Good evening, everyone.

Like to call to order the um August regular library board meeting here at the College Avenue Branch.

Uh, can we have a call of the roll?

Yes, Mr.

Federman.

Present.

Dr.

Matada.

Present.

Dr.

Classio.

Present.

Dr.

Payne.

Present.

Dr.

Riolo.

Present.

Dr.

White.

Brother.

And welcome to our newest board member, Miss Woodard.

Yes, welcome to the board.

Thank you.

Okay, I recognize a quorum.

Good evening.

Thank you everyone for joining us here at the College Avenue Branch or on our live stream.

Welcome to the August 2025 meeting of the Indianapolis Public Library Board of Trustees.

My name's Ray Beterman, and I serve as your president of our Board of Trustees.

We have a very full agenda this evening, but I'd like to begin with some timely and meaningful news.

Of the four key pillars uh in the Indianapolis Public Library Strategic Plan is being a workplace of choice.

As part of that commitment, we value the well-being of our employees and volunteers.

With that in mind, I'm proud to share that the Indianapolis uh public library is featured in the August edition of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce magazine Bizboys.

Right here.

We got a little nice, nice pictures in here.

Very cool.

Um, and I think you guys got a copy too.

Yes, we all got a copy.

Excellent.

There we and it's got a star.

Multiple stars.

Yeah, it's even stars on the inside.

Um, so we're part of the cover story titled Mindful Manners Leading with Humanity, uh, which highlights uh employers across the state who are prioritizing employee well-being.

In this feature, we're recognized alongside other outstanding organizations like IU Health, Meridian Health Services, and Purdue University.

Congratulations to our entire team, especially our talent and development staff for this meaningful recognition from the Indiana Chamber.

All right, switching gears to more local news.

Uh we want to celebrate a major milestone in education.

The Indiana Department of Education recently announced that third grade reading scores have improved at a record breaking rate statewide, with an even greater progress here in Indianapolis.

As proud champions of literacy in our community, we know that Indianapolis Public Library has played a role in this success.

I see firsthand the impact of our dedicated staff in the vibrant library spaces that inspire a lifelong love of reading and learning to our young readers.

This momentum is supported by our summer reading program, which we'll hear more about later in tonight's agenda.

The Indianapolis Public Library is boosting literacy in many other ways year-round.

For example, our shared system is a massive collection.

We facilitate to get books into schools and into the hands of young readers.

We also have an early literacy initiative like Reading Ready and the Thousand Books Before Kindergarten Program.

Let's not take for granted our story times and our branches and the bookmobile visits to child care centers.

Also, our quick reads collection and uh playway audiobooks are designed to make reading fun and accessible at any age.

And personally speaking on those audiobooks that uh saved us on a car ride to Florida, so that was that was great.

Um thank you to our incredible staff, community partners, and loyal cardholders for being a part of supporting and nurturing literacy in our city.

Now I'd like to invite Miss Stacey Hurt, uh branch manager of the College Avenue Branch to step forward and share the board report.

Um thank you for coming, and by the way, thank you so much for uh that wonderful uh food beforehand today.

It was delicious.

I'd like to thank um President Bitterman, members of the library board, and welcome to the College Avenue Library.

We are happy to host you today.

Um tell me I got the little clicky thing here.

No.

Okay.

So who we are?

I uh I'm thrilled beyond belief.

My name is Stacey Hurt, I've been branch manager here since last November, and as of this month, we are fully staffed for the first time in a very, very long time.

So, yay.

Um, yeah, uh we were doing a little look at our statistics, and I would say about a third of our staff has been hired in the last six months.

Uh, another third of the staff have been here at least in the last three years.

We do have some uh wonderful staff that have been here since before this building was here.

Last year we got to celebrate our hundred year anniversary of being in this neighborhood, this being the third iteration uh of the College Avenue Library.

Yeah, so we're we're very proud of our space here.

Okay, let me just clicky click.

Okay.

So here at College Avenue, we have a small service area, but it's a very diverse and very different.

We've got um four different uh neighborhood associations.

I've been starting to develop relationships um with Murdy and Kessler one and uh uh reaching out to some of the others.

Oh you've really last year when Nora and Pike were closed, and even for the month when Glendale was moving, we got an influx of people like I didn't know this is actually closer to my house.

So even though those branches have opened, I think we uh snabbed some of um their patrons for ourselves.

Okay, just okay.

How is it?

Um as you know, libraries we do a lot of things.

We're more than just about the books.

Um, one of my goals since we've had so much turnover and staff lately is to re-establish the relationships we've had in this neighborhood.

So you can see um many of the community partners.

The list here just the ones that we've worked with in the last probably three, four months.

So we're really uh re-establishing our relationships with the the neighborhood and then growing from there.

Um okay.

Oh, another cool thing coming up um next week.

We are gonna be one of five libraries test piloting our library of things.

So we got that on our uh coming here.

So a lot of cool stuff happening here at the College Avenue Library.

Um wait, I'm gonna go back on.

Forgot to mention uh yeah, I'm just looking at here uh on the slide.

Uh, we've been hosting the uh partnership with the health department in here, and that's been uh we love our nurses, and we just wanna give a shout out to them.

All right, now I can go on.

All right.

So I want to give you some of the program heights.

Um my background of for many years was a youth or children's librarian, and so to me, programming's the fun part of the job, you know, because you really get in in that interaction and one-on-one with the the people.

Um, our new children's librarian here at at College Avenue um has been actually getting teenagers to show up on a regular basis to a teen DD program and some others.

Um, she took over the uh science programs I was doing when I was the children's librarian here, and so we've got our Saturday Smarties, or just some of the things.

One of my passions is to do multi-generational programming.

And I started as a youth librarian and and I've continued as the manager with our um once a month family game night.

And if you'll indulge me for a moment, I got two little antidote stories about monthly game night.

A couple months ago, uh um a grandmother came in, and you could tell it was last minute having to babysit the kids.

And she's like, Well, we're taking them to the library.

First of all, does my heart good that that's where she thinks to take them?

Didn't realize it was family game night.

And so she's in there playing Candyland with her grandchildren, and it was just the sweetest thing because instead of just coming in, sitting on her phone, letting the kids run wild, she was engaging with her children.

And it's like that that's what family game night's all about is bringing people together like that.

We take that B2 community space thing serious here.

Uh the other thing from our family game night is a lot of the kids there.

We play the Pokemon card game, and the kids all have the cards, but you know, they don't know how to play the game.

So when they come in, I've been getting them to play with their parents, you know.

And um, this one mom had been bringing her son, and the kids all know each other from school, but the parents are starting to get to know each other, like, oh, you're you know, so-and-so's dad, and you know that.

And we've got repeat customers coming, so the parents are getting together.

Well, one time this mom drags her husband along with her, and I get him to play Pokemon with this kid.

A month later, they come back, and the kid is excited.

He's like telling me about this epic Pokemon bottle he had with his dad.

They played at home with his own cards, and he was so excited.

And it's like, you know, as a librarian, I live on that for months, just that interaction with the the public and the people, and you know, one of the many uses of the library is that you know, community space.

Um, sorry.

All right, I can babble, so I will respect your time.

Do you know I give you a little shout out about the branch?

Um, next week in September, we'll be starting our flavor fresh.

You can see some of the artwork.

So if I'd hosted next month's meeting, you guys would have seen all the cool artwork.

Please come back.

It will be up from September through the end of January.

This will be the 22nd year we've hosted the Flava Fresh um art show.

It's uh a juried art, and in October, we'll be doing a uh meet the artist or artist reception.

So we want to invite all of you guys to come back to College Avenue and check out the artwork.

Um some of our other cool attractions, obviously, our fish tank is the big thing, and uh um yeah, um, basically that's all I gotta say.

Sorry, I'm a little nervous.

Uh so you guys have any questions for me?

Thank you very much.

Any questions uh from the board.

In the room where we had that huge meal up on the bulletin board.

Yeah.

That's fascinating.

I saw a vast half of a basketball with a face.

That was an art installation that's been here many, many years and predates me by much.

So yeah, it was a community found art collaboration with a kids' group.

Like, yeah, we we love art between the the pictures and then we've got music.

We've you know, that's one of our themes here, too, is the art.

Um just wanted to commend you on building new relationships.

Uh, as the branch manager, building those relationships that break down some time with leadership change makes a big difference.

And the fact that you're reaching out to those folks who may not know that they have a new branch manager or that the kinds of exciting things are going on here and the many programs like chair yoga for some folks who could really benefit from it.

So, congratulations on building those relationships and keep it up.

Hopefully, you'll be able to tell us even more about how things are going because it is an exciting time.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Please.

Do you happen to know when in October the meeting the artist is?

Um, I'm gonna say Friday, definitely on a Friday.

Um, whatever Friday is in the 20s, so I'm gonna say the 24th.

I had a guess.

That's um six o'clock right after the library closes, it's after hours.

Thanks.

Yeah, good work.

Dr.

Class, yeah.

Yes, of course.

Oh thank you.

So I I was I was intrigued by the collaboration between the health department and the library.

How does that work?

I thought that's a very good question.

They were already here before I got here, so we just you know, let them in in the mornings and you know that.

Um I I honestly don't know.

Uh someone downtown had established it.

I think I'm gonna resolve COVID for COVID vaccines.

Yeah.

So they do flu vaccines when they get them in, and then COVID vaccines, they sit in the hallway and we'll do Narcan uh training, and they also a blood pressure tests and just a general resource for the community.

Um, and they have a little clinic, which used to be I guess a cafeteria in the building, and so they got their own clinic space, but um, they sit in the table table out in the hallway most of the time.

You know, they're just they're good people.

It has continued since uh COVID time.

Yeah, thank you.

Any other questions?

No, all right.

Well, thank you very much.

We appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right.

Also, tonight we will hear three overview reports, uh, which is amazing.

Three, three is better, three is better than none.

Yeah.

All right.

Um, so the first two come from programming, which includes summer reading and programs for seniors.

May I ask uh program specialist Devrie North and Area Resource Manager Caitlin Coyton to please step forward.

Hello.

Yay, we're so excited to talk to you about summer reading today.

Um, my name is Caitlin.

Uh, you can call me Kate.

Uh I'm an adult services area resource manager, and I have with me Deborah North and I am the School Asian Families program specialist on the juvenile side in the programming department.

Um, and we can't move forward uh with this presentation without acknowledging the work of Alexander Hampton.

He is also a program specialist with an adult focus in the programming department um and one of the architects of this program alongside Devrie.

Um, so congratulations to Deborah and to Alex for the hard work, and you're gonna see why they deserve that.

