 Welcome back to, if you've been away, to our Big Talk from Small Libraries 2020. I am Krista Porter, your host here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Big Talk from Small Libraries is sponsored by the Association for Rural and Small Libraries and the Nebraska Library Commission. We are annual conference and we do, we have presenters that are all from libraries for universities, public libraries, health libraries that serve populations of 10,000 or less. And right now on the, on the conference we have with us Copper Queen Library, who is, as you can see there, the best small library in America 2019. Congratulations! Yay! And with us is Jason and Allison from the library and they're going to talk about their experience and the things that they do at their library there in Arizona. So I'll just hand it over to you guys to introduce yourself and tell us all about the library. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you for having us, Krista. It's quite an honor to join you all today. And I'm here with Allison Williams. She's our program coordinator. Hi, everybody. We are so pleased to be a part of this conference. So today we're just, we're going to talk a little bit about what we've accomplished over the last four years. Alice and I have been working together to make the biggest impact in our community. And we've accomplished some really amazing things. So we're going to highlight some of those. First we're going to start with just who we are and where we are. We are in Bisbee, Arizona, and that's in the southeast corner of Arizona, about 90 miles southeast of Tucson. We are a rural community and we are, Bisbee is an old copper mining town. In its heyday, it was called the Queen of the Copper Camps. So really interesting history in our library. It's our folklore and we love to share this story. We had, our library was started in 1885 and it's kind of got an interesting start point. We had principal members of the Copper Queen mining company. They came to Bisbee to check it out and upon their arrival. The story goes that they found a swing and corpse of a fellow that was hanged the night before. And they were so shocked by this site that they decided immediately the town needed more civilized diversions and So thus in 1882, the Copper Queen Library was established and it started in the corner of the Copper Queen store, the mining store. And in 1885 we got our first building that you can see there on the screen. And that building burned and we got the 1892 beautiful building. And as Bisbee grew, that building was actually demolished to create our 1907 building where we are housed today and that's where Allison and I are presenting from. So, so a little bit about Bisbee. Bisbee serves the residents about 5500 people live in Bisbee. And we are located in the Mule Mountains, eight miles from the Mexican border. Back in its heyday Bisbee's population was over 25,000. But when the mines closed in the 1970s. And then Bisbee's population left to look for work elsewhere. And it left the window open for an eclectic group of artists and writers poets musicians and for lack of better word hippies came into town and they started to recreate the urban landscape. And this is our evolution here kind of takes us to where we are today. And it attracts retirees and travelers as well as a younger generation of entrepreneurs and creatives looking to escape bigger cities like Tucson and Phoenix. And it really is this this interesting mix of peoples and cultures that has created this extremely diverse and very engaged community. And over the past four years Allison and I have really been able to tap into this community and we really do consider it our most valuable asset. And it's enabled us to do some amazing things, which led to winning our small library award. And as well this influx when this town was the mine closed down and the mining corporation actually gave the library to the city of Bisbee in 1976 and that's approximately the same time on the influx of artists and poets and hippies all came in and that created its mark on we're known as an artist town. We're, we're definitely known as a cultural town both in the history button in arts and really amazing events. So, we have evolved through this 138 years, the library standing strong and embracing knowledge as you can see, building community and inspiring curiosity as part of our mission. So, when we, as librarians, we identify the needs and then we look at what the barriers are to providing these resources and services to our community. And the city of Bisbee is when I first moved here, it reminded me of the five boroughs of Manhattan with where the library is old Bisbee being Manhattan and Warren being Brooklyn and on and on so San Jose where our new annexes is the closest to the Lincoln border and the farthest away the neighborhood farthest away from our historic building. So, Cochise County is geographically spread out in Cochise County. Every student can go to any school in Cochise County that's because of the geographical barriers, as well any resident in Cochise County can have a library card at any library in Cochise County. And we just moved to a one card one county system which is just fantastic. One library card for all the libraries both city and county district libraries. And that just kind of illuminates how we resource share and how spread out we are and how people actually travel a lot. However, the neighborhood of San Jose, which is the closest to the border and the farthest away from us. It has the largest population of children actually, and we found that the smallest amount of those residents were patrons regularly coming to our library. As well, a couple years ago, the county had to end their, their bookmobile program, which we have a lot of unincorporated areas around the city proper