Item 4DLibrary Board Report
Friday, March 26, 2004
The Southlake Library Board respectfully submits this written report in an effort to maintain
communication flow between the Board and City Council.
The Southlake Library Board held their meeting on Wednesday, March 24, 2004. Below is a
summary of the issues addressed at the meeting.
Librarians Report — Library Administrator Kerry McGeath reviewed with the Board the
activity of the past Month and indicated that the number of items that checked out from the
Library was up 24% for the same period last year, and that Traffic was up 27 %. Year to date
the Library is up 20% in checkouts and 31% in traffic. Computer use was up 157% over the
same period last year and is up Year to date 67 %. Volunteer Hours are also up 109% for the
month and 37% YTD. The result of these increases is that the number of Transactions per
hour per person has had a big increase from 29.73 to 36.99 transactions. Experience from a
retail environment has shown that once 50 to 55 transactions per hour per person occurs then
ability to properly serve customers begins to degrade somewhat.
Programs at the Library — We have two Storytimes per week at the Library and 385 children
and adults attended those. We are preparing to move into the next phase of the operation in
which we truly begin to market the unit, and develop a comprehensive plan for programming.
We did have two programs this month that were note - worthy. We had Irish dancers in the
Library on Saint Patrick's Day and the program was attended by 50 people, and had a Puppet
show sponsored by Artsnet and the National Endowment for the Arts that brought in 104
people. We are adding two more Storytimes per week beginning in April so we will see an
increase in attendance for those as well. February we had 620 people attending programs in
the Library which is a 42% increase over last year. We also made visits to Carroll ISD
schools for their open houses this week in order to sign up people for Library cards and to
promote the Library.
Workshops and Conferences — Kerry and Jesse Ephraim attended the Texas Library
Association Conference in San Antonio, and Kerry was named the Chair Elect /Chair of the
Texas Library Associations Reference Roundtable and will be doing a workshop at the
conference next year on Customer Service for Reference Services. Maria Cameron and
Elizabeth Beamon have attended a couple of workshops this month including one on how to
have a better Summer Reading Club Program. They have also gone to a number of area
libraries to study how other Youth Departments operate in order to give us some competitive
advantage.