Congratulations here in just a second.

Um, we also can't move forward without thanking the Indianapolis Public Library Foundation.

They fund both the juvenile and the adult sides of the adult of the summer reading program.

And I want to make a special note and say that due to their support this year, in particular of the adult program, that enabled our staff to be able to participate in the program this year, which helped drive the promotion system-wide.

The staff were very excited and engaged in the program, which I think is what led to some of the increase in numbers that you'll see because they were more excited to share about it with our community and feeling part of the community to be able to participate in it themselves.

Um, wonderful.

So I want to just talk about why we do summer reading.

We've done summer reading for a very long time at the Indianapolis Public Library.

Not only because we think literacy is a critical skill for our community, but because it brings joy and fun to the library during the summer.

And it also ties really closely in with the library's mission of enriching and supporting communities, but also instilling a love of lifelong learning.

So we have our own little mission statement for the summer reading program, which is to provide a joyful environment through communal experiences where children and adults strengthen literacy habits, their reading incentives and workshops.

We'll talk about all those little pieces there.

But what was critical to summer reading this year is children and adults.

So kids' summer reading has been around for a very long time.

Adult summer reading has as well, but it's had different iterations of how the program works in this year.

We were really strategic and intentional of making sure the two programs mirrored each other.

So not only was it easier for our staff to talk about with patrons, but to also encourage adults to model reading for the kids in their life, but also allow other adults to participate in the program as well and earn prizes, which uh we really saw a big draw for that.

Um, some other goals we have for the program this year as well was to increase participation for targeted groups, which we'll talk about, um, increase readers who completed the program and increase the encourage me to spend more time reading response on our patron survey.

And um, we should also note that this year's theme for the program was paleontology and geology.

So you'll see a lot of pictures of dinosaurs and rocks and that is a unifying thread throughout the program.

Yes, thank you.

Um, so how summer reading works, the elevator pitch is you track the time you spend reading, and at different reading milestones, you can come into the library and get your prizes.

You can track online through the Bean Stack app, which you can get on your phone, but we also have paper trackers available sometimes, especially for kids.

That's more tangible, more fun to see your reading progress.

Um, we had four different trackers this year for our different ages.

The new one this year was our teen tracker.

Um, we were really hoping to increase team participation by carving out a special place for them in the program, and we did see that as a result this year, which has been fantastic.

Um, I would also be remiss to not point out our outreach department.

Um, they facilitate our group summer reading program for kids who can't come to the library who are either in care or at camp, um, and they do an amazing job, not only facilitating the program, but making sure that they have materials to read for the program as well.

We have a lot of partners as well that help support this program.

Many of them donate prizes or help us on programming, and this is a list of the, I'm not gonna name them all because there's too many, but all of the partners that we worked with this summer, I think this shows really the roots into the community that this program has and the and the many ways that we're partnering with various facets of the community.

Um that I do want to mention include Project Play.

They were the beneficiaries of our book drive this year, and we collected over 2,000 books for them.

They distribute books to families in need to help them build their home library.

So we're very proud of that partnership.

Um, we also received free museum passes from the Indiana State Museum.

Of course, everyone loves library night at the ballpark with the Indianapolis Indians.

Um, Indiana 529 donated two 529 dollar scholarships that are meant to help fund education for students.

So that was a really exciting grand prize to give away this year.

We partnered with Can Can, which is right next to our Spades Park branch on grand prizes, and we also had prehistoric pictures.

We had library weekend there at the Can Can where we showed free screenings of films, which was really exciting.

One of my personal favorites, a cave of forgotten dreams.

Love it.

It was so cool to see on the big screen.

Um, and lastly, we partnered with Indie Parks.

Uh, they did a book club with us at Holiday Park where we read why don't Dinosaurs matter, and they also gave out pool passes for our juvenile um summer reading, which was a big hit.

A huge hit.

Yes.

Audio Indy, um, we've had a partnership with their athletics department, and they give away um tickets for basketball games, men and women's games.

Yay.

Yeah.

Yeah, and they've they've done this the past couple years, and they're always thrilled with the turnout that they get.

I'll go back and tell them.

So we offered lots of thematic programming as well, both for adults and our youth audiences, uh a smattering of the programs that we offered for adults.

I mentioned our natural history book club that we did with Holiday Park.

We had a really uh extremely popular stone carving program.

It was a little bit dusty, but everyone really loved it.

We had overwhelmingly positive feedback for that one.

We offered guided painting, printmaking, and paleontology for adults, which was sort of a lecture type program, and of course, our Can Can Prehistoric Pictures weekend at the Can Can.

Um, in all, we offered 63 programs for just over 600 adults this summer.

And on the juvenile side, we offered 10 different programs out of the programming department.

One of my favorites was our junior paleontology program, which we did in partnership with the State Museum.

They really know their stuff about natural history.

We were very happy to have them this year.

And of course, our ever popular animal programs are always a big hit during the summer.

And that some of our branches do continue their traditional story times and stuff during the summer as well.

So we can't discredit the work that they do as well.

So now I'm gonna dive into the data.

I'll probably go through this quickly.

So please raise your hand if you have any questions for me.

Here is a breakdown of our total minutes read this summer just to show how the different groups and summer reading contribute to that overall goal.

We always set a community reading goal.

This year it was 20 million minutes.

We smashed that by reading 26.9 million minutes.

Yeah.

Adults alone uh read three million minutes more than they did last summer, really um showing the increase in participation in that age group.

And then here, just to see the growth over the last couple years of our total community reading, we really shot up this year, which was really wonderful to see that people get behind that as well.

Here is a breakdown in total participation for the summer.

We did hit another great goal, which is reaching over 30,000 people with summer reading this year, um, which is just amazing.

And um the pie of adults is steadily growing bigger.

There was a 62% increase in adults participating this summer, um, which is fantastic to see.

And then here again is um this in a little bit of a different way.

It's participation participation versus registration.

So the blue part is our register or participants for the summer, excuse me, and the orange is the registrants.

So you can kind of see proportionally the total number of people we're engaging with, how many people are actually participating in the program.

Um, so that's 80% of registrants do end up participating in summer reading, and that is a 16% growth over 2024, uh, which is stunning overall, really.

Um from our patron surveys, uh, these are some things we wanted to pull out from the kids and teens survey.

Um, we had, I think it's 93% of um participant or survey respondents strongly agree or agree that the program encouraged their child to read.

Um, and then 77% um of survey responses said that participating in the program improved their child's reading confidence.

Um, so it really goes to show that the program is not only there for fun, but it really does encourage the things we want to see from it of getting people to read and also uh especially for kids working on the reading muscle for them during the summer.

And I think that really speaks to the point that Dr.

Biederman made this morning um at the start of the at the start of the meeting tonight.

Did I upgrade you?

You deserve it.

You deserve it.

Um, in terms of adult feedback, first of all, I have to say we are just excited to have feedback.

Last year we received a total of three surveys for the program.

This year we received 1,624 surveys.

So just to have this amount of feedback increase this year is a really big bonus for us to be able to continue to refine the program for coming years and build on the momentum that we've really seen this year in the increase.

Um, feedback has been overwhelmingly positive for the adult program, including to the changes that we made.

We added some great prizes, we aligned the structure with the juvenile program.

90% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the program met their expectations, and 86% agreed or strongly agreed that the program encouraged them to read.

So we're just thrilled to be able to dig into this feedback for the adult side because we actually have something to read this year.

Uh, we also set out and articulated several goals that uh Devri mentioned at the beginning of this presentation, and we achieved all of them.

We're very proud to say.

So we had a 33% increase in our teen participation.

Um, we wanted to see an increase in participation in adult men and our senior populations.

So respectively, we saw a 92% increase and 106% increase.

Um, we're just really thrilled.

We think just treating the adults like they matter, giving them an opportunity to engage really um it showed that it works, and people want to participate in this program.

In general, we also saw an increase in overall program completions.

So we had an overall increase in of 44%, uh, meaning that 58% of all participants completed the program and a 32% increase in the positive response to the survey.

This program encouraged me to read.

So we're just very thrilled to have met these goals that we articulated at the beginning, and looking back at the survey responses for both the juvenile and the adult um programs for this year will help us formulate our goals for next year.

And we also wanted to pull some quotes from patrons from the surveys we collected that go along with our pillars and the strategic plan.

We tried to pick one quote for each one, but this first one belonging.

We couldn't decide between two.

So we're gonna share two on uh for belonging.

Um so the one from the juvenile program, this is uh from a caregiver of a six-year-old.

My child is bilingual, and the option to be able to read in both languages was really helpful.

And there was a great selection of books at the central library for French readers.

Um so not only is it great to hear that the program is inclusive of this family's needs, but to also know that the library has the resources that they're looking for is really wonderful.

And it's great that that um respondent highlighted our world language collection too.

Uh for adult side of feedback, um, one adult participant shared, it provided uh talking point with neighbors.

Then we were able to recommend books, get to know each other better, and learn from each other.

Yes.

And for learning that ties into the stats about the reading scores that have been um touted, I should say recently, um, tying into learning this is a different caregiver of a six-year-old participant.

Summer reading benefited my daughter in a major way.

We spent a lot of time together and learned new words, discovered how to read sentences correctly and improved her vocabulary by reading different books daily.

Um we love to see this.

This is exactly what we want to hear out of the summer reading program.

That not only is this child improving her reading skills, but that families are doing it together and it's making a meaningful impact for everyone.

And lastly, in terms of well-being and helping us meet that strategic goal, an adult participant shared.

My friends and I thought the reading program allowed us to be more motivated to read.

I deleted some social media apps and made it a habit to read before bed.

It was great.

So we're happy to hear that.

We know that that probably helped their well-being, especially when it comes to getting a good night's sleep.

Yes.

So thank you.

Um, any questions for us?

Um asked me that asking for more information about adult learning programs.

And so you just hit every mark on it.

Thank you so very much.

I'm gonna talk more about that too after this.

So yeah, yeah, more to come.

It's working.

Where did you say so when you disaggregate it?

The data, are some of the branches even doing more in terms of the adult learning feedback?

Because survey data can get skewed if you have it more from one community than another.

So when you think about, for example, uh a one of our branches that's in a particular community or another community, do we get more survey feedback from particular communities?

That's a really excellent question that I don't have the answer to.

I'm looking back at Alex to see if he knows.

I thought McKinsey might be here.

I don't see.

Oh, McKenzie's here too.

Yeah, she is.

I don't know the answer.

The only reason why I have is because the feedback from adults in some communities might be stronger, and that would skew some of the data.

So it says, okay, we've got a lot of adults over here.

