News for the Week

Welcome to autumn!
Here's what's happening across KPL:

• We've submitted a grant application to the Kenosha Community Foundation to fund premium quality virtual reality headsets in support of our 2020 programming efforts. "Building Empathy through Virtual Reality" proposes programming with content offered though the United Nations , NASA, and The New York Times. Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab has been studying VR's effect on empathy with good results and VR has been quite useful in helping older adults with memory loss. If funded, we'll focus on teen and older adults with VR programming and see what effects we see here.
• Kenosha Parks Alliance holds its annual summer parks program wrap-up tomorrow at Lincoln Park from 12-2pm. KPL Outreach will be there with our bookmobile, handing out free books to kids and offering a craft. I'll be serving hot dogs, courtesy of the Kenosha Kingfish, and ice cream from Culver's. The city will provide free kites for kids and families. Come join us if you can.
• Thanks to everyone who participated in Voter Registration Day this week. We helped a good number of people register and checked the registrations on many more. Way to support democracy!
• We're planning a community forum with Building Our Future to connect with our community on issues of child care. Stay tuned for details.
• ADS and Circ staff will head out on a tour of nonprofits this coming week to strengthen their skills in referral to local agencies.
• The warm clothing sway for kids and families happens tomorrow at Northside. 

Jennifer M writes: I wanted to nominate Katie Engle for a bright spot award. She is always so on top of her work, prepared to offer thoughtful opinions and ideas, and ready to go above and beyond to help with whatever anyone needs. No one instance that stands out here, I've just been noticing!

Thanks, Jennifer, and thanks, Katie, for your outstanding work!
Happy weekend, everyone!

Newborn Kits Ready to Deploy

Our partnership with Kenosha Lifecourse Initiative for Healthy Families to provide “welcome bags” at area hospitals that include info about the library, a library card application for the new baby, early literacy tips, developmental milestones, and a board book (The Very Hungry Caterpillar) are ready to go! The bags are diaper bags and also contain a couple of diapers and wipes. Lifecourse is providing funding for 20 kits! Thanks to Heather and her team for making this happen.


Other News for the Week:
Milwaukee Public Library's new delivery service lets people place a hold on a book, have it delivered to their home and picked up when through. Read about it here.

The second round of KnowB4 cybersecurity training is available- check your email. This is mandatory training for all staff so we can keep our computer systems safe from threats. Please do your best on these assessments. You're not expected to be a security expert, just a smart consumer for the health of the organization and for your own personal online safety in this tricky cyber world we live in. Training like this may prevent you from identity theft and scams that are becoming more common. Please take the time to educate yourself!

Health Risk Assessments (HRA)- Instructions

Health Risk Assessments for employees enrolled in the City's health insurance are scheduled for October 15th - 18th, 2019. In order for you to access the City's Health & Wellness Clinic and avoid a 5% monthly health insurance premium contribution, you must complete an annual Health Risk Assessment (HRA). Additionally, retirees and spouses must participate in the HRA to use clinic services. Healthstat will conduct the HRAs at the Transit Building (4303 39th Avenue) during the following dates and times:

Tuesday, October 15th	6:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.
Wednesday, October 16th	6:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. to 3:45 p.m.
Thursday, October 17th	6:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. to 3:45 p.m.
Friday, October 18th	6:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.

Online registration begins Tuesday September 17, 2019 allowing you to schedule your HRA appointment as well as complete your health questionnaire electronically.

HRAs include a healthy life survey, a fasting blood draw (glucose, triglycerides, total HDL and LDL cholesterol) a blood pressure check, and height and weight measurements. Healthstat will mail each participant a report with their results to their home address. Please note the report is confidential, and the City of Kenosha will not see individual results. If you have the results of a fasting blood test that was completed in the last 90 days, you may bring a copy with you to your appointment time in lieu of another blood draw.

New employees hired in 2019 should not participate in the group HRA in October.

Employees who wish to complete an HRA must do so during the group event in October.  Therefore, you may only schedule an alternate HRA appointment if you have an approved absence such as an extended medical leave or vacation. Thank you for your cooperation. Please contact Human Resources if you need to schedule an HRA outside of the appointment times provided in this email.

Flu Vaccines 

Flu Vaccines will be available during the same days and hours (see chart above and attachment) as the HRAs at the Health & Wellness Clinic. Vaccines are available for all employees, spouses and retirees. No appointment is needed. 

