 Good morning, and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time, and we do record the show every week. So if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. You can always go to our website and watch any of our recordings. And I'll show you at the end of today's show where those archives are that you can watch. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch. So please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone who you think might be interested in any of the topics we have on the show. We do do a mixture of things here on Encompass Live, book reviews, interviews, mini training sessions, demos of services and products. Basically, our only criteria that it is something that has to do with libraries, something that libraries are doing, something that we think libraries should be doing, new services or products that may be of interest to libraries. And it could be libraries of all types. Here at the Nebraska Library Commission, we are the state agency for libraries across the state, and that is all states, all libraries. Public, academic, K-12, correctional, museums, and your library, we would have something on the show for you. We do have Nebraska Library Commission staff sometimes come on and do presentations for us for things that we're offering here through the Library Commission specifically, but we also bring in guest speakers, and that's what we have this morning. On the line with us is Janet McAllister, and she is the director of the Rochester Public Library District in Rochester, Illinois. Good morning, Janet. Good morning. Thank you. Hi. And she's going to talk to us about, as you can see on the screen here, engaging your community, some great patron-driven programs, things that they've done at their library. Now, this is a session, I'll tell you, that was originally, we do also here out of the Nebraska Library Commission, an annual online conference, a whole day long of sessions called Big Talk from Small Libraries. That's done at the end of February, and it is libraries who have a population served or an FTE of less than 10,000 or less, so small libraries. And this is one session, we get too many submissions, too many proposals for our one day long conference. So, if anyone that we can't fit onto that day, I bring on to our weekly end conference lot. Maybe someday we'll extend it to two days, we'll see. I'm in charge of that, so we'll see if I can handle two days. But today, we have Janet joining us now to talk about what they did in their library. So, I will hand over you to take it away and tell us what you did, what you've been doing there. Thank you so much. Welcome. I'm so glad you guys are here today. And I can share with you some of the fantastic programs my library has been doing in the past few years. I am the library director. I am reusing the slides that I used this past year at the Illinois Library Associations Conference. At that session, I also have my circulation manager and my adult program and outreach coordinator with me. They're not in my office today, but I still wanted to give them props for all their input for this presentation that we did. So, if you do, I do at the end of this presentation have a slide for if you have questions, but I am absolutely happy if you want to ask them during the presentation at any time we could stop and talk about any questions, you need more details instead of waiting to the end. So, don't be shy and ask questions. So, I'm just going to give you a little bit of some stats because I always felt like that's one thing people say. Well, how big are you in comparison to your own library that you're at? So, our population, the village is 2,893, but we are a larger district population of 7,993. So, I also went ahead and did some updates on some of our numbers so that you can see that we in the last year had 3,642 card holders and now we are up to 5,065. And that's a great, great increase and a big part of that is we've been going out into the community. So, we will go to our sparks of the park as something that our community has every year around the 4th of July. And so, we are actually going out and taking our iPad and having a tent and we are asking people to sign up for the card. So, we're trying to get out in the community. We're going to the school to make sure all the kids have library cards. So, we're actually leaving the library building, which you're going to hear me say several times because that's one of the things you have to do. You're going to be engaging with your whole community, not just the patrons that are coming in. You know, your regulars that come in every couple of weeks or sometimes every day. But going out and finding those people who aren't using the library, maybe don't even know where the library building is. So, we've had a great increase in several of our numbers over the past couple of years and that's really because we've been doing so much outreach. So, we'll be talking more about that in future slides. But another number is that I have five full-time employees, myself and four other employees, and then I have six part-time. So, compared to other libraries, that might seem, you know, small libraries, they only have two people. We seem really large, but if you compare to a lot of the large libraries in Chicago area or Springfield, which we're right outside of Springfield, we're very small compared to them. So, I also wanted to show you, like, the number of adult programs, the number of just our total overall programs offered. Our visit, our library visitor number has really gone up. We have over 89,000 people coming into the library every year. So, it's just a great number. One thing that we are really trying to do is we are hoping to hit over 100,000 checkouts. That's kind of