Good evening, everyone.

It's my pleasure to welcome you to the monthly meeting of the Indianapolis uh Public Library Board of Trustees hosted at the Beach Grove Branch.

My name's Ray Beterman, president of the Indianapolis Public Libraries Board of Trustees.

And before we begin tonight's agenda, let's have a call of the role.

Mr.

Bieterman.

Present.

Miss Johnson.

Present.

Dr.

Pacio.

Present.

Dr.

White.

Rosen.

And Miss Whitter.

Present.

We can have a floor.

Excellent.

All right.

Well, I've got some exciting news to share.

Who's excited?

I am.

So on May 6th, the library received a wonderful and well-deserved honor.

The Indianapolis Public Library was named a 2026 top workplace by the Indianapolis Star.

On behalf of the Board of Trustees, I want to acknowledge this achievement and congratulate the entire library team.

CEO Hill will share additional details in his report, but I wanted to personally express the board's pride in this recognition, which reflects our strategic priority of being a workplace of choice.

Congratulations to everyone who made this possible.

And speaking of exciting things happening in Indianapolis in May.

Do you know you know where I'm going?

It's very exciting.

So we host the uh the best race uh in the world uh in one weekend, and it's the Indy 500.

But those vehicles, they're not the only impressive vehicles in town.

This Saturday, the Indianapolis Public Library will unveil two brand new bookmobiles.

Yeah.

All right, let's crack for that too.

Uh fittingly, the public will get its first look at these uh bookmobiles during the 500 festival parade this Saturday.

Uh, the board had the opportunity to get a sneak peek this evening.

Uh, very cool looking.

The patrons are gonna be in for a treat.

Uh, these new bookmobiles arrived just in time for our annual summer reading program, which officially uh kicks off May 30th.

And of course, summer reading is not only fun, but it's also free and open to all ages in our community.

This year's theme is play your way, which celebrates your neighborhood library branch as a place for creativity, imagination, discovery, and lifelong learning.

Participants can earn prizes by tracking time spent reading, listening to audio books, reading aloud, or being read to, uh, making uh the program flexible for readers of all ages and all reading levels.

Uh registration's easy uh at any library branch or online, and while you're online, be sure to check out the summer reading kickoff celebrations taking place May 30th at every Indianapolis public library location.

Uh thank you to our programming team and branch staff for planning what promises to be a fun-filled summer.

Now let's uh learn more about our host branch tonight, Beach Grove.

I'd like to invite Mr.

Todd Gilbert, uh, Beach Grove Branch Manager.

Uh please step forward and give your report.

Thank you.

Uh let me start by thanking each of you for coming out here to the branches.

Uh that's a very special thing that you guys do to show up and come out and see us out at the branches, and we really appreciate it.

So I prepared a short slideshow.

Just has some basic information.

We saw some good increases over this past year at the Beach Grove Branch.

So we saw some increases in door count year over year, which we were excited to see ever more people coming in.

Uh, with summer reading coming up, typically our patron counts do climb, so we expect to see continued growth.

We have a lot of families with children in the Beach Grove area, so that's a big part of our reason for being here, and summer reading is definitely an exciting time for that group.

So as you can see, our circulation climbed.

I just pulled some interesting stats.

Our top circulation maybe was the general fiction, just the adult collection, so we get lots of readers to just the general adult, uh, but also children's picture books.

So that bears out what I was saying about how families with children are a big part.

Uh we hope to see the whole family come out and visit the library, mom, dad find a book that they like, but they also find something uh for the younger readers as well.

Um, one thing of note uh the Playaway collection.

We saw a little surge in those, which is exciting because the libraries invested more uh and increased the size of this collection.

I brought the mists of abal on today.

The playaways are a lot of fun because there's no internet required to access this audio book, and you don't have any CDs.

It's a completely self-contained little MP3 player.

So it's great to maybe wear while you're jogging or biking, maybe while you're out in the community without worrying about transporting CDs around.

So these are starting to really pick up a little bit, and it's exciting to see.

So our programming stats, we really reached out and tried to make an effort.

One thing I'll call out the youth attendance and adult attendance for our programming both have gone up year over year, which is a lot of fun.

Part of that is the staff doing a great job of selecting or presenting programs of interest to the community.

Also, our PDA department that does programming for the whole system definitely deserve a little round of applause from the work they do with our programming.

Also, we're trying to offer more broader range of programs for all ages, seniors, adults, teens.

We want them to feel welcome at the library and participate in programming as well.

So we've increased our number of programs offered, and we've seen an increase in our per program attendance.

So we're on the right track there.

Staff at Beach Grove is small but mighty.

Two full-time librarians, a full-time library assistant, two part-time library assistants, three hourly library assistants, and I particularly want to call out the circulation supervisor who carries a lot of the load of supervising and helping to manage the operation.

She does a great job, Joe Laker.

And I also want to give a little nod to our two pages.

As you see things like the circulation numbers increasing, all of that material, when it gets checked out, well, of course, it gets turned back in.

And then it's the pages that are responsible for collecting that material, making sure it goes back on the shelves, ready for the next borrower.

So awesome pages as well.

The staff has uh obtained a few special certifications.

This is something that the NDPL system as a whole has really been working hard on.

We want the branches and central library to be welcoming, open, available to everybody.

So the dementia-friendly certification is a certification where staff do some special training so that they're better equipped, maybe to understand some brain changes, things like that, so that they can offer the best possible service to folks that could benefit from that.

The safe place organization, many are familiar with, is a, as it says, a safe place for youth who may be experiencing challenges or difficulties to come and have a non-judgmental uh opportunity to speak with adults that care and can listen and can maybe get them in touch with resources that could help them out.

And then the autism certificate.

Again, staff did some special training to better understand some of the neurodiversity and some of the particular challenges that folks may have, or just to make it feel more welcoming and friendly for folks like that to come in and join us in the branches.

There are several branches that have obtained all three.

More are working on it, so that's something we were definitely excited to be a part of at Beach Grove.

And that's what I have for you tonight.

I wanted to leave some space if you had some questions or anything you wanted to hear a little bit more about.

Great.

Uh questions from the board.

Yeah, please.

Thanks for the report.

How is that uh dementia training translated into service to the patrons?

Well, there's a couple of things that staff can do themselves in the way they present themselves or greet, or just recognizing if somebody's having a challenging episode, so that you're a little quicker to realize maybe that something is happening and that needs a little more attention.

There are also some things you can do physically to the space to make it easier to navigate, some things with signage to make it easier for folks to find their way around, even as simple as maybe changing some paint schemes or some color schemes so that things stand out a little bit better if someone is presenting with some of those those challenges.

And we've tried to accommodate multiple aspects of that.

There's always a little bit more that you can do, but we have done a little bit with the physical space and quite a bit with the staff training.

And thanks for doing that.

Any other questions?

So thank you also for an amazing report with as a follow-on question.

Is that the trainings or the special trainings that you offer?

There has been a call for that special training specifically in this area.

So I see that you have I'm cheating and looking at his notes.

Um the dementia of the safe place and I can't receive the autism.

So is that representative of the demographic CEO?

I think of Marion County as a whole.

Well what we're seeing is is across the board, we're seeing a need for some additional training, some additional effort from businesses and the community at large.

So together working on this, and so this is very much something that the system as a whole became interested in, and the Beach Grow branch in particular, we do have a large senior demographic.

We want to make sure we're prepared and able to continue offering services as the demographic ages, but we also want to be ready for folks that are moving into the community or folks that are beginning to discover those library services that they can take advantage of.

So a little bit of both.

I think it's it's a give and take.

Yeah, I love that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

All right, thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

I felt like that was for me.

That would be good.

Always.

Always.

It's a nuts out there.

Oh my gosh.

We should make it spending.

So also tonight uh we have a report from the uh Center for Black Literature and Culture at Central Library.

Uh so now if Ms.

uh Haley Rakes may please step forward and give a report.

Good.

Hello.

Hello.

Hi, my name is Hallie, and I manage the Center for Black Literature and Culture.

I started this role in September of last year, and I'm really honored to be here tonight.

I'm happy to share some of my vision and a little recap of what we've been up to.

This presentation will cover an introduction of the CBLC team, the vision we have, an added strategic plan objective, including new messaging, a new social media initiative, some of our community partners, and we'll finish up with our programming.

She has been in the NDPL system since 2007.

I joined in 2025 after completing my master's in Africology and African American Studies from Temple University.

Brianna and I are both Indiana natives, and we are passionate about making the CBLC an inclusive community hub that operates as a third space for all.

We have identified opportunities for reimagining a CPLC that has broader reach and how we welcome and center community.

We are emphasizing building community trust and strengthening our partnerships.

We are meeting our community where they are, whether that be in person, online, and emphasizing accessibility.

And we assert that the CBLC is a third space rooted in belonging through access and inclusion and aligning with the library's strategic priorities.

So when we say third space, what do we mean by that?

We are asserting that the CBLC is not work and it's not home, but it's a community hub where people can access literature.

In this, we are connecting all programs to the library's collection and resources.

And in all that we do, we will remain culturally grounded.

We added a new strategic plan objective, B 5.5, which falls under the belonging KPI category in the 2025-2027 strategic plan.

In that we aim to boost awareness for the CBLC with new messaging, a new social media presence through Instagram, and an increase in visitors.

We are already increasing our efforts to meet people where they are, in person, online, in schools, and in daily life.

We are building community trust through an authentic presence and feedback from our community and partners.

With our new messaging, we are asserting a CBLC that is welcoming, uplifting, educational, culturally grounded and centered, and traditional yet innovative.

I've found that many young people are unaware of the CBLC, and it's incredibly important that we engage youth audiences by building out digital spaces to ensure that the CBLC is truly intergenerational and future looking.

We partnered with communications and marketing to assert and affirm the CBLC as a welcoming home for Black literature and culture and all those seeking to learn more.

