Library Board Shifts Focus After Director Hire
With a new library director hired, the East Lansing Public Library (ELPL) Board of Trustees is now shifting its focus to other facets of improvements for the library.
Following a busy few months of the search for a permanent director, the board hired Kevin King on Jan. 10 as the library’s new director. At the Jan. 17 meeting, the board once again thanked all those involved in the hiring process and provided an update that King’s contract is being finalized and a formal background check completed before he can start his work. President Amy Zaagman said this should be before March 1.
Board members received the one-year report on the Jan. 11, 2023, incident involving a Black ELHS student.
Conversations among the library board have now shifted to discussing strategic planning and budgets, as well as a discussion of the one-year report of the subcommittee on the Jan. 11, 2023, incident.
On Jan. 11, 2023, a Black East Lansing High School (ELHS) student was wrongfully accused by library administrators of starting a fire in the bathroom in October 2022. The police were called by library administrators to ask the student to leave the library.
In light of this event, the board formed a subcommittee consisting of board members Ameenah Asante and Polly Synk. The subcommittee has been working over the past year to “investigate the events that led up to then-Library Director Kristing Shelley calling the police on a teenage patron, and to respond to community concerns about the incident expressed at the Jan. 18 meeting,” according to the report.
Each board member was provided a copy of the report at the Wednesday meeting and were seeing it for the first time. In light of this, the board agreed to take a more in-depth look at the information before proceeding with any questions and discussion. No action is needed to be taken on the report unless the board decides that additional action is required.
“I want to express a lot of gratitude to the subcommittee for doing this work,” Interim Library Director Angelo Moreno said. “I think it’s very important work and it lends itself, I think, pretty organically to the work we’re continuing to do as far as the strategic planning and as far as our new director. In my mind, and I think in a lot of staff’s minds, these things are all related.
“And I think we’re really in a good place right now,” he said. “And I think one of the reasons we’re in a good place is because staff, the board, the administration, is slowly coming to the realization that the more collaboration and the more transparency, the better.”
Fiscal Year 2025 Action Plan was a “collaborative effort.”
The board was presented the Fiscal Year 2025 Action Plan by Moreno and unanimously approved moving forward with the plan.
Moreno said designing the plan has been a collaborative effort among the staff. The library staff worked as a team to add definitions, core values, assign people to different projects, as well as providing room for rethinking some policies. The core values of the plan revolve around accessibility, community, innovation and knowledge.
“The spirit of what we did was collaboration and cohesion, rather than having everybody put their individual projects in there,” Moreno said.
The board continued its business with various reports.
The board discussed the monthly financial, director’s and president’s reports.
Zaagman highlighted underspending in a few of the library’s accounts for the month. She hopes to be able to use that funding to possibly complete other projects the library has put on the back burner.
The director’s report showcased a successful December at the library, specifically for the collections and technical services department.
Collections and Technical Services Librarian Chrissie Evaskis-Garrett shared that, in December, she submitted all of the library’s ISBNs for diversity audit through Ingram Content Group, ELPL’s book vendor.
The results showed that ELPL is in the 95th percentile, with an incredibly diverse collection. Across almost all categories, ELPL is higher than the average for the libraries Ingram conducts business with.
The library board next meets Feb. 21.