our next goal. We like to set more goals for ourselves and we would love to see that number increase. And so, we're hoping that next year we can, we've even got a big sign up and we're going to keep tallies each month so that the patrons can see with us that if we're going to hit that number. And I think involving them, like, helping, you know, asking them to, you know, check out, keep checking out so that you can help us reach this number. I think will be a big benefit to us to reach that number. So, that is just our number so that you can kind of see compared to where you're at. So, one of the first things that we started was a donation center. And it kind of started with, we had a young man who asked if we could do a coat drive. And so, we were like, that's a fantastic idea. So, we'll do a coat drive. And then the next thing I thought of was like, my kids are out of the school district, they're in college. And so, but I still could do, you know, collect the box tops. Well, you can't just walk into the school and give them your baggie full of box tops because they don't just let everybody in the school building if you don't have children. So, I thought, why don't we collect them here? There's got to be a lot more people like myself. Let's collect them here at the library and then we'll get them to the school. And with that, then it just kind of took on a life of its own. And we do like to have some, set some a little bit of guidelines and rules for things, but we're also very flexible and kind of just let it flow. Like if a patron says, hey, can you collect the milk carton tops for the 4-H, then we're going to go like, that's a great idea. Let's do it. It's so easy. We've got these baskets. We just put a flyer on it. We put it out in our newsletter and social media and just let the community donate. And then we just make sure that it gets to the right people it needs to go to. So it has grown. It started off with just a couple baskets and a couple of things that we're collecting. As you can see from the list, we are asked to collect things. And sometimes we'll do it. It's a one-time only. Sometimes it's an ongoing. The eyeglasses and hearing aids for the Ryan's Club, that's one of those that we have. Every month we have that basket out there and we collect hundreds of used eyeglasses and usually turn that in monthly to the Ryan's Club. Another one that we did was the pillowcases for a little dresses for Africa. And the first time we advertised it, we were hoping to get like 25-50 pillowcases made. And actually our first run, we had 500. So sometimes it can be a little bit overwhelming that this community is very generous. And it's a good problem to have. But sometimes you think it's going to be a smaller and you have to also then plan that, okay, I now have to ship all these dresses. So I just put out a message asking if we could get some donations to help with that shipping. And then the next thing we know the church was joining us. And so these things, you know, you have to be flexible and listen to the community and not be so rigid and think, this is the way I'm going to do it. This is my project. I'm doing it this way. You have to be able to listen and work with the community so that we're all in this together. So another thing that we do that many of you probably do is the food for fines. And we also do the school supply drives. And those have been really well received in the community. The other thing I will talk about a little bit long in another slide is the fleece for project Linus. And that's been one that we've had so many people in different organizations organizations want to join us in. I'm going to go to the next one though and we'll just go ahead and talk about our seed library. I went to another library and I saw this great program and I was very intrigued about creating a seed library. So I started talking to people in my community and found out that a lot of them wanted to start their own gardens and wanted to know more information. And so then I checked with like, and you probably have something similar in your area. Our U of I has an extension. They have master gardeners and most of those organizations will come out and do your programs for free. And so kind of getting people interested in it. We start having the programs. And so then we went and to that library where I saw a really great display of how they had their setup. And so I said, can you share some of this with me? I would like to get this started. I had this old library card catalog that we're not using. I would like to use it. And so he so generously shared all of his templates with me. And so now we have created our seed library and I share the templates with anyone who would like them also because the library and the real sharing is what we really do so well in libraries. And so I was very happy to get his information. And then he's also happy that I was able to tweak it enough to fit my needs. And then we're able to share it with other libraries who are now starting their seed library. Janet, I just wanted to say I love that you're using that old card catalog. That's where you're holding it. That's a great use of one of those. Isn't it awesome? And he had one. I really stole nothing from him, but I absolutely love it. And if you could actually see my office, I go and say old card catalogs that people don't want. And I'm like, how can you just be getting rid of this? I want it. That's one of my goals someday to have one of my own. I haven't found any yet that I can, you know, people's libraries do sell them off or auction them or something. So if your eyes open, you can find them. Yeah. And they are the perfect size for a seed library. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we were able to take so much of the information that he had and tweak it to really fit our needs. We didn't have to go in. It wasn't so labor intensive. Like, you know, we were able to already had a jumping off point. He shared the things that didn't work out as well as he thought or, you know, what worked and what didn't work. And so then we've done the same thing like this didn't work or this worked better doing it this way and how we let people check them out and how, you know, when people bring seeds back to us. You know, all that is, we've got a great system now set up. So it's not really labor intensive for my staff. The very first time it was, you know, contacting different companies to get seeds donated to us and then sorting those seeds and putting them into the wool packets. But now we have people who love it, who come in and say, when do we need to sort seeds for you? You know, so once you get people who are interested, the people who are coming to the classes, the people who are actually checking them out, they will volunteer and help with you because that's their passion is gardening. So and I'm happy to say that this year I have three tomato plants. And so I'm excited because I kill all plants. And I was so excited that my journey in this is that I have picked three tomatoes. I have three plants. I have more growing, but three that are right now. So I feel like a farmer. That's great. You finally found the seeds that work for you. Exactly. Exactly. And so, you know, that's just one person's feeling. You know, how many people had, we have had 250 in 2017, 250 seed packs were checked out. You're making an impact. You're making a difference. And we had our youngest patron check them out was a seven year old young man. And he wanted to grow lettuce. And you'll see a slide coming up shortly. He was actually one of our youngest vendors at our farmer's market. And he brought his lettuce. So just fun stories that you can share that, you know, are making a difference. And small, just a small difference, but that's a difference, you know, so we're educating people. We put out all of our gardening books and they get checked out. And so it helps with having those displays. So we always do like a display at different times of different gardening things and put the books right where people are looking for them, like you're going over the seed area that put books all around it. And so it helps our stats, which is always another big plus. So something that we took over. This is our third year. And our village no longer could. Afford to run the summer recreation program. And it has, as you'll see from the numbers. First, when we took it over, we had 551 kids signed up for this program. So it's a very important program in our community. The children are excited for it. The parents are excited for it. They start running up a half an hour before it even starts for registration. We couldn't just let that go. So we decided that we would incorporate it in with our programs. And so the first year it was a lot of work. And I'm not saying that every library should do this, but it's so amazing. We're slowly incorporating it with our summer reading. So that is our end goal is that it'll just become a summer reading summer rec one program. The thing with this so far is that each of these instructors charge a fee. And so, you know, the library programs are mostly all free. So we're still trying to figure out how we can navigate actually making it a free program. We haven't gotten there yet, but we are. This is what something that we're really working on. And I think that, you know, the sports and the arts and crafts, all these programs are important. And we also then, you know, really tie it into different folks that they can read with people who are active during the summer and continuing to learn. I think it's so important. And this, I mean, just the numbers of children and the parents coming looking forward to this program every year just makes me know that it's so important to the community. And that's what we're here for, for the community. So we listen to them and we know that this is what they want. So just as this community, what I have found, I've been here for six years, I probably didn't mention at the beginning. When I first came in, I had some of my own ideas when I walked in. Like I saw there were only six computers and I was like, I came from a library that had 20 computers just for patrons. So my first, my first reaction was this, this library is going to need more computers. Well, no, this library did not need more computers that, you know, after the first year of watching and seeing what was happening. People come in with their laptops and they want our Wi-Fi. The computers, there are six computers, they never have a line. We have very fast internet. So, and we have very nice computers. It's just because they have their own devices and would rather come in with their laptops. And that's, that's how it works for this community. And another thing that I found is that we offered a slime class, a library free program. And we had six kids show up for it. We offered slime classes, same class through our summer recreation where they had to pay $5 for the class. We had it filled up within minutes and had 10 kids. We ended up doing three classes, so 30 kids. So it's just another one of those things that they want to pay for the class. And the free class had so much lower attendance. Just one of those quirky things that you find out your community is different than a lot of other communities. That's very interesting. Like having it associated with something else that didn't catch on to it, but as its own thing. Yes. It made sense. It's very interesting. And it's, you know, it's like, well, you want to pay the $5. Okay. And it was