Thursday, February 02, 2006

Present:  Amy Hughes, Mary Marchaterre, Karen Hubbard, George Love, Terry Reynolds, Phyllis Johnson, Don Durfee, Patrick Quimby, Dick Rupley

Absent: Faith Morrison, Gail Mroz, Bette Mongold, June Hawthorne, Dee Vincent, Dana Richter, Brian Geiger

Don Durfee called the meeting to order at 4:04 pm.

The minutes of the January 12, 2006 meeting were reviewed and approved.

Terry Reynolds handed out the Treasurer’s report which showed that the FVPL had $15,037.38 as of February 2, 2006.  The Treasurer’s report was approved.

A.  Book cart report. Work bees to be scheduled?

     We are not using a new cart yet for the book cart.  We won’t schedule any work bees now, but will need to schedule several for March to get ready for the April book sale.  All blankets and cards have been moved from Faith’s office to the FVPL office in the library.

B.  Econo-foods slip report   No report

C.  Winter Carnival Table

The FVPL Winter Carnival table will have free hot chocolate and cookies; books, blankets, and note cards for sale, promote Friends membership and general donations on Saturday Feb. 11, 2006 from 10:30 AM to 3 PM in the lobby of the library. We need volunteers to sign up to help at the table, bring cookies, hot chocolate mix, and other supplies – we passed around a signup list at the meeting and will send a request out later via email.

D.  Book Sale discussion and plans.  Book sale times.  Pre-sale rules discussion.

      The book sale times will be 5-7 pm on Tuesday, April 18, 2006 for the pre-sale, and 10 am – 4 pm on Wednesday, April 19, 2006 for the regular sale.  The bag sale will be from 3-4 pm on Wednesday, April 19, 2006.  We decided that only individuals on the “book sale committee” will be allowed to help set up the book sale.  The book sale committee will be the FVPL board members plus the students who sign up to help plus anyone who the FVPL board appoints.  We hope that this will prevent the problem we had in 2005 at the book sale where several folks showed up to help and then set aside for themselves boxes full of books before the pre-sale that they wanted to purchase.

E.   Promote new Friends memberships and donations.

      We discussed a few ways that we could promote new FVPL memberships and donations.  Don Durfee suggested that we send a mailing to all MTU employees via campus mail.  Amy Hughes will check with mail services to see if this would be allowed.  A committee was formed to think of other promotion ideas and to make recommendations to the FVPL board.  The committee is Don Durfee, Phyllis Johnson, and Amy Hughes.  More members to this committee are welcome and encouraged.

F.   Request to purchase artwork for first floor of library

      Phyllis Johnson requested that the FVPL consider purchasing one or two Mary Ann Beckwith paintings to hang in the library.  Mary Ann Beckwith has loaned the library a number of her paintings, and now needs to remove them.  The cost for each painting is $1,800.  We discussed the request.  Some of the comments were something like: 

“$1,800 is a lot of money for a painting, we should consider other art works that cost less and still meet the needs for art in the library”.  “We should ask Mary Ann Beckwith if she would be willing to give us a discount price on the paintings because the library plans to purchase two of them, Phyllis Johnson plans to purchase one of them for the library, and the FVPL may purchase some”.  “The library also needs sculptures”.

No decision was reached on the request.  We will have a general discussion about the request at the next meeting.

The meeting adjourned at 4:56 pm. 

The next meeting will be held on Thursday, March 2, 2006, 4-5:00 pm, in the library. 

Submitted by Amy Hughes, February 3, 2006.