 Welcome back everybody. This is Michael Krista and Laura at the Nebraska Library Commission in pretty darn cold Lincoln, Nebraska. And we are now two o'clock in the afternoon central time. Just a little bit of housekeeping for those of you who just joined us. We are recording all of the sessions and we'll be posting all of those recordings and the slides from the presenters, usually starting sometime in the middle of next week. There is no active chat functionality in GoToWebinar so what we're doing is if you have questions or comments for our presenters, you can put those into the questions area of the GoToWebinar interface. We will pass those along. Also we are paying attention to Twitter with hashtag BTSL so you can post those there and we are looking at that. So it's two o'clock in the afternoon and our next speaker is Anita Bennett, the county librarian at... I am going to screw this up. Where is County Library, North Carolina, thank you. I'm sorry, I've been doing as best as I can today and that one just totally... Her session is titled The Libraries Open, Meeting the Needs of Your Community by Giving Up Control. Anita, you have the stage. Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much. Welcome everyone. I want to tell you a little bit about how I ended up here in Perquimans County Library last summer when I first started my job here in the small library. Patrons would come up to me and say, I hear you're from Boston. How on earth did you end up here? When I told them that I wanted to work in a small library, they'd say, well, you sure found it. People seem genuinely concerned. They probably thought I was running away from something. They definitely thought I wouldn't last long, especially the woman who said, I hope you're enjoying your stay. I hope you enjoy your stay. I wasn't going to be around for very long. The fact that I ended up here was pretty interesting. I was working in a really stressful environment in the busy northeastern university libraries in Boston. Walking three quarters of a mile to the train station every day and then a 45 minute train ride into the city took its toll on me after 11 years. Last year in February, after a couple of glasses of wine, I started surfing the net. I don't know if you've ever been in that situation, but it's not a good combination. I started looking at travel sites like Expedia, TripAdvisor. I need a vacation. Yeah, that's it. I should probably book it right now before the price goes up. This is a little formula you might want to keep in mind. Wine plus internet plus a credit card equals impulse buying. I booked a trip to Lake Lore in North Carolina for April school vacation. In the weeks leading up to the trip, I kept telling myself, you know, Anita, this really is a good job. You have great benefits. You need to count your blessings. And I did, but it was just a drudgery that got to me. I decided that my ideal job would be somewhere in an affordable area in a small library near the water, preferably near the ocean. I'd come to this conclusion before, but this time I was really serious. And I said to my son, no, really, I'm serious this time. And he said, are you really going to do it this time? Please don't change your mind. He was an avid fisherman, and he really, really wanted to move somewhere by the water. It is said that once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen. I had just begun to search for jobs when I discovered the Association for Role and Small Libraries and a posting for a job in North Carolina that sounded perfect. I applied for the position and I was asked to interview the very same week we were going to be in North Carolina. The library is located in the town of Hertford in Proclamance County with a population of around 13,000. The county is spread out among rural townships and many areas have limited or no internet access. It's a really diverse community. It's mostly low and middle income. There are a lot of grandparents that are raising their grandchildren here. There are four county public schools and quite a number of homeschoolers as well. There's little economic growth and since there aren't any jobs nearby when students graduate, most of them leave the county. There are a lot of retirees, many of whom live in a gorgeous gated community called Alba Mile Plantation. The average age of residents in Proclamance County is 49. The county is on the Alba Mile Sound across from the Outer Banks, which you may be familiar with. It's a very popular summer destination. Having an Outer Banks sticker on your car has a bit of a cache to it. But not to be outdone by the Outer Banks. Folks around here want to cash in on their down home charm. So this area is known as the Inner Banks and they have their very own sticker. In 2011, the library board and the county librarian plus a group of county residents conducted a lengthy study at the library. They compared it to the other libraries in our regional system and to libraries serving similar sized communities. The county commissioners paid for an architect's design of the new library that was three years ago. For the past seven months since I started, I've been working to gain support for a new library by building relationships and meeting community needs. There are six ways in which being other oriented and being open to ideas is working at our library. One, make the physical space open and welcoming. The first thing I did was eliminate the off-putting signs