 All right, welcome back everybody. It is the second to last session of Big Talk 2014. It is the top of the hour. We have Michael, myself, Krista, and Laura here at the Nebraska Library Commission, your hosts today. And for our next session is titled, Be Novel Fresh, Fearless, and Affordable Library Programming, presented by Charlene Edwards, the program director at the Bradley Beach Public Library. She holds an MLS degree from Rutgers and a BA in English and Education. Since her arrival at Bradley Beach in 2011, she has doubled participation in library programs, while decreasing costs and utilizing local resources. So it sounds like a standard to live up to. Welcome, Charlene, and take it away. Thank you so much and hello everyone. Thank you so much for joining me this afternoon. I have been employed as the program director at Bradley Beach Library in New Jersey for a little over two years. And today I'm going to talk about my experience as a programming librarian and share with you what I think are some really great ways to spice up your library programming, regardless of your budget. And also, while forming really valuable partnerships with other organizations within your community. And most importantly, using these programs to help your library stay relevant in the digital age. So as we are all painfully aware, Libraryland, as I like to call it, is going through a period of change. And for many it seems like it's a period of gloom and doom. We're constantly being bombarded by these ideas that libraries are on the brink of extinction, that we're nearly obsolete, and that we're on the road to fading away into obscurity. This picture pretty much sums up how I feel whenever I attend a library conference these days. I envision this sort of, you know, gloomy feeling when we're talking about the library's future. And while we are facing a lot of challenges, we're also going through a really exciting period of growth. And we're becoming essential to our communities in really new and exciting ways. I like to think that we're not becoming an endangered species, but we're really becoming a very adaptive one. So I thought first we take a quick look at the real challenges that we're facing in order to think about how can we can succeed in spite of them. So most libraries are facing a decrease in funding at the federal, the state, and the local levels. And this has resulted in a lot of staff reductions and cut hours. And it really hinders our ability to stay current, especially with regard to technology and training. Consequently, this makes it harder for us to stay relevant in a community, in the digital age. My library has faced recent budget cuts and we actually just went down to only two full-time staff, myself and the library director. Fortunately, in spite of all this, libraries are really rising to the challenge. So I like to say keep calm and consider the facts. And I call them the happy facts. And I'm just going to throw some statistics at you that really make me feel better about our situation. According to a report released by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, in 2010, public libraries served 96.4% of the total U.S. population. This is huge. And in 2012, 58% of Americans had visited a library or bookmobile in person in the past 12 months. And even in even higher percent, 69% say that the library is important to them and to their family. And in 2003, Pew Internet and American Life Project reported that 53% of Americans had visited a library or bookmobile in person in the past 12 months. One of the highlights from the public library funding and technology access study that was done in 2011 and 2012 was the fact that, based on survey responses from over 7,000 public libraries, 62% of public libraries reported that they were the only source of free public access to computers and the internet in their communities. And circulation in 2010 was 2.46 billion materials. That's the highest circulation in 10 years. And we're on an increasing trend. So in other words, libraries are not going the way of the dinosaur. But there is a lot of change ahead. But it's a good change. You might be wondering, well, why are we focusing on library programming if we seem to be doing all right with regard to library usage? And there are a few reasons. Library programming has become increasingly important. The 53% of people that I just mentioned who visited the library in the past 12 months, 41% of them attended or brought a youngster to a class or a program at the public library. And 23% of them attended a meeting of a group to which they belonged, while 21% attended a class or a program or a lecture for adults. So these are exciting numbers for us. And attendance at children's programs is sky high. In 2010, it was 60.5 million. And children's programs continue to be very important. And while attendance at all programs continues to rise and libraries continue to come up with new and innovative ways to meet their patron's needs, we're starting to use programs to really connect people to ideas and to help our communities develop a sense of identity and a sense of pride. We're finding new ways to enrich individuals' lives both through learning and through recreation. And we're promoting early literacy as well as education. And of course, we're helping individuals on their job hunt. As we're evolving, our vision is broadening. And we're doing really exciting things that we've never seen before being done in libraries. We also really need to focus on programs because even though libraries are getting more use than ever, the physical traffic to our libraries is decreasing. And it's probably going to continue to do so as people are accessing materials remotely. So the use of e-books, as we all know, is steadily increasing. The use of primaterials has been