 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am Krista Burns from the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is Library Commission's weekly online event where we cover NLC activities and any sort of library topics maybe of interest to Nebraska librarians. We have commission staff that do presentations and we have guest speakers sometimes as we do today. We do these one-hour sessions every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. They are free, but they are also recorded so if you're unable to attend one of these live sessions, you can listen to the recording afterwards. This morning we have a couple of, depending on some famous people from Omaha Public Library, I'll say. Well, it depends on your point of view and I'll show what else is being what that means in a second here. Amy Mather and Mania Shore from Omaha Public Library have been doing some work with people who are some underserved populations possibly in your library, young professionals, adults, trying to get them in and use the library more. And so they have a presentation here that they're going to do today for us. What I do want to show though is what I meant by their famous, they are, yes, Amy and Mania were named along with lots of other very cool librarians. 2010 Movers and Shakers by Library Drill Magazine for their work just on these exact things here. So congratulations to both of you guys for that. We thought that was very cool. Nebraska getting a nod out there in the library world. Thank you. So there's a nice right up here. This link will be available. I'll put it up in our presentation links when the session is over. So anybody who wants to go ahead and read this. So how did this all come about for you guys? I want to know first, you know, how'd you, you know, become a Mover and Shaker. Mania? How we became a Mover and Shaker was thanks to the Omaha's previous director. Yeah. Of course. But yeah, from a personal perspective at my last library, I really wanted to do work with people in their 20s and 30s and young professionals. And it just was an option. They weren't interested. And here, you know, Rivka just really never said no. So we were free to do whatever we wanted to do, which was wonderful. And that was the big thing. I mean, we definitely had the agility to sort of try new things. And if it failed, it failed. If it was successful, it was successful. So we were happy just to be able to just go out and do lots of new things. And it's okay to fail. That's good. Yes, it is. Absolutely. Yes, I can see that they do have a comment down here from Rivka, effectively promoting library subscription databases, something of a holy grail for public libraries. And that she has now moved on to Sacramento, yes. Well, so that's great. We're glad that you guys got that. Some cool pictures. I did notice that the pictures that are on the website are different from the pictures that are in the actual print magazine. They had different photos there. So if you do have a copy of library journal, you do get that at your library, or if you have somewhere you can borrow it from, you'll see some different photos of Amy and Mania in there. Yes. Yeah. So, okay, so let's go on. And what I am going to do is I am going to turn over control to Amy, and they have a presentation that they're going to go through about all these different programs that they've been doing. Hold on just one second. Yeah, well, we're doing that. I just want to say that we've stepped in. We were not the original scheduled program. So some of you, I don't know if you saw this, we did this sort of exact same presentation at NLA this year. So apologies if you've seen it already, but we've added a couple slides, so there's some new information. And I can't see any questions that are being asked, but we like a really interactive presentation. So feel free to raise your hand and interrupt or write questions in crystal. Let us know as we go along. Otherwise, it gets really boring and we're just talking. Absolutely. Just over the phone. To an invisible audience. Excellent. Okay, we see your presentation, Amy. Go ahead. Okay, excellent. Great. Thank you, everyone, for attending. And we're going to give a talk today about the young professionals, the group you don't realize you're missing. And I'm just going to give a little bit of a background on myself, and then I'm going to ask Monica to do the same. I moved to Omaha, Nebraska in February 2008. I had prior to that, I actually worked at ProQuest for about nine years and went there directly out of library school. And an opportunity came up in Omaha, and actually had a friend that lived here and she encouraged me to move out to Omaha. And I absolutely love it here. And going from vendor to public library was quite a shock. But I actually love working for the public library. It's been an amazing experience. And one of the things, though, that when I was working for the vendor, I rarely, rarely stepped inside of a public library. And I love libraries, but I had that love in that imagining of like a child. I went always as a child and a teenager, but I never went back as somebody in their 20s, 30s, and now I'm in my 40s. But anyway, I do work in the library and I go to libraries often now. But so I have a real interest in trying to figure out why the people in their 20s and 30s don't come into the library and what we can do about that. So I'm handing it over to Monia for an introduction. Good morning. My name is Monia Shore. I'm a branch manager here at Omaha Public Library. I've been working in libraries since the age of 16. I started