 Good morning, and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast live every Wednesday morning, starting at 10 a.m. central time. But if you're unable to join us on Wednesday mornings, that's fine. We do record the show every week, and it is posted to our website, and I'll show you at the end of today's show, where you can see all of our archives. Both the live show and the archives are free and open to anyone to watch. So please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think who may be interested in any of the topics we have on Encompass Live. We do a mixture of things here on the show, book reviews, interviews, mini training sessions, demos of services and products, basically anything that we think may be of interest to libraries. Our only criteria is libraries. So all types of library, school, academic, public, correctional, special museums. We're all across the board. We do also have a mixture of type of presenters on the show. Sometimes we have a Nebraska Library Commission staff that do presentations for us on things that are local and things that we're doing here in the state and from Nebraska. But you also bring in guest speakers as we have this morning. So Ramalyn, can you move on the line with us? You can share your camera again. Let's see if you've turned it off. There you go. All right. And your slides to the play from start to get them full screen, on the left there. There you go. So with us this morning is Ramalyn Tillman. Good morning, Ramalyn. And she is an author, but also has done some work with libraries on as our title of today's show is Big Time Library Support in Small Town. So highlighting efforts to support libraries in small towns now and in the past. And you did your research on libraries in Kansas, correct? Well, you might. So and I actually didn't really talk much about this. And she's got this book she wrote about it. We're going to talk about all this in Carnegie Libraries in Kansas. But are you originally from Kansas? Is that where you ended up doing your research there? Right. I grew up there. I went to a school that was named after a librarian, my own school, which I actually had totally forgotten until a few weeks ago or actually about a year ago when I asked my brother if I thought they would change the name from Lee Elementary to something else during the time when everybody was taking their statues down and he said, oh, Ramalyn, you're wrong. That wasn't we. Our school wasn't named after a general. It was named after a librarian. It's not that Lee. It's a different one. Okay. All right. So I think I just let you take it away, Ramalyn, and tell us about what you've been writing about in the research you've done. Okay. Well, thank you very much. I know this is very different from the kinds of things that you often do. I really, you know, I really fell, well, I shouldn't say I fell in love with libraries. I don't remember when I hadn't fallen in love with libraries. But this book was certainly a labor of love to libraries and cultural efforts in general along, around the Midwest. So. Yeah, actually go back to, that's okay. Just go ahead. Yeah, if you're just, you're gonna have to probably not save unless you made any change. Okay. Click on the start. And then you should be able to just click on the slides anywhere and it will bump to the next one. Okay. That's what you're trying to do. Yeah. Yeah. I was, where your arrow keys on your keyboard sometimes will do that right and left. Okay. I'm gonna put my picture up because it just seems really informal to sit there. This is my glamour shot, obviously. So I've always loved libraries. I can't remember when I haven't loved libraries. And I hope that comes through. I'm sure that comes through in the book. It was inspired by the 59 Carnegie libraries that were built in Kansas in the 1910s. And why I think it's especially relevant to the kinds of work you guys are doing today. And yes, I know Nebraska had even more Carnegie libraries than Kansas did. You had 69 libraries that were built for roughly $700,000 all total now has an investment. Nice. Yeah. And so I hope you all feel very much celebrated when you read my story. So as I said, I've always loved libraries. And this is my first library in Manhattan, Kansas, the one named after the librarian, Mary Cornelia Lee. I went there a very, very long time ago, but I do want to point out it wasn't so long ago that there was a Model T in front of the building. But I love this vintage postcard and it's actually the dedication page of my novel. To this day, I could go inside, walk up those front steps, turn to the right, turn to the right again, go to the bottom shelf and find the Nancy Drew Mysteries. My father insists that our first trip to this library occurred before I learned to walk. I don't think that's true, but I do know we went long before I learned to read. And the first book that we always check out over and over again, I think they didn't have restrictions on checkouts in those days, was the Pivish Penguin, which was about penguin determined to fly. He tries and tries to fly like the other birds and he finally climbs on an iceberg, spreads his wings and floats down. And as I was writing this novel, I thought, you know, that's not really a bad life lesson because a lot of tenacity and determination is involved. Anyway, fast forward until after I finished my book, and I actually had been very timid and not had any of my Midwestern friends read it. I'd had a lot of