decreasing. And this might be sort of painful to think about, especially as librarians. We don't like to think that print books are going out of style. And I'm not saying to load up your fireplace with your print collection just yet. But I think what we're beginning to understand is that we really need to think outside of the books. We need to offer people another reason to come through our doors. We've learned that we need to offer these new and exciting programs to meet our community's needs. And the Pew and American Life Projects Report Innovative Library Programs in the Wild really shows us what we're doing, what new things we're doing. And I would definitely check it out. It's from last year. It's from 2013. And libraries are butchering hogs for programming. They're letting people borrow plots of land for gardening purpose. They're offering 3D printing services so people can build robot hands. We're really evolving. And before I start to talk about what programs we're offering at my library, I just want to give you all a brief overview of my library and the community that we serve. Because all libraries uphold the same basic values and we strive towards similar goals. But we're extremely varied with regard to our resources and the composition and needs of our communities. So Bradley Beach is a very tiny town, less than one square mile. And the population is a little over 4,200. But the number actually triples, more than triples in the summer because we're a short town. So we get a lot of people that vacation in Bradley Beach. And that really influences our programming. We're relatively small. We only have about 33,000 items. And we're a municipal library. So we're not part of the system. We're independent. Our program budget for 2013 was $3,833. And this has been shrinking for years, a few years ago with $8,000. Our total costs in 2013 were $3,668. So we use 95% of our programming budget. I think it's really important to note that only $645 of our total program budget for 2013 was spent on speakers, presenters, and performers. And the rest, the $3,023 was spent on supplies, like all the goldfish crackers, the kids eat at storytime. So the way we keep our costs down is that a lot of our programs are in-house. We do them. And the outside presenters that we do get are usually volunteers. In 2013, we had 581 programs. And they were attended by 4,104 individuals. And it's really kind of neat to look at because that means that we really only spent a dollar per person on programming last year. Of the 581 programs, 270 were for adults, only 14 were for teens, and 297 were for children. And our teen situation in Bradley Beach is probably a little different than other libraries because Bradley Beach doesn't have a high school. The teens go to school outside of the town. So their academic and social lives are centered outside of Bradley Beach. So I think that really affects the numbers of teens we have coming through the doors. I mean, we're constantly trying to get them in. It just hasn't been as successful thus far. But we are always trying. And we found that an important part of our programming is building partnerships and collaborating with other organizations and institutions in Bradley Beach and even outside of Bradley Beach. And that's really how we make our library invaluable. We really prove our worth by partnering with the town departments and the school and other local organizations. And the benefits of this is increased visibility for both partners, split costs, and like I said, proving your worth. They're pretty much partnerships and collaboration we see as the keys to good programming and staying relevant. Now, a good example of, I think a good example of all of these benefits is last year, the Chamber of Commerce approached me about a new club that they were starting in town, a gardening club. And they just wanted us to get the word out that they wanted new membership in this club. And I said, well, why don't we co-sponsor a Master Gardener workshop, the Chamber of Commerce and the library? And we'll pay for the $50 for the Master Gardener to come to the library. And as long as you advertise the workshop through your Chamber of Commerce contact list, your email list. And this really worked out well for both of us because we reached people that weren't on our library email list, people that don't come into the library, and the Chamber of Commerce reached people that they normally wouldn't reach. And it really helps promote their new garden club. They did get membership in that. And the executive director of the Chamber of Commerce really loved the idea. And we worked together on several things since then. It was a win-win for both of us. So when you're thinking of who to partner with, like I said, the schools are a really important part of this. According to the State of America Libraries Report, a recent survey found that people want to see libraries, 85% respondents to this survey really recommended coordinating more closely with local schools. So people do think it's important. And at our library, we work really closely with Bradley Beach Elementary School, K-8, Dill Lake School in town. And we visit the school often to talk about programs with the students and with the teachers. And we say what's going on in our library, but we also offer our services and programs. And it's also really important because school libraries are suffering so much. And the school library in Bradley Beach lost a lot of funding. They only have a librarian there five hours a week. So we feel like we can really supplement the instruction. And last year we had, in 2013, we had the pre-kinder gardeners, the kindergarteners, the third grade, and the seventh grade students come into our library to supplement their classroom instruction for special programs they came in. And