The 2019 Holidays & Closings calendar was approved at last week’s board meeting. Find the link below and under Staff Resources to the left.

http://catalog.johnstonlibrary.com/share/Holidays%20Calendar%202020.pdf

We received our first question about voting for the combined City/School Vote that will take place on November 5. JPL is a voting location on November 5th but we are not a location for in-person absentee voting. 

If people are interested in In-Person Absenstee voting (otherwise known as early voting), they can do that at the Polk County Election office, located at – 120 2nd Ave., Suite A Des Moines, IA 50309. The Polk County Election office is open for in-person absentee voting beginning October 7 through November 4, (Mon-Fri 8am – 5pm). 

October 25 is the voter preregistration deadline to request an absentee ballot by mail.  Voters may use Election Day registration procedures to register to vote after the preregistration deadline. If people want to request an absentee ballot by mail, the form is here: https://www.polkcountyiowa.gov/media/330976/absenteeballotapp_campaign.pdf
The form should be mailed to the Polk County Auditor’s Office at 120 2nd Ave., Suite A Des Moines, IA 50309

Sample ballots for the November 5 election are available at the Polk County Auditor’s Office: https://www.polkcountyiowa.gov/auditor/election/city-school-combined-11-5-19/

If a person wants to know if they are registered to vote or wants to register to vote online, that can be done at the Secretary of State’s website: https://sos.iowa.gov/

Polling Place/Precinct info can be located at the Secretary of State’s website: https://sos.iowa.gov/elections/voterreg/pollingplace/search.aspx

For those who don’t have a JPL email address or who do have one but don’t have outlook open while working at a public desk, there’s a new “Email a Patron” form in the lower right corner of the intranet. (This takes the place of the desk stats form which is going back to paper.)

Here are some examples of what you could use it for:

• Sending a patron a link to the Adventure Pass webpage or a link to a search of our website for a particular author
• Sending a patron information copied from the IRS website or the city’s website

The message will be delivered from the notices@johnstonlibrary.com email account which Molly and I monitor. 

Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.

I forwarded the email below to JPL patrons who have used Bridges within the past year. 

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As a borrower of Johnston Public Library e-books and e-audiobooks, I think it’s important that you know how decisions by book publishers impact wait times for library users and how publishers’ pricing of library e-books and e-audiobooks limits the number of copies that we can make available. The email from the State Library of Iowa included below includes information on these issues as well as how you can give feedback to publishers about how they do business with public libraries.

Here are the main points for those in a hurry:

• Libraries often get a discount on physical books and audiobooks but publishers charge libraries three to five times more than retail for e-books and e-audiobooks. This limits the number of copies we can buy and increases wait times.
• Macmillan—publisher of John Grisham, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, and other popular authors–has decided to prevent libraries from purchasing more than one copy of all new e-books and e-audiobooks for the first eight weeks after their publication. This will result in even longer wait-times for new titles.
• The easiest way to let your voice be heard is to sign the petition at https://ebooksforall.org/. You can also contact Macmillan directly be emailing press.inquiries@macmillan.com

Eric Melton

Director

Johnston Public Library

6700 Merle Hay Road

Johnston, IA  50131

515-278-5233 ex. 604

melton@johnstonlibrary.com

https://dmsymphony.org/events/havana-nights/.

This is a link with info about our first pops concert of the season.  If you like Latin and Spanish music, this may be right for you!

The Pleasant Hill Halloween party will be held this Friday the 18th, from 6:30-8 at the Doanes Park Youth Center in Pleasant Hill.  It’s free and you may wear a Halloween costume, and there will be lots of games and excitement! 

New language clarifying our rule on cancelling an Adventure Pass has been added to the website:

“To cancel a reservation please call the library (515-278-5233) prior to closing the day before your visit. “

With the extra funds received for the flowers, I made a donation in Robert’s name to Blessman International. 

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Lynne’s dad passed away on Friday morning. A sympathy card is in the break room for anyone that would like to sign.

I am purchasing flowers on behalf of the library and will collect money from those interested in contributing. An envelope will be placed in the breakroom. 

Services will be held on Tuesday, October 15 at McLarens Resthaven Chapel & Mortuary in West Des Moines. Visitation is at 10am and the service is at 11am. 

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/desmoinesregister/obituary.aspx?n=robert-r-thompson&pid=194144259&fhid=11274

I received this messge from the parks director yesterday. I’ll provide more information as I get it.

Eric,

We have been working with the Iowa Wild to encourage more skating/ice hockey in the metro area.  They are donating a rink to the City of Johnston to install and use this year.  This will just lay on a grass surface.  My thoughts are the commons there by the library represents the best site.  It has plenty of flat ground and parking adjacent to it.  I wanted to touch base with you to make sure that you didn’t have any issues with this location.  Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks,

John

John Schmitz

Parks and Recreation Director

I thought staff may be interested in my response to a patron requesting that we relocate a particular book. There may be cases where relocation is appropriate (and I believe we’ve done it once or twice while I’ve been at JPL) but, in my opinion, this is not one of them. 

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Hello!

