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5.4 <br />I I! I C;� MY 1=0 I <br />To: Elk River Library Board <br />CC: Robbie Schake, LSC <br />From: Brandi Canter, Lead Patron Services Supervisor <br />Date: January 15, 2020 <br />Reciprocal Registration Pilot at Elk River Library <br />Late in 2019 Karen Pundsack, GRRL Executive Director, started conversations with Carla Lydon, Director of East <br />Central Regional Library, about how our libraries might work together to help each other's patrons register for <br />library accounts. I worked with Robbie and some of her staff to come up with a possible procedure, and Carla <br />worked with her staff in Princeton, and the result is that on January 9 we processed our first new card for <br />someone who lives in our region and uses the Princeton library. <br />Building Repeat Usage with New Borrowers <br />We've done a lot of analysis in the last few years about our borrowers. Staff at Elk River and around the region <br />work very hard to bring in new borrowers — they do outreach events in their communities, come up with <br />exciting new programs, and collaborate with local partners like schools and assisted living facilities. In spite of <br />these efforts we are seeing downward trends in borrower and circulation numbers. <br />Recently we sent one of our Patron Services Supervisors to a Public Library Association training how to make <br />our physical spaces more inviting, accessible and user-friendly. We'll be sharing some of these ideas at a <br />regional training for LSCS in March. <br />This week we'll have a meeting of regional and front-line staff to talk about diversity and inclusion in our <br />library services. We have a wide variety of people attending, and the goal of our Executive Director is to come <br />out of this and future meetings with specific strategies regarding the collection, access, public service and <br />more. In addition, in 2020 we plan to have a workgroup that will specifically look at the issue of building <br />repeat users — in other words, keeping more of the library users we already have. Insights and <br />recommendations from this group will help inform our next Strategic Plan. <br />Finally, for a bit of fun we are also working on building an online book recommendation page so that patrons <br />can receive a customized list of 2-4 recommended titles to try. We're hoping to have this available before <br />summer. <br />