that are so close to the city. Most people think they are part of the city and when the bookmobile services stopped that isolated this whole area from services in a pretty dramatic way. So, we, we looked to bring the mountain to Muhammad we identified spaces in that neighborhood and really we couldn't have done this without the busy unified school district. There was an abandoned school there a school that had been closed, and it was closed for 10 years just they couldn't reopen it. But under the rules of the school district, they had to keep the lights on so there was electricity and maintenance, however, there were no occupants. So we had the unique and remarkable opportunity. We asked for a classroom in this empty building in this neighborhood, and we were given this classroom. One of our goals was to address the, the failure rate in English language arts in the busy unified school district, all three schools having a 65% failure rate of the LA, and how we can best reach the children. And we decided to start at the beginning looking at preschool literacy programs, as well as the geographical location and so this is the, this is the birth of the idea to create the Xanax in San Jose. So, at the same time that we were looking at this. We saw that there were other organizations around town that were also trying to address the some of the problems in early childhood literacy. And one of the first steps that we were that we wanted to accomplish was to kind of rain all those organizations in together under one umbrella and work together as one team to accomplish something even bigger. We noticed that we started hearing that one group or another was also attacking literacy, which is fantastic. However, none of them were working together and we are a great believer in adapting ideas rather than reinventing the wheel. It cuts down on the workload with a small staff and we all these different resources of community members and groups. We reached out to so many of them and we created a little literacy advisory group. That was specific to preschool literacy from members of all these different organizations. One of the biggest things about Bisbee is that it is just filled with organizations and nonprofits who are identifying specific needs in the community that and working really hard to make changes. And as Allison and I started reaching out to organizations, it kind of spread. And we had organizations reaching out to us to participate. And being a very central location and just the identity of the library. These organizations trusted us and to come in and to help and to make a difference. So you can see from that page. I don't know if this is everything, but it's we're just our community is so much stronger with all these organizations and it's, I think we found it rather easy to find different ways to work specifically with each one, and really enacting change, positive change. And if I could just mention a couple of these partners. So the bisbee unified district school district the Puma logo is an amazing partner and they provided the physical space and resources to make this happen. But we also use the bisbee high school CTE construction class to they volunteer to build bookshelves for us. The first step up is be not go group is similar to habitat for humanity. They do repairs to homes and buildings for low income. People in our community and they were inspired by us and started working with us and the construction class. So we had contractors and architects designing really good plans for the space and for the shelves that the students then built for us. And as volunteer and under a grant process. And then the friends of the Copper Queen library we cannot neglect them. Our friends are an amazing amazing board and group of people who do so much work really hard to support programming for and collections for us through fundraising. So working with the school was not new to us either. Do you want to talk about the registration? Yeah, so when about four years ago when I first started here and Jason came back as director of the library we reached out to the school district to find out how we could better partner and the first thing we did was we created a patron card registration form that was included in all the registered school registration packets in all three schools realizing that they have the same vetting process that we do. Checking residency IDs address and all of that so it's very easy for us to create a box for staff to just check that they had checked the same things that we would. They, we attached this form to all the registration the parents filled it out. The school sent us the forms we created patron cards and sent them off to all the children. I think over the last three years we've created over 600 new youth patron cards, which in our small population is. Relatively amazing. And that was our phase one. We then reached out to the school librarians and to all three schools and the principles of those schools to do various programs outreach going into the schools but also having them come here. We created a program coffee with the principal with all three principles coming to the library and talking to the public. We started a haunted library and that is run by the middle school builders club and the high school students mapping that out creating it working on it. And we have a lot other of other programs that the teens and the youth from the schools are primarily responsible for creating. But then when we moved, we created this relationship. People. It's so good to know who people are to know their names. We're also very small community so there are patrons as well these teachers and principals and students but through growing this relationship when we came to the point where we asked for this space. It was, we had already established our, our creds as