that were on the front door. Things like no cell phones, no food, no drinks. Patrons under 17 without a parent are allowed to enter the library only twice per day. No shirt, no shoes, no service. I wanted to greet people in a friendlier manner. So I came up with this little poem that has the same concept in it, but it's so softer to take. It's so nice to see you with a shirt on your bod and some shoes on your feet without cell phone in hand, drinks or stuff that you eat. With Banks, the library staff. It's important to provide an atmosphere that's positive and uplifting. When I first started, I met an artist who came into the library and I found out she was on the head of the local arts league. I asked her if she would be interested in collaborating with us and displaying some of their artists' work in the library. She was excited to do this and we're very happy with it. We now have a monthly art display in our small lobby. And when we sell our work, we receive a percentage of the sales. A lot of people have said that they think this is a great idea. It's just a simple thing, but it keeps the library fresh and stimulating. One day, a local high school graduate named Cassie came into the library. She put a canvas on the table to get ready to paint with acrylic and one of our staff was just completely shocked. She said, you're not really going to let her paint here, are you? I said that Cassie had asked me if it would be okay and I really didn't see a problem with it. It was obvious to me that this girl was in need of some encouragement. I like to think that's what a library is for, to build people's self-esteem, support and encourage. We featured Cassie's work in our December display and she seems to be building her confidence now because she's had some other displays around town, too. Being a small library, our stack space is limited, I'm sure you know. The standard practice was don't read too much or it will look like you have enough space and don't need a new library. We re-readed books that were long overdue for departure and we opened up the space, allowing us to shift and expand the fiction collection. It made it much more visually appealing and much easier to use the collections. Another thing we've done is place signs promoting our e-books throughout the stack. These are some e-books displays at the end of the stack. We have some brochures that are in a little pocket for people to take. I was just joking about texting one of my staff saying, how about we do something like this? Want more romance? Find it online with e-books. I really didn't think she was going to take me seriously about some of these things, but she did and I don't know, I think they're kind of cute. How about like a good mystery? Just try downloading these books. See if you can figure it out. Sometimes it isn't easy to download the app in e-books, so that one is pretty right on. So with small changes, we're really making the library happier and welcoming. It's a pleasant place to be. Number two, tap into other people's passions. Being new in town has its advantages. I'm in a completely new environment now and with all these new people and I don't know them and they don't know me, there's just no baggage at all. It's like being completely reborn. So as my job is to understand the community, in order to do that, I need to meet people and become interested in them and ask them questions and let them talk about themselves and about what interests them. What I discovered is that when you really pay attention to what people are saying, they think that you're pretty special. They like you and all because you listened to what they had to say and it made them feel good. So I started really listening to the community and with each person I met, I discovered their passions. They seemed genuinely pleased that the librarian was interested in them and it made them interested in the library. Our local newspaper is the Proquimans Weekly. I met with the editor and he was concerned about preserving the newspapers, as you can imagine. And I looked into one possible way that we could digitize the collection that seemed promising and I told him about it and he was thrilled. So since then I seem to have made a friend for life and he publishes all things library including photos and events and I now have a column in the paper. So this has worked out really well for us. I also met with the head of the Chamber of Commerce and got the tour of his pride and joy, the Catfish Hunter Museum. Jim Catfish Hunter was a baseball player. I don't know if you remember that name. He was born and raised in Hertford, North Carolina. And Catfish Hunter later developed ALS, also known as Blue Gerb disease. So if you remember the ice bucket challenge, people around here were quite active in getting their heads dumped on with ice. Even though the head of the Chamber is a big supporter of the athletic complex idea that's also trying to get county funding, he's been really supportive of the work that we're doing at the library and he's actually been speaking at some of our library events. In this small community there are countless opportunities for committee work and interacting with local agencies. I really think that's the way to go when you're trying to reach out to your community. I became a member of the Minister's Council on Education. This is a great organization with area churches who work to support the public schools and to promote events. I attend