Director Briefing - January 04, 2023

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone. I'm looking forward to working with all of you in 2023!

Processing Lost Payments and Money in Delivery, PLSDAC Meeting Item

We have a fairly full PLSDAC Agenda for Friday. One item that will impact libraries differently is the "Processing Lost Payments and Money in Delivery" agenda item. I have put together a memo to explain the situation so we can discuss it on Friday.

System Memo - Invoicing for Lost Materials and Money Traveling Through Delivery.pdf

The summary is that cash and checks can no longer be sent through delivery, and owning libraries should be invoicing the circulating library for lost/damaged items payments. We're going to put together a report to help with this. From our 2022 rundown of instances where this will be needed, it should not be an administrative issue. We can talk about this on Friday, but if I can clarify anything, please let me know.

New York State Minimum Wage and Salary Threshold

Our HR Consultants posted the following notice on Minimum Wage and salary exemption:

Minimum Wage Increase

Updated minimum wage rates went into effect for employers outside of NYC, Long Island and Westchester County on December 31, 2022. The new minimum wage for upstate workers is now $14.20 per hour.

Salary Level Increase

The increased salary level (for the executive and administrative exemptions) for upstate workers has also been adopted and went into effect on December 31, 2022. The new minimum salary level for upstate workers is now $1064.25 per week.

OWWL.org Website

We've received great feedback about the new OWWL.org site. Thank you to everyone who has been sharing posts about all of our new services. Consumer Reports and Mango Languages will be around for at least three years, so talk those up to your patrons as much as possible. I would love to see some good usage statistics for those.

One request we did receive about OWWL.org was to put the link to the staff email login page on the site. Unfortunately, we cannot accommodate that request. One common security issue is that websites are scraped for direct URLs to email providers. Not having it on the site increases our security. Another good reason to make sure you have a strong password for all of your online accounts. The direct URL is mail.owwl.org. That should be easy enough for library staff. You're also welcome to bookmark it locally on your staff computers. The same is true for OWWL Docs, that URL is docs.owwl.org.

At the bottom of OWWL.org, there is a link for About the System . This will bring you to https://owwl.org/system/ where we have a URL to the System Event Calendar and documents that we are required to have on our website.

2023 Trustee Workshop Schedule

Below is the Trustee Workshop Schedule for 2023. All Trustees and Directors are invited to attend. They all count towards the two hours of continuing education that all Trustees are required to complete this year.

If you have a topic you would like to see on this list, let me know. I have room to add one or two.

Workshop	Date	Time	Link
State Aid for Library Construction Info Session	January 31, 2023	4:00 PM	Registration
Roles and Responsibilities for New Trustees	February 6, 2023	5:00 PM	Registration
Trustee Handbook Book Club: Open Meetings Law with Kirsten O’Neill, Committee on Open Government	February 21, 2023	5:00 PM	Registration
Legal Compliance for Libraries	March 9, 2023	5:00 PM	Registration
Trustee Handbook Book Club: The Board-Director Relationship	April 18, 2023	5:00 PM	Registration
Trustee Handbook Book Club: Financial Planning & Budgeting	June 20, 2023	5:00 PM	Registration
Budgeting Q&A with Ron and Kelly	July 17, 2023	5:00 PM	Registration
Trustee Handbook Book Club: Strategic Planning	August 15, 2023	5:00 PM	Registration
Trustee Handbook Book Club: Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Access & Justice	October 17, 2023	5:00 PM	Registration
Trustee Handbook Book Club: Financing & Managing Construction Projects	December 19, 2023	5:00 PM	Registration

For the most up-to-date list, visit Trustee Workshop Resources .