 It is 11 a.m. Central time and we are back with Big Talk from Small Libraries 2020. I'm Krista Porter, your host here in Lincoln, Nebraska. Big Talk from Small Libraries, we are sponsored by the Association for Rural and Small Libraries and the Nebraska Library Commission. And we have presentations all day today from libraries who are in populations of homes or at universities or colleges where their FTE is 10,000 or less. And next up with us is one of what I'm, I love all of our presentations today, but this is one that's a little close to my heart. It's there from the State University of New York at Delhi, SUNY Delhi. I am actually originally from New York. I went to SUNY Binghamton and SUNY Albany. So they're from my home state. And I am a gamer, I am a geek, I'm a nerd, all of the above. So I'm going to be very jealous of all the great things that these guys get to do it and when they were at their college. So I will just hand it over to you, Caitlin and Liz, to introduce yourself and tell us all about your awesome cons that you did. Great, thank you so much. So my name is Caitlin Barotti and I have Liz Santabono here with me. As we said, we are from SUNY Delhi in upstate New York, a nice rural community. And we're here to talk to you today about our experience running a couple of library con events the past couple of years. We're excited to share to you the good and bad and the ugly and everything in between that we have learned over the past couple of years sort of as this event has evolved. So Liz is going to start by giving you a little bit of background about, you know, SUNY Delhi, where we are, the kind of community that we serve as well as sort of our library con origin stories. I'll take it away. All right, so as Kate already mentioned, we are a smaller, more rural college community with an FTE of 3,100 students approximately. Our mix, we get people all across the state. So although we're very rural, a lot of people that are, well, a lot of students that are here are coming from a more urban environment. So we're always trying to, as a library, give them, provide them a space that kind of meets all of their needs. And this is kind of where library con evolved from. So the origin story, I think is what I'm supposed to be talking to you about. So I was in an office with another librarian. We were just chatting things up and she was bragging all about Comic Con, which was months away, by the way. So if you're into that kind of thing, this happens months in advance. And I said, I made the mistake of saying, what exactly is all the hype about? And let me just say I got an earful. Oh my, yeah. So while she was filling me in about all the great things that make Comic Con what it is, I being a more new to programming person was like, oh, well, maybe we should do this in Delhi. I mean, if my librarian friend is this excited, maybe we should do it here. Maybe other people feel the same way. And of course, our director, who is also a fellow geek, she's a Star Wars geek, had overheard this conversation. Popson and says, hey, I give you the green light, go. So she wasn't a very hard sell at all. So that's what got everything rolling. So we're gonna break it down between year one and year two because we had a lot of growth between the two years. So year one was in 2018. We kind of grabbed a superhero theme because Marvel at the time was super, super big in theaters. It really kind of still is. And so we also wanted to keep it broad. And I felt like grabbing a superhero theme kind of lended itself to that. We tried to do a little bit of something for everyone. And you can see on our slide how many different things we offered. Again, a little something for everyone. We did do it on a Tuesday evening. Our students, like I said before, they're very transient, they go home on the weekend. So it was more beneficial to do it. We figured on a Tuesday night, that was when our library numbers were usually pretty, they were up from five to nine. So just a couple of pictures of our event. This was our faculty panel. It was super well attended. I will say that they may have offered some extra credit to their students, but still there was a lot of good dialogue, a lot of good questions after, each of the presenters finished their talk. On the next slide, we have board games. So that was a really nice, for me anyway, coming into the Comic-Con realm of things. It was a really neat surprise for me. I saw a lot of geekiness at the board games and they were always packed. I had no idea that these types of board games could take hours to play. And we had students that would come in, they would see the board games, get interested, they would run to the vendor, buy a starter pack and then come back and play the game. It was really, really exciting to see. That's exactly how it's supposed to work. That's awesome. Everybody wins. You and the players and the vendors. So it was all hands on deck and ended up being super big. We'll talk about that little more in a minute, but we had wonderful staff support. So in the lower left corner, you'll see my buddy Kate and our fellow librarian slash Comic-Con enthusiast, Jen. They just had completed a escape room, Harry Potter theme. We had like a little test run beforehand to make sure it all went smoothly. Being a guinea pig is fun. Yeah, it was super cool. And then in the upper right, where all of the staff that were just on hand, we had a selfie photo booth. So in the throes of the chaos of that night, which again, I'll tell you more about in a little bit, we managed to snap a quick picture before we got too exhausted. So year one, what went right? So we had a huge turnout. We kind of came into it thinking 50 people would be considered a success. We would be really excited with 100. Well, we ended up with over 400. So again, I'll talk about it a little bit later. We were underprepared, but almost in a good way. We were happy to have that problem, but it gave us a lot to think about for the following year, right? It is a good problem, a terrifying problem, I'm sure. We refer to that year as the fever dream because nobody really remembers what happened those few hours. Exactly, we just knew that our feet were really sore. So escape rooms were super amazingly popular. Escape room, I should say. The Harry Potter thing, the students booked it out in the first hour that we were open. And then we had many anxious students kind of hovering around the desk saying, hey, hey, did anyone cancel? Are they not coming? I wanna dive in. Like I mentioned before the board games, they were really fun. I know I learned a lot about, you know, all the things board games, it was super cool. And the vendors were a fantastic hit. They were a