Booksale Friday and Saturday, May 2nd and 3d!!!

Yokayo Seed Library Opening This Week!

The Yokayo Seed Project (seed lending Library) at the Ukiah Library will open this week.

Come on Saturday, April 26th at 11 am for a talk about the importance of local farms, seed saving and gardening during a drought

Spend the weekend with the Friends of the Library

Well howdy there friend of the library!

Thank you for your support of the Friends of the Library, Ukiah!

Things are never dull around the library- especially this week!

Tomorrow, Friday April 4th, 5-8pm, at  the Corner Gallery we will be hosting the First Friday Artwalk to display entries for our seed library logo, the Yokayo Seed Project. Come eat snax and chat with us!

Saturday April 5th, FOL Ukiah is having our monthly used book sale. At the library from 10am- 3pm. 

ALSO...

Our Board Meeting this month is on Wednesday April 9th at 6:30 pm. Please make note of the changed time. We are hoping that by making it a little later and on a different night, we might get some more of you great folks out to the meeting. We would love to see you there. 

105 N. Main St. 

Be there!

As always, sharing is caring! Feel free to pass this information along!

~mk@FoL

--> Like us on Facebook if that's yer bailiwick

LIBRARY FILE - So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye

 

By Eliza Wingate

Updated: 04/02/2014 11:31:01 AM PDT

I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank Mindy Kittay for all she did for the Ukiah Library. We changed in the last 15 months from cramped to open, from cluttered to neater (though not yet perfect). We have new furniture, new display book cases, new display boards, specialized carts for children's picture books, cheerfully colored book carts, many, many, many new books, audiobooks, large print books, ebooks and eAudiobooks, all kinds of books.

Staff were sent to several library conferences last year: for Bookmobile Librarians, Small and Rural Libraries, California Library Association and many online trainings through InfoPeople and other groups.  We had a staff day learning how to deal with difficult people.

Staff had the opportunity to try what they liked doing, creating book clubs, working with Ukiah Reads, blogging and creating illustrated reading lists for specific age groups, working with Therapy Dogs to encourage children to read. We now have a full-time Children's Librarian and story times on Tuesday, bilingual and Saturday afternoon.  We created a Teen Room and had a happiness corner.

We started participating in First Friday Artwalks and had a variety of art, music and food while the Friends of the Library started their booksales on first Friday nights. We had lectures on the stars and goat cheese, both highly popular. We or I should say Anne Shirako started a book club. We had a couple of movies and plan to have more. This Friday at the Corner Gallery we will be hosting the First Friday Artwalk to display entries for our new to be seed library logo, Yokayo Seed Project, our new logo will be found on all official seed library documents. This is through a grant called Book2Action. We will be having a workshop with Thurston Williams about the importance of farming and eating locally, and Gina Covina on saving seeds and more.

Our Facebook page use grew with Mindy's additions of quotes from authors and related items of library interest.

We initiated self-checkout of library materials. It is an alternative. We are still there waiting to help if you prefer the traditional method. Unseen and in the staff area, we have added the Bookmobile staff and shelves for all the books and audiobooks and movies on hold, waiting to be taken to various places in Mendocino County. We have made room for more staff.

The children's library also received a grant which has given them interactive toys for toddlers, something we were lacking and 11 of the most incredible puppets which our children's librarian will be using in story time. I know I have forgotten something, probably several somethings. I just wanted to take this last opportunity to say "goodbye and thank you."

Eliza Wingate is the Branch Librarian at the Ukiah Library, Mendocino County Library, 105 N. Main St. , Ukiah. She can be reached at (707) 463-4580.

Mendocino County Library Director Resigns

It is with great sadness that I share this report from Sunday's Ukiah Daily Journal.
Thank you, Mindy, for your service to the community of Ukiah and the Ukiah Public Library! You will be missed! ~mk

Mendocino County library director resigns unexpectedly

By TIFFANY REVELLE

Updated: 03/30/2014 12:00:14 AM PDT

Conflicts with Friends groups dogged her

Ukiah Daily Journal

Mendocino County Library Director Mindy Kittay is resigning after a year and three months on the job, the Mendocino County Executive Office announced Friday.

