Minutes

LIBRARY CITIZENS ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Final Minutes

Meeting of November 29, 2007

Room 421 City Hall

San Francisco , California

Meeting called to order at 6:10 PM  

Roll Call: Present:  Braun, Cauthen, Cuttler, Kallen, Lee, Resnick, Seeman, Soto, Vogel, Warfield, Weaver               

Absent:   Edouardo, Ryan, Situ; 3 vacancies Resnick left at 6:50 p.m.

Roger Kallen agreed to take the minutes for this meeting.

General Public Comment: Sylvia Johnson said a body like the Library CAC is important.

Old Business: City Librarian Luis Herrera distributed a chart showing the history and proposed decline in funding for the state Public Library fund and the Interlibrary Loan and Direct Loan Fund.  The chair distributed a sheet containing information on how to protest the proposed cuts to these funds. Mr. Herrera noted that the decline in funding hurts smaller libraries that are more dependent on state funding more than it does larger libraries, such as San Francisco Public Library.

Senator Leland Yee told the LCAC chair that all departments are being asked to take a 10% funding cut to offset the State budget shortfall. The LCAC will revisit the issue after the budget is released in January, 2008.

  Follow-up on BLIP Audit Recommendations: LCAC officers gave a copy to an aide to Supervisor Mirkarimi and will follow up with him and the Board of Supervisors. It was suggested that in the future we put the resolution text into a letter to the President of the Board of Supervisors, with a copy to each member.

Discussion of Library website: Discussion noted the difficulty of navigating to the LCAC site within the Library website under the new website design, the out-of-date vacancy notice for the LCAC, that the Friends of the Library is listed on the home page but the Library Commission and library administration are not. Members said the people in charge of the Library should be listed on the home page. It was also noted that there should be a direct link to the LCAC on SFPL’s home page, as there was before the redesign. Members said that since we are an advisory committee for the Board of Supervisors and that only 5 out of 85 such committees are not listed on the SFGOV website, we should pursue a listing for ourselves.  A key goal is to enhance public participation. The members agreed that we should adopt resolutions on this subject for both the Library and Board of Supervisors.  

Public Comment: Sylvia Johnson said the LCAC should be on the SFGOV website.

July-October minutes: Action was not taken on the July to October minutes.  The chair emailed the draft minutes to LCAC members when the minutes were posted on the library website. She will email them to the members again so they can review them before we vote to approve them. Members were reminded to bring their copies of the July to November minutes to the next meeting for action.  

The next meeting will be on Wednesday December 19 at 6:00 PM in room 278 of City Hall.        

The meeting was adjourned at 8:10 PM.