it were we had established that we were committed to growing literacy in the schools and our student body. So, a little bit about the physical space of, or where the building exists that our classroom is in we call it the annex it's the copper Queen library annex in the San Jose neighborhood. And it's basically an empty classroom that we work given all utilities amazingly all utilities including free internet paid for by the busy unified school district. And also close to not go Arizona which is lies on the border with Mexico and the sister city of not go Sonora Mexico is right on the other side of the border. And not go Arizona has only a K through eight schools so after eighth grade, all of the students from that school feed into this be high school. As do many of the smaller communities surrounding this be so once high school is reached there's a whole new influx of students from the surrounding areas so attacking literacy as it were at such an early age and providing services to the surrounding schools and it's not just not go we provide services to the preschools the head starts to other charter schools and to home schools as well, all building bridges between all of the education branches in our community. And also I just wanted to just say the annex is not a separate library it is an offsite collection it's a collection in a different physical location, and again finding this way to do to make this project work. We couldn't establish a whole new library, but we could establish this offsite collection which gave us this ability to do a huge project on a manageable scale. And also, students from not go Sonora Mexico cross through customs each day to to go to school and not go Arizona. So, really we're, we're affecting patrons from both sides of the border. So they come they so they those kids come to your annex as well. Yes, they're technically have residency in the United States in order to enroll in the school district. However, especially at the not go elementary K through eight. There is a large influx of students who cross that border every morning and every afternoon. And we are a bilingual community and for many English is a second language, but it's also the broader picture of parents while students might speak English fluently. There's also the communication barrier with interactions with parents and getting parent engagement, and we're able to provide resources to cross this international boundary. The wall as it were. That's awesome. I love it. So, and this neighborhood also so there's. That is the most family homes where there are annex location is and it's within walking distance of a lot of those homes and apartment complexes. So just the central location in terms of that and it's kind of hard to explain this because it is a it's a small town and like Allison said our burrows are very distinct and separate. And we've got a lot of just physical barriers in the way I mean we've got a giant open pit where copper was mine separating where we are we call old busy from the rest of the town and we've we've also got the geography of the mountains that create these physical geographic barriers. So, it is hard for some of these neighborhoods to visit us an old busy we've, we're a tourist community parking is. It comes at a premium it's it's very difficult nightmare. And it's a lot of people that live outside of old busy. Unfortunately, they've had to give up on coming here because it's sometimes just not worth the fight for them to find parking so this really could not have worked out better for us and I think, you know, if we look at providing services and eliminating barriers and building bridges. This, this, this begins to really check off a lot of boxes on our library mission. So, I love before and after pictures and this kind of gives you an idea of what we were given. I mean this empty space when Allison and I walked in there we were just like this is ours like, oh my gosh we just we started the, you know, the wheel started spinning and you know lining up potential partnerships and people who were interested. Everyone just kind of came together under this one roof and that's the second picture is the CTE class the construction class building the shelves and this project gave them such community investment. So all the participants all the students who helped build those they signed their names on the, what was it the bottom of a table that they created for our, our workshop programs, this long low table for the kids and yeah they've all signed it and it's so valuable to have them do real work in real life as opposed to doing a project in the school classroom that they bring home to their mom and, and it gets put in the basement basically. They're very invested in in this project. And as a result invested in the library. So we did, you know, we are a small library. We do not have money. So we had to start looking at grants and possibilities of bringing money in specifically for this project. We knew we needed a lot in terms of collections and materials and furniture, computer equipment printer. And, you know, when we started telling it all up. We realized that we were going to have to start looking elsewhere for possibilities and we were successful in writing to major grants. One of them was to the Arizona State Library and LSTA grant, which was for collections and furniture and computer equipment and then we also wrote a grant to Freeport Macmaran, which is the mining concern, not the original mine owner, but that was sold to Freeport about over 10 years ago. So Freeport Macmaran, our mine is no longer a working functional mind. However, it is still there's still a presence here with soil reclamation as well as we lease a mine tour. So we there, that's one of our tourist attractions is going in into the mine tunnels and Freeport Macmaran has a community