 All right. Hello and welcome to the 2019 Public Library Accreditation and Community Needs workshop. I am Krista Porter. I am the Nebraska Library Commission's Library Development Director and I handle obviously accreditation, library accreditation, public library and certifications, E-Rate, many, many other things at the Library Commission in my department. But today we are going to talk about public library accreditation and community needs response planning. Now some of you are up for renewal for your public library accreditation this year in 2019. Some of you I believe are up not until next year and that's fine. It's great to get a head start on this whole process. Some of you may be directors or staff at libraries, board members. That's great to have as many people as possible up to speed on everything that we're doing and that you might need to do related to accreditation. And I know some of you are brand new. I've talked to some of you and some have done this before. I've been through this process in the past. Hopefully with everything we go through today everybody will know everything you need to know about being accredited for the Nebraska Library Commission. So those of you who've been through before this may be somewhat of a refresher. Hopefully for the new people it will be a good introduction to it. So the Nebraska Library Commission does do public library accreditation and we have all the information for this on our website. You have also been given a handout I sent you ahead of time which is also available on the session page for today's workshop. The presentation materials you can use those to follow along with some of the things we're doing today. There's also this new article that I just put up there. I apologize I've forgotten to get that out to everybody yesterday but it's here online. An article about something that was done in Hartford, Connecticut at their public library. Don't worry if you didn't read it ahead of time. There's no pre-reading requirements for any of this but I did want to get it out there as well. Now on our website here we have a menu on the side about the public library accreditation and certification programs that we have here at the Nebraska Library Commission and they're all together because they are all related. I'm going to start just down here at the library accreditation section so we can just about the basics of that and then some of the things that lead up into it. So the Nebraska Public Library accreditation program this is something that we run here out of the Nebraska Library Commission. This is not something that is a national program set up by ALA or IMLS or other national organizations that all states do. It is specific state to state. Some states do not do public library accreditation, do not do librarian certification, things like that. But here in Nebraska years ago they did decide this was something we didn't want to do. So why do we do this? What is the purpose of a library accreditation? And you can see here on the website we have some basic information about it. Really it's a good way of setting some standards for libraries. Basic standards of things we think librarians and libraries should be doing or could be doing to provide really good service to your communities. There's bragging rights involved with it of course. We are accredited and we are accredited at whatever level that we are. You can compare yourself to other libraries and see what they are doing, how their accreditation levels are and there are some peer comparisons that go on in the process as well so you can see certain libraries and how you compare to them. This is good to bring to any stakeholders or funding people to show if you might need more funding or more support or more staff or something in a certain area you can show look here's how we are doing and here's how this other library is similar to us is doing. And you can speak to them about what might need to be updated. There is also money involved in this. There are certain things that you need to be accredited in order to receive the funds. One of them is our state aid payments and this is something that actually we just posted recently. I think it might be on the next screen of our blog. We do state aid. I'm going to just look that up here. There we go. State aid. Every year libraries who submit their public library survey to us are then given funding. There's dollars for data for everyone who just submits the survey but if you are also accredited you get state aid and then depending on what level of accreditation you are at there's three different ones that we'll talk about you can get a little bit more money in each higher level. So you can see state aid is based on the population of your service area and the basic one for the smallest libraries that we have is $565 plus .06 cents per capita and then if you are at that's your basic bronze level and then if you are at silver or gold level for accreditation you get a little bit more I think it's about 200 or so dollars more. So this is just straight up money you get that you can do whatever you like with. There's no restrictions on them. No requirements that you meet any criteria or anything. This is just state funding that we get that because you are an accredited library we will pass on to you. In addition we have grants here at the Nebraska Library Commission that we offer and on our website we have a link here to lots of information about grants but was specifically what I'm talking about right now is over here over here our NLC related grants. In order to apply for any of the grants that we offer through library commission your public library does need to be accredited. So continuing education grants that's training grants for attending workshops or conferences or events or bringing someone into your library to do a presentation. Internship grants if you're going to receive an intern to work at your library and we will find a stipend for them you need to be an accredited library. Youth grants for excellence that's our training our grants for teen or children's services and oh library improvement grants there they are for building improvements or sometimes for programs major projects you might be doing. So in order to apply for any of those grants that we offer here via the library commission you do need to be accredited. We also have some other grants that are listed here our library innovation studios project that's the makerspace equipment we're putting into libraries our sparks grant which is for connecting schools and libraries with internet. Those also as a grants that we hand out you would need to be had to be participated in those which are already set with the libraries. You wouldn't need to be accredited as well. Also other organizations have also decided to use our accreditation program as one of their requirements for their grants and that's what we have listed down here under the other funding sources. Community development block grants these are through the Nebraska Department of Economic Development and libraries can apply for these and they are listed under public works actually. So your community and for the benefit of your library could apply for a grant through excuse me the Nebraska development block grants the CD BG grants but you do need to be an accredited public library if you're going to go for one for your library. Also jumping down to the USDA community facilities grants same thing they are for facilities and public bodies libraries are your city would provide submit this and they also list libraries here somewhere I know I've seen them. There we go libraries so educational services but your library would need to be accredited to apply for that one through the USDA and then lastly we show here the Kreuz Bennett donor advised fund grants these are grants Shirley Kreuz Bennett was an educator here in Nebraska and when she passed away she had a lot of money she wanted to donate and she specifically wanted her money to go to libraries so through the Nebraska Community Foundation she set up a fund this is specifically for the smallest libraries you just have a population of fewer than three thousand to start with and then you can get funding now there are actually three different types of grants that they offer and one of them is actually a planning grant grant to become accredited so if you are a library that is not accredited yet this is a grant you could apply for for to cover any costs or expenses you might incur to become accredited accredited things like if you need to attend a workshop and they need someone else to cover the library while you're out you can get a grant from them you get money from them that will cover the salary of that person if you need to set up internet access or your online catalog or anything you know any subscriptions you might apply for one you know the first time getting signed up with Overdrive or other things anything you might need to do that's here on this list things that would either help you work on your accreditation process getting started in the first place or earn you more towards your accreditation you can get a grant for to become accredited so that's a little helpful one for a non-accredited libraries but after you're accredited they have two other ones an enhancement grant specifically for programs and services and then a facilities grants for anything in your building so upgrading fixing things new construction whatever needs to be done so for both of these the crates Bennett facilities and enhancement grants you would need to be accredited these are all matching grants one-to-one matches so if you ask for $500 from them you'll need to put in $500 towards whatever your project is as well so in addition to just being able to say hey we're great library we've done awesome things and look at all we've done about with being accredited you can also get monies you have the ability to apply for grants that you normally would not have if you were not accredited so it's really a measure of the quality of your library services and you know showing how great you're doing a lot of libraries like to you know mention it but you'll also get a little window sticker from your system original library system that you can put in the window of the library we also have now online badges that you'd be able to put we can give you the file for that post on your website your facebook page anywhere online that you want to showing off so that we've you've earned your accreditation so that's there's a lot of good things that can come good reasons to be accredited now the process begins every year officially on July 1st is when you can start working on the application form itself to either become accredited or to be get reaccredited if you're renewing but right now at any time you can start working on gathering the information you need to do that working on your community needs response plan the actual extra document that we'll talk about so July 1st you'll get an email from me telling you if you have done your public library survey telling you hey you're being invited to start the process so there are some other some basic requirements before you can even start your accreditation first thing being completing the public library survey and the supplemental survey that we include along with that this is something that starts in the fall I believe it went live in November and just wrapped up in February Sam Shaw here at the library commissions in charge of that so you get emails from him and once you've completed your survey that's the the basic thing the thing that you have to be to have done and then we will invite you to become accredited if you've never had before or work on your reaccreditation if you're up for that the process you get accredited for three years so you need to be reaccredited every third year so you won't this is not an annual thing that you have to do this is something you do this year and then you don't have to go through the process again for another three years at the moment then there are our 12 minimum qualifications you have to meet as a library basic things that we think library should be doing before you can even start so I think some things you absolutely have to have and we'll get into those and then a whole separate document the community needs response plan this is an actual as a separate document that you will email to me it is not an online form it's not something that you fill in the blanks something or anything like that that's a separate thing that you'll write up and send to me either email mail however you want to word document PDF whatever works for you previously as you can see here that was called the strategic plan so you may have heard of it called that and have some previous information and training about that if you are renewing your accreditation you may have a previous version of it called that and that's fine the strategic plan is just a name for the the actual document but it was confusing to some people it strategic plans are a certain thing they are a lot of organizations or businesses or communities you know municipalities have a strategic plan like this is our five-year plan for how we're going to run the entire business for the next five years and it has a lot of different parts about everything you'll do that's not exactly what we're asking for in a community needs response plan so it was getting confusing to people and intimidating and maybe scary to some of you that I have to write a strategic plan for my library no this is just a specific maybe be a it might be a subset of a strategic plan if you happen to have one already with looking at your community and deciding what needs to be done what can the library do about it and how you're going to respond to some specific things so we decided a couple of years ago that we would change what the name of the actual document is all the content of it is still the same everything you need to do to write one is the same so your previous plan if you're renewing can be used as a basis for your new one you don't have to start from scratch or anything but we are calling it the community needs response plan and hopefully that makes you know because it makes more sense and is more accurate it'll get you more on the right road for what you're needing to do there are three levels of accreditation you earn points on different things that you do at your library for each level bronze silver and gold are three levels yes it was based on the olympics bronze silver and gold medals at the time this this new version of accreditation was being put together it was the olympics time and someone did make a little joke saying what are we going to call our levels now how about gold silver and bronze haha isn't that funny well they said that's a great idea actually let's go with that so our levels are bronze silver and gold previously accreditation was done in a slightly different