All Staff Meeting Recap

In case you missed the all staff meetings we held a few weeks back, or just want to recall what was said, here are the notes from managers.

Outreach Services

2019  Accomplishments

1. Lisa, School Aged Outreach Librarian developed a new program to work with struggling readers.  Aim to increase literacy before the important 3rd grade mark. Lisa is now in 3 schools with the reading program in addition to her STEAM school visits. Congrats to Lisa on her 3 nominations for I Love my Librarian.
2. Elkid became a Racial Healing Circle facilitator and even presented at WLA.  She will continue to use those skills in 2020 by helping Youth services run a Teen Racial Healing Circle.
3. Completed a 4th Summer as a major partner of the Kenosha Parks Alliance providing Outreach in Reading & STEAM to kids at multiple summer parks sites.
4. KPL BKM was featured on PBS Wisconsin Life with Angela Fitzgerald.

Anticipating 2020 

1. Partnering with Leadership Kenosha to launch a new program called Books in Barbershops.  The program gets books into urban barbershops that serve minority families that have the lowest literacy statistics.  The Leadership Kenosha team that accepted the project calls themselves The Barb-arians (Barber + Librarians)
2. OS will expand our deposit collection offerings.  Soon we will be loaning board book mini-collections to daycares that serve low-income families.  Studies show these daycares are not likely to have funds to purchase age-appropriate books in the infant and toddler rooms.  Board books can be expensive, so daycares forego purchasing them. OS will lend them on a rotation similar to how we serve senior facilities with LP books. Thanks to Tessa in YFS and Collection Services for helping us to get it off the ground.
3. OS will acquire a new “sprinter” style delivery van this spring.  We will switch over to serving lobby stops with the van and turn the truck into a kids literacy mobile. 

From Linda:

• 5,243 City of Kenosha residents were issued library cards.

• We went from averaging 50% for self checkout usage in 2018 to averaging 75% for self checkout usage in 2019 at Southwest and Northside Libraries. Moreover, for the first time, in the month of December we averaged 80% for self checkout usage.
• With Building Common Ground in mind, we are doing four discussions about impactful topics. Our first one is Monday, Feb. 17th. The topic is A Nation in Debt.

YFS recaps:

1.  In 2019, Youth and Family Services staff presented 1,322 programs that brought almost 31,000 participants into our library branches!

2.  In 2019, Youth and Family Services relocated the Ready to Read areas at Southwest and Northside Libraries so that the toys and activities were available during ALL open hours. In addition, we created small versions of the Ready to Read spaces at Simmons and Uptown Libraries. The result was a dramatic 80% increase in patron use of these and other passive activities in our branches!

3.  In 2019, Youth and Family Services staff formed great partnerships throughout the community, including at the Kenosha Correctional Center with a program called "Dynamic Dads." In this 1.5 hour workshop, Linda Potter teaches fathers and father figures residing at KCC about the critical importance of reading to and with the children in their lives. She also teaches them how to pick age appropriate books and how to read aloud in a fun, engaging manner. Participants are all offered the chance to practice reading a picture book aloud to the group. Mrs. Potter's sessions have been rated almost exclusively 10/10 with great comments, including my favorite which read, "I learned new ways to be a fun Paw Paw."

4. As for 2020, we are thrilled to be the recipients of a $10,000 public library-public school collaborative LSTA grant! The grant is called the "Kenosha Diverse Books Initiative." Through this grant, we will work with library media specialists at KUSD to create a tool to evaluate our juvenile and young adult collections (theirs and ours) for diversity and take corrective measures as needed. This will help ensure that our collections reflect our diverse community. This work will even assist KUSD in changing their collection development policy going forward. The $10,000 will go toward bringing highly celebrated juvenile and young adult author, Meg Medina, to do a visit at both a KUSD school and a KPL sponsored event in April.

From Rob:

KPL has made significant improvements in Cybersecurity training, going from a 34% chance of falling for an attack to ~1%. We have new items in the collection for patrons including Ghost Hunting Kits, and Wonderbooks. Wonderbooks are children's titles that will read to them, like the CD Book Kits, and ask them open ended questions at the end, like a guided book discussion. This helps to reinforce the concepts that are covered and improve reading comprehension. Finally, new for this Summer, patrons will be able to borrow outdoor activities from the library including: Bocce Ball, Frisbees, and Lawn Darts. For technology, CNS is working to replace 34 of the existing staff and public iPads. In addition, these new iPads can be easily remotely managed, so no more Configurator stations at the branches and YFS will not have to wait hours for the iPads to be restored. The old iPads will be recycled for time clock stations, and other uses around KPL. It's also time to replace the public laptops at Southwest and several of the older desktop computers around all of the libraries. The newer desktops will have wireless networking, to make it easier to move systems around. Lastly, I would like to thank Katies, Chad, and Don for their patients with training me on the Southwest AMH, where I spend some of my Friday afternoons; and soon, I will be at Northside to help troubleshoot the AMH there.