grant foundation. But one of the things that they were remarkable for funding is staff. So when we wrote this grant for $40,000, we allocated 20,000 of it for staff, which enabled us to fund a part time employee for one year. With a vision presented to eventually have this become a permanent city funded employee over while we had a three year plan for that. We are incredibly lucky that our city manager, our mayor and council saw the value in this space and the value in this employee and funded this position as permanent within one year of the creation of it. This is a remarkable accomplishment for our city and for our library. After so many years of cuts, I can't tell you, but they too saw the vision, they too participated our mayor and council in understanding the need for these resources. So Freeport Macmaran, we were able to have $40,000 that LSTA grant was $25,500. And on top of that, we had a lot of smaller partners. So in kind donation by volunteering step up as we not go on donating wood and the plans, but also individuals who donated $500 here $500 there rotary gave us a thousand. And these small small amounts from local individuals and organizations are as powerful as the large numbers in the representation of how many members of our community were standing behind us and creating this epic project. Yeah, and when I think the, when we were looking at furnishing this space, we did not want this to be an afterthought we wanted to provide a really vibrant space with with new things in it that were specifically for this neighborhood. And it looked beautiful and and it does it's it's it's an amazing feat and to look to look back at these pictures of the empty room with the boarded up windows and to see now this beautiful space that's that's being used it's amazing. And another thing we did was we replicated. And I get to brag about Jason here which is that he has an amazing ability and vision to look at space and reconfigure it and redesign it to use space in the best way possible and this was designed with the many children's library and a mini adult library and many compute public computer station, and then a work table, a maker space, our staff computer. And all of this fit into this one classroom with some low shelving and furniture but it's also the same furniture that we had recently bought for the main library so there's a feeling of familiarity and continuity. And, and also a space for the adult collection mini adult collection mini DVD collection all of that. So that really was just a shell of a building then there when for a long time before that you were able to use it. Yep. Yep, what it up first picture there yeah. But we have some exciting things to say about that coming up. So, so we knew right away that our focus on this space was going to be early literacy and parent engagement and our early literacy coordinator that we hired through the report grant started designing and implementing preschool programs. And we started to tap into volunteer resources. And when we, we first open we thought we'd be open for maybe 16 hours a week and we had such a great response to our volunteer call that immediately we were open 28 and a half hours a week. Yeah, and I, I don't know how other small libraries are we have a really good volunteer team here at the main library but we had a volunteer open house. A couple weeks before we officially open the annex, and we have 40 people show up and fill out volunteer forms 40 new people who wanted to help us. That to me was an astonishing day. And one of our regular volunteers, she had gone door to door in the entire neighborhood, knocking and talking to people and handing them an invitation to come. So that's, that's the kind of support that makes something like this viable. Yeah, and this is given an opportunity for our volunteer base to really expand on what they do. I mean, I think for many years volunteers were just asked to shelf books here and now it's volunteers are using their skills that you know a lot of our volunteers are retired teachers and psychologists and professors and PhD. Yeah, and they're using their skills now to help facilitate preschool programs are open play is so much more than just a playgroup for kids it's bringing in professionals and having a very informal opportunity for parents to react to interact with people of, you know that in professions that can help them with parenting and, and being engaged with their children. It's, every volunteer has brought such a very special and unique perspective to this project, and it's just it's fun finding a job for everyone and so far we've been really good at doing that. So, when we asked for this classroom and we're told yes and had the agreement and started moving in the building was empty. But pretty quickly, the school superintendent decided to move the administrative offices. Over into this building so immediately half of the building office space was renovated and the district office staff moved in that that alone was wonderful because we were willing to be alone but we wanted more life in this in this community. Aborted building has a really detrimental effect on the neighborhood. It's the word blight is accurate. People feel ignored and as soon as they moved in and we moved in. A new, you can see the Bisbee science lab logo up there in yellow. They were so impressed with what we were doing and they are, they were just down the street from the main library. They wanted to come over to San Jose into the annex that they asked for a classroom. At the same time, the U of a cooperative extension for each club also asked if they could have a classroom. So within six months. There were multiple programs occurring the hallways filled with children. As well, we did not keep ourselves isolated and reached out to these other groups and in fact formed a