way and that you had to there were still three levels of it in 2013 the way it worked was changed previously you had to meet all the criteria for level one and then you were able to start working on level two you had to meet every criteria in level two before you could become level three that was really hard for some libraries there were you know if you were just missing one thing one docket one one criteria one one one thing that you couldn't get your library doing then you would be completely out of luck of jumping from level one to level two just because you're missing one thing and people thought that was just too too hard for libraries to do so they revamped the system in 2013 and now you can earn you know some basic points you earn based on what you said in your public public library survey the basic survey what basic info you submitted to us but then there's other questions that you can answer and depending on what ones you answer you earn certain points and working your way up through the three levels so for example and then we think this is more equitable among the libraries because one library might be really good at one thing and not so good at something else and this other library is good at that something else but not the one thing the other library is but they both earn points and can work their way up and it really reflects better what each library personally is doing and their level of what standards they have and what they need to be providing to their own communities so it really reflects better um hopefully what's going on in each local community out there okay so there is so first you'd have to submit the public library survey and then you get invited to apply there is an application form online that you can that you submit that does not go live until July 1st you'll notice if you do click on it now it's going to say it's not going to begin and even if you go through here and click all these starting boxes these are your 12 minimum qualifications are going to go over it won't even let you get to the next step but it'll still say nope it's not July 1st yet but we do have a preview application on the website so if you are um wanting to look ahead of time to see what the questions are you can go to this preview application and it will show you each of the sections and every question this isn't a live form you can't click on anything and make anything happen nothing works with it but you can at least see ahead of time what all the questions are that you're going to be looking at and asking and there is the help guide that will pop up it's in here so you can see all of our instructions and extra information that we have put into the form if you need it and you can see how many points each thing is worth so you can see if you know how many you might need to earn to jump up to another level how many might your where you're at might you might need to earn to get to the basic level so you can see whoops not what i want to do what what you'll be working towards so the 12 minimum qualifications as you saw on that page there are here now these are the basics that we think every library needs to be doing no matter what before you can even start either being credited or reaccrediting renewing so first you need to be illegally established under state statutes chapter 51 of the Nebraska state statutes is all about libraries and establishing them and what you need to do and how your boards need to be set up and how you work with the city and everything then you need to comply with all Nebraska library laws rules regulations on any other local or federal laws that affect them then you also have to have a board a library board either governing or an advisory board either time either type the board and the director need to be certified and i'll go pop over to our information about certifications now so we can talk about those while we're at that point in our minimum qualifications you may have noticed when we do and i mentioned this earlier on the little pop out menu for accreditation also talks about certification to your criteria are that your library board is certified and your public library and your library director is certified these are both programs that we run here through the library commission on the board certification your library board must and this is all about continuing education and lifelong learning and keeping up with what's happening in the field specifically for your board what they need to learn is things having to do with running a library board collectively as a group a board needs to earn 20 hours of CE credits during a three-year period and this is a 20 hours together not 20 hours for each person so if you have a board of five people they just need to each earn in that um through your period four credits each they can do these at the same time so if you have a board of five and you sit down and watch a webinar or a training session like this one for example it was an hour long session then you all you earn if they're all sitting there five of them together watching something five hours of CE all in one shot so not too too difficult to do but some boards do struggle with the continuing education the extra education part of what they need to do to be certified and to then be re-certified we do have a list here of some ideas of the kind of things that you can do as a board webinars workshops in-person sessions online sessions recordings of online sessions will all be acceptable we also here at the library commission have paid for an account at um through united for libraries which is ala's organization for friends and foundations and boards for the trustee academy courses and these are workshops that you can take online they can each do it alone work on it together however you want to you can see the kind of things these are about are having to do with being a board member so working on the library's budget working with your library director advocacy the kind of things board members need to be in interest involved in and then there are short takes these are little short videos that you can watch little 10 minute videos if you watch one of those and then earn and then watch some questions that they have then you can earn CE credit for that as well so have a little discussion after watching this so this would be the kind of thing one of these really quick short things takes not even like what half an hour in total at a board meeting put it on the agenda everybody sits and watch one of these short videos and then they talk about it boom they've all learned um CE credit for that amount of time um the things that board members can earn continuing education CE credit for on towards their certification is not necessarily going to be the same as what a library director will learn some things may cross over you know library advocacy policies of course but if it's a training session for example about how to run a story time for toddlers like how to actually do that as a staff person that would not be something a board director library board member would earn CE credit that doesn't have to do with doing their job as a board member person who works the library library director or staff person they would be able to earn CE credit for that kind of training if a board member wants to attend it that's fine they can you know that's great that they're learning but it's not something about doing their job as a board member so they that makes it not eligible for them to earn the CE for it we have lots of other links to other things that you can attend other short videos so there's a lot of things out there that you can access and send to your boards to help them earn their CE for things that you attend that we host here via the library commission or that you attend through our regional library systems and you have a check-off sheet or something we will gather that information and submit your continuing education credits for you for example today all of you who are logged in i'm going to get a spreadsheet afterwards from go to webinar that will tell you me you are all here and i will be able to submit that to Linda Babcock keeps track of that for us and so you can all earn your CE so i'll actually i should say right now while we're talking about it if there's more than one person sitting with you at a computer and you're all watching around one you've only logged in as one person let me know in the questions section of your go-to webinar interface who else is with you so we can make sure they get their CE credit as well i know someone did contact me earlier and telling me someone else to be with them but if anybody else has that same situation you're watching as a group or a bunch of people more than one person together the only way i'll know there's somebody besides the person you logged in is if you type into the questions section there and let me know now if you attend something else or you just want to make sure we get your credit there is a form here for public library boards to report to us there's a separate form for library directors or staff to report their CE activity so here's for the board member and you can see here in one form you can do multiple activities and list multiple names of people attending so you don't have to do for example like i said before if you've got five board members sitting and watching the webinar you don't have to submit five different forms you submit this one form list the activity list the names of all the people that were there and then they get all get submitted with one form for that particular event you can also look up your board's status there's a link here for it also on the pop-out menu you'll see there's the library board status review so you can if you're not sure and you want to know where your board is at are you certified are they not how many hours do they need you can look it up here you can see here we have the libraries it's arranged by city by default but you can sort it by library name system respiration date and you'll see if the board is certified when they expire what regional system you're in if the board has expired you'll see their year is in red which means they need to work on getting re-certified if they want to and if you click on the library's name you will get their board certificate the board records so you can see exactly for the current three-year period what we have in our right in our records as what they've attended and for how many hours and what it all was you can see how many hours they currently have and how many are needed and when they need to be re-certified by so they need so this is Ainsworth needs to do another nine and a half CE by September 30th of 2021 so they've got plenty of time we also list who the board members are as far as we know in our database if you need to update that there's an information link here where you can let us know if any of this information is is is wrong needs to be changed the three-year period for the board certification you'll notice this is three years library accreditation is three years public librarian the library director's certification is also three years the expiration dates of those will not necessarily match up they're not all going to be on the same timeline because you may have started each one of these things at different times library accreditation now goes for a full year and it expires to the end of the year in December and then you go three years and then it renews again for your board certification and your librarian certification it starts whenever you first joined the program before you first started doing it so you can see here um apparel Ainsworth did it starting as of the end of September so that's when their recertification is due they were up for accreditation right now uh they don't need to have all of their c e done by the accreditation time they're now in the process of keeping up with their board certification they are currently certified still because your current certification lasts for three years so this is good through 2021 um so they're certified and when 2021 comes along they've got to make sure they get all their point their c e by that to read to renew uh same thing with the public librarian certification uh it might not match up your director might have be in the middle of working on their certification and they've got 10 other credits done and they need to do however many more as long as they're still certified from last time they're good as far as the criteria for the library being accredited is concerned now if you're unsure about if this information is correct or you think you submitted something um and we don't have it listed on here Linda Babcock here at the library commission is who you would submit contact or if you don't see something listed here you just click on the button it brings you back to that board uh report form to submit something it's okay to resubmit if you're not sure you know something is here she'll sort through it and figure out and just give you the right credits for everything so also under the board we do have a library board manual that we've created this is something you may have used to have had years ago as a big fat binder it's all online now the basics of being a board member so this is something else that can help your board members just keep up on what they need to do in their jobs all right so the other thing is your library director also needs to be certified so this is the board as a whole now the librarian certification this is about individual library staff um anyone who's a librarian here in the state and works or works at a library in the state can apply to the certification program to earn their certification if they want to there's a special form to submit to let us know you're starting the process oh there was the same thing back on the board one I didn't mention that there's a form you have to let us know that your board is working towards certification you can't just start attending things and assume you're going to start earning CE there's actually a form that you do have to uh application form there is right there to actually say yes we want to start um becoming certified and then there's the same thing for the librarian so any staff who you have working the library can do this in order to be accredited for the whole library your director has to be certified there are different levels of certification the levels are based on once again the size of the population you serve and then there's some basic requirements of that everybody has to have a high school diploma or GED equivalent something equivalent and then depending on how large your community is you need to have more education either at a college university going to a library school having a degree a master's degree there or working towards courses associates bachelor's whatever if you don't have that then you can do our basic skills courses that we offer here through the