And we know the research shows that if you get more of those adults, just like you said, engaged, encouraging, modeling, it makes a difference.

And so that's why I was asking.

Yeah, that's a great question, and one that we'll have to dig into when we get back and have a chance to have the data in front of us.

Yeah.

It's such excellent work.

Thank you.

So I you have me, I'm I'm extremely excited.

So the last testimony wasn't my testimony, um, but I actually have started to put down social media and I'm trying to pick up books more.

Now I have two questions.

I have several questions, but I'll prioritize just two.

Um, one of them is when it comes to the media, is it physical books?

Is it um audio books?

What is considered reading in your definition?

Any any kind of reading counts.

So if you're reading a physical physical book, an ebook, an audio book, if you're being read too, if you're reading to someone, uh if you are reading the back of the serial box, I would count it, you know, any any kind of reading that gets you excited um is good.

And I think one of the important things for the kids' side and adults too, is um the opportunity to self-select what kids are gonna read.

Um, that's really important for motivating kids to read, especially when they're out of school and they finally have the chance to not being told what they have to read, um, and letting kids, you know, if they want to read more about Minecraft, let them read more about Minecraft or Pokemon or whatever it is.

Um, that really helps encourage them to keep reading.

Awesome.

That's really good.

And then really um quickly, second question to have such a big jump and feedback.

Um, what was the magic?

What did you do?

How did you do that differently?

From one year to the next.

Yes.

Um, I think we put a lot of thought and intention into the program this year.

And I it's gonna sound very simple, but I think just offering really cool prizes that adults wanted too was a major motivating factor for a lot of people.

Um, even offering tiers of prizes.

Last year it was just one prize for completion and nothing else.

So having that tiered step up level.

Again, I I do have to call out that I think the fact that because the program was funded through our foundation this year and that our staff are able to participate themselves, that got them so excited about the program, and it got them wanting to share more openly and more proactively with staff and share what they were reading and share how far along they had gone on the prizes.

I I truly believe that motivated some of the success of the program this year.

Yes, and then specifically to um survey responses.

We did do a drawing.

If you submitted a survey, you were put into a drawing for a hundred dollar Meyer gift card, and that's true for the kids and adult programs.

I think that is also a good motivator for survey response, particularly.

Great job.

Great job.

Thank you.

Any any other I'm still on the three responses to 16,000.

Yeah, 1600.

Oh, yes.

Well, they're still the really.

I think half the battle is the joyful, happy, excited spirit that you bring to the program.

And I know it's spread among everyone that you work with.

Thank you so much.

And that's really an uh it's our staff is amazing at promoting summer reading.

Um, and I do think aligning the programs where they really mirrored each other made it a lot easier for our staff to get others excited about the program of oh, I'm here to sign up my kids, but did you know you could get prizes too?

Grandma, mom, you know.

Um when you're reading to that toddler, you can count that for your reading tracker as well.

Yes, yeah.

So um the change in the program I think made it easier for our staff to get excited about promoting the program more widely as well.

And the alignment made it easier for them to promote both.

Yeah.

Do you have a sense of how many or what percentage of the people were using the app, the website, and the paper trackers?

I don't think we have a way of tracking that.

Um everybody does have a preference.

I will say um we switched over to Be in Stack, which is the software we use to track reading challenges in 2020, um, which was already a difficult year of running the summer reading program through the pandemic.

And so um we do uh hear feedback that sometimes the app is hard to navigate and people don't particularly like using it.

Um so that's definitely one of the reasons we still offer the paper trackers is we're happy to just do that work for patrons when they are um tracking their time doing summer reading.

Uh, but also sometimes it's just more accessible for people to have a physical um thing.

So that's why we do keep up both.

But I don't have a way of oh, I don't think we have a way of knowing which one's more popular.

The trackers were pretty cool.

Yes.

They are uh tricky to design, but really fun when we get them right.

Great.

Thanks.

So follow up with a similar question, but do we track audio book minutes versus like just regular printed?

So if you're if you are using the app and um you're also logging what books that you're reading, you yourself could see that information.

Um, but if you're coming up to a staff person with your tracker, they're just entering the time you spent reading.

Um, so we also don't unfortunately have that information.

I would say though, maybe anecdotally, I do think audiobook listening is going up.

Um, because I've seen it on the reports from our collection department, um, especially e-wor e-resources is just gone through the roof during COVID, especially for adults.

So I do think there's something there.

That's what I was wondering if if if one of them was going up versus the other one.

Yeah, I don't have that information, unfortunately.

That would be really cool to know though.

Can I add something?

Yes, please.

From the peanut color.

We um we added last year an early literacy tracker, like we did with the team, but for early literacy, so for children zero to five, they can count their time talking, playing, reading, writing, singing, right?

And so, and we have a calendar, so every day it gives a suggestion for what to do with your child.

And I feel like that has been a really powerful uh thing for educating the adults, caregivers that you know, when you're talking to your child, you are preparing them for reading.

So I I just wanted to add that in.

I think and it made a big difference this year in our participation of the Yes.

I'll I'll say what Shale mentioned here into the mic.

Um, so we added an early literacy tracker to the program in 2024, um, because we received the feedback that tracking it time with a three-year-old reading is a little challenging.

Um, so we expanded that definition of reading to include all of the every child ready to read principles, which is curriculum is too strong of a word, but it's the outline that we follow at all of our story times here at the library for those ages.

Um so you can write, talk, read, play, sing, and any time you spend with your zero to five-year-old, um, those times count towards your summer reading.

Those times count towards your summer reading.

So a little different than asking about audiobooks, but um really tailoring to that age group and helping educate parents and letting them know that they're their child's first and best teacher.

You're teaching the parents how to teach their kids.

Yeah, and knowing that they can do very small things that will make a big impact.

You know, if you're going to the grocery store with your kid, like point out words, talk about what's on the signs, show them things on boxes or cans, like that makes a huge difference, and it's really easy to integrate in what you're doing already.

Cool.

Dr.

Anything good.

No, I'm just uh very, very uh excited and impressed with the increase.

Uh achievement.

I predict it's going to go up higher next summer.

I hope so.

I hope we can keep up.

Work on that.

Um, and you guys have a second.

Yes, I'll go through this quickly.

Um because we we were asked to speak about senior programs uh at the library and the services that we offer for seniors.

Um I'll say so far in 2025, we've had over 3,000 seniors attend 264 programs, and they roughly make up about 19% of all of our program attendees uh for programs designed for adults and seniors.

They're also approximately 16% of our active cardholders.

Um, and in the PDA team, the programming department, which Devray and I are part of, we uh take a multipronged approach to serving seniors.

So this is uh a sort of a limited, uh small swath of all of the things that we offer for seniors because it would be impossible to cover it all in stay here before midnight.

Um, but I will also add that 95% of seniors report enjoying library programs.

So some of the things that we offer financial literacy, some of these programs, though specific for adults are tailored to seniors.

Um, that can include things like learning about Medicare, um, learning about the in the nuances of the Medicare system, like the advantage plan versus the Medigap, Medicare basics.

Um, we have a financial literacy class about social security retirement, estate planning.

So there's a whole slew of topics that we offer that are tailored for senior audiences.

We have two programs this fall this year that were supported by AARP through our foundation.

So I wanted to highlight those.

One is our caregiver support at our Beach Grove Library.

It's a very interesting program where weekly caregivers can come and enjoy chair yoga while their care receivers attend a social hour where there are opportunities for connection and quarterly, they receive a longer period of time where they get resources and educational information about aging and disability.

Another one of those AARP supported programs is outsmarting scammers.

Um, topics for that come from uh partners like the attorney general's office, and they include avoiding elder fraud, protecting yourself against romance scams, which is super interesting, social media self-defense, and general consumer protection.

I know that a lot of our seniors find those programs incredibly useful.

One that I'm very excited about coming up this fall, this is kind of a special one, is recovering our stories, Latino Voices Writing series.

We are partnering with Meiharondo Juntos, Indiana, Artemicano, and La Plaza to bring author Maria Julia Hildalgo to lead a writing workshop about intergenerational storytelling, which is going to be really focused on how older generations can pass down stories to younger generations.

And I'm just so excited and thrilled about that program.

Also, we offer regularly every year healthy brain aging with the Alzheimer's Association and Diabetes Education through the Marion County Health Department.

We also offer special training for our adult librarians tailored to the kinds of reference questions they may receive so that they're prepared to help seniors coming into the branches.

Some of those trainings include a training from the Social Security Administration when there were all of those questions earlier this year about changes to the SSA and also an upcoming training from SACOA, which focuses on aging and disability resources in the community.

When I reached out to our branches, they shared a ton of things that they do.

One of which that I really want to highlight is our dementia-friendly business certification.

We have 11 branches and two internal departments that have completed this certification.

Basically, 50% of the staff have to take a training and they learn to become dementia friendly to the patrons that are coming in.

This is a program that seeks to build awareness of and break down stigmas surrounding various forms of dementia and implement practical chains that make life easier to navigate for those with dementia and their loved ones.

A lot of branches also shared community partnerships that they have.

And I can't mention all of them.

We have 25 branches, but a few that I wanted to highlight were at Southport, they do outreach at senior centers nearby, like the Perry Senior Services, Glendale nearby visits American Village, Pike goes to Robin Run Senior Village and brings tech help.

So they're doing a lot of outreach specific to their service populations.

And also they all offer monthly meetup programs like book clubs and craft for noons and some support, which are opportunities that seniors can take advantage of to connect with each other.

And then lastly, our outreach department does a ton to support seniors as well.

They currently have 29 stops that serve seniors for the bookmobile.

They have 10 locations that serve seniors for their monthly book drop-off, and they have 50 current library express patrons and over 150 um active volunteers who are over 55.

Woo.

We have to give you an applause.

And that's just a small portion of everything that we're doing for seniors in our community at the library.

We have such a large aging population.

And too often, and the reason why we asked for this presentation is because a lot of times people don't know about the services that the library has done and committed to our seniors.

And so as we broadcast, and I'm so glad that it's being broadcast, that more people learn about the resources that the seniors are given.

And I know our time is pressed, and we have so many other things we have to discuss, but thank you so very much for meeting the call to do this.

We we're thrilled to serve seniors, and we're thankful for the opportunity to get to share about what we're doing.

So I appreciate it.

So amazing job.

And also, as you I do have a question, I can ask that later later about how you curate your programs, making sure that you meet the needs, but a very, very um impressive list.

And then just curious if you don't have to answer this right now.

Are you working with different organizations that may have a senior population that could benefit from that?

So just looking at how it's being promoted because you're right.

I'm looking at a lot of a lot of this.