small coalition where we met all together to look at our programming schedules and make sure that our programs were complimentary that they did not compete but rather. Made it so that we had accessible programming to children. At almost every day of the week we started this last summer with a summer reading program. We included them in our summer reading program schedule so that families would know that every day of the week there was something for them to do. And we are continuing that collaborative relationship. So, as with any project, you get unintended consequences and one of the first things that we saw was that a lot of adults wanted to be a part of library services they wanted them to be to have resources and. And a lot of teens also wanted space and a collection for them. And this is great I mean this is exactly the organic growth that we wanted to see and not even a little over a year since we open we are already in the process of expanding into another classroom. And this is so super exciting for us and we're within the next two months. We're going to be working on furnishing another classroom that would house the adult collection so you can see this is the pictures are on the other side of that children section. And there is a small adult collection of books and DVDs and it's just it's not meeting the needs of our patrons and so we approached our city manager and the busy unified school district again to see if obtaining another room was a possibility and they were quick to sign off on a yes. So, it's it's very exciting you can see that the second photo is our adult living room and adult collection that will move across the hall into this larger classroom. Also, I would like to mention that could she's county library district is another amazing partner as they are going, they are recently moving and they are going to be providing shelves that they don't need from their move and also giving us access to their collection of adult fiction and nonfiction that we will be able to place in our library it's we're all because we're all under one catalog, we can be the new home, and every library has access every patron still has access to them in fact more access is the way that district is looking at it because they're more administrative and not all necessarily open to the public. So the existing adult area is going to become our new, our new teen center. So we're going to deck it out with some fun colorful retro to me a century modern furniture that's so cool. We're working on some grants to provide teen resources, including books and we're working with an organization called kids need to read and grow your library who are donating over 700 kids books to this project, which is just an amazing partner and opportunity. So, we'd like to talk a little bit about some of the, some of the programs that we have done in the last four years. Kind of some new things for us. The, the first thing is that that I'm so proud of and just love is the library of things, creating a library of things seem daunting at first with the lack of shelf space, as did creating a seed library but with the help of one of our amazing front desk employees who's a master gardener. She was able to help us in creating this seed library which does not take up a lot of room and in fact we just reuse a card catalog unit and it is so active and we perfect for that I see that in lots of libraries that those doors are just perfect for this. And it actually doesn't take as much in terms of physical space and money to create it we buy larger seed packages and then we break them down into individual amounts. We've also gotten several grants from seed libraries from seed foundations that will provide it. But we also through Arizona libraries grant created a hotspot a Wi-Fi hotspot program so we have 45 Wi-Fi hotspots that is pretty much the most successful in demand program and that we have with a holds list of 30 to 40 people at almost all times. We also have pickleball sets, botchy ball sets, a button maker, but one of the things we realized in this second room addition at the annex is that there are already these built-in shelves that are larger that are like cubbies that are perfect for an expansion that we wanted to do but again didn't have the space or the resources and we have a volunteer who is very mechanical and he collects tools and he is going to be providing all kinds of tools to us to create a tool checkout program with power tools and gardening tools and actually we want to add some kitchenware too because sometimes you just want to bake a Bundt cake but you don't want to buy the Bundt cake mold necessarily. So we are having so much fun looking at all these items and how to make it not a burden on staff and volunteers to make these resources accessible and I think it's going to be amazing. Yeah, the thing about these new spaces it's like those dreams that you have like when you're walking around your house and you realize I have a whole nother room I never know about. And it's just it's been fun to be able to do these things. We are maxed out at our main library in terms of space and we've been really creative and creating new space here but you know it comes to the point where it's your, you know, you can't do that anymore. So this is really exciting and just in terms of the opportunity to do more things. And I know we're getting down to the time here. I think it's only 20. But we want to kind of just share some pictures of some of our programs that we've been doing over the years and you know this job is amazing and when you actually just stop and and just take a breath and look at everything that you know we've been able to accomplish and inviting the community in and really giving them the space and the support and the resources that they need. I don't want to wait till the end to give