North Buffalo Library Planning Committee Update

The Committee meets on the first Monday of each month at 5:30 pm at Cafe Allegro on Hertel Ave.

Recent meeting notes:

North Buffalo Library Planning Committee
Meeting Notes – 4/12/10 Café Allegro
5:30pm – 6:30pm

George Emery, Lynda Stevens, Brad Hamm, Bridget Quinn-Carey, Robin Tashjian, Sheldon Berlow, Liz Smith, Annie Reed, Janelle Toner, David Lampe.

We welcomed several new people who have expressed interest in supporting our efforts to improve library service in North Buffalo.

We continued to discuss the goals of the committee with an emphasis on obtaining funds to conduct a survey of the community to document support for a new library in North Buffalo. We determined a need of approximately $20,000 to conduct the survey. We are looking for support from B&ECPL, the county and the city through our contacts in government.

We discussed the need for this committee to be officially designated as the community group that the city and library system will work with towards implementing the library service goals within the framework of existing planning.

We also talked about updating our membership and we should post a list of people on the committee with a short bio.

Next meeting scheduled for Monday May 3 for 5:30 at Café Allegro.


North Buffalo Library Planning Committee
Meeting Notes – 2/1/10 Café Allegro
7:00pm – 8:00pm

George Emery, Lynda Stevens, Brad Hamm, Bridget Quinn-Carey, Lynn Marinelli, Robin Tashjian, Sheldon Berlow


Meeting times were discussed and it was agreed that the committee would meet the first Monday of each month at 5:30 pm at Café Allegro.

Meeting schedule for 2010:
March 1, April 5, May 3, June 7, July 5, August 2, September 6, October 4, November 1, December 6

Discussed the goals of the committee. Agreement to keep the goals simple at this time.
• Provide expanded library services in North Buffalo
• Survey the community to determine support for a new library
• Generate community support

Community survey and needs assessment. Discussed the recent Kenmore phone survey. Briefly talked about the need for a Friends group for North Buffalo and the attempted book sale at the North Park branch. We need to move forward on finding the cost of getting a needs assessment done. However, the first step is to get cost estimates for the needs assessment. We need to know how much money to ask for.

Action points
• Bridget & George will look at potential consultants
• Bridget will contact Kate Weeks at Kenmore Library for information concerning the cost of their phone survey
• George will contact UB Library School to see if there is potential help in the survey/needs project
• Brad will make contact with UB Social Work school

We continued to discuss the need for support from city hall but understood that this group may have to take the lead to get anything done. Sheldon emphasized the need to keep this project quiet until after we determine what the community wants. No promotion or publicity yet.

We talked a little bit about the South Buffalo project and multiuse buildings.