TOWN OF SCHODACK LIBRARY ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Previous Minutes: Feb 28, 07 Jan 31, 07 Jan 10, 07 Dec 06
MINUTES OF THE SCHODACK LIBRARY ADVISORY COMMITTEE
March 14, 2007
Acting Chair Seth Honeyman called the meeting to order at 7:35 PM. Chair Carolyn Stetson was out of state; member Michael Hurley was absent for personal reasons.
The minutes of the meeting of February 28th were read and approved unanimously.
Andrew White reported on the data secured from the UHLS. He stated that System personnel were cooperative and provided the requested data promptly. The material is not yet analyzed, but will be reviewed by Robert Franklin and presented to the Board by Carolyn Stetson at the next meting. Mr. White suggested that the Committee consider sending a letter of appreciation to the UHLS.
None of the Committee members attending had conducted a focus group since the last meeting. Karen Fagan plans to do a series with school parents, and Debra Young will set up a meeting with pre-school parents. will do a focus group with senior citizens. The Committee members expect to conduct a final review of focus group results on March 31st.
Mrs. Young reminded the Committee that there would be a session with members of the East Greenbush library board 7:30 PM on Tuesday, March 20.
The Committee briefly discussed the survey instrument. There was general agreement that it should be kept short.
Mr. Honeyman reported that he had not yet sent letters to either the supervisors or treasurers of adjoining towns to get more comprehensive data on library support. He expects to complete that assignment within the next few weeks.
The next meeting's agenda will include reports on the UHLS data, preliminary results on the financial survey, and discussion on the form and nature of the survey.
In the absence of further business, the meeting was adjourned at 8 PM.
The Town of Schodack Library Advisory Committee February 28 2007, meeting was called to order at 7:30 PM in Conference Room B Schodack Town Hall by the Chair Carolyn Stetson. Present in addition to the Chair were Debra Young, Karen Fagan, Mike Hurley, Andy White and Seth Honeyman. The minutes were approved for posting. The Committee noted with sadness the death of committee member Louise Pearce, and spoke of Louise's commitment and able participation in the committee's deliberations.
The Chair reported that Supervisor Secor had secured an electronic copy of the Town of Schodack voter registration files and the addresses are being edited to prepare a comprehensive town address registry. These data represent the most comprehensive no- cost data registry of households available. The file will be given to the Upper Hudson Library System IT manager for comparison with their Schodack cardholder data. This should offer a more accurate count of library cardholders in the town and eventually assist in designing the survey process. Andy White agreed to work with the UHLS staff on this report.
The Committee reviewed progress to date on the Needs Assessment interviews. Louise Pearce's focus groups were reassigned. The Chair noted that Louise had already scheduled 3 interviews and completed one at the time she was stricken.
Focus Group interviews completed are:
Friends of Castleton Village Library
Friends of East Greenbush Library
Maple Hill High School students
Schodack Valley Fire Department
Dawne Kelly volunteered to help set up other fire department interviews. Those to be scheduled are East Schodack Fire Department and South Schodack Fire Department. Debra Young will contact Board member Frank Curtis who is active in the East Schodack company. Mike agreed to cover these interviews.
Remaining focus groups to be scheduled:
Veterans:
Mike Hurley has spoken to contacts at:
Veterans Foreign Wars Castleton
American Legion E Greenbush
Veterans Foreign Wars or American Legion Nassau
PTOs:
Karen Fagan spoke to the president of Castleton Village School and the Maple Hill Middle School PTO's. There is no Maple Hill High School parents group although it might be possible to set up a parents meeting through the principal's office.
Green Meadow School.- Carolyn Stetson talked to the PTO president. There are very few Schodack parents active in that organization and only two Town neighborhoods in that school. The president suggested instead that a neighborhood meeting be used to contact school parents. Andy White agreed to arrange this since it's his neighborhood.
Students -
Columbia High School : Carolyn is still trying to locate a contact at Columbia High School.
Nursery school parents:
Debra Young has prepared a sign up sheet. Andy White will attend meetings as well.
Happy Kids Preschool
Maple Hill preschool
The Kids Place Preschool Nassau
First United Methodist Preschool
Schodack Business Assoc-- Seth Honeyman will cover this Southern Tier Senior Citizens Center- They meet frequently so Seth expects to do this on short notice.
As we requested, Supervisor Secor sent a letter to the president of each Library Board and included the proposed interview questions. The Chair will set up these interviews and the committee agreed that as many members as are available will attend all these meetings. Since these questions will not be included in the Town wide survey they can be completed any time before June. At the meetings the library staff will be asked to provide a written report of services and attendance.
