City Marketing & Communications Committee

Transcription

1 Board Meeting of February 12, 2013 Departmental Reports Associate Director, Kathy Wicks January 23: January 28: January 30: City Marketing & Communications Committee Fairy Tale Ball Meeting UBA Blend of Urbana During the time period January 10 18, I used leave to participate in the Disney World Marathon in Orlando, FL (it was hot). Graphics: Heather Sinclair has been working with Deb Lissak to prepare print pieces for the upcoming strategic planning process. Heather has started with plans for art work for Megan s Reading Room for the 2013 Summer Reading program. The theme for this year is Have Book Will Travel. Many new programs and services coming up that required the assistance of Graphics Services: The library will begin circulating ereaders to Urbana cardholders. Teen Service Adult Services has scheduled a two tech series programs Splash! UMS After School Program and the TUFL Teen Tech Series. New displays on the first floor, including a Valentine s Day, Blind Date with a Book. Drupal Website: In late January, the News-Gazette made some changes to the website, based on input from the library s Drupal committee. Changes included: Changes to the placement of the catalog search widget, Go button, and Donate Now button. All of the elements were rearranged for better spacing and layout. Changes to the color scheme. Based on comments from the Foundation and the public, there was concern for the lack of depth to the font/background color contrast on the main menu. This has been changed. Changes to the header and footer menu colors to complement the change in colors on the main menu. Changes to the Best Mobile settings to make the display of detailed information more apparent and at the top of the screen. The changes have eliminated the need for a user to scroll to the bottom of the page. On January 24, Deb, Keran, Becky, and I received an overview of the E-commerce and PayPalFlow payment process through Drupal. Becky and Keran received training on daily reports and detail reports that reflect donations received through the website. With the addition of the Zinio digital magazine service, adjustments were made to the website to highlight the service and expand on the eresources option on the main menu. A Digital Magazines drop-down label was added to the eresources tab to accommodate this addition.

2 CU Catalog: In January, several changes were made to CU Catalog to reflect decisions made by the library s PAC committee and the website bibliography committee. These changes are: The addition of a Quick Picks navigation tab with lists created using Polaris record sets. The current lists include Newbery and Caldecott award-winning titles, and Staff Favorite Reads The addition of a Zinio Digital Magazines navigation tab that will permit access to the service through the PAC. The addition of a Donate navigation tab that connects to the donation page on the library s website. We had decided to create a separate navigation tab for More Award Winners and NY Times Bestsellers that linked to the library s BookNews landing page, but the complexities and continuous changes in the page links on the BookNews site don t permit this. We will need to adjust accordingly to the main landing pages for this content. As a promo experiment, the book cover carousel on the PAC portal page was changed on Monday, January 28, to reflect the Youth Media Award winners announced at the American Library Association meeting on that morning. This was accomplished through the creation of Polaris bibliographic record sets. Polaris has provided a list of pre-populated record sets to use on the carousels, such as most circulated titles, but with Polaris 4.1, we also have the option to create our own carousels. Our Mobile PAC problems were finally resolved in January. During the setup of the service by Polaris, they inserted CUCatalog.org as the library s PAC URL in the settings. This setting sent users to the landing page for the PACs of both libraries, rather than the landing page for The UFL PAC. After asking Amy Al-Shabibi at Champaign Public some questions, we decided to change The UFL PAC URL to that specific to The UFL PAC. This resolved the issue. City Marketing and Promotions Committee: Our meeting in January introduced a few more members to the team, including staff from 40 North / 88 West and the Champaign County Economic Development Corporation. At the meeting I was able to talk about upcoming events and new services at the library, including the introduction of circulating ereaders, the Teen Tech series, the upcoming Boneyard Arts Festival events at the library, and the Fairy Tale Ball. In other promotional news: On January 31, we posted a teaser photo of the ereaders on the library s Facebook page with information about the upcoming service. Within two hours, we received a phone call from WCIA-TV. They spoke with Anne Phillips, who provided them with more information, and they contacted me for more information and to ask for permission to use our photo. Great PR! The library has opted to promote the library s summer reading programs through the Illinois Marathon Youth Run. At the request of ExploreCU.org, a new website that seeks to curate the arts, culture, and history of Champaign-Urbana and its surrounding area through library collections and community-generated content, I wrote and submitted a promo piece that outlined the history of the library, its mission, its collection, and services.

