1997-05-19 Board of Library Trustees Minutes

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Board of Library Trustees Minutes of Meeting May 19, 1997 E Present: Ms. Cherrie Dubois, chair; Mr. Stephen Conner; Mr. Robert Fields; Dr. Christine Redford; Mrs. Maria Silvaggi. Absent: Mr. William Diamond. Also present: Rob Maier and Elia Marnik of the Board of Library Commissioners; George Theophanis; Mary Bastiani. Ms. Dubois called the meeting to order at 7:05. Minutes: The minutes of April 7 were accepted. Financial report: The personnel budget is tight; up to $800 may have to come from Incentive. The Town decided last month to implement the 52.2 week fiscal year. Statistical report: Circulation continues to go up. Reference questions rose dramatically in March for both children's and adults'. Public hearing on the bylaws: Mr. Theophanis made two recommendations:'in Article II, Section 2, make explicit that each member has one vote, rather than each board; in Article IX, change the wording to avoid the danger of having amendments passed by less than a majority of the board. The hearing was closed at 7:20. Mrs. Silvaggi moved that the following words be added to Article II, Section 3, end of first sentence: "each member of each board having one vote." The motion passed. Mrs. Silvaggi moved that Article IX be amended to read "by a majority of the members of the entire Board." Discussion against the amendment said that this qualification may delay amendments; discussion for the amendment said that bylaws should never be under that kind of time pressure. The motion passed. Presentation of representatives of the Board of Library Commissioners: Mrs. Marnik told the Board that Commissioners have been visiting many libraries across the state. The Board has requested $160M for library construction funds from the state, and trustees are urged to contact their legislators in support of this bill. Mrs. Marnik commended the Board of Trustees for being forward-looking in its pursuit of endowment funding. Mr. Maier explained the application process for construction funds. In response to a question about support for technology, he said that, for the last fifteen years, of the three million dollars appropriated from the federal government, about one million has gone to support technology, especially networks. Mr. Maier expects that in the future, these funds will support network telecommunications charges one hundred percent. The new Telecommunications Act provides for a fifty percent discount for schools and libraries. A virtual catalog program will enable users at home or in the library to search once and retrieve holdings from any library in Massachusetts. This will be useful for research on unique topics, ° rather than for commonly-owned materials like bestsellers.