Greetings!

Ushering in a new year at your Pasadena Public Library

After a year of significant changes at the library, we would do well to take stock of where we are and where we're going, as we welcome in a new year.

The past year has seen the retirement of Sheila Henderson, our dynamic library director for the past decade, along with a paring back of library staff numbers as the City worked to bring its budget into line with revenues falling due to the tough economic climate. While no one welcomes a situation like this, the more immediate concern is how we meet these challenges.

I am pleased to say Pasadena Library employees have shown outstanding resourcefulness in finding ways to meet the service levels patrons expect with fewer positions available to cover the work load. The skill and dedication of employees as they go about their often expanded duties is a story that really should be more widely known.

As we move into the new year, we're certainly not looking in the rear view mirror; instead, we're focused on re-evaluating our mission of providing the kind of modern library experience our community deserves. And that translates into actions that will make a tangible difference in the services we provide and the resources we have at our disposal:

• We are moving forward with the Fairmont Library Express concept, a re-thinking of what patrons at Fairmont Branch most often request and how we will provide those materials. We'll inaugurate a centralized floating collection between both library locations, so that more patrons will have materials access, with a faster checkout experience;
• We anticipate finishing a complete redesign of the library website that will incorporate some of the best practices for information sharing that libraries are currently offering. In conjunction with this effort, we have already begun integrating staff message e-boards to make communication from management to staff, and between staff members, more transparent and efficient; 
• We're reinitiating the Back To Basics staff development program to cross-train staff in comprehensive core services;
• We've begun closer cooperation between the City's IT Department, HALAN and the library to facilitate the most effective technology enhancements that we can provide library patrons and our staff;
• We're reviewing library policies to further protect the safety of our youth patrons, while making sure the library is used as a place of learning and enrichment, and not as unpaid childcare;
• We'll undertake a very active initiative to correct outstanding fine abuses, return missing materials to our collection, and make sure that the serious issue of outstanding fines and unreturned materials is met with a response in line with the seriousness of the costs involved.