3 We ve had requests from downtown businesses for posters for the upcoming Fairy Tale Ball on April 5. Boneyard Arts Festival: The library will once again be a venue for the Boneyard Arts Festival. This year, the event has revised their community focused days (formerly, Urbana s day was Saturday), to designate both Friday and Saturday as Urbana and Champaign community focused days. The library plans on scheduling several performances, including a performance by Rocky Maffit and Chris Vallilo, who will release a CD in March. They have agreed to promo the library s concert as the official release of their CD. Building and Maintenance: At the suggestion of a City employee, we learned that Public Works might be willing to deliver ice melt to the library, rather than us buying it. Becky Brown contacted the City and we now have a storage case of ice melt outside the library, which will be used by JPE, Inc. as needed. The City will deliver the ice melt and will check up on our supply after each snowfall. The train table in Children s Services collapsed in November. Rather than spend the money on a replacement table, JPE, Inc. repaired the table with additional braces inside the table and under the tabletop. The children are very happy the train table is back! Strategic Plan: I have been working with Deb Lissak on the documentation for the community committee orientation packet, and reading the Strategic Planning for Results book, which was written by Sandra Nelson, our strategic planning consultant. Library Website Statistics for January (through Google Analytics): 26,723 visits to the site 12,714 unique visitors 49,885 page views CU Catalog Statistics for December (through Google Analytics/Polaris): 16,684 visits 6,780 unique visitors 293,923 page views 94,055 total searches Evanced Calendar Statistics for January (through Google Analytics): 985 visits 411 unique visitors 2,578 page views

4 Acquisitions, Keran Harrington Projects: Brian Robertson and I continued to work on the erreader launch. We were able to find a suitable case and have it screen printed by Weiskamp. Dawn Cassady and I had an initial meeting on the RFP for RFID. The salaried staff of Acquisitions Services and I met to decide on our preferred Polaris enhancements. Our preferences were passed on to Dawn Cassady. Becky Brown and I were trained on some aspects of the library s website e-commerce by the News- Gazette personnel. Volunteers: 6.75 volunteer hours were recorded in January. Training: None Miscellaneous: Postage rates increased on January 27. Cindy Scheidemental, Brian Robertson, and I met briefly with Curt Leppert from Baker & Taylor. Curt was here primarily to meet with the Adult Services staff. Gifts/Donations: $175 in memory of Donna McPherson $100 in memory of Alice Lain $100 in memory of John Deppe $200 for the purchase of adult historical mysteries $100,000 from the estate of Elizabeth Alexander Information Technology, Pat Clifford After using a cell phone to test the coverage of the new access point locations for our wireless service, it was determined that the area along the south wall at the west end of the first floor and along the north wall at the west end of the second floor were a little marginal. The signal was OK for a laptop, but devices with a lesser radio, such as cell phone, show a weak signal. As a result, we have contacted VOLO to add additional nodes in those locations to receive better coverage. We expect the work to start in February. Administration gave approval to go forward with the project to permanently mount projector systems in both the Lewis Auditorium and the Satterthwaite Conference Room. I have started ordering and assembling the parts needed to do the project and hope to begin the installation in February.