this year already we've had the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. They visited the library. We did a genre based scavenger hunt to go along with their classroom instruction. And we already have plans in place for visits from the pre-kinder garden and the third grade students. And the gifted and talented teacher has approached us about using some of our programming for their classroom instruction. So it's really exciting to work with them and to be valued by them. They reach out to us now. And the goal this year is to sort of infiltrate the first, second, fourth, and fifth graders. Because we haven't gotten them yet. We haven't gotten them through our doors yet, but we will. So one of the things we decided in the past year was to offer for any Bradley Beach Elementary School student a free library card, really regardless of their town or residence, because some of them come from the surrounding area. And right now we're currently hatching a plan to hold a reading fair, sort of similar in set up to a science fair in the spring. So we'll have local authors be judges. And it's really exciting plotting with school because we can come up with some great ideas together. We've also discussed merging our catalogs, perhaps in the future. Because like I said, the school library has been hit very hard. So besides schools, like I said, town departments, we've partnered with recreation, tourism, and local organizations, the historical society. We do a lot of work with senior groups, the arts council, and of course local businesses. With all of these partnerships, you'll really be tapping into a segment of the population that might not come through your doors. And also I think one of the important things that we sort of overlook is supporting other libraries, supporting one another. So like I said, Bradley Beach is a small town, and the surrounding towns are also very tiny. It's a handful of once-grandmile towns. And we were hit pretty hard by Hurricane Sandy in this area, not this past October, but the one before. And one of our neighboring libraries, Belmar Public Library, was hit extremely hard and they were closed for several weeks. So we provided temporary library cards to their residents until the library reopened. We've cosponsored events with Neptune Public Library, which is another neighboring town library. And we've done this with several libraries, several different projects. And I think it's really important to collaborate with your colleagues, your librarian colleagues. And we're actually planning a sort of librarian's think tank for Monmouth County librarians sometime in the spring, which we're really looking forward to. Because we have similar town populations, similar situations, similar challenges. And it really helps to talk to other librarians. We also let a lot of local groups use our space. And I like to call this hands-free programming because we really don't have to do anything. The only condition is that they allow new members to join. So we wouldn't let any group come in that would exclude anyone from being part of their group. We have a writing group, a knitting group, and an overeaters anonymous group. And they come in several times a month. And our patrons have really taken to these groups. And like I said, it's a benefit to us and it's a benefit to them without really us doing much being very involved for being hands-on. We've also had a lot of government programs at our library. Every year we have AARP tax assistance. And they do that for three months leading up to April. And it's very popular. And they offer tax assistance for free. We also had, after Superstorm Sandy, we had a tax assistance outreach event. The New Jersey Division of Taxation came. And these things, like I said, are very beneficial to our community. We're basically just offering our space. And at Bradley Beach Public Library, we sort of developed a reputation as yes men. If you have an idea for a library program, we're generally on board. But the three main programs that I'm going to highlight today, they really all involve collaboration and they all rely on this idea of forming valuable partnerships. And I chose certain programs today that I believe are really easy to replicate and that would benefit most, if not all, communities. I basically want to touch on this idea of determining the needs of your community. We talk about in our field using surveys and focus groups to determine our community needs. And those are great ways. But in my experience, a lot of times I don't get really the desired amount of feedback with surveys and focus groups require a lot of time and planning. And we have done those things, but I think a really foolproof way to determine the needs of your community is to get to know your community, to really talk to your patrons, and more importantly, to really attend community programs, festivals, volunteer fairs, set up a table at back to school nights. We try to get involved as much as we can, either going just as a neighbor or as a library representative. We reach new segments of the population and we really try to involve ourselves. And it does garner a lot of feedback about what the library can do to greater contribute to the good of the community. It also helps to take risks when you're doing programs, doing different things and seeing what works and doesn't work helps you determine your community needs. I found that Bradley Beach doesn't really respond to academic oriented programming. They don't come to lectures that doesn't draw the masses. They really like performing arts. We have to practically stack people on top of each other when we invite someone to do a dramatic reading. So that's what works for our community. But you really don't know what will appeal to your community until you give it a try. So I have three