The Town of Lincoln, MA - Library Trustees

Due to boiler and sump pump issues the building & maintenance expenses are already high a 94%. Barbara will be requesting a reserve fund transfer to cover the high cost of heating oil – which has seen a 28% increase –~and for the sump pump replacement.

Town meeting approved our CPA grant for $461,750 to replace the Gund roof and $24,000 for the vault study. The vault study will review all options for improving and/or relocating the vault storage area. We cannot collect insurance for the boiler fires as we have a $10,000 deductible. The matter is now in the hands of town council who will seek compensation from the boiler maintenance company if possible. We have also received money from the Friends for new shelving and storage units in both the children’s and adult departments.

Jane and Amy were on hand to convey the disappointment and disrespect that Nadine felt at our previous meeting when she attempted to raise the issue of library staff registering as new participants in the town’s health insurance program. Nadine felt intimidated, not listened to, and that the issue was not compassionately nor accurately addressed. Jane and Amy reminded us that the staff are not paid for coming to our meetings and that they often do not feel comfortable bringing up issues before the board. The board acknowledged that the issue was not handled well and that there was misunderstanding about how the health insurance program works. Diana, in particular, tried to express the board’s respect for our wonderful staff and that we need to better convey our appreciation in our meeting interactions. The health insurance issue is apparently being sorted out by between the staff and town offices.

Al has been looking at devising yearly goals and well as specific project goals for fundraising. But to do that he needs direction from the board about what exactly we need to raise money for. We should not, it was agreed, be raising money for the basic functioning of the library – staff, books, maintenance etc. – that should be paid for by the town. What then are the ‘extras’ for which we should seek private donations? Some informal suggestions were offered including: parking space, building space, the vault, unpredictable expenses, and a building endowment fund (for general building improvement and maintenance). It was agreed that more thought on fundraising goals is needed.

The Gund roof project can be started immediately, and we must move quickly if we are to start work this year. We are initiating a public bid for the architectural services; services to help prepare the specification and bidding documents required to engage a roofing contractor to do the work.

Re. fundraising and space planning for possible future library additions, Marshall suggested that over the longer term we may want to look at the possible ascendancy of electronic books and what effect that will have on the role that physical libraries play.

There was uncertainty about the Campus Planning Committee: is it still active, on hold, disbanded? Independent of the Campus Committee, the library should continue to push for solutions to the parking problem. It was suggested that we send a reminder to the 1^st Parish to encourage people attending White Church functions during library hours to park at the Stone Church.

Our two warrant articles for capital expenditures sponsored by the Community Preservation Committee were both approved at Town Meeting. The library received one grant of $461,750 to replace the Gund building’s artificial slate roof with real slate and a second grant of $24,000 to fund an engineering study for the design of a new HVAC system for the library’s vault.

The Town now has a new line item for repair and maintenance of the library. For FY 2006 the amount of money in this line item is $27,000. In exchange for this new line item, there is no line item in the library’s operating budget for building repair and maintenance. For FY 2006, we had requested $10,000 in the library’s operating budget and $17,000 in the Town-wide maintenance warrant article.

Lincoln Sudbury Regional High School students gave a full blown presentation at the library about Tracey Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains book. The audience was very receptive and many had worked with Paul Farmer, the subject of Kidder’s book, or in Haiti and had a lot to contribute.

The library’s prior HVAC serviceman has not sent the library money to pay for the repairs. Town Counsel sent him a collection letter but he did not make any payment as a result of this letter. Our next step is to work with the Town’s insurance company to see if we can get a settlement.

The Live Jazz program happened in the afternoon on Saturday April 9. The Alamo City Jazz Band was a great hit as “Classic Jazz” keeps rolling along. The traditional Wednesday evening performances also went well. The Friday morning book group read Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijieand and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

The theme of April vacation week programs in the Children’s Room was “Crackin’ Up at the Library.” On Tuesday April 19 Ed Popielarczyk put on a magic show and even showed the children how he performed some of the tricks! On Thursday April 21 Joan Goodman presented a hilarious program based on the popular “Captain Underwear” series by Dav Pilkey. Children brought clean underwear to decorate. Throughout the week, patrons put jokes into a container in the Children’s Room for all to enjoy.

The book delivery company, CD&L, is still trying to improve delivery service. Sometimes the delivery arrives before noon, which is terrific, except on Mondays when we do not open until one o’clock. One day the truck driver left bins of book out on the terrace in a rain storm. Books from all over the network were in these bins, not just Lincoln’s books. We reported the incident to the Metrowest Massachusetts Regional Library System which administers the delivery service.