a shout out to all of the librarians listening. Thank you, all of you and I hope you two are having fun at your jobs, because we've really really are. It's it's really amazing. Just some of the pictures that there's a we have a return to the vultures parade where actually we have a workshop going on right now downstairs. The turkey vultures come every spring and somebody created an event with a parade and our workshop downstairs is a paper mache workshop for such a parade workshop, creating paper mache forms to walk in this parade. That's main street they're walking down and every return of the vultures signify signify spring and and they are actually someone just bought it one so that's perfect time. And then we'll also have an adult program on the birds themselves nature's cleanup crew carrying eaters and how they benefit the environment. And then the shots of the band are the Bisbee high school band who on the top picture we're playing on our balcony. For the parade and on the bottom picture where we have an end of summer reading party at our, our city pool where the fire chief and police chief come in and the firemen come in barbecue for us. And we have free passes for the pool. And last year the band came and played and you can see they're on their swimsuits. But also playing for everybody at the pool. And the handmaid ends is for band books week it's one of our favorite celebrations is just celebrating the freedom to read and each year we've come up with characters to dress up as and we from the book that we will, we will sit and discuss and we do flash mobs out on Main Street just to raise awareness and that was, that's always a fun time this past year we were penguins from and Tango makes three on Main Street on a rainy September day, which is actually perfect for penguins. And it's, it's kind of grown and it's, it's people. You know, randomly, it will spot us out there and, you know, scratch your heads and like what's going on and exactly is just we're celebrating our freedom to read. And the pickleball rackets and balls and the botchy balls. Those are new courts that were built so we check out the equipment so people can go play. In the upper left hand corner is astronaut and children's author Mark Kelly, who for last summer's reading program a universe of stories was our guest author. That's taken from the front but so Mark Kelly. During the process of asking him to come he actually declared his candidacy to run for the Senate of Arizona. So we ended up working side by side with his campaign manager. However, this was not a political event. This was an author reading and Mark brought his wife Gabby Giffords who used to be our Congresswoman. And there are about 100 people there. And he read from Mousetronaut. And then we did a Q&A and the questions from the kids were amazing, amazing. They asked him, what is your favorite planet? And as you can imagine, he said earth. And it's always been a dream of mine to turn the library into a haunted library over Halloween and that picture up in the right hand corner is a picture of, it's a total transformation of the library. Two floors. Two floors for two hours. It's a lot of work. The first year we had over 300 attendees and like Allison said, we worked for the Builders Club from the high school. We worked together and last year they did twisted fairy tales. They plan a whole tour. They map out how to block off the stacks to make a maze and they tell a story and they create costumes and get actors or become the actors. Really phenomenal work and just that last, the bottom picture of us in the cemetery was from summer reading program. We started taking the library out of the library on a series of field trips and we use Miss Peregrine's home for peculiar children to go as our theme to go to the cemetery and take Victorian pictures. So we were being photographed and we asked the photographer to please make it black and white. I think, and I'm just smiling here, but just talking about some of our programs and I think Allison and I are just, we're willing to try anything. And I think that's where, you know, and we find something that works, you know, you can grow upon that idea. And I think that's where our success has been, you know, we've had programs where, you know, no one has come and, you know, it hasn't all been. Yeah, but even if we reach one person or three people, we are excited that I think that people have to remember, you know, whether or family or other events you never know, you never know what's going to happen. So we just keep trying to find out what the community wants and needs and remove barriers and fulfill our mission to support them and to sustain them in the best way possible. And part of that is experimenting and so and breaking boundaries ourselves and and and learning new things ourselves. So when we went to our soul last year to accept the award. That was such an amazing conference and such a privilege for us because we have a $0 professional development line in our budget. However, this year we have received a grant we applied for a professional development grant and we are going to Wichita, Kansas in. Is it September, October 2020. Yes. End of September. Yes, end of September 1st week of October. Yeah, I'll be there. Yay. So we do want to invite if anyone has any questions or has, you know, heard something that they want more information about Allison and I are available. Contact information emails and telephone number. Please reach out and contact us we'd love to hear from you. I think that's the other lesson that we've learned over the past few years is that, you know, we don't need to reinvent the wheel. There's probably a library out there that's done it already and we've reached out to other organizations to see how they do specific programs and offer services and we've learned so