International Falls Public Library Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes
October 12th, 2022
Present: Diane Adams – Library Director, Paul Nevanen, Heather Weaver, MaryJo Winkel, Mona Johnson, Ashley Kostiuk, Dick Peterson and Darcy Sullivan
Meeting was called to order at 4:28 pm by Kostiuk.
Minutes – Sullivan moved and Weaver seconded to approve the September 2022 minutes. All approved.
Financial Report – Nevanen moved and Peterson seconded to approve October 2022 bills. All approved.
Director’s Report – September circulation was 7% above September 2021 which keeps us at 7% above for the year to date. Anecdotally, this past week has been slower. Molly is creating 15 Libratory bags each week, but only about 11 – 12 are getting picked up. We’ll see if calling those families not picking up their bags will help get them into a rhythm of using the library regularly. I got COVID and we canceled storytime the third week of September, so have only had three weeks of storytime thus far. We’ve had 10 – 20 participants.
I am debating whether or not to try a Winter Reading Club again. We had no participants last winter and after the dismal summer participation am hesitant. Let me know what you think. The vibe I am getting is that readers are reading and don’t need motivation, they just read. And the non-readers or reluctant readers are not coming to the library and parents don’t seem engaged or motivated to encourage their children. I had a very interesting discussion with one of the elementary teachers at some point this past month and she said that we used to have a spectrum of students and parents ranging from super involved to checked out with everyone kind of at their own place and now she finds that families are either engaged and motivated or checked out with few to none in between. So the question becomes how do we re-engage the families who have checked out of life? A board member suggested reaching out to teachers and seeing if maybe we could coordinate with them.
The junior room couch was picked up today by Loni Bright for recovering, hopefully it won’t take too long. Progress continues on the courtyard stairs, but I am not at all sure what they will look like when done, they don’t look like stairs yet.
Old Business: Fall programming is storytime in person, weekly Libratory take-out bags, and a monthly take-out craft for teens and adults. We are looking at adding some kind of crafting/knitting etc. in-person time come the new year but trying to figure out a timeframe as we have folks interested who don’t drive at night and folks who work during the day so trying to figure out a way to have two times, maybe?
The rough draft of the disaster plan was shared, a couple of additions and changes were proposed. I am still waiting to here from Betty Bergstrom and Ted Brokaw about information needed from them.
New Business: none
Next Friends of the Library book sale will be Monday, November 7th from 5 – 7 pm.
What are you reading? – Dick read Shadows We Hide by Allen Eskens (a MN author), The Things We Carry by Tim O’Brien (another MN author) and Lucky by Marissa Stapley, besides her school reading Ashley is enjoying Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez and will be reading The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Mona continues to enjoy Lee Child books and is reading The Affair while Heather is reading the classic The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare, MaryJo continues to read Louise Penny titles and really enjoyed The Long Way Home while Darcy just picked up the short story book Women Sleuths. Paul is reading Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor and Diane just started The Maid by Nita Prose.
The next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, November 9th, 2022 at 4:30 pm.
Meeting ended at 5:05 pm.