professional writers read it, but I had known there was enough personal in there that I wasn't ready to share it with someone I knew really, really well. But I'd made a new friend out here in Long Beach, California, named Connie Delgada. And she was from Sydney, Nebraska, and we had been exchanging stories. So I asked her if she would be one of my first beta reader from the Midwest, and she was. And then I, you know, I just wanted to know whether she got it or not. Well, as soon as she read it, she came up so excited. She loved it, and she got at her cell phone and she showed me this picture of the of the Carnegie Library. So and and so, in fact, she had devoured it. She had lots of fond memories and isn't it beautiful? And then it isn't a beautiful. So back to the genesis of the book, I love the color of that one, too. Isn't that just beautiful? I'm going to talk a little bit about the libraries later. I actually I've been I've been carrying notes around for about two decades when I actually started writing the book. I was 24 when I was 24 years old, straight out of grad school at the University of Kansas. I was hired to work with local arts councils in Kansas as the director of the Association of Community Arts Councils of Kansas. And although I'd grown up in Manhattan, the rural communities I was visiting in the state could have been on the moon as far as I was concerned, as far as my understanding of them and how they worked. And I think those of you who had experience in Lincoln and Omaha and then move to more rural communities, understand what I mean. But over and over again, I was meeting with groups of mostly women who were determined to bring cultural opportunities to their towns. And as a young woman trying to find my own place in the world, I was fascinated by the roles they created for themselves, their commitment and ability to make the world better. They were teaching art history and appreciation in the schools, hiring storytellers, forming community theaters, even building art centers. Anyway, I became fascinated by these towns and why some of them had a certain energy about them and some of them didn't. I wondered if there was something in the water that made some people some towns walk faster than those in the some people made people in one town walk faster than those in the next town over. And I kept running across these libraries. The Lawrence Arts Center had come from a Carnegie Library. Actually, it was it was just about the time the libraries were being turned into art centers. And since I was working with arts councils, I was intimately involved. I was living here in Lawrence before the transformation of this building from library. So I used it as a library and then was working with ACAC by the time it was being converted into an art center. Dodge City began to make plans and then Goodland. And I also had occasion to visit the again, this is a vintage shot of the Scottsville, Nebraska library, which had was becoming an art center. Carnegie libraries were being converted to other uses as well. Historic museums, counties and city offices. Some of the libraries had simply outgrown their space. It was a time before computers made interlibrary loans so easy and fast. And there simply wasn't enough room for books on the shelves. And many of them thought they couldn't make accommodations for the new ADA requirements for ramps and other accessibility issues. Now, interestingly, a lot of them stayed and a lot of the buildings that were converted, you know, have managed to get around those rules. But at the time it was it was very intimidating. Anyway, early on I saw similarities between the volunteer efforts between the two eras, the library eras and the art center eras. I saw how women from both times, and I say women, it was obviously many more volunteers than that, but they were mostly women. I saw how these women I knew found their own power and self-esteem in their volunteer efforts. I imagined how women of an earlier era would have found satisfaction and even joy in making their communities better. I mean, they were coming out to lands. Many of them were were coming out into the land for the first time and having quite a challenge in bringing cultural resources. I ran across a couple of reference books during that time. Alan Gardner has a fun and inspiring book about the Kansas libraries, which was available online until just a few years ago. And then George Bobinsky wrote a really wonderful definitive seminal book on Carnegie Libraries, which I wanted to show you the photo of my posted notes. As you can see, I relied on very, very heavily. Again, these were resources I carried around for decades. They've lived in garages of at least seven houses in five states before I decided to dust them off and try my hand at writing. When it came time to write, I didn't really know it would be fiction because the story I really wanted to tell was the story of advocacy and how a few people can make such an enormous difference in their communities. For a few days, I contemplated writing a memoir, but I realized my memory is too bad, let alone that nobody might be interested. My family at Thanksgiving, when we sit on the table and my brothers reminisce and talk about memories, I often joke that if I do write a memoir, it'll be titled Was I There? Because I just sometimes don't remember. I thought about and that's always been true. My best friend says, you know, the good thing about you, Ron Lin, is you don't need to worry