Mary Barr was instrumental in helping provide consistent brand messages to positively influence the look and feel of an evolving CBLC.

We launched the CBLC Instagram account, CBLC.and library, you should go follow it, in February of this year, and already have consistent engagement and feedback, and we've hit about 17% of our following goal.

Through conversations with the community, we've heard people say they've joined an event or visited the CBLC because they saw us on Instagram.

Collaborations are key in promoting the library's resources and raising awareness of the CBLC.

We have new and old collaborations throughout the community, and here are just a few that we've been pouring into, and they're also pouring into us.

So we have Artists at Work, Future Black Leaders, Madam Walker Legacy Center, and Best Life with Kathy Barnett.

Lastly, I want to end with some of the programming that we do.

Some of our past programs included collaborations with Ken and Teen Central, our She Leaves Legacy series and Girl and Brocode, and some upcoming programs that we're excited for.

We have the CBLC's ninth annual bookfest and Juneteenth celebration featuring Tommy Adieme, best-selling author of children blood and bone.

That will be June 13th from 10 to 3 at the Central Library.

We also have our 2026 Black Health Fair, which is October 13th from 10 to 3.

And we have a couple book clubs as well.

We have Soulful Pages, which meets the third Monday every month at 6 p.m.

in the CBLC.

And we have the read-in, which is in collaboration with artists at work, and that meets the first Monday every month at 6 p.m.

And both of those are in the CBLC as well.

And for next year, we're super excited because the CBLC turns 10, and we are looking forward to celebrating that anniversary.

And in 2027 as well, we are excited to launch a lecture series.

So thank you so much for listening, and I'm happy to take any questions at this time.

Alright, any questions from the board?

Please.

Thank you so much for your emphasis on third space.

Thank you for your presentation overall.

But specifically for garnering the youth, helping them understand what third space means.

Oftentimes they use library spaces as their third place, third space, and not they're not even knowing what's significant with that.

So what what what more programming are you developing?

Oftentimes they see the library as simply a place for literature, but they don't understand that not not everybody understands that literature spans all all different spaces within intellect, within mind, within socializing.

So what other programs are you thinking about for the youth to attract them to CBLC?

Definitely well we're we're starting with um just collaborating with people who are already kind of the experts with programming for kids and teens.

So that's why we collaborated with Kid and Teen Central.

We're looking to collaborate more with Teen Central specifically um and with their renovation being complete uh pretty soon I think we'll have more programming um we're we're looking to have a specific cap for that as well just so that that is um uh a consistent goal that we keep up with um but also I think uh right now young adults even um we're looking to make sure that they know that they're welcome here um so with programming for sure but also just in daily life we want people to feel welcome at the library and utilize the resources that we have um and I think especially now um people want to be out in community they want to connect with people and I think the library is the perfect place for that.

I agree thank you.

Yeah.

Oh quick question.

You've you've promoted my Instagram I want you to know I'm a follower map.

Yes thank you so much.

And I've engaged it seems yes thank you for that.

I have a question pertaining to the uh lecture series.

One of the things that have uh kind of witnessed in the last uh seven eight years is that most people don't value the here and now uh to get a sense of who we are where we are why we are etc um in your I guess selection of individuals for a lecture series I would like to request that you consider uh a person like Dr.

Pat Payne as a part of that uh because so often people live in the or century Indiana and they have no clue of how we evolve in century Indiana.

Uh a person like Dr Payne is interesting because she came up during that time of segregation and she's seen pictures on both sides.

She had the choice and she say that short reads but really her heart ended up in attics where she has so many different things she could bring pertaining to black literature and culture and we can't even talk about her connection with uh Africa and and different countries in Africa, Egypt, etc.

So as you consider lecture series make sure that we incorporate people who have lived it or live pertaining to a certain theme hers could be under the heading of education or something but uh I hope you guys consider that because young people have no clue of what happened yesterday uh 10 years ago or 50 years ago and they're not always gonna find that in a book and so that makes the lecture series very important for kids to really grow from that.

Yes I I would love to be connected with Dr.

Payne.

I think uh first can first hand accounts are very important um and I think many of us in this country have been miseducated.

Um so I think everyone can can learn a lot from the lecture series as well.

Yeah that's great that's great.

Any other questions comments?

Just a quick one thank you so much for your presentation.

You mentioned building community trust what made you feel like that's something that has to be built upon rather than it's something that already is and what does it mean to build community trust?

I think specifically within the library.

Um I and specifically with the CBLC, we a lot of us say we don't want the CBL C to be the best hidden secret.

Um, but many people who are even natives to Indianapolis don't know that we're here.

Um so I think we build trust by by being by building those partnerships and by letting people know that we're here.

Um we wanna connect with you.

Uh we want to um have you.

Um and we've we've we've gone consistent growth I think this year, but I think uh specifically people who don't see themselves at the library.

I want people to know that even if they have never read for fun, um, we can always find some sort of connection, some sort of resource that will help their lives be better.

And even just connecting with people, I think that is so powerful right now.

So I think when I talk about community trust, that's kind of what I'm talking about.

Still trust, um, but also awareness plays into that.

I I think so.

The reason why is because you also use the notion of authentic.

And I question whether or not there is some distrust because if you're gonna talk about building trust, well, is there something that is not trustworthy?

And then the whole notion of emphasizing accessibility, I wondered about has there been a barrier to accessibility?

I do think when we talk about literature, there has been a lack of access, even in the educational space.

Um I that's why I think it's so important to do something like a lecture series.

Many people don't have the opportunities to get a degree.

Um, luckily I have been able to get two, and I think a big passion of mine is to kind of bridge that gap with higher education and regular dagular people in the community.

I think um a lot of people are passionate about wanting to know more about their history and knowing knowing more about the world today, and I think it shouldn't just exist at that higher level, it should be um within the community as well.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Interesting.

Alright, any other oh please, Dr.

Poss.

Um, so you mentioned that you want to engage more with the community.

How does the uh CBLC goes out into the community?

Are we gonna be using the bookmobiles?

Are we gonna be using the branches?

Are we gonna be visiting places?

Um in a in a time when things are being taken away, right?

How are we replacing that or or bridging that gap?

That's a great question.

Um, so my team and I we do table.

Um we've tabled at some schools, we tabled at different programs.

With Future Black Leaders, they had a leadership summit and we were there to table as well.

Uh just letting know letting people know that we are here.

Um, but the bookmobile is a great idea.

I think that's um a great option.

Um, but yeah, any any opportunity where we feel like we can connect with people who maybe have nothing to do with literature or nothing to do with the library, letting them know that we're here and there is always an end when it comes to connecting even other forms of media to literature and books.

Um, so I I hope that answers your question.

I I just wanna see more engagement.

Just because there's uh an effort to take away history and and leave us with a void.

And I I we're in position to maybe bridge that gap or or feel that void, uh, right now.

So I wanna be clear about that.

Yeah, I'm definitely interested to hear your thoughts.

I'd love to maybe follow up.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Awesome.

Great.

All right, any other no?

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much.

All right, we will now proceed with public comment.

Uh Angie Gilbert, do we have any people requesting a public comment today?

Uh yes, sir, we do.

We have Michael Torres and then we'll have uh Laura Hammock.

Okay, great.

All right.

Yep.

Item important.

All right.

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

There are several individuals representing the same group.

Please select a spokesperson.

Please do not repeat the same comment someone else has offered.

Please also note the public comment is uh not the appropriate forum uh for commenting on matters related to employee charges, employee complaints, or alleged employee misconduct.

Any such matters should be brought promptly to the attention of the CEO or the talent and development department where matters can be addressed uh properly in compliance with established library policies and procedures.

A five minute limit will be allowed for each speaker.

Each speaker should give their name and let us know if they're speaking on behalf of a group.

Mr.

Torres.

Good evening, board of trustees.

My name is Michael Torres.

I'm a PSA at Central Library, celebrating twenty nine years there this this year.

Um I've been neglected, neglecting my members and people who have who are standout employees at Central Library or the library system when they leave or retire.

So tonight I'm gonna focus on a particular person, Barbara Ann O'Leary, who was um a youth technology assistant in the curve, and now the kids' zone, excuse me.

I um notice Barbara, she does the game night on Tuesday nights and I'm in the info desk Tuesday nights, and I s I can see how she engages families, not just the kids, the parents and the g grandparents even, and it really warms my heart to see that she really really uh is doing a job that we all really would like to be able to do, and that's engage all kids and parents and everything.

And she does this repeatedly, and she did it repeated repeatedly, and she also um enjoyed it.

You can see that she enjoyed it.

She was there for about eight years, and she has people that continually come and even ask for her.

So her service was incredible, and I'm sad that she's no longer with us, but I will always remember the great work that she did with the patrons and stuff.

The other part I wanna discuss is um resolution 192026 is a real resolution to increase the pay grade 20, the CEO's salary repay range.

I wasn't able to come to the um HR Diversity Committee meeting where this was discussed.

So it was election day and I was actually up for precinct committee men, which I actually was uh um on my race, but uh at any rate uh I was um unavailable, but I see that um I've been getting a lot of calls and talk and questions about uh this particular resolution.

Um normally when we do races and studies.

Well, when we do pay grade of range studies, we have compensation studies, we have data, we have um peer libraries that we usually look at, and we have compensation study uh information that to help make the case for this um raise or widening of the gap.

I don't think there was anything that was at this meeting or there was anything that was made available to um justify uh the range.

I'm not saying it isn't uh uh valid or anything, but I'm saying that the process that we normally go through is where we would study other libraries and we would see that data.

Um I'm I'm afraid and the concern from all of uh staff and everybody is that uh we didn't see that, and that not trying to take anything away from everybody, we just are concerned about the process.

So, and I'm sorry that I have to be the one to say this, you know, um to bring this up, raises concern, but uh um I think that uh it would be great, it would be good and transparent if that information was shared with staff or the public.