great addition. We needed to have them. So what could have gone better? We kind of alluded to it a little bit. So we weren't prepared for the mass number of people. We ran out of event bags. So we were constantly running up and down the stairs, printing things to just try and put some sort of event bag together or get them flyers. We were just not ready. The raffle tickets, I'll own to it. It was a little bit of a late afterthought right before the event. So there was kind of a separate half sheet that was tucked into the event bag. And it was kind of confusing. And the raffle tickets went into the door prizes, which, you know, students want those prizes. The comic strip contest, again, you know, we put out a lot of different feelers for a lot of different things that first year. And the comic strip contest, it just had low participation. We, I think we had two. It was beautiful. They did beautiful artwork, but it was low. And disrupted student study space. So more specifically, we have a very dedicated base of nursing students that come every night. And they were a little cranky that the volume was a little higher than they anticipated. So something to think about for next year. And because it was our first year, it was also my first program that was on this scale. I held on to things like a nervous nally. So I didn't delegate well. So it ended up being very stressful. Yeah, Liz was a rock star and she really pulled it off. But, you know, we knew for future events, things need to be delegated a little bit more just for her sanity. I feel like I might've lost a few years off my life. Yeah, I'm one. Okay, so let me give you an overview of year two. The main differences between year one and year two in terms of how we planned it, the biggest thing was that we moved it to a weekend evening instead of a weeknight. Happened to be the weekend before Halloween. We weren't sure what impact this would have on our attendance just because, like Liz said, we do have that transient student population and a lot of them aren't around on weekends. But we knew that we wanted to try it on a weekend and this seemed like the year to do it. Also, the coast proximity to Halloween helps with the costumes because if people already have their costumes ready for Halloween, they can kind of wear it to library con as well. Why not? We also expanded to both floors of the library this time. The first year we were sort of confined to the first floor, but as the event grew and as we brought in more things for them to do, we expanded to both floors and we did let students know ahead of time this year about the study space disruption. Another thing we added, we were able to do a showing of the movie Hocus Pocus the Friday before the event as sort of a promo. Our student activities department was able to sponsor that, which we were very grateful for. I think it did bring some light to the fact that this event was happening. We did have a pretty good turnout. About 10 students showed up in their pajamas. Those jammies were super cute. Yeah, and we popped some popcorn and showed the movie and they had a good time. And then the main thing that helped us grow from year one to year two was we had much more campus-wide involvement. You can see just the list of things that we were able to offer expanded so much. We were able to pull on a lot of the different clubs and interests that we have around our campus. So things like the Gamer Lounge. We have an anime and gaming club and they were kind of in charge of that. Our architecture club held a Lego build. We had the vendors, the local public library was able to bring two escape rooms this time instead of just one, just because those were so popular faculty involvement. You can see in the picture that we have there, we have a faculty member who is super into D&D. So he made a station that was just to create your own D&D character station. That was a huge hit. His wife happens to be a very avid cost player. So she did a little lightning talk and had her costumes and props and things there. Our computer club had a VR headset that they set up and let students do a little VR station. It was just, it was really cool to see how different areas of the community and our campus were able to come together and just contribute their own kind of thing and it contributed to the whole event. So definitely we're able to offer a lot more. That's nice, I think to have those kind of smaller things. I mean, some people may be more intimidated by come to this event or area to play D&D when they've never done it before. Just do the beginning part. Just do, create a character, get the idea. Some other time you can actually get into actually doing it. So it gets a little taste or a little tease. Yeah, exactly. And I think that works well when, you know, they're able to move from sort of one station to another and it's a very sort of fluid environment like that. So just to show you some pictures, some of our costumes on the right is our photo booth station with a few little fun props. The top photo is our vendor Bearded Dragon Games and Comics. They were their both years total hit. Bottom left was our crafting stations where students were able to make their own wands and paint masks and picture frames. So our students here really love crafting. So we knew that they would gravitate towards that right away and they did totally needed a geeky craft station. Yeah. And then the bottom right is just our architecture club with their Lego build, which, you know, students, everybody at all ages, I think can appreciate Legos. So that was popular as well. This is Barbara, our cosplay expert on the left. She, like I said, brought her props and costumes and talked to students about how she made them and she was very busy lady all night. Yes. She had people swarming her all night with questions and she also did our costume contest as well. She was the judge's choice. Yep. And just to show you a few more of our costume contest entries, they really came from a really wide variety of pop culture areas, which I think is great. There was a little something for everybody. This was at the end of the night when we were announcing our costume contest winner, both the people's choice and judge's choice and doing some prize drawings there at the end. So you can see, you know, the students put together some really great costumes. I was impressed. And of course we had staff involvement too because the event was so close to Halloween and we like to do a staff coordinated costume each year. We decided to combine them and we did Star Wars. So we were able to wear that for library con and Halloween as well. So if you can get your staff involved, it sort of encourages everybody to have