Bridges System Staff Reports August 2020 Karol Kennedy - Library System Director

Jefferson County Library Services Board: I attended the Jefferson County Library Services Board meeting in July. The 2021 budget request was the main item of business. The budget request was reviewed and approved for submission to the Jefferson County Administrator. The 2019 Annual Report of Jefferson County Library Service was also completed and submitted by Dwight Foster Director Eric Robinson. 2021 Bridges Library System Budget: I attended the County Executive budget review and presented the preliminary budget approved by the Bridges Library System Board in July. The final version of the budget will be brought forward to the board for consideration at the September Bridges Board meeting. Library Director Meetings: One of my goals as a new system director was to get out to each Bridges library within the first few months. I was hoping to get to know our directors a little better, gain a better understanding of each library and community, and get feedback on what was going well, challenges being faced, and how the system might be able to help. Unfortunately, my first few months on the job brought challenges we never anticipated. I am happy to report that I have finally started these individual meetings. Directors can decide if our meeting takes place virtually or in person. I met with five directors this month and was able to visit two I had not been to before. It has been wonderful to have this one-on-one time with the directors. I look forward to meeting with each director in the coming months. State and System Staff Meetings: It was decided that these meetings will continue to be scheduled weekly at least through the end of the year. In addition to COVID-related topics, standing agenda items include ILL, delivery, and PLSR recommendation implementation updates. The opportunity to share information, coordinate collaboration, and provide support has proven to be valuable for both system and DPI staff. COVID-19 Updates: On July 30, 2020, Governor Tony Evers issued Emergency Order #1, requiring face coverings in certain situations, which became effective on Saturday, August 1, 2020. According to the Order, every individual, age five and older, shall wear a face covering in any indoor or enclosed space other than a private residence, when in the presence of any other person who is not a member of the individual’s household or living unit. This includes public libraries. This order expires on September 28, 2020, or by a superseding action. Laurie Freund – Coordinator of Library Development

ARSL Conference Scholarships: Registration is open for the Association for Rural & Small Libraries (ARSL) Conference, which will be held virtually September 28-October 2, 2020. This conference provides an opportunity for library staffs to attend, get quality content and engage in topics highly relevant to their work without having to travel. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) is working with library systems to provide LSTA funds for scholarships so interested library staffs working in public libraries with municipal populations less than 25,000 and need financial support to attend. Twenty

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Bridges member libraries are eligible and library staffs can fill out an online form at https://forms.gle/g67rc5eHmJroyKfYA by Thursday, August 13. Bridges is working with DPI, coordinating the scholarships for the SEWI region, and handling the registrations in order to get the group rate. Library staffs who wish to register directly without the scholarship, can do so directly through the ARSL Conference website.

Wisconsin Trustees Training Week: Just a reminder that these noon-hour webinars run through the last week of this month (August 24-28). Library trustees and library staff are welcome to register and attend these online sessions. More information and registration can be found at https://www.wistrusteetraining.com.

Trustee Appreciation materials: Gift bags containing event materials, invitation, Nick Butler’s latest book, Little Faith, and other items have been sent to all member libraries for distributing to your library’s board members. We will be sending emails to all trustees and library directors to communicate and promote our October 1st event.

Virtual SEWI Materials Meetup: Just a reminder that our regional online meetup is August 19. We’ll be discussing and sharing how libraries are preparing and handling materials with the ongoing pandemic. Information and registration can be found at https://sewilibraries.org/events/virtual-sewi-materials- meetup.

HR Issues in the Time of COVID-19 webinar: This SEWI webinar, geared toward library directors and managers, was held on August 5 with Attorney Geoffrey Trotier, of von Briesen & Roper, who provided helpful guidance on “best practices” being adopted by employers and compliance with rapidly changing laws and regulations since the pandemic hit. We had 176 registrations and 117 people attended. Mr. Trotier took the over 100 questions registrants submitted before the webinar and tailored the presentation to answer those questions. He then answered additional questions that were submitted during the webinar. Slides, recording and other materials from the webinar are available on the SEWI Libraries Archives web page at sewilibraries.org/continuing-education-archives. Angela Meyers - Coordinator of Youth and Inclusive Services

Library Memory Project Community Read: Many challenges have come our way this year, but the unexpected donation from the 100 Women Who Care - MKE Metro West (c/o the Alzheimer’s Association) in February has allowed us to get creative in how we offer programs to attendees of the memory cafes. Using funds from the 100 Women Who Care group, we are offering a community read of the book, How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals by Sy Montgomery. We are encouraging our regular memory café attendees and anyone living with memory loss and their care partner in our general service area, to register to receive a copy of the book to keep, and then join a discussion and sharing session on October 2 at 1:30pm. We are partnering with the local bookstore, Books & Co., in Oconomowoc, to order the copies of the books and supplemental activity sheets.