I don't know if it's available to the public.

For my understanding, it's not.

So my concern is that uh, or my wish and my ask is that that information be shared with the public and staff, and um, and if it's not available, then I think it needs to be tabled until that information can get out to staff.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for your your comments.

Can I have a quick question?

Uh no, okay.

I just wanted to ask about the um barber over there.

Okay.

Um, who's next?

Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

That's all right.

Laura Hammock.

Hi.

Good evening, everyone.

My name is Laura Hammock, and I proudly serve as the superintendent of Beach Grove City Schools.

It's so nice to see you.

Thank you all for being in Beach Grove.

We're thrilled to have you.

Tonight I just wanted to talk about uh gratitude, uh, gratitude for this branch.

Uh the Beech Grove Library is a critical component of this community, and I just can't tell you as superintendent how deeply grateful I am for the people that make up this space and for the services that are offered.

In education, we often talk about partnerships.

Sometimes that word can be overused, but every now and then you encounter a relationship where the word partnership truly fits.

And that is exactly what exists between Beach Grove City Schools and the Indianapolis Public Library's Beach Grove Branch.

For anyone who visits our campus, the physical representation is hard to miss.

Our organizations literally share a parking lot.

Side by side, we are connected in a visible way.

But I would suggest that the physical closeness is actually one of the least important things about our relationship.

The deeper connection is in the work.

Over the last several years, the Beach Grove branch has enthusiastically opened its doors to our students in ways that have made a meaningful difference.

Fifth and sixth graders from Central Intermediate School walk over during the school day and experience what a community library can be.

Your team has helped ensure that students obtain library cards and understand that this space belongs to them too.

And that matters.

Because for many children, having a library card is about much more than checking out books.

They learn that libraries aren't clubs.

Libraries welcome all, and they say to our students that they belong here, that this place is for them, that they have access and that they matter.

For many of our students, this building also becomes something more than a library.

Outside of school hours, which it was so exciting when I came through the doors this evening, it becomes a safe place.

I saw many of our students downstairs.

A welcoming place, a place where students can spend time, learn, read, explore, and simply exist in a caring environment.

And every time that our students walk through these doors, your staff and your librarians meet them with kindness and support.

Beyond our schools, your presence throughout Beach Grove is felt in countless ways, whether through community programming, engagement efforts, or your support of initiatives like Prevention Week and partnerships with the Beach Grove Drug Free Coalition.

Your team consistently shows up for our city.

When people talk about the things that made Beach Grove special, the library is always a part of that conversation.

We all know that libraries are so much more than books, they're about opportunity, they're about connection, and they are certainly about community.

Just as I cannot imagine Beech Grove without Beach Grove City Schools, I truly cannot imagine Beach Grove without this library.

So tonight I just wanted to say thank you and welcome.

Thank you for your commitment to our children and our families, and thank you for investing in our community and for being a true partner for our schools.

Thank you.

All right.

Any other public comment?

No, sir.

That was the last speaker.

Great.

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

There was an executive session on April 20th, 2026.

Is there a motion to approve uh the minutes from the executive session held on April 20th, 2026?

Is there a second?

Second.

Um then moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

None will have a call of the role.

Miss Johnson, approved.

And Dr.

Ritata.

Dr.

Palacio.

Approved.

Dr.

White, approved.

Ms.

Twitter, approved.

And Mr.

Vieaterman.

Approved.

Uh, is Carrie?

Thank you.

Oh, um.

Ms.

Johnson is gonna sign for today.

Uh all right.

Uh regular meeting held April 27th, 2026.

Is there a motion to approve the minutes of the regular meeting held on April 27th, 2026?

So is there a second?

Second.

Uh, minutes have been moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

Hearing none, we'll have a call to roll.

I'm still have to approved.

Dr.

Matada.

Approved.

Dr.

Classif.

Approved.

Dr.

White?

Approved.

This order?

Approved.

Approved.

The motion's carried.

All right.

We'll move on to the finance committee.

Dr.

White, you are chair of the finance committee.

Thank you for identifying me for that purpose.

We're gonna bring uh Lena report with the financial report.

We only have one resolution this evening, and we'll get to that after the uh financial report.

Welcome.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Um Mary and I will present a brief overview of April's financials.

I will review the revenue and Mary will review the expenditures.

Uh for the month ending of April.

Uh we received 1.6 1.7 million dollars and one about one million of that is tax advance.

Um that's typically what we receive now.

This is a little bit more than we received last year.

We will receive the remaining of our property taxes in May and June.

So right now we have received six percent of our revenue for the for the fiscal year, but as you remember, our cadence is we receive the majority of our revenue um in May and June.

Um the intergovernmental we received um Lloyd and Coeb Plus, we received E-rate in the amount of $31,000.

And then um for uh charges and services public printing we receive $42,000, and then for the miscellaneous revenue of interest, we received $99,000.

And this is a little bit less than we received in the past, but however, I noticed that our um the interest yield has stayed the same for the month of April.

So, you know, I had to do the research because I didn't know why it stayed the same.

And um, but it was just um consistent for this month, um, not this month, but in but in April, and it's just with the federal they left it the same.

So if you look in our investment report on page 38, you'll see that the interest rate is about the same as it was last year.

I mean last month.

We'll be there.

So um, so the federal reserves remain steady on those rates.

Um the summary on page 31 of our um board report, that is where you'll see the revenue of us receiving the 1.7 million.

And if you want the details on that, that's on page um 33 of the detail reports.

Um this slide here, um the first on the right, you'll see the revenue for the month that high compares to last year of April 2025, and as you notice that we received just a tad bit slight higher than last year, and again that was a mailing deal to um a little E rate that received in the tax advance, and the um graph on the right is the year to date amount, and you'll see that um our revenue is slightly higher than 2025 until we get to the charges of services and miscellaneous revenue, and again, um that's because the interest rate for last year was much higher than this year.

That's in the miscellaneous and the charges for services.

Um, that's the uh revenue that we received for um printing.

So that's slightly um less.

Let's see.

And that's all that really stood out to me in regards to the revenue right now.

And I'll let uh Mary review the expenditure.

On the operating expenses, um they're distributed among four uh main categories.

Personal services and benefits is the largest, um, which is our salaries, benefits, and professional development.

And um we are at twenty nine percent year to date of the budget, and as the year is you know, a third, we're under budget overall.

Um the um next category is supplies, um, which only spent seventy seven thousand this month, and we're at 22 percent of the supply budget uh the next highest category is other services and charges the four three um which includes legal security cleaning services equipment supplies and technology expenses um and year to date is four point six million which is twenty three percent of the annual budget capital outlay this is primarily our books and some furniture and we're at one million year to date it's just twenty-four percent of the budget and then we also present this in graphs on the next slides oops on the left is the bar chart uh April versus April of the prior as well and comparing to the budget year to date I mean for the month and um so our personal services and benefits is the largest chart there um with the budget being in gray last year's is in orange and the blue is this month I mean last month April so it shows that um we are within budget uh supplies also is within budget then the other services and charges are also within budget under budget and but more than last year however we planned for that so uh the capital's outlay is slightly higher than on the monthly basis uh than the budget um but I believe it's we're doing pretty well on the year to date on the year to date on the right is presented a line chart with the yellow line being the budget orange being the 2025 year to date at this time last year and then the blue is this year's year to date and um we also present the totals year to date there so again over last year um on personal services and benefits um which is expected but we are under budget and supplies uh is under budget um and under last year other services and charges is under budget and so slightly more than last year and capital outlay is running a little bit more and um than last year and a little bit more than budget but overall we're doing fine um do careful cost management okay oops are there any questions any questions on uh the report yes question yes thanks for the report so on the personal well personal services and benefits we're looking at a little bit under two million dollars in savings year to day it's about one million a little bit over one million so um during the time when we create the budget we're in the negotiation period for benefits and so of course we are more um conservative when we budget because I never know well we never know about medical so we include that and then this also includes open positions as well.

So that's why it appears this way and this can fluctuate throughout the year.

So it really depends.

And we fully um self-insured for the medical so we pay all claims so it depends on what's going on on the month.

So this will fluctuate but we are this does appear to yes, we are on the budget as in the month of April question okay I I wanted to add another question.

So typically um, you know, I this is my six, seventh year on the board.

Sounds kind of crazy.

Seventh, yeah, seventh seventh year?

Oh boy.

Um, but but from what I've seen in each of the years, we end up under budget.

Yes.

We're we spend about 87% of the budget on average.

Yes.

So there is like more capacity, we've but more budgeted capacity than what gets used in a given year.

Yes.

Um but if you call for the budget for 2026, um when we completed the budget, which you know, again, we typically, although we show that we're maybe a surplus, I mean uh deficit, we typically become a surplus this year, maybe a little bit different, um, but we do have enough reserves to cover that, and that we did plan for that.

So, great.

Any other questions?

All right.

Oh, yes, just to follow up.

Oh okay.

So are we on target to sort of meet the uh eighty-seven percent?

Um I know you don't have a crystal ball.

No, but it we do have a cash flow statement which is on um whatever page that is.

I think I wrote it down somewhere.

It will show um how we kind of forecast out and based on our current expenditure.

Um it will show if you review that that we will still be in a deficit, but things change with the way expenses fluctuate and how we are good stewards of our expenses and we kind of review those, so you know.

Deficit, you mean I'm sorry?

You mean under budget?

Or over.

Um the cash flow will show that we're over budget.

Okay.

Over budget over cash.

Right.

Cash.

Yeah, we're still be under budget.

Mm-hmm.

Under budgeting, right?

Yeah.

Well, our budget had um included uh planned fifty-seven point five million in revenues and seventy million in expenses to utilize some of the reserves.

Because we had to we had to utilize some of the reserves because they were getting billed pretty high.

It was recommended that we use some of our reserves.

That was from our external audit.

Yes.

Okay.

Well, in our long-term planner, and in the long term.