My nine year old recently checked out “Breakaways” by Cathy Johnson in the children’s section. I was surprised to see it had a picture of two boys kissing in bed. I want to state I would also think it is not age appropriate for my nine year old to read a book with a boy and girl kissing in bed. I do not know what you think of this, but as a parent who visits this library often, I would like to suggest this book would be better suited in the young adult section.

Thank you

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Thank you for your message about The Breakaways. I looked through the book and can appreciate that some of the content is not what you’d like your child reading. Some parents, however, may not find it objectionable for their child. We feel that these kinds of decisions are best left with parents and not librarians.

We are cautious about moving books into sections of the library meant for books intended for an older audience (the recommended age-range for The Breakaways is 8 to 11 years). Doing such would make them less accessible to their intended audience and would also put us in the position of “deciding” that, in this case, a book written for 8 to 11 year olds should be less accessible than other books written for that audience.

I have decided that The Breakaways should stay in the library’s Juvenile Graphic Novels collection. I’ve attached the library’s Collection Development Policy which includes details about how we select library materials as well as a form you can complete to have the library board reconsider my decision.

Let me know if you have any questions or additional comments.

The West Des Moines Public Library will be closed from October 14-26 to prepare for renovations, so please don’t be surprised if a lot of WDM residents request cards from our library. 

The HVAC guy came today and thinks he solved the building pressure issue that was making it hard to open the staff door.

Requesting renewals for ILLs over the phone or in person just got easier

All ILLs that we lend have a wrapper that instructs them to email Dreama for renewal requests, but if a patron calls the library or stops by a public service desk to request a renewal for an ILL, we can submit the request through the Purchase/ILL Request in the Helping Patrons view of the Intranet.

1. Look up the patron using the barcode or last name.         
2. Click on the ILL link in blue to the left of the name. 
3. Click submit next to the title(s)

If they have an email address on file, the patron will receive the following email: 

We received your interlibrary loan renewal request. We will let you know when we hear back from the lending library about extending your due date. In the meantime, hold onto the item (we’ll waive any overdue fees that accrue while we’re waiting for a response). We will let you know as soon as we hear back from the lending library.

We are compiling a list of funny reference questions for a presentation we are doing at the beginning of next week. 

If you have any that you’ve received while working in the library, please send them my way! If you have the answer to the question, that’s even better! 

 Agenda – All Staff Meeting 9/26/19

• TS/IT

  • Call Numbers: An Item’s Address

    • Dreama presented how a call number is a map to an item’s location. 

    • Checkout her slides

  • JPL Photo Archives

    • Dreama gave an update on the JPL photo archiving project

    • Checkout her slides

    • Visit the archive

• Public Services

  • Fall adult and family event schedule (link)

  • Our Stories: The Mizo Community (more info)

  • ESL Childcare

    • We are suspending childcare for our ESL class. Attendance has been too low to continue. 

• Youth Services

  • Socktober/Sock Hop

    • We will be collecting socks and other articles of clothing during the month of October. This will culminate in a Sock Hop on October 21st. A sensory-friendly sock hop will start at 5:30pm followed by a sock hop for all at 6:30pm. See details.

  • New programs:

    • Paws to Read

      • A new YS program lets kids read to trained therapy dogs. One of the dogs is HUGE! Details here

    • Teen Programs

      • Jessica has started a new teen tabletop gaming program. She purchased several cool new games. Details here

  • Kosovo (if time allows)

• Circulation

  • Home Delivery Update

    • Home delivery has taken off this past year thanks to Rod and Molly’s efforts. They’ve been turning more deliveries over to volunteers. Checkout the link above for the latest stats.

  • Volunteer Update

    • Volunteers put in a ton of hours at JPL. Molly shared some stats which are linked above

  • Welcome Jennifer

• Eric

  • Online payments

    • Providing a way for patrons to pay fines/fees online is WAY too expensive. We will not be offering it any time soon. 

  • Security Cameras

    • Once the city council votes to approve the expenditure on 10/7, the new security camera system will be ordered. We hope to everything done by late fall or early winter.

  • Restrooms

    • The restrooms will have new tile, stalls, and counter installed sometime this fall or early spring.  

  • ILA

    • Several staff will attend–and Megan, Beth, and Peg will present at–the Iowa Library Association annual conference next week. Checkout the details here. Staff will share what they learned at the next all-staff meeting in November. 

The West Des Moines Library is having a huge book sale today through Sunday during their hours in order to prepare for upcoming renovations.  Hours are today (the 27th) from 9-6, Saturday from 9-5, and Sunday from 2-5. 

Renovation should start later this fall and be completed in early 2021, and a lot of items that aren’t circulated as much as others will be placed in storage.  Those items in storage will likely be unavailable for checkout, so a lot of ILLs may take place during this time.  Also, please expect a lot of WDM residents requesting cards at our library. 

“Judge Olly Neal grew up in Arkansas during the ’50s and didn’t care much for high school. One day he cut class and wandered into the library. It’s there he came across a book by African-American author Frank Yerby. The provocative cover piqued his interest, but Olly had a rough-and-tumble reputation to uphold. So rather than check out the book and have his classmates see he was voluntarily reading, he stole it.

He came to StoryCorps to tell his daughter Karama Neal about what happened next.”

Listen to the rest of the story here: https://storycorps.org/stories/judge-olly-neal-and-his-daughter-karama/