actually one of our employees who bought it. So that's a class, but it works here. And that was, you know, 30 kids who learned to make slime and had great fun. So, you know, that's that this is the part where we're kind of trying to figure out how the summer wreck and summer reading can go together. You know, but the paying and not paying kind of part of it, but we don't have a question about the summer wreck. Two, where do you, I see a lot of these pictures appear. They might be taking place in the library, but for the outside thing events, do you just still hold them elsewhere in the town, even though the village couldn't afford to actually run the programs. They still use those locations or is everything done at the library? How is that? We have the, we can use the park and we have several churches who volunteer their spaces. I mean, some of the locations that we go to, like our local pizza place that we have, you can go in and the kids get to make their pizzas and they show them how the back room, how things work. And then we have a blue, that's a chocolatier. You know, he makes the chocolate and he goes in and has a class about where the cocoa bean comes from and then they actually get to design their own chocolate bar. And so we, those are actually at those locations. And it's a great partnership between us and local businesses because, you know, it's in there. So it's a win-win situation for those programs. So yes, we have them at different locations. We do like all the arts and crafts here at the library mostly. But church use lets us use the basketball courts. The park has a different area for them to play the goalies and we have baseball at the park. So that is a great partnership that we're able to get free spaces to use. Great. So it's been a lot of work, but it's so rewarding because it's so many kids are part of this. And that's also, we have over 500 kids participate in summer reading also. So some of them are in both things and some are separate. They don't necessarily are in both programs. So we have a community that's really active and really appreciates the library. And they, what their education is important to the community also. So I think that's part of our success with our numbers. It's, you know, the community rallies around education and sports and it's just a good community where the schools are very, a lot of people move into this community for the schools. So that always is a helpful thing for libraries. We have families who are going to come to Storytime. So we're going to come in and check out books for the children. So the next one I'll talk to you about, we'll talk about the farmers market. And this, this, I came from a community that had an awesome farmers market. And so when I came here and there was no farmers market, I was like, oh, well, I can go downtown Springfield. But you've been down, you know, any big community place, there's no parking. It's just a hassle. And so I was thinking that surely we should have a market here. Nobody wanted to start it. So then I found a couple of people who were really excited to think about having a market. And so then we all talked with my friends at the library and they thought it was a great idea. And like two months later, we started a farmers market. And this will be our third year. And it has grown. Our first market had three vendors. And we do it every Saturday and it's out on the library parking lot. And it has now grown. Last Saturday, I believe we had probably 20 vendors. We have music. We have demonstrators come by. We have nonprofits. We have like Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts. So every week we do this from, say, the first weekend in June through the first weekend in October, every Saturday. Another thing that we just tried this year we started is we were doing no direct sales vendors. Our farmers really wanted to have that farmer's feel. So it had to be, you know, it could be crafts, but it had to be handmade crafts. We wanted, we didn't want it to get taken over by direct sales vendors. We had so many of those vendors calling us and saying, can we be part of this? That we decided that last Saturday of every month, so four Saturdays, we would do an inside sales in our community room. And that would be for the direct sales vendors. Those are your like Mary Kay, Tupperware, you know, those kinds of small businesses. And so we've done it two times and that is working out wonderful. Our direct sales people would like to be here every Saturday. And so next year we will be reevaluating. And I think that's another thing to keep in mind is that you always, you know, you start off with an idea and then you just let it grow. And you try to keep everyone happy because we want to keep our vendors within with us from the very beginning happy. But we also want to make the other people in our community happy, those direct sales people. So we're trying to figure out and balance this in a good way. So far what we're doing this year is helping us working. Another thing that we are really excited for, we just got our equipment in and here in Illinois it's called SNAP benefits. So back in the day they were called feed stamps. But so those people who get that debit card with their SNAP benefits on it will actually be able to come to the farmers market and buy their produce. That is, you know, it's anything that's through the government takes a little bit of time, but I've gone through all the paperwork and we finally have it. And so we're really excited because I think that's, you know, something that we should definitely have. And so I'll be excited hopefully this next Saturday to see how it goes. But I'm sure that we will, we have people in the community who will be very happy that we now have this service