Okay, great.

All right, any other questions?

None?

Okay.

Is there a motion to accept the report of the treasurer for April 2026 for filing for audit?

So moving.

So is there a second?

Second.

All right, it's been moved in secondary any further discussion.

Somebody jumped ahead.

We're supposed to have discussion now.

Oh, I could have plenty of discussions.

That's okay.

That's okay.

Let me ask you a question.

So what is the benefit of bringing down the reserve?

'Cause that that may be counterintuitive.

Um well our um what's the call or cash?

I'm trying to think it's our policy that we have for our reserves that we should only have um at least 50 percent of our our of our property taxes and right now we have more than that in our reserves.

How much more?

Um more way more.

Okay.

So it's recommended we do spend some down.

Okay.

Any other any other discussion?

Um, thinking was finished.

Um no, I said thank you.

But I just wanted to bring for those who don't understand the benefit of drawing down the reserve yeah, yes.

Yes, fund balance policy.

I was trying to figure out that out.

I mean, Russell, you're supposed to help me with that.

All right.

Any other no?

Okay, let's have a call of the roll.

Miss Johnson, Dr.

Matata, approved.

Dr.

Classio.

Approved.

Dr.

White?

Approved.

Ms.

Witter, approved.

Yeah, Mr.

Baderman.

Approved.

The motion's carried.

I will move on to the we'll come forward now.

We will see the resolution uh seventeen forty six.

Good evening, esteemed board members.

I'm here to um talk about um resolution 17 2026, which is our annual renewal for OCLC cataloging metadata and interlibrary loan subscription services.

This is a core service uh that we need to create our catalog, and um this is what I was we're asking uh to authorize the approval of our renewal.

And this is a suite of cataloging and management tools that helps us to create the database of our catalog of our holdings across all of our locations.

Um it's essential to the work that the cataloging uh team does and uh assigning do we call numbers as well as creating records for the hundreds of thousands titles we add per year um using the latest um cataloging standards of RDA, which is resource description and access, and uh the older Anglo-American cataloging rules version two, AACR2 standards.

Um the interlibrary loan part of the subscription allows our our central library staff to um request books from other libraries across the country for our patrons if we don't own them, or to send um books that we have that other libraries don't have to libraries across the country, um, based on the holdings with that we mark in the cataloging module.

So they work um hand in hand together, both the cataloging and metadata and interlibrary loan.

Um under the terms of the contract, the renewal will be 115,392.56 cents for a period of July 1st, 2026 to June 30th, 2027.

And it comes out of our operating budget art uh which has already been budgeted for um as this is a known expense every year.

So we're asking for um your approval of the renewal.

Do we have any questions?

We also thank you for the additional explanation behind what all those terms were.

When you presented it before, it was useful just to know that it really does allow the library staff to do what it needs to do.

So thank you.

Absolutely.

The uh finance committee recommended will do pass and full board for this resolution.

All right.

Uh resolution 17 2026 regarding OCLC cataloging metadata and IOL subscription services received a positive recommendation from the finance committee.

So the chair would request a second to such recommendation.

Second.

Any discussion?

Hearing 911, call the roll.

Ms.

Johnson, approved.

Director Martada, approved classia.

Approved.

Approved.

And Mr.

Peterman.

Approved.

Motion's carried.

Thank you very much.

Um, updates are um, I think I recorded this last month, but the audits on schedule to be completed by June, and it should be reported to the board, probably I think July or August by our auditors and um we're pursuing for the 2026 bonds to cover Overton um innovation.

And this is any other questions.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Dr.

Wade, anything else for finance committee?

No, that completes our assignment for the month.

All right, thank you.

All right, let's move on to the diversity policy and human resources committee.

Dr.

Pasio, you are the chair of that committee.

Thank you.

So we have two resolutions today.

Uh resolution.

We'll start with the resolution 18-2026, and I'll pass it to uh John for explanation on that.

Is uh related to policy updates.

Thank you, Dr.

Palacio.

Uh good evening, everyone.

Uh, I'm here to ask for your uh approval for resolution 18 uh 2026.

It is a long list of policy uh revisions and approvals.

I'm not gonna step through each and every one because we did that in committee, and the vast majority of the updates are grammatical, uh updating job titles or or changing the order of the words or things like that.

There is one policy I did want to talk through uh in the board meeting though, just to make sure we got it in front of the public because it has to do with their the way the library uses their data.

Uh that is policy 50 uh excuse me, 513.2 library use of circulation records.

You can see it on the screen there.

Obviously, intellectual freedom is foundational to what the public library does, and patron privacy is foundational to intellectual freedom.

So anytime we make a change in the policy that discusses what we do with patron data, we want to make sure it's as uh uh discussed as possible.

So uh essentially what we're asking uh to do is to broaden the range of things that we do with public data to include uh analyzing usage trends of the library, so uh for example, mapping where library card addresses might be on a map to learn which neighborhoods uh do not have very high library card uh rates, things like that.

Um and in discussion uh in committee uh we we discussed a lot about talking about what we would also not do, in other words, uh how we would never sell library data to third parties.

So we articulated that uh in this policy as well.

Uh Dr.

Passio had some good questions about how we make this clear to patrons.

So we're gonna be including some language uh in this effect in our library card application, so that when patrons create library cards, they'll have all this right in front of them.

They'll know exactly what we plan to do with the information that they turn over to us.

Um, and that's that's the summation of the changes.

Like I said, that's the that's the big one.

All the others are small.

I'm happy to answer any questions, but um, yeah, whatever whatever I can tell you, I'm happy to tell you.

Great.

This has a due pass recommendation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, uh resolution 18 2026 regarding the update of library policies related to public services received a positive recommendation from the diversity policy and human resources committee.

So the chair would recommend uh would request a second to such recommendation.

So, all right, any discussion?

Just want to make one point.

Thank you for also following through on the idea of public trust, how patron data is used and putting into place the kinds of parameters around that is not so very important.

It's the reason why we always have to make sure that there's a certain amount of transparency when we're establishing trust.

So thank you so very much.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any do something, Mark?

Yeah, please.

So you're talking about the identifying the data before it's use as a for statistical purposes.

Correct.

So the data that's involved in a library card application is essentially name, birthday, address.

That's what we collect.

Thank you.

Okay.

Any other discussion?

Hearing 911 call to roll.

Ms.

Johnson, approved.

Dr.

Patada, approved.

Dr.

Palacio.

Approved.

Dr.

White?

Approved.

Ms.

Woodard?

Approved.

And Mr.

Greenman.

Approved.

The motion is carried.

Thank you.

All right.

Moving on to resolution 19-2026.

All right.

Resolution 19-2026.

It is to amend the pay scale for pay grade 20, which is the CEO position.

This request came from the board to expand the pay grade.

Alright.

Um, so resolution 19-2026 uh resolution amending pay grade 20 for the chief executive officer.

It did not go through uh committee, so it needs both a motion and a second.

Does anyone um move?

So move.

All right, it's been moved.

Any second.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any discussion?

Yes.

Please.

So I see it.

There's a table here that has a range.

Could you explain that range?

Because it goes all the way to 270.

Yeah, so normally we whenever we expand it, we spend a little bit more from what it was requested.

The request was to or the salary to be two sixty-five.

Okay.

So we are moving up to 270.

Could you talk a little bit about the comparables that we used?

Thank you.

Um all right, so um, so there were a couple of sets of comparables that we looked at in doing this evaluation.

First, we looked within the city.

Uh we looked at the other municipal corporations, and NDPL is by far the lowest paying for its executive by the tune of uh sixty thousand dollars lower than the next closest executive, which was at 262 for just a base salary, not including any bonus or any other compensation.

Next up was 298, and then 334, 351, and 463.

So we looked at those numbers for the other executives of the other municipal corporations, which are the Airport Authority, Indigo, Health and Hospital Corporation, IPS, and the Capital Improvement Board.

In addition to that, just looking at a sampling of a couple other libraries just in our sister state, the state of Ohio, um, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus were all within kind of this 250 to 270 range.

So uh we we made um we looked at that and compared to where we were in order to be competitive on the next time that we have a search uh for a CEO, we wanted to take some steps now in order to alleviate some of that pressure at that point in time.

So that compared with the stellar performance that we saw from the CEO, uh, we came up with the recommendation that that we did.

Thank you very much.

Um I just wanted for for public to understand where we got those numbers because otherwise it's it may appear that they come out of clean air.

So no.

So thank you, uh President Biederman.

Absolutely.

Yeah, any other comments?

Just one reinforcement to that.

Uh if the uh CEO position became vacant, etc.

And we were doing a search for who would be the next CEO, you know and I know based on common practice, that salary would have to be elevated substantially.

So I I really feel that based on the performance of the current CEO, we need to be fair enough to him to compensate him accordingly, just a personal opinion.

Any other discussion?

I agree with uh his stellar performance, so I I want to mention that as well.

And uh I know when we hire him, I I mentioned that in my view he was being not paid enough.

Um but I did want to uh back to the comments of prior public speakers, start with phase one being the employees who are on the front lines, and that's what we did three years ago or two years ago.

So um I wanna express my gratitude for the Hill's patients uh waiting his turn in this, I call it three-phase uh step getting here, and and we need to continue to improve the lives.

Uh we see inflation hitting, so uh you know, keep keeping that in mind and appreciate uh Tisha's work and Lolita's work and everybody else, uh all the great work that you're doing and keeping this institution not only uh sustained but alive and engaging with the community.

So just want to add those comments, Dr.

Martina?

I'd like to offer a different perspective.

I think that it's really important that we also keep and keep in mind those who are boots on the ground all of the time.

And three years ago was one rate of inflation, but inflation has gone up quite a bit more, and so how are we paying a close attention to the pay raises that if we're giving this, how does it look to those who are boots on the ground?

How does it look when our staff is a turnover in some c in some cases because they aren't getting the kind of salary that they deserve to get?

