 All right, so it is 12 o'clock a little after 12 o'clock noon central time. It's time for our lightning round sessions for today's big talk from small libraries online conference. I'm your host, Christopher Porter here at the Nebraska Library Commission. We have three great presentations for our lunchtime hour today. So if you did look at the agenda, there was originally four. One of our presenters was unable to be here today. And that's perfectly fine. A little bit more time for the other three. So up first is Emily Morrison, who is what our, let's see here. I'm just double checking. Our first Nebraska presenter. Yay. Hi Emily, she is from our Blair Public Library and Technology Center in Blair, Nebraska. I'm going to talk to us about genealogy, a, I know a very popular well of subject in libraries and how they did it in their library. So go ahead Emily and take it away. All right. So I'm living in the Blair Public Library as Krista mentioned. And already wants to do it. Okay. So just to get some background on the Blair Library, we're located in Blair, Nebraska, which is just north of Omaha. Our city population is roughly 8,000, although we have closer to 10,000 patrons. That's a mix of city, county and non resident patrons. So the library has roots dating back to 1877. The library was run by a group of women. And then in 1916, they accepted Carnegie funds. That's this building right down here. Unfortunately, that building burned down in the 1970s and was replaced by this building in the middle. And then finally, just as we outgrew that library moved to our current building in 2017. So one of the collections at the old library, the one in the middle in the 1970s was a local history and genealogy collection. This was something that was kind of organized and maintained by a local genealogy societies. The library staff didn't necessarily have much to do with it. When we moved into our new library, we were able to actually have an entire room dedicated to the collection, which was really awesome. But when it came over, it was all just kind of boxed up and then just put on the shelves as it is and hadn't really been touched since then. So that was very, very disorganized. This grew worse over time just with people coming in and using stuff and putting it back. The genealogy group was a little less hands on when the collection moved over. So that was another reason why it kind of got so out of control. And then lastly, people like to donate materials to the collection, but they wouldn't necessarily let us know they were donating. So they would just leave books on the shelf. So maybe half of the stuff in the room was catalogued, but half of it was not. We had no clue what was even in the room. People would ask us like for help finding stuff and we would just walk in there and tell them I can look a bit, but I'm not going to be able to necessarily find the screen. That was really frustrating because you think libraries are supposed to be these perfectly organized, perfectly run systems in this room. It's not how we wanted our library to be organized. So I didn't realize that I was going to be doing a presentation when I started this project. So I didn't actually take pictures of how bad everything was. These pictures that you see below are pictures of us trying to hide how disorganized it was just to try to show off the room. But as you can see, there's just not a lot of organization on the shelves. There's materials next to each other that have no reason to be next to each other. So it was definitely not very sustainable and the room was not usable. So as a new hire and someone with a history background, I was given the task of reorganizing the room and getting it back to where it should have been. I started this project in about June of 2021 and it's taken me many, many months. It was a really big overwhelming project. I didn't even know where to start at the beginning. So I just decided to break it down and go shelf by shelf and just take everything off. I started with three categories. So there was things that I knew for sure that I wanted to keep. They should stay in the room. There were things that needed to be weeded and then there were things that I wasn't quite sure what to do with yet. So I just kind of set those aside and hoped I would figure out as I went along. So for things that I wanted to keep, this was really easy. Just anything related to the purpose of the room. So anything that had anything connected to genealogy, local history. Then there were also just some items that had some historical value that I thought would be nice to keep if we didn't have the space for them. That might not have been the case, but for now we had room. So this collection right here is a pictorial history of World War II. So it's just some really cool volumes that have a lot of unique pictures that you wouldn't necessarily see elsewhere. We also had a really cool 1921 book on storytime programming recommendations. It was written by a librarian. It's just a rarer book, so I didn't want to just get rid of it, so we still have that one as well. For any of the general nonfiction books, I just used Dewey to catalog them. That's what we use for the rest of our nonfiction, so I wanted to keep it similar in here so people knew where to find things. For the numbers that I wasn't as familiar with, I used Worldcat and the library thing to look them up. For the most part, it was just genealogy and Nebraska history, so that was somewhat easier. There were a number of reasons I decided why something needed to be weeded. For instance, we had a lot of outdated materials that could actually be updated. We had a guidebook to Ancestry.com that was for an older version of the website, so it doesn't make much sense to keep that when it's not actually going to teach someone how to use the site as it is now. So we just went ahead and purchased replacement copies of things that we could. Anything we had more than two copies of, we decided to keep the nicest copies and then get rid of the rest. For instance, this book on the side over here is in very bad condition. The cover was no longer attached, the spine had fallen off, and we had probably three or four copies, so we were able to get rid of this one. We