordinate, plan and oversee JaxReads the Big Read in the spring. This will help supplement our limited resources in the programming office. Ms. Smith and Ms. Mooney will work together on this project.

The second major area in P&C is marketing and media relations, which Stacie Bucher coordinates, assisted by Wally Bowden, Graphic Artist. Ali Johnson also assists her part-time on writing projects, such as JPL’s annual report, a fact sheet designed for local and state officials, various flyers and brochures, new programming guide, pitches to the media and Next Reads. Pam Beaton supports both the marketing and programming areas.

The third major area of P&C is resource development and grant writing, which Pam McClellan coordinates. She pursues grants and helps write grants and proposals, such as Big Read, our grants through Investor Protection Trust for Investor Education programs, poetry programs, bookshelf grants, exhibit grants and programs such as the recent Benjamin Franklin presentation and exhibit. She also handles applications for various awards that are available through the Florida Library Association, American Library Association, and others.

The fourth major area is the Conference Center, under the leadership of Mitesh Sangani, assisted by Will Daniels, Chris James, Calvin Webster and Bernard Smith. We operate as both a revenue generating business and as a service to library programs and events. We have done well during the first two years of operation and funds raised help cover staff and other operating expenses, but the majority of our business in the Conference Center is still non-revenue generating, including library programs.

Frank Smith works part-time in P&C and is our “air traffic controller”. He is taking on additional responsibilities beyond the Conference Center and is helping us manage the work flow in and out of the department. We set up a new centralized email address, primarily to be used by staff, and all requests and questions for P&C will flow through him and help us better manage projects and better serve all of you. This will be sent out in writing with additional information; the email address is pc@coj.net .

Dr. McLaughlin discussed partnerships as both a concept and as a strategic issue. A partnership may be defined as a relationship that is formed with one or more organizations to engage in a mutually beneficial project, program or service. It enhances and complements what each organization does, or creates something completely new for the customers or stakeholders of the partnering organizations.

Partnership development within the library system is not intended to be totally centralized or the sole responsibility of Partnerships and Communication. Branch staff has been very successful in developing strong, beneficial partnerships with organizations in the communities they serve and we encourage this to continue. There are also some deliberate, focused partnerships we are engaged in from a centralized point of view that will benefit the entire system.

Melonee Slocum suggested having workshops or conversations with staff about developing partnerships and we will do that in coming months.

There are basic principals and best practices to follow, particularly when entering into a formal arrangement, as we do with partnerships developed around grant funded projects, but most successful partnerships are based on the same foundation of mutual benefit, communication and cultivation over time. Dr. McLaughlin encouraged staff to think about how partnerships can be formed that will enhance, improve or enable branches to do something totally different that will delight and enrich customers. Potential partners may not always be obvious to us and we need to think “outside the box”.

The upcoming Library Awareness Campaign, or what has been previously referred to as the Library Card Campaign, was discussed. We need to be more proactive and reach more people about our wonderful services. In the spring, we will begin the new Library Awareness Campaign. The committee for planning this campaign consisting of Laura Minnich, Ron Block, Stacie Bucher, Wally Bowden, Jenny Mooney, Don Carpenter, and Keith McLaughlin, along with Brunet Garcia and a representative from American Institute of Graphics Artists (AIGA).

For the first six months we will have an advertising campaign on radio, TV and billboards, as well as outreach by branches. The next 12 months we will look to the branches to continue with outreach efforts. This is about us all being actively engaged in what JPL does. We will be sharing with the community what they can do with a library card—using our website, our resources, a PIN, etc. The library card is tangible and helps us have a convenient way to promote the Library Awareness Campaign. We plan to use the slogan “Your ticket to ________” or “My ticket to ________” and let customers fill in the blank.

American Institute of Graphic Artists is making this a major project and they are putting a survey together to be used prior to the campaign and one for a post campaign survey so we can judge the success of the campaign. High school students will compete in a library card design contest.


QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

When are we expected to be able to hire pages again?
Alan Mosley, the Mayor’s Chief Administrative Officer, has not indicated that the City’s hiring freeze can be lifted considering the present economy. Director Gubbin will apprise everyone when a decision is made; a change is not expected soon. There is some flexibility – if you have a PT staff member working less than 24 hours and another PT staff member quits, you may add hours up to the 24 hour cap with the approval of your Administrative Supervisor.

What changes/enhancements are incorporated into the new Workflows system?
We are upgrading our SIRSI Dynix system to a new release on Staff Development Day, March 18, 2009. We will have lots of training before that.
Key Enhancements for Workflows Upgrade:
· New staff client with updated “look and feel” and enhanced Windows functionality
· Better matching for duplicate user records
· User alerts now pop up on screen without having to click on “alerts”
· New holdings displays
· Browse searching is no longer in uppercase
· Several key enhancements for technical services in Cataloging, Acquisitions and ILS.

Our projected go live date for the new Workflows Client is Monday, March 23rd. Training will be scheduled in the two weeks prior to the go live date and will be a combination of classroom training and online, self-paced modules.

Why are you closing the Conference Center two days a week? Is that cost effective?
We close on Sunday, except for space needed for library programs and for a few customers who rent space the whole weekend. Monday we are closed both to outside customers and to the library because we do not have resources to open seven days a week. We need Monday to catch up on cleaning, etc. Yes, it is cost effective.

How can we increase circulation (performance) and decrease staff (hiring freeze)? Is this contradictory? We want to increase circulation of reading materials by 2%. What we are talking about here is marketing—encouraging people to read through reader advisories, story hour and displays. For example, Kema DeSagrada is putting stickers on books with notes such as “You might want to read” and “Book of the Week”. Displays can be used to promote reading materials. It is a challenge, but we have to set numerical goals in advance of the budget being set by City Council.

When can we go out and buy books from vendors? It took a while to get bids approved, but the paperwork is signed and we can now proceed with our orders. We have a multi-year contract so this time next year; we will not have to go through this process and will be able to order materials a lot earlier.

Is there any word about library operating hours? We had proposed making some changes at Bradham Brooks Northwest and at University Park. UPK’s usage is almost up to regional branch levels and we need to change their hours. I am holding off doing anything right now because we may need to make more global changes. We do not want to change some hours now and have to make more shortly thereafter. We are looking at business levels on an hour-by-hour basis at every library.

Graham Branch is closing at 8 pm now. Will that be the case for other libraries such as Murray Hill and Maxville? From 7 pm – 9 pm there is very little business, especially the last hour.

Security and safety were the issues at GB and closing at 8 pm is good for that branch. I am not planning to make other changes in hours right now.

What type of staff feedback are you looking for on the Library Awareness Campaign and when are you asking for it? Staff at branches will be asked to start participating in mid to late February. We will need to know how we can utilize our plans in your areas and how branches individually fit in the overall campaign, and then we will launch the campaign. Our committee has one more meeting next week to streamline our plans.

Will you be developing partnerships with the branches? The community profiles that branches construct will help staff recognize what partnerships can be developed. I will be working with Melonee Slocum to present a workshop on partnerships to the community profile team.