And so I'd like to yes, honor the importance of a CEO getting what they deserve to get, but at what point do we make sure that everybody who's on the who's working on the shelves, who's making sure the books get done and making sure that the uh periodicals are maintained, that all every aspect of the work is honored and respected, and that's not always the case.

Even when we say we're making sure that the library is seen as a place where people want to come to work, how do we make sure that the salary is competitive, that people stay, that they stay because the salary is um comparable from the not just the CEO, but from every single aspect of the terrain.

And that's not always the case.

So three years ago is one thing.

What's happening today?

We have to do it against the program.

That's the point.

I completely agree with you.

I think we opened the box to this when we did the uh last increase overall for employees, and then we knew, and now we know more than that, that we must pay attention and adjust them accordingly.

And we we know this, because when you talk about a surplus, it's city county council.

Uh, when we go asking them to help support us in increasing the amount of revenue that we receive, we need to be able to justify the need.

Right now, for big surplus, it's hard to justify a need.

So it's a balance you have to you have to really deal with to be fair to all your employees, and yet don't destroy their organization by uh having shortfalls.

So there is a formula for uh when that surplus is necessary, but I agree with Dr.

Matada 100%.

All this does is make us address along with the union and representatives of the employees that what will be our next step because we have to take action on that next, and this isn't the process.

So we we we cannot afford to forget that with inflation, the economy and the madness that's going on, uh that we have to pay attention to the salary of our employees.

So I completely agree with you 100%.

I appreciate that so much.

Thank you.

I just I go to the vision different branches.

I spend time there.

I was just over at one of the branches.

The librarian, the manager was so grateful.

She said, Oh, we finally got uh early childhood, a person who sp specializes in early childhood.

I said, You finally got it?

She said, Yeah, it's taking some time.

Why is that?

Oh, well, you know, we got turnover.

When we have churn and turnover, that's something to follow up on.

Find out why.

That's why when you mentioned um Barbara and O'Leary, what's what's the reason for the turnover?

I don't know.

Haven't asked, haven't, but I always want to know more about why somebody leaves.

And if we don't do a careful study of that, and we're paying up, which we deserve to make sure that we do, and I don't want to speculate on anything.

I want to make sure that we have um the data to always make the kind of decision.

That's why I ask about the data, that's why I ask about equity of opportunity, so that we keep excellent staff and we keep them for the long haul.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you very much.

I I completely agree and echo, and I at the last meeting we talked about that future agenda item.

We're gonna take a look at some of those things, and I know that that's in process, so we will be getting more information on that, and I think that's a good step in this process, and I'm interested in hearing a little more about this early childhood thing too.

About keeping good people.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

All right.

Uh any other discussion on Mr.

President, I there is some um between the chart that's attached and the resolution there is a discrepancy.

The the resolution says 265 the chart says 270.

So I would just ask that the board clarify um is that two sixty five or is that two seven text of you text of the resolution should say two seventy instead of two sixty five okay and so in order to amend that do we need another motion to amend I just need your move and second to acknowledge that so we had a second on the moved and seconded any discussion on that aspect all right um hearing none we'll have a call of the role for the amended motion correct Miss Johnson approved Dr.

Matata Dr.

Palacio approved Dr.

White Miss Woodard approved and Mr Goodman approved the uh motion is carried all right uh Dr.

Placio anything else from DPHR nope that concludes our presentation thank you all right moving on to the facilities committee uh Ms.

Johnson you have a big presentation for today together the whole choreography um so Mr.

Parsons I believe was joining electronically today is that correct is he is hello okay can we can we we can we hear him is that possible I just um there whoa all right what do we have for today we have uh one resolution um that is resolution 20 to 2026 which is approval to award a design services contract for central library restroom update project so to the next slide and the is moving towards uh more acceptable sample restrooms we've seen this um to uh positive uh positive feedback and our recent renovations at more I think we've seen this uh especially the third floor restroom update as part of uh the kid central renovation um and now the rest of the tower floors one two four five and six are still uh in the old style of the uh bifricated um gendered restrooms and uh they also need to be addressed to be more accessible so this uh this contract is a uh direct procurement for the purchasing code um for KRM architecture they were uh not were they are the lead architect for Kid Central Teen Central um and they were awarded that back in 2022 they've been with us working in central library for the past four years uh they designed Michigan Road and Glendale uh both of which have received great feedback and they're currently designing uh the new West uh Indianapolis branch uh they also have experience uh with the state of Indiana uh with their regulations for restroom design um for both durability and accessibility uh so they have the history uh they're familiar with NDPL they're familiar with our processes they um are familiar with what uh needs to occur in our restrooms and have a um uh a good idea of uh what our patrons um you know and what expanded access for our patrons means so the awarded amount um the uh awarded um uh is 94,300 dollars this includes design and engineering and construction administration.

So this is a standard project where we have design and engineering first, and then we go out to bid for the general contractor for the individual trades, and then we receive those bids back.

And so uh this project will be funded via bond fund 486.

Uh the next slide.

Uh community impact uh KRM is based in Indianapolis.

Uh they are not a city certified XBE.

Uh we went, we had a quick discussion with them about the bidding process uh for the general contractor, and they've agreed to assist uh the general contractor or the construction manager as constructor or the CMC, whichever uh option we pursue uh in meeting our XBE goals uh for the construction portion for the trades portion.

I think our next slide is just the question slide.

Okay.

Okay, so uh resolution 20-2026 uh received a positive recommendation from the facilities committee.

So the chair would request a second to such recommendation, somewhat.

Second, I'm sorry, second.

Oh boy.

All right, so uh we got a uh second to the recommendation.

Um can we go back to the slides for a second?

I I had a discussion right.

Yep, yep, forward one.

There we go.

All right, so um you have this statement that says vendor will assist GC, CMC in meeting XBE goals for construction.

Can you explain what that means?

Sure.

So uh during the bidding process, this is uh that those bids are uh considered public works, and so that's the Indiana code that they are monitored under.

So that is uh we are required to award to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder.

Um, and so uh we cannot pick and choose uh which vendor we want based on XPE.

We have to go with the lowest amount, lowest responsible, and so what we do, right as possible net.

Um, and so assisting the GC or assisting the CMC, that is comparing and contrasting what your list of vendors are, making sure that um assistant and KRM will assist um you know the contractor primary contractor uh with reaching out to those vendors with making sure that um other business organizations are aware um of the contracts that are going out.

So we um basically is working on the back end to cast as wide a net as possible to entice XBE vendors uh to take a look and submit a a bid.

Please.

Yeah, well, I mean it is GC or CMC.

Generally, you are receiving a singular bid as a library from the rolled-up bid from that GC or CMC, but you are not receiving individual bids from the provider of carpet or the provider of drywall services, you are receiving the assembly of the room as a whole.

And so I think when we discussed this with purchasing, because it is not the normal process for NDPL to direct solicit services, and there was uh Adam and uh purchasing department had a discussion about utilizing direct uh procurement of services in this instance because there was a familiarity.

One of the questions was how do you uh want to make sure that you uh attempt to utilize meets the utilization goals during the bidding process?

So um one of the things that the architect will be tasked with is what Adam just described, which is making sure that they are inclusive vendors who are inclusive of uh XBE vendors in their solicitation of quotes uh for that roll-up process.

So it is assisting the likely or potential uh general contractor or CMC and making sure that they are inclusive of that, which is not normally the process that the library um always engages in.

So it's an attempt to take an extra step to encourage those CMC or GC vendors to uh include include those uh it's special attention to them on this project.

Okay.

Um does that spark any other questions or discussion?

Thank you.

All right, okay.

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

Miss Johnson approved.

Dr.

Matada, approved.

Dr.

Palacio.

Approved.

Dr.

White, approved.

Miss Woodard, approved.

Mr.

Baderman.

Approved.

The motion is carried.

Thank you.

All right.

Um library foundation update.

Oh, actually, is there anything more?

Sorry.

Okay.

All right.

We got our meeting going on.

I know right.

All right.

So uh now we're uh thank you, Adam.

Um now that concludes uh facilities.

Now let's do the library foundation update.

Dr.

Yolo is not here, so I'm going to read the report as fast as I can.

All right.

Unless you want me to slow down, Dr.

Please, right now.

Okay, um news for the Library Foundation.

Library Foundation Board of Directors elected new officers at their May 12th annual meeting.

We're pleased to announce the new officers.

Carrie Jeter Lewis, Chair, uh, uh Martio Donatelli, Vice Chair, Susan uh Lipton, Secretary, uh Berton Ugra, uh Treasurer, and Brad Holtz, Immedia Past Chair.

Uh we thank 187 donors made gifts last month.

The top corporate and foundation donors are uh Alan Whitehall Clues Charitable Foundation, American Honda, uh Motor Company Inc., uh, Apex Benefits Group, Barnes and Thornburg, Citizens Energy Group, Cummins, Eli Lillian Company Foundation, Forvis Marvis, Kat Stepper Miller, Ritz Charles Inc.

and Woodley Farah Manion Portfolio Management Inc.

Uh this past month we're proud uh to to give more than a hundred thousand dollars to the library.

Examples of major initiatives uh we supported include the book Bonanza, the World Culture Celebrations, the concert series and the summer reading program.

All right.

Uh thank you, Library Foundation.

Yes, okay.

And now we move on to the report of the CEO.

Right good evening.

Thank you, Mr.

Biederman.

Uh, first is the confirmatory resolution 21 2026 as it related to financial travel and personal matters that occurs between each board meeting.

This resolution is in its typical format, and I would ask for you to uh for your approval of resolution 21 2026.

All right, is there a motion to approve resolution 21-2026 regarding finances personnel and travel?

So move.

Is there a second?

Second.

Uh, it's been moved and seconded any discussion.

Hearing none will have a call to roll.

Dr.

Matada approved.

Dr.

Palacio.