about getting old because you've never had a good memory. I thought about writing nonfiction essays, but wasn't sure I was up to such serious research. And in the end, I decided to try fiction with the hopes more people would read it. And besides, hadn't I always loved playing with dolls, making up dialogue, wouldn't this be similar? So I have to say that I actually tried to contact Carl George Levinsky about using a paragraph or two from this book. And I had tried very hard to find him and didn't and finally realized that the American Library Association what held the copyrights that they vary kindly and generously and easily gave it to me. But just a few weeks ago out of the blue, I had a message from George Levinsky. Oh, wow. How much he'd loved the book. And it made me feel really good because it's something that had stuck in the back of my mind, wondering whether or not I would be doing him justice. And he brought me a very wonderful blurb for it. And he also told me told me about the process of taking 10 years to read the microfiche documents of all of the correspondence between the Carnegie Foundation and the individual libraries. So talk about labor of love. This is still available. Some of you may already have it, but and I think he said it's just gotten picked up in Japan after all years, but it's really quite wonderful. Anyway, it wasn't quite so easy to write novels. I thought it might be. But I persevered. I started with Angie, always knowing that she wouldn't be the one to tell the story. Angie comes from Philadelphia. She's pursuing her PhD in library sciences. And because it's a novel, she has to have lots of roadblocks along the way. And she's come back to New Hope, Kansas, fictional town, where her grandmother lived until her death. And she's come back to revisit the Carnegie Library there and to uncover its secrets. She has very, very fond memories, as I confess to have, of a few weeks she spent in New Hope, Kansas, where she went to the Carnegie Library every single day. Ultimately, in my story, her grandmother's journal is discovered, which gave me the way, the vehicle to tell the intimate details of the early history. Because I was interested in the transformation also of libraries into art centers, there had to be an artist who is Tracy. And then Gail is the third voice in my book. And she's a tornado survivor who must rebuild, rebuild not only her own home, but her entire hometown, including a library at an art center, because I wanted to show how this would be really relevant and really immediate even today. It was the last one to come to the party, partly because the Greensburg tornado happened after I started the book. And that's when I really saw a way in to that same kind of community situation that I wanted to tell. I always knew fiction or nonfiction that this story would be of different motivations for different women and to finding one's own worth and self-esteem in the process. I had discovered that myself and I saw it in the women around me. People advise beginner writers to write what they know. They should also tell us to research what we love because many minutes would be spent in exploration. Luckily, I loved my topic. In researching the book, I had great fun in sleuthing archives, reading the perfect penmanship of those recorded minutes at library meetings. And I hope you all are lucky enough to have some of those in your archives because they really are quite wonderful, not at all formal in many cases, or even when they are formal, filled with language that just can put you in those shoes immediately. At one point, I even got to show a librarian how to use a microfilm machine myself so I could read the old newspapers that seemed to be something that people don't know how to do anymore. As I pursued my discoveries, I was overwhelmingly impressed by the dedication, again, of mostly women volunteers who conducted bake sales, minstrel shows of all things and women's softball games to raise money for books. I got caught up in the politics of the women's suffrage movement since the library bond measure was often the first vote women cast. And do you want to know why? It was often because the town leaders expected them to vote for prohibition as well. So they made sure they got the vote. I studied the history of the dust bowl, orphan trains and epidemics. And many of you may know this. Many libraries were closed for extermination during the epidemics. And some of my research involved looking at the more recent events, including spending time in Greensburg and seeing firsthand their phenomenal efforts and understanding how contemporary the story of community building still is. So I spent time in. Kingman, again, a beautiful old structure. And then because my character came from. Philadelphia, I went online to find what I thought would be her home library in Philadelphia and came up with the Chestnut Hill Library. And I had it all pictured in my mind and just wanted to do a double check to see what it was like. And it's obviously very, very beautiful. But when I got there, it was really small. I had thought in Philadelphia would be a very large structure. And the good news is I walked inside and felt immediately at home because it really was not all that much bigger than that manhunt Carnegie Library or these other Carnegie Libraries had been visiting along the way. I wanted to talk a little bit. I mean, I just love the libraries themselves. And I I early on in my arts career, working with