5 There were a number of problems regarding the DCEO laptops: While installing additional software on the laptops, it was discovered that the Adobe Software products supplied by the U of I had reached their trial expiration. As this was to be fully licensed software through the U of I, the problem was reported to Martin Wolske, who reported that the version of the Adobe products they chose did not support retaining the licensing information when re-imaging. Adobe's only solution to the problem is a very expensive licensing server that would permit license retention while re-imaging. One can still re-license the software on every machine after imaging, which is doable, but it does require more time. After re-imaging and re-licensing the Adobe software, it was discovered that the Microsoft Office suite was not activating ITS license when it was being used. My attempts to activate the license failed, and Martin Wolkse was contacted once again. It was discovered that the Office suite needs to be activated on the U of I internal network before it actually becomes active, which is part of their agreement with Microsoft. Martin took one of the laptops over and connected to the U of I network and activated the license for Office. Adult Services has indicated that additional software will be needed on the laptops. As such, I may be going through the re-imaging cycle a few times more in the future until we get a stable load on the laptops. The following incidents requiring saving video from the security cameras occurred: January 9, 2013: Second floor computer lab disruption January 17, 2013: Alleged assault off library property Children s Services, Lora Fegley Statistics Reference: 2703 Computer Use: 958 Total Program Attendance: 1267 Preschool Tales: 241 Babies Lap Time: 412 Toddler Time: 60 Special Music Programs: 62 Special Programs: 492 Programs We took advantage of a day off from school to host a Dance Party. Sixty little people and their parents danced the morning away at this active program. To coordinate with the new Hobbit movie that came out recently we hosted a Hobbit Party for 25 people, complete with an activity to make Hobbit ears, feet and beards. The Community Center for the Arts joined us to present a Young

6 ACTors in ACTion workshop for 15 young patrons. Our Fancy Nancy Tea Party was a big success with 50 people making crowns and wreaths, playing a word game and listening to a popular Fancy Nancy book. Anita Purves Nature Center brought their bugs, snakes and worms to our Creepy Crawlies program to educate 72 patrons about these creatures. Thirty-six people were chasing their gingerbread men through the children s department at our Catch Me I m the Gingerbread Man program. After making the cardboard gingerbread men, they were spirited away, leaving the children to wonder. where did they go!! Our Battle of the Books Club is getting students ready for the Battle of the Books that is taking place in April. Twenty-seven children came to discuss books that have been selected for the competition. The numbers for our Chess Club rose to 136 this month perhaps due to an article in the News- Gazette. It helps to have good press! Our Prairie Breezes concert this month was Del Sur, a Latin American band from Champaign/Urbana. We had 62 people at the program, and the band really had the children up and dancing throughout the whole program. Multicultural story times this month included Slavic and Middle East we had a total of 36 for those programs. At our Art Lesson for Kids in January, a UIUC art student instructed 35 people on how to draw superheroes, a very popular topic! Story Times Our regularly schedule story times; Babies Lap Time, Toddler Time and Preschool Story Time, are going strong with over 700 participants this month. Outreach/Community Involvement Our Children s librarians have been making their annual visits to the all the preschools in the area, presenting programs and giving out library promotional materials. So far we have read to almost 250 children. We had 150 children in this month with their schools or child care centers. Most of them come to check out books or attend one of our Preschool Story Times. The City of Urbana held its first Middle Market a market that will be held at Lincoln Square Mall once a month during the winter months. Lora and Carol Inskeep manned the TUFL table, where we answered questions about the library, read stories and promoted the library. About 100 people stopped by our booth, and everyone seemed happy to see us there. Lora attended a Birth to 6 Council meeting and two Read Across America meetings during the month. Lora also started up another 6 th grade Book Club at Urbana Middle School. We are focusing on A Single Shard, by Linda Sue Park. This author will be visiting our library in February, and the participants of the book club will be able to meet her, a great way to culminate the program. Library Business We hosted Martin Wolske s class this month for a tour. These students will use the Children s Department for a project; coming up with suggests for a re-organization of our space. Much as they did with the Adult Service Department, they will be focusing on more collaborate space for our computer areas. Elaine is a member of the library s Patron Conduct Committee, and she gave us a de-briefing of their meeting at our bi-weekly staff meeting. We will all be listening to The Black Belt Librarian webinar before our next meeting so we can discuss.