much and. Yeah. And that, you know, what works for us might not work for you, but you can take these ideas and adapt them to best for your staff and your physical space, your budget and your community needs. And I think the other thing Allison mentioned just a little while back it's providing what the community, not only what they need and that a lot of times that's what we concentrate on but it's also what they want. And that's sometimes the fun, the fun part of it is finding out what is fun for them, you know, it's, we do concentrate a lot on on community needs and providing resources to address those needs but also let's have fun together let's let's let's do something and converse together let's let's build community that way and just enjoying something together. Leisure time is as important as everything else. Oh, definitely everyone needs their downtime in their less brainpower dime time. That's why I read I mean I love reading for that. Absolutely and actually what you guys just saying that's what that's what big talk from small libraries is all about sharing, borrowing, getting ideas. Libraries are all about resource sharing and everyone who is presenting here was happy for you to totally steal their ideas as someone did comment earlier. Do it. Yes. Absolutely and as Jason said, we're happy to share how we created the contract for the Wi Fi hotspot checkout form, how we created the library patron card form. I mean we are, we're absolutely want to offer assistance in supporting other libraries who are also, you know, you know, short on resources. Also, another shout out to Arizona libraries. The resources that they provide to us across the state. Phenomenal, just an incredible group of people and through grants through education opportunities through their three year library Institute program. So, I didn't really understand at first. I thought that they were too far away from us being in the capital in Phoenix and that they wouldn't be interested in it as for and that was just my misconception. Boy, was I wrong. They are such amazing people and such a huge support. That's great. Yeah, that's what us I mean here in Nebraska the Nebraska Library Commission where we're at here. We are what you would call the state library is just called the commission here and we are here on the eastern side of the state in the capital but we are the agent state agents library agency for the all libraries across the entire state. And try to have what we can do to support all of them and all their various needs, which is very wide range and yes. We do have a few questions that have come in that I think I'll have you answer here anybody have any questions use your questions section to type them in and I'll grab them for Jason and Allison. We have a question about the science walk that you did who helped with that and what are some of the things that are in that science walk that you. So actually, that what I meant to add that on to the end of so part of the annex expansion it's again there are phases to it we're expanding into the second classroom. But as well as this being an abandoned school, there's also a giant, giant abandoned playground outside in the back of the building. And we are working with the school district as well as the science lab and some other partners to enter into an agreement with the city of Bisbee and the busy unified school district to create a outdoor park outside of the library and the science lab in the back of the building, which will be literacy walk. It's a it's a it's a large space that's a combination of some science park installations and outdoor classroom. A literacy walk. We're going to look at the history of the story. We have some gardens. So we have some gardening organizations, but also a solar panel garden demonstration garden, which is where the plants underneath protect and keep up the panel. And the solar panel provides energy but also protects the plants. It's very interesting. So it'll be science literacy. It'll be steam basically, as well as a giant mural that we're working on on the side of the building. So, and then we hope to do some sculptures and some other playground equipment. And we're going to be working with different organizations and different funding. The way we've looked at this. So looking at the overall plan seems huge and intimidating parts. It sounds like yes. Yes, but we can divide out every part of it into a smaller project for one group to work on. We have the overall plan. So this is similar to I know I heard of lots of other libraries doing story walks. You have that as well. Where's that part of the history of storytelling. So starting with. A large rock and some little built in box of chalk that people can draw do their own cave drawings drawing on that going to a circular storytelling area like a oral hit oral tradition of telling stories around a fire. We're not going to have a fire pit though. But it will be a dual purpose community gathering space as well as for outdoor classes for students to sit around and then going into papyrus and tablet. So a place to make clay tablets or work with the earth. Again, we're forming this idea. There are a lot of moving parts, but we are slowly but surely progressing on this. Yeah, so on the story walk someone wants to know where you got the picture signage for that. Is that something you did yourself or was there from like the story walk. No, we haven't created that yet. So story walk the actual organization. You buy the story from them and that goes in to stands that are usually created by the library who does it. But we also have a lot of local children's authors, a lot meaning good, like a few for the amount of for our population. Local story. Children's authors who are willing to collaborate with us in writing a story for us. We're using their stories. So basically