Approved.

Dr.

White?

Approved.

And Mr.

Bader.

Approved.

The motions carried.

All right.

Moving.

Moving on.

Um, so this report will cover uh the month of April in the previous 30 days.

Uh the agenda items you see output measurements.

We'll do some engagement data, staff recognition, top workplace, upcoming events, and then Miss Maryam McKenzie, our chief strategy and analytics officer, will give an update on strategic plan.

The first one is our output measurements, some key data points, visitors uh on any typical day again was six thousand three hundred and fifty-seven, was our average daily patrons.

Um for the month of April, we had 203,987 visitors, which is about a 4% increase uh from last month.

Uh circulation, our daily average was 20,592, and that includes physical books and e-circulation.

Our total for the month was 658,549, which was slightly down uh from the previous month.

Uh our adult programs, you see, we had 322.

Uh all ages 64, and youth 572.

We had a 19% increase in programs compared to April of 2025.

And then there was like a 50% increase in program attendance compared to 2025.

The next is the key engagement metrics.

As you see, I highlighted a few programs here.

The first one is Your Nose Knows, which was a PDA program.

Tyler's had the chance to explore their senses at Your Nose Knows, which was a sensory exploration program, which was hosted at multiple locations in partnership with the Indiana State Museum.

We had 110 little noses that participated.

And then Fort Ben had their model railroad train show.

It's the annual train show.

Our conductors at the National Model Railroad Association, Central Indiana Division, set up their tracks and trains, and we spent uh all the live the live long day welcoming.

They had 480 passengers as they explored the exhibits and completed activity passports throughout the library, and they were able to earn prizes.

Crystal House at Garfield Park students came for a tour, which focused on library resources and services.

They had 15 students who received library cards, and the students love the idea of the seed library and learning about the seed library.

Intro to gardening, there were six classes throughout the library.

Gardeners of all experience levels learned about edible landscaping, container gardening, and caring for perennial plants.

And then last was computer classes.

Throughout the month of April, the tech learning team visited locations to present computer classes.

The most popular class was the Internet Toolkit.

In this class, users learned the basics of navigating websites, managing bookmarks, and using the internet to its full potential on a daily basis.

Next, I want to do staff recognition.

So the uh Star Awards recognition for the month of April.

Our winners were patron services was Michael Rorley from Irvington.

Pierce Support is Lexi Owens, who is a mid-region floater.

Community involvement, Sue Davis from college, and Rebecca Thorpe from college.

Following up, uh Page Excellence was Susan LeVay from Glendale, and volunteer and partnerships was Christy Mossman from Glendale.

And then the community involvement is just a duplicate from the previous page, and I apologize about that.

So can we give our Star Award winners a round of applause?

And then real quick, I want to talk about uh the top workplace.

Uh this is the word cloud uh that came from the survey and how our employees describe us.

Uh they see the the bigger bolder words were the words that were uh included the most uh inclusive, community diverse, open, welcoming, helpful, engaging.

So a lot of adjectives up there to describe uh the workplace, and uh again we had over 1,100 comments from the survey.

I believe 74% of our staff completed the survey, and our overall rank was 12 out of 44 at large companies.

So we should be proud of that.

So again, congratulations to the staff and all your hard work.

And I wanted to add this photo.

Um the photo on the right, um, and I made sure I got John Helling's permission this morning.

He actually sent me a text the next day, and I really this kind of resonated with me, and I really appreciate uh what he had to say.

Thought you might like to see how we all see you.

Thanks for taking us there.

So thank you, John, for that.

I appreciate you allowing me to share that.

Um, again, thank you to the staff who attended.

Uh, we did win the Spirit Award that night for engagement, and uh, so thank you again to the the staff who attended.

We had a really good time.

It was is a really good event, and I think we all felt proud and uh happy to be a part of NDPO at the time.

And then we also won uh a $50, $500 gift card for winning the Spirit Award for that tonight.

So uh some upcoming events.

Um Haley mentioned this in her presentation, the Soulfo Pages Book Club.

That is going to be on uh I don't know the 19th.

I can't read my writing, so I'm sorry I won't give out the dates.

Uh the next one is the Indianapolis 500 parade.

I believe it's on May 23rd.

The bookmobile will be involved in the parade.

Uh here at Beach Grove, you have Connection Cafe.

Connection Cafe is a social hour featuring games, arts and crafts, and music, and it also gives a chance for caregivers and others to uh enjoy each other's company.

Next is not on the list, but Scene Central and Kids Central, their grand opening is scheduled for June 6th, and then the SRP kicks off on May 30th, August through August the first.

And then lastly, I don't I didn't make a slide for this, but I just want to say um the ELT, we had our retreat at Barnes and Thornburg on May the first.

All 10 of our ELT members participated as well as uh Roberta Jaggers, who is president of the Library Foundation.

So thank you for the participation.

Uh we had three sessions.

The first session was executive presence, which was facilitated by Mr.

Jimmy McMillan from Penske.

Um the second session was led by uh Brent Mackey from Paradigm Rhyme.

It was Burnout Performance and System Design, how leadership, internal state, and system design shape performance and under pressure and contribute to a workplace of choice.

Long title.

And then our last session was Remembering You, Compassion Fatigue Recovery Strategies led by Sarah King.

Uh very good retreat.

Appreciate everybody showing up.

Uh thank you to the presenters, and thank you to our chief talent and development officer, Ms.

Tisha Gillarse for putting that together for us.

And um if you have any questions for me, I'll be happy to take those.

If not, Miss Mary Ann McKenzie will give an update on the uh strategic plan.

Yes, ma'am.

Could you say some more about the 125th anniversary of Martin Del Brightwood?

That's a big deal, and it's such an important hub of the community over there.

What's the celebration gonna look like?

Um I'm not quite sure what the celebration is gonna look like, but I know that Teresa Coleman, the manager, has invited previous managers uh from the system uh to be at the the celebration, and I apologize that um I passed over that when I was going through the the updates.

Um, but that's what I can tell you about that about right now.

I don't really know what else that entails.

And I know all of yes, I thought I'd look at that.

I know that uh I believe Miss Johnson, you will be there, you will be speaking together.

I believe is what they told me.

Yes, I will.

Yes, uh, everybody knows Ms.

Johnson was a former uh branch manager of the Martin Dell Brightwood branch.

Um so I look forward to seeing you there.

And one thing I always say about Miss Johnson in case anybody don't know.

I remember when we had our grand opening, and she came to me and she said, Greg, I'm gonna give my speech, and I'm not gonna use any notes.

Like, nah, you're gonna have to use notes, and she actually gave her whole speech.

She did not use a single note.

So we look forward to to hearing.

And I really do hope that the board does come out for this celebration.

125 years in a community, that uh the library, that branch has served as a hub.

Uh it was located in a strip mall, a strip mall next to a safe way, and for all those years, and people still saw it as a critical part of the community.

So I hope the board comes out, shows up and shows out and shows that we really do support this important event.

And that's on Saturday, May 30th, and I believe it's from 2 to 4:30.

So, yes, it would be great to see uh everyone there if you could make it.

I'll be there, and I'm sure there'll be some other staff there.

So we look forward to it.

Any other questions?

All right, all right.

I invite Miss Mary Ann McKenzie up.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I would be remiss if I didn't say this.

I just have one other thing.

I forgot.

I don't know.

I meant to put this on my slide.

We had a retirement uh Linda Kaepernack.

She was the circulation supervisor at uh the Warrant branch.

She was uh had been in the system for 52 years.

And she retired on uh her last day was April 30th, and also uh she is the one who hired me into the system.

So congratulations to Linda.

All right, good evening, everyone.

I'm Burse and Mary McKenzie, your uh chief strategy and analytics officer, and I'm going to give you two updates tonight.

One of them is going to be a focus on the current strategic plan.

And the next one is going to be setting some foundations to prepare us for beginning the next one.

Um, because of course long-term planning never stops.

We're always looking ahead.

So that'll be a good ground setting conversation to kick off what I hope will be between 15 to 18 months building to the next plan after this.

So one thing to know as we go through the current strategic plan is this one's a little long.

Um every quarter we focus on one strategic priority, and one of our strategic priorities is learning.

It's the largest one, so this is the longest presentation.

So as you sit here thinking, this seems really long, um, you might think about does this mean that next time we should have a little simpler of a plan so I can get out of here earlier.

Just a thought.

All right.

Our key performance indicators are going to be um summarized in three ways.

If you see an upward-facing arrow, we're moving in the direction that we expected, and it's we're seeing strong growth.

If you see a straight line, that is going to be some what we'd call no significant change.

There's still maybe change, and it may be in a negative direction.

We just haven't surpassed the level where we would say we really need to look at this closely and figure out why.

If you see an orange arrow, it's not red alarm bells, it's we need to look more closely and make sure we understand that.

Again, because this is going to be a little bit of a longer presentation, I'm really gonna focus on those orange arrows where you need to have context and sort of you know jump over the really exciting great progress we're seeing with all the blue arrows.

Not to say that we're not um thrilled to see the progress that we're making, but it's a little bit less important context for long-term planning.

So we're gonna start off with our uh priority of belonging, and the very first orange arrow we encounter is with our key performance indicator for um people count.

And then also on this slide, I'd like to note um because uh last year you had two columns, a short-term lens and a long-term lens, and I thought, wouldn't it be great if we had more information on every slide?

You now have a third column.

That third column is comparing end of year 2024 to end of year 2025.

It's just kind of a reminder of um where we left off so that as we look at these quarter to quarter comparisons, which sometimes can have some variability, that um year-to-year comparison kind of gives us an idea of where we're on the right track broadly, so that we don't overcorrect if we see an orange arrow somewhere where on the whole we were moving in the right direction.

Okay, so we see an orange error here under people count.

It is um looking at comparing 2026 of quarter one to 2024, and in particular in that column we were looking at the average over the full year of 2024.

