March 2008 Report

Library Director’s Report- March 2008

The City Council conducted their follow up budget priority session in March. A few budget options were requested—none for the library—and a status quo budget, which city staff have recommended, was generally agreed upon. Priorities were formally adopted; the only change was to add a Youth and Education priority (previously it was under another heading).

Lighting at the Downtown Library is under review. The hanging fixtures have proven to be very expensive to maintain and are not very effective nor efficient.

The library had four staff graduate from the Supervisor’s Academy: Sarah LaTorra, Roz Kutler, Maria Diaz and Kasia Pereira.

Discussions are underway with Parks and Recreation on how best to manage the five community rooms at the Redwood Shores Library. Issues are how to schedule, charging for use, creating a consistent policy with PRCS, allowing private events/groups, allowing PRCS to hold fee-based programs (e.g.: toddler exercise, or art classes). A report to the Board will be forthcoming on recommendations.

A follow up meeting with the City Manager regarding the joint meeting with the Library Board and City Council, resulted in recommendations that will be forwarded to the Council sub-committee. These will include increasing Library Board representation to seven and codifying hiring procedures for the Library Director.

The Youth Agenda team (Police, PRCS, Library, City Manager) will be presenting work to date to City Council in May. The Council is very excited and supportive of this collaborative approach to programs for youth and families. Sarah LaTorra and Kathy Endaya are our two standing members of the team; and all youth service staff have been involved. All four Department Heads are committed to this project. We have adopted a youth asset-based model. A presentation will be made at the May Library Board meeting.

The City’s General Plan process kicked-off in March. Sarah LaTorra will represent the library for departmental/staff input. This is a very ambitious project, with many opportunities for community and Board members to participate.

The highlight of the month (and the year) for the Traveling Storytime Program was receiving the City Proclamation and being honored for the work that the program does in the community. Board President Rudy Madrigal and program coordinator Jan Pedden, along with about 20 volunteers and library staff, were at the City Council meeting on March 24, and listened as Mayor Rosanne Foust read the proclamation and thanked the volunteers for their continued dedication to the children of Redwood City. The Traveling Storytime Program received a beautiful framed copy of the Proclamation for the office.

The Redwood City Library Foundation received a $112,000 donation from the Beverley Hemphill Trust, the largest gift from an individual in the Foundation’s ten-year history. $50,000 of the gift will be applied to the Campaign for the Opening Day Collection. A long-time Redwood City resident, Ms. Hemphill had a great love of books and history. She devoted countless hours as a volunteer for the Archives Committee of the Library, taking and transcribing oral histories of colorful local residents, among other efforts. In addition to the unrestricted gift to the Foundation, Ms. Hemphill left $51,000 to the Library which will be used for the new Teen Center and to purchase a self-checkout unit for the Children’s Room.

We have hired, on a temporary basis, Leslie Zane, formerly the program director at Montalvo, to help with special projects such as re-opening the coffee cart, programming the Library Plaza, planning a library card campaign, branding and marketing the library, and seeking partnerships. Several exciting opportunities are being developed.

The Library will have a table at the weekly Farmer’s Market.

The Library’s website has been redesigned to better align with the City’s site.

Jacky Averill screened over 500 bird photographs from 32 photographers for use in the Interpretive Center of the Redwood Shores Library. A bird photo selection meeting with Librarian Roz Kutler and three volunteers was held. Although the quality of the photographs was excellent, it was decided to open the photography contest to a local birding list serve before making the final photo selections. Jacky joined the list serve and posted the announcement of the contest. The new deadline is April 6.