they will be helping donate copyright so we don't have to buy the licensing. Yeah, we're kind of going we're going to create we're going to create our own. We're going around. Oh yeah, you have the capabilities to do that you don't have to yeah. Yeah, we can't afford that copyright on story walk. So we're calling it literacy walk. Nice. Okay. Question about the seed library. They want to know how you got started with doing that to your seed library. Well we reached out to another, a small rural library within our county system who had started one. And said one of our part time workers who is a master gardener she took this on as a special project of hers and she reached out to seed companies. It all started with donations and small grants. And all of a sudden we've got boxes and boxes of seeds on our table that, you know, we then repackage. And, and not only that it's local donation so we also have a garden club that supports the sea library and helps to, you know, teach people how to garden and we have master gardeners from the U of A cooperative extension and coches college who come on. They come to pay them they come and do presentation so the garden club meets monthly and then the local nonprofit called the Bits be bloomers provided. They bought these large so we're downtown we don't have an outdoor area what we do have is a balcony, and we have these large tabs along the balcony both sides which are like big cattle watering chops, but they're filled with cattle and our seed librarian Kathy, she plants a spring garden and then a summer garden and this past year she did a small winter garden with Swiss charred kale. And so that we have the preschool kids come and help plant that garden last spring, and then that grows. It's amazing to see a full beautiful bountiful garden on the balcony downtown. And if anyone's interested in starting one seed companies have been more than willing to give free seeds and we're already we're restocking our library now and we're again Baker and Baker Creek seeds is donating a bunch of seeds to it so there don't be afraid to ask because that we've gotten a lot of free seeds and again the idea of the seed library is to keep this a sustainable project and you are. We're teaching people how to harvest seeds and bring back seeds from their most successful and healthy plants. And the idea is to get these seeds acclimated to our climate where we're in the high desert. It's a very challenging growing area and when we know a plant does well, that's what we want to keep in our library and also teaching teaching people how to garden in this climate because it is possible. And the other thing is when we first thought of this idea we thought oh my gosh this is so big, but then an even smaller rural library nearby. We talked to them about their seed library and it was basically they started it in a shoebox something the size of a shoebox and when we heard that we thought oh we don't actually have to like imagine this giant thing we can start small and see how that works. And I love that idea of, you know, work with what you have and provide what you can, you can start small, even with a shoebox. Yeah, absolutely. Do what you use what you've got. Yeah. One last question we're going to ask here. Someone's questioning about the loading out of the tools that you're doing. What about insurance for that when people are using that? Are you covered by libraries? That's a great question. We're still in the process of creating this and going through the vetting process. We will create a separate contract agreement. We have rules about being over 18 and not have any fines and all of that. But also we have a liability release form that they will have to sign and cannot check out without that. And this will go through our city attorney or city manager and all of that. So it will be properly vetted until it is structured in a safe and manageable way. We will not start the program. And again, this is something other libraries are doing. So we are definitely going to reach out and talk to some other libraries that are doing something very similar and see what they do. It's the best resources in other library. Absolutely. I think it's Portland, Oregon has a library of things. I looked at their catalog and everything there. They provide their contracts and information. So we will be reaching out. Yeah, there's lots of places to get resources about that and how to do all these different things. All right. Great. Thank you so much, Jason and Allison. I was thrilled to be able to have you guys at the conference this year. We always do try to bring whoever has been, and I think we've been successful this year, the most recent Best Small Library in America along. So thank you so much for joining us today. Well, thank you for having us. One last word for any library considering applying for Best Small Library is to just do it. We did it and amazingly we won. And it's a great exercise in being able to write down some of the great things that you're doing. And even if you don't win, you've got language written already. That's great for grants. It's great for showing what you do. You're not too small. It's hard to be small and you are the best. We are honored to be amongst so many great libraries. It's hard to promote ourselves oftentimes. Exactly. And that's why I was thrilled to have you guys on too. We've had, like I said, we've had the Best Small Libraries on and ALA Library Journal who does this award. Thank you Taylor. Their definition is populations under 25,000, which to my brain is really big. That's what we said too. Yeah, you guys are what I think of when I think of who should be the best small library in America. We've had many of them that are 22,000, 26,000 populations served. So congratulations to you guys. Thank you so much, Kristen. Thank you so much.