really successful programs that I'm going to talk about that I plan to develop more and improve. And I'll briefly address some of my honorable mentions and I'll let you in on some of my best program ideas that actually ended up to be huge failures at Bradley Beach in hopes that maybe they'll be a better fit at another library. So like many libraries across the nation, Bradley Beach Public Library has usually gone along, well almost always gone along with the national summer reading theme, but we haven't been entirely satisfied. When I started at this library in 2011 and I was starting to think about summer reading for 2012, the librarians who had been here said that they felt summer reading was too time intensive. The kids would come in after reading a book. They would give a brief oral book reports to the librarian. They'd get their reading log stamped or stickered and they'd get their prize. So in 2012, we did decide to stick with the national reading theme, Dream Big Read, but we also utilized Evanced, which was an online component that was offered by New Jersey State Library for free, which was great. So we did our summer reading program, Dream Big Read, and we had the usual amount of participants, but as the program drew to a close, I really felt dissatisfied with the program. I felt like summer reading participants weren't coming into the library, they weren't interacting with us, they weren't engaged, they were at home, they were logging their hours, and I thought maybe Evanced was a little too convenient for us. So I started brainstorming with Janet, who is my brilliant open-minded library director, and we brainstormed a bit and we were discussing ways to make summer reading more exciting and more meaningful. And the Collaborative Summer Library program does a wonderful job of coming up with themes, and they do a wonderful job of providing excellent materials. But we talked about perhaps doing something that was a little more tailored to our community. We didn't immediately come up with a solution, but then I attended an eSummit conference, and at that conference, Eli Nyberger from Ann Arbor District Library in Michigan was a speaker, and he talked about, he was very inspiring and he was very cutting-edge, and he talked about their summer reading program, which they called the Summer Game. And it has a really intense online component, because Eli is an IT guy, and I knew we wouldn't be able to replicate that at my library, because our IT person is only at the library a few hours each week. But I really liked the idea of taking the emphasis off of reading, and putting the emphasis on community engagement and multiple literacies, and of course, fun. We want the kids to have fun. We don't want summer reading to be more homework. So we'll start attorney. So this past year in 2013, we did an independent summer reading program that we called Bradley Beach and Beyond. And we weren't quite ready to take the plunge and get rid of the reading part altogether, but we did create a passport-style program that incorporated not only reading but other literacies. And it emphasized exploring new interests and exploring the community. So I'm just going to open up the passport and show it to you. I tried to put any material for any program I'm talking about on here, so that I'm assuming you'll have access to the PowerPoint, so you'll be able to steal it. But I have my email at the end of this PowerPoint, so if anyone wants any materials, I'm definitely willing to give them up. So this was our PDF of the passport. And we split it into seven weeks. Let's see. I just want to show you week one. So each week had three sections. And section one was your standard reading log. You would record how many books you read or for how many number of minutes you read. Section two, we call the bonus point section. And that had to do with I offered a selection of activities that you can do. And if you did them, you check them off and you'd earn points. And then section three was a section of reading extension activities, but we definitely didn't call it that because then no kid would want to do them. We called it pick of the week. And you could choose to draw a comic strip or create a picture collage or make a poster or create a soundtrack for a particular book that you really enjoyed that week. So what the kids did was they went through seven weeks of this and each week had different activities. And they earned points and they'd come in once they hit certain point marks and they'd collect their prizes. And also each week we had a weekly raffle and you could come in and get your passport stamped. And you didn't actually have to have done any amount of reading. And we did this because some kids will read one book in the summer for the entire summer. And that will be good for them. And some kids will read 25 books and that'll be good for them. So we wanted to give the kids that maybe read at a slower pace still a chance to earn prizes. So if they came into the physical library and we stamped their passport, they would get put into a weekly raffle. And the weekly raffle prizes were great. They were donated by local businesses. So it really worked out well. And we got a lot of positive feedback. And the weekly raffle really helped kids that maybe didn't come to the library often associate it with something fun. And the really great thing about this passport style program was that our program participants, our summer reading participation doubled. And we were thrilled. We did not expect the number to jump that high. So in addition to the passport program, we also worked with, on the summer reading program, we worked with the Bradley Beach Recreation Department. So we had all the summer camp kids involved in our summer reading program, which we hadn't done before. So we had team