the meetings and promote important school events through the library. For example, one of the elementary schools was trying to get mentors who would be good role models for young children. And we work to support this cause by advertising with the school's posters and some handouts at checkout. The public school system also has a community coordinator who has been extremely helpful for us in publicizing our library events. I emailed her any program information and she makes sure that it gets into the school's newsletters and websites. She'll also print out flyers for us to distribute to the council members. Another agency I serve on is called the Interagency Council. This agency deals with juvenile crime prevention and domestic abuse. At these meetings, I've learned a lot about the social services that are available to the community. At the library, we're making people aware of health that's available to them by talking with people and providing brochures. Even though there are competing organizations that are vying for county funding to establish an athletic field and a new Boys and Girls Club, I make it a point to express support for their organizations. Not only because I want to maintain good relationships with the community, but because I truly think that these projects would benefit the community as well. I'd like to share with you a quote from Tony Robbins, the motivational speaker. I'm sure you will appreciate this. An easy way to immediately expand your personal reference experience library is by exploring the wealth of literature, stories, myths, poetry, and music available around you. Read books, watch movies, attend a play, go to seminars, talk with strangers. All experiences have power and you never know which one could change your life. If this idea is being open to experiences that speaks to me, all experiences have power and you never know which one could change your life. Number three, be open to programs and collaborative events. Because our library is so small, it's difficult to have programs. We don't have a closed off space for programs and our events are mostly held in the children's room, which also has the computers that the adults use. Here's a slide of a movie with behind that is the book sale that's going on and then behind that are the adults using the computers. Instead of not having programs because of lack of space, we're having more programs than ever now. And those attending can see how much better it would be if we had more space and hopefully they'll be vocal about this. Plus when we have programs, it helps us to document our space issue with photographs. I've made it a point to visit with all of the principals and librarians of the four public schools in the county. When I can, I purchase materials for our library to support their education. We've made an all-out effort to support the school's iPad initiative. Our part timer, Helen, serves on the school's media technology committee. As each child in grades three through 12 has received an iPad for the school year thanks to the Golden Leaf grant, which is funded by the tobacco companies. With the iPads and all the e-books we have, we're working hard to turn students onto e-books. This is a slide of a great e-book poster for kids that our children's librarian put together. Helen and I work one-on-one with students in the library to develop a step-by-step brochure for them on how to download the app and use the e-book collection. We've sent the brochure to all of the schools and they in turn have sent it to parents, encouraging them and their children to get a library card so that they can have access to the e-book collection. We've created posters with e-books for children and adults you can see here, and this has been very effective, especially with the teams. The middle schoolers are involved with the Battle of the Books. You may be familiar with it, the program that encourages reading. We have every book on the list between our library and those in the other libraries of our regional system that we can receive by courier, plus those we have as e-books. We've given this information to the school library so that the students will know what's available to them. Speaking of the middle school, they have something that's really effective called the Principal's Council. I'm not sure if this is done in a lot of schools, but I thought this was just a great idea. It's a group of students who meet with the principal every month and they brainstorm about issues that come up and they try to come up with solutions. We met with the council about our idea for a poetry slam at the library. This group of kids identified students who would be interested in reading their poetry and they suggested that we have a teacher that they were really crazy about to come and read his poetry. They offered to make posters to publicize the event in the school and they also told us what they wanted to eat and drink, which was helpful. We had a really great turnout of about 40 people and not only kids, but adults recited poetry too. One of our staff members provides materials for people who can't leave their homes. She visits them, she also visits nursing homes, and she does trivia with them in the nursing homes. We've been asked to show movies at the library for some of the residents of nursing homes and adults in community homes. We've had three movies so far, 10 o'clock in the morning, and our staff member calls this a copy cake and a movie