I know a lot of groups that could benefit from this, but I'm not sure if they're aware.

Yeah, I think that's a really excellent point.

And um, one of the benefits of getting that partnership from AARP meant that they were really active and wanting to get engaged with promoting our programs to their audience in the community, and they did a lot.

They um Alex, he's in the audience, got interviewed by them and did a whole um article about the things that he's offering through the Outsparting Scammers program.

So we we try and take advantage of those partnerships when they come along.

Great job.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, let's move on to our third report of the evening.

It's a department presentation on the collection management uh service area.

So can I ask uh Pam uh Swedener and Angela Carson from uh Pam Sweatner from Cataloging, Angela Carson from Processing.

Please come up and uh share your presentation.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Well, thank you for having us come and talk to you tonight.

Um, I'm Pam Sweatner, I'm the manager of the cataloging and metadata department.

And I'm Angela Carson, the processing manager for mention.

And we're just gonna give you a brief overview of what it is we do.

Um we are part of the collection management technical services group.

There's a lot of departments in collection management, and really uh here we have three acquisitions, cataloging and processing, and we are those the middle and the last part of that.

Um so for cataloging and processing, though, we are very interconnected uh in how we do things.

And so the cataloging part is the process of organizing, describing, and classifying library items to make them accessible to our library users, and really the goal that we always have is to make that as easy as possible for our library users.

And the processing part is the fiscal processing preparing materials, all four minutes uh excuse me, ready for circulation for shelving for pages for the patrons to be able to locate, pool, and check out on their stuff on their own, actually.

Sorry.

Okay, so this is just a brief overview of what we do in cataloging.

Um, first of all, we catalog not just for the public library, we have over 90 shared system libraries that we also catalog for.

Um, and the process really includes uh importing MARC records from different sources like OCLC and MARC records, it's just machine readable cataloging.

That's all that stands for.

Those are the encoded records that sit behind uh what the you know what is displayed for our library users, and we are the ones who bring those into the system.

Um, and I know you've heard of OCLC because Deb comes up here uh about once a year and says we need to renew our contract, and that's how we get the records that we use that sit in our library system.

Um we also we have call numbers and we add and verify access access points like authors' names and subjects and things like that.

Um, and we also import and manage catalog records for online resources like the ebooks and the e audiobooks.

That's just another another discovery point.

You know, most people are using the app.

You know, they'll go to Libby and download things.

But we, if somebody is searching for particular authors or titles in the catalog, they can see that we have those versions as well.

And it's not just the e-books and the audiobooks.

We have e-magazines and newspapers and some of our databases, we have full text records for those as well.

Um we import files from vendors that provide uh shelf writing materials.

That's not a large part of what we do for NDPL, but those things come in.

They're already cataloged and pre-processed, and that's based on information we provide to those vendors for things that are, especially things that are high demand.

You know, and a lot of our DVDs come in that way.

Um, it's especially important that we do this for our shared system members because uh we have so many that a lot of them still send materials to us that we hand touch and we catalog and process, but a lot of them also use these vendors, which is a very good thing, especially for um systems like IPS.

Uh they don't send any materials into us, they everything is done through vendors, and we we load those files into our system as they order materials.

Um we manage authority control in the catalog, and all that means is that it's a process for standardizing headings for consistency, you know, subject headings, names, authors' names, series titles, those things um are need to be consistent in the catalog.

So that's part of what we manage.

We work with public services staff to fix issues.

That happens, you know, simple things like typos, but also cover images sometimes don't match the titles.

That's a third-party vendor, and so we're made aware of those, and we reach out to our vendor who helps us uh deal with those kinds of issues.

Um we maintain our uh NDPL catalog holdings in OCLC WorldCat.

Again, we do that for everything that we uh put into our catalog so that people who are searching WorldCat um they can see what we've got, and also it is a service that works with our interlibrary loan folks, so we can lend materials.

So this is just an idea that I wanted to give you.

These are the numbers that represent physical titles cataloged.

And what I mean by that, that's stuff that came in the door.

This is from 2023 to year to date 2025.

And the orange is the NDPL and then the green is shared system.

So a lot of our shared system members, they send their materials in in totes.

We catalog them.

We see we touch all of those, and uh you can see the numbers here for NDPL over the last couple of years.

It kind of varies, but it hovers right around that mark, you know, averaging uh somewhere in the the high 30s.

So so far this year we're up to 22,000 things for NDPL.

That's come in the door.

And I wanted to include information about one of the biggest projects we worked on in the past couple of years, which was the onboarding for IPS.

And um so in 2023 and 2024, we imported the holdings for about 34 schools, and they had existing catalogs.

So we took their data and we added all of their items into our system.

And what you can see here is this is just the sheer number of items that were put into the system, and it was a lot, and it was a heavy lift.

And the cataloging team uh were managing these files, making sure everything came in properly, uh handling the issues that came up when things came in, and um so that was that was a big uh project for us.

And the orange represents the amount of materials that were coming in for other shared system members in the same time period.

The the um not the physical titles, but the ones that came in from our vendors.

So what we're doing now is IPS is in, and they are just now a part of our regular workflow, and we folded their items in just a they're just coming in, they send us their files when they order materials, and we just load them in like anybody else.

Our current cataloging projects, we're working through the book club kits, which were just turned on uh recently.

Library of things is coming.

I know you've heard about that.

They should be uh ready to go.

We'll be providing the catalog records for those.

And we've got a zine collection coming uh in early 2026.

So we'll be excited to see how people respond to that and see if they like those.

Okay.

What does processing do?

Everything else.

Please bear with me.

Processing manually prepare all the library materials, DVDs, book print, um, sorry, for circulation and use and return.

Uh, we add materials to the catalog by completing item records, assigning the correct collection code material codes, uh loan periods, um any assigned branch locations, and attaching special labeling, security tags, and programming those tags for safety.

We have a daily distribution list that we use every day to distribute any all and all new materials to selected branches.

Um, and we also assist with other tasks and projects uh from other departments or branches as we go along.

Um we collect our statistical, we retain stats, statistics on every task that we complete.

Um, these are some of the areas that we retain statistic information, uh, new orders that comes in.

Um Chef Ready material as Pam described as chef ready.

We have to go through and make sure that all the elements are applied to the material as requested.

Um our other duties uh is a combination of um book club kits processing.

Um we have several of things.

Sorry, still nervous.

Um we have uh we recall material to come in to verify, correct, things like that.

Uh unpacking, we assist with unpacking new materials coming in.

Um invoices are processed to for internal control uh to make sure and verifying that all items are accounted for before invoices are retained upstairs to accounting for remittance.

Um, and then we have share system uh with do the physical processing for share system materials, um, and the book club kits.

We also help maintain or manage that collection by placing the holes, pulling the material and uh trapping and sending them out to the branches.

Um sorry, using myself.

Uh this is our annual statistic chart from 2023 to our current year.

Um, the blue is our current year.

We're still like six months out.

Um, and I see that number rising to probably meet the 2024 number.

Um, you can't see the book club numbers down there, it's kind of real tiny.

Um that's we have included um added new items to the collection.

So we have probably about a little over 600 kits so far.

And it's for all genres, uh, adult teen and juvenile, uh, some Spanish and a few French titles of kits as well.

Uh we we do a lot of projects and tasks.

Uh, our biggest one for the year was, of course, Fort Ben.

Our opening day collection was um processed on site, sorted, shelled.

Uh, we also have done uh unprocessed, added unprocessed material to the floating collection, and that's for adult teen and juvenile.

Um, there was the storytime collection as well as the zine collection now will be added.

Um we've also assisted with some redistribution of duplicate titles at branches, uh like Spanish uh in the CBLC as well as children's collection, and then we stored a lot of materials for Pike and Nora during their closing.

Umest is the Library of Things Pilots.

Our processing staff is processing those materials for circulation.

And we just kind of wanted to give you an overview of really how much how much stuff do we have?

And uh uh the blue represents the titles in the catalog, and the orange represents the number of copies we have.

So you can imagine, you know, we you have one title of something, but you might have 25 copies because every branch needs a copy of it.

So that's why the numbers are so different.

Um so we manage the new stuff coming in, but we also manage it while it's here because things move around a lot.

And uh sometimes we have to turn things off and make them unholdable, like uh when the branches are being renovated or parts of central are being renovated right now, the children's and teen collections.

Um so we do a lot of management while things are here, and then when things are withdrawn from the system, we manage that process as well.

So things are always coming and going, and this is just sort of an overview of how much stuff uh uh we got and yep.

And that's all we've got.

So if you have any questions for us, we would be happy to hear them.

Thank you, but I'm okay for now.

I've got a couple of questions about cataloging.

So thank you for all you do with all those titles.

You have the graph titles catalog 2025 in the last couple years.

It was hard to tell.

Are we pretty much on track to be the same as 2024, or does it look like it's a little bit lower?

Do you have a uh it's hard to tell because publishing season varies?

There's a fall publishing season, so a lot of orders get placed earlier in the year, or when they are published later.

So we expect an onslaught of things.

Probably around September.

Yeah.

Okay, that makes sense.

Um, and then I was just wondering if there's ever been a discussion about a need to go from Dewey Decimal System to cataloging into Library of Congress system.

Is there it's never come up?

It's it's really um you want to avoid that it's it's far less common for public libraries to use the library of Congress system.

It's it that's largely an academic classification system, though some public libraries do it.

I know Chicago Public Library does it in Boston, yes.

But um reclassifying that many items in a system would probably uh but it doesn't make a pro it's not hard for you then to gather new materials and it's not like an extra step for you or anything.

It's it's easy enough to do it, just doing decimal.

Oh, yes, yes, it is.

Yeah, that sounds like a big head.

Okay, thanks.

Yes, uh question, clarification, yes, for my benefit.

You do a lot of cataloging for other systems, the shared system libraries.

You do the shared system library, but do you uh provide any uh cataloging services for non-NPL systems at all?

No.

On behalf of the Indianapolis Public Schools, I just want to thank you and tell you that the 34 schools that the shared system serves has made a world of difference, not only in their lives, but the lives of their parents.

So thank you so much.

You're quite welcome.

Any other any other comments?

Nope.

All right, thank you so much.

Okay, there we go.

Now let's uh proceed on to public comment.

All right, do we have any public comment for this evening?

There's just a first name here by the name of Jacqueline.

She says she's a community member and she wants to speak about the College Avenue branch, and then after that, we have one other speaker by the name of Jenry Bennett.

Great.

All right, I have to read a short little statement, and then you're up to the races, okay?

All right.

Uh, we welcome feedback uh from the public about Indianapolis libraries, and this is a time when public may address the library board.