arts communities, a man once told me a friend of mine talked about how the most amazing structures on earth have a sense of occasion and a sense of intimacy simultaneously, simultaneously. And he talked about the cathedrals in Europe and he talked about the and the cathedrals in Europe and the performing arts halls that we were seeing being built. And and I find myself anytime I go into a building thinking, does this have a sense of occasion? Does this have a sense of intimacy? And I realized that the Carnegie Libraries do that in spades because they are so you do as you walk up the big steps, as you see the columns, they do really have that sense of occasion about them. And they also with the details. And I've got some more slides of the details of the buildings themselves. They really are there. They really are quite, quite lovely. And I realized just recently that the other thing they have in common is a place there are places where people go to be with other people and also to go inside their own heads at the same time, which is quite an interesting complexity. So someone recently asked me what ten things I learned during the writing of my book. And I realize that these things all are really good advocacy tools. So I'm going to share my ten things with you. The first is Andrew, Andrew Carnegie, funded over 1600 U.S. libraries in the early 20th century. Many of them in very small towns. And I think you can see that in Nebraska very evidently. Over half of those libraries are still open as libraries a century later. So there's quite a legacy there. And I think we're all the beneficiaries of it. Carnegie gave away over 90 percent of his wealth over three hundred and thirty three million dollars for the betterment of mankind. He was best known for the libraries. He also funded the simplified spelling board over 7000 church organs and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Now, Mary Benedict, who's a much more famous author than I am, has a new novel out called Carnegie's Made. And what she imagines, what she imagines, who motivated Carnegie to give to libraries? As the title suggests, she imagines the made. It's a wonderful companion piece to my book, I think. But I still like, I'm not going to say I like my book better, but I'm still more intrigued by the local volunteers than I am by his motivations. I think they were the true heroes, and which is one of the reasons that I are true heroes and heroines, which is one of the reasons that I wanted to to celebrate them. To receive funds, to receive his funds, a community had to donate land for the building and commit to operating funds for the next 10 years, and that those operating funds had to be and, oh, as I say, in some of those towns stretch their populations in order to receive more money. Nobody would do that now, right? He the the matching fund that 10 that 10 year commitment was for 10 percent of the building costs. So, in fact, it was a dollar for dollar match over a 10 year period. You probably already know this next fact, but I have to. I skipped a few facts. Let me go back. You probably know today there are over 17,000 public libraries in the country, more libraries than Starbucks, all of them providing free access to computers and Wi-Fi. And providing the coffee, too. Well, then it was a librarian who told me this and it was before the current controversy about Starbucks restrooms. But she pointed out that they always have very clean restrooms that are open to the public. And it has changed my life. Well, not really, because I have a tendency to stop in libraries whenever I travel anyway, but it's given me one more excuse and also way to allow my friends who are with me when I am posing on them and saying, don't you need to restrooms stop? There's a library here and we go in and take a look around. Better than most gas stations, definitely. Definitely better. Don't have to buy anything. And you're and you have that sense of occasion and some intimacy at the same time, too. I'm not sure this is still true. It was earlier, but over 175 libraries across the country have addresses on Main Street. Again, approving their importance to their communities. And that's certainly how they started. And for the Carnegie's, I can almost find it on Main Street or the street named after the town I'm in or the state I'm in or it could be on First Street or Elm or Maple. And this is another thing that I don't need to tell you. But I do want always point out libraries are full of people looking for jobs, checking the newspapers, doing genealogy research, reading to kids, grabbing the latest bestseller, maybe an audio book. I know I'm preaching to the choir, but the very first interview I did for the book was with a very young reporter who was doing her very first interview. And she said to me, oh, I guess people don't go to libraries very much anymore. And I had to retort and say, you haven't been one lately, have you? I got it completely backwards. Um, like, you know, she I suggested she stopped by one for herself because it was very evident she hadn't been in one. Yeah. Libraries are a writer's sacred place, for sure, providing knowledge, inspiration and community. They hold the roots of our democracy and the essence of our diversity. And then this is something else, you know, Andrew Carnegie said, a library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It's a never-failing spring in the desert. And this actually sits on the prologue page of my book. So even