break. They are a really appreciative audience. In fact, last week the forecast called for frigid conditions. So this is the south mind you and people are used to this sort of thing. Our staff member was concerned that our visitors from the community home who were coming couldn't tolerate the cold. So she called the director and she left a message that she was canceling the movie. And the director called us back and she was so disappointed and she said, we don't care if it's cold, we want to get out. These people really do want to get out. So we're taking advantage of going out to other places, to schools, any opportunities that we can get. We'll set up a table at our laptops and sign up people for library cards, whether it's outside of an auditorium with a fourth graders that are having their concert, or at a Halloween event, they have something called a trunk or tree for the kids with their candy from cars that are outside the school. And they also have hoops in the cafeteria. And we've worked at that event in the cafeteria. And we've worked at event centers too. Getting out into the community hadn't really been done too much before I came. And so when I found out about this Chamber of Commerce event, it was a business expo, I knew it would be a really good opportunity for us to reach a wide audience. I attended a free chamber workshop that was put on by a local college on how to be successful at a trade show event. And this was really helpful for us. The event turned out to be a lot of fun for the staff and it was really successful. We signed up a lot of people for a library card and we got the word out about our e-books and events through posters and brochures. We raffled off prizes too. And we took pictures of the winners and posted them to our Facebook page. The theme, as you can see, was sailing to success. Another off-premise event was a wine tasting slash e-book program that was organized by the Friends of the Library. And it was held in the wine shop in the gated community that I mentioned before, Albumile Plantation, beautiful place, where mostly retirees live. We did run into some problems with the Wi-Fi not working very well. But people were happy anyway. Number four, empower staff. When staff express an interest in something, I say let them roll with it. We have a staff of five, myself, three full-time employees, and one part-time employee. A full-timer named Wunder has been running the Black History Month programs at the library for years. She organizes the events, she puts it all together, and they're very well attended. And I'm thrilled that she does it. In a staff meeting last fall, one of our staff members, named Earlene, brought up the fact that she and other staff really didn't know who was on the board of the Friends of the Library, nor did they know any of the members of the Friends. She suggested that we have a Friends Meet in Greek. I asked her to put the program together, and she invited the library board, trustee, the Friends board, and members of the Friends and the county commissioners as well. It was an outstanding event. Really, it turned into a major discussion about the need for a new library. Fifth on the list is say yes to volunteers. No volunteers had been the library's policy. The reason behind this was that if patrons or county officials saw that there were people who would work for free, why should we be paying the staff? Our first event using volunteers was an e-book event called Get Nappy, where we showed people how to download the e-book app and e-books onto their devices. People that attended were really thrilled with the volunteers that we had. We had three really nice high school volunteers that were recommended by the school library. I think actually they enjoyed just being with these young students even more than learning about their e-book. It was really a nice thing to say. Number six, get input, trust in the wisdom of others. I will admit it, this is actually the scariest tactic of all, but it's by far the most powerful way to generate ideas. Seek input from others. The library board and I were trying to figure out exactly how we were going to generate support for a new library. Someone on the board suggested that we identify some key people from the community to act as advocates. And the president of the board and I just looked at each other and we were obviously both thinking the same thing. I'm all for being open and receptive as long as I have complete control over the situation. The idea of asking others for their input just scared the heck out of us. I mean, if you start including others in the decision-making process, there's just no turning back. You open things up to other people and you could lose complete control and that is a pretty scary thought. But if you're ruling the roost and being opposed to suggestions at every turn, for one thing, people won't like you. And for another thing, you'd be shutting yourself off to a wealth of ideas that if you only consider the possibility, a whole world of good things will open up to you. So the board president and I went into our next meeting literally with open arms rallying the other board members. We made a list of 25 people who we felt were key people in the community. There were business owners, teachers, retirees with corporate experience and so on. We divvied up the list of people and each board member was responsible for getting in touch with the people that they had suggested to ask