And part of the reason that we went with an average for 2024 versus looking at quarter to quarter comparison there is because our goal was, you know, to grow our visits and our top year of 2020 or top um month of 2024.

We'd love to see that attendance every month that we have.

So we kind of looked at the average to give ourselves um a strong target to be shooting for.

Um, unfortunately, this quarter, one of the things that we need to keep in mind is that uh a large driver of our people count is the central library, and we unfortunately um unexpectedly had to close for around six weeks during this period.

So the negative um negative signs that you're seeing next to these percentages is largely coming from that um fact.

And then also a little bit for that comparison to 2024, the fact that we set a pretty ambitious goal for quarters such as this, where historically we'd have slightly slower attendance because of things like weather and other factors.

I also want to highlight a win.

I know I said I was gonna focus on the orange arrows, but look at that web traffic.

Um it's up 50%.

Um, some of that is coming from one of our vendors, Biblio Commons.

They um look at our um database that you use to search to find a book in our collection.

Um, they have started measuring um how people access their resource differently.

So we're seeing a jump from them, but I went and took a peek because I was like, Well, are they driving all of that?

And they weren't.

Um we have been seeing about 10% more folks visiting our blogs, about 30% more folks visiting our event calendars.

And even that bibliocommons jump, it was significant, but it wasn't unreasonable.

So we really are just seeing some really strong growth on our web presence, which is great because if you visit our website, you're going to discover something and hopefully come visit us in a branch.

Next in belonging, we have a great positive slide that we won't spend a whole lot of time on, active card holders and then our surveys for belonging programs.

So these are things that focus on stuff like community history, civic literacy, those types of programs.

We're receiving very strong positive responses to our key questions in those categories.

Because I know that it's hard to sit and look at all these slides with percentages and data, I did try and interspersed this time a few of our learning objectives that relate to different priorities.

And of course, when we're talking about belonging, one way that we foster a sense of belonging is making sure that we're accessible to folks by including some thought and care into making sure we have materials and databases that are available in their preferred languages.

So one objective, objective L2.3 was all about making sure that we had curated resources for how to access our databases in your preferred languages and then also how to learn languages using our learning platforms.

On this slide, you're going to see our top three categories or top three vendors for learning languages online.

Mango languages, ASL defined, and then Lot for Kids, and LOT LOTE is languages other than English for kids.

These three are a great set of resources.

Since quarter one of 2025, we've seen over a 50% increase in usage of them, which we're very pleased to see.

Collectively, they support over a hundred different languages.

And you can see on the slide I included some highlights of things that we know that are being spoken in the community that folks come and ask us for and look for.

And so this is a great resource for that.

And as someone who myself is constantly trying to pick up languages with poor results, it's also a great resource for adults seeking to find a lower level reading level in another language as they acquire their skills.

So very exciting platforms, and we're thrilled to see them being used by the community.

The second part of this was looking at language accessibility.

And I'll be honest with you, I took a little bit of liberties on this slide.

We have a fantastic digital resource librarian named Darlene Fox, and she explained to me what she was doing to evaluate our language databases, and I took the liberty to come up with this diagram based off of that.

So if you have too many questions, I might have to refer you to her.

But essentially, she said, hey, if I'm thinking about accessing a database and making it accessible for another language, I have to think about first, does it have world language content?

If it doesn't, if it has English language content, can it be translated?

And is it being translated in a way that's respectful of the language it's translating in rather than like AR garble or something like that?

And if it has those two things, I also need to think about is the interface translated?

Because it doesn't matter if the content's translated if I can't navigate to find it.

So she evaluated all of our databases using these three lenses, and what we found was that we have you know a large number of databases, and what languages were supported, whether they're supported in all three categories, it quickly becomes quite complex.

And when you have situations like that, one of the things you have to think about is how is someone gonna reasonably navigate this?

And it's a little challenging.

So this is an area where we really are relying on our librarians to be knowledgeable about our database collection, and when they encounter a patron asking for information in their preferred language, to be able to use resources to connect them with something that truly meets their needs.

So Darlene has come up with a document that helps librarians evaluate different databases based off of their preferred language.

On top of that, we have the Spanish language filter.

This is on our database page on the website.

So that main database page, you'll see the link there, or you can scan that QR code if you'd like to poke around.

There is a Spanish language filter because Spanish is the most commonly spoken language after English in our community, and we have good availability of Spanish language content in our databases.

It's the most commonly supported one across our databases.

And it's important to note that when it comes to databases, we're kind of at the mercy of vendors here.

We can advocate for additional languages, we can advocate for additional accessibility, but you're kind of at the mercy of what's available in the market.

So we are going to be continuing to evaluate what's available, how we can push for additional access in these spaces.

But for the moment, the best one that we have is definitely Spanish.

There's quite a bit of content targeted for Spanish speaking audiences.

So because those databases are specifically designed for individuals who speak Spanish, we know they're going to have a good experience.

There is that filter to lead them to it.

We wouldn't necessarily add that for every other language content because sometimes we can lead you to a database that might have your language, but you might not have a good experience navigating to it.

So again, we're really depending on librarians and reference interviews to connect people with the appropriate resource here.

Okay, back to our stats and figures.

Next we have well-being.

Well-being is, you know, encompasses everything from social work to helping you find a job to financial literacy to your mental and physical well-being.

And our program surveys in this category are very consistent.

They were strong last year, they're still strong this year.

But a key piece of this priority is our partnerships, and our partnership survey is still in progress, so I don't have some fantastic results to share with you, but I will have them either next quarter or the quarter after that.

We're just still in that data gathering phase.

But if you love partnerships, now's a great time to highlight one of our long-term ones, the Marion County Internet Library.

This is a partnership that we are sort of the lead partner.

We help support over about half a million dollars worth of databases for access by 41 high schools and universities.

These databases are also available to our patrons.

And if you look in the lower left corner, you can see during the academic year, we had about three-quarters of a million articles retrieved from these databases.

They're very well used.

We also have a trainer who we were able to offer a trainer through a grant facilitated by the public library and the public library foundation.

That trainer, when they were working with schools last year, found that people were really excited and they wanted reminders to engage and continue to use the resource.

So one of the strategies they're going to use this year is to do a monthly newsletter.

That's something that we do with our shared system partners as well, and has had really good effect.

It just kind of reminds educators who are busy and dealing with a lot of information.

Hey, just a reminder, this could be valuable.

Why don't you use this in your classroom?

So a great partnership, we're really thrilled to be able to support this.

And that was the reason why we kept it as an objective in the strategic plan, even though it was something that was already established.

It's something that we continually have to fundraise and support, and it involves IT, communication and marketing, our collections librarians.

It's a big lift, and we really think it's worth that effort to maintain it.

So in Workplace of Choice, when we started the strategic plan, our theory was we were going to send out a staff survey twice a year.

In quarter one, we were going to survey on job satisfaction, work environment, were you feeling supported and recognized in your work, things like that.

And in quarter three, we were gonna ask about psychological safety.

And we did that for the first year, and we did that for quarter one of this year.

So if you look at that second row, there is a category for job satisfaction.

But after year one, one thing that we were finding is that in order for us to keep our staff's responses truly anonymous, we couldn't gather a lot of helpful information that allowed us to take actionable steps.

So we heard earlier this evening about winning the workplace, the top workplace award.

And with that award, we are engaging a third party group to survey our staff, and they're able to gather information while still protecting staff's anonymity and to give us comparisons against others in our region and nationally, and to just give us a deeper insight into that staff experience in a way that allows us to focus and target in to see where some of the concerns are coming from.

So we're going to continue to offer our own in-house survey, but we are going to offer it one more time, we believe in quarter one of next year to sort of get that final measurement.

And then in quarter three, this year we're instead going to swap for again doing that talk workplace survey, just because we think that it's a good balance of having our own internal measurement that's truly anonymous and an external one that allows us to gather a little bit of additional data to make some actionable decisions.

Now you will see an orange arrow on this slide.

I want to acknowledge that over there in comparison to our first measurement.

We saw a lot of variability in our response rate for this survey because we're keeping it so anonymous, we can't send a targeted reminder to say, hey, please remember you need to take this survey, unlike the third party survey, which can.

And so as a result, we had results that varied by location and so on.

It makes comparison one to one a little bit harder.

So we suspect that the largest reason for that drop was just a drop in response rate because we had that one where we had about 437 folks respond, and it was a really positive result.

It's hard to prove given the variability in the data.

So we're not taking that lightly.

We are examining all the feedback we're getting from that survey closely.

But in general, if you look at the actual measurements, 77%, 78%, 83%, all of these are well above what you would expect for a workplace that is having good success and being a workplace of choice.

I looked at Pew Research does a survey of job satisfaction generally across the country, and they found in 2024 that on average about 50 to 60 percent of employees said that they were satisfied or very satisfied with the workplace.

So we're well above that, but of course, always striving for more growth, and we do think our new approach is gonna allow us to have that growth.

The final thing that you're gonna see there is of course staff retention, and we ended in a positive spot this quarter for staff retention.

Next, we're gonna get to the meat of this learning.

That's the focus of quarter one feedback for all of you.

So you will find in your print packet every objective related to learning, there's a couple paragraphs of updates.

You're gonna see a lot of orange arrows there, though.

So I do want to just take a moment.

Circulation for active card holder, this is one that we've talked about already.

Uh, circulation is growing slowly, active cardholders is growing quickly, circulation is not growing this quarter because of central closure.

So these numbers are a little bit worse than what we'd normally see, and we're gonna continue to monitor them.

But we do think that we have some big celebrations of learning and reading this year that are going to help boost those circulation numbers.

So we're still optimistic that we can turn these into steady blue arrows in the near future.

Then we have e-rese, e-resource use per active cardholder.

There's only one orange arrow in that very first column, what's our short-term lens, comparing us to quarter one 2025.