as a shelver. And I came to Omaha from Multnomah County Library in Portland, Oregon. I worked there for 10 years. But like I said, there weren't a lot of opportunities for me to go beyond my job description there. So I followed Rivka here because I had worked with her in Portland, moved to Omaha sight unseen, and it's been a great experience. It was the best decision I ever made. And that picture of me was taken somewhere in Nebraska or Iowa, and I cannot remember the library, and I apologize. But, you know, I'm 34, and libraries don't really serve me very well. And I use the library because I always have used the library, and I grew up in them. But if I hadn't, I'm not sure that the library would even be a part of my consciousness. So we want to talk to you today about ways you can bring people like us back into your building. So who are those young professionals? You know, people could start out in their 20s or 30s, or if they're a late bloomer like me, I didn't really start my professional life until I was 30. And I worked in bars and restaurants for years and years. But that would be a young professional, which is Monia. And here I'm at one of Omaha's big events as the Omaha Fashion Week, and I'm with my friend Mickey. And a couple people we know doing karaoke and not very good at it. And as Amy scrolls through these pictures, I just want to say that young, we realize that term young professional is not perfect. We're still trying to figure out something to call it. I mean, sometimes we say adults in their 20s and 30s, but then that leaves people in their early 40s out. And it's more of who the person is than their age. So keep that in mind as we look at the pictures. A couple others. Swaray for Rivka, and another young professional. So one of the things that I did dig out when we first did this presentation was like looking at sort of some demographic. And one of the things, the huge population, just looking at Omaha alone, is that more than 35% of the population is 24 years old or younger with a median age of 34.9. And that's the age that we're really not getting into the library. And that's what we need to figure out how we can really target services to them. I'm going to have Monia talk about some more demographics. These are national statistics. People are marrying later in life than they have for previous generations. If you take a look at this, you can see this is women and men not married by age 35 and not married by age 40. So almost 25% of men are not married by the age of 35. So if your services are focused on women, if your services are focused on people with children, you're missing anyone who isn't married and has children. Can you go to the next slide, Amy? Yeah. These are marriage rates for people of color. Again, a national rate. I found this to be pretty shocking statistic, especially if you look at African-Americans. The marriage rates for African-American women not married by the age of 35, that's almost 42%. I mean, that's almost half of black women are not married by the age of 35. Now, of course, that doesn't say anything about the rates having children without being married, but it's still a pretty stunning statistic. In the next slide, Amy? And then the last national statistic. That word's always been a problem for me. I used to practice it as a child. The age of the mother with her first child. If you look on the left-hand side, it starts in 1970 and then ends in 2006 on the right-hand side. It's still the vast majority of people or women are having their first child between the ages of 20 and 34, which is a little too big of an age fan for me. It doesn't really tell us much. But what you do want to notice is the top and the bottom. The rates of women having their first child under the age of 20 is declining significantly. And at the top, the rates of women having their first child at 35 years or older is increasing. So again, if you're waiting for them to come back, you're going to be waiting a long time. And a statistic I just used in another presentation I did, which is if you're serving from age 0 to 18 and then you serve adults with children and then you don't really do programming again until they're 55, so the sort of general senior age, if someone doesn't have a child, you are not actively serving them for 37 years. And that's a huge gap. Yes. And I think we need to work on solving that. So, yeah, go ahead. Okay, so this is just to show you that rates of community involvement among young people are declining. So only 18 percent, these are national statistics, only 18 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds attend some kind of religious service every week. So if you think of church or synagogue or some kind of religious community as being important to people, rates of that kind of involvement are declining. And also, membership in community groups, which is another way of saying volunteerism, has declined by more than one quarter since the 1970s. That's quite a bit. So people aren't, they aren't volunteering. They aren't going to religious service. Where are they going? Can you do the next slide, Amy? And there's the question, where are they finding community? Nearly one in five adults in this country will never have a child. One in five, that if you're waiting for them to have kids, you are not serving them. I think we make a lot of assumptions about what our underserved populations are. This is a new underserved population. And why don't most of them use the library? And would you use the library if you worked there? I honestly, before, you know, we started programming, like