7 Lora and Elaine were involved in trying to come up with a way to produce searchable bibliographies for our website. We both did some research and some testing and helped come up with a solution. The Fairy Tale Ball Committee met to discuss marketing and graphics for the event, taking place in April. Adult Services, Anne Phillips Statistics January was a busy month for the Adult Services Department. We had 7268 total Patron Interactions; this included 312 hushmarks, our term for interactions involving patron behavior. There were 7604 unique computer lab sessions; 357 of these were adults in the Children's Department. Staff Education and Training Mary Towner attended a webinar on security called Black Belt Librarian. Carol Inskeep visited the exhibits at ALA Midwinter conference in Seattle. Joel Spencer attended the full conference. Amber Castens and Joel attended a two-part webinar entitled Creating a Digital Media Space for Teens. Anne attended a webinar on using the RDA Toolkit. Professional Activity Mary attended an ILA Awards Committee meeting. Amber and Joel met with representative at the Urbana Middle School to set up a Teen Advisory Group. Amber trained a new Tech volunteer. Programming Teens Manga Club 6 Video Game Day 30 Art Day 14 SPLASH (UMS After School) 13 SPLASH (UMS After School) 14 SPLASH (UMS After School) 10 Adult Game Day Computer Class 6 UFLive 65 Tech 21 Class 3 UFL Reads 5 E-Reader Drop-in Session 30

8 Outreach UMS Book Discussion Group (Amber Castens) 3 Teen Advisory Group (UMS) 11 Clark-Lindsey Village Library Visit (Mary Towner) 6 Administration Alex Klemperer has joined our part-time staff; Chris Williams has resigned. Pre-RFID weeding continues. We are working on both fiction and non-fiction. Our second Drop-In E-Reader Session had 30 attendees! The full Adult Services staff (including Infonauts) had their quarterly meeting; several good ideas relating to displays and other circulation-boosting techniques came out of this. Our new digital magazine database, Zinio, had 400 check-outs in January this was a soft launch with minimal publicity, so we are very pleased. Champaign County Historical Archives, Anke Voss ARCHIVES USERS (including in-house/mail/ /phone requests) Urbana 109 Champaign 77 Champaign County 50 Illinois 21 Out of State 6 Non-US - TOTAL 263 QUESTIONS Reference 188 Other 152 INTERLIBRARY LOAN In-State Out-of-State ILL for Urbana Patrons 1 15 ILL to other libraries 7 20 INTERNET USE HOURS 326 PROGRAMS Presentations/talks Library/department tours School visits to library Genealogy/Local History classes Other 1, 22 attended.

9 VOLUNTEER HOURS 54.5 PROGRAMS/OUTREACH 1/8: Eric presented to the Champaign County Historical Archives on the features of the new Local History Online database. 22 attended. 1/29: Anke attended the monthly meeting of the Lincoln Legacy Committee. The committee is discussing possible funding sources for upgrading the permanent Lincoln exhibit at the courthouse. STAFF NEWS Archives Staff Retirement: After over 30 years working at the Urbana Free Library, Archives Librarian, Howard Grueneberg, has confirmed his intention to retire, effective, January 30, His last working day at the Archives will be Saturday, February 16. An invaluable colleague, Howard, throughout his tenure has maintained his exceptional performance as a cataloger and indexer, shared his vast knowledge of Champaign County history with staff and patrons, and trained countless staff and volunteers. Howard joined the UFL in 1981, as a microform technician at the Urbana Municipal Documents Project. In 1987, when the Municipal Documents Center and the Archives were combined into one department, Howard was appointed its librarian. Among his many contributions to the Archives, Howard s technical skills translated to knowledge of computing and the transfer of over 400,000 index cards to the Local History Online database, which was launched online in During his tenure Howard devoted countless hours to making LHO the invaluable resource it is today, prompting Jean Koch to exclaim in an evaluation, Lately the hardest task seems to be to get him to leave work and go home! After years of devoted service to the Archives, Howard finally can! We wish him well as he embarks on a new chapter, and we will miss him greatly. To bridge the time without one of our full-time staff members, the Archives is seeking applicants for a temporary archives assistant. We hope to post the opening for the archives librarian position vacancy within the next few weeks. NEWS ABOUT COLLECTIONS & PROJECTS Materials requested by our patrons this month: Books/Journals: 323 Photos: 22 Microfilm Reels: 286 Vertical Files: 23 Maps: -- Special Collections (Tepper): 4 Champaign County Records: 168 Noteworthy New Accessions include: from Gary Baldwin, Edison Middle School Yearbooks, , filling a substantial gap in our collection; from Carol Erb, records of the Sidney Senior Citizens Club, and records of the Sidney Historical Society; from Marty Dwyer, Urbana Railroad Company ledger books, and Savoy elementary school photographs; and from the United Pride Center of Champaign County, publicity and other printed material. Anke has worked with Heather (who was very patient through multiple drafts) throughout the month to significantly revise the CCHA s brochure.

