PCPL board to purchase new computers

Despite the Putnam County Public Library being without an official director, the board kept things moving forward Wednesday evening during its monthly meeting.

Before the regularly scheduled meeting began, a public hearing was held to discuss the 2014 budget. Seeing no issues the board will move forward and hopefully adopt the budget on Wednesday, Oct. 23 during its monthly meeting.

It's once again that time of year where the library looks to replace several of the computers that are getting out of date.

System Administrator George Edenfield came before the council to ask for approval to purchase eight new HP Compaq 6300 Pro computers.

Six of the eight new computers will be used in the reference section and the two remaining will go into the children's section.

"This came about because I wanted to replace eight patron computers that currently have a Windows XP operating system," Edenfield explained. "I want to get Windows 7 computers. Windows XP goes out of extended support from Microsoft in April 2014, which means it no longer gets security updates, it no longer gets updates, it no longer gets anything."

The board agreed to purchase the computers. However, once they are received Endfield informed the board that it could take up to three months to get them up and running with all the library's software on them.

The board then went on to discuss the children's room renovation, which is still in the planning stages.

Board member Lisa McCoy recently met with the renovation committee to review the plans.

McCoy informed the board that the committee is trying to plan for two community meetings in October in hopes of gaining valuable input from library patrons as to what they would like to see done with the children's room.

The board recently agreed to hire OMS for the renovation and plans on having a presentation from them during next month's board meeting.

As the board continues to look for the replacement of former library director Alice Greenburg, who recently decided to retire, employees Lisa Barker and Pat Newman are acting as interim directors.

"We've received about 20 applications," said board member Wes Wilson. "We've received about twice that many, but ones that don't meet the qualifications we send them a letter informing them of that."

The closing date for applications is Sept. 30 and the board hopes to hire someone shortly thereafter.

The libraries finance committee also recently met to discuss additional compensation for both Barker and Newman for the extra hours being put in as interim library directors.

"We all agreed that was a good thing to do," board president Nancy Zennie said.

Due to full-time employees being contracted for only 35 hours per week the board agreed to approve the additional compensation, which will cover a total of five more hours of pay per week at their hourly rate.

The board also agreed to become a member of the Little Free Library National Association. The cost of the membership is $25 and only includes the newly installed Little Free Library at Robe-Ann Park.