If there's several individuals representing the same group, please select a spokesperson.

Please do not repeat the same comment someone else offered.

Please also note that this public comment time is not the appropriate form for commenting on matters related to employee charges, employee complaints, or ledge employee misconduct.

Any such matters must be brought promptly to the attention of the CEO or the human resources department where matters can be properly addressed in compliance with established library policies and procedures.

A five-minute time limit will be allowed for each speaker.

Each each speaker should give their name and let us know if they're representing um a group.

Thank you.

All right, so I think mine falls under that category of maybe having to speak with the CEO because it's regarding employees here and misbehavior.

Yeah.

All right.

Thank you.

This will be quick, I promise you.

I think most of you received a copy of my remarks.

If you didn't, I have one left and such.

My name is Jimmy Bennett, and I uh represent a group called Epic.

And uh I'm here, I don't have a presentation and all this stuff.

But I uh we're we are an educational group or a new new group, and we really are talking more about our government system and how it works and our constitution and our Indiana Constitution.

We've had a couple of classes to cover that.

Uh John Holmes has been the presenter of doing that, and um what we want to do is really to look for your benevolence.

We want to use one of the rooms here that we have scheduled for this uh September 7th, and there's a fee for that.

And because it's a new group and such, and we are going to charge for food because we need to charge for food.

We were looking to see if the uh uh charge for the room can be eliminated uh for us, can be bypassed.

Basically, that's the reason from here by here that I'm here.

All right.

Um, more classes, and we're sort of looking to see if this could be an ongoing uh exemption.

Uh thank you.

Noted.

Okay, thanks.

All right, any other public comment?

No, sir.

That is the last speaker.

Okay, thank you.

Um, let's move on to approval of minutes.

Uh so we made a regular meeting on July 28th, 2025.

Is there uh motion to approve the minutes?

The regular meeting held July 28th, 2025.

Boom.

Is there a second?

Sorry, is there a second?

Second word sentence.

All right, excellent.

We got two seconds, we got a third now.

All right, uh, so the it's been moved and seconded.

Any discussion.

Hearing none, we'll have a call of the roll.

Dr.

Matak approved.

Dr.

Passio.

Dr.

Cain.

Dr.

Riolo, approved, Dr.

White, Miss Witter, and Mr.

Biederman.

Approved.

The motion is carried.

Great.

Let's move on to the finance committee.

Uh, Dr.

White, you are the chair of the finance committee.

Thank you.

The uh first act of the uh finance committee is to have a presentation of the 2024 audit uh report.

Good evening, board president Biggerman and trustee.

I like to invite Scott Nickerson.

Um he is with Crow.

He has been our auditor for uh about five about four or five years now.

Um, but he wants to uh provide um a presentation of our 2024 audit that was completed uh the end of June.

Good evening.

My name is Scott Nickerson, partner at Crow.

My goal here today is to provide a review of the 2024 audit.

Uh my primary focus will be a qualitative.

Obviously, you're in the midst of 2025 and focusing on the future as far as your financial activities.

But uh my role is to uh provide you feedback related to the financial record you're receiving throughout the year, as well as acknowledging the annual comprehensive financial report that the library files each year.

As you're probably all all aware, uh the filing that the library does uh to the GFOA, Government Finance Officers Association is the highest form of recognition of reporting.

So I'm thrilled to see the library continue their commitment to uh meeting that highest standard of reporting.

Um results, we'll talk about the scope of our work.

Uh we'll talk about uh highlights and some of the financials and then other feedback.

As far as scope of work goes, um we're providing an opinion on the financial statements.

So basically, our job is to look at the records as prepared by management, looking at the financials, testing those financials and providing feedback.

Uh ultimately we do provide an opinion that's outlined on the on the screen.

But basically, our opinion states that we believe that the financials is prepared by management to be materially correct and to meet the appropriate reporting and disclosure standards.

That's the highest form of opinion you can get, a clean opinion, unqualified opinion as expected, but it's never taken for granted.

That's why I'm finance team here working diligently.

One of the things I always think about when I'm providing feedback to a board is uh how is the information receiving throughout the year?

One of the things I do notice in your monthly board package is very detailed financials, both budget to actual forward looking information about what may be happening in the future.

I'm happy to report there are no significant uh matters related to our audit that would change the value or the accuracy of that monthly information you're looking at.

So happy to provide you that feedback.

This is a historical record of uh your financials.

I'm not gonna spend time walking through all the numbers, but I didn't want to highlight that you do operate managing a variety of funds.

Uh the general fund being your primary activity fund, which is supported primarily by property taxes and other programming revenues.

You have a bond and redemption fund, which is primarily funded by taxes to cover your bond financing projects, which you've been very active for the last several years with that.

And lastly, construction funds, which are how you use those proceeds to construct new assets or acquire assets for the organization.

Then we have something called non-major everything else.

Uh, so your financials organized in that matter.

Uh, from the standpoint of overall uh activities you're managing, you can see that you're managing almost 160 million dollars of assets.

You have liabilities uh uh in the range of uh 67 million, and then fund balances of 86 million at the end of the year.

Uh when you're looking at the fund balances, which is your equity or your you know what's left after you have assets and liabilities, you can see that the general fund has about 51 million, of which 41.5 million is unassigned.

That means it's available, probably already planned for and thought about for future years, but it's available resources.

The 8.1 million that's called committed, essentially represents your uh rainy day fund and another small fund, but about 8 million of that, I believe, is the rainy day fund, which is part of that general fund.

I know you track that individually within your records.

And then lastly, uh assigned at the point in time of 1.6 million is essentially the encumbrances that you had made at 1231 of things that you know that were already essentially paid for, but not but not exercised as of 1231.

The bond redemption fund and construction funds you can see are entirely restricted because the use is restricted uh by outside parties, and you have to use those monies for debt service on your bonds as well as bond proceeds have to be invested in uh the capital projects that were approved under those bonds.

So that's a kind of highlights of the balance sheet.

Next page, please.

This represents the revenues and expenditures of the organization.

Um total revenues that were available to the organization as a whole were about 80 million dollars.

Your expenditures were about 87 million, and then you had bond proceeds uh about 6.3 million.

Overall, your net change in the financials was a negative 208,000, which basically almost break-even when you think about it.

However, more importantly, what you're managing in the general fund is probably more the day-to-day active management, whereas the bonding entering funds and construction funds kind of follow their own pattern as how you spend them.

You know, bond and interest is based on a schedule.

Uh the revenues are set up to match that the payment schedules.

The construction funds can sometimes have their own life.

I'm sure as well will be done there, you know, as far as when monies come in and when they get spent out.

So to highlight the general fund, you did have a net change of 4.2 million during the year.

Um positive change.

Once again, that money is typically due to timing or planned uses of revenues in the future.

I never want to point out that it's money available, as you all know.

There's really money available to support the organization going forward.

Um, if you think about from a fund balance standpoint, uh, the fund balance for the general fund, 51.4 million.

If you compare that to your total expenditures in a year, it's about one year's worth of expenditures.

So use that as a measuring point of shows the available reserves should a COVID happen or other things happen, you probably dipped into some of those reserves, knowing that things had changed.

But that's a good measure, kind of a long-term basis of showing that you do have reserves in place to either to address a specific issue, to invest in your programming, as we've heard a lot about today.

Um, lastly, uh you report on two different levels.

We call the fund accounting level, which is what I just presented a moment ago, but you also present your information on a uh gap basis or a full accrual basis.

You're one of the few libraries in the state that actually take that step of preparing full gap financial statements.

Uh one of your peers, Alan County would probably be the next closest uh representative this somewhere reporting package.

So I always like to just kind of lay out this is what you look like if you were comparing yourselves to uh to a private business, you know, showing full accrual.

Uh not a whole lot changes overall.

Uh you can see your assets of the organization are on the left, liabilities in that position or fund balance on the right.

We do indicate that you do have a component unit, the library foundation, which is uh considered as part of your reporting entity.

That entity actually receives an audit from another firm and they have their own audit process.

However, because of the relationship between the library and the foundation, that information is also presented in your reporting entity.

Overall, uh the main differences you see on a full accrual versus your fund accounting are two major things.

One's capital assets and the other is a full representation of your debt.

So when you look at your assets, you'll see 350 million dollars of total assets, but you can see more than half of that is really tied to your branches and all the capital assets that you own.

Uh those are reported on a historical cost basis, not on any not on any concept of fair value of something much different today.

On the liability side, the primary difference between the fund level accounting and the full accrual is the bonds payable that you have, which are about 54 million.

Uh about 19 million is due within the next 12 months, and then 35 million um represents longer term debt.

You typically in the last several years have issued multiple tiers of debt, and I think you had actual meetings in last couple weeks about how you're supporting new bond issues or new capital projects in the future with a future bond issue.

Um lastly, net position or somewhere to fund balance, uh still represents an unrestricted amount of about 43 million, which is similar to the fund level, which represents maybe about a year, 12 month of activity.

So that's kind of a high-level overview from a qualitative standpoint.

Once again, clean opinion.

We did have one audit adjustment, which was related to uh a processing management typically does each year.

Um that was to uh update their uh bad debt expense and allow you know, um uh as far as monies I'm not able to collect related to fines and so forth.

So that's one audit adjustment that was processed.

Other than that, uh the key note is uh no applicable items to report to the board.

Sometimes I scare people right when I have to wear disagreements with management census matters and so forth.

However, there are no applicable items to report to the board, so are happy to provide you that feedback.

And I wanted to thank uh Lolita and Mary Rankin for all the work they do in preparing for the audit as well.

I'm just I'm sure they do for you throughout the year, providing you feedback on the uh activities of the library.

So thank you very much.

Any any questions from the board?

Thanks for classy.

How many items were tested?

So the way that we test uh our work, we do uh different levels of testing.

So some of the areas we focus on are sampling of revenues or receipts.

We focus on payroll, we focus on other disbursements, capital outlay of significant dollars.

We use a sampling methodology, so we'll select a representative sample of the population of activities.

We also do some risk-based assessment to say what are the unusual transactions or are there significant changes and how activities are being processed throughout the year as well.

Um we look at cash reconciliations, we look at investment reconciliations.

Uh, we look at the technology system to make sure that the your accounting system is operating as intended and making sure that the right people are accessing that information as an example.

So, how many would you say hundreds of transactions?

A lot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The rate the way an audit works is if we can rely on the internal controls of the organization, if we test those controls, where it tells us that we can review less transactions.

So it's always a benefit for management to have uh a great internal control structure in place if that reduces the burden on them with all the questions we have to ask.

So hundreds to thousands, depending on the nature of the transactions.