volunteers go over to the summer camp on a weekly basis. And they had passports as well. And our team volunteers would read the younger kids' story. And then they'd go through the passports of all the kids in the summer camp. They'd enter them into the weekly raffle and they'd stamp their passports and they'd give out prizes. And a lot of the kids in the summer camp weren't year-round Bradley Beach residents weren't as familiar with the library or weren't familiar with the library at all. And we felt like we reached a segment of the population that we normally did not. We also collaborated with a neighboring library, Avon Public Library on the summer reading program. I invited Avon Public Library to join us. They're a small library as well. They really didn't have much of a summer reading program. And I thought it would be fun to have sort of a friendly competition between our libraries. And what we really did was we had our launch parties together and we had our finales together. And they used our passport. And their participation also jumped with this summer reading program. So we were both really happy with the results. The competition part kind of fell by the wayside. But the kids seemed more interested just in earning the prizes than they did in beating the opposing town. But that's a good thing I think. And we'll probably work on the summer reading program together again this year because it was beneficial to both of us. And like I said, this passport is part of my PowerPoint. And I'd be willing to give it to anyone that wanted to use it. And it spans seven weeks. We also actually, we had an online component to this passport too. It was a summer reading wiki. But it didn't get as much use as we had hoped. So we're definitely going to tweak it this year in hopes that we'll get more people on it. Or maybe our kids just aren't ready for the online component. Get back to my PowerPoint. All right. So the next program, I want to talk about, program number two was our historical walk, which when my director approached me about doing historic walk in Bradley Beach, I was a bit skeptical because like I said, our town is very small. And I had no idea what events of historical significance could have possibly happened here. I had heard the legend of Captain Kidd, a pirate who had supposedly buried gold on Brindley Avenue. But that really wasn't the sort of historical fact that I was looking for for historical walk. So I started consulting with our barrel historian. And I realized that there were definite bits of interesting history about our small town. And there wasn't anything groundbreaking that happened. But there were some fun bits of information. For instance, Babe Ruth, the baseball player, came to our town for a barn storming game. And he was supposed to come for a reception at the mayor's house. And he was two hours late because he actually stopped in another town to visit a little boy who had seriously injured himself falling off a horse. And the big story was that he went and saw this little boy. He surprised him when he was on bed rest. But it's still an interesting story to tell on the historic walk. So we did the first historic walk. And preparing for it was a little overwhelming at times. But like I said, we do have a town historian. And she also is a professional librarian. So that was convenient. I also did a lot of research myself. So it's great if you have a town historian or a historical society to tap into that resource. But if not, there is a lot of information that you can find. Even if you just talk to an amateur history enthusiast in your town, which there are a few of those in Bradley Beach as well. So we've done the historic walk three times now. Each time with additional, you know, new additional stops. And I actually am going to open up the, for sure, for our most recent walk. We do it in the fall. And we do it in the summer. We do it in the summer because we think it will appeal to the people that are vacationing in Bradley Beach. And so far it has. It's very popular. This is our brochure. This most recent walk only had six stops, but ended up being two hours and 20 minutes long, which I don't know how it ended up being longer than the past ones, but it had less stops. But that's sometimes how it goes when you're talking about history. We want to in the future, hopefully, we would like to get a grant to make this a self guided walking tour with an audio track. That would take a lot of labor, but we definitely think it would be worth it. And more and more often, you're seeing that libraries are creating their own digital content. And that's something that we would like to do. I actually was just at South Orange Public Library in New Jersey, and they had created a collaborative local history website, which I'm going to go to. It's very neat. It took them two years to build, but residents of the town can post on it, person accounts of historical events, which is really neat. And a lot of libraries are doing this, and it adds the value to have your own unique content. And another example is this library in Wisconsin, and they partnered with Wisconsin State University of Wisconsin to create a local history digital collection, a unique collection. And it's really neat if you get a chance to look at it, which I am short on time. But it's in the PowerPoint. I do want to get to program number three, which, and I just want to say that one of the benefits of the historic walk was that we partnered with the historical society, and it really increased their visibility, because I don't even think people knew that we had a historical society in town. So they were really happy about that. And like I said, we've worked with them on a few things. Also, now I know more than the average person about our little town, which definitely comes in handy