Minutes 05-14-2013 - Laserfiche WebLink

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dashboard. He noted that the eight libraries involved in this pilot study have dashboards created for them. Lucinda Munger said more work will be done this summer to develop more tactics to support this plan. Chair Jacobs noted that tonight's meeting site was switched in order for Carrboro Aldermen to attend, but the Aldermen have their own meeting tonight. Lucinda Munger said she did send the plan to the Board of Alderman, as well as the Hillsborough Town Council, and she asked for comments from both. Commissioner Price referred to page 30 regarding the community needs assessment. She questioned how Orange County is described, and she said that there are African and Native American residents in the county. She would like to see this diversity reflected in the plan. She referred to the demographics regarding location and access and said she did not notice anything about family income being taken into consideration. Dr. Anthony Chow said there is a family income demographic sort further on in the report, but this was not collected regionally during the process. Commissioner McKee asked if any of the information gathered in the focus groups was surprising or unique to Orange County. Dr. Anthony Chow answered no. He said that the five broad categories listed came up repeatedly, especially the request for books. He said the rural community always has issues with access across the state. Commissioner McKee said he still likes books, and he is glad to hear others feel that way too. He said that access is a key for everyone, whether urban or rural. Dr. Anthony Chow said there is a lot of feedback on internet access and transportation. Commissioner Rich said, with two different library systems in the county (municipal and county), she thought that there was supposed to be some sort of inter-local agreement in place by 2016. Lucinda Munger said the interoperability agreement is moving forward in small steps. She said this is part of the 21St century library concept. Commissioner Rich asked Dr. Anthony Chow if he had dealt with this before. Dr. Anthony Chow said the state is more interested in the county-wide perspective. He said he thinks that libraries are a source of community pride and county and municipal conflict is common across communities. He said that he feels that integration is the way of the future. Commissioner Gordon asked what will be included in the final report. Dr. Anthony Chow said it will be a more thorough version of what was presented tonight in the draft plan. He said that the community needs analysis was very comprehensive and will be the appendix of the final report. He said that there needs to be a deeper analysis of the trends in the focus groups, as well as an overall summary of the project and a final chapter on data analytics. Commissioner Gordon asked why he didn't know what the metrics would be by now. Dr. Anthony Chow said 2/3 of the metrics were identified already by the state, and the last 1/3 was left to develop as part of the process. He said the community needs assessment is going to help with this last part. Once the goals were identified, then the metrics could be developed to measure the progress toward those goals. Commissioner Gordon asked if the grant was for the community needs assessment. Dr. Anthony Chow said the grant is for the strategic plan. Commissioner Gordon said, speaking from a research perspective, this is not what she expected. Commissioner Dorosin asked when there will be specific action items to implement these objectives, rather than just a "zoomed out" view of information.