them if they would be willing to get together with us to come up with ideas to work toward a new library. We've had two meetings with two different groups of advocates. We were blown away with their ideas and their interest in working with us in various capacities. They offered to develop a website dedicated to questions and answers about the new library we were proposing. They would research available grant funding that was available, write articles for the newspaper, speak to community groups and other things. The response was better than we had imagined and their support for a new library was overwhelming. Together we're working toward a new library for Clemens County and I think we're moving in the right direction now because our county manager asked us to have our architect give a presentation of the new library at the next county commissioners meeting. I like to think that everything we've been doing over the last few months has been instrumental in making this happen. Thank you very much for listening and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you, Anita. That was wonderful and I'm sensing a theme today of listening to your community. I don't know what to do people sitting next to me think but we seem to keep hearing that over and over again and it makes a lot of sense. I'd like to remind everybody that we will happily take your questions. Just go ahead and type them into the Q&A section of your GoToWebinar interface. We'll happily pass those along and we will also take them through Twitter if you use the hashtag BTSL. Laura, I think we have one that might be kind of a discussion issue that has come in. One of our listeners says, I've been struck by so many presenters mentioning past practices that were so unfriendly, off-putting to stay the least and wondering what about the library boards in these years? It's not solely the fault of previous directors. I think previous boards are also to blame for allowing such poor perceptions of the libraries to continue. I don't know if the board is to blame but it seems just to be a whole philosophy that starts in the library. I don't know what it is. Even I have been afraid to go into libraries and go up to the desk and talk to people. I don't know. I think why librarians feel that they have to have certain rules for people. People need to be kept in their place or something. I don't know what it is. Traditionally, for thousands of years, libraries were places to organize and protect the material. I think we've really seen a great change in the whole idea of what a library is and what libraries do. I can follow on that. First of all, do you have a governing board or an advisory board? We're part of the regional library system. There's a regional board. Each of the four libraries have their own library board of trustees. I have a great board. They're very, very nice. That's one of the things that attracted me to this job. When I was interviewed, they were just awfully nice. Some of them just wanted to hug them. After they give you the job? That's true. After the job. Can you speak to how your board has been through this transformation? Obviously, it sounds supportive. They've been great. The whole thing for me here, my major role really is to not only run this little library, but to try to get support for the new library. I think the former directors may not have been as interested in outreach as I am. I have had a lot of great responses, especially when I met all of the librarians and the principals at the schools. The people that I've met, they're thrilled that the librarian is interested in them. They're really anxious to collaborate with us. It's been great. The board is very supportive. They're very happy that I decided to come from Boston and work with them. It's great. It's a completely different work experience that I've ever had. Nice people down here. I have to say. This is something about this southern charm. People are very friendly. I think it's going in the right direction. I bet the last six or eight weeks you've really appreciated not being in Boston. Oh, absolutely. There's a lot of pictures on Facebook though. Here's a question. I guess I've always wanted to ask somebody in your situation. You heard from the previous director and their opinion of what you've done with the library? The previous director is actually the regional director. Interesting. She had this position for, I think, two years and then went on to the other position. She actually comes to our board meetings. I have to give a librarian's report. I do so many activities, so much outreach that she's never done. I don't know what she thinks about it. She really doesn't say anything. She lives across the street from me. If I don't show up to work, she can see my car is still in the driveway. She's really very nice. We get along well. I'm sure for her, she must have some, I don't know, sad feelings about the new director of the library getting along so well with the staff. I think it would be only natural for her to feel a little bit, I don't know, a little bit sad, maybe, or jealous. She's a funny look to do. She's an administrator. She keeps me and all the other head of the libraries in line. Oh, sure. I totally understood. We had another question from the audience. Are you hiring? It's funny, when I told one of my staff members the title of my presentation, she said, oh, yeah. She says, that's perfect for you, open, yeah. She says, you want an event