Thanks.

Yep.

Green.

All right.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

I'll have to call Mary Rankin up.

She's the treasurer for the library.

She will uh review the treasury board, the revenue and the expenditures for the month of July.

Hello.

Okay.

So as of July, um, our property taxes remain leveled as the next uh expectation would be around November and December because all the spring collections have been distributed to us.

The intergovernmental is comprised of E-rate, COIT, and LOET, um, which are income taxes, uh, is the IT part of that.

And those are scheduled distributions at a regular monthly rate.

So those are very uh standard.

Uh the charges for services, the largest component of um the fifth the monthly amount is public printing at $39,000, and miscellaneous largest component uh for the month is uh interest that was earned.

So of the 211,000, it was 167,000, but the highest uh rates received coming from the Husure Fund and the Trust Indiana Fund, respectively, and as you can see, we're at 54% of the budget received, and again we're um that's um typical because of the way the property taxes are distributed.

Only like four percent under our projected budget amount of 58%.

So um that's still um I'll look at it as fragable, and then graphically the revenue for the month versus the year to date are shown here on the left, and where the line format shows um property for the just the month, the intergovernmental components compared monthly budget to the July of last year versus July of this year, and as you can see, it's very nearly even across the board, a little bit less on miscellaneous.

I don't know why.

And on year to date, the budget is in um yellow on the bar chart, blue for the uh year-to-date 2025, and orange for year-to-date 2024, and this shows our property taxes are up over last year at this time year to date, intergovernmental is up, uh fines and fees also increased, and charges for services have increased and miscellaneous are down some.

I think some of our interest may have been reduced for a time due to um coverage of bank fees and the way that they allocate that.

Um expenditures then should we see.

Do you have any questions on revenue so far?

Okay, go on to expenditures.

Um the largest category is personal services and benefits, which is at 50% of the budget, and since we're more than 50% of the year, we're doing okay.

Supplies uh everything's also less on the month to date as well as year to date.

Um we'll go on to the next graph of the expenditures by type for the month.

Uh the budget is shown in gray on the jar on the bar chart with July of 2025 being um blue and July of 2024 last year in orange.

So it shows um as expected, our personal services and benefits are up over last year, um, slightly due to raises and so forth.

For the month, uh the budget is shown in gray on the jar on the bar chart with July of 2025 being um blue and July of 2024 last year in orange so it shows um as expected our personal services and benefits are up over last year um slightly due to raises and so forth um but we are under budget and supplies is also slightly over last year and other services and charges remains under budget as well as capital outlay is tracking very close on the year to date uh it's in the line chart with personal services and benefits uh being again the largest part of the budget at 23.6 million approximately and our year to date is 20.4 million supplies are under budget and other services and charges come in uh two million under budget capital outlay which includes books, um comes in under budget by about 400,000 so far.

Do you have any questions on expenditures?

Overall expenditure about nine percent under budget that's good.

Yeah, that's it for the treasurer report.

All right, is there uh motion and a second to accept the report of the treasurer for July 2025 for filing for audit?

So second moved and seconded.

Any discussion here called the roll.

And Dr.

Mentata Yes approved, Dr.

Palacio approved, Dr.

Payne, approved, Dr.

Riolo approved, Dr.

White approved, Ms.

Winner, approved, and Mr.

Bitterman.

Approved the motion is carried.

All right, let's move on to resolution 33.

So that's one of the resolution 33 2025, and this is for appropriate appropriation and tax rates for the 2026 budget.

Uh we had a do pay as a recommendation from the finance committee on recommendation.

So um July the 8th, I um did a high level review of the budget through the finance committee and July 28th, I did a budget briefing to the board, and then on August the 12th, we had a public hearing uh for the board budget presentation for the 2026 budget.

So this is resolution comes from this presentation of public hearing.

Um it is a resolution for appropriation of tax rate.

Um the library is required under Indiana Code 36-3-6-9B to submit an adopted budget and and tax levies for the um to the council clerk by August the 31st.

That is why I'm presenting this to the board now on um August 1st and August the 8th, the library published notice of the public hearing for August 12th and adopted in tonight.

Is this where we want to adopt the budget for the 2026?

Um it was also published at this Indian store, the IBJ and court and commercial record.

The attached resolution that you have that is on the board document page 55 um includes the library operation funds, bond uh number two fund, rainy day fund, and a library improvement reserve fund um effected January 1st, 2026 through December 31st, 2026.

This slide reflects what was published, and this uh will show that the total um budget that was published for 2026 is 89 million, and the adopted tax let levy was 79 million.

This is a comparison from 25 to 26, and the um increase in the operating was about 8.25%.

And if you notice on the next slide, the bond is reduced from um this current fiscal year because we paid off a bond, and then the LURF in the rainy day will stay the same.

Yep.

All right, all right, thank you for that.

So uh is there a motion uh for adoption of uh resolution 33-2025 regarding appropriations and tax rates for the 2026 budget?

Uh is there a second it's been moved and seconded.

It's been moved and seconded.

Is there any discussion?

Seeing none, we'll have a roll call vote to approve resolution 33-2025 regarding appropriations and tax rates for each 2026 budget.

Dr.

Matata approved.

Dr.

Placio.

Approved.

Dr.

Payne.

Approved.

Dr.

Riolo.

Approved.

Dr.

White?

Approved.

Ms.

Approved.

Yeah, Mr.

Bitterman.

Approved.

The uh motion is carried.

All right.

Anything else for finance?

No.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Um, doing the um public hearing, uh, we had a long-term review, and um our um advisor spoke about they was uh missing um the net asset value.

So we received that since then, and to our surprise, it was much more than we thought it would be.

Um it was the increase of about 8.89% for Marion County, and honestly, if you look at Hamilton County, that would they only receive a 5.95, I mean 5.95% increase.

So it was really surprising.

So, what does this do when we receive this increase in net asset value?

It does not affect the general fund, but it does affect the bonds.

Um this slide right here is what um um Barnes and Thornborn um presented in June and July when they came to the board.

The difference is that we will now save um about 150,000 because instead of paying the bond back in three years, we're gonna pay it back in two years.

Um, pay more on the principal, which will reduce the interest expense.

This is just a date for the net asset value that was written on.

So that's I just want to a date the board.

Okay.

And then the next update is um September the 8th.

We are presenting um to the city county council the audience for the bond, the 2025 bond.

And um, so we're hoping that they are approved that.

And once that is approved, we also got to present the the bond to the municipal corporation on September the 11th.

So uh, and then um a budget presentation to the municipal corp on September the 17th.

So um, as you can tell, my schedule's gonna be busy in September.

And that's me.

All right, thank you so much.

Appreciate the update.

Any questions?

Any questions?

No, appreciate that change from the three year to the two years.

So it's just some significant savings.

Great.

All right, uh moving on.

Thank you very much, both of you.

Uh moving on to diversity policy human resources committee.

Dr.

Classio, anything to report today?

Um, do they we don't have any more action requests uh to go through, but we did discuss a series of policies, uh updates uh are in the process of being drafted.

Thank you.

We'll move on to the facilities committee.

Dr.

Riolo.

Um, okay.

Okay, for the facilities committee.

Um, first of all, I wanted to acknowledge Dr.

Eugene White for filling in above and beyond for additional committee assignment for an entire year.

Um, thank you very much for your service.

And I am very happy to welcome Ms.

Woodard for joining our committee and who unexpectedly jumped in in her normal meeting unexpectedly so that we would have quorum and um thank you very much for um being a good team member that way.

I look forward to working with you, and then to Adam Parsons for always providing a thorough review of our resolutions and planning updates so that we can make sound decisions.

So go for it, sir.

We've got a couple of resolutions tonight.

Just the two.

Thank you, Dr.

Riolo.

Uh first resolution is uh approval to award a purchase order for two CMSA box trucks.

So CMSA uses box trucks to deliver uh library materials to uh the various uh branches and shared system locations.

These two trucks are at the end of their useful life and they are no longer cost effective to maintain.

Uh they have reached their 10 years, and we expect to get another 10 years out of the two new box trucks.

We had issued two formal invitations to quote, which both failed in 2024 and 2025.

We had zero respondents for both of those.

Uh the uh we talked to purchasing and they approved use of the special purchasing method.

Uh 5-22-10-10, no offer received under other purchasing method, referring to the two formal invitations to quote.

No offer received under other purchasing method, referring to the two formal invitations to quote.

So we used the informal invitation to quote process by soliciting three vendors.

We contacted Capital City for Tom Woodford and Heritage Ford.

And we posted that uh also on the website.

Um we received one quote from Tom Wood Ford.

Uh as they were the only respondent, they are also the lowest responsive and responsible respondent.

And we recommend uh approval.

Uh the estimated cost was 140,000.

We estimated approximately 70,000 per vehicle.

The total cost of both of the vehicles is 120,324, and the project will be funded via bond fund 485.

Do you pass to the full committee?

34-2025 regarding the approval to award purchase order for two box trucks for shipping and receiving reasons recommendation from the facilities committee.

So the chair would request a second to such a motion.

Is there any discussion?

Uh hearing none none.

Can we have a call of the roll?

Dr.

Murtado.

Dr.

Placio.

Dr.

Payne, approved.

Dr.

Riello, approved.

Dr.

White?

Approved.

Ms.

Swoodard.

Approved.

And Mr.

Vidyman.

Approved.

The motion is carried.

All right.

The next resolution is a little bit of a mouthful.

This is approval to award a planning, programming, and design services contract for the West Indianapolis branch renovation project.

So West Indianapolis branch is next on the long-term assessment for the suggested renovation schedule.

We followed the request for qualification process, which is uh what we is our standard process for hiring these services.

Uh it follows Indiana Code 5-16-11.1.

Uh we sent out uh the invitation or sorry, the uh request for qualification to 75 vendors and 11 business development organizations.

We put out a public notice uh the weeks of April 11th and April 18th, and we hosted a pre-SOQ or statement of qualification conference on April 25th.

Uh that was attended by seven, eight, nine vendors.

Um we received nine full statements of qualifications after the initial uh evaluation.

That was uh whittled down to three finalists.

Those three finalists were invited for 75-minute uh presentations in front of the six-person evaluation team, and the evaluation team recommends award to KRM architecture.

The contract is not expected to exceed 500,000.

There was a request uh to explore language for not to exceed or uh narrowing down the costs, and that will occur during contract negotiation, which will occur after board approval.

Uh the project will be funded via bond fund 491.

That is the 2025 bond fund that we are still pursuing.

Uh in the meantime, we will use rainy day funds.

Uh and then those funds will be reimbursed from bond 491.