when you're working in a library. All right, so on to program three. We did a Thank You Neighbor program. Now Good Neighbor Day, fall, on September 28th every year. And this is a way to really foster a sense of community pride. And it can also help you promote volunteer work in your community. And a patron actually approached us with this idea of celebrating neighbors in Bradley Beach, the kindness and generosity of neighbors. Because after Hurricane Sandy, we saw such generosity in Bradley Beach. And this patron thought, well, it would be a wonderful thing to celebrate this. So we came up with Thank You Neighbor celebration. And it was very easy. We promoted it. And we have a very good relationship with our local newspapers. There are two of them. And we're in the newspaper almost every week. When we're not in the newspaper, we feel like our 15 minutes of fame is up. But the next week, we're usually in it again. So they promoted this for us. And people could nominate their neighbors as good neighbors. They fill out a form, they bring it back to the library. Actually, I have a form right here. And then we sent out invitations to our Thank You Neighbor celebration on September 28th. We sent them out to both the nominator and the nominee. And it was really wonderful. This is the first time, this past September was the first time we did this program. And we had over 100 people nominated as good neighbors. And they came to the library on the 28th. We read out the names of the nominees. We gave them a certificate. We gave them the form that said who nominated them, who nominated them, and why they were nominated. And it was just a really happy celebration and not a lot of expenses and not a lot of labor. And we want to improve on it even more next year by having people sign up for volunteer work at the Good Neighbor celebration, such as, you know, signing up to shovel your elderly neighbor's walk when it snows or signing up to share a garden on your land with your neighbor. So you both reap the benefits of, you know, whatever you sell. So this is something that I think we're just going to continue to get even better as time goes on. And like I said, the three programs I just mentioned, I think are really easy to replicate, which is the point. Okay, some honorable mentions. We do an annual art show, because like I said, our community really loves all things, having to do with art and the performing arts. And this art show is on its ninth year now. We're actually having it next week. Last year, we had 250 people come. And we had about 40 local artists coming from not just Bradley Beach, but all the surrounding towns. Word has really gotten out about it. And they bring art pieces in a variety of mediums, whether it be oil paintings or watercolors, or even we have cross stitch entries this year. And it's really exciting to see what people come up with. And it's really just great event. And it's very easy. We say, Hey, you can only submit two piece artwork. We only set the artwork up for a day. People come in for two hours on a Sunday, have some light refreshments, look at the artwork, listen to some music. And then it's a big collaboration with the school and one of the senior groups in town, because the students then come in the next day. And they write essays, and there's an essay contest. And then the seniors celebrate the essay winners. So it's a really great thing for the town. Like I said, we're always trying to foster this sense of community pride. That's really our goal. One of the other programs at the library that really worked out well, we have a backyard. It's not well landscaped. It's not huge, but we're really trying to take advantage of it. And we do quidditch in the backyard at the library, muggle quidditch. I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with Harry Potter, but it's just nice for the kids that are less into reading and more into sports or even both. So when we do quidditch, we get a wide variety of kids come out that maybe normally we wouldn't see at the library. We also do a townwide scavenger hunt. I linked to the form on here. We do it for National Library Week. It's a lot of fun. And like I said, we're always just constantly trying to get people to explore different parts of their town. So that's what some of the things in the hunt help them to do. Discover places, perhaps they would not go on their own. We do life-sized candyland, which is just good clean nostalgic fun. That's one of our big winners. And just some programs that I really loved my ideas and then they just turned out to be big duds, but maybe they'll work for you. I had this idea for a how-to pub for kids where we'd have volunteers come in monthly. And it was really to encourage middle school kids to learn new skills and explore new hobbies. So for instance, we'd have someone come in that was a chess expert. We'd have someone volunteer to come in that was a plumber or we'd have someone volunteer to come in that did gardening. And it really just didn't fly in Bradley Beach. We didn't get a lot of participants at this program. So we ended up actually taking it off the schedule, which was kind of a bummer. But maybe it worked for someone else. The Sunshine project was also not a success, but something I was really excited about. And it was to facilitate projects to benefit local charities. So once a month we'd meet and we'd work on a project like, let's see, creating homemade fleece blankets for Project Linus. And at first, we had high attendance, but then attendance started to drop, unfortunately. I think because it was on a Saturday and we really don't get a lot of people coming to our programs on Saturdays. Life-sized battleship, that was trying to be in the same vein of life-sized Candulant. And it just didn't fly, unfortunately. And then Family Feud. I