fun. Got to kind of tall yoda there, but that's okay. Kind of a tall yoda, but not much you can do about that. Okay, so what went right with year two? The additional escape room was very appreciated. Full, it was full yet again. They brought back their Harry Potter escape room as well as the Rocky Horror Picture Show themed escape room, which was very popular because our campus drama club had just done Rocky Horror the previous semester. So there was definitely good interest in that. Another thing that we were really proud of with year two was the geek inclusivity was totally like to call us. So we were just really trying to have a little something for everyone, even if you're not the traditional geek but you just want to come in and do a craft or something, that's awesome. And I think that kind of gathered a collection of, you know, more diverse students for sure. Better signage this year. The first year was a little confusing about where everything was. So we made a point to make better signage, but there's still room for improvement. My best advice with the signs for the event is make them bigger than you think you need. Most of the ones that I made that we hung from the ceiling or around the building were composed of like two 11 by 17 papers that I had put together, which seems huge when they're crowding my small office, but then once you get them out there in the building, you know, we have a decently sized space and it doesn't quite have the same effect that you expected. So that's another thing on our list for next year. Cosplay demonstration, as I said, was super popular. The help from other student groups and departments was huge. I mean, I can't say enough about that. That's really what we wanna emphasize to you guys more than anything is pull on your community, see what people are willing to contribute and how they geek and that can save you money, effort and it can just really help to grow your event. But if they're coming and they're excited, it's hard not to share any excitement as a new student coming in and going, hey, what's D&D? What's this costume contest? Anything that helps with that? As you said, as you label it, the geek inclusivity. There are so many different things that people are interested in. It's huge. It's insane to even try and keep up with all of it. Everybody can find something. Yeah. And lastly, the ticketing went more smoothly with our raffle tickets. The main change we made there is instead of giving everybody the tickets at the beginning in their goodie bag with a paper about what goes to what we tried to give them the tickets at their point of need. So one of the things was if you fill out a survey, you get a raffle ticket, but you don't get the ticket until you fill out the survey. Or if you go to vote for the costume contest, you get your ticket as you're voting. So it made more sense. Yeah, it cleared up a lot of confusion. And all those tickets were tied to your door prizes, those hourly door prizes. That being said, there were still some things that could have gone a little bit better. Our attendance was significantly lower. I think we had about 200 students this time, which we kind of anticipated, but like I said, we wanted to try having it on a weekend just to see. But I think it's important to note that just because we only had 200 people doesn't necessarily mean it was a failure. I mean, it's still 200 people. It's still way bigger than anything else we do. And the students who did attend were very enthusiastic, I think, and it wasn't like the ones who were there had planned to come there and they were ready to go. The lightning talks, we transitioned from that faculty panel to lightning talks and they were kind of poorly attended. And we think that might be because they were a little too academic in nature. We kind of gave the professors freedom to choose what they wanted to speak about. And I think a lot of students viewed that as too much like going to class during the week and listening to these people talk, even though they were doing it on more fun pop-cultury topics, and also the prior year they had offered extra credit and we don't think that that happened this year. It's always a big incentive. So we're looking for, that's one area that we want to change for next year and kind of encourage them to be involved in sort of a more fun, organic way, kind of like that faculty member who is very into D&D and to create your own character station, that worked really well. So I think sort of the key is going to be asking them what they geek and how they can contribute even if it's not in an academic lightning talk. And at that point it's our responsibility to really figure out how to facilitate that. Yes, yes. The costume contest entry process was a little fumbly. It got bottlenecked at the beginning when everybody was coming in at the beginning of the event and we had one person who was trying to get people to fill out an entry form, take their picture, print the picture and then post the picture in the area where the voting was. And it was just too much for one person, particularly like I said at the beginning when everybody was coming in. So that sort of could have been streamlined a little bit better. And then also people only had one vote. So if they voted too early on in the evening and then somebody else came in with an awesome costume and entered a little bit later, they weren't able to vote for them. So that was kind of unfortunate that the people who showed up later kind of were at a disadvantage. So we needed to tweak that, we needed to tweak that for next week. It wasn't horrible, but it's just something that could have gone a little more smoothly. I anticipated vendor needs. This was interesting. So we had a couple of vendors who arrived and then we found out that they needed laptops and a wifi connection, which that's something that has to go through the IT office and they weren't there on a weekend. And it was just that was one of the things that we ended up scrambling around to do the second year during the event. So we definitely plan on sending them out, just a questionnaire ahead of the event this year and saying, okay, what do you need so we can get those anticipated ahead of time? And these vendors were vendors that we had had the first year who didn't have these needs the first year, but apparently needed the second year. So it was hard to anticipate. And then lastly, the cold salmon and stinky cheese. So you'll see in the image there, we had contacted our campus catering to provide some food for this event. And they had done it in the first year, they did a great job. We had talked with them vaguely about doing some kind of mad scientist scene for this. So we were