Little bit, and then we're not going to be able to do it.

Coleman here.

Johnson?

Kim?

Here.

Naker?

Here.

Here.

Chair Jules?

Here.

Five present.

Two absent.

None being excused.

The first item on the agenda is the approval of minutes.

Minutes 26-20.

Library board minutes six three twenty twenty-six.

Great.

I will take a motion from Council Member Naker to approve the library board minutes from June.

Is there any discussion?

Seeing none.

All those in favor say aye.

I aye.

All those opposed.

Five in favor, zero opposed.

The minutes have been adopted.

The next item on the agenda is staff report, staff report twenty-six-106.

Equity, inclusion, and anti-racism coordination at St.

Paul Public Libraries.

Welcome, Coral, to give this presentation.

Really looking forward to it.

I am really pleased to be here.

I'm pleased to be doing this.

Um, good afternoon, Chair Jose, members of the library board.

My name is Coral Gessner.

I use sheher pronouns, and I am the equity inclusion and anti-racism coordinator for St.

Paul Public Library.

Again, I'm pleased, I'm really grateful for this opportunity to address you all, come before you and speak a little bit about equity inclusion and anti-racism coordination at St.

Paul Public Library.

So to get started, I just want to begin with a really high-level overview of the position as well as the different roles that it operates within both city and library structures.

As a member of the equity core team for the city of St.

Paul, I meet by monthly with equity staff from HR, Hero, and Public Works to coordinate the quarterly citywide equity change team meetings and support their central HR and city equity initiatives.

As the library equity inclusion and antiracism coordinator, a member of the senior leadership team, and the co-chair of the library's equity change team.

I've been with the library for three years now.

I have a background in museums, and so I consider it a very like sister parallel field, and I'm really really pleased to be sort of doing my dream job.

And I've focused in these past three years most of my energy and efforts in building infrastructure, implementing new tools, and strengthening the library's practices and skills.

Ultimately, I'm really guided by this goal and this idea to strengthen the library's ability to do equity inclusion in anti-racism work across all functions and levels of the work that we do.

I think about this question.

What can we put in place now that will help us sustain the work for the future?

This is still a new role for the library.

There is definitely more work to be done to define itself, to grow clarity on what the role is as well as what it's not, and establish the ways that it intersects with library functions.

As a part of those efforts to build better definition around equity inclusion, anti-racism in SPPL.

We've developed three pillars that guide the work, and the majority of the project's initiatives that I've been leading and coordinating for the library fit with on underneath these pillars.

The first is deepen and increase the impact of equity inclusion, anti-racism behaviors, and practices.

I also want to mention that this is the same language that is goal number four in our current SPPL strategic direction.

The second pillar is library equity change team, advancing the work and cultivating capacity.

And the third pillar is building community and new initiatives.

For the rest of this presentation, I've sort of decided to organize and share some of the specific work that the library has done under each pillar, and then we'll have time for questions after that.

So the first pillar of the work is executed mostly through trainings and learning and development.

This includes shared power and supervision.

This is an exciting partnership with Mia Henry and Freedom Lifted that is helping SPPL build a community of practice rooted in equity with our library supervisors and project managers.