library commission to earn that education we know that not everybody is going to go to college or can have the time to do that or the money and we do have these free courses we offer the basic skills classes that you must complete depending on the level you're going for and that will help you get the knowledge and education you need to work at and run your library now staff people need to earn 45 credits CE credits a lot more than a board member of course this is about running the library so also over a three-year period though so you have three years to earn 45 credits and that's 15 credits a year not bad um you should be able to you know do that and same kind of thing you can um earn credits for attending workshops attending conferences webinars for example everyone who is actually attending this workshop today we should go for about two hours if everything goes on time all of you will earn board members and libraries staff library directors two hours of CE credit each so this counts if you aren't watching this live you're watching this as a recording you'll get the same two hours you would have to submit to us to let us know you attend you watch the recording if you attend um our Nebraska library association school librarians association annual conference or any of our spring meetings or any of those kind of in-person things let us know and you can earn CE for that webinars online recordings of webinars actually taking academic courses for college credit you can get credit for that as well um something else I think some people don't realize or and I didn't know if you actually teach yourself if you are presenting webinars or presenting sessions so if you are attending a conference and you are presenting an hour long or a 50 minute session on a topic that counts as continuing education as well and you can submit for that and get CE because you taught other people about something um I sometimes have people come on my weekly encompass live online show if you're one of my speakers I will um let Holly and Linda know and then you'll earn the CE for attending for being the presenter for that day for that session uh there is a reporting form also for the library staff different ones than the board one so board has its own form library and staff has its what kind of event it is when it was and they submit this it goes to Linda and she will then add it to your record if there's any questions about it this also in the um board one she may come back to you and want more clarification or something sometimes there is a record look up also a CE record look up for the library staff I won't be able to show you this one because it does have a password but you just put in your first name last name password there's a look up here if you need to look up what your password is and it will tell you basically the same information that you saw on the board record of how many hours you have what we have you down for and how many hours you still need to do so if you're wondering where you're at in the process do you have enough credits do you how many more do you need go here and you will be able to look that up yourself it's also of course in the pull out menu here um like a CE record review under library and certification for staff or directors we actually have also similar comparable to the library board manual we have a director's guidebook so this is specifically for library directors although some of your staff can benefit from certain sections depending on what they do at your library and this is all about I see it's much longer than the uh board one everything you might need to know about being a library director so I definitely recommend taking a look at this and using it to do um your job whether you're a new director or you've been around for a while you might learn something from there let's see we do have a question that has come in here do we need to fill out okay the question is do we need to fill out and submit the form saying we didn't see hours for things like this meaning the workshop we're doing right now or is it automatically applied yes um no you don't need you don't need to submit for anything that you attend live that we present like this and usually we'll try and mention that sometime during the workshops or even in person things we do um hopefully you can let you know um the last couple of weeks I've been going around the state doing this same workshop in person um with uh check off sheets that people check off their name and say yes I was here uh this kind of thing I take and then I submit and give it to Linda and she gets your CE automatically so for that you don't need to do it yourself I'll submit it to her um usually for anything that you attend that our regional library systems are hosting uh they will submit on your behalf as well because they'll have a similar check off sheet that yep you're here uh but if you do anything where you're not like with us that we know you're here you would have to do it yourself so like if you watch a recording of this you'd need to submit that one I can't tell who's been watching our recordings there's nothing that gathers that information or if you attend something that's not something we are running you would then definitely need to send that in to us all right so that's your board certification and librarian certification are both needed before as criteria for become your library becoming accredited so any other questions about that feel free to type in any thing you have I answered your question there Wendy Amy I see what you type book you got sitting with you today we'll make sure everybody gets their credits all right next main criteria is you receive local funding from your village township county whoever is your local municipality can't be just a donations and you know or the library with no funds you submit the most recent public library survey actually parts of the some of the survey questions and the supplemental survey some of those questions are automatically pre-fed into the this application form that we're going into so that you can um you don't have to re-answer some of all these questions and we've already asked you something in the public library survey it'll pre-populate and you already have those answers in there for you you do have to have paid library staff working at your library this is you can't be just a volunteer run library with nobody who's paid for the job now if you do need to have volunteers come in sometimes to cover for you for certain things like you all you know your staff goes to a meeting or an event or a conference and but you still want to keep the library open at home and a volunteer comes in or a board member to run the library that's fine um that's you know on a you know case by case basis every now and then but not as your regular daily um running of the library has to be paid staff director has an email address that they actually use and check regularly now that may sound a little weird to have to say but when this accreditation process was first started a long time ago uh some people did not have email addresses even though many of us were using it we did have some library directors who refused to have an email address said I don't even check my email if you want to contact me call me on the phone or send me something in the regular snail mail they decided back then no you need to have an email address that's how we're going to reach out to you we have 60 to 70 libraries every year that are up for reaccreditation we can't be calling and mailing things out so made that requirement i'm hoping now at some point i might be able to take that off as a requirement and it will be 12 minimum that should be 11 it's gonna be a standard but we'll see uh making your basic services available without charging people who are in your service area that pay the taxes to your library so this is your basic you know borrowing books using the materials um in the library um getting recent reference help from the staff people now if you do have like paid cards you know if you have the people that come outside your area and you have them pay for a library card and out of out of area card that's fine they aren't supporting your taxes um little thing other things beyond these what's listed here like paying for paper when you use the printer paying for materials that are used for craft events or maker space events um equipment and whatnot that is perfectly fine this is just talking about your basic book book bookloading using talking to the librarian using the reference using the materials in house also you need to access the internet at no charge cannot charge a per minute fee or something to someone to use um your internet and then you do an annual report to whoever you're governing body your local government is um into the public so some sort of an annual report about what the library is doing that you do now once you get all those 12 basic general criteria you will then see what pops up at the bottom is the apply for accreditation button now if i i'm in here i logged into like a special link so i can get into form um if you try to do it now before july 1st you'll get a message that will say no it's too early if you enter till july 1st but after july 1st when i email you it will say hey uh accreditation's open go ahead go to your form uh you have an id and password this is the same user id and password that you use to submit your public library survey so that bibliostat username and password we don't make you learn a new one there is a little look up here too if you can't remember what that is since you did your survey last fall or whenever it was so i have one here i've already logged into because i'm not going to show you someone's username and password uh north fork public library has graciously agreed to let us borrow their form to look at it online and see how this all works so this is actually their live form now that i'm into just for this demo purposes so when you first go into the actual form you've got some basic instructions here about how it's going to work uh you'll see that there is uh certain things will be automatically prefilled in your form as i mentioned coming from the public library survey green check means you meet the guideline red x means you don't this is also quite a lot of these questions are just based on what you've submitted as your answers but some of them are actually peer question review questions you're being compared to your peer libraries your peer libraries are libraries that are similar in local service area to your library so you can see who they are when you're in your form there so we just look at and see what your size of your community is and find other ones similar and that's who we compare you to usually try to have four or five above and below um you can see here for north fork um we have it a little off but we also have some iowa libraries not every community in nebraska has enough communities of the same size to compare to excuse me so in order to be able to have something a valid calculation done a valid you know comparison done we actually look at iowa's public library statistics and use their information to do some of the peer comparisons so they'll be similar size as your community that will be compared to um all this public library survey data is out there um publicly we post ours they post theirs so we can use it for this purpose as i said sam shaw's in charge of all the peer's library data so if you have questions about that you can talk to him um as i said the point you accumulate points for each level and you'll see here this little box that's popping down and following along with us as we're going through the form as you're checking and unchecking questions you'll see that it will change if i uncheck this one here this policy here goes down to 218 recheck it goes back to 19 if i checked another one up to 20 so you will have a running tab here of what your points are so you can see where you're at in the process there are also help guides throughout the form i showed it to you for so you can click on that pop up will come out it will dump you to that specific question questions help information but this is the full help so you can scroll up and down inside there and see information about any other questions on the form so we're going to quickly go through each of the sections of the form here so you can talk about some of the different things that are that you're being asked now the first thing here is a green check it's already automatically checked for you can't undo that that's because we clicked on those 12 minimum minimum qualifications to even get into the form and then you need to have your community needs response plan this is your plan about how you're looking at your community and we're going to talk about that after we go through this form this needs to be submitted to me it used to say on this form it needed to be approved that was confusing and wrong what i usually but i do when you are applying for accreditation is i take what you've submitted here in your form and i take what you've written in your plan and i look at them together to make sure that anything you've mentioned in your plan you've checked off that corresponding question if there is something in here that relates to it and if you checked off something in your plan you've mentioned or in your form you've mentioned in your plan making sure everything matches up and you're getting the right points that you should be getting so i need both of those just to me i don't approve either the plan or your accreditation until i've finished looking at them both together after i've done that i may reach out to you with questions while i'm doing it if i need to know more information if something's confusing if i'm not finding something you said you did on your website or something i'll reach out to you but then when they're both all evaluated then you'll get your approval of both of them if you uncheck this box you will get an error you do have to have submitted the plan to me in order to to get through your application here so and you'll see it just has a little thing there that says uh you must have a written plan you have to check it before proceeding if you don't have a plan go to our library and please for more information or talk to me about it so that box has to be checked in order to submit your form here uh your review the plan annually plans are something that you should be using on a regular basis just to keep up with what you're doing so um you if you want to earn those points check that box tell you the last time tell me the last time you looked at it and then there's a list of policies there's lots of different policies that libraries can have we list some examples of some things that we know you might have check all the ones you do if we also you have three extra ones here if there's something you have a policy for that we just didn't come up