We had an unusually high usage rate in quarter one or 2025 through a mixture of expanded databases and then also digital Indy had some strong usage that quarter.

So that's where we look at that second column, that long-term lens, we're seeing that our long-term lens, we've seen some really strong growth from where we started.

So that short-term lens is showing a slight slowing.

We'll keep an eye on it, but we expect that we will be in the blue by the end of the year because we're still seeing very strong usage.

And then learning programs have seen positive responses in the surveys.

Okay.

Speed runtime.

Reading and writing.

We see some orange arrows.

World language usage down.

A big piece of this is central.

I would say about 3% of it was caused by central's closure.

Central is the largest hub of world language materials, and this is specifically looking at the physical collection.

In addition, we are seeing a drop in world language use and shared system borrowers.

We have theories about why that is but we don't have proof.

We're going to keep an eye on this as we move into the next quarter.

Deb was helpful enough to go and look at world language use for e-resources that's something that's a little harder to gather.

It's not easy to pull together and she did see that we were seeing some dips in Spanish language e-content collection as well.

So again this is something that we're going to keep an eye on and make sure we understand where it's coming from.

We suspect it may be things that are external to the library and our efforts impacting borrowing of world language materials.

So we'll monitor that but it was definitely compounded by that central closure this this quarter in reading and writing you're going to see that program attendance was low in comparison to 2024.

We have shifted where some of our big events occur so this was sort of expected and we have some big swings for programs coming up over summer reading and in the fall.

One thing that I have to note if we're talking about reading and writing one strategy that we were told by the community that we needed to focus on was helping address literacy rates within our community one collection that we have been building out related to this is our quick reads and our decodable books collections and in your packet you'll see some more in-depth definitions about what these mean essentially these are books that are designed to be accessible for teen and adult readers who have lower literacy attainment rates.

And we have been expanding that collection we have made them far more findable you can now search decodable books or quick reads in the online catalog to quickly find these materials.

So we're really grateful to our cataloging and metadata teams for working to make these very accessible and findable as well as our acquisition team to grow that collection.

And then I mentioned that we had some big swings I just want to point out there are two big events centered around reading and writing if you're looking for a chance to celebrate the joy of reading these are the two big notes one is in September September 12th 2026 we don't have a ton of information on this one yet but it's being planned by a reader services committee that's the group that when you see those bibliocommons lists on our website when you use indie who's your reads to get a customized human curated list of recommendations those are those folks and they are working with our programming department to plan a big celebration of reading and they really know what our community loves so I'm looking forward to see what creative ideas they come up with.

And then the more recent one the upcoming one is June 27th we're going to have day of play for summer reading at Central Library.

Summer reading is an opportunity for really boost not only reading and writing in our strategic plan but all the different categories so this year's summer reading the activities that you complete in addition to the reading challenges result in you touching different parts of the strategic plan to really boost the results of the entire strategic plan.

Then we have digital resiliency one orange arrow the reason is central everything else moving in the right direction and in particular digital resiliency programs are moving in a very positive direction you'll see in comparison to quarter one 202 our attendance is up by 85%.

I just wanted to highlight the reason for this that the team that delivers those and then our in branch librarians have really been focusing on topics that hit the heart of the conversation around technology in the community things like online safety, online security, artificial intelligence.

If me mentioning those things gives you that tiny little seed of nervousness because you feel like maybe I don't know enough or I am falling behind I did include some upcoming programs where this team will sit down and work with you and help you grow your confidence so you can be certain that you were prepared for the way technology is approaching and taking over our lives.

And this strategy here was focusing on providing package programs so I'll just reminds you that package programs is where we take a group of programs and offer them at multiple branches to try to increase access to a high quality program in multiple communities.

STEAM is down.

It is because of Central.

It turns out that when we're talking about learning, which has STEAM, nonprofits, and small businesses, the hub of many of those programs is our central library.

So we see a decrease.

I looked at this extensively.

It was pretty much perfectly mapped to the fact that we had to cancel some Central STEAM programs.

So hopefully this will not occur in future quarters or ever again, because we are very excited to have Central not only open, but also our teen and KED Central getting ready to celebrate their grand opening in the very near future.

One thing that I think it's useful for all of you to understand about that STEAM category and how we're implementing at the operational level is when we talk about things like the seed library.

The seed library focuses on food equity, so it falls under well-being.

But the programming related to it, how to plant a garden, how to grow things.

We put it under Steam because we really felt that that was agricultural cultural sciences, and we wanted to make sure that was measured and respected in that way.

So you can support this category and get us out of the orange and into the blue by attending one of these upcoming programs on seeds.

As we move into June and onwards, we start to move away from starting a garden into some of that gathering saving seeds and so on as we get towards the tail end of some of our planting seasons.

Then we have nonprofits and small businesses.

Again, did I mention Central is a great hub for these programs, and we love them for it.

And we miss them when they are disrupted.

So our nonprofits, we did offer those programs, but because we had to shift locations, and some of this was last-minute communications, we definitely saw an impact on the overall attendance.

We will offer a nonprofit series in the fall, and so we are optimistic that we can reconnect with the patrons who are interested in these programs, and we offer one-on-one appointments year round, and they will work to fill in the gaps for anyone who might have missed a topic because of this disruption.

Similarly, small businesses, small businesses in a slightly different category, though.

That team is for the first time is offering spring and I think one group in the summer sets of programs.

They're really thinking about targeting to a smaller audience.

So their spring category was focusing on folks who are starting food-based businesses, and any time you focus your audience, you're gonna have a slightly smaller attendance rate.

So I suspect that when we think about uh program attendance and one-on-one appointments, it might be low for the rest of the year, but that's because we're targeting on that smaller audience.

So we're really excited to see them come up with innovative ways to really focus in and meet specific needs.

So we'll be monitoring that closely, and I'm excited to see what they come up with.

Last slide for this deck.

I just want to point out that when it comes to small business, we did complete one objective around the collection.

So Central is uh, of course, a hub for small businesses, and one of the things that we thought about was well, if we have this hub, we need to make sure that we have books available on that topic.

So maybe we should start what we would call a non-floating collection.

So, most of our collection, you check it out, you return it to another branch, it stays at that branch.

A non-floating collection, you return it to the other branch and it returns to its home.

And our librarians were very thoughtful in evaluating this idea, and they said, you know what?

We have so many small business books.

Unlike um, say our nonprofit books, which are a little bit narrower, that floating collection model where it stays there, doesn't impact us that much because we have such a variety of books that we can choose from.

So they actually recommended that we keep the collection as is because that sort of pooling of resources is already happening because they have so many folks requesting small business books at their location.

So the system is working as intended.

That's great to hear.

And then we are also looking at the data that we have to build out that collection for 2026 and 2027.

I don't have a whole lot of information on what that looks like yet because we're still in the middle of acquisitions and all those pieces, but we'll have some more by the time I give you an update in quarter one of next year.

Any questions on any of this or anything in your print package?

We have some small questions.

Yes, yes.

Just very brief questions.

Thank you for the report, Miss McKenzie.

First, first I want to say thank you for adding context to those orange arrows because that provides so much more understanding behind the shift.

Um, second, I wanted to ask that dip in access to e-resources.

Did it have a whole lot to do with change in access in SPIRE?

In quarter one, not so much because we recovered those by quarter one.

I believe you want to turn on the CD.

Is that sound right?

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

I think that impacted us in quarter four more than in quarter one.

Okay.

Um, and again, we did just have a really unusually high usage of databases in quarter one of 2025.

Um, yeah, we'll be chasing that for a while.

I think in quarter ones.

Thank you.

Create any other any other just a brief one.

World languages, you attributed rain down because of central.

And yet we have world languages, a major population over at Eagle Creek, right?

And when I wonder if if there might be some other reasons for it down other than central.

Yeah, we do that central.

Like I said, that accounted for about 3%.

That's what dipped us over basically into the orange versus a steady blue with a negative.

Um I looked at it.

We were down in some areas.

The largest dip um for both shared system and central, they both had a a dip of about 600.

What happens is when Central um isn't able to fulfill holds, and they were also in the middle of a remodel that really impacted um quarter one a little bit.

Um, they are the largest hub of children's world language books.

And children's world language books is what really drives circulation of that physical collection.

And so that's why I think that it had that disproportionate impact.

But you were correct.

We believe we are down um generally across the system.

It's varies where we're seeing increasing uses versus decreasing usage, but definitely both in physical and then in Spanish language e-content.

We were down.

Um, so some of it is definitely more than central.

And so that's where we're gonna keep an eye on it in quarter two and quarter three, um, just to kind of see if we think that this is part of our broader trend trend, which given what's happening external to the library, um, that wouldn't be unsurprising, but we just want to make sure we have data to to back that up.

And thank you for drawing attention to the low four kids language other than English initiatives.

That's really exciting.

And Ray, Ray was over here.

Just so excited.

He said keep talking about that.

Yeah, absolutely.

I love it.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, any any other questions?

No.

Perfect, thank you.

Matter of fact, who's the CEO report?

All right.

Not quite.

We still have one more.

Oh, you wanted to do that next month.

Okay.

I think we're are we doing it this month or next month?

Next month.

What?

The um strategic plan development process.

Oh no, we didn't do that.

We do it next month.

Perfect.

That is wonderful to hear.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

All right.

Okay, that concluded the CEO report.

Don't finish business new business.

There's times made available for discussions and item items not on the agenda which are of interest to library board members and the opportunities given to suggest items be included on future board meeting agendas.

Do any board members have something to suggest for June 2026?

Yes, Mackenzie's strategic plan.

For the next one.

Great.

Yeah, can you believe it?

We're already ready to start on the next strategic plan.

Yeah, I'm excited.

Are you really?

Yeah.

10 out of 10.

All right.

Um, okay.

So the next board meeting is June 22nd, 2026 at the Fort Ben Branch Library, located at 93 30 East 56th Street at 6 30 p.m.

The meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.