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System Director’s Report:

September 2005

Some Very Special News

Our very own Kristi Williams (Past SCLS Board President and one time “femme fatale” star of our one act system celebration play, “The Curious Case of the Death of Chester Pismo Snavely”) has been selected to be the Wisconsin Library Association Trustee of the Year for 2005. She will receive her award at the WLA Annual Conference during the last week of October. The system generally sends several trustees to this conference, (details are on-line at www.wla.lib.wi.us) Anyone wanting to go should contact Heidi at their earliest convenience. Congratulations, Kristi, on a well deserved honor!

Budgets and Contracts and Plans, Oh My!

It’s budget time again, as proven by the encyclopedia sized stack of documents tucked into your packet this month. These include the proposed 2006 Annual Plan and Program Cost Summary, the 2006 Budget and Notes, and the 2006 Statutory and Supplementary Resource Contracts with our resource library. Over the next week, these documents will be considered and acted upon by the Public and the Multitype Advisory Library Committees, and will be reviewed in depth by your own Budget&Finance and Personnel Committees. Subsequent to this review, Budget&Finance and Personnel will bring recommendations to the regular Board meeting for your final action on October 10th. Last but by no means least, all this information will be submitted to the Division for Libraries, Technology, and Community Learning on or before October 15th, to comply with Wisconsin statutes (and so that we can receive our first system aids check in a timely fashion in November.)

Of Other Things

Aside from all this, we are currently gearing up for the foundation brainstorming session on October 5th, watching several bills in the legislature with great interest, trying to find out just exactly how the tax freeze affects libraries in certain special circumstances, participating in a DLTCL survey of shared automated systems and what they cost, squabbling with DLTCL about who gets access to state level interloan contracts, and recovering from this year’s system celebration (which was a smashing success from most accounts.) Additionally, the automation folks are becoming ever more stressed trying to keep the existing system going well past its “shelf expiration date” while upgrading local LINK computers to a new operating system, preparing to participate in the installation of the new statewide Badgernet telecommunications network, and preparing for our great leap forward to a new Dynix Horizon system in 2006. Delivery, on the other hand, is coping with gas prices that have spiked at times to well over $3.00, as well as continuing double digit increases in service demand.

In short, things around here are fairly normal. See you on October 10th.