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21 November 2025 Rural Directors Meeting

  The rural director meeting started with an introduction and what the directors thought were the biggest challenge to being a rural library. The top item was staffing. Issues expressed: trained people not available, hired and being ghosted, dependability of hires. Budget issues and funding were second. The per capita grant from the State library has not been increased in 5 years. Inflation has eroded the funds. Property tax percentages in the Illinois Statutes remain unchanged for more than 10 years. The Interlibrary loans were discussed. The Illinois Heartland Library System has installed an automated sorting system at one of the hubs in Southern Illinois. It is driven by bar codes. The system has Bar codes on the cover in the upper left corner next to the spine. This enables the system automation to sort to the proper library. The Rural Directors are in the RAILS Library system, and they do not have a definitive place for the bar codes. Many now have them inside the Front ...
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18 November 2025 Last Day in the Lillie M. Evans Library

It was a bittersweet day at the library. The staff has been so helpful to this novice. The Director Duttlinger has really been helpful to show the behind the scenes activities. We started the day discussing the time sheets and discussing the many different opportunities. She wanted to focus on three items today:   Reader advisory   Grants   Weeding We started looking at Reader Advisory and the tools that are available to the staff. Looking at the usual suspects like Good Reads, Reading Group Guides, and RA for all. Looked at Best Seller lists Publishers Weekly and New York Times. The LME Library has its own recommendations on the website. Was asked to add books to the website. Spotted a Health and wellness category that did not have any books. Asked about that category. So I went for that one and looked over the collection to see what books would fit the theme. Picked out a dozen titles that encompassed various healthy activities looked in the system for the check...
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11 November 2025 Weeding to make shelf space for new books

  Went in and had an option of three tasks. Circulation, Cataloging, and weeding. I took the Weeding as I know how much it would help the director. Also it would help me learn more of the back end of the Workflow. As you are using the MUSTIE principle for pulling books. Also use judgement based on the patrons. In my experience at the library, I have spoken to many patrons. Like Mr. Smith who like westerns. We have a lot of patrons that prefer wholesome books with a religious theme. In talking to the book club members they have some unique needs. No books over 400 pages. They do not mind a little spice for the selections. They also like ones that spur discussion. Working in the biography section today. Started in the B-EDW section. Working with a laptop and mobile workstation was going down the list of books in the computer. If they were not in order would clean up the order on the shelves while pulling. Using the laptop you can see how many times it was checked out. Date it w...
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6 November 2025 Resource Sharing Alliance (RSA) Board Meeting

  The meeting was held at the Farmington Public Library. Director Duttlinger is the treasurer of the Board. The meeting was a hybrid with 2 members online and a quorum present in the meeting room to meet with Open Meeting Act requirements. RSA is the LLSAP that provides the system support for the circulation software. Also provides cataloging assistance and database support. The First item was the Audit Presentation. This was important as RSA is currently Reaching Across Illinois Library System employees. January 1, 2026, they will be RSA employees. Which will be a government entity. With that comes new accounting procedures. The Auditors explained the differences in the practices. Moving from Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB).   RAILS Financial team Discussed the difference in the two methods. FASB provides financial information to investors where GASB looks at accountability and transparency of the organizat...
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28 October 2025 Payroll, Inter Library Loans, Spice Club, and weeding

  Payroll, Inter Library Loans, Spice Club, and weeding We started the day looking at the forms and excel spreadsheets that tracked vacation time, personal time, biweekly payroll and other payroll functions. Also talked abut the IMRF and the optional retirement funds. Working at the front desk,  receipt of the inter library loan delivery. 15 items that were returns. 3 items that were for our holds. The hold items were processed and phone calls to the patrons that they were available. Spice club will be on display this coming Monday. Prepared the spice kits from bulk packaging into 42 kits for patrons. The kits have the spice packet this month it is Cinnamon the mix from Pencey’s had 4 different types of Cinnamon. It was very aromatic. When the kits are fully assembled they have an information sheet that talks about the spice. Then there are two recipes from books in the library. They are printed on the back of the sheet. The spices change every other month, The last part...
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24 October Rural Directors Meeting

  The Rural Director meeting was held at the Brimfield Public Library in Brimfield IL. The meeting had 18 in person directors and 2 online. The meeting is held monthly at different library locations. The first item on the agenda was the ILA Conference attendance and what programs those that attended enjoyed. The Chat GPT program was brought up. The attendees thought it was a great opportunity to look at some of the features. With the slides available for attendees through the conference website. The group talked about the ability to turn an activity into separate steps was a real hit with the group. One librarian talked about using it for different book discussions. Another uses it for inspiration when they have writers block. Another uses it to fine tune their grant process. One of the programs discussed was the Graphic novel popularity. Many were not aware of all the hype of the media. The presenters at the conference talked about engaging graphic novels to span the age gaps in...
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21 October 2025 Workday at the library Book Club items for the remainder of 2025 and on to 2026

  The day started learning all about the upcoming book club selection. Went into RSA workflow and ordered several large print and a total of 14 copies of the Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters. This is a common practice in RSA to support the book clubs. It is cost effective to share books. In the workflow system you can see the books that were in transit to the different libraries in the area. Looking at the volume of books in the Inter Library Loan program was eye opening. It was great to see this service used. As it does save money for the libraries to borrow from other institutions. Director Duttlinger has been tracking the book club choices of the small and rural libraries in Central Illinois in blogger for the past 15 years. Other libraries post their upcoming selections to assist with selections to guarantee available copies of books. After finishing the ordering. Worked on the Book Club November 24 th selection promotion sheet. It includes a picture of the cover of the bo...
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