though you know some of these things, I wanted to use them because I point out that they're still very good as advocacy tools. And I I think that they're they're important to keep at hand. I'm still loving my libraries and getting to them whenever I can. Here's my favorite. And I have to tell you, my favorite is almost always the last library I visited. So I just happened to last visited this beautiful library in Canyon City, Colorado. Absolutely gorgeous. I love the stone there. Yeah, that beautiful. And again, that sense of occasion, they actually don't use this as the front door anymore, probably for handicapped access, but it's just glorious. And then inside the details were just so beautiful. I mean, these scrubbed floors and exquisite details of the old clock and the old undertaking and ambulance service thermometer. And then probably my favorite thing of all was the plaque to Andrew Carnegie, but even better, the plaque to the ladies. Because 30 years before the library was built in Canyon City, those ladies had been up and down the street with baby buggies collecting books to make a lending library. That doesn't say devotion. I don't know what what does. So my book tries to tell the story of those community volunteers who brought and continue to bring culture to the plains. I hope it's a tribute to them, to their dedication and hard work. I also hope it documents their advocacy efforts in both time periods. That's really the point I want to make today and why I think it's relevant to the work you do. These women, these mostly women volunteers were smart. They developed what I used to call a bag of tricks. When I was working with Arts Council volunteers and suggesting they put the advocacy arguments together, I tried to remind them that different kinds of people, different people are influenced by different kinds of information. Some people respond to carefully measured statistics, others to a heartfelt story or an anecdote, others to a profound quotation. Without really thinking about it, I worked all of those kinds of advocacy into my novel. I used the photo I showed you earlier of that Carnegie Library in Manhattan as my dedication page. I used the quote I just shared with you on the prologue page from Andrew Carnegie. I quoted George Babinski, who the who. So clearly captured in his book the dedication of the early pioneers who were determined to bring culture to the plains. I just wanted to read you a paragraph from him because I think it sets the scene so well. He's describing the different kinds of libraries. A millinery shop in Clay Center, Nebraska. A decrepit wooden shack in Dillon, Montana. The hospital in Dunkirk, New York. A printing shop at Grandview, Indiana. The balcony office of the drug store in Malta, Montana. A building house by building housing the horses of the fire department in Marysville, Ohio. A physician's reception room in Olafa, Kansas. An old abandoned church at Ottawa, Iowa. A room in the opera house of Sanborn, Iowa. Three small rooms over a meat market at Vienna, Illinois. All were typical of the ingenuity of the townspeople in their efforts to establish local libraries. So those all even predate the Carnegie libraries and show that pioneer spirit from which all of us are are descended. I also code an article I found in old newspaper from Dodge City, which I think is just so much fun. And this is what I mean about getting into your archives and seeing the original language. Again, this comes from Dodge City. It appeared in the newspaper. When the word was given out, they were going to have a library. Whether any help was given to them or not. The men realized the library was practically a subtle fact and they gracefully turned about and lent their assistance. Not that the men of Dodge City do not favor public libraries and everything in the educational line, but they believed other things should be looked after before a library proposition was taken up. The ladies had the matter taken up with Mr. Carnegie and happened to strike him on a full dull day when he had been able to give away only a few hundred libraries and he readily took advantage of the opportunity to make it one more by building one in Dodge City. So in my novel, the women take action to support both the library and the art center by making potholders first. I'm sure all of you have been involved in what I consider kind of low-key fundraisers. And then they are inspired to do high-end designer staff scarves that they can sell for ten times the price. They realize it wouldn't take any more to make a scarf than it does a potholder. They hold potlucks and ice cream socials before the Independence Day parade. They gather their forces to write letters to the editor and Facebook posts to advocate their cause and to fight off those voices who are concerned with conserving tax dollars who are more concerned with conserving tax dollars than providing cultural services to community. They persuade people one on one and encourage each other to keep going. Let me read you for a minute. Let me show you some other Carnegie libraries, I think. Just to reiterate my point. That's not the end of my slides, so I'm sorry about that. It is the end of my slides. OK, never mind. Do you have pictures somewhere else on your computer? No, I think that's OK. Well, I would say if you want to, you could go back to one of the previous pictures in the slideshow. And you can do, instead of from the start, you can go from the current slide all the