610 Quincy St. ź Rapid City, SD  57701

605-394-4171 ź www.rapidcitylibrary.org

 

DIRECTOR’S REPORT:  JUNE  2005

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

 

ADMINISTRATION

G. Chapman is scheduled once a month to work in a library department. Also scheduled is conducting a tour of city facilities and operations for new employees twice a year or as needed. May 16, the SD Newspaper Digital Steering Committee met in Pierre. Minutes are attached. ASFCME Negotiations have started and are scheduled to continue with meetings in June. Budget meetings have been held with City Department Heads and Mayor. A recommendation is due to the Mayor by mid June. The recommendation for the Mayor will be approved by the Library Board. G. Chapman chaired the SDLA Library Issues Committee conference call wrapping up the 2005 SDLA Legislative issues and planning for the 2006 Platform Meetings – Wed, June 15, at Rapid City Public Library, 1 – 4:00 p.m. Agenda attached.   

 

 

Building & Grounds:  Phase two Network office remodel is scheduled for this week. This part of a plan related to the air handling reconfiguration that took place last year. Funding is within the existing library budget. Replaced small pebbles with larger landscaping rock to reduce cleaning time. Construction for a new membrane roof is going to Council for CIP funding approval Monday, June 6. Replacement would be scheduled for completion no later than the end of this year. The state recently replaced platforms and air quality monitoring units on the north side of the roof.

 

Public Information and Programming:

 

·         New Hours promotions

·         IMLS Grant – revised narrative draft

·         Foundation – invitation, mailings, and PSAs for Stephanie Kane events

·         Summer Reading Program – documents and publicity

·         Lunch and Learn – flyer for local businesses, web page and book mark

·         Publications – June newsletter and calendar; computer course brochures; thank you cards for City Depts.; CD library tour card; Mothers’ Day seed packet/recommended book list gift

 

Training:

All staff members received refresher information on the Tornado Alert and Power Outage procedures. These procedures are part of the RCPL Safety Manual.

 

Greg Russ gave a demonstration to staff members on the new wireless projector system.

 

At the all staff meeting in May, staff received information on the youth and adult summer reading programs for this year.

 

Youth services staff used the wireless lab was used to instruct 26 students at the Rapid City Boys Club in the use of the KidsCat, the library’s kid-friendly online catalog.

 

PUBLIC SERVICES/YOUTH

 

Programs: The 2005 Summer Reading Program began on May 22nd.  Throughout the month of May, Youth Services staff visited local public and private elementary schools to promote summer reading and library resources.

           

Services: Homework Help computer stations continue to be well used.  Students logged nearly 170 hours of homework time on these computers during May.

 

Collections: May is a popular month for school group visits to the library.  Six groups and a total of 274 students received tours along with special presentations or story times.  These tours offer an opportunity to educate young people on the many collections, online resources and services available.

 

PUBLIC SERVICES/ADULT SERVICES-REFERENCE

 

Programs:  In the last of the SD History series programs, Rick Mills showed a video on the history of SD railroads. The 26 attendees had a lively question and answer session after the movie.  Micki Douglas from the Social Security office offered information on the new SSA programs.

 

Services:  Roaming continues to be a popular service, with 105 questions being asked this month. Staff proctored 12 exams in May. 

 

Other:  The reference work area has been reconfigured; two new staff desks replaced the old reference desk that was still being used. This adds space to the reference work area and will allow for some changes in configuration. Staff has continued to select materials for their areas as well as doing collection assessment. They have been active in the monthly Readers’ Advisory meetings as well.

 

SUPPORT SERVICES/CIRCULATION
  • We are using receipt printers at the front desk, which give patrons a slip with the titles and due date of each of their items.
  • Our Mother’s Day Patron Perks program was successful. We gave out 100 packets of seeds with bookmarks listing flower-gardening books.
  • Staff contacted local businesses for donations of prizes for the adult summer program, Distant Places.
  • We developed a report in Aleph to check the popularity of newly-ordered materials to ensure that we are creating a popular collection.
  • We have implemented a new ILL procedure which allows the ILL duties to be spread across the department, where previously only a few staff could work with the system.
  • SDLN was able to implement a new overdue report script which allows us to mail the third overdue notices. Previously the first through third notices were combined in a single file and the notices to be mailed could not be separated.

 

Outreach/Volunteers:  
  • Six new homebound patrons were added in May. We delivered to 58 of the 76 active patrons in the program this month.

·                                 In May, 38 volunteers contributed 501 hours, falling short of our goal by 19 hours.
  • Librarian Is are evaluating volunteer position descriptions to fill departmental needs. They are also discussing a change in the 6 month review to an annual review for volunteers.
  • Readers’ Corps senior reading program now has two volunteers; one volunteer at Holiday Hills and one at Fountain Springs
  • We have given 19 youth tours toward the goal of 45 (42%), and 5 adult tours toward the goal of 30 (18%).

 

SUPPORT SERVICES/NETWORK SERVICES

 

Services: 

  • Setting up streaming video server
  • Researching Captivate training software
  • Working with macromedia Flash
  • Working on city template changes
  • Installed Deepfreeze to replace Centurion guard to protect machine hard drives

 

 

SUPPORT SERVICES/TECHNICAL SERVICES
Services: 
  • Thanks to Aleph and our bar-coding of magazines, we now have meaningful and comprehensive magazine usage statistics for all of the magazines on the public shelves. What is the most popular magazine?

○        In adult, National Geographic beats Oprah by one vote as the most popular. The next top three are Martha Stewart Living, Glamour, and Readers’ Digest.

○        In youth, Nickelodeon beats Vibe by two votes followed by J-14, American Girl and Discovery Girls.

  • We made arrangements with our major vendor, Ingram, to invoice us just once a month instead dozens of times per month.
  • Theresa replaced Barb as one of the departmental representatives on PIP.
  • We discovered a way to allow selectors to check whether an order they are working on will over-encumber their budget.