Staff Development Day - May 15, 2026
Our half day is May 16 from 9-noon, doors open to the public at 1 pm. This meeting covers mandatory training and emergency procedures. This year we plan to focus on neurodiversity training lead by Lauren Lestremau Allen from SUNY Empire CAARES (Center for Autism Advocacy, Research, Education and Supports).
The New York State Annual Report
The NYS Annual Report was sent to SALS for review on Monday April 13th.
Space Usage Study
We conducted our 2nd month of data collection.
Sustainability - Earth Month Print Challenge
Currently staff print around 13,000 pages each month and that is without copies and personal printers. We are trying to see if we can reduce staff printing by 1,000 in the month of April.
Of note, last month we printed 9,000 pages and we were on trend to print 6,616 if we continued to print at our current rate. This was made more challenging because we are printing our own voter signature sheets this year.
For those who want to know our environmental impact of 2 weeks’ worth of printing: We have used 33.5% of 1 tree, produced 35.5 KG of CO2 (which is equivalent to driving a truck roundtrip to Albany) and kept one lightbulb on for 2,222 hours.
Continuing Education
Thank you for the opportunity to attend Public Library Association (PLA) Conference in Minneapolis as a speaker and attendee. I was able to connect with public library workers throughout the U.S. to have discussion about innovation, equity, technology, leadership and sustainability.
I attended the thought provoking opening and closing Sessions (Bryan Stevenson and Sean Sherman), a Big Ideas keynote with Dr. Ruha Benjamin, and several targeted professional development sessions including Generation-Z engagement trends, ethical and human-centered uses of artificial intelligence, and strategies for establishing a public library foundation to support fundraising and longterm sustainability. I was also able to walk around the Exhibition Hall and get a tour of the award winning MSR Design office space. I behaved and picked up only one book, The Children by Melissa Albert which will be available in June. If you like fantasy, horror, thrillers with a mystery, I can lend you my copy.
Respectfully submitted,
Jennifer Ferriss