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Summer Library Program Performances: We are wrapping up performances for the summer with just a handful more shows to go. Most of the system coordinated performances, geared toward preschool and school age children, were held virtually this year. With assistance from Laurie Freund and Mellanie Mercier, we were able to provide one Bridges’ staff for each virtual show to help with the technical aspects of running Zoom Webinar. Some performers, like Wendy & DB, provided live concerts, while others, like Steve Girman, offered a two-part video series with live intermission pieces to keep the kids engaged. We learned a lot about providing online programming through the popular platform Zoom, while also helping our libraries offer family-friendly content during these unprecedented times.

A Mukwonago Community Library patron wrote following the Duke Otherwise show:

"Our kids were looking forward to the show all week! And, although I am sure his show is even better in person, we all enjoyed dancing around, laughing, and clapping from the comfort of our living room. Thank you again for making these events accessible to us and for all the work you are doing to provide us with these opportunities during this time!"

A family dances along to the Duke Otherwise show

Jill Fuller - Marketing & Communications Librarian

John Cotton Dana Award: I am excited to announce that the Bridges Library System is one of eight recipients for the American Library Association’s 2020 Public Relations Awards for our Library Card Signup Month campaign last September. Bridges will receive a $10,000 grant provided by the H.W. Wilson Foundation and be honored, along with fellow 2020 winners, at a reception held by EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) at the 2021 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago. I am grateful to Connie, Karol, and Mellanie for their support of this project, as well as all of our member libraries for implementing the campaign in their libraries last September. I appreciate every opportunity to help promote our amazing libraries!

September Ad Campaign update: This year’s Library Card Signup Month campaign is almost ready for launch! We will have 8 billboards in Jefferson and Waukesha counties, as well as web ads on a variety of popular websites and our social media channels. The Monarch Library System will also have billboards and are partnering with us on the cost of the web ads. I am finalizing designs for the toolkit that I will send out to our member libraries within the next week or so. All libraries are encouraged to use the graphics and text copy to help promote the campaign.

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Graphic Design Projects: I recently created designs for the 2020-2021 Kids’ Choice Awards, including bookmarks, header graphics, and a poster. I also finished the invitation for the Trustee Appreciation Virtual event and created new graphics for the updated end date of Ancestry Library, the new mask requirements, the Weiss Ratings demo, and Spanish-language versions of the Holds Pickup graphics. Finally, I have been reviewing and working with our hired graphic designer on the first drafts of the graphics for the CAFÉ app.

Newspaper Column: I recently reached out to the Whitewater Register to see if they would be interested in publishing my monthly newspaper column and they responded positively. I submitted the first column for the Whitewater Register in July.

Beth Bechtel - Database Management Librarian

Ongoing Authority Work: Last month I received update files from our authority project vendor, Backstage Library Works. With Shawn Carlson’s help and careful tests, the new authorities were added to the catalog over the course of a few early morning this month. I continue to work on authority record clean up, including both the many reports Backstage has provided and specific requests from libraries. An example of a recent specific request was when a cataloger asked me to look into a series of mysteries by Reginald Hill. Many of the titles were listed under Hill’s pseudonym, Charles Underhill, and were not easily found in the catalog. I linked the book titles to both Reginald Hill’s authority record, as well as the authority record for his "Dalziel and Pascoe" series.

Book Group Kits: Many of our libraries have wonderful collections of book group kits. These are multiple copies of the same book, often with discussion questions, circulating together in one bag. Unfortunately, these can be difficult to find in the CAFÉ catalog. This month I added a field to each book group kit record to make them discoverable with more keywords. Book group kits can now be found by searching for book group kit or kits, book discussion kit or kits, reading group kit or kits, and book club kit or kits.

Erin Kramer - Technology Support Specialist

Services to libraries: Outside of day-to-day troubleshooting, I installed a new label printer at LD Fargo Library and trained their cataloger in its use. I attended training for the new Patch Manager software that I will be using. There are still a few wrinkles to be worked out with that software, but it will be a great tool once we get them sorted out. Best of all, I have been getting out and about to the libraries a little this past month to work on-site instead of remotely. Despite the concerns of Covid-19, it has been lovely to get out and see people in person again. That is the best part of my job and I have missed it.

RFID Project: RFID tag encoding training was completed with Town Hall Library staff in late July and they have begun tagging their collection. The training was extra fun as it was the first RFID installation/training that I was able to do in person at a library since the project began.

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