excited about that. Then when the day of the event came, it became kind of evident that we think they forgot about us until the day of. So I imagine that it was something like the show chopped if you watch that where you have this mystery basket and you're trying to scramble and see how you can fit these different ingredients that you have at your disposal together. So they gave us this bed of spinach with cold salmon and like craisans and corn and then a cheese plate and some veggie crudité. And like we were grateful to have the food, but it was really not the thing that you would anticipate eating at an event like this. Not at all. And the students let us know that both at the event and in their feedback surveys, the most common comment we got was cold salmon and stinky cheese that they did not like. So this really wasn't something that we could have anticipated, but we wanna make sure that that communication is a little better in the future. And you know, obviously we're able to laugh about it now, but as it was happening, it was just the most bizarre thing. Yeah. So next question. You don't think you can predict? Yes. Yes, I mean, nothing else we gotta laugh. And we ordered a pizza, and it's a different story. I mean, we may or may not have shared it with some of the students that we asked for it. Yeah. We're gonna be from the salmon. Anyway, so that's sort of an overview of what the each year looked like, but now we wanna move into the sort of behind the scenes. The advice we have for you, should you decide to put on an event like this? And Liz is going to talk a little bit about that planning. Okay, so key elements of planning. Start early. So we've already started planning for this year's library con, you know, tentative dates. We've rolled around a couple of groups on campus have already said, hey, hey, are you doing it next year? We want back in or, hey, can you, you know, find room for us to try it this next year? It sounds really cool, we love hearing that. So we're feeling out, you know, who we're partnering with. We also took a really good look over our surveys, as you know, whole salmon and stinky cheese, but more importantly to see how we're going to grow. And, you know, our students are really good about telling us what they like, what they wanna see. So we take that very, very seriously. And I hope that you can see that between year one to year two that we did a lot of growth and a lot of that was driven by our surveys. So find your key players and delegate to their strengths. I think if there's any one thing that's the most important out of this, it's really figuring out how your community geeks and where their strengths are. So for example, you know, the second year we reached out to student groups, they're great. Their word of mouth, it beats nothing. It's the best form of advertisement, but they need some reminders. If you're working with students, you know, it takes a little extra nudging sometimes, but they can be a huge help when it comes to manpower. And they're so enthusiastic, they're great. They're worth that time. Faculty, they have great geeky talents. It's just a matter of pulling it out of them and figuring it out and then showcasing it. So, you know, we keep hitting up our physics professor who loves D&D and, you know, our other professor who loves cosplay. They just, they bloomed beautifully at this event. But it's just a matter of figuring it out what they like to geek about. And after that, they take off. Make a marketing timeline because you wanna keep things fresh. If you're dealing with students, the more frequency and seeing different changes, it just keeps it in the forefront of their brain. It keeps them thinking about this really cool event that they wanna be a part of. Outreach, it should be intentional. So, like I said before, you know, students, you need a little bit more outreach than faculty and maybe a little bit more, you know, more so for faculty than you would your vendors. I mean, our vendors, I think, second year I called them once. They said, hey, are you on board? They said, yep, give us the date and the time and we'll be there. And that was pretty much it. They're ready to go. So, also have like a timeline of when you reach out for vendors, helpers, et cetera. Kate can attest to this more so for her marketing piece, but color coding is your friend. Lists and color coding, Liz will tell you that even just for the signage at the event, I had like a color coded list and then a different color coded list that arranged the signs in a different way and then a map that went along with the color coded list. So, you know, it's better to over plan as always. And I think if there's something you think you might forget, make sure you don't. Yeah, yeah. That's all I can say to that. It's just, it's such a very busy type of program and it's easy to forget those things. There's a lot of moving parts for sure. And I think more openly now than ever, I think we geek on organizations. Yes. Yeah, we geek. Thank goodness, right? So, okay, a little bit more of the nitty gritty here. So how we leverage those resources across campus. So year one, our helper list, we didn't have student groups. Again, it was my first year. I really wasn't sure. It was just too worried that students wouldn't be reliable. So I didn't really grab for any of them and I also didn't know who to grab out for, but year one was a great springboard for figuring that out. Community partners, we have an amazing local public library, Huntington Memorial Library. When I called them up, I said, hey, you know, I heard that you do 3D printing. And that's when I got on the conversation of, well, hey, we also have an escape room. And they spoke our language. So we were bonded at that point. So they're our partner for years to come, as far as I'm concerned. Bearded dragon, comics and games, they've been with us since the start. They're also just over the hill, local group that does all of the more classic geeky things that you would expect to be at a library con. Southside Mall Cinemas, they obviously didn't want to come to the event, but they donated some door prizes. All of our community partners, we didn't charge them to table. We just asked them to donate a door prize to save, to keep that cost. And they were happy to do that. I mean, it benefits them, it benefits us. It just, it's a really happy relationship. Yes, yes, it's very good. And so Green Dode Bookstore also came. We had a local artist that did a lot of beautiful artwork in the theme of our event that she, I think she made quite a killing on all of that. Our campus partners, we had campus dining services. Don't underestimate the power of food. If it's free, they're common. And