way to the left. It says all the way to the left, right next to where it says play from start down a little, you can touch it there. OK, I thought I'd just read you a very short passage for my book, even though those other two actually come from my book, too. But it involves the advocacy for the art center. But I think you'll see the point. It's told in the voice of Tracy, who has moved from New York City to be an artist in residence. Tracy's had a really awful past. She was found in a trash barrel on Times Square when she was just hours old and adopted and not had a very fun life. But she's done an exceptional job in New Hope, Kansas, especially with the rather defiant teens, with whom she has a lot in common, as well as the older quilters. So she's talking about how they become advocates. The quilters have turned into an army and their mission to save the art center. All they can talk about is how to raise enough money to keep me here and keep it going. They got Brett to write an editorial in the Gazette. And it was pretty damn impressive. He wrote about how people wanted to live in a place that's vibrant and thriving about how the art center helped change New Hope from nowhere into somewhere. How even bring a Myeong built an art center before he built a church when he got to Salt Lake City. The historical references impressed Angie for sure, as if she weren't already crazy for the guy. He wrote out he wrote how hope is both a noun and a verb. And it's time we put some muscle behind the verb. He wrote about how he'd had he once had a hope. He wrote about how he'd once had a son and dreamed his son would find his own voice here. The women wrote their own letters to the editor, too. Jennifer wrote the arts are the soul of a community, whether it's a big city like Washington, D.C. or a small town like New Hope. Rachel bragged about me, how important I've become to both the guilters and the teens. What a difference I've made. Even Gail from Prairie Hill wrote it saying how jealous they are of our art center. The Gazette published them all. None of it is making much difference, though. The Wednesday night potlucks have dropped off. And today, tonight raised $20. Rachel didn't want me to see, to notice when she counted the money, but I can see there was just, there were just a few bills, most of them single dollars. Some families have stopped coming altogether, scared of the lubbers and their pals. The contributions are down, as is the quality of the food, to be honest. Lots of chicken, some of it left over more jello than ever. Rachel said not to take it personally, that people are feeling both hot and poor, but she had a crease in her forehead that usually isn't there, so I can tell how worried she is. When I turn on the computer, there are responses to the editorial on the art center's website. Really mean responses, anonymous and mean. If we wanted to live in a city of depravity, we would live in a city of depravity, citizen for a clean America rights. Junk is junk is junk, and junk is not art, writes Patriot. Frivolous at best says, let's get serious. Send the artist home, writes Watchdog, as if I have a home. The decent thing would be for me to quit, pack up my supplies, hitchhike out of town, in the controversy, and let the quilters hang their ordinary, well-made quilts. At least those quilts are getting more impressive by the every day, as they are learning to play with color and embellishments. At least I can be proud of that. If I leave town, maybe everybody would settle down and they could keep the art center. It would break my heart to leave now. This comes to me with the force of a grade five tornado. As hard as it's been, I like it here. Like having such a great space, like being part of a bunch of women, whether or not they give a damn about me. But if things don't get better, I should definitely move on. It's the best for everyone. So anyway, I hope my novel is a really good read, but I'd be ecstatic if it provoked a few people to action and support of their local community and institutions. A dream came true when I found out last week that the Library of Congress has acquired the book. Since I have a 50 year old memory of standing there, thinking, wouldn't it be cool to have a book on their shelves, a prestigious institution. And I was moved to tears one way and met with a group of women in the basement of the Linden, Kansas Carnegie Library, which claims to be the smallest Carnegie Library in the system. And they told me that they thought I had told their story. They accused me of speaking into town and looking. And then yesterday, I had an amazing find. I just happened to see my sales reports and found out that Salt Lake County Public Library System has bought 176 copies of my book. Oh, wow. So I think they think, as I do, that it can be a really good community resource. The Fayetteville Library also bought several copies and several have bought book bags for book clubs. When lots of we do here, we do book club kits of books and buy lots of them in bulk like that in bulk, so to speak, so that we can send them out to libraries who are doing book clubs as a set. That's great. I hope this makes a really good contribution to those because I think it does inspire people to think about their own roles. And at a time when there's so many challenges to how we all find our places in the world and there are different challenges than they were back then. But I think this is, at least I hope it's really uplifting and