Fair Oaks
• Armando Ramirez secured a donation of new Spanish materials for Fair Oaks.
• Maria Diaz and Armando worked on programming for April and May. We will celebrate Day of the Children/ Day of the Book with Yuyi Morales. She will do two programs for us on April 30th – one at Fair Oaks at 6 p.m. and one at the Downtown Library at 7:00 p.m.
• Continued to work with Fair Oaks School on the author visit at Open House on May 22nd.
• Maria has been following up with Trish Girardi, Associate Director at Garfield School on some dates for our joint collaboration program and author visit at the school.
• Maria continues to work creating and printing flyers and bookmarks for our programs and the CAHSEE program materials, an online service we will be offering to help kids pass the high school equivalency exam.
• Maria was invited to join the San Mateo County Historical Museum Immigrant Advisory Committee. At the meeting in March the group continued to work on the 2008 Immigrants Day Festival to be held on Saturday, May 17th. http://www.historysmc.org/annualimmigrants.html
• Exploring possible sites for a Tech Lab for the Fair Oak community, Maria came across TecnoUNO (2800 Middlefield Road). Maria, Armando and Maria Kramer have made an attempt to visit and find out what type of service they offered. They provide a variety of computer services, sales, repair upgrade, and so on but the hours are operations are not listed and they have not been opened when he has stopped by.
• Saturday March 8th, 11:00 a.m. – Música, Cuentos y Activiades didácticas en Español. The 2nd Saturday of the month program with Valeria Causo Chalian was attended by 9 families and 15 participants.
• Armando’s Lunes Luminosos – Monday at 6:00 p.m. Average attendance is over 25 per week.
• Elisa’s Cuentos con Gusto – Tuesday Morning at 10:30 at the Fair Oaks Community Center Pre-School and 11:00 at the Library. On the overage Elisa has 64 participants in addition to the two new families that have joined us during the last month.
• Cristina’s Thursday Thrills – Thursday at 5:30. The program has been increasing in attendance this last week Cristina had 22 participants that stayed for the whole program and 11 who came late or left early.

Youth Services
• Teen volunteers for March: 34 volunteers for 144.75 hours. The Library Teen Council has grown to 8 teens who are engaging and enthusiastic individuals.
• Continuing our partnership with Hoover School, Cristina Thorson told stories and congratulated the kids on their achievement on meeting their reading targets for the month. Each of these classrooms had 100% participation.
• There are some great things going on in our schools! Cristina was invited to one of the best parent gatherings she has ever attended. On her own time and under her own initiative, Hoover teacher Ninfa Zuno and her husband have organized weekly “Literacy Nights” not just showing parents how to share books with their children; but also conveying some of the fundamentals of reading — the commonsense ones (put expression in your reading) — and the weird, arcane educational system ones (Lexile levels). A tasty dinner precedes each meeting, and the atmosphere is casual and fun as well as instructive. Cristina talked about the library and its services, and handed out 21 library cards.
• During his off hours Chuck Ashton visited the first and second grade classes at Nativity School in Menlo Park where over 100 students joined him in telling the stories and singing songs.
• Along with children’s singer/songwriter Andy Z, Chuck presented stories and songs to a group of several day cares and preschools who came together at the Community Activities Building specifically for the program. Nearly 100 children and their providers sang along with the songs and shouted along with the stories.
• Ten members of a local clown guild attended Chuck’s Bedtime Storytime where he modeled storytelling techniques for them. After the program the members stayed to learn other techniques they can incorporate into their clown presentation to develop children’s pre-literacy skills.
• Cristina and Jacky attended the workshop: “When the Tweens Come Marching In” at SFPL and learned the ABC’s of patron interaction: Acknowledge “I understand that you want to play StickDeath in the Family Place …”; Boundaries “…but this is a blood-free zone.”; Choice “You can choose to play another game or you can use the computers upstairs to continue.”
• The monthly Paws for Tales program has picked up a strong following since its inception in January. Presented in conjunction with the Peninsula Humane Society, the program gives children the opportunity to read to specially trained dogs and their handlers, an activity that has proven to be successful in developing the reading skills of reluctant readers and readers in general. Attendance has grown each month for the program to the point where we no longer have sign ups for the program as we have sufficient numbers of drop-ins taking part in the program (approximately 50 in March.)
• Sharks were the order of the day for the monthly Seaside Storytime presented in conjunction with the Marine Science Institute. The sharks program is always a hit, giving the children the opportunity to get up-close-and-personal with a live leopard shark. No children were reported missing or maimed after the program.
• In another wildlife program, Wildlife Associates brought several wild animals to the library for an appreciative audience of 175 to learn about. Children and their parents had the opportunity to see an arctic Fox, an African porcupine, a kestrel, and an alligator.

The KIP program change in venue, moving from Fair Oaks School to the Downtown Library has been very successful. Parents and their children had the choice to come to the library (on a bus) or play soccer at the school. All chose the library! If you see a bunch of kids with yellow t-shirts working in groups under the guidance of their teen tutors—say hi.