Kittay submitted her resignation Thursday, two days after the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors reviewed her job performance in a closed-door meeting Tuesday.

At the time of her hire in November, 2013, the county executive office lauded her innovation in a "well-respected and award-winning library district" and contribution "transforming a failing library system in Colorado into a library success story" featured in Library Journal and the L.A. Times.

"I'm really going to miss her," said Ukiah branch manager Eliza Wingate. "She was brilliant.... She brought about more positive change than we've had in a long time. This place looks great, and she made it happen."

Wingate continued, "She had so much energy and ideas, and she actually worked in a quality library system, and that counts for something." Citing budget cuts that had put the financial responsibility for the library system largely in the hands of various friends groups throughout the county, Wingate said, "And we had forgotten. We were just in survival mode."

Kittay's March 25 performance evaluation was her third in five months. Such evaluations usually happen annually. She was evaluated Oct. 21, Dec. 16 and again in March. County Counsel Doug Losak said Friday that he couldn't comment on Kittay's departure because it's a personnel matter.

Ukiah City Councilman Benj Thomas, who has sat on the county's Library Advisory Board for the past eight years, said Kittay "didn't feel secure in her job" since she'd been under close scrutiny from the board. Thomas said he had received "a considerable amount of negative comment about Mindy, which I never felt represented a significant portion of the community or library users."

Thomas said he is "deeply sorry that it didn't work out for Mindy and the library and the county," and called her departure "a real setback for the library system."

"She ran into some real opposition from friend of the library groups," Thomas said. "What she was doing, in the opinions of many, was a brilliant job of moving the library in the direction of a 21st century library. Some did not like the changes she made, and had been very vocal about that, but her vision was excellent."

Kittay had vocally disagreed the Friends of the Ukiah Library's board of directors when it took a controversial vote in October to set aside $75,000 of its $115,000 budget to fund a new library building.

Kittay objected, saying there were no plans to build a new library, and wanted the Friends to instead use the money to meet the Ukiah branch's more immediate needs for books and materials, computers, staff training, a new meeting room and new carpeting.

The meeting was contentious, with board members claiming most of the set-aside money came from book sales the Friends had organized over 40 years. Some attendees argued that the community had contributed at those sales and other events to run the existing library, not to build a new one, because the only plans for a new building were informal and vague.

The debate around the October decision got so heated that two of a handful of audience members urged the board to put their emotions aside before voting. Several board members said their decades of membership entitled them to be emotional.

Kittay urged the board to instead launch a capital campaign and put aside $10,000 to seed fundraising efforts specifically for a new library building for the sake of transparency to the public. She urged the Friends to consider that roughly 70 percent of the Ukiah branch's books are upwards of 10 years old, and the computers are 10 years old and also in need of upgrading.

When some of the board members said the county of Mendocino should be responsible for some of the items on Kittay's list of needs, such as a meeting room and new carpeting and furniture, Kittay said the county's budget is tight and its Board of Supervisors doesn't plan to contribute more of its general fund.

Six out of 11 board members voted to set aside $75,000 for the new building. The October meeting followed another high-emotion meeting with the Ukiah Friends in September.

Kittay had also told the board that she was using 70 percent of the revenue from Measure A -- a one-eighth cent tax to support the county's library system -- to pay for staff time and benefits in order to extend hours for the public at the Ukiah branch.

Thomas said the measure's passage and influx of money at the advent of her time with Mendocino County was both an advantage and a burden.

"An advantage because there's more money to spend, and a burden because the expectations can get very high, and sometimes exceeded what could get done with that money in terms of staffing," he said.

He suspected Kittay also encountered conflict between Ukiah and outlying communities as she worked to centralize the county library system, making some of the outlying branches less autonomous.

"Certain jobs are better done, and more efficiently done, through a central organization, rather than through a dispersed one," he said.

Adding that the Library Advisory Board's concern is for the best interest of the entire county library system, Thomas said, "We had really high hopes for Mindy being able to stay in the position and bring about some of the changes that she wanted to. I hope her successor would have some of the same vision."

Tiffany Revelle can be reached at udjtr@ukiahdj.com, on Twitter @TiffanyRevelle or at 468-3523.