just don't have the means to preserve it as is. Again, anything that was in bad condition and the information was available online, we also chose to get rid of. In our instance, we were more trying to preserve just the information rather than the materials. We just didn't have the money to go send everything to be rebound. For instance, we had a collection of Daughters of the American Revolution books. We probably had about 40 of them and they were literally crumbling to the touch and just taking up a lot of space. So we contacted a member of the group and asked if they'd be interested in having the books and she told us that everything was available online and she didn't even want them. So we made the decision to weed those in that case. And then lastly, anything that didn't have a connection to genealogy or local history, with the exception of some of those cool historical materials, we also decided to weed. Anything we weeded, I first offered up to staff members to see if they'd be interested in keeping it as a display item. I also contacted the local archive and other community organizations so we weren't just getting rid of these materials that someone else would be interested in. So for the things that got set aside, these were things that I knew that I wanted to keep, but I wasn't sure what to do with them because they couldn't be shelved as is. For instance, we had a lot of materials that didn't easily fit into just the regular nonfiction of Dewey. So I ended up making specific categories, including yearbooks, directories and periodicals, and I kind of gave them their own sections in the room. So over here on the left is just our periodical section. And those all just got a call number that started with periodicals. We also had a lot of items that were in terrible condition but couldn't be replaced. I wanted to keep them but preserve them. So I actually ended up creating a mini archive in our storage room just to help preserve the materials. This definitely would help. It reduces the handling of the materials because they're not just sitting out on the shelves for anyone to touch. I have everything laying flat instead of on their spine so it puts less pressure on the spines. They're all in archival safe PVC-free bags to keep dust off. And then they're just out of the sunlight. They're a lot more protected in this area. And that way people can use them still but they're not just out for any old person to walk in and handle. Naturally, this was not an easy project. It had come across a lot of problems and came up with some solutions for those problems. For one, we had a lot of loose papers and pamphlets that had just been left on the shelves at certain times. So when I could, I collected related ones into three ring binders or I used a heat binder to keep them together. If there wasn't enough to make a collection of them, I ended up adding them to a hanging file storage cabinet in the room. Another big issue I ran into was our shelving in the room is very narrow. So as you can see, things are kind of just hanging off. When I could, I replaced them with deeper shelving but we didn't have enough to do the whole room unfortunately. So one solution I came up with was to use these little storage bins and it kind of helps stabilize the binders on the shelf. And I also split some of the bigger binders up into smaller ones. They're not as heavy if they do happen to fall off the shelf. And then lastly, just the sheer amount of material I came across. I kept thinking I was close to getting done and then I would find more books that needed to be catalogued. There was a cabinet in the room that was full of some books and then the director had a couple of boxes in her office. There was about 10 boxes in storage that had just been there since we moved in 2017. So there was a lot more that was supposed to be in there and it just never made its way over there. It is now all catalogued and in the room for people to use. So these are just some of the cool things I came across while doing this project. We had quite a few financial books from the library, so this one's from 1924. And it just lists the different expenditure columns, for instance, periodicals, salaries, utilities. It's just kind of cool to compare the budget back then to what it is now. This is a collection called Bear Tales and it's work by the local high school students. So we have short stories, poems, artwork, and essays. We have a few different years of these and it's just one of the more unique local resources that it is cool to have in that room. This is a stereoscope and some stereographs. So this is another thing that I just found in a box in storage that was pretty cool. You don't expect to find that necessarily. If you're not familiar with stereoscopes, they're kind of like an earlier form of 3D. So you have this little viewer right here and then you move the picture back and forth and it looks really cool. It's similar to a View Master, if you know what that is. And we had about 20 different sets on different topics, just sitting in boxes. And this was probably our biggest find, again, in a box in storage. This is Confederate currency that was sent specifically to the Blair Public Library by the Treasury Department in 1912. So this was money that was confiscated during the Civil War. And then the Treasury Department later reached out to different museums and libraries to see if they'd be interested in holding on to these to preserve the history. So we have probably about 20 different bills of different currencies and we have the original envelope, the original letter still. It wasn't well preserved because it was just sitting in a box, but I've now moved it to page protectors. So hopefully it should stay in good condition for years to come. That is very cool. And interestingly, the Treasury Department wouldn't have their own process of preserving them or wouldn't have thought Library of Congress or something like that. I'm sure they have some of their own too, but there just must have been that many that they have. So as of January, I am mostly finished with the project. I will go into why it's just mostly in the next slide. But definitely the collection is more usable now. Everything that should be next to