with the libraries? The librarians cook? Sure, we'll do that. You want to have somebody in here talking about wild game and preparing it? Yeah, sure, we'll do that. This is some of the things that we're doing. We're having a dinner, something I'm sure they've never done here before, having a dinner in March and we're going to be showing a video presentation of the motivational speaker, Les Brown, and making kind of a dinner theater. But getting people motivated in this area is really an important thing. I think there are a lot of people in this community that are living in pretty grim environments. It's a very low income, a lot of unemployed people, and most of the motivation that they get, most of their uplifting experiences are through the churches. They're very much a church-going community. And one thing about this motivational speaker is he's not basing everything on religion, he's basing it on your ability to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and do what you want, have your passions, and go for it. So I think it might be good for some people to listen to a presentation that's not maybe something a little different than what they've usually heard. What would you say has been your most successful new thing you've done? The e-book program, actually of the four libraries, our e-book statistics are a lot higher than other people's. But I'm blessed with a staff that has some really good technical experience and they can put together things pretty fast as far as a brochure on how to download books and things like that. They're really technically savvy. And that's been really great. And people will come into the library all the time and ask directly for Earlene or Cowan to help them download e-books. And we had two events. One was the Getting Happy event, which was at the library with the students. And that was really great. We had food, and that's always nice. And then the second event we had was at the Plantation with the Wine-Tasting e-book event. And that was also fun. But our figures are really up there on our e-book statistics. So that's a lot of fun. And I love seeing young adults get excited about reading. That's a really nice thing to do. And then I'll follow up with the opposite direction. Has there been something that just didn't work? Well, I don't know what didn't work. I just know that for the last two weeks, we've had snow and ice. And we've had about six programs that we had planned, and they were all canceled. So that didn't work out very well. But let me see. There's something that didn't work. I can't think of anything that hasn't worked. I don't know. Maybe some community members might not be so up on all the changes. I don't know. But I don't want to know about it. Because most people seem to be pretty positive. But gosh, I can't think of anything that hasn't gone wrong. Nothing didn't work is OK. You know, sometimes there's always that story of, yeah, we tried this and that just didn't go over well. But hey, if it's working, great, go for it. Hey, there's still time. Hey, you can always be in the mood. I'll go back to you on that. So talk a little bit more about this trying to get a new building. You mentioned towards the end there that you're being asked to speak at one of the council meetings coming up. Where is that? And if you get to the point where you need to, you know, it looks like it's getting pretty positive. Do you have plans for marketing it, trying to raise funds, that sort of thing? Well, since it is a county, it would be a county building, the money is to come from the county commissioners. They do have plenty of money. Like I mentioned, there have been some competing projects. But we're on what they call the commissioners, the county's 10-year plan, meaning that it is an issue that they want to address. They do want us supposedly to have a new library, but this is a 10-year plan. And we want to have that happen a little closer in time than 10 years. So there have been some changes with the commissioners. There have been a couple of new commissioners that have come in, a couple of others have left. And we've been to some of the work sessions, and we've listened to what the commissioners have to say about libraries, and we have a lot of support. And I think, too, that one event we had, that meet and greet, where we had a couple of county commissioners here, and they could hear how passionate people were, and how much people felt that this was necessary for the community to have a new, bigger space. I think that's really helped. So, I mean, they just have to commit to, we have an estimate of about $3 million facility. The county already has the area picked out, the land, the county owned property. It's in a great location. I think it's going to happen. I think that if they know that everybody is really pushing for this, I think that's going to turn the tide for us. Great, thank you. Yeah, it sounds like you've kind of already got the momentum going, and that's... Well, we're working on it. That's half the battle. Well, don't stop. I mean, that's good. And when you have your new building in five years, come back on, and you can tell us all about it. We're rooting for you. We're rooting for all of you. So, all right, well, Anita, thank you very much. We don't see any other questions from the audience, so I think we're going to wrap up this session. Anita, thank you so much for your time and sharing your story with us. Thank you. We appreciate it.