I think that we put it right close to the entry door so they could see it. They happen to wander into the library. The first thing they see is the food and then they wanna see what's going on. Yep, yep, exactly. So I think that that had a lot of power for us. But if you don't have something like Caddy, really take stock of your local area resources. Like you might be really geeky about your farmers markets. We kind of are too. Local area restaurants might wanna come to campus and work with you. You could always reach out to the food bank or we also have a stellar culinary program that maybe you could leverage a little help from them as well. There's other options. Also, and all the time campus partner was our Barnes and Noble bookstore on campus. They donated a lot of great prizes. And I can't say enough about our faculty speakers and our helpers as well. So we're really lucky to have a really great community of helpers right from the get go. Year two. And you can see in year two just how much we've grown just in the area of student groups. I mean, the college players, that's our local drama club on campus. And they sort of served as MCs for the event. As I said, Anime and Gaming Club contributed the Gaming Lounge, Computer Club brought their VR headset, Architecture Club did the Legos. Meeting Professionals International is a group of our hospitality students. And they just came in, they ran our craft table for us. And they were great at that. And our campus also puts a lot of emphasis on community service. So you have students who are always looking for community service hours. So we put out a call and we got several students just to help set up the table for them. And they were very helpful. We've maintained those community partners. Those are largely the same as the first year. Campus partners, we added a couple more. A big one was the Center for Student Leadership and Engagement. We had picked them as somebody, a department that we might wanna reach out to and see what they would like to contribute. And upon meeting with them, we, Liz and I have always had our list of pie in the sky, dreams like yes. If we had unlimited budget, what would we want? And so we went in there and we really weren't sure how that meeting was going to go. But we quickly found out they wanted to contribute to us, but they didn't have ideas. We had the ideas and they had the money that they wanted to throw at us. So they ended up sponsoring that screening of Hocus Pocus as well as they brought in a caricature artist who did free characters only. So that was like beautiful for us to hear that they just wanted to pay for something for us. So if you can find somebody who has money that they're looking to throw at things, that can be a huge help. But it doesn't have to be something that big. I will say, the next thing on the list is the Office of Residence Life. Amazing. They had walkie-talkies that they weren't using. So we borrowed those and that was a huge help. They had a button maker that they let us borrow and we use those buttons as prizes for the escape rooms. And it's just like, it doesn't have to be something big. Like that really didn't hurt them at all to let us borrow their walkie-talkies for one night, but it was a huge help to us. It saved our feet. Yes, much less walking around in the first year. So reach out to those people if you're in an academic library on your campus or in your community, you can hide a bad small budget with enough community partnerships for sure. So just to give you a sense of the marketing timeline, I wanted to touch on when we sent everything out. So six weeks out, we put out a save the date. This went out in our campus email that goes out daily as well as we have digital signs around campus. So I made like a little sign to put on that. We also did library displays and bulletin boards both years. Liz did an awesome thing the first year where she took all of our library staff and she Photoshopped us to be different superheroes based on the roles that we fill within our library and did it as sort of a meet the staff thing at the beginning of the semester, which was awesome. We've done bulletin boards. She and I did a Mario themed one this past year. So you can really do a lot to sort of build the hype within your library as well. Four weeks out, we put out the call for the costume contest. This just went out in the email and on those digital signs again. But the timing of this was important because it was right before our students went home on fall break and we wanted them to know that like if they have costumes at home to bring them back and students need those reminders. They do need those reminders. Yeah, two weeks out, we put out a more detailed teaser because at this point we had confirmed what vendors and things were going to be there. So we're able to give them a little bit more. And again, this went out both in that email and on the digital signs again. And then the week of the event, we did the movie showing promo. We put up tent cards both in the library and the dining calls to sort of get at those students who maybe aren't in the library that often but they go to the dining calls. They could see that this event was happening. And then the email just the week of reminding everybody that library study space is going to be disrupted. And if you want to study on Sunday evening, you're going to have to find some work to do it. And we didn't really get any complaints about the second year of all that. So that definitely worked. And I also want to say that most of this advertising, we just used Canva. If you haven't used Canva, it's a wonderful website for creating flyers and... Love Canva, yes. It's amazing. With the zero graphic design training and education, you can be a graphic designer. It's definitely helpful if you have a tiny bit of like Photoshop knowledge, but you really don't need it. And I'm going to show you the next few slides are just to give you samples of some of the marketing that we put out there. And they have great just pre-made forms that you can just plop your own information into. Their templates are the best and they're free. And they're free, mostly free. There is paid content, but you can get around it. So this was our save the date for the first year. Pretty straightforward. Second year our save the date was more of a Mario theme. Just go along with the bulletin board that we had done. Whiteboard surveys. Very cool. This is a tool that I love to use. They're easy, they're free, they're fun and they're interactive. So the first year I put out this whiteboard at the front of our library and just said, if you could have one superpower, what would it be? And you could see that students just