This is why rainy day exists to use in uh the lack of presence of funds.

Uh the vendor is based out of Indianapolis, Indiana, uh, and they have committed to using 40% uh XBE subcontractors.

KRM itself is not an XBE.

Contract negotiation should be early next month.

Kickoff, I would expect uh by the end of next month.

Design and bidding uh to finish in quarter two of 2026, and construction will hopefully conclude um at quarter three 2027.

Uh I would like to have construction only close the branch down for one summer reading program, either 2026 or 2027.

That will be determined during the design and bidding phase.

Recommending passed for the floor board.

Okay, great.

Resolution uh 35-2025 regarding the approval to award a planning programming and design services contract for the West Indianapolis Renovation Project received a positive recommendation from the facilities committee.

So the chair would request a second to such recommendation.

Second.

Any discussion.

Hearing none will have a call of the roll.

Dr.

Matata.

Approved.

Dr.

Passio.

Approved.

Dr.

Payne.

Approved.

Dr.

Mariolo.

Approve.

Dr.

White?

Approved.

Miss Woodard?

Approve.

And Mr.

Bitterman.

Approved.

The motion is carried.

I'm here at World Special.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

So just a quick quick thing.

Can I, when we're done signing, can I get those back?

Yeah.

Thank you.

Um.

And then let's move on to the library foundation update.

Dr.

Riolo.

Yes.

First and foremost, I want to start the report.

Um to say that I'm proud to announce that our foundation president, Roberta Jaggers, was honored as 2025 outstanding fundraising professional, recognized by your state professional association.

Absolutely.

Her efforts have helped to raise over 17 and a half million dollars to support children and adults across the county in her 20 years, beginning as an intern and now as president.

So she's we're lucky.

She should be great.

Okay, so other than that, there's still lots and lots of stuff going on with the foundation.

Um the Indy Library store has a storefront online, so you can purchase books at IndieLibrary Store.org that will help to support the foundation.

Um the foundation is beginning their 2026 budget process.

Um and very exciting, there is going to be a matching gift campaign.

So any gift um received by the foundation in the months of September and October will be matched up to 250 per gift for a total of 11 and a half thousand dollars for that match.

So please consider donating online at ndpl foundation.org um so that we can in those two months so that we can try to um get those matching funds.

Also on Saturday is the Indy 11's prof um professional soccer team library foundation event that's mystery at the mic night.

Um the game is at seven o'clock, and the part of the ticket um price will actually benefit our foundation.

And the bookmobile will be there and the soccer team will be there.

And so even if you can't be there this Saturday, if you purchase online through the foundation, you can continue to support the foundation through purchasing those soccer tickets.

Um this past month, 123 donors made gifts, and the top institutional donors include 92.3 WTTS, Downtown Optimist Foundation, ESPN, Ritz Charles, and Schmidt Associates.

And this past month, the foundation provided more than $600,000 to the library, including major initiatives in like the Marion County Internet Library, the Social Work Department, the Lillian Schilders Hall Scholarship, and on the road to reading program.

So very busy with our very special president.

Very lucky to have them.

Great.

Well, thank you very much for the update.

All right, let's move on to the report of the CEO.

Um Gregory Hill.

Thank you.

Good evening, board president, members of the board.

Uh the first one is resolution 36 2025, which is the confirmatory resolution related to financial travel and personal matters that occurs between each board meeting.

It is in its typical format, which you see in front of you.

Uh, I would ask for your approval of resolution 36 2025.

So motion to approve resolution 36-2025 regarding finances, personnel, is there a second second?

All right, it's been moved and seconded.

Any discussion.

Hearing none, we'll have a call of the roll.

Dr.

Murtata.

Approved.

Dr.

Pacio approved.

Dr.

Payne.

Approved.

Dr.

Riolo.

Approved.

Dr.

White.

Approved.

Mr.

Miss Woodard.

Approved.

And Mr.

Bitterman.

Approved.

The motion is carried.

All yours?

Sorry about that.

No problem.

Um okay.

I will cover my C O report will cover the month of July.

And here's the topics that the report will cover here quickly.

Typical day, program review, accessibility workstations, staff recognition, upcoming events, and Miss Mary Ann McKenzie will give a strategic plan update.

The first one is physical circulation on any typical day.

We had total circulation for July was 476,193, which was about a 1.8% decrease from this same period last year.

But on any typical day, we had 15,581 items that checked out.

Top branches for circulation was the Glendale branch, NOAA branch, and the Lawrence branch.

And I would like to add that the host branch College Avenue circulated 15,704 items, which is pretty great.

That's only about 3,000 from the third place branch, which was the Lawrence Branch.

New card holders, 99.

Visitors.

We had 7,901 visitors on any typical day.

Our total visitors for the month of July was 200, just a little bit over 237,000, which was a 5.4% increase over the same time last year in July.

Top visited locations was the Glendale branch, Fort Bend, and Southport.

And the host branch college had 10,013 visitors, which was just about a thousand less than Southport at the same time.

So great job on that.

Programs across the system.

We had adult 228 programs, 2,067 participants.

Some of the uh top programs was uh we had the free legal clinic at Central.

Uh services included criminal expungement, eviction sealing, and tax help.

Uh in partnership with the Indy Community Yoga, Eagle also hosted a yoga and meditation program, and they had about 16 patrons who attended.

Arts and Craft continues to be uh one of the top programs for adults as well.

Youth, we had 570 programs.

We had about 15,289 participants.

Uh top programs for that was the Dino Storytime, was one of the most popular programs with Professor Watermelon.

We had 357 participants at about at uh nine different locations and teens did a really good job.

We had some programming for teens.

They had a chance to create their own paper at papermaking workstations.

They had 106 participants who joined at 16 sessions.

The next item is the accessibility workstations in partnership with Easter Seals Crossroads.

We have installed accessibility workstations at all of our locations.

And at the top is sessions.

These are the top locations for sessions.

Uh Southport leading the way at 188.

Glendale was at 134, uh, Eagle 111, and Irvington was 109.

Uh the assistive technology that is on the accessibility workstations include height adjustable desk, large key keyboard, large print keyboard, a trackable mouse with programmable buttons and arm supports, and some of the software that we have at the stations include text reading app, live transcription, a math app, and magnification app, screen reading apps for blind and visually impaired individuals.

These tools can read information to users, respond to voice commands, and help people with learning disabilities.

Again, appreciate all the hard work that all the staff do.

And uh for community involvement, we have Sakura Fuqua from program development area, other duties assigned is Robin Kellett from Central Adult Services and Mike Green from Operational Services.

Patron Services was Maureen Keisterson Yates from Nora.

All right, we got three more.

Uh summer reading was Kelsey Abernathy at Pike, uh volunteer partnerships, Ashley LeCount from Fort Ben, and Pierce Support was Jake Smith from Glendale.

So another round of applause for all of our staff members.

And then just an update on some of the programs that we have upcoming.

Saturday, August 28th, we have Virtual Arthur Talk, How to Thrive in a World of Constant Chaos and Conversation with Dr.

Tasha Yurich.

And that is from 2 to 3 p.m.

Saturday, August the 30th.

There's a Glam and Groom presented by the CBLC from 12 to 4.

And that is a session for young girls and boys to come together to learn how to empower themselves and to dream big.

And then lastly is the September 6th is the 501 3C nonprofit organization course.

And that is 10 30 to 12 30.

And that is the end of my portion.

Just want to thank you, Greg, for responding to the request to share more about what's happening with the adults.

To learn that we're making sure that have over 228 kinds of programs.

It's fantastic.

Thank you, Greg.

All right.

Thanks.

All right.

Hello everyone.

I'm Mary McKinsey, strategic planning and assessment officer.

And I'm happy to welcome you to the latest installment of way more information on my slides that I'm going to talk about you at you as I walk through them.

So in your packet, you have a wonderful complete report.

This is the first quarterly report where we did a deep dive into our objectives.

So if you remember, our strategic plan had three layers.

We had our big ideas, which are strategic priorities.

We had our pillars, which were our goals, and then we had the strategic actions.

So that was the implementation that we were following under Gregory's direction.

So this report is the first one where we were doing a deeper dive into one of the pillars, one of the priorities, to give you an update on strategic actions.

So moving forward, when you get this packet, you will have that deeper dive that gives you a little bit more operational insights.

So I hope that you find that valuable as you move forward.

Today I'm gonna try and point you to the highlights and where you might like some additional context to understand the symbols and information that's provided.

So start off with uh just essentially from this slide.

What I really want you to know is that if you want to know what all the symbols mean, it's in your complete packet and a version similar to this, but most importantly, if you see blue errors either facing up or moving across, those are things that are steady, they're strong, they're heading in the direction one.

If you see an error facing downwards, that's not a sign to panic, that's a sign to ask some questions and make sure we understand what is happening and figuring out if it's expected.

Similarly, if you would like to know how the report is laid out and how all these numbers came about, there's also a section in the packet that'll walk you step by step through all these measurements mean.

From this slide, what I'd like you to know is that when you read this report, you're gonna be looking on the left-hand side to find out what the key performance indicator is, and then you'll have columns in those columns.

What you're really looking for is the example down here at the bottom, that arrow above it will have the relative change percent.

Focus on those.

Then, if you're curious, zoom out and read the rest of it.

We're gonna run through three of the strategic priorities.

We have four, but of course, DPHR does a pretty good job of keeping you all abreast of things related to workplace of choice.

So I'm gonna focus on the external facing stuff for patrons, which are learning, belonging, and well-being.

We're gonna start with learning.

Uh, learning has a couple orange arrows, so I'm gonna focus on those, give you some context for what we're seeing.

So, learning, of course, um has things like reading and writing, stem and steam, uh, digital resiliency, so a large quantity of things that are both collection-based and programmatic based.

So, our key performance indicators are a mixture of circulation, access of online resources, and then also um feedback that we receive regarding the program elements.

And what you'll notice is that when we look at circulation per active card holder, we have a nice blue arrow for our short-term lens, which is comparison to the previous quarter, but we look at a comparison to 2024, we have a downward facing error of about 5%.

This is us continuing to see um the things that we've talked about in previous board meetings about circulation, it's just shifting.

We're seeing some growth in e-resource usage.

We're seeing some depression in physical circulation, and we're not gonna see any major impact from our strategic plan efforts, probably until um beginning next year.

So if that continues to remain orange, in the next year, we'll be having a conversation about should we address the strategies that we take to try and boost circulation.

Right now we're just kind of monitoring it and acknowledging that what we're doing right now, it just hasn't hit attraction yet.

In contrast, e-resource usage, you're gonna see an orange arrow in the left column, and it's a large number, 35%.