Professor Mike Hurley led a discussion of the focus group results to date and the planning for the town wide survey. He urged the committee to keep good notes on the free discussion issues. For example, groups interviewed so far all mentioned libraries as a destination and a place to spend time, and not just a location to secure materials to take home. This had not been anticipated (except by Louise). The committee scheduled a work session to compile raw data and to figure out the town wide survey topics.
The approximate schedule for the survey was discussed at length. Focus group data must be analyzed by the end of March and draft questions ready in early April for a town wide survey period in mid to late April The school vacation complicates things, so the third and fourth week of the month look like the best options. There are several survey approaches under discussion. The committee talked about mailing surveys but places that option last because of the expense and the traditionally low response rate to mailings. Other better options are door to door canvassing in neighborhoods, if we can get enough volunteers to do a Saturday canvas, and at community events such as the Kiwanis chicken barbeque (which is unfortunately too early.) Everyone will try to identify any kind of Schodack gathering during mid and late April where we can ask attendees to take five to ten minutes to complete the written survey. Mike expects about 30 questions. As data comes in the St Rose interns will tabulate it using standard statistical analysis software. The survey process must be completed before May 1 (or the school semester will be over and someone else will have to do the tabulations.) Professor Hurley expects to use a stratified random sample, so some follow up surveying will be necessary to fill in the demographic cohorts.
The Committee received an inquiry from a resident who may be an expert in this type of surveying. Professor Hurley will talk with Dr Kathy Cooke to see if there is a fit.
Agenda for the next meeting will be reviewing the focus group interview results and updating the interview calendar. Next meeting is 3/14/2007.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:55.
The Town of Schodack Library Advisory Committee January 31 2007 meeting was called to order at 7:35 PM in Conference Room B Schodack Town Hall by the Chair. Present in addition to the Chair were Debra Young, Karen Fagan, Mike Hurley, Louise Pearce and Seth Honeyman. The minutes were approved for posting. The Town Board appointed Andy White of Preswick Circle on 1/30/2007 to fill the remaining vacancy on the Committee. The Chair reported that efforts continue through Supervisor Secor's office to secure Upper Hudson Library System cardholder data. The UHLS has been unable to provide verifiable counts thus far, and efforts continue to accomplish that. The Committee was reminded of the meeting time change on 2/14 to 4:30PM.
Seth Honeyman presented a proposal to the committee for the Financial analysis portion of the report. Work on this will parallel the Needs Assessment process. (The proposal is attached). Initially, the analysis will address both expenditures and income for all three libraries under contract with the Town. He will also collect comparison data from the cultural affairs budget line or library services line as appropriate for all Rensselaer County towns to provide a comparison base. The needs assessment will provide a comprehensive description of services to facilitate analyses where service packages vary among the libraries. The object is to describe and rank expenditures and services across comparable population and assessment bases. The national Infomata library database may also be of assistance in this comparison. When the Needs Assessment interview process is complete, the financial analysis can then be developed for those alternatives of interest to the community.
The Committee then discussed the Need Assessment process. We should be scheduling the focus group and library interviews soon. The Library Board and employee questions were reviewed and approved. These are attached. There was some discussion about who could best speak to library future goals or vision. The group agreed to include head librarians in the Board Meeting so that their information will be available. At the same time, the library staff will be asked to provide a written report of services and attendance. This will likely be their UHLS annual report. The Committee decided to ask Supervisor Secor to write to each library board explaining the Advisory Committee's purpose and requesting a meeting. The Chair agreed to work on that.
Professor Mike Hurley discussed the use of focus groups and his initiative to set up a research project through the College of Saint Rose. An IRB proposal will be completed with the goal of hiring two research students to manage all data analysis and reporting. The Committee agreed that they would not be conducting resident interviews since that process involved outreach and publicity with the community. The Committee will use focus groups to start the needs assessment. They identified several homogeneous groups within the Town who can assist in clarifying and expanding our survey questions. Each group will meet with preferably a team of two committee members although several folks have serious time constraints this and next month. They represent a range of ages and interests and seem to be appropriately representative. The actual written survey will involve a random sample.
The committee narrowed the list to:
Veterans Foreign Wars Castleton
Veterans Foreign Wars or American Legion E Greenbush
Veterans Foreign Wars or American Legion Nassau
PTOs:
Castleton Village School
Maple Hill Middle School
Maple Hill High School
Green Meadow School
Students -Maple Hill High School
Students -Columbia High School
Nursery school parents:
Happy Kids Preschool
Maple Hill preschool
The Kids Place Preschool Nassau
First United Methodist Preschool
East Schodack Fire Department
South Schodack Fire Department
Schodack Business Assoc
Southern Tier Senior Citizens Center
The list does not include the library boards and staff which the Committee will meet with together. Members were asked to decide who they wanted to interview in focus groups and to attend a training session on running focus groups conducted by Professor Hurley.
