Search Subcommittee Minutes February 3 2020 REVISEDCity of Beverly, Massachusetts
Public Meeting Minutes
Board: Library Trustees
Subcommittee: Search committee
Date: Monday, February 3, 2020 7:OOPM
Committee members present: Mary Behrle, Bruce Doig, Meghan Karasin. Thalia
Lewandowski, Colleen Michaels, Joanne Panunzio
Committee member absent: Myron Schirer -Suter
Others present: Ona Ridenour, Laurie Formichella, Anna Langstaff, Lisa Ryan, Mayor Michael
Cahill, Katie Marsh, Janice Shaw
Recorder: Joanne Panunzio
Joanne Panunzio presided.
A. Disposition of minutes of January 27, 2020 meeting
Motion to approve: Colleen Michaels
Second: Bruce Doig
Motion passes
B. Interview of Library Director Candidate Janet (Jenny) Benedict
Infmch irtinn
Question: What appealed to you about this position when you saw it advertised?
Response: The community and revitalization of the arts community. The buildings are
spacious, and there's great care in preserving the history of them when possible. The
progressiveness and care of the collection matches her ideals.
Question: what do you feel distinguishes you as a candidate for Director of the Beverly
Public Library?
Response: CEO of Vancouver Memorial library (45,000 people); responsible for financial,
human resources, infrastructure, public relations and community engagement
Question: What do you consider your most significant professional accomplishment? Why?
Response: Infrastructure development work: combining 5 pieces from 1950 -93, with no
previous plan for its renewal, and managing $6M worth of renovations over 9 years to make a
cohesive library.
Staff culture change: Initiated better communication methods to unify the 5 buildings, lots of
staff development.
Question: Tell us a little bit about Vancouver. We know the population is roughly 45,000.
What percentage have library cards? What was your budget? How does your library serve
the homeless, seniors, housebound and other disenfranchised population?
Response: It is similar to Beverly's 75 percentage of library patrons, as Vancouver had 70 %.
Worked with schools to coordinate school registration with registering for a library card.
Provided services to seniors both in the library and electronically. Had "Library Bound"
program, which picked up seniors and brought them to the library.
Leadership
Question: What are three of the most important issues facing public libraries today? As the
library evolves into a key player of the community, what do you see as the primary role for the
main library, the Beverly Farms branch and the bookmobile? How would you proceed to
develop a vision and mission for the future and then communicate that vision?
Response: Access to digital content can be threatening to libraries, as we can get priced out
of purchasing digital materials. Need to be politically active. Europe is already trying to
address this. The new 5G network brings changes as to how we use technologies and the
immersive web. This is challenging for library budgets to pivot and shift with the technological
evolution.
Question: Co- operation in library organizations, such as our NOBLE is very important to the
health of our library. What professional relationships have you built? Are you a member of any
community organizations? How do you maintain these relationships?
Response: From a professional standpoint, there were 18 libraries in the collaborative
similar to NOBLE. Was a presenter at meetings to this group (6 meetings a year) to talk
about opportunities for collaboration. Library was a member of the British Columbia Libraries
Cooperative serving 5M people. Overdrive, Evergreen and E -books were done
collaboratively.
Community: Co -chair of North Shore Immigrant Inclusion partnership at it's conception which
included 42 community agencies.
Question: Is there an organization that you had an especially close relationship with?
Response: As an immigrant in Canada, The North Shore Immigrant Inclusion partnership
was important on a personal level.
Question: Please give an example of a situation when you've created an environment where
others could contribute their ideas. What was the outcome?
Response: Staff worked on a pod -cast, working with 6 people to create the branding, shape
and content. It was a new concept for the staff and they were able to break it down into
components.
Question: You commissioned a feasibility study to explore the options for the future
development of a mixed -use library. What is your definition of mixed -use?
Response: Long range plan thinking about existing library built in 1950 set on 5 lots of land.
Long term vision was needed. Question of how to use these 5 buildings. Would the library be
in 3 of the buildings? Mixed use, would you add commercial entities? Residential options?
Question: How do you encourage the trend toward libraries as a center for community
learning, while not sacrificing core library services?
Response: To maintain services to make it more efficient in terms of materials management.
Looking at where the departments were in the buildings and putting them physically closer.
Streamlined cataloging, what can be out - sourced to our vendors, and leaving other cataloging
to the staff that would be specific to our population.
Staff /Patron
Question: How would you deal with an irate customer that comes to you complaining about
poor service her /she received? What if the staff member was simply following policy? If you
heard a staff member giving out incorrect information to a patron, what would you do?
Response: Has training in deescalating situations. "Hear, listening, gather from the
information, ask staff for their perspective." There was an issue with hosting a shared
learning project about diversity which upset a member of the community. Asked staff member
to reach out to the member and exhibitors. A solution was reached. The upset patron was
satisfied with the explanation.
Question: How would you cope with the problem of being short- staffed for a few days?
Response: There was training in customer service: reliability, responsiveness and
relationship in that order. Reliability is number one. Would a program need to be canceled to
keep the desk open? Document was drawn up to list the order of these things. Staff was
cross - trained so customer service jobs were the top priority.
Question: Tell us about the most difficult personnel problem that you had to deal with. How
did you handle it? Was it resolved? What techniques would you use to improve morale?
Response: A new hire manager that, after 6 months of initiation, still didn't have the skills to
complete the project, as well as 'disappearing' for hours at a time with no explanation. An
outside professional coach was hired by the library. Other staff members were not aware the
manager was being coached, but other managers were aware that steps were being taken on
the manager's performance and to please allow some time.