what we're doing, absolutely not. I might have gotten you to check out some books, but programming, absolutely. I would have gone to different places. And somebody who doesn't have children and has never been married, I'm definitely in part of that population. And what happens? To be honest with you, I know this for myself, so I can speak for myself. And definitely for, you know, a lot of my friends, they definitely buy their material. They're hanging out in Barnes and Noble. They're hanging out in boarders. They're, you know, in music stores. And all the library programming is geared toward kids or seniors or families. And they also, and this is one of the things that I really think about all the time. And we are definitely working real hard about trying to figure out how the market resources that we know that people in our group would like. And I think, you know, one of the things that we're using heavily now is Facebook and using our fan page to really sort of target that group, because I know for a fact that's where this sort of underserved population is hanging out. And also this sort of belief that maybe, like, you know, the library has no value in their lives. And so we've got to, I mean, they always will have this love for it to where you're like, oh, you know, I went there as a kid, and I love the library. But in the ask them a question, well, do you visit the library today? And most often, they would say no. Yes, if you hear a lot of your, especially your politicians saying things like, libraries are important for kids, that's wonderful. And I'm so happy that they think that. But we need to change the conversation a little bit to include that libraries are important places for adults. And then what do you do in order to reach this particular group of people? You have to find the sweet spot. You can't just tell them libraries are important. You have to show them the value of libraries in their lives. And it does take a lot of work. I mean, it actually takes a lot of, you know, it takes going out in the community and really figuring out like what to do or how to bring them in. And a lot of networking, which I do love to do. So it's fun, fun, fun. So one of the first things we did was have laptop will travel. And Monia, I think you probably maybe have to think about like where this started, because I'm not sure if I will have a story right. Gosh, I'm not even sure I can remember it that way. The reality is that Omaha Public Library spends a lot of money on databases every year. And as a frontline reference librarian, it's frustrating to me how few people know that they can access these, especially from outside the library. And it's frustrating to me because I know that if people aren't using them, I'd really like to see that money being used somewhere else. And so this started as a push to try and get local businesses to use our resources to show them that they could get a business library card and they could use our databases, especially ones like ReferenceUSA, which as we know is available as a statewide database, ProQuest Newsstands, Business and Company Resource Center, and General Reference Center Gold, we go into businesses and for the most part the businesses here, they have their own meeting rooms, they have their own laptops and projectors and screens, and we would just sort of roll in, spend an hour showing them how to set up alerts and ProQuest, how to make sure they're getting all the updated information they can about their business, and that would be it. And we would sign them up for library cards. If you're in a community where your businesses do not have those resources, you can have them come into your library and do exactly the same thing. Go ahead. Oh, yes, and I would say this is probably, and I love promoting this because I think one of the traits, at least for myself and I know a lot of other users is they consider themselves as a virtual user. They're the people who are all, they're trying to get information, you know, from their computer and home, from their iPhone, from wherever, but they may not be actually walking into a physical building. And think about it. I mean, if you all are in the library, I'm sure you have had vendor reps because I used to work for vendors. The reps or the trainers would come out and train you on those databases. But what happens after that? Yes, we train them and we do show the public how to use them, but we need to take that one step further and really sort of instead of showing like target these resources. And I think that's exactly what we did with these. You know, we picked specific databases that we knew that would be helpful in everyday work life of a business. And I remember that we were at Mutual of Omaha and we showed ProQuest Newsstand and if somebody had been looking up information, took her an hour a day, it might have been the New York Times, and she figured out that she could set up an alert and have information pushed to her from ProQuest Newsstand and she said, this is going to save me an hour a day. And she was just elated about that. That's pretty awesome and very impressive, yes. Yes. And I think, and that to us was like, we found that sweet spot. That's exactly what we're trying to do. And when you do go into these businesses or wherever you're targeting, think about what they do. I mean, I know one of the mistakes that I think that, you know, they always gloss over the entire thing, but instead of doing that, think about, and one of the things we tried to do was like, what kind of information do you look up? We asked the businesses, like, so