for them. One thing, you know, it's what has made this a success is the partnerships. Reaching out to Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, the churches, any nonprofit organization. And they actually have, my next page, we'll show you, this is like one of our Facebook postings that we did. It shows all the different types of vendors. We've had a couple food trucks even come to our market. We had someone who was a baker and then we have also had a coffee guy who has now has a food truck. So our vendors are fantastic. Like I said, it keeps growing. My hopes would be maybe someday that the village would maybe want to take this over and let it be down at the park. When we run out of space in our, we don't have that big of a parking lot. And we still, and luckily this starts before the, most of this is before the library's open to be open at 10. So there's enough parking for everyone. But it does take up half the parking lot. And so, I mean, I feel like a really great place would be the park. But I think, you know, if I get it going running smoothly smoothly and can show them that it's no cost to them. You know, that's my kind of my hope is that it becomes a village ran event. Just because it is a lot for the library and the friends to take on. And now they are asking that we do our vendors are asking that we have a couple of holiday events inside the library in our community room. So we're discussing that right now. And I will have to say that I am surrounded by a great team of staff who go above and beyond to make these things happen. So that's another, another plus that I have is that they, you know, don't mind giving up Saturdays and working to make this happen. And I think it takes a whole team of really dedicated people to make these programs happen. And because we are going, I think, above and beyond what a lot of libraries do. And I do want to say, though, there was a library up north who came to my conference presentation and they have started their farmers market in conjunction with their parks department. And she just let me know that they're doing one a month, so they'll have four markets. But it's really exciting whenever you do a presentation and then someone lets you know how it went for them and what they start. So that was pretty exciting. The next thing I want to talk about is our little free libraries. And so we partnered with Boy Scouts and asked if they could help us with the installation. I checked with my village. They let me have two different areas. One is near a bike trail and one is down at the park. And then we just checked this once a month and make sure that the books are that has adequate books. We just try to put paperbacks and put kids books and adult books and some teen books in there. And I'm lucky to say that nobody, there's been no vandalism, there's been no damage that our patrons are getting really good about putting books in there. At first, they were just taking the books and it was never being replenished. So we were constantly going up there and putting more books out. But now it is really caught on where they are starting to put the books in. And so it was just a, that is a great project if you have it in your community. They're just, they're so much fun. I know that a lot of the moms, when they're strollers, they're pushing the kids, the kids always want to get out. You know, and get books from the little library. I did on this for the actual installation, the post and the other items needed. I did write a small grant from Lowe's. They are very good at giving money, especially when you have a partnership with the Boy Scouts for doing this. And then along with that, I wanted to say, from the Little Free Library, we did an action book club. And we took that straight from the Little Free Library site. And one of them that we did is we read Dewey. Everyone knows Dewey, but Kat. And so then we partnered with our local shelter. And we did a craft with it and was bringing in old t-shirts and then creating these toys for the animals. They have a brand new program that I'm just starting to look into with it. It is, the new theme has come together. And I really like, they have a book selection list on there so you can take from kids, teens and adults. And so I'm really thinking this could be a great program in our community. So I like the idea that, you know, we're reading a book and then we're taking action to do some, you know, it combines good reads with good deeds kind of thing. Yeah, I like that. That is more than just doing a book club. Yeah. Yeah, it's exciting. Yeah. People want to do awesome things in their community. Sometimes they want to donate, they want to help. Sometimes they just don't know where or how to. They just need someone to guide them and say, here, do the thing here, do this. And people like to be social in a group. Like our crafting classes go over really well because you sit at the social time that you talk in your, and I think that's people really want that. They really, they need it, you know, we're in a society where we're really cut off with computers and they want that person to person, you know, in person talking. And so we've had a great success with it. I really, I love the idea of the kids and the teens reading books that, you know, we'll talk about encouraged unity and understanding, you know, especially at this time in the world, you know, like just starting to understand each other, listen to each other. And so I think that this is a great time for this type of a book club. And then it also gives you different ideas with the books as to who you can partner with and what you could do. You know, it could be one just going to the park and picking up trash, you know, but you do it as a group. And I think, I think that's