10 In preparation for the imminent staffing changes, Anke and Howard have met regularly to discuss the transition and transfer of critical tasks and information. Archives volunteers and staff continued working on adding dates to Polaris records and adjusting them to provide simpler and easily understandable record displays. Eric continues to analyze and modify the display of new Local History Online database. In her role as temporary staff, Amy Bishop continues to implement the ISHARB grant-funded project to re-house the McCandless photo collection. Archives volunteers Mary Margaret Jones and Acquisitions worker Karen Singer continue to complete series and tackle new ones. Marnie, Norma, and Karla continue to do on-going projects. Volunteer Mary Twigg continues working on our backlog of title abstracts. GSLIS student volunteers, Amy Bishop and Kelsey Graham, continued with their special collections processing projects. Two practicum students joined our staff, Sierra Campbell (GSLIS, UIUC), and Debbie Reese (GSLIS, San Jose University). Sierra is processing the records of the Exchange Club, while Debbie will be developing subject guides and displays based on our materials throughout the spring of Circulation Services, Dawn Cassady 1. Shelver/barista Kim Nguyen resigned during January because she is moving to Chicago. Eleanore Brown and I interviewed two external candidates, but decided to hire internally to fill the position. Current Acquisitions clerk Amy Podlasek will take over Kim s hours in the shelving/barista schedule as soon as possible, and she will keep her Acquisitions hours as well. 2. During January I finally completed the ongoing project to update the census tract numbers we record in patron accounts. For some reason Urbana s census tracts changed quite a bit between 2000 and 2010, which made updates to our address list both challenging and extensive. Needless to say, I ve become quite familiar with Champaign County s GIS webmap! 3. I have been working with clerk Caleb Wilson and Adult Services librarian Carol Inskeep on the procedures Circulation will use when we start circulating ereaders during February. Circ staff will undergo brief training during our regular staff meeting. 4. Once a year, the Polaris Users Group compiles a list of requests that libraries have made for changes/enhancements to the Polaris software. The list is distributed to all member libraries, and the libraries can then vote for the enhancements they want the most in various categories. Since Champaign and Urbana are considered one site for Polaris purposes, our votes are combined. I have been working with the Admin team and the Circ staff to determine which enhancement requests we want to vote for, and I will submit our choices to Amy at CPL. If Champaign s votes and Urbana s votes don t match up, then the votes will be split. Not ideal, but at least we have a chance of getting some additional functionality that would be helpful to us. 5. I have drafted revised wording for the Circulation Policy clarifying that juvenile cards are issued to the parent. Deb has gotten assurances from the Illinois Library Association that we will be on safe ground with this approach. I brought the draft to my Circ staff meeting for feedback and hope it will be ready for the Board in March.

11 6. Keran Harrington and I met to plan out our approach to writing the library s RFP for RFID. We split up responsibilities and have several detailed RFP examples to use as examples for specifications and wording. It sounds like we may have an on-site visit from a vendor later in February. 7. I spent time reading the PLA guide Planning for Results in preparation for the upcoming strategic planning process. 8. Meetings: January 14: ereader meeting January 23: Quarterly ILL/OCLC meeting 9. Outreach: None this month 10. Door count for January 2013 = 37, Library card statistics for January 2013 a. 271 new cards issued b. 155 renewals c. 3 new non-circ cards issued d. 2 non-circ renewal e. Total = 431