what kind of competitive intelligence do you want to know about? What are you interested in? That way we could really tailor the training about, like the information that they're seeking and that's how you connect them to that resource. Yeah, and even if you're in a smaller system and you don't have the database resources that we have here, everybody has access to the statewide ones. And you can focus them on those. ReferenceUSA is an incredibly valuable resource that not enough people use, especially if they're going to Google to search for business information. Exactly. And we all go to Google, but we all know that information might be a little bit better in the resources that we have. Okay, the next program is the Library of Tent, and I think we'll have more. This is the only program that we feature that we were not directly involved in, so it'll be very brief. This was started at the Washington Branch Library here, I believe, and it was an attempt to go to the people instead of waiting for them to come into the library. So, library staff would take a laptop into somewhere that had free wireless, so a Starbucks, a McDonald's, a... A Vera. Yeah, somewhere where free wireless was available, put up a little sign that said the librarian is in, and just sit there. It's a very simple thing. It's a novelty, and people will ask questions. If you can figure out a way to remote into your catalog, you can create library cards for people, and you can just get them started into the library, and this is the same concept that Amy was talking about earlier with being a remote-only user. I mean, we all know we want people to come into the library, but not everybody's going to, so create a space and a way for them to use your services without coming into the physical building. Hardbound to heartbound, speed dating at your library. Really, really, really fun program that we did, and luckily, Valentine's Day was on Saturday, so it was perfect for us to actually do this program, and we did this in 2008. Right, Mondia? It was 2008. 2009. 2009, sorry, 2009. And just to give you, like, titles, coming up with titles, I'm just going to give you a brief history, because I thought it was kind of funny the way that the title sort of organically came about was, I am a avid addicted to Facebook. I'm on it all the time, so whenever I have a question for all of my friends, and one of the things I'd love to do is, like, can you come up with a title for this kind of program? And they're quite a story. We had tons of comments about, like, what to call speed dating at your library on Valentine's Day, so a couple of comments were, you know, hardbound to heartbound, but that's actually a mix of two comments, but we did get some pretty hysterical ones that came through, so it was really cute, and I'll have Mondia talk about the actual graphic design of the flyer, which I think is very important. And now we've moved on to not just reaching out to business people, but to the community of people that you have who are in their 20s and 30s, and it's important when you're doing programming to think about, I feel a lot of times, like, libraries just throw events up in hope that they stick, and really what you want to do, especially with this age group, is try and figure out what they want and how you can tailor to them. So Valentine's Day, it's really not a fun day when you're single. We all know it's a manufactured holiday, but still, it sort of sucks to be single on Valentine's Day. And the double whammy of Valentine's Day and Saturday night, it just makes it even worse. So how can we appeal to people who might just be sitting at home or doing some kind of anti-Valentine's Day thing is we decided to have a literary speed dating event. A couple of things to notice on this flyer. One, it's at 7 o'clock, which is an hour after the library closes. If you can do after-hours programming, do it. That's a perfect thing to do with this particular age group. If you think back on the statistics we showed you earlier, if you don't have a family, have children, you're not married, you're not active in your church, and you're not volunteering, what are you doing on Saturday night? You're at a bar. Yeah, you're at a bar. Or you're not at a bar because you hate bars when you're at home where you're with a couple of friends. You need to try and channel those people to come into your programming at your library. The other thing to notice, and I love doing this presentation locally because I can say all of you as non-profit organizations are eligible for one night liquor licenses through the state of Nebraska. It's $65. Really? I did not know that. I assume statewide. I assume it's not just Douglas County or the city of Omaha. I mean, maybe I should look a little bit more into that. But we use this whenever we can. It is $65. That's it. And every non-profit is eligible for, I think, six a year. But if you have a friends group that's a non-profit or a foundation that's a non-profit, that's another 12 right there. So this age group, alcohol is a great thing. And I know that your knee-jerk reaction might be to shy away from it, but I have to tell you we've done three events with alcohol and we've not had a problem with people drinking too much. You can restrict the number of drinks that people can have if you'd like, but we just haven't had a problem. It's just a way to get people in and it helps lubricate the event a bit. And I think Amy also wanted me to talk about this flyer. The marketing that you do to this age group is incredibly important. We have a graphic designer. I recognize that