really wish that it worked out. I tried it about three times, but it wasn't a winner. So I guess here are my takeaways. Just Do It, which obviously is a motto that I'm borrowing from Nike, but I think it really applies. I mean, if you're on the fence about a program and it's not really going to cost you anything, I say, why not try it out? Because maybe it'll be a big hit with your patron. Also, I really didn't touch on this as much. I wanted to beg and borrow. We really ask for things from our community. And we should, because we're a library. And I really had to convince myself of that when I first came into this field, because I wasn't comfortable asking for things. But I feel like when you're convinced of your work, you can convince other people. And like I said, everything we're doing is benefiting the community. And also, I'm really a big advocate of stealing each other's ideas. On our library, Facebook, I have liked, I would say, hundreds of New Jersey libraries, just so I could see what they're doing. And it really helps me come up with programs. I think it's very beneficial. And of course, give back. I think sometimes we forget that that's our entire goal is to give back to our community. That's what we're here for. Obviously, we aren't just about items. We're about enrichment. And then go big and then go bigger. If you do something and it works, take it, push it even farther next time. If you have one story time, it's very successful. Two story times, probably going to be even better. Three story times, even better. And at one point at Bradley Beach, we had four story times. Right now, we're at a steady three. And all three are going strong. And these are just some really, I think, great resources for programming librarians, programming librarian, which is full of really great resources, really good resources for us. I don't know how many of you have been on this website, but they have, they also have marketing tools, which is great. Because usually, we don't, small libraries, especially don't have someone specifically for their marketing and promotion. So it's nice to have places that we can go. And Library Journal has a new opinion section called Programs That Pop. And there's only two pieces right now, but they are going to continue Programs That Pop. And it's a really great way to get ideas for your library for programming. The State of America's libraries report for 2013 is out. And it's wonderful, I think. It really gives us hope for our evolution in the future. HUE Research Center has wonderful studies involving public libraries. And of course, American Library Association's Libraries Matter Portal and ALA's Transforming Libraries website. So I would love for everyone to add me on Facebook. Like I said, it's a great way to get ideas from one another and to work together. And if anyone wants any materials, or anything like that, there's my email, charlaineatbrowthedeachlibrary.org. All right, Charlene, that was a great one. I'm just going to say thank you so much. Thank you so much. Yeah, we've got a couple of comments and a couple of questions. Everybody seems to love the idea of life-size candy land. Where can they find pictures or instructions? On my Facebook page, definitely. All right. What else have we got coming from the audience? Well, someone says, how are you funded? Our programming budget is much smaller, and we serve 18,000 people. Oh, wow. Well, we're in municipal library, so property taxes is a huge thing. I'm not really, you know, I don't know how the budget is divided. That's something that the library board and the director work on. I didn't even realize that was a high program budget. It does sound like it's just a question of priorities, I guess, and determining the programming is something that is important and needs the funds to support. That's true. Here we have another comment where somebody says that they are also a summer resort area, and their kids go to school in another town. So they go to that town, and they do book clubs in the high school, and they do interlibrary loans for the middle school and high school, and they get cooperation from the school libraries and the teachers. That's wonderful. And then somebody's asking about your partnership slash collaboration-related programming, the hands-free programs. Do you count them towards your total program provision and how? We do, because like I said, our patrons join these groups, so they are counted the same as any other programs that we have at the library in terms of program numbers and participation. And someone just can't get over, and he says, how do you manage to get in over 500 programs in 365 days? Oh my, it's intense. It really is. But like I said, we have a lot of fail-safe programming, like a lot of libraries. We have a lot of story times. We have a weekly movie showing. There are programings that don't require a lot of labor. That are still just as beneficial to the community, I think. Somebody else loves the passport idea for the summer reading program, and somebody else would like to see your email address back up there. I guess she didn't get it all. Oh, sorry. It happened. While Charlene is pulling that up, we want to give her a thanks one more time. We are out of time for this session. We have one more to go this afternoon. We have been recording everything, and we will be posting all of the recordings and PowerPoint presentations, and Charlene maybe can send us those PDFs also, and we'll get those posted for people. We'll do that. So Charlene, thank you for that. Lots of great inspirational ideas there. So we are going to go ahead and take our last break of the day, and we'll be back with you in about 10 minutes to do our final session on motivating library employees in tough times. Thanks for attending. We'll be back in a few minutes.