with as an example type it in there and you get points for that as well um you do not have to have a separate written policy for like each one of these things is a separate document if they're all part of one big policy about something that's fine um if they're in some other documents that's something else that you have that's fine just as long as you have something that if any of these things you need to deal with like patron behavior somebody want to put exhibits up what's customer complaints that come to the library any of these kind of things how people can use your meeting rooms as long as you have something written down somewhere some written procedures and policies of how you do this that you can check off the boxes there a separate kind of plan is a technology plan this would be about what is the technology you have in your library and how are you going to keep it up to date uh basically you know we have this many computers these are our routers this is our system um these are our servers and our network and we know in three years we're going to update the computers and then another four years we're going to get new routers you've got this all planned out for you um we do have uh help about that if you want to see about doing one of those um about how to write tech plans what kind of things could be included in them um this used to be a requirement for e-rate if you do e-rate that's why it's on our e-rate page it's no longer a requirement but we still have all the information up there to help you write one so these are really good plans to have just to keep track of what we're what we have in the library and inventory of that how old it is and when it might need to be updated so that you can just keep things you know current and useful the next two questions here having a friends group or foundation these come from your survey questions as it says here it tells you based on the information submitted for the supplemental survey there is the basic public library survey that we have you do and then there's an additional supplemental survey with extra questions that we in Nebraska we wanted to know that are on the main survey and that's where these questions come through so you can see norfolk they don't have a friends group but they do a foundation and these are just automatically filled in and because we pre-filled from the survey and they can't uncheck these or change them or anything now for any of these things that do come from your survey whether it's the main one the supplemental if something has changed since you submitted the survey between when you submitted the survey and when you're doing this form we can behind the scenes change that for this application form I have had that happen many times that you know the survey was submitted last December but now in July of the next year we've actually we've created a friends group now we actually do have one we didn't have one last December but now one's been set up let us know Sam and our IT people we can go behind the scenes and we can change that to make it a green check for you so you can get those points we do know that situations do change between submitting survey and submitting your accreditation application form when you submit the edit this form I want it to be correct and accurate to what's happening when you're submitting this form not when you did that survey six months ago or whatever so if anything is different just let us know and we'll update that for you second part of this is your resources your income and this is where we get into the peer comparisons so this is comparing your library's income to the set communities the same size as yours so as long as you meet either the average of all those communities or the median you earn the credit for that you don't have to have both both the average and the median you may meet one or the other and you'll get the green checks you can see here you've got your local income what hours are you open the schedule of hours reflecting an attempt to meet the needs of the community and then asking you letting us know when was the last time you asked your community when they think the library should be open now this does not mean checking this box does not mean you actually changed the hours based on when they wanted you open they may have some out of that are those crazy ideas but when they want the library open and you might not be able to meet them and that's okay as long as you've asked them what do you guys think about when the library should be open then you can earn these points for this and then of course meeting all federal state and local codes for your basic safety and access to the building now your staff expenditures on your staff so this would be salary and benefits how do you compare to your peers and then here's where we have the information about your library director and then any library staff that may be certified gone to that certification program that we have your director and you can see here this is how the minimum certification level is based on the local service area population of your library so you'd have to see whichever you can see here for Norfolk they're required is five and they are five they're 10,000 or more they want a bigger of course so as long as the director is certified that automatically fills in because we have that information from your public library survey any additional staff they're certified you can also earn more points for so here you can see they have certified staff and extra six of them that are also have gone through our program beyond the library director and then you can earn extra points for any of those how many FTE you have compared to your peers and then does your library have resources funding specifically for continuing education this long paragraph here means is there a line item somewhere in your budget is there specific money in your budget that you use to pay for attending state conferences pay travel to traveling to workshops pay for certification programs or registration fee for something does the library have a funding specifically designated for that and you can see this also just comes right from that survey now on to the technology that you have in the library do you have an uncreated library system is it available online how's your broadband internet is it adequate to meet the growing user needs that's up to you to decide do you have a phone with an answering machine or voicemail technology accommodations for persons with disabilities this would be specifically things like special software screen reader software that will help people with disabilities know what's on the screen special computers that special keyboards or equipment for people with disabilities and an adequate number of computers is determined by either if you've mentioned this in your community needs response plan or your technology plan technology plan is where you would keep you know have a plan for this is the size of our community this is how many computers we should have do we have enough you can see here Norfolk doesn't think they have an adequate number and that's actually pretty common there's so many people wanting to use our computers they're always waiting in line there's always a line for it so we do not have an adequate number because there's just too many people always waiting so they honestly did not check that box so then we have questions about your library's collection does it reflect your mission goals of the library how do you do on weeding the collection do you use your staff use online websites so this would be things like going to google and looking up things on there going to the american cancer society website to find from data and research resources so your library staff being able to help your library users do this and then we've got some questions here all pure comparisons to other libraries about how your expenditures on your materials are any circulation of them turnover rate in the circulation collection collection and collection size so all of these just pulled from your survey and compared to your peers okay we have a question that just came up here i just see that there is the end of life for windows 7 going to be an issue we couldn't upgrade this year due to a budget cut money is going to be an issue for this next year too um we don't have any requirements on what level you need to have your equipment on what what like you need to have windows 7 or whatever um beyond i think if you just try and keep up with what you can that's that's fine you know everybody's going to be able to do it at a different rate we've we've had many libraries in the past who have been beyond what we have here here at the state sometimes we haven't had the most up to date like i can say also it's sometimes money issues uh staff and time issues for all the computers we have here so um we don't have any there's nothing in any of our information about technology or even about technology plan that tells you you must be at whatever level the plan is just at least have a plan to know what you're going to do and that you do and just so we know you're being aware are aware of the fact that you need to keep things up to date as well as you can um everything we do should work we try to we do know that we have lots of libraries that are not able to you know upgrade as quickly um and we do try to keep anything we do that's online related um at a level that anyone who we might be working with will still be able to access so that shouldn't be a problem uh i hope that helps answer your question do the best you can that's all you can do awesome all right yeah okay so the services that we offer that you offer at your library so this is the actual programming things that you're doing do you do outreach programs going on to the community so uh delivering books to people homebound people doing a story time in the local daycare something outside the library's building building um doing at your library loan do you do that yourself or do you use the library commission we do provide it i ll services through here where if you are not able to find out and um borrow those books yourselves you just come through us we have information on our website about that and we can borrow books for you from any library in the country um attendance at your programs how does that compare to your peers um here we go library programs um that are have been entered in your community needs response plan when you do your plan and we'll see that when we get into that in a second here um and a little bit here you're going to come up with certain programs and ideas and things you might want to do so are you actually doing some of those programs you can list those here and then uh another summer questions here that come from your survey answers are you using the life databases that we have through the library commission and you can see here we have some help guides to tell you what we're talking about here uh Nebraska access that's the databases that we offer for free um the legislature gives us funding to provide this to all library citizens in the state so are you using that through um to provide resources to your patrons and then do you have things that you subscribe to that are in addition to what we do so other databases other persistence that you have you can see here in our forecast a pretty long list of all the different things they do so um and this is all just pulled from your survey as you've already answered this questions uh so is there anything else that you pay for in addition to the ones you get for free through us and then do you have wifi in your library uh next question here is about uh collaboration and cooperating with other groups does the library director or any library staff um our member of the board attend at least two village city council township board meetings basically your municipality are you having a face on there at those meetings that doesn't necessarily mean you're on the agenda and you're speaking but you're at least attending and keeping up with what they're doing um at least do it twice a year uh and it can be either you if either your library director can do that or board members can fill in for that um staff participating in community organizations and groups um that says so keep the library involved in other organizations out there and you can see here we have um this would be things like Rotary Club Kiwanis those kind of things um other groups so so anything that you can you can join with and partner with on programs give a team board this is something many libraries are doing uh we know that uh and when uh children are young they're big library users their parents bring them in when uh people become adults they use the library as well pretty well pretty much um you can have millennials but teens kind of lose sometimes some of us lose the teens so many libraries are having a team advisory board to help them bring in more teens or to run the programs um and keep the youth coming into the library do you cooperate with other entities for shared services and you can see here we're talking about things like uh other departments of the um of yours town like parks and rec so do you work with the parks and rec department to do a story time in a local park or something something that is a group thing that you're both you're actually providing a service and you're both promoting it together uh advocacy efforts are you um board members and staff participating in any sort of advocacy now this would be attending of course the Nebraska library association does advocacy day here in the spring um at the capital uh if you pretend those but there's also things that ala does online workshops and sessions and things so anybody who participates in anything that has to do with advocacy uh you can earn points for each of those people that you list there um and then are you participating in any of our research sharing things like our overdrive Nebraska car the pioneer consortium are you a part of any of that and the last question of your application from here is about communications how are you sharing the information and the resources and what your library offers to your community um on your library's website do you post your mission statement and those policies now this section here um many of these questions you probably realize i can't um really check to see if you're doing necessarily all of these things but at this point here for some things that i can check i will so if you say you post your mission statement and policies on your website i will go and find your library's website and look for it online and see if they're there um if you do any of these social media things i will go look and see what you're doing there um oh question we have here that just came in though point specifically for maker spaces um as far as a service that you offer um if it's something you mentioned in your plan you could get points for