each other on the shelf is next to each other. So it's a lot more browsable. Everything is also searchable in our online catalog. So you don't have to be at the library to know what we have. Staff members also are able to know what we have to offer. We're having programming in the room now as well. So we do these genealogy help sessions with some of the materials and using ancestry.com. And so it's great to see the room finally functioning as it was supposed to be. We don't have people walking in asking for help finding a book and having staff members telling them that we aren't sure where that book is. So it's nice to have it finally in order. There are some ongoing projects I'm working on and as well as future projects that I will tackle at some point. There's a lot of odds and ends that I still am not sure what to do with this. For instance, this cute little book down here, it's about the size of a quarter, which is it's cute, but in practical, I cannot shelve it as is. So that's something I'm going to have to figure out what to do with at some point. Our shelving in the room is very limited. There's not much room for expansion. If we were to get more donations, which we hope to, there's going to be a point when there's not going to be any more room on the shelves. So we would like to get some more shelving in there. There's also no oversized shelving. So all of our oversized books shown down here are just sitting on top of our microfilm cabinet, which is not ideal, but it's the best spot for them at the moment. I kind of mentioned the local genealogy society earlier, but I just want to go into a bit more detail here. There's kind of a fight for control of the room. Does the genealogy society own the room? Does the library own it? When they moved over, they brought some of their own stuff, but over the years, more material has been donated specifically to the library and staff has become a little more hands on with the room. So we are the ones who are primarily in charge of it at this point. However, the genealogy society still likes to exert some control over the room. They were initially opposed to some of the expanded shelving. They still have this corner of the room down here where they have their whole file cabinet and just some different boxes that I did not touch. That is their materials, but it just makes it a little confusing when there's these two groups who kind of claim ownership of the room. And then lastly, I would like to digitize materials. Eventually this is something I'm not super familiar with because I don't have a lot of experience with creating a digital library, but it'd be cool to kind of preserve some of the local materials and make them more accessible. So that is something I would like to work on eventually, but not now. I'm going to take a little break from doing all of that, but it was a really fun experience. It was a good learning experience. I have not ever really worked with archiving before, and I feel like I've learned a lot in just a few months. Okay. Thank you, Emily. Does anybody have any questions? We can grab a couple of questions if you have them before we do go on to our next speaker. We do have time for that. I think it was a great presentation that you did here. I understand why you wouldn't think you, we didn't know you're doing a presentation to have the before pictures, but the after ones. Pretty bad pictures if I would have known I was going to do a presentation. Look great. I do have a question here. You mentioned that it is easier for people to use the collection now, of course, but do you have, did you have statistics on usage before and after? Are people or surveys or anything from actual users, input from users? We didn't know because the materials in that room can't be checked out. There's not any circulation statistics. All we have really is anecdotal evidence from staff members who mentioned trying to help people find stuff in the room. And we had even genealogy members come up to me and ask me where material in the room was when I was new there. And I had to tell them I don't know. I'm sorry. You can try to look on the shelves, but the room might not be. And did you get, have any input from users on how to rearrange it? Did anyone have any ideas? I didn't really get input. No, it was, we knew that we wanted to do do we for the most part because that's what the rest of our library is so we didn't want to use some other system that would make it more complicated for users. I did get input from staff members on some of those other collections like your books and the like the newspapers and trying to figure out if I should try to integrate those or leave them separate. And so, yeah, I did ask other staff members for some input during the project. And we do have one other question from that will ask your how did you catalog the things that were really worn out that you preserved in another area. Oh, okay. Yeah, I meant I meant to touch on this a bit during the presentation, but I didn't. So, I kept everything with a call number of gr for genealogy reference, but for the items that were in storage. I made a shelf location specifically that was genealogy storage that is one way that people are able to see in our catalog that they're in that archival space instead of in the room. And then I also created a note in the record that says something along the lines of this items in bad condition. Please ask a staff member for assistance in viewing it. So it is located in the record people aren't just going to go into that room and try to find stuff that's in the archive. So what are these in your catalog? Is this something public that anyone can just see in your online catalog that's out there on the library website? Yeah, you just go to our Blair Public Library website and view the catalog from there. We don't have the best catalog for doing advanced searches, but you could search something along the lines of genealogy and then you could get a list of resources from there of what we have in the room. If you have other questions, we don't have time to get to all of them. You can reach out to Emily at the Blair Public Library and she'll be happy to answer your questions about anything. So thank you so much. It's so interesting.