Three to Be Interviewed for ELPL Director Position
The East Lansing Public Library (ELPL) Board of Trustees continues to move forward in its search for a permanent library director and has narrowed the field of applicants down to three candidates to interview in early January.
President Amy Zaagman, who has led the permanent director search subcommittee with Vice President Pamela Smith, updated the board and library staff on what they have accomplished and plans moving forward.
“This subcommittee has been a great group of people who bend over backwards to be there and help out tremendously,” Zaagman said at the board’s Dec. 20 meeting. “I am pleased with the progress we have made and our timeline.”
The director position has been vacant since June when ELPL Director Kristin Shelley resigned. Assistant Director Brice Bush submitted her resignation at that same time.
Zaagman described the timeline followed in the search for a permanent library director.
The subcommittee of 12 people formed on Sept. 20. In September and October, the subcommittee met to discuss a job description as well as get the job posted.
Between Oct. 13 and Nov. 17, the subcommittee received resumes and applications.
A total of 14 applications were submitted, 10 of which were forwarded to the subcommittee for review. Four were screened out due to “not meeting the minimum qualifications,” Zaagman said.
The subcommittee met Nov. 29 to review the applications. Utilizing a worksheet, members gave their thoughts and opinions about how the candidates matched up against the job descriptions. Six candidates were chosen to move onto the next phase of preliminary interviews.
The subcommittee formed questions for those preliminary interviews on Dec. 5. Preliminary interviews were held over Zoom on Dec. 15, with 10 subcommittee members present.
The preliminary interviews consisted of six questions, 25 minutes per interview. Each subcommittee member was given a worksheet to score the quality of the interviews. The two subcommittee members who were not present were given documents with information regarding the interviews in order to submit their feedback.
Subcommittee members came together and chose three candidates they believed the board should move forward with. The board reviewed these applications at the Dec. 20 meeting and approved them for final interviews.
Due to Trustee Ameenah Asante’s excused absence, the board was not able to set dates for final interviews, but plans to conduct all three public interviews sometime in early January.
A Request for Proposals was approved for a consultant to assist with strategic planning.
Trustee Shawn Nicholson provided an update for the subcommittee for strategic planning, led by himself and Trustee Polly Synk.
Nicholson briefly presented the Request for Proposals (RFP), which seeks a consultant to assist the library to develop a strategic plan that “hopes to gather community and staff input in order to confirm or modify the library’s mission and purpose,” according to the proposal.
The RFP was approved unanimously and the subcommittee will move forward in its search for a consultant.
ELPL’s interim director presented the FY2024 Action Plan and proposed library policy revisions.
Interim Library Director Angelo Moreno presented the FY2024 Action Plan for approval.
Highlighting changes to the action plan, Moreno discussed the addition of definitions to core values of the library: Accessibility, Community, Innovation and Knowledge.
“We hope to use these definitions as a guide for developing tasks and projects in the future,” Moreno said.
Moreno and the staff also added names of ELPL staff members to each task on the action plan.
“We made an effort to add more than one name on each task to encourage collaboration across the organization,” Moreno said.
The FY2024 Action Plan was approved unanimously by the board.
The ELPL staff is currently working on the FY2025 Action Plan and plans to submit it for approval of the board at its next meeting, Jan. 20.
Moreno additionally presented policy revisions for the library large meeting room and the working-from-home agreement. He presented concerns about the need to make uses of the large meeting room more clear for patrons. The policy has not been revised since July 2014.
Moreno also presented concerns about employees working from home.
“The bottom line is that we need some kind of policy or guidelines regarding remote work,” Moreno said. “Some work can be done by our staff from home on occasion, but we also need to address the workplace needs as well.”
The board agreed to discuss these policies further at the January meeting.