Jeanne has been testing several reference online databases and has asked others on the staff to evaluate these databases. The two databases that Jeanne believes are most appropriate for our patrons are: CQ Researcher and Oxford Reference Online. CQ Researcher publishes extensive reports on “hot” topics in an even handed and thorough manner. Examples of hot topics are: child welfare reform, exporting democracy, and alternative fuels.

Oxford Reference Online contains many reference books published by the Oxford University Press. Examples of these reference sources include: The Oxford Dictionary of Art, bilingual dictionaries, A Dictionary of Biology, The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization, The Concise Oxford English Dictionary, The Oxford Companion to United States History, The Oxford Companion to American Law, and The Oxford Companion to American Literature. The search features of these online books make it easier for patrons to find information in them than in the printed versions.

The Friends of the Lincoln Library agreed to fund several library projects and purchases at their April meeting. For the Children’s Department $2,784 was approved for new shelving, storage bins, and frames for posters. For the Circulation Department, $2,171 was approved for new shelving and storage drawers. An easel and board for Reference Department announcements was approved, which will cost $227.46. With all of the new DVD purchases, the Friends approved a new storage rack which will hold 480 DVDs at a cost of $1,674. A new DVD/video player was also approved for the TV used for programs in the Tarbell Room.

The repair work, which was identified in Taunton Control’s January 25, 2005 survey of the library’s pneumatic control system, is finished. I had three referrals from Fitzemeyer & Tocci for qualified air and water balancers. All presented good proposals so Fitzemeyer & Tocci advised me to take the low price quote.

The interior work on the wood windows is completed and the exterior painting is nearly finished. The exterior wood above the rounded windows in the Farrar Room cannot be restored and will be replaced with mahogany. Work on the stained glass will begin soon.

The higher priority work is completed. The electrical outlet in the floor of the Tarbell Room was replaced. Blank plates were installed in the Light Panel 2 electrical box. The fluorescent lights in the ceiling of the Tarbell Room above the stained glass were removed and new ones, that will work when the attic temperature falls during the winter, were installed.

Neil Rouleau performed a water test of the Link roof on April 19. First, he measured the water moisture of the insulation between the rubber roof and the concrete roof. The insulation should be dry but he found areas of moisture. This is bad news for us because the wet insulation will freeze and thaw over time and deteriorate metal and damage the concrete roof. Next, he ran water onto the roof for approximately 35 minutes until water leaked into the Children’s Room in front of the circulation desk. No water leaked from the pitch pocket, however, so we have not found the source of that leak. When I explained that we only have leaks at the pitch pocket during heavy rain storms with high winds, Neil thought the source of the leak could be from the short brick wall at the edge of the Link Roof above the terrace which faces Trapelo Road. Another water test will be necessary to test this theory. Neil will send us a written report of his findings and a map showing where the roof has wet insulation and where water leaked into the Children’s Room.

There is an underground stream beneath the Gund building. Two sump pumps pump water out of the ground water storage pit and out into a storm drain under Library Lane. An alarm is located in the storage pit and is set off when the water level rises too high. This gives us a chance to avert a flood in the sub-basement. During the heavy rains in early April the water alarm was set off repeatedly. The sump pumps could not keep up with the amount of water flowing into the pit.

Jack Pugh observed an engineering flaw with the design of the discharge pipes. The two sump pumps each discharge into their own 1.5 inch pipes but then they combine together into one 1.5 inch pipe. The pipe that both pipes combine into should be greater than 1.5 inches. Another solution is to have each sump pump have its own discharge pipe instead of combining the two sump pumps into one discharge pipe.

Jack MacLean, Jeanne and I are revising our grant proposal. The feedback we received from our first proposal was that it could be funded by the Massachusetts Historic Preservation Commission. In a competitive grant round, if our proposal can be funded by another group, it makes it easy for this group to reject our proposal.

Two Trustees attended the April staff meeting. I was impressed by the staff’s willingness to express their concerns about the Town’s current multi-tiered health care coverage. I was also impressed by the Trustees’ concern for the staff. Health care is rising and taking a bigger chunk out of our paychecks and the Town’s budget. There is no easy solution to this problem but a multi-tiered health care coverage system is not fair to all of the Town’s employees.