you may not have a graphic designer. It doesn't mean you can't be careful about what kind of flyers you put out. At my last library, I did an event for this age group and the first proof came back from the PR department with teddy bears on it. You don't want that? Yeah, no. We really default to programming for children and that's what our design department is used to doing. Send it back. Make sure you get something that looks like this, something that looks adult and sophisticated and people will come. Also, I just want to remark that having alcohol in the library and people staying after hours in the library is quite the novelty and people will love it and not only that, they will viral that information out, which is great because when we had these events, people were posting immediately from their mobile phones as like, I'm having a bug wiser in the library. I mean, they just thought that was just a hoot. And because of that, that viriling out through Facebook or whatever social media or whoever they're telling their friends, it sort of gives that age group that underserved population like, what's that library doing over there? I think I need to check that out a little bit more. So it is a great thing to do that when you program for adults because the word does get out there and they're going to take notice. Yeah, and I think the fact that they were so excited to drink a beer in front of assignments in the library really shows how outdated we are with the community because it shouldn't be that big of a deal. And at this particular event, we had about 65 people. I have a how to guide which I can make available. You can email me or I can send it to Krista. It's sort of Omaha Public Library specific, but it might give you some guidelines on how to throw one of these yourself if you're interested. Sure, yeah. Anything you have, we can add to the recording afterwards. Any documents or anything, no problem. Okay, great. Perfect. I have one other thing I'd like to add. I don't know if you have like just one library or some branches, but we really did look at which branch to hold the set. We held this in Benson. And Benson is kind of an area of like a lot of nightlife. So we knew that it would be successful because it sort of does get that nightlife traffic. And there's also that whole population, the 20s and the 30s and early 40s, do live in the Benson area. It sort of has that sort of niche group that we were going after. So when you do are having something like this, if you are targeting towards this group, try to think about the area that you're having it in. Okay, one of our next events that we have was Bored Silly. And one of the things that if I wasn't going, being part of that group, the underserved, and hanging around with a bunch of these people, one of the things that we did as a group, we definitely went to bars, but one of my favorite things that I did with my colleagues back east and even here was get together and we would play games, whether it be board game or card games or whatnot, because it's just really fun. So why not bring that to the library? Yeah, and if I could see all of you, I would ask you how many of you have a gaming system that you purchase maybe for a teen game event or some board games that you purchase for teens? You can use all of those with this demographic as well. There is no reason that you need to be spending thousands of dollars on your adult programming. Use your resources. Now, a couple things to notice, seven o'clock after hours on a Saturday night, and we had a liquor license. It's the trifecta of programming. Absolutely, and this is related to this, but I've done some gaming presentations myself. The average age of a gamer in the country, do you know what that is? No. 35. Yeah. So the things your teens are playing, they're not the only ones. Your adults are playing those same systems. It's true, and here's what we had. We had a rock band set up in the meeting room. At Benson, they have a big screen, so it's great. It's enormous, like movie size. And then we had board games just piled on a table, and they had a TV that had a trivia game, so we just used that. And people would come in, get a drink, pick a board game, and we took over the entire library, which is the benefit of having after hours programming. You don't have to worry about confining yourself to a meeting room. And at the first event, we had about 70 people, and at the second event, we had about 60 or 65. And I remember at the first event, we had lots of little tables of people playing games. By the end of the night, we had an enormous game of apples to apples with about 25 people. Oh, yes. People love that one. It's a good game. If you go to our ALAs or PLAs and our NLA conference here now, there's gaming nights at those, and all the adult librarians are showing up, and there's huge tables full of people here playing board games. Yeah, it's not rocket science. People just want to get together and have fun, and they don't necessarily want to do it in a bar. We are still adults, so we like to have a drink. We like to meet new people in a relaxed and casual and fun atmosphere. If you just keep those things in mind, it's not that hard to do this kind of programming. And you notice, again, the choir, it's a very adult-centric. Yes. Oh, I know. We do require registration for events. Not because we're afraid we're going to hit a cap, because we take over the entire library. We really could have hundreds, but it's to gather people's personal information. We're not big brother here, but it's very important that you get people's name