that um we don't have any specific question about maker spaces yet it's not a thing that everybody is is doing um but it is um you know oh sometimes it's technology related so which question were you wondering about where do you think that might fit into i guess is what i would want to know about points specifically for maker spaces that part of your collection technology that's not something of a specific question about now no but if it is something that you think oh on services well you're doing that if you're in those kind of group collaboration things yes if you're doing a maker space it's a collaboration with someone else definitely so if you're going outreach and taking i know some libraries yes are taking their button maker or the things that are more portable out into the community um definitely that would count um whatever the program is or service that you're offering if you have either you bring it out or if for example if you mentioned something in your plan like you said we want to have a program where we bring bring the kids in to show them and have a program for using the um 3d printer or something you know that would totally count yes i think that might be why we're so vague with our definition you just say programs and services whatever it is that you've come up with whether it's related to the traditional delivering of books doing a story time doing a craft time maker space would count as well yep so on to communication back to communication so as i said this is something that i will um look for so the next section session question here is about using all your social media do you um post things to a blog or your website facebook twitter instagram snapchat whatever the news the next thing that someone's going to come up with that you use and you interact with your public out there uh you know just say at least monthly i know for some people that may be a little rough what i usually do is i look for the most recent year and see if at least you're publishing something every other month or so a couple of times a year depending on you what's going on in your library uh i just make sure you're using these things so when you list here what you have i will go and look for those and make sure you are actually posting on there um but then you still need to um promote things not on the internet there are people that don't use social media that don't use facebook that don't want to and there's these are still tons of people you can get in touch with about what you're doing with the good old fashioned newsletters newspapers posting flyers radio ads or you know having a spot on the radio um some people put things into their you know utility bills anything that gets out to everybody so any of the non internet related things you're doing any of this you get points for that you can check that box do you have exhibits and displays in your library either display of here's the books for summer reading program or here's someone who has a teacup collection and we're going to display it for the next month uh that would count for that um letting the public use a bulletin board to promote their things so having something for public use this is this would not be just doing your um paper promotion is to be letting the public use it and then reporting um to the village board city council whoever um is your local municipality i just say here usually monthly this will depend on whenever your schedule to report to them as long as you do do it um post those reports on your website and then actually communicate then the last thing here is communicating with other organizations it's kind of very common for library to report back to their village or city or town but other organizations civic organizations if there's a business or an economic group a business leader group in your chamber of commerce or something in your community do you go there to communicate with them either communicate just emailing them or keeping in touch with them to promote things do you attend their meetings if they have open board meetings and whatnot so keeping up with what not the usual groups that you would submit to and then it will fill in the library director's name based off of your survey you see your points have been held up on the side there's a box at the bottom at this point you can submit or save your um application if at any time during the application you do not have to do this whole huge thing all in one sitting if you only know some of the answers or you only get partway through it that's fine you just save um you can save this and you can come back to it when you log in again later it'll have saved all the answers you've already put in there and let you continue and pick up where you left off when you're totally done you think you've answered all the questions then you submit um you can still get it back into it after you've submitted it's not like it's locked or it's in stone um but generally the idea is once you hit that submit I get a special notification letting me know that you've submitted and I know you're done with the application I'll then go look and see did you get these um your plan to me yet so I can start comparing them and working on all my evaluation does not have to be at the same time that's okay um however you can get each one to me as I said a lot of things that you might check off on here and mention your plan are going to relate to each other so you should be working on both of these together so that you have everything mentioned in your plan the document they submit to me is also checked off correctly on here and as there is also you can't even submit this until you check this box that says you have submitted your plan to me I am um I do awful on that as long as you're working on it you just want to get this done that that's okay to check that box uh however if you never get your plan to me you're not going to get accredited and so the whole checking of this box would be moot um but it is okay if you're still in the process but you think you're done with this if you want to do that I recommend like I said try and do them both at the same time together and submit them both at the same time so that you just have everything matching and correct and up to date so that's your application form any other questions about the form itself let me get back to my accreditation page here as people have been asking questions throughout that's great just type in a question whenever you think of something whenever you want to ask me about something I'm here so your accreditation you did your survey you've met your requirements gone through that form and looked at all the questions that need to be done and then the other last thing you need to do is work on that community needs response plan now we have a whole separate page about the community's response plan that we will go and look at and this is where you can start the packet of information that I sent to you and posted onto the session page you can follow along some of these pages in here it will be what I'm talking about everything that's in that packet is also on this planning almost everything it's on the planning page here so there was that article that I talked to you about that I emailed to you last minute about Hartford Public Library they had a issue going on in their community this is Hartford Connecticut where there was a difficulty between the police and the teens and some of the people in town so the library hosted a meeting for these groups to talk had nothing to do with library programming had nothing to do with services they were offering at the library they just were the neutral ground a place where these two groups could meet and connect and it really did a great thing people felt comfortable there in our in-person workshops for this people usually I have people read this and then tell me you know what you think about it I'm not going to make us sit here for five minutes in quiet while we're doing this but the kind of things this is the kind of thing that we're thinking of the kind of mindset we want you to try and be in when you're thinking about when you're doing your community needs response plan what is something happening in your community that the library can help with you're not going to solve everything you know the library isn't solving the problems between the police force and the teens and the people in town but they were able to be the place where they could facilitate the discussion like I said the neutral ground sometimes if the mayor's office or the village board is going to host a meeting people may not necessarily be as open to that and feel as comfortable because they may think they have certain ulterior motives or something people seem to think the library is a nice is a good safe place where they can talk about whatever and this worked out great for them in Hartford so read that article when you get a chance if you haven't already and it will give you the kind of vibe the kind of ideas what we're talking about with community needs response planning this is not generally the kind of thing you are taught or learn when you go to library school or even take our basic skills classes we're talking in those courses it's a lot of really concrete day-to-day here's what you do in your job but this non-traditional thinking something that the community needs and this is what we're trying to get you to think about with your accreditation process and this community needs response plan when it was previously called the strategic plan that was the idea then too was you're thinking strategically about what's going on in your community and what can you do to to get involved in that or to work with that as I said that that word kind of confused people a bit but that is what you were thinking what we wanted you to do is look outside your library walls find something that you can that you can help with like I said you're not going to solve everything and that is perfectly fine don't don't don't try and there's going to be many many things going on in your community the library can do nothing about and that's fine too you're going to look at everything going on and then pick the ones that you think might be something that you can morph with now there are seven basic elements that need to be in your community needs response plan as long as you have all of these in some way shape or form in there you will be it'll be approved by me we have specific worksheets and help guides that can help you get all these parts in there now if you are being you are up for re-accreditation which means you've done this before you will have a previous plan that you can work from and they said earlier you did not have to rewrite something from scratch again so if you are becoming are you doing re-accreditation this year or next take your previous plan and just change the things that need to be changed you don't have to start all over again there'll be certain things in here that are going to be the same like your library's mission statement most likely unless something major has changed and how you're providing services or what services you might be providing that will probably be the same thing your community profile this will definitely be different this is census data on the demographics of your community what makes your community unique what are the the different populations what's happening with housing what's happening with education near town that's definitely going to be something we update based on census data I'm going to show you how to get that and then an assessment of your community's needs looking at what's happening doing a survey doing a focus group did your community do a quality of life survey already for the community and this is something about what the community needs not the library this is where you got to start thinking and it's gets difficult for some people stop thinking about what the library is doing what the library can do with the library your library users need just look outside your walls and what's going on in the community and as I said not necessarily going to be things your library can even respond to you're going to get a whole list of things that are happening in town the roads are horrible the dog park needs maintenance the internet services is bad all these things the library that necessarily can have everything to do with but there will be some things that will pop up but you might make a connection and then you can do an analysis uh swats if you've heard of that before strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats this is something that is people have had struggled with in our uh our plans that we've asked them to do and this is because we've had we've made this different usually when you do this kind of analysis you're looking at your entire organization a business looks at their strengths and weaknesses and then the opportunities and threats to their business or to the organization what we've done for our purposes is we split it up into what are the library's strengths and weaknesses and then outside of the library what are the opportunities and threats in the community so when you're looking and reporting and putting in your plan about opportunities and threats the word library should never be mentioned in there this is just about what's happening elsewhere the first two parts you'll talk all about the libraries good things and bad things and then you look at the good things and bad things in the community and then with all this information that you have you've done a profile found your census data and demographics you've asked what the community needs are you've I've not analyzed your strengths weaknesses and then your community's opportunities and threats then you analyze all of this to come up with some specific and goals things that you can actually do a new program to get instituted a meeting you're going to host whatever whatever and you're going to be looking at all this information to come up with those things now this is not this is one reason why I changed the name from strategic plan to just community needs response planning this is not going to be every single goal everything single thing your library is going to do over the next three years it's going to be we've looked at a bunch of things in our community we've come up with three different things we want to do and that's it that's all I need is three different goals projects things that you might do that have come out of this research that you did about your community and about what your library has been doing so this is just like a small subset just getting I think part of the reasoning behind this was some of our libraries have become very closed off and blinders on and we do our library things and that's all we're doing and that's good but we want to look outside that help your community be part of it be out there in their face make sure they know that you're the library and you're