empowering. Anyway, I'll stop soon. I just want to encourage you all to begin to develop your own bag of tricks that can help influence the community members. I know you're still faced with challenges, how many hours you're open and what your acquisition budgets are. And I just salute the incredible work that you do. But and so as you move forward, I just hope that you love my book, of course, but also start a collection of stories and statistics that you can share. I think that we've all gotten a lot better about having photographs on Instagram and on Facebook. But just encourage you to remember that some people don't aren't there. They need their information in different ways. And then I just say, don't be greedy. Share all of those great stories. Encourage others to share them as well. I think you're talking about doing this, not just online, I'm doing local, you know, because if you're trying to either build a new community or update one or something like that, build a new library, they're the local people that you want, you need to get them on board. So doing things locally. And I think a lot of our smallest towns know that best. They know I need to get into the local paper or the newsletter or put signs up in the post office or the local cafe and everything. I think that's very, and I think also that yeah, that's very true. And I think they need to be celebrated a lot because we even begin to take it for granted. Although I think small towns do do understand their power, the power of individuals in a way that some of us who are living in bigger cities now don't. So do you have any questions? Sure, let's see. Anybody does have, excuse me, any questions? Please do type into the questions section of the GoToWebinar interface or if you want to share anything about things you've done to raise money for your libraries or just support your library or celebrate your library. Sorry, we don't have one comment that came through one of our librarians here. Gibson Memorial Library here says that our library is a Carnegie library and is named after the woman who founded it, just like what you were talking about. Fabulous, not many people did that. Yeah, and I think that's true. I mean, we talk about that. Me mentioned that you're talking a lot about women and there's women in the novel, of course, but that is how these so many libraries before they were Carnegie's were at the same time. It was potentially originally called the So-and-So Towns Women's Club, Women's Book Club. And for whatever reason, they jumped on that. And so that is just how it started, yeah. So yeah, anybody type in your questions, comments. As I said, I told you earlier, Ramblin, I did get this book downloaded onto my device. I got an e-book version of it. And I like how it is both a novel. Fiction, you can read, and as you're talking about what to do in your libraries, it can work as a guidebook, so to speak, as here's some ideas and things that you can do and how it worked out for these women in this novel working on the library in their town. And that not everything will work. There'll be some failures. There'll be some things that do work and some don't, but you just keep going. And so I think it really works great as both just fiction, if somebody likes that kind of thing, strong women doing something together. And if you are in a library, you could definitely use some of this. It does celebrate tenacity. Yes, absolutely, which we have a lot of and need a lot of here in the Midwest. And there is one librarian who isn't particularly helpful and I've had some librarians question that, but you know, you need those in a novel. You can't put it. There's gonna be people in the town, people on, even I work with libraries here in Nebraska on library boards who seem to not really be as supportive as they should be considering they're on the board. It's interesting dynamics that you have to deal with. And yes. It is so personal. That's one of the points I wanted to make in the book is it is such a personal commitment and it infects people personally inside themselves as well as the community that they're serving. And in libraries in general, but especially in small towns because everything is so needed and so local that it's not just, oh, it's the library and it's on the other side of town and I'm on this side of town and it doesn't matter to me in larger cities in smaller ones. There's not really that far physical or mental distance. It's all, everything is, everybody is so involved in everybody's lives and wanting to do what's good for the community and people have different opinions on how that's gonna work. Well, I think you have the advantage too of people still allowing their children to go there by themselves, which opens less than a big city. So they will have the experience that I had growing up of really, I mean, that was a place I could just feel in control of the entire world and see all of its possibilities. It was never ending. It's still not ending. Yep, absolutely. All right, well, it doesn't look like anybody is typing in any desperate questions or comments yet right now. So we may wrap things up, I guess. If anybody has anything you desperately wanna say or ask Ramalyn about or talk about your library, type it in there. As I said, I've read this book and I highly recommend it. Thank you so much. I enjoyed it a lot. It's a pleasure to do this. This has really been fun. Yeah, well, we're happy to have you on. I'm glad, yeah. And especially something