News for the Week

Heather is working with Kenosha Lifecourse Initiative for Healthy Families to provide “welcome baskets” at area hospitals that include info about the library, a library card application for the new baby, early literacy tips, developmental milestones, and a board book (The Very Hungry Caterpillar). The “baskets” are just high quality, water resistant, closing file folders. Lifecourse will provide funding for 20 kits!


Congratulations to Zander for his appointment to the BadgerLink Advisory Board!

KCLS (our library system)  has won LSTA funding to tag Community Library's collection. CL will tag at their locations and we'll tag their items coming through the AMH at NS and SW to speed things along and greatly reduce our exceptions bins at those locations. As soon as those tags arrive, we'll hold some tagging refresher courses for Circ staff.

On September 24, National Voter Registration Day, our staff will be joined by Forward Kenosha
volunteers to offer sign-up tables in our lobbies. Only city and county clerks are authorized to register
voters in Wisconsin, but we can verify registrations online and help people navigate the online registration
system, as well as answer any questions about polling locations and registration requirements. This
activity supports our Civic Literacy efforts.

The libraries are officially "zoned up." We've done this to set the expectations for staff and provide a
means to talk to people about their behavior in any zone. For instance, if two people are holding a friendly
but loud conversation back in the stacks, I can intervene by saying, "Hi, I'm Barb. I work here at the
library. I don't know if you noticed, but you're in the library's Study Zone. Only quiet conversation is
allowed in this area. I can show you where the Social Zone is if you'd like to continue your conversation."

Posters and table tents are up. Please familiarize yourself with the zones in place. We welcome any feedback
about this system as we implement it. We're open to shifting zones as needed- let us know how it's working.
This system is in place and working well in Oak Park, IL and Miami-Dade libraries. We're hoping it makes
things easier for everyone.

Here are the initial zones:

Uptown 

All areas - Study Zone

Simmons 

Upstairs - Study Zone

Downstairs in Children's - Social Zone

Southwest 

Children’s Area, Lobby, Meeting Room/Conference Rooms, Study Rooms,                         

The Hub, Teen Space - Social Zones

Adult and YA stacks, public computers, circulation & ref desks and all tables not along the windows -
Study Zones

Tables along the windows - Quiet Zones

Northside 

Area from the public Printers to the Children's area and the Teen Space - Social Zone

Area from the public computers to the tables along the windows - Study Zones

Tables along the windows - Quiet Zones

This week's Bright Spot Award goes to the KPL Outreach Team for continuing service in the wake of the unexpected bookmobile downtime. Reloading, rescheduling, pushing carts around, calling contacts... you made it look so easy! Way to provide exceptional service! 
Sharing honors is our amazing maintenance team who fixed the bookmobile generator in-house and got us back on the road ahead of schedule. What talent! 

Brandi reminded me earlier today what the public always says they love most about KPL- the friendly
atmosphere. Thanks to all of you who greet the public with a smile. They feel your warmth!

Barb 

Have a greet weekend, everyone!

News for the Week

Congratulations and thanks to our outstanding Youth and Family Services Staff for another incredible Summer Reading Program. The team surveyed parents and caregivers of participating youth and here's what they said:
92% reported their child maintained or increased their reading skills.
79% reported their child reads more often
86% reported their child is a more confident reader
75% reported their child uses the library more often
What an impressive report card!

Also, Congratulations to Karen Rozzoni for graduating from DPI's Youth Services Development Institute!

Marcia and I visited LDV Vehicles in Burlington last Friday to brainstorm an additional delivery vehicle for Outreach. Looking forward to seeing the prototype they develop!


The first round of capital budget talks with the Mayor went well. If approved in the next two rounds, we'll move forward with some restoration work at Simmons, replace the exterior doors and back stairs at Uptown, and start the first phase of work at Southwest that will create a larger central activities room. Check out the September board packet released later this week for pictures of the new spaces planned.

No additional information on just when we'll move out of the Civic Center building. The new Shalom Center Food Pantry addition needs to be finished first, and that project isn't on schedule, so we're waiting. In the meantime, the air conditioning at CCB breathed its last breath, and the cost of repair is astronomical, so conditions are worse than ever till heating season.
Which leads me to this:
This week's Bright Spot goes to all the staff at CCB who have stoically endured the heat and stale air since the air conditioning broke several weeks ago. You are amazing!

I'll be heading to San Francisco for a long weekend, starting tomorrow, back Monday. We'll be in Yosemite on Friday so I'll be offline. Please contact Linda Noyce for any major decisions in my absence.
Enjoy the beautiful change of seasons!
Barb