loved this. It got huge feedback. I will say, if you're working with college students you do need to monitor this because they do like to see what they can get away with. But then the second year I just asked, what library icon event are you most excited about? And it didn't get as good of a response but it's an easy way to just, at least people when they walk in they see that it's there and that it's happening. And I also just wanna say that you can use this for other non-library icon questions too. I'm an assessment librarian here. So I've used this for really informal assessment just to ask things like, if you could change one thing about the library what would it be? And it's great to just get quick, easy feedback or just if you're looking to do something found a couple of weeks ago we asked, if you could meet one fictional character, who would it be? So it's kind of easy passive programming. And the only real pain with it is that you do have to monitor it and make sure nobody's writing anything profane, but most of the time they're better than you think. Like the students do behave most of the time. And you've got a little bit of a following. Don't forget. The more of these you do, the more people anticipate that they'll be there. This was our teaser for year two. So you can see a little more detail about what's going to be there. This is our tent card for the first year. Again, a little simpler superhero themed. This was a tent card that we put out for year two for the Hocus Pocus screening in particular. And I just, I love this tent card. I think it's so cute. That was a pre-made Canva template. And I just popped in the information that we needed. It was perfect. It's totally free, yeah. Tent card for the actual event from year two. Classic library con colors. Yeah, those colors. We tried to tie everything in in the same colors. And I think Liz and I still have memorized the hex codes for that red, yellow and blue. We dream in those colors. Oh lord, yes. And Liz is gonna talk to you next about our schedules that we printed out both years. Yes, so what you're seeing now is the year one schedule. So it's really cool. It's got some nice eye catching colors, but here's where it kind of fell a little short. We missed out on using the backside of the page. And with these being tucked into our event bags, space was kind of important. It was eye catching and clean, but there was not enough event detail and the layout could have been a little easier to read. You know, when it's been a long night, that blue on that black is a little tough to read. I mean, they've got younger eyes than me, but gotta consider those things. And also in the event bag, with this was a half sheet of directions with tickets stapled to it. Again, it kind of was a little bit of a late afterthought when we were prepping for and stuffing the bags. But we had never done this before. So we were kind of just resiling. So we ended up remedying the following year, the next year, and kind of marrying the two onto one sheet. I'll advance the slide so you can see that. So this is year two, front and back. We kind of chunked it out according to the physical location that the event was gonna happen in the library. Because again, it was the weekend we were actually taking up a lot more of the library. So we kind of needed to have a little bit more direction. And like I said before, we used the backside. This is where we decided to clarify about the tickets and how they get used. But like Kate had said earlier, we started handing out the tickets at the point where they would need to catch them in. So we could explain it to them a lot more easily. We ended up getting a lot less clarifying questions on our ticketing system because of that. But again, our classic library con colors. We're probably gonna use that. We should build a logo, but I feel like these are our colors. Colors are serving as our logo, right now. Our signature thing. And then this is just more event signage. You can really do a lot to set the stage for the event even as you're setting up the one on the far right. Just little tiny things that you can add in to sort of build that environment and the ambiance and get students anticipating what will be at this event and get everybody excited. And don't overlook the smaller things, I guess is what I'm saying. But also again, make the signs bigger so you think you need because it really does help to sort of build the boundaries of where the event is happening and what's where. Like I said, we hung some signs from the ceiling which helped because when you do have a crowd of people you can't necessarily see what's on the other end of the room. So those are helpful. But I think if you plan far enough ahead you can do a lot with the signs. There were a lot of them, but I was really pleased with the way that they ended up looking. You spent a lot of hours on those signs. Like I said, I made like three different lists. But the earlier you can start in on those and just kind of it's a nice touch to add to your event. Lastly, I wanna talk about assessing and debriefing. So what you see here is just a half page survey that we handed out the first year. And it was really simple. I asked three questions. What did you like the most? What did you like the least? What are your suggestions for next year? And honestly, it worked perfectly. It gave us exactly the feedback that we needed to know. It got right at the heart of everybody's opinions about how this event went. So we ended up using it the second year too. And it really, it just, it gives you everything that you need to know. You don't need to make it complicated. And they're kind of fun to go through. You see the same things coming up over and over again. The first year, over a third of respondents said that they loved the escape rooms. And that's why we were able to get to the next year. That being said, you see the little star in the upper right hand corner that says no bearded dragons. Sometimes they comment funny things that you don't anticipate. So we mentioned bearded dragon games and comics was our vendor. At least two students we found out through these surveys we're anticipating having live bearded dragons at this event, which we never would have known. Yeah, so it gave us such a good lab, but they, you know, I mean, they didn't want to hold them. They wanted them to hold them pet. They also mentioned, you know, just funny feedback like that that, you know, you miss out on if you don't ask. So we gave them raffle tickets for incentive and we got really good feedback. And I also just want to say in terms of debriefing, write down your thoughts before you forget. I won't make you do it like the evening of the event