doing these great things for all of them so they can be very supportive of you this is all advocacy for the library too so you only need to come up with three things that you might do based on all this information you've gathered and then a plan for evaluating this this is going to be this is going to be a document that you'll use regularly it is not something that you should write now and then come back to it in three years to look at it again when you're up for re-accreditation because these goals and projects are going to come up with it's going to be something you're going to do between now and the next time you're up so you're going to definitely want to look at it regularly so to help you out with this we have a 12 step program uh with this the basic steps you can take and we're going to go through this specifically but this is just a document this is um if you have a better way of writing this document up and getting those seven basic criteria into it that's fine this is just a way a process to do it a way to get there not the only way you can get all this information so what I'm just showing you here today is here's some guides we put together some worksheets some extra resources to help you get all this information and then put it into a document and then meets all those criteria that we say we think you should have in your plan in the end so um breaking up into small bits uh doing one step at a time so you're not so overwhelmed we're hoping will be very helpful to you now we do also have some examples of some library's plans here some from previous years um there are a couple of new ones that i actually mentioned at the end of the agenda for today uh lead windside public library and panka karni library those are two brand new ones that i just put out from last year um so these are all good examples of community response plans if you look at them you'll see some of them are very different some have here put a picture of the library um their mission statement and then they just go jump right on into it community profile some of them have a table of contents let's see panka just everyone has a table of contents i think yeah gothenberg has a whole table of contents for it there's lots of different formats you can use to put together the plan there's no right or wrong format it's all about the content that is in there as long as i can find those seven things and find them somewhere in your document you'll be good to go now to get started with this plan um you've got these worksheets here and how do you two guys extra things to help you out as i said these are just some things that you can use to help you work through the process uh your planning team you're gonna want to plan and have a team of people together uh and i'm not gonna go through every single one of these documents because um they're all things you can look at but i'm gonna highlight the ones that i think are most useful and what you should definitely be be looking at as a library director if you're a library director here you do not want to go into this um alone you do not have to write this all by yourself have people help you uh library staff and board members definitely doesn't have to be everybody definitely don't have to be everybody but a few of them that you know would want to be involved in this and then actually look outside the library communities people in your community uh one of your your library super users someone who comes in use the library regularly who's they they know what's going on in the library someone who's a member of the church or the superintendent of school or someone who you know might have some sort of uh you know investment in you what's going on in the library maybe even someone who's not a library user you know people in town you talk to people you know almost everybody and you know who's coming in and who's not talk to someone who is big in the community or someone who you know and say hey will you come help us figure out how to get the library and get you in the library what would help you come to use us so get creative with that but don't go in alone we had one library who did do that that i know of and it was very stressful and and a struggle for their staff um this library director did it all on their own they then moved on to a different library they they moved as happens and their uh staff came to one of my trainings last year the year before and had no idea where to start the director did it all on their own they didn't even have a copy of their plan they didn't know how the director had come up with all this information and they were basically just left left hanging you know with no idea what to go where to do don't do that have other people involved so that if you do go on to another library or another you know something else and that's fine that happens people will be still there and know what happened so you don't want uh how many people involved will depend on how many people you have on your staff and your board and what's available uh you want to have some communication at least some you know back and forth um discussions about things so five people minimum is a good amount this says up to 12 i find 12 crazy for myself uh but if you're a really large organization that might work for you potentially um so you're gonna have to you know have these you're gonna have people they're gonna have different opinions and ideas and then you will have to negotiate with them about you know agreements and and compromises and whatnot so once you have so you got your team together and then you're going to have all these other things you're going to need to do getting a community profile your demographic data doing some surveys and things doing the SWOT analysis this and developing the goals this is the kind of thing that you can then um divvy up among those team members too not everybody has to do all of these things the next things that come up to put together your plan assign different people a couple of people the different parts of it so the first thing we're going to talk about is the profile this is your library demographics we have a worksheet here that you can fill out do and it's just this is basic information um of what the kind of things that the us census data um the us census collects so you do not have to fill in every single one of these numbers this is just all the things you could um look up to get an idea of what's going on demographically um and the trends in your community uh lots of times in communities you do have people who say oh there's tons of little kids around everybody's having babies or the population is aging there's only old people and we need another senior center or there's all these immigrants from a certain group come in or all the immigrants from left and they're not here anymore uh and that's great that people have their anecdotal ideas and and think what they think but census data is where you can verify if this is actually true so you definitely want to get the numbers get the statistics and data to make sure that what people claim is what's actually happening um and once you do have this information this will help you with those goals and programs you might like to institute you may find out that yes there are tons of babies there are 30 percent of our population is under the age of five we need some more toddler time or more story times or more kids programming now we also have that in statewide figures we update this with the state as a whole so if you want to compare your community to the state we'll pull together the state numbers for you um this will probably be updated soon uh sam is working on statistics on the survey and we'll probably have more recent data on here but if you use the one that's there now and compare that's fine you don't have to wait till we put the newest one out at whatever time whatever's up here at the time you go and look at our website it's fine to use but it's all the same numbers just for the state as a whole now where do you get this information the u.s census data has online the um american fact finder um let's see here we have okay that's there we go um where they have all the data they've collected in the census now this is a section of your plan that if you're working from your previous one you definitely need to update these numbers i do not want to see three-year-old data that you're working with now we all know the u.s census the full census is only done every 10 years but in between censuses they do do american community surveys and population estimates so they do collect data in between full censuses so you do have numbers and information here that is more up to date than the 2010 census especially right now you don't want to use we're going to be having a new census next year trying to base anything you do on 10-year-old data is not a good idea you're not just not going to have anything it's really going to be useful because it's not going to be accurate um and for what you're doing for your community your plan that you're going to submit to me i do not want to see the same numbers that you submitted three or four years ago you you're going to have you go here and find the more up to date information it's all broken down over here on the left side age education housing income poverty level race all the information you need is broken down if you go to a certain section you see they've got the sense 10 2010 census but then right here is the more up to date 2017 at the moment american community survey information now you can search for your your town here um so who do we have um um okay i know i'm only i'm doing this because i saw that you were asking questions so you can look up your community now you can see here when you start typing and i'm not sure really what the reasoning is behind this sometimes it will automatically come up with your nebraska but sometimes you may have to add in nebraska to get your our town here so um sydney we're going to look up sydney's specific numbers and you'll see once i search for that now um oh i'm on the race area here we go back to population the main one there we go so it starts off here with the 2010 data but if you just click down here instead you will come up with the more up to date from the american community survey information that you can look at all right we have a question so does this no i'm sorry i won't the ender with the chairman the director of sydney public library this is why i picked his i saw his name come up in questions wants me to fill those in for you i'm sorry i can't do it so i vote you have another question does this information need to be reflected area represented by our funding source for example we're funded by tax dollars from our township good question um it's going to depend on what you want to do what data you want to collect and that's actually something i was going to show here you can see you can search by state county city town or zip code and depending on what you put in here you're going to get different numbers so since i've got sydney's up here um sure what is the zip code for sydney off the top of your head can you give that to me and i'll show you how it different um what the difference is here all right six nine one six two so there when you go by zip code you'll see that comes up different for their population and all the other democrats will be different as well so there's going to be you can look for what is your city limits what the census data has for there then if you want to look at your zip code that border is going to be different and then thank you sherm if you even look at your county um let's see there we go shayan county nebraska will give you different numbers so you're gonna want to use this data and search it based on well who you want to talk about in your plan who you want to try and serve as your community so um if you're only saying we only just serve the people in our town look up your town and be done with it if you know people come in from the county as a whole even if you're not the official county library you may want to look at the county data if there's other towns that you know use your library for example we're so-and-so town but this town and this town the east west of us do not have a library so they come to us you may want to look at their data look of their towns so you're going to have to know ahead of time you know either who you already serve or who you might want to serve and look up that data now what you report to me is up to you and how much you dig into these numbers is up to you as well it depends on what you want to do with this information like i said this community needs response plan is supposed to be something you actually use gathering all this information is not supposed to be just a chore and a fill in the blank because i have to type thing i want you to be able to learn from it and use it and do something instructive with it afterwards so think about what you want to do with this information to then decide what you're going to look up maybe just look up all the different things all the different options state counties zip code other towns around you that you know you use and see if anything any sort of trends come up see if you notice anything that you might want to you know respond to that actually that town down the road from us has tons of little kids and doesn't have a library and needs help let's focus on so and so town that's going to be our new our goal that we come up with we're going to institute a traveling library of books that every month will bring to that um daycare center in that town because they need help you know you never know what might pop up from this what you report to me i'm just some general statistics about your your own community of course to start with but if you've decided that something else county info some other towns info is important to you report on that as well um let's see we do have another question here let's see what we have will there be time to address how to reach non-library users and how to conduct successful meaningful surveys in focus i will be talking about conducting surveys and focus groups yes that will be coming up next okay so this is where you get all your data for your community survey now you may have noticed if you read it when i first logged into the america fact finder here that there's a little notification up here the us census has decided that as of july july 1st being when our accreditation application form goes live and when our process starts um they're going to be changing where all this data is on their website uh i wish they'd consulted with me because through july 1st this is where you will go starting july 1st this it will be this data dot census dot gov site um it doesn't have a cool nickname like american fact finder it's just census data but that's okay um it shouldn't be all the same numbers just in maybe a slightly different format um you see it's kind