Morale: A lot of appreciation for the work the staff does. Motivation of staff comes from seeing
that the work they do makes a difference in other people's lives and those stories to the
community.
Community Engagement
Question: What are some of the unique service populations that the library can serve and
how can that service be provided?
Response: The library had 6 service models : Early years, kids and teens were broken up
into 6 distinct service groups each with their own desired outcomes. Adults had "personal
enrichment, and then digital learning. We were mostly interested in bringing adults together
around particular areas such as shared learning, veterans, local history, digitizing photos,
inclusion and diversity, social inclusion.
Finance
Question: Our trust funds allow us to spend $20 -25K a year. Think about how would you
spend roughly $15,000 of that to make a big splash that would show the public what an
endowment or donation to the library could do.
Response: The West Vancouver Library's endowment went from $3 million to $4.5 million
and gave $200,000- 250,000 on an annual basis. Private donors gave in the 10s of
thousands. "Library Bound" program was a private donation. Suggestions were for
renovations of physical spaces, digitization of materials, and our "library of things" , or offering
musical instruments to kids are way to use it.
Question: What is your thought process when faced with the unexpected. For example, our
operating budget is 2 million dollars. If we were told to cut the budget by $100,000, What
would you be looking at to cut? What is your thought process for problem solving?
Response: A conversation with the Board would be necessary. If it was $10,000, can we
find inefficiencies anywhere? Could we scale back? Can we give up the van and find another
one in the district? $100,000 would be the equivalent of a staff member or two, or changing
open hours. It was noted that the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners protects us.
Question: On the other hand, what would you do with a windfall of an additional $100,000?
Response: The salary budget is important and changes in staffing may be done, or short
term collection projects that could be funded.
Question: Under financial management, you directed the development of a 30 -year asset
management framework for equipment, technology and furnishings. In Beverly, the Board of
Library Commissioners requires a 5 -year plan. How did you project 30 years out ??
Response: Using asset replacement schedules you can map out everything you have in the
library. You don't necessarily replace like for like, but it gives you an idea of how peaks and
valleys look over the 30 year period and can level it which works best with the municipal
budget. It does not give you a sense of what's new that you may need in the future. But it
gives you some idea of a 5 or 10 year idea. It is a valuable piece of information for
maintaining an inventory and a valuable piece of financial information for the library. There
were all department heads and took a year to build.
Technology
Question: Please describe a situation in which you drove the implementation of a new
technology. What ideas do you have for using new technology to further increase staff
efficiency and improve service to patrons? What was the impact on the staff or community?
Response: We opened a digital learning lab (850sf space) with a full suite of programming.
This is based on Use it. Share it, Create it. Develop it, Explore it. In 2014 -2016 looked at
what was had and what technologies were needed for business functions and where our
community was. The Digital learning lab was the first step in the library's future of supporting
digital literacy in the community. It was an infrastructure project and new service delivery that
was planned together. Universities were researched in the design to be flexible and around
social interaction and collaborative. Programs included digitizing photos, slides and uploading
them; coding for electronic circuit boards and micro - computers, creative track around video
and audio production.
Some ideas for improving staff efficiency: in Scandinavia, there are robots shelving books
and retrieving books. There will be questions as to what will we automate? Vancouver
automated their website to manage PR communications around the programming to cut down
on cutting and pasting info from different formats.
Question: MLS is an open source of which we're involved in the development of it and
ongoing improvement. What is your experience with that? What do you see as a way to use
technology to improve staff communications or public consumption. (if yes) How would you
leverage that?
Response: Worked on an open- source project that was a referral service for English
Language learners to track them and lead them to what they need.
Question: How do you stay abreast of current technology trends and evaluate what you
think can be applicable and benefit both internally from an operational perspective but also
provide the optimal next level to the customer? What do you use? What do you do?
Response: Sources monitored include Gartner, Inc., Pew Research, Gallop Polls. OITP
(Office of Information Technologies). Consumer trends are perhaps more applicable in the
library environment than necessarily business development. Also internally questions where
is the library today, and what is the potential next steps could take within a reasonable
framework. 2014 came up with a grid that had a level of difficulty of implementation (easy,
moderate, challenging) that looked at cost perspective and doablility perspective. This
quadrant approach showed what was challenging and costly, down to what was doable and
cost - efficient. This process was used every couple of years to map out what is in the realm of
possibility.
Question: Was there one trend that you saw that you were able to bring to fruition in
Vancouver that you were really proud of.
Response: The library's response to the proliferation of mobile devices and mobile networks
was embraced early on in the game. Tablets and Kindles were available and did load- and -go.
Vancouver did not do a 'wait and see ", but just jumped right in to the trend.
Closing
Question: What would you like to tell us that we have not asked?
Response: My bachelor's is in journalism and I'm accustom to doing a lot of writing and doing
public relations works in terms of annual reports, etc.
C. Public Presentation
Library staff present offered the following input:
It was obvious to the staff that her budget, staff and responsibilities outweighed what would be
required here in Beverly. She was very progressive, forward thinking and experienced with
infrastructure and community engagement. She came well prepared for the interview. She
had done her homework on Beverly and the library. There wasn't a way to gauge her
management style. What was her work flow dynamics in Vancouver? She was skilled in
talking about infrastructure, technology and good global perspective, but what would she be
like in the day to day with staff? Her responses were well thought out and applicable. Her
personality was charming, with a sense of humor. Was pleasant and respectful. The staff felt
they would feel comfortable around her. They would have liked to get a better feel for how she
would work with the staff.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:25PM