This is a short-term lens, looking at previous quarter, a shift from an academic year to summer.

And of course, e-resources are all of our databases, which our students love.

So this is an expected one.

And I do want to acknowledge that in this first year of measurement, since we're constantly comparing to previous quarter, these measurements are going to be more susceptible to noticing those small changes.

As we get further into the plan, our short-term lens gets a little bit longer, we start comparising to previous year, we'll see less of a wobble in the numbers.

But you will see sometimes some really big shifts, and that's because we chose relative change, um, percent relative change, which is susceptible to noticing small changes, which is exactly what we want.

However, when we look at e-resources in comparison to last year, we're up six percent year today.

So we're not panicking there.

This is an expected change.

And of course, learning programs, people love our programs, they tell us they love our programs.

We started strong, we're still strong, that's great.

Let's look at belonging.

Belonging is all blue arrow.

So this is an easy conversation to have with you because look, things are going great.

They could be doing better.

We always want to see our uh strategies really start to get hit that traction point and see some bigger numbers, but right now we seem to be on the right track.

I do want to acknowledge up in the left hand corner, we see that people count hasn't a particularly strong measurement this quarter.

Again, this is a short-term lens.

This includes a June, that transition out of school into summer reason.

Of course, we're gonna see a big boost in people count.

Um, and we're happy to see it, but I wouldn't get too excited, I wouldn't necessarily expect to see that all the way through the end of the year.

Um, in your packet, again, we're starting to do that deeper dives, looking at our goals, looking at our objectives, the strategic actions.

We focus that deep dive this quarter on belonging.

So, this is a great opportunity for you to kind of look at some of the operational things that we're doing.

Um, and I'll highlight a couple of them in my presentation, but just know that that's in your packet if you'd like to see it.

And then next I have a well-being slide.

Well being is a little bit boring to report on right now because it's something new that we're measuring, at least the way we're measuring is new.

Um, so as Gregory mentioned, um, we are looking at doing a partnership survey.

We said this was the year that we're gonna write the survey, begin to gather the resources and deliver it.

We won't have the results until the beginning of 2026.

And then well-being programs, which covers things such as mental and physical well-being, but also financial literacy and career choices.

Those programs were strong, they're ending strong, we're getting good feedback, um, but you know, nothing really major and exciting to compare to because we don't have a long-term lens for this one.

But that will get more exciting next year.

So let's take a layer down into the strategic plan and talk just very briefly about some strategic plan goals, um, first perspectives.

The key performance indicators for these was tied to programming.

And one of the things that we talked about when we were setting these key performance indicators is what is a successful program.

Is it that we offer a large quantity?

Is that we had a really large number of people attend, and the answer was it's complicated.

Some programs need to be really small, some programs should be really large and vibrant, and of course, we want to do more programs, but what we really want to do is offer high quality programs.

So the compromise is that we report to you the number of programs offered and how many people attended, so that you can look and dig a little bit deeper to decide for yourselves are we seeing the progress that we'd expect?

This quarter, we see two large orange facing errors around programs offered because we offer fewer programs, however, those programs were larger, so you see the blue arrows next to attendance.

So we have context, we understand why it's happening.

I'm not hugely concerned, and I also know that again, we were heading into summer reading programs, summer reading program had the focus of natural history, which meant that programming in these areas was of course going to decrease slightly over the summer.

So I would project that if we were to look at this KPI again in this quarter's measurements, we'll probably see the same thing, but we'll see it swing back, and by the end of the year, we'll have a robust set of programs.

Another one with an orange arrow was community legacy, and it had a short-term orange arrow for the same reason as online resources, because this includes digital indie, encyclopedia of Indianapolis.

Those are online resources that people use for research.

It just seems to have been impacted by that dip that we see over the summer.

But if you look at year to date, look at that 30%.

They have done a fantastic job.

And in your packet, you'll see they had a couple objectives that we gave you a deeper dive highlight into.

And one of them was in particular that they have recently published some new articles and a new feature on the encyclopedia of Indianapolis.

If you would like to contribute to our strategic outcomes next quarter, and also look in to see what they're doing, I encourage you to visit the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis.

Their major focus, this is coming from their recent uh grant from the Close Foundation is focusing on LGBT plus content.

And there are some great articles.

If that's not a perspective that you've researched about our city, I encourage you to take a look.

And of course, our fantastic Matoya Barker who runs the special collections room, she does some great programs there with a virtual and in-person, so it's a great way to get connected if you struggle to come to our in-person events.

So I encourage you to check those out as well.

Yeah.

They're great programs.

They are.

They're personally some of my favorite ones to attend, but I don't have children, so I understand what other people might choose story time.

Lastly, we'll take one final dive down to look at strategic objectives.

There are just new symbols, so we'll acknowledge this the new symbols are there, but largely we just have an expanded set of symbols.

If you see a plus line, we achieve something.

If you see a red X, we're gonna need to restrategize.

And if you see a gray symbol, we're early in the plan, we're still building some of these ideas out.

They haven't started.

The rest of them, they're different, but at a like intuitive level, they mean essentially the same thing.

I'm gonna show you some blue arrows, a big upward-facing one, um, celebrating the diversity of cultures and heritages within our communities.

So this was an objective that was proposed by our programming staff to say, hey, we have some great partnerships around the Lunar New Year, around our long-term uh partnership with Art Mexicana, and we really want to embrace those and make them a center strategy for our strategic plan.

And I'm happy to say by this point we have done them.

When I was repoing the data for this report, uh, technically, one of them was on July 12th and it hadn't happened yet.

Um, but they have all happened, and we have already re-engaged those partners to continue to work with us next year.

So we're hoping to um offer similar celebrations next year and hopefully expand to include an additional one next year as well.

So this is a great one to look at if you'd like to see um that sort of vibrant large community gathering, what those outcomes have been.

And I know I've seen several of you at these events, but um, if you haven't had a chance to visit one of them, they are it's it fills up the entire central library with music and joy and sound.

They are great opportunities to see the outcomes of our strategic plan.

Next, I wanted to give you a preview of what we're gonna talk about in future quarters.

There's a new process we have called the cardholder access registration and engagement plan.

These are plans that we ask every branch manager to write to say find new card holders, engage your community.

So I just want to give you an update that all those plans have been written, they impact multiple objectives across the strategic plan.

And because we're at college, I had to highlight a quote from their report.

One of the things that we told the branch managers, in addition to say, hey, tell us how you're engaging partners, tell us how you're engaging schools, how are you involved in the socioeconomic success of your community?

We just said, and also what are your other ideas?

And college gave a fantastic response to this.

So they said during our staff meetings, we talk about different ways to reach patrons.

Self-speiting the library is something we try and do all the time.

So the question is how do we keep it fresh?

Adding the college care plan as a talking point in our monthly staff meetings will help with mindfulness and intentionality.

All staff are ambassadors of the library.

I really appreciate this response.

Um, this came from our branch manager Stacey.

It really shows what the intention of these care plans is, and we are expecting that these are going to draw drive some strong success at the branch level.

So not just looking at the big picture, but looking at the small wins that we can get with staff at an individual branch that will drive carpholder outcomes in circulation.

Last update, I know I said I wasn't gonna give you an update on workplace of choice, but you guys get the dry data and policies sometimes.

And I just want to acknowledge that we've had two big wins already with our goals for this year.

One of them is our arms group, they run the career development program and our mentorship program, and they have expanded that to include resume interview and employee branding training already this year, and they're continuing to expand that program and make it more valuable.

And the second one is their talent and development team.

They set a goal based off of the outreach they've done historically of going to 10 recruiting events.

They've already attended eight so far this year, and in their update that you have in your packet, they list out some of the partners, and you'll see some really strong and meaningful partnerships that they have gone out to say, hey, we recognize that you have talent and help us get connected with it.

So I think that that's gonna be a great success and win for that strategy as well.

All right, that was the fast talking.

What questions do you have for me?

I have one.

You had mentioned uh about the part and survey.

Uh, how will we decide on which partners we're going to survey?

Sure.

So we do a process called the community action plan process, in that if a community partner is engaged for the program, the person reports who their contact was for that partnership.

So to start out with, we're going to engage anyone who is directly engaged in program planning with us.

We also have our social work department.

They have a series of partners who maybe didn't do programming but might have done tabling.

So they'll provide us some recommendations.

And then the executive leadership team has their own partnership process where we're sort of looking for those big key partnerships.

And that will also be a group for us to survey.

So collectively, we're hoping to have you know individual partners who maybe only work with a single branch all the way up to community partners who are engaged with the library more at an organizational level.

Yes, we can absolutely provide that list.

Great.

Please.

Thank you for your report.

It was a really thorough report.

Um, as it relates to the programming that you scaled back on, did you receive any feedback from the community on demographics that may have been impacted by that programming no longer being available?

And if you did, um, do you plan to um reintroduce those programs in the near future?

So, how will you prioritize the growth in the program offering in the future?

So I think it's worth noting it's less about scaling back in terms of the quantity of programs, it's more about the type of program.

So during summer reading, historically, branches will focus their efforts on the summer reading theme to build into that branding.

So a lot of times it's something where we'll offer a spring series or a fall series, but during the summer, we'd offer a different set of programming.

Um, but our programming department does monitor that engagement, and then of course the branches have their individual programs that they do.

So there's a mixture of branch really community-based programming and those large scale ones.

And um as we get feedback from our surveys from our branch partners, um, we make sure to incorporate that and adjust our long-term planning.

So we're actually in the middle, again, there's this process called the community action plan process where we say here's a large programs we're intending to do next year.

And so we're, you know, looking at the feedback we received this well, looking at what was successful and popular this year and trying to dial it in to plan for how to space that out over next year.

One of the things that we are looking at is usually we see a little bit of a dip of children's program in August.

So I know that our program department is saying, you know what, we need to fill in that dip with maybe some external presenters.

So we do try very hard to be responsive to that.

Thank you for that.

And I appreciate the fact that you said that you take feedback that you've received in order to drive those decides uh those decisions.

Thank you.

Great.

Any other questions?

All right, there it goes.

I conclude the CEO's report.

All right, thank you very much.

Okay, no unfinished business, no new business, uh, future agenda items.

This time is made available for discussion of items not on the agenda, which are an interest to the library board members, and the opportunities given to suggest items to be on uh future library board meeting agendas.

Do any board members have something to suggest for the September 2025 board meeting?

All right.

Great.

Uh next regular meeting is going to be Monday, September 22nd, 2025 at the Martinale Brightwood Library Branch and located at 2434 North Sherman Drive at 6 30 p.m.

Uh the meetings adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.