a great way to get the community involved. And so I'm hoping that next year I will have that have even more with it having with the kids and the teens. We also started another one, a part of our crafting. We did, we just called it crafting for cause. And so this is where we would meet once once a month. And we would have the pattern available. We also also have our programs be passive. So if you can't make the meetings, we have the instructions and the materials. So we have actually the crafting section in our library shelving units where we have all the craft books that and then we have different materials. We have lots of yarn and fleece and stamps and we have so much stuff. We take donated things and people can check those out. So if you want to try different types of crochet needles, we have sewing machine. We have just lots of things that would have been donated and some things that we have purchased. But we always have the kit there so that you can, if some people would rather just do it on their own or their schedule doesn't match up with the night we're having it. And so we've done that. One of our things that we always leave out as the project Linus and those are the fleece blankets and they're so easy to make. They're the tie knot blankets, two pieces of fleece. You cut them in small strips on the ends and you tie them and you can buy it as kits or you can just buy two pieces of fleece and we have tons of people. We put it, it was in the newspaper, the Springfield newspaper and we started getting actually boxes of fleece being donated to us. And we have one lady who donates regularly every like three months sends us a box of stuff. So then we put it out for people to make the blankets and then we have a person in the community who is our coordinator who takes those blankets to the hospitals. We've had Girl Scouts come in to do these blankets. We've had, oh, we take kits to the assisted living. They love to do the blankets. We'll just have grandparents and their grandkids come in, especially during the summer, like you can tell that they're coming to visit or whatever. They come in and do projects and they just sit down at the tables and take the craft stuff and make them. So I think that's another part of having those passive programs that people can just pick it up themselves and do it. As you can see from this year's stats, I asked her to give me her total stats and she had this year we collected 490 items. So it's a lot, but it's great. So we've really tapped into our community, our crafters, our people who want to give back to society. You know, the people who really care to be doing good, I think. And I think the staff also is passionate about these things. So I think that also helps that we like to craft and we like to read books and we like to talk. And so I think having people who are working that are passionate about the programs is a big class because we talk them up. We just, in conversation, you bring it up and once you ask somebody in person to attend something, I think it goes a lot further than they just read it in the newsletter. And we do, we have a quarterly newsletter that is mailed to everyone's home. And we also have that online and we have email blasts that we use and we put it out on all the social medias. So we have, we do a lot of our marketing, but I still think the best way is more than enough. I feel like when you're at that circulation desk, you have to have people who are going to say, if you take out a craft book that they need to then be on point to say, hey, I see you like to craft. Did you know that we have a craft class at least once a month? We have to be proactive thinking about how you can tell you what they're checking out and what they're, what they're talking to you about into other programs that we have and making that personal invitation to them. It gets a lot more program attendance than just putting it on a flyer, having it up on a wall that nobody really brings. And I have wanted to do away with the mailing of the newsletter because I know most people with the mail comes and you just think, oh, that's junk mail and you throw it away. But I have people in the community who will not allow that to happen that they love getting that newsletter and they love to have that calendar that they pull out and put it on the refrigerator and they know the dates of when the events are happening. So not everyone has moved on to just technology. I have personally, but that doesn't mean your community has to tell you, you have to keep doing what's best for your community, not what you may personally feel like. I use my Google camera for everything and I just, for me, paper is not what I'm looking for, but I do have a community who wants that newsletter. And so I'm listening to them and doing what they want and that's a big part. I think that's very a very important comment. I hope everybody listens to that. What you think is good for them might not match with what they actually want and that you do have a whole levels, multiple levels of people at varying comfort with technology or paper or whatever. And all of them are your, your community and your users and potential users to that you might not have brought in yet. And that, that's the real important thing is, you know, trying to reach out to people who are not using the library. For me, that seems like such an odd thing, like, how could you, how do you live without using the library because I grew up in a library, I always been in libraries, my children have always been in libraries. So for me, it's a very foreign thing to be like, I've run into people and they're like, oh, we have a library and I'm just like, how do you, how are you living without a library? And you're such a, you know, such a value, like