September+28,+2010

NYCSLS Council Council Meeting #1 Date: September 28, 2010 Time: 12:00 - 3:00pm Place: NYPL, Mid-Manhattan Library

__**Members in attendance**__: Kathy Steves, Christine Hatami, Beth St.John, Sally Young, Janna Robbins, Linda Cuff, Arlene Dominguez, Robert Nelson, Jessica Hochman, Jody Howard, Danial Nkansah, Sarah Hinkle, Linda Cooper, Beth Pollicino, Andrea Vaughn, Maureen Hurley


 * __Office staff in attendance__**: Leanne Ellis, Melissa Jacobs Israel, Elizabeth Naylor-Gutierez, Judith Schaffner, Lynne Kresta Smith, Barbara Stripling

__**Documents at meeting:**__ //Five-Year Library System Plan of Service// //Fall Conference 2010 flyer// //"It's All About Text Appeal" SLJ article by Olga Nesi//

12:00 - 12:30 Eat and greet 12:30 - 1:00 Announcements and Information 1:00 - 1:45 Plan of Service Revision 1:45 - 2:00 Communication with DOE Clusters/Networks 2:00 - 2:45 High School - College Transition 2:45 - 3:00 New Business
 * __Agenda:__**

//Announcements and Information// Kathy opened the meeting and members introduced themselves.

Melissa - Fall Conference and FLM The upcoming fall conference will be held on Nov. 2nd at Brooklyn Tech HS. The keynote speaker will be Joyce Valenza and the topic will be "21st Century Learning in the Library." There will be about 80 concurrent sessions and breakfast and lunch will be served. Melissa has asked for assistance in setting up on the day of the conference as well as the day before. The new ordering system, FLM, will integrate with Books in Print, with no need for a FAMIS ID. Users will be able to maintain processing specs, create a list and share it with the school secretary.

Elizabeth - Professional Development The Library of Congress partnered with the UFT Teacher's Center for a workshop last June on teaching with primary sources. There were 25 participating librarians and teachers who compiled lessons on using primary sources for research. The Teacher's Center will have a table at the fall conference and PS 153 has been featured on the LOC website. We are considering holding additional professional development sessions on Saturdays and during the Feb. break.

Leanne - Digital Citizenship grant This grant is focused on teaching students safe and ethical use of the Internet. It is a two-year grant for $21,000. This will be presented at the fall conference with the goal of developing K - 12 lessons with video on digital citizenship. These lessons will be put on flash drives for distribution at the 2011 conference.

Judith - New Yorkers Read grant This 2-year grant for middle school participants focused on readable, enjoyable non-fiction. We distributed sets of non-fiction and provided PD on the use of these books. The grant culminated in a trip to a Liberty game at Madison Square Garden. Macy's provided $80,000. The grant will be repeated again for grades 3 - 5 and the application was posted online with an Oct. 6th deadline. Judith asked for titles of great non-fiction to create a reading list.

Leanne - Union Catalog Destiny is our shared catalog with 638 schools currently. Other schools are using Mandarin, etc. But Destiny is expensive and we are considering OPALS, an open source catalog that is less costly. SLS could cover the maintanence costs for schools and an RFP is being developed.

Barbara - Personnel changes and budget The DOE has eliminated Teaching and Learning, so SLS is now part of the Division of School Support and Instruction. Every school is now an empowerment school and we need to re-organize SLS to serve clusters of schools. We now have 6 clusters, all LSO's and ISC's have been eliminated. The push is for all academics to be handled at the school level, not at Central. While principals are feeling the effects of budget cuts at the school level, SLS is also facing 20-40% in cuts statewide, including supplemental funds. This year we are able to use funds rolled over from last year, but next year's budget may be more of a concern. Judith will be retiring as of Nov. 5th.

//Plan of Service Revision// We need to be very strategic with the revisions. The activities we do have an impact on student learning beyond K-12 to college and careers. Our activities need to be very explicit. Judith shared the framework Plan. Kathy asked if we need to establish committees to work on the Plan and come back to the Council. The last Plan had major changes. Barbara said that her annual report includes activities which are part of the Plan and that we are aligned and on target. One problem area is with client groups. We will also need to align with the Common Core standards. In Element 1 Resource Sharing, we have four goals. We should take a look at these goals and ensure that they support the work we want to do. Think about what kinds of things we need to build together and align the goals. This is our homework for the next meeting. We may be able to put the Plan on a Wiki and make it interactive. The due date for the Plan of Service is the last Council meeting.

//Communication with DOE// SLS is currently divided geographically but the DOE would like us to align with the clusters and networks. Each SLS staff member will be assigned to a cluster.

//High School - College Transition// This is a new focus for SLS. It incorporates the skills we teach in the library. The DOE has a new initiative with CUNY and IBM for students who finish school to get a job with IBM. The initiative will effect students in grades 9 through the 2-year college. SLS will set up a committee of librarians to be a part of this. Leanne and Barbara are working on an overview of the CUNY study group.

//New Business// Andrea - Brooklyn Library In October we will be launching a "Teacher Card" for K-5 teachers which can be used to check out juvenile materials. If a child does not have access to materials on class visits, the teacher can use the teacher card to check out materials for the child. There will be no late fines and the teacher can use the card to put holds on multiple copies of books. There is a new exhibit entitled "Drawn in Brooklyn" about 24 picture book artists who live and work in Brooklyn. It opened on Sept. 21 and tours are available. It was suggested that the next meeting be held at BPL to see the exhibit. Andrea is checking on the space for Nov. 8th and will advise Kathy. Beth St.John gave a shout out for the teachers and parents section on BPL's website.

Sarah Hinkle and Daniel Nkansah - Queens Library Queens Library wants to form closer relationships with school librarians. Barbara suggested that SLS could partner with Queens on this effort to improve communications. They have a library card registration drive including group registrations and have instituted the "Read Down Your Fine" program in which $1 is removed from a student's fine for every half-hour they read. One feature of the Queens website is the ability to put in the number of the school and find the closest branch library.

Next meeting is scheduled for Nov. 8th. The meeting was adjourned at 2:45pm. Respectfully submitted by C. Hatami and L. Cuff.