Agenda for the next meeting will be finalizing the focus group questions and setting up the master schedule of focus group interviews. Next meeting is 2/14/2007.
The meeting was adjourned at 9:05.
Meeting Minutes: January 10, 2007
a) Data Review: C. Stetson distributed new copies of graphic data that relates to the UHLS umbrella code of 387. These graphs show the distribution of zip codes for all cards holders. Carolyn stated that this data reflects a systematic error that shows that there are a fairly large number of cards that are issued to individuals residing outside of the town of Schodack based on zip code. We have now cleaned the data and removed all invalid card codes. Seth questioned if the data reflects all card holders in Schodack (i.e. out of a population of 12,000 there are 2,654 card holders.) Carolyn clarified that this data is independent of the issuing library. Rather this reflects all card holders registered in the UHLS within the boundaries of Schodack based on zip code. M. Hurley will be asked to review this data. Carolyn pointed out that there is certainly a margin of error with this data. S. Honeyman is also volunteered to review the raw data.
Carolyn then distributed circulation data sorted by zip code for review by the group. This is percentage data which defines usage in specific zip code areas.
A third graph was distributed which depicts the number of items circulated, per library, January through November 2006.
The group agreed that all of this data provides a starting point for our conversations and needs analysis development. Seth requested that we hold off on posting the data to the Town and Village websites until he has the opportunity to dissect it. Carolyn will send that information to him.
b) Available NYSED Support Services: Carolyn reported that she has contacted Jo Mattie at NYSED and has discovered that there are no free consulting services available to support our efforts. She did however identify an individual in NYSED who can assist in providing data on the comparison of library services on a national scope. There are also a variety of resources that we can use to define best practices. We eventually will need someone with a legal background in this area to explain charter issues, etc.
c) Review and Discussion of 1995 and 2002 Reports: The group agreed that there are both similarities and differences in the charges to these two groups and to our current 2007 group. L. Pearce and Seth shared their experiences in working with the last two groups. Carolyn focused on the per capita contribution in each of the library areas. D. Young shared that some Towns spend up to $35 per capita. In terms of lessons learned from these reports the group feels that through a needs assessment we should be able to identify those services that library consumers want and what they are willing to pay for. The group also spoke to the need to report our findings back to the Town Board and the community in a manner that will generate significant interest and support. Seth raised the question: Is there a constituency for library services or is there a general constituency for the East Greenbush library, the Castleton Library and the Nassau Library? Our needs assessment should speak to that.
Louise stated that through our needs assessment we should be educating the community about library services that could be available. Many people feel that the only purpose of a library is to lend books when, in fact, a variety of functions and programs are typically offered through community libraries.
d) Clarification of mission: Carolyn pointed out that we need to be careful that our efforts to educate during the course of the needs assessment is not misunderstood as advocacy for what we feel are appropriate library services for our community. Carolyn then distributed a draft Library User Survey from Fort Smith Library which does identify a range of services for recipients to respond to.
The group agreed that it will be a challenge to administer a survey without an operating budget. Seth mentioned that the last survey that was done via phone was done by calling every seventh individual in the local telephone book. This effort generated a sample that was statistically significant.
e) Agenda for next meeting: C. Stetson asked the group to continue to review sample materials with the goal of producing a document by the end of January to be used to assess interest in the community. She has census data to be reviewed in conjunction with the development of this document. Seth suggested getting a constituency of volunteers to assist in collecting responses, most likely by phone. Perhaps some local college students from St. Rose or Siena could participate in collection and analysis of data. We can also consider presentations to local civic groups where we can hand deliver surveys.
Minutes submitted by: Karen Fagan
Minutes approved by: Committee 1/24/2007
TOWN OF SCHODACK LIBRARY ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Meeting Minutes
December 13, 2006
I. Call to order
Carolyn Stetson called to order the regular meeting of the Town of Schodack Library Advisory Committee at 7:30 p.m. on December 13, 2006 in the cafeteria of the Schodack Town Hall.
II. Roll call
Carolyn Stetson conducted a roll call. The following persons were present:
Carolyn Stetson, Seth Honeyman, Louise Pearce, Debra Young
The following persons joined the meeting at 7:46:
Micheal Hurley and Karen Fagan.
III. Open issues
IV. New business
V. Adjournment
Carolyn Stetson adjourned the meeting at 8:38 p.m.
Minutes submitted by: Debra J. Young
Minutes approved by: Committee 1/10/2007