just financially, I feel like you can check out DVDs, books, you know, to me, it just is a so, such a foreign idea to not know where your library is and not be using it. But they are, there are people out there and so we have to go out to those places. So one thing we did is, we do a, they call it, we call it Cabin Thiepher and it's our adult reading program, because our summers are so busy with summer reading, farmers market and summer rec. There's just no way we're going to do an adult reading program during the summer. So we do it during the winter. And so one thing we did at the end of the two months, they do a trivia night. So we thought, let's change it up a bit. And if you can see from the one picture, we actually did our trivia night at a local restaurant slash sports bar. And they actually do a trivia one night week, I believe. And so they just tagged, we just tagged onto that and did it as a library trivia night just to get out and get in touch with maybe some people who weren't using the library. So we thought, let's take it out of the library, go someplace different. We've in the past, it always done in our community room. One thing I am seeing with this is that our numbers are dropping down. And so that's another thing that I'm absolutely okay with it. We've done a program for ever and ever and ever. And sometimes they just run their course and, you know, my whole donation center, it, you know, a couple years down the road, it might not be doing as well as it was doing. And it's okay then to let that program go and start fresh with something else, try something different. Maybe the trivia is they don't want to do a trivia night anymore. I mean, there's so many different things to think about, but it's okay when your number starts to go down to just let that program go the direction it's heading. That's one thing with my staff. I tell them, you know, if you have an idea or if a patron has an idea, we will try it. You know, if it's basically we can, but we will try it. And if it fails, that's okay too. Like that's, that's fine. We've learned from something from this and we will try it a different way. Or if we did try something two years ago and it did not go off so well. Well, it could have been timing, it could have been a date, it could have been so many different factors that if somebody wants to try it again and we can afford to do that, then we're going to try it again. Just one time, if it doesn't go right, doesn't mean that it's not going to be a good fit later. So, but my staff all know that, you know, try it. I'm always open to new ideas. They have a lot of free reign with their creativity. And I think when it's something that they're passionate about, something that they really enjoy, it's going to be a better success. We have a, along with this, we also have, like most libraries, we have a daybook club. We have an evening book club and we have a book to book club. I have three different book clubs and they are brand by three different people. So, my adult program coordinator does the daybook club, but I have another employee who does the evening and then I have another employee who does the book to movie because those are the things that they're passionate about. The daybook club does not read the same books as the evening. It's a totally two different set of patrons who are coming in. The same as the book to movie. It's a certain group of people that are coming in and they're looking for a certain type of book, a certain type of movie. And my three people who are in charge of that are doing what that group wants. That makes sense. It's not what book they want to read or what they're hearing other people read. It's what that group is a whole lot, the kinds of things that they want. And they know how much of a stretch of they will buy. Some of them may not want any kind of violence in the book so we don't even go there. So they get to know the group really well and not that other people can't join because it does it kind of one night there might be 20 people the next night there might be 15. But they have different, I think we're giving the patrons different types of book clubs. Not just a different like oh this is science fiction. It's just the day people are going to be your people who don't want to drive in the evening. So it's generally the older people, the tired people. And so they just have a different set of what their requirements that they want for their books. And we kind of ask everybody like what books do you like, what are all those that you really enjoy. So they do a really good job with listening to the group as a whole and then coming up with titles that best fits that group's needs and what they're wanting to read. Oh gosh I'm talking too much right. Okay so some additional community engagement things that we do we also participate in as far as the part parade. We the homecoming parade. We do like a festival of trees that is supposed to be our courtyard garden and the back of our library is what that thing was right there. And then we also do charity walks. We don't do every charity walk of course but we have different groups of us who if someone asked us to walk in it we we like to participate. And so it's just another way of getting out in the community and being you know they see us out in the community, not just in the building. So does anyone have questions. If anybody have any questions for Janet here any questions comments thoughts on anything to mention. I chimed in with a few of course during the presentation. I think it's really great you've done you've taken some many of your things that you do are taken some very traditional things at libraries doing and kind of given them a little twist. Like the specific book clubs and lots of libraries do book