of fancy flashier a little more bells and missiles i got maps and visual visualizations and bar graphs and things so trying to make it more useful to people we can do the same sign of searching we did here and there actually i just typing in sydney uh this one did pop up automatically with sydney city nebraska and once it loads it does take a little bit longer i've noticed for this to load um they got a lot more they have seemed to have a lot more graphics and things on the page um or maybe because it's just new i don't know um but they've got some of the same information you can go to different tables demographic and housing information and you can see here this tells you you can go the different years so they've got the maps let's see let's do the maps so there's lots of different things that you can um look at here uh ideally it's going to have the same numbers just in different places is what it's supposed to be i try and get back to the main page again and there we go um i want to see six there so you can see here you can do the zip code search and it's going to actually bring it up so depending on when you go to gather your census data you'll either have the american fact finder or you have this new census data that doesn't matter to me which one you use um if you do it before july 1st and grab the information from here that's fine if you're doing this after july 1st and it's the new site that's fine um i believe it does also say somewhere that um yes when the new site goes live it will have the 2018 american community survey data so when you're newer um but that's okay as long as you've got either 17 or 18 whatever is newest on this page or newest in this page depending on when you do it is perfectly fine with me so i'm open to whichever it just has to be different than what you had in your plan when you last submitted it because definitely your numbers will have changed some might not and that's okay i normally population does change either up or down something over three years not drastically maybe maybe not drastically enough to change your community's needs or goals or things but definitely this is a section you have to have updated in your plan to me and get back to page all right so that's your community profile gathering your um census data now community needs this is looking at um this is going on to your community and doing surveys and focus groups and trying to gather information now if your community's already done something like this we've had many people tell me that well you know three years ago our city did a survey did a quality of life survey that's fine use that data that's already been collected um don't reinvent the wheel don't duplicate effort if something has been done for me by the community as a whole in the last five years that is acceptable i don't want you to have to go crazy doing something that's already been done it's already out there um but if you do want to focus on some more specific things you can do something in addition um to supplement that data or if nothing has been done then you do need to do some sort of surveying of it of what you've done so on this worksheet we have different kind of methods you can use and these are just a bunch of examples you do not have to do all of these um please don't do all of these unless you really want to um but just a lot some ideas so a focus group doing an open focus group where you just say to people announce there's going to be an open meeting the town hall type meeting at the library to talk about our community's needs uh good to bribe people with food they love to come for that kind of thing um they may also in all of these different ways surveys that you do um this is where you're talking about the community's needs what's happening out in the community what's happening in your town in your area not the library's needs this is another part that can be kind of difficult for some libraries and the people coming to your events coming to your focus groups or filling out your survey they see this coming from the library and they want to start talking about the library and that's fine but what you're trying to do is gather information beyond what the library's doing what's happening in the community so to kind of let them get it out of their system I recommend start with some library questions maybe what do you like what do you think it's going to library but then get start leading moving them towards questions about the community what do you think is going on in town what do you like about the community what don't you like about it and lead your may have may have to lead them into that direction so these focus groups they may be difficult to run to you might have someone who monopolizes the discussion a lot some people maybe are not as open with wanting to you know talk publicly about things that that's okay you may need to do a survey and this would be you can do an anonymous survey does not have to have people saying who they are anything a survey that you put on your website some people do stick them in the utility bills everybody gets a bill from the the water company or the phone company or something and being included in that put flyers around the town have other organizations or group push out the fact that you're doing a survey and now these survey questions and we've got actually some sample survey questions right here these are the kind of questions you're going to be wanting to ask in your focus group on your survey whenever you're talking to people and this is where you can see these questions don't have anything to do with the library and that's the idea look what's going on in the community that the library might be able to do something with so how satisfied are you living there what do you like most what do you like least I like this one would you recommend to your family or friends to come live here what's the most critical issue facing our community and you're always talking about the community not the library in all these questions that you asked them so this is just some suggested questions you may do more some of our example survey plans from some of our libraries do include their surveys if you got some more ideas for questions we can you know provide that to you as well so a survey might be something that would be of use for people that prefer to remain anonymous jumping back up here key informant interviews this is similar to doing a focus group but with specific people so rather than just doing an open call for anyone who wants to come and chat about what's going on a community this can work a little bit better than a survey or focus group because you pick and choose who you want to hear from people who have influence in your community the superintendent in the school parents who are virially involved in the community religious group leaders doesn't have to be open to everyone so you can directly talk to these people and say what do you need what does your group need from our community what does the school really need the town to do what does your church what would be great for you that the town can do be you know be careful of leading them away from the library questions but so that's another way that you can maybe get some really good information and then just your own observations you can just walk around you know what's going on in your town just sit down and think about what do I know that's going on what is everybody complaining about what's going on the goal is what's important the goal is to collect this information and find out what people are thinking about of what's going on in your community not the method so these are just a bunch of different ways that you can do that open call to bringing people who are not users or who are big users surveys that just go out to everybody in town so you may hopefully will get people who are not library users don't just sit your survey at your library and leave it bring it to other locations bring it to the grocery store local bar the beauty shop wherever people gather and then like I said try and get it mailed out maybe if there is a local newspaper and they will include either the survey or a link to your survey if you do an online survey just say here's the url for our survey please pop over there and click the boxes and answer the questions that we ask of you now in not on our website but in yeah we also have some key informant questions so if you are doing this is an example of that someone has done of this is like a pretend example of asking questions of certain people and the answers they give this can give you a kind of idea of the kind of questions you could ask of people when you're interviewing them some more questions and the kind of answers you might get back which are just you know some great just some ideas ways to you know helping you lead you in in you know the kind of things you might you know give you an idea of what kind of things you might add answer so you can maybe lead them to those questions in your packet of information which is also available on the session page there is a you'll see the next page will have a bar graph and a list here this is something that was done in 2015 Richard Miller my predecessor looked at all of the community needs response plans that we received and read through them and kind of categorize things and the most common things that libraries communities in Nebraska were talking about and there's a page where just this is the most popular to least mentioned so this is just also to give you an idea of what people might ask about or what things you might look at and look for in your community that might be going on that are problems business retention youth-centered non-sports related programming of housing housing is a big thing not enough too much not good enough not affordable enough sidewalk street improvements jobs the pool needs work we need a pool the dog park needs work we need a dog park so many different things this is just to give you an idea of what you might look at in your town if you can't get anyone to submit surveys you can't get anyone to answer your questions that at least can say well this is the kind of things going on in Nebraska and other communities maybe they're happening in ours as well let's see we have another question here okay all right no you're not confused okay the question here is i wonder when we can ask it when okay i wonder when we can ask about library hours for the accreditation question if our survey needs to be focused on community need it seems to me that there is need to ask some library specific questions at some point that is true absolutely and you can have this survey you're doing or these interviews you're doing be a combination of things sure some specific library questions if that's a great way to get them to answer them and then some general about the whole community questions and that's fine you could also do i mean this might be like separate surveys one about the library one about the community and promote them and do them and is different things that's an option it is a little more work like i said if they're your community your county your department can now film and they already have done some sort of quality of life survey you don't have to redo that part at all so actually ask around we've had many communities that have been saying to our system directors or in classes we didn't know that there was a survey done nobody even told the library that the county or the town or the chamber of commerce has done something and we found out not only have they done something but they asked questions about the library and the community was really supportive and positive about the library but nobody ever told the library was on this thing and nobody ever told the library what the answers were so ask around to see if something has been done that you just may be not heard of and you might already have that part done but i think also like you did say Deb having a mixture of questions would be perfectly okay on this if you need to get answered questions about the library that you want to know but you want but also make sure you have those community questions so you have that part coming in as well and that is perfectly okay so you don't have to worry about being confused about it mash them up together and you're fine now the next part of the worksheet we have here is the wonderful spot analysis strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats this is the one where i mentioned that some people get confused because let's try to close this other one we're talking we separate them out and we talk about internal environment and external internal being all about the library external being all about your community so we've separated this out we only want to hear about the strengths and weaknesses of your library and the opportunities and threats in your community in general like i said any when you mentioned these and your plan this this the community profile with the census data and the spot analysis two things that i most often send these plans back to libraries to rewrite and to fix the profile they've just you know only just have just done last the previous numbers that they have they didn't update them the SWAT they've started mentioning things that in the external environment opportunities and threats about the library so that's the two big stumbling blocks the two biggest stumbling blocks and writing these plans so specifically about the internal environment about the library you can see here we give you some examples of the kind of things to think about you're taking what you know about your library and then down here in the lower part about your community and trying to fit it into these boxes what's the strength what's a weakness what's an opportunity what's a threat and then these will help inform your goals that you're going to come up with this is the kind of thing you can just brainstorm in your library have your staff just brainstorm ideas and this is something that sometimes libraries are have a hard time with patting themselves on the back saying we did great we did good so strengths do that pat yourself in the back what are the cool things we do what's great about our staff and our volunteers what are the good things about our building the technology do we have the maker spaces what services that we're offering our governance is our library board great to us you know just think of all the good things that are going on and then the weaknesses this is also hard to be honest sometimes yourself our volunteers really not stepping up and doing what we need or what we asked them to what are the horrible things but our building which is probably the easiest weakness to say our conditioning is horrible the toilet's always back up whatever where you're lacking in technology or funding you're programming or you're not doing good in whatever be honest with yourself now this is something that