Recently Asked Questions (RAQs)

Can employees volunteer at the library where they work, specifically in New York State?

We have had this come up quite often and the word has always been, employees cannot under any circumstances volunteer at the place they work. Since libraries have programming like holiday events outside of regular working hours, employees like to lend a hand but have been told they cannot.

The Fair Labor Standards Act from the US Department of Labor says that for nonprofits, employees may volunteer at their workplace, if it is work outside their regular duties. Our example, under FLSA, would be if a library page wants to help with our gardening. The gardening is outside their regular duties and can volunteer. If it was volunteering to shelve books, that wouldn’t be permitted.

We cannot find anything in state law or anywhere else that clarifies whether employees are permitted to volunteer outside their regular hours. This is especially critical for large events or for people that work at a circulation desk. They cannot leave their post to do anything else.

Hello,

We have had a huge increase in AI bots on our member library websites. My concern is that internal policies linked on member websites will be “learned” by AI and linked (cited) back to that member library. I’m concerned that members might have their Emergency Action Plan in their Personnel Policy Manual, and that financial controls could be used by ransomware hackers. We go by the following list to define internal and external policies: https://nyslibrary.libguides.com/Handbook-Library-Trustees/policy-checklist

Would it be a “good practice” to not post internal policies online? If there are a few internal policies that you feel should be posted online, would it be best to say online that you have the policy, but please contact the director (or library) for the file/print copy? That way, AI won’t be trained on the policy.

Thank you!

Our library is a school district public library. The associated school district is a central school district. The library does not hold or oversee our own elections. Library trustee elections, yearly levy, and any special ballot initiatives are held by the school district.

Our library trustee elections have become more active recently with a noticeable increase in resources being spent by candidates. Signs, mailings, political consultants, all have become common. With these changes have come more questions from the public about the elections and allowable candidate activities. Greater scrutiny of expense filings, questions about candidates’ signs, etc. have come our way.

If we received questions like these for non-district elections, I would send folks to the County Board of Elections for an authoritative answer. That is not a great resource for district elections like ours.

Is there an entity that has oversight of our elections? Is it the School District Chief Elections Inspector? Does NYSED have a role? Is it different for different types of school districts and associated school district public libraries? Are election rules for a school district public library potentially different than for the associated school district? Where can we direct questions from the public to receive solid answers?

Under what circumstances could faculty face personal liability if they wrongly accuse a student of breaching academic integrity through AI use? Would liability primarily arise under defamation, negligence, or contract/tort law (e.g., duty of care to students)? Would the institution’s liability insurance typically cover individual faculty in these cases?

Our public library Board of Trustees is wondering if the meetings of their committees (Personnel Committee, Finance Committee, Policy Review Committee, etc) need to adhere to the requirements of the NYS Open Meetings Law like we do with the full Board Meetings. Because ED § 260-a mentions cities with a population of over one million (we do not reach this threshold), some say that the committee meetings do not need to adhere to the requirements of the Open Meetings Law, but others argue that this part of Education Law doesn't seem to delineate between Full Board meetings and Committee meetings, so if we follow the OML requirements for one, we should follow them for all. However, this would represent a huge shift in how our Board gets its work done, as they do not currently advertise the committee meetings or post minutes, and they frequently conduct these meetings via Zoom.