Guilford Free Library Trustees Minutes 09.21.26

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Guilford Free Library Trustees In Person & Online Meeting – Guilford, Vermont

Monday, September 21, 2026 – 6:30 PM

Trustees present: John Shaw, Josh Nelson, Jeannette Tokarz, Peter Hetzel, Laura Lawson Tucker

Trustees absent: Emma Hallowell, Meghan Ohrstrom

Library Director present: Amber Hunt

Meeting began at 6:40 PM.

The minutes from the August 2026 meeting were approved.

Friends Group

  • Davida Bagatelle, President of the Guilford Free Library Friends Group recapped their new status as a nonprofit organization with a 501(c)(3) designation.  She stressed that their goals remain the same: to support the Guilford Free Library. 
  • The Friends Group had a successful membership drive.  They have 15 new members.
  • Davida looks forward to working with the Library Trustees and Amber to ensure clear messaging in the Library’s annual appeal letter about the Friend’s group separate fundraising activities. Each group will have its own fundraising, yet it is all in support of the Guilford Free Library.

Chair’s Report – John

  • All is well!  Amber continues her fabulous work as our Librarian.

John asked the Trustees to formally vote on the following directive for the town treasurer:

Please transfer $182,510.20 from the Town of Guilford/GFL Trustee Fund 411-2010 to our new Edward Jones investment account XXX-XX142-1-7.

The Trustees unanimously approved the motion.

Librarian’s Report – 

  • Book Group featuring Peter Gould was fantastic! Leah should be commended for organizing and running the event held at BBCC.
  • Attended a Library Conference in Alabama.  It was wonderful in many ways: Amber was part of a cohort of small rural libraries—40% of libraries in the US have 3 FTE or less employees, but they don’t often make it to conference.  It was great to be represented, Amber reported.
  • There were many moving speeches.
  • Amber expressed appreciation for the Trustees supporting her attendance at the conference—so far away!
  • Amber gave the Trustees a short training on our website about how to search, hold, and request books.  We have 5,000 items to loan out in our collection, and for example Brooks Library has 80,000 items to loan out.  It’s great for us to have access to this system.

Building and Grounds Report- Laura

  • In August, Michael Becker and Laura spent an hour walking through and around the library building. Overall, Becks was impressed with the work we have done over the years to keep the building sound and in relatively good shape. He suggests some electrical work.  Laura is in touch with Erika to follow town procedures to properly pursue that work. There are some fairly simple accessibility tasks that we should also be able to accomplish. We looked at accessibility in terms of parking and access to the library building.  That will be a larger job, but it is something we need to keep in mind. Emma has created a Google doc that will centralize tracking of building needs, the town’s Asset Management plan, and a list of completed tasks.  

Treasurer’s Report – Jeannette

  • Amber continues to do an excellent job keeping books & services expenses on track. 
  • Elly and Amber and Jeannette have been doing great work clarifying, adjusting, and implementing a more streamlined financial system for the Library with the town.

Learning about surveys in preparation for writing our new Strategic Plan- Josh

  • Josh gave a thorough and thoughtful presentation on crafting surveys and how to best ask questions that will guide the writing of our new Strategic Plan.
  • We will continue developing the survey during our next Trustees Meeting.

Reviewing our old Strategic Plan- John

  • What were successful elements? The action steps for each goal helped us achieve some of those goals.
  • What did we learn? Regular reviews of the Strategic Plan were very important so that we could stay on track as well as potentially revise or adjust as needed.

Old Business from August (These are notes from the August meeting that we might want to keep referring to as we work on the new Strategic Plan)

  • In order to inform our new strategic plan, we want to gather input from the community in 3 different ways with a focus group, survey & open meeting.
  • Jeannette emphasizes that we need to build the “why” with the town, as trust is the currency & engagement is how we build the trust. Perhaps we ask “What should we be solving at the library TOGETHER?”
  • Josh suggests we put the survey at the top of the list moving forward with community engagement strategies as well as offers amazing insight into surveys generally speaking.
  • We discussed in depth our own views towards gathering community feedback & the time/attention to detail that requires.
  • We all agreed we trust Josh to lead us with survey-specific needs.
  • We will revisit the old strategic plan at our next meeting & define goals moving forward.

New Business

  • Appeal Letter: Jeannette and Amber will write the letter with input from Davida regarding clear messaging about the Friends Group.

Trustees will review the donor list that Amber will send to the Trustees.

John will attend the Selectboard meeting with Amber on September 28.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:10 PM.

***Next monthly Trustees Meeting:  Monday, October 19, 2026 at 6:30 pm– In person at the library/or online

Meeting minutes by stand-in sub for Meghan!

Laura Lawson Tucker