The evening of 2025-02-03 was a meeting of the Mendon Public Library Board of Trustees.
Sounds like the Library has been stepping up sharing information on their website before meetings. In particular, the unapproved minutes from committee meetings.
Looking at those told me they were reviewing the policy on what to do if Immigration and Customs Enforcement shows up at the library. I thought it was a bit silly to have a policy for just that agency. It implies, at least to me, a degree of having lost the plot. Now a policy for what to do if ANY law enforcement agents show up? That seems much more sensible. I said as much during the public comment portion of the meeting, and the idea seemed appreciated. Should be a simple enough tweak to the policy. We’ll see if that’s what happens.
In that vein, a number of Trump’s recent executive orders were mentioned. It wasn’t clear to me if this was to ‘resist’ or ‘support’. But was definitely a sense of ‘be aware’. Which I find interesting. I would think, in a sane world, a local library wouldn’t need to care about what orders the President is issuing. Perhaps there would be rare exceptions, but not as a general rule. So the question becomes: Is the President insane for issuing orders that impact the local library? Is the library insane for paying attention to orders that don’t impact them? Is everyone involved insane, because that’s just the world we live in? I have no answer, but ‘everyone is crazy’ would explain alot.
There was also talk about joining a Sustainable Libraries Initiative. Interesting discussion, and while the Board was in favor of pursuing this, there was some concern it might become a distraction. Fair enough, wouldn’t want to lose focus on the job at hand while chasing ‘sustainability’. On the other hand…
There is a TV in the library that usually plays a slideshow of upcoming library events, and that sort of thing (also used for special events, but that wasn’t tonight). Well one of those events is ‘Spam, Scams and Other Shams‘. Which, in light of the discussion on becoming sustainable, had me thinking the whole thing might well be a scam. I have insufficient information to verify that either way. But I do wonder how that would be measured. Assuming ‘sustainability’ was a scam, what would be the scammers pay off? And how would we go about proving that?
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the February 03, 2025 meeting of the Mendon Public Library Board of Trustees.
Link to agenda on Library website until they update it, losing the past.