that's for our small libraries that we have majority of libraries here in Nebraska and in Kansas and many places in the Midwest. This is for you, definitely. All right, any last words you wanna share with us, Ramalyn? No, just thank you so much. And again, I celebrate you every day, every hour of every day, every minute of every day. So congratulations for your good work and keep at it. Yes, well, thank you. And congratulations to you too getting in the Library of Congress. That's amazing. All right, so I think that will wrap it up for today. I'm gonna pull back, present your control to my screens. So just to share. All right, this is the page from today's show. So that will wrap it up for today's show. It is being recorded and will be on our website on our archives later this afternoon as long as YouTube and everything cooperates with me. If you go to our page here, so far Encompass Live is the only thing called that on the internet. So if you just use your search engine of choice, Google whatever and type in Encompass Live, the name of our show, you'll come to our website. This is our upcoming episodes, but right underneath them is a link to our archives. And this is where today's will be at the most recent ones at the top of the page. This is last week's show about our Nebraska's One Book, One Nebraska title. And we will have the recording and presentation. It was put links here. We'll have that for yours as well. Romelyn, you could email me your PowerPoint if you want to then I can post it here with the recording. I send it to me and I'll upload it onto our site and host it for you. Our archives here are searchable. We have a search here. So if you do want to search for any other topics or speakers or anything, you can use that to search all of our shows or just the most recent year. Encompass Live, this is the 10th year of our webinar series. So we do have our archives going all the way back. And if I scroll all the way to the bottom of this, you'll see and I won't do that to make it dizzy. But it does go back to our very first show, which was January 2009. So as you are perusing our archives and searching them, do keep that in mind. Everything is dated though. You can see here it will tell you exactly when the show was originally broadcast. So some of the information may be old, outdated. Some links might not work anymore, but we're librarians and we save everything. We archive, this is what we do. So you can find some good historical information in there as well. So when the recording is ready, I will email everyone who attended today and who registered to let you know that it's available. And then we will post it on our various social media locations as well. Yeah, sure. I could do Skype interviews or those kinds of things too, if people get book clubs together. Yeah, lots of that, mention that. Yeah, lots of that's something that many authors are doing. Yeah, is so that you don't have to travel and then have to pay for travel or bring you in or something. Definitely, yeah, reach out. I love to travel to you because I love those texts, but I know sometimes that's not always possible. Sure, sure. And I do have a link, I did link to your website from our session information. I don't know if that's the best place, romlin.com. And also I had a link to the She Writes Press, so I'm not sure, you know, either way to get in touch with it. Yeah, definitely reach out if you want to have Romlin come and talk to your library book group or to anybody about the book and about what she's been doing with all these libraries. So we are also on Facebook. I've got a link here to our Facebook page, Encompass Live. Here's our Facebook. So if you're a big Facebook user, give us a like over there. We do post when shows are coming up. Here's a reminder about today's show. Posts about when recordings are available. So if you use Facebook a lot, you can like us over there and get notices of what's happening there. And I hope you'll join us next week on our topic is Library Innovation Studios. This is an update and review of what's going on with this Library Innovation Studios is a program here, a new grant that we received here at the Nebraska Library Commission to provide temporary makerspaces in libraries. Basically, they travel from library to library across the state over the next three years. And we've got the second round of applications available, we're gonna be bringing in our last group of libraries into the 13 libraries into this grant program. July 20th is a deadline for that. So if you are in a Nebraska public library and you want to be involved in this, listen up, come to next week's show to learn more about it if you're not sure and get your application in for that. You find out we've already, we're in the second group of libraries having this equipment. So we're gonna hear from some of them about what's been going on with using this equipment and then talk more about what you can do if you want to have your library receive some of this. Other than that, that wraps up for today's show. Thank you everyone for attending. Thank you, Romulan, for being here. This was awesome. Thank you so much. I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed this. I enjoyed the book and I enjoyed your talk and hearing about how you, after reading the book, hearing about how you came up with all of it is really cool. Thank you, thank you, thank you. All right, so thank you very much and we'll see you next time on Encompass Live. Bye-bye.