Annual Report Timeline (2025 for 2024 Annual Report) for library directors

January 23, 2025 —Receive notification via email from the State that the electronic form site is open. Your ID and Password will be included in that email.

IMPORTANT RESOURCES:

If you are looking for help with the Annual Report, here are a few options:

IFLS Workshops

• January 30 at 9.30a – Annual report workshop at Fall Creek Public Library. Information and registration
• February 4 at 9.30a – Annual report workshop at Somerset Public Library. Information and registration

Library Division Resources

• Instructions for the 2024 Annual Report. Includes current descriptions of annual report data elements. New items and resources are highlighted in the Annual Report instructions.  12/18/24 revision contains the addition of an optional question 13 in Section II. Library Collection.
• 2024 Annual Report Workbook This worksheet can be used to compile information before entering annual report data into LibPAS. 12/18/24 revision contains the addition of an optional question 13 in Section II. Library Collection. Note: The worksheet is provided for convenience and does not replace submission of the online or PDF report. 
•  Annual Report Q&A Repository. This workbook is intended for library and system staff responsible for gathering and submitting statistics to the Wisconsin Public Library Annual Report. The workbook contains questions and answers for the current Annual Report and a subset of relevant questions from prior years.

Questions

• You can always call or email for help: contact Leah for help with programming questions, and John, Katelyn, and Adam for help with anything else!

February 14, 2025 – Deadline to have the Annual Report Data entered and the form locked for review by Adam Fuller, Katelyn Noack, and John Thompson. We will be reviewing reports as they are completed.  Please email Adam, Katelyn, and John when you are ready for us to review your reports.  We will review and contact you if we have questions about the report.  We will let you know it is okay for you to print the report and have approved and signed by the library board president. 

February 21, 2025—Signed print copies must be received via email at the IFLS office. This year you can send signed, scanned PDFs to Joanne Gardner at gardner@ifls.lib.wi.us. The PDF file name should be “2024 City Name” like 2024 Ladysmith.   IFLS needs them by the 21st to make sure the forms are properly signed so IFLS can email them to the DPI by February 28th.

Top Tips for Annual Reports (from Katelyn, May 2024)

Reference Transactions

Reminder to count your reference transactions! Some libraries count all of their reference transactions with patrons and others do survey weeks throughout the year. Do you sometimes have trouble figuring out if a patron’s question counts or not? Check out this fancy new flowchart from the DPI!

The flowchart asks three easy questions to determine whether or not the interaction was a “reference transaction.” Still not sure? There are examples of common questions on the back side.

Share with your staff and post next to the circ desk for all their flowchart needs.

Library Visits

You may remember this tip from the weekly digest, but here it is again.

When counting library visits for survey weeks, staff should be counting every single person who walks into your library. This includes… 

• Library Staff 
• Municipal Staff 
• Your Waltco Driver 
• Polly Patron who needs to use the bathroom 

A door counter doesn’t discern who is visiting on “official library business” and your staff shouldn’t either. 

Survey Weeks

IFLS recommends a minimum of one survey week per quarter, but to get a more representative sample of who uses your library, one survey week per month is even better. Your library’s visits in May are likely different than those in January or September; so, it doesn’t make sense to use just one or two weeks out of the year to account for all the visits and help you’re giving.

Program Tracker

Finally, you may remember Leah sharing this wonderfully updated program tracker from the DPI. Now including drop-down menus to speed up your data input, you’ll thank yourself when annual report season 2025 rolls around! While your neighbor is adding their programming numbers up manually, yours will already be formatted and ready to go.