because you're exhausted and tired and brain dead. But the next day, write down what happened, what went well, what didn't, what needs to change. Those little things you don't think you're gonna forget, but you do, you do. And that, you know, we always write down our feedback and then we leave it for like a week or two to recover and then you go back and you discuss. So that's kind of what I have to say about assessing and debriefing that can be really helpful as you go to plan in future years, the more that you can document what happened and how everybody felt about it, the better shape you'll be in to, you know, make improvements going forward that will make your future events even better. So future library cons, right? Cause we're gonna have another library con. We can't, we can't not. Of course, I think you have to, yes. For everything, ever and ever, they love it. So we're gonna move back to a weeknight. That makes perfect sense. We heard it loud and clear from them. You know, they were telling us throughout the event that, hey, we're glad that you're having it, but you're in the week. So yes, we can. That's when they're on campus. That just makes more sense. We're gonna encourage fun faculty interaction. So we don't know entirely what that means. We're trying to, like Kate said, we wanna get away from that academic feel that the students weren't all too into at the time. So we're just gonna try and get out of those faculty that they've come for both years. So I know that they're geeky. We just didn't have more fun with it. Yeah, we just need to extract that geeky from them. And that's our mission this summer to kind of figure that out for them. So we're thinking maybe we wanna reach out to our culinary students. Delhi is pretty known for their culinary cuisine. So we don't entirely know what angle we're gonna work, but we're gonna see if we can reel them in. We almost had a guest speaker this last year. So we're gonna push for that a little bit more too, maybe kind of in sub of having like a talk that our faculty put on, you know, maybe not, but everything is still kind of in the very open planning stages. But if we could get a really good guest speaker, we almost had one that I think he was involved in the art for Spider-Man. I'm gonna work on that real hard for this next year. See if we can get it. And that just goes back to the idea of pulling on your community versus and seeing who has connections, right? And it's funny because the person that knows this guy, and I wish I could remember his name because I think anyone who geeks out there would recognize his name. And I can't think of it and I'm sorry I failed you, but it turns out that the person who runs our Barnes and Noble bookstore babysat his kids. So he might be able to get him to come in. Connections coming off warm. You never know. Yeah, it's who you need. You don't know the power of your community until you start reaching out and grabbing at all of those interests, everything. And I think you also need to find someone in the area who has some pet bearded dragons to bring along. I know there's probably a demand for it. That's a good thing, yes. There's gotta be somebody who owns them and be happy to bring them along and. Yeah, and like we have a veterinary science program here. So we have students that have, you know, beagles and all kinds of different animals on campus all the time. So it's not entirely outside of the realm of possibility. Imagine the beagles coming over in costume. Yes, I can't and I would love it. Can you put a little cape on a bearded dragon, sure. Yeah, it's costume contest, so. Pet costume contest. There you go. That would be fun, yes. And as you can see, we respond to your, your requests and comments. We're paying attention. That's good. So we're welcoming any questions now. Obviously our emails are up there. If we're more than happy to help you if you're thinking about planning something similar or you have questions that we don't get to answer before the end of the session, please feel free to reach out. Yeah, yeah. All right. We do have a few questions that did come in, yes. So thank you so much, Caitlyn and Liz. Like I said, this is one of one's, you know, different one I hear what you guys did and it sounds like it was really just like any sort of a, you know, con, a comic con or something at an academic level. And size and, and having those, the budget that you have to work with, you know, working university, it can be, it's not, it's, can be a struggle. But, and we got some comments. So yeah, like great ideas and thanks for the marketing tips and timeline. I cannot, yes, I agree total, coldheartedly that the tips about how to have lists and keep track of things. I've got my pieces of paper here from previous talking to my libraries. My notes last year to tell me what to do this year because a year later, I'm not going to remember. I thought about, yeah. You never know. You know, like we said, it's so important to make sure your marketing stays fresh because especially our college students, you know, I think they get used to seeing the same things on those digital signs and maybe they only skim that email that goes out. So, you know, as many venues you can get your marketing in and just keep it fresh, keep changing it. Absolutely. Now, we do have some questions here. If anybody does have any questions, go ahead and type them in to the question section of your go-to webinar interface and I can read them off here. I think many of these questions came in before you got to certain parts of your presentation because I believe these are things that you had talked about. So, what do you want to know about? Did you have a time limit for each area or was it all going on at the same time? You could do what you wanted. It's kind of fluid. Yeah. We didn't really limit anything. It didn't seem to be a problem. Yeah. I mean, the only things that we really had timed were the escape rooms because they need to be. We had a set time for when we would like announce the costume contest winners and things like that. But like Kate said, everything else, like board games and when you could come up and say create your D&D character with our physics instructor, you know, all of that was very fluid. We wanted people to be able to walk in the door and just take it in on their time. Yeah. It was pretty organic, particularly the gaming. It was kind of just, they sort of policed themselves. Same with the Gamer Lounge. We had a couple gaming systems set up in there and they really did a good job. I could see it getting maybe a little out of control if we do go back to having 400 plus people. You know, it might be something that needs to happen in the future, but for now, you