clubs but I love that you've got those with those different themes of what people might be interested in the books movie ones I'm a particularly interested in that sounds like a really cool. People have opinions very strong sometimes should this have even been made into a movie and was the book better. And sometimes I've seen people say sometimes the movie was better. I have never, never, ever have that I bet you know I just yeah I guess your imagination is always better than what everybody's got a different. Anything you want to say or anything you want to share anything you were doing at your library that you want to share. While we're waiting to see if there is as you can see here Janet's got her contact information here as well as her other staff members that were involved in these programs. After today's show we'll get the recording up and Janet if you want to send me this slide deck I think it's great it's got a lot of good info you can send me the this the presentation I'll upload it as well to the archive. Perfect thank you. So everyone have access to that and some of your tips and tricks and ideas on there. Gonna give a couple more seconds to see if anybody wants to say anything any more than before. And I do have to say this is so much different than giving a live presentation where you see people's faces and you can interact and my screen is so different. Here we go. Here's a face I'm here. It is yes webinars are I it is a very different situation definitely and I know our audience I'm sure they feel the same way. Sometimes we have the camera views of our presenters and sometimes we don't as well. It is different but I'm glad that we're able to do it and get this information out to more people who can't potentially attend these presentations in person. So we'll keep going as long as we have people that want to do it. All right doesn't look like anybody has any urgent questions at the moment. So I think I will hold back presenter control. Thank you very much Janet for presenting joining us today and sharing what you're doing. There we go. At your library and thank you everyone for attending. The show has been is being recorded and will be on our website. This is our Encompass Live website here that I'm showing you now. If you Google Encompass Live and your search engine of choice anyone that you want we are the only thing called that so far on the Internet. Yay. So you should come up with our page. We have our upcoming shows here but our archives where today's show will be posted are listed after upcoming shows as a link here for archive Encompass Live sessions. The most recent ones go to the top of the page. So today's show will be up here at the top probably just later this afternoon. Once it's all processed and everything through go to webinar and YouTube. We'll have a link to the recording and a link to the presentation just like this one that was from last week will be on here. Everyone who attended live this morning and who registered for today's show we sent an email directly letting you know that the recording is available and ready. And we also post that information out to our various social media channels. Facebook Twitter etc. You can see here we also do have a search feature for our archives. This is the 10th year of Encompass Live so we and we do have our archives going back all the way to the beginning which was January 2009. I won't scroll down this whole list here to make you dizzy but they are all here. So you will find some things in our archives that are old of course potentially outdated expired programs things that don't exist anymore. But we are librarians so we archive things keep things for historical purposes. So you can do a search on here searching all of our archives going back to the very beginning or just the most recent 12 months and just want current update information. But you can see as you look at any of these sessions they do all have dates so you will be able to see when something actually was broadcast live. So you can take that into consideration when you are watching a particular show when you do go into the archives. And the dates are here on the sessions. They are dated when they were recorded in YouTube so you will know exactly when it went live. So that is where our archive will be. I hope you join us next week when our topic is ditching Dewey. There is a controversial subject for some people. How we converted from Dewey to Bisac and lived to tell about it. Parchment Community Library and Parchment Michigan have their library has done this. And their director Teresa Stanner is going to be with us next week to talk about how they made the switch in their library. So definitely sign up for that and any of our other sessions that we have here. I have got some for September that are getting confirmed as we speak so you should see the first couple of September dates being added to the schedule here within the next week or so. So keep an eye on that for any of our upcoming shows. Also Encompass Live is on Facebook. We have got links here and their individual sessions to the Encompass Live Facebook page. If you are a big Facebook user give us a like over there and you will get notified of things that we are doing. Here is a reminder to log in for today's show. And when our recordings are available we post on here as well. Somewhere down here should be. Here is an announcement of the recording from last week's show. So yes if you like to use Facebook give us a like and you will keep up to date on the things we are doing over there. Other than that that wraps up for today's show. Thank you very much Janet for joining us today. Thank you for having me. And thank you everyone for attending and hopefully we will see you next time on Encompass Live. Bye bye.