your staff can brainstorm together if some of them want to also be anonymous with this that might be a good idea too to get some to be honest about things if you want to say we're gonna like a suggestion box just put in here what you think our strengths and weaknesses don't have to identify yourself that might be something that a good way to do it once you've got all that about your library then you need to look out into your community so this is where you don't mention the library at all some of the things you might think of that are opportunities and threats to your community you might connect to the library for example um technology the internet is um horrible in the town so everyone comes to that's and that's a well it could be an opportunity for library the um the the internet is terrible in town so everyone comes to the library for their wi-fi to use the internet there that's great but you don't want to mention that library part just say this threat is there's no good internet anywhere in town so that's what you've just got to think about what's going on now if there is something that says but the library can help fix that that's where you get into your goals and your um the strengths and weaknesses that's when you do the library part this part is just what's happening in the community so we also have some things here to lead you in the right direction um economy are there as employers that are coming to town or leaving town how is that affecting the community the social climate is there a new immigrant group in town is there one that's left how is the community relating to each other are there too many teenagers running wild in the streets and we need to create a program to keep them occupied you know whatever is going on so all of these things have to do with your town as a whole now some of those community needs that you came up with from your surveys or your focus groups that is what you can start popping into those boxes about your community these are the things that came up from our analysis from when we did those surveys and gather that information and now we know we can put them into these different spots in our boxes here and then once you have all that information that's when you come up with your goals and objectives what are you going to do now with all this info uh the worksheet we have here is just a basic uh listing the three like I said three is what we asked for if you can only do two because of whatever reasons that's okay definitely a minimum of two but three is a good number to come up with with some new ideas and these goals that you're going to do these things you're going to do we're talking about doing these over the next three years so not oh my gosh right now I have to do this thing to get my accreditation no this is a plan so you're planning for what you're going to do your goal could say in 2021 we are going to in 2020 we are going to do this this this and that's fine that's what we're talking about look to the future looking at what you're going to be doing the goals we have a little sheet here about how to write your smart goals smart as an acronym some of you may have seen this or heard of it or used it that is the kind of things that you need to have accomplished when you've written your goals it needs to be specific measurable attainable relevant and time framed so specific something you're specifically doing and this is going to be pretty easy you can see here answer the question what has to be done looking at all those needs that we came up with looking at what people are talking about what do we need to do um measurable um how are you going to decide if it worked if you did it what is the frequency going to be you know how often is it going to happen so your you know thing that you're um trying to do is the town we need um our local daycare centers don't have any books for the kids so we are going to initiate a lending program for the daycare once um and we will bring them books that they can then have for a month and then we'll go and pick them up and bring them back and bring them new books so um that's the the thing that needs to be done is getting books into the daycare um you're going to do it a certain you know amount of time you're going to see how they use the books it's attainable don't go crazy don't say we are going to um go to every single daycare in our town and the three towns around us and bring them all the books that you know you don't go overboard make sure you don't scare your staff away something you can actually do um irrelevant this is going to be if you're working off of all that information you've gathered that's going to make it relevant you looked at the community you've seen the demographics of the kind of people that are in your town you've seen them complain about different things you made it relevant by using that information and then timeframe when are you going to do this in 2020 we are going to initiate a lending program and then we will go there once a month and transfer out the books and who is going to do it um our children's librarian or our this volunteer or whoever is going to do it um there are uh some things you can use as you're looking at your these different parts questions to answer to decide if you're writing this usefully and the idea is these goals and objectives are something to be uh need to be useful to you something you can actually do something you want to do something that you can actually pull off basically um so you can look at all these different things here just as you're thinking about these goals do i meet have i met all these kind of criteria or some of these things that are on here now these goals that you're coming up with um i've had a questions asked of me about the goals people have been doing you know the previous plan they had some goals uh you may have completed some of those projects that's great onto new things you may have some of those still ongoing as an ongoing goal or we tried it it worked okay but we need to tweak the program because it didn't work out as well as we wanted to that can be your current your new goal in this new plan you can take a previous thing you've done and say it didn't work exactly right and we want to try again so this is still the same issue right now in our town it's only three years later this is still an issue we want to try again so here's how we're going to do to get you can fail at these goals failure is a great learning experience that's perfectly acceptable you can say we tried this thing it failed completely and we are going to completely revamp it and start over we're not going to continue and we get it's just we're going to try something totally new and that can be one of your goals so you can have some of your previous goals be your new goals and your new plan if you want to if you need to because of what you're going to do with it but try at least come up with at least one new thing something you didn't do before based on all that information that you gathered based on the census data you looked at the community needs you came up with from your surveys and your interviews and then when you took all this and did this whole SWAT analysis come up with at least one new one at least hopefully that you've that you've realized is something that you could work on now as you're going through doing all these needs and these surveys and all this you're going to come up with a long list of things like that list that was of all the things that were going on in the different libraries that we came up with before you're going to come up with a long list of things many of them things that you as a library cannot do anything about and that's okay in your plan just report here's the top 10 things that people are complaining about but as a library there's the only two that we can do anything to we can help do create a new lending program we can just like that article about harford we could host a meeting and be the place where they can all come and talk about something doesn't even necessarily need to be providing a library service as the end result but just being serving the community's needs and something they need this is where libraries today are thinking about outside the box are providing lending of things that you'd never thought of before are participating in things and providing things that are not completely untraditional and that's what we're we're looking for and hoping that you can discover in your communities is things that you never would have thought of before by going through this process and making it part of your regular library service lastly do your evaluation we've got a little question here questions here who will evaluate on your team what's the purpose when many of my plans say once a year at a particular board meeting the library board will real look over the these plan the community needs response plan and make sure we're on schedule for what we said we would do so you could say every august at the august board meeting they will look at it now throughout the year the library and library staff will be using the plan to do those particular little projects and developing them more but the evaluation will be the board or you library staff and director just checking in to make sure do we do it around schedule how's everything working are you ready for next year's goal and new project that we're going to do right and once you have all of those and have them written up into something you should be you have something that is acceptable and will be approved by me and useful for you i hope that is the ultimate you know result of this whole thing these goals is what you're really going for trying to find something new you can do in your community something you can do to help serve them and keep your face out there keep them thinking of the library is something that they can use all right so uh any other any questions about any of that any other questions you have about the different processes did anybody ask anything and i didn't explain as clearly as you wanted something you wanted a little bit more about please go ahead and type into your go to webinar question section and i will answer them i do recommend taking a look at the example plans we have here as i said is perfectly fine use some other libraries format to create yours use your previous plan if you are re-accrediting as a basis for your current for your new one make sure you change the particular things that have to be different your community profile demographic data needs to be different your community needs and SWAT may be different maybe the same it has only been three years some things don't change over that short period of time and that is okay that would be something you can actually say in your plan we've discovered that our community is still having a problem with this this this and this but there's this one new thing there may be some things have been resolved three years ago we needed a pool and now it's in place awesome now how do we work with that so no other questions that you need to ask me right now all right that will then wrap it up for our workshops this afternoon that's everything about the community's response planning this is all about getting your libraries accreditation so start right now working on that plan if you haven't already work on updating your previous one writing a new one if you have a draft that you want me to look at and while you're in process still that is perfectly fine send it to me I can evaluate you know give you some tips as you're in process your system directors your regional library system directors can also help with that Eric Jones the western library system Scott Schilders and Southeast Denise Harders and Central and Jan Jolliff out in western they can all help you as well with any of your plans that you're writing this can be an ongoing process between us until you get down to what you want to actually submit once you have your plan submitted and your accreditation form submitted then as I said I will start evaluate them and I will come back to you July first is when the form goes live so you can start working that October first is the deadline to submit both things submit both your plan and your certain your online form those two things I have to have by October first then after I have both of them I'll start looking at them by December 31st everyone will be informed about if you've been accredited and at what level between the time you submit and end of the year we may have back and forth if I have questions from you if you have updates to me there may be some back and forth before I get you your final answer but anytime after July first when that form goes live you can submit to me if you send me something July second and you're all good then that's cool I'll start looking at it then you might have your answer very early but ultimately October is a deadline now if you are unable to meet any of these deadlines let me know we can give you extensions as I said at the very beginning this is not a program dictated to us by ALA or anyone else or IMLS we run it here from the commission I'm in charge of the program and if I need if you need if you have extending circumstances we can give you an extension we've given a few months extension to some libraries we're very busy I've given a whole year extension to libraries if there's a brand new director and you're coming to this totally cold and have no idea what you're doing let me know don't panic this is not all the things you need to learn as a new director this is what something that can be put off for a year and you can try you can extend your accreditation one more year and have you do it next year we've had libraries who had some construction done when they were either expanding and building building a new library doing renovations and if that's happening during the summer accreditation period just let me know that you can't get this done to and I'll give you another year on your accreditation as well so we can do that as if you need to you just need to keep in touch with us about these kind of things if you're struggling just keep in touch with me and we'll make sure we try and get you through the process all right so any other last minute questions that you have about accreditation or community's response planning or surveying surveying I'm watching to see if a new type anything all right all right then that will wrap it up for our workshop today we are recording it and we'll be posted onto our website I'll say tomorrow as you can see here we have a recorded online session um from last year after this one um and this is a process that'll be updated for this year's um recording so you have the 2019 up-to-date information all right so call me email me you guys know where to find me here at the library commission and we'll get you all through the process all right thanks very much for everyone for attending bye bye and good luck