know, they were pretty good. They didn't really need any interference on our part. So you didn't have as many in the second year? No, we had about 200 the second year. Yeah, interesting. You just... I think it's just that, you know, they all go home on the weekends. Right, timing. Yeah, that's why you're going back to the week night. What they lacked in numbers, they made up for an enthusiasm for sure. They wanted to be there and they had to be there. It wasn't just a matter of people wandering in. They think they're going to study for the evening and then we had, do you remember that one gentleman? He came in costume and he came like an hour before. Yes. I was so excited that he was like, can I help you set up? I was like, well, yes, I guess you can. Yeah, he has all the help you want. He needs, yeah. All right, and I think that's just it. So we added a couple of extra hours too. We made the event longer the second time around and these kids came in at the beginning and they stayed right up until the end of the event. And even then, like, we were very lucky. They're such good kids, but they were like, oh, can we help you clean up? And oh, do you have ideas for next year? Like they were hitting us up, right? They're good. So yeah, very enthusiastic the second year. That's awesome, success. We had quite a few questions about vendors. What types of vendors? Who were your vendors? What type of organizations from off campus did you partner with or at least tried to? I think you did give a lot of information about that. Yeah, comic bookstores, local bookstores, artists. It depends on who's in your community, but those were the big ones. Yeah, and like before, you really want to get a feel for what you have to offer in your area. It doesn't necessarily have to follow a marble theme. And those are the vendors you reach out to that might be applicable. Like we reach out to the movie theater and some of them might give you posters, which you can use to decorate with. Our local one does not. There's a lot of different, like we have there's gaming stops in the area that might give you gift card certificates for donating prizes. Like there's a lot of different ways to reach out. And I think that's just very individual community based. Yeah, and I think if you come up with this idea, like you guys and like your director, people who are going to come up with this are in the geek world already and may already know, oh, I need, I know this comic shop. I know this bookstore works with us before. I know this gaming shop. Let's go to them and find where the people are that we could bring in. Yeah. For sure. It definitely helps. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I didn't know a darn thing about it. I've learned a lot. Oh, here's some librarians. We would love to have this at my library, but with a small public library and a small staff, it'll be difficult. And she wants to also know, what is the cost on a limited budget? I know. Yeah, I was gonna say, so we didn't pay anything for door prizes. Everybody that tabled brought a door prize. And like I said, those that didn't table, we're really happy to donate. So you might be able to do a lot with that. We didn't buy Legos. I think our architecture club brought their own. I think we just paid for some crafting stuff. Crafting supplies, like table cloths for the different tables that the vendors were on. It sounds very similar to any library program really. I mean, it's just a different focus. There weren't too many big expenses. I mean, we were lucky to not have any costs for food. So that was great for that. Just trying to think, I mean, and we really didn't, sometimes we pay our local library to run off some 3D printing items to kind of give away to or as swag and our swag bags and stuff. And they partner with us really well and their prices are really low. So if I had to guess, we probably kept it at around $100, maybe less. And we actually have a comment for someone else to help answer that question. Nice, which actually kind of plays right up with what you just said partnering. This person is saying, tell the last small library that just asked about how to do this with a small staff and a limited budget to partner with other small libraries in your area. That's what a group of six tiny libraries in one county did in Iowa. They held a highly successful con that they've repeated since. So it doesn't have to be just you reach out to other libraries near you and see if everybody wants to get together and do some sort of event. And then you can all share in the work and the cost and whatever. I think that's a fantastic idea. Yeah, I mean, that's how we were able to provide those escape rooms. So we're the most popular thing both years is that we knew that the public library over the hill ran them and had the stuff that they could bring to us. Yeah, all they asked was for us to put their name out there and we're like, absolutely a thousand times over. And that librarian who asked Rachel Crescent said, wow, thank you for the advice, definitely. All right, just a couple of last few things here. One place that they had a library con they had a local petting zoo come at theirs and a stranger things themed escape room. I just mean, that's one that I've been interested in putting together maybe because since it's been so popular, we've been thinking like we should really put together a few just to hold a standalone programming too. And then one other tip, I'll give this one and then we'll kind of wrap it up. So we can move on to our next set of presenters. Our library kind of outgrown our little library. So we partnered with the city and moved it to the city park. Doesn't even have to meet those people. Yeah, yeah. Cool, yeah, it's like we said, it's just about figuring out what works for your community and what they wanna see and what talents and treasures you can pull. Yeah. You never know. So this is what I just wanted to confirm. Yes, Canva was the name of the graphic site, C-A-N-V-A. Just go ahead and Google that Canva and you will find it out there free, easy to use. So I think we'll have to wrap that up for the questions, everything. Definitely reach out to Liz and Caitlin there, their emails with any other questions or info you want from them, tips, tricks, what to do with your escape room at your library, whatever size it may be. Yes, absolutely. We'd love to hear your questions and how you are doing things at your library. We like to bounce ideas off all the time. All right, so, all right. That will wrap it up for our 11 a.m. simp. Thank you so much, guys. That was fun. I wish I went to Sydney, Delhi now. I'm not in college though, but. Everyone there's having a great time. All right.