and email addresses. That's how you'll stay in touch with them and how you tell them about upcoming events. I know there are still libraries out there that don't collect email addresses. I would really very strongly urge you to start doing it when you sign people up for library cards and when you have events like this. As a 34-year-old woman, I have to tell you when I give my email address to a business, I assume they're going to add me to an email list and make it very easy for me to opt out. So opt people in to your mailing list. It's okay. Just make it easy for them to get out if they don't like it. And another thing I'd like to point out is that the second event, we actually start charging for drinks and we sort of felt it out before we, for the first board silly to see if this would be, you know, if they would mind because we did have a big tip jar out there and all that tips just sort of went back to, all the tips went back into paying for the event. And then the second time around, we did charge and from all that money we made, these events are now paying for themselves, which is good. And maybe one day it'll actually even make a little bit of money. Wow, that's awesome, yeah. And I'm sure it's cheaper what you guys charge than going to a bar and buying the drinks there. Oh, absolutely. Well, I think we charged $3 for everything. Beer, wine, soda, and water was each $3 maybe. And we could even charge an interest fee, I think. You know, if you don't, here's what I can't tell you numbers on. I can't tell you how much it costs to keep the heat running or the air conditioning running. How much we paid in staff. We had a security guard, which maybe you wouldn't need to do if you're in a smaller system. I can't tell you the cost of all those, but what I can tell you is the cost of buying the alcohol and the decorations, we never spent more than about $300. And if we had 60 people and each person has a couple drinks and each drink is $3, we did make a profit and we paid for the events. And so don't worry if you don't have money for adult programming, because I know most locations don't. We don't even have that much money for adult programming. It's the kids and the teens. They get the most money, but you don't have to have a ton of money. You don't be shy about asking people for donations or an entrance fee. You don't have to require it if someone can't afford it, but, you know, it's an event. People don't mind paying a little money for it. Exactly. And the other thing too is get the word out there. When we did have the flyers beforehand, not only, I mean we posted it in our library, of course, but if you're not getting to that population, they're not going to see it. So make sure you, like, post it places where they will see it. Coffee shops. I always post it at Whole Foods to get them to see it there. I would take it around to some of the local bars in the, you know, in the Benson area where we had this event, because I wanted to make sure that they knew about it. And I also spread the word, you know, just through my friends and whatnot. So make sure when you do go out there, and any local newspapers always talk to them because they think that's a novelty as well, so they will pick up on it. All right. So these are some pictures from our board, silly. See, we're not lying. We actually have people in their 20s and 30s there. Drinking. And playing Twister. Yeah. Awesome. And how do you find them? And these are some, just how we do find. Email blast, like Monia was talking about. And we can't talk about that enough. Make sure you opt them in. And Facebook and Twitter, that is where it's at. And it does work. But I do want to say something about Facebook and Twitter. Those social networking is, I know we hear a lot about it, but it really is about the connection in the community you create there. You can't just drop events into your feeds all the time. That's not how it is. Make yourself available to answer questions. On Facebook, say, does anybody have any questions about the library? Anyone have any complaints? It's okay to have conversations with people. That's how you get connected with them. If you're just posting events, I got to tell you I scroll past most of those. But if you ask a question, then I think you're talking just to me. And I like that. Word of mouth and personal connections always, I think, is some of the strongest advertising and marketing that you can do. And be involved with your community. And I know we both work very hard at doing that to make sure that we're connected with Omaha and that people know what the library is doing. Yeah. And look around at your staff, because if you don't fall in this demographic, chances are you have someone who does. Maybe you have a shelver or a clerk or somebody who's in their 20s and 30s and can help you plan the program, execute the program, and bring their friends. Because word of mouth is very important for these events. And if you are not falling in the demographic, it's a lot harder for you to connect with the community. Exactly. Direct mail solicitations. Be bold and ask. We've done that a lot. Social media. We have, you know, we, just talking about social media, not only just like the local newspapers and the city weekly and all of that, but we also know there's a lot of fan pages out there. There's the underground Omaha. There's the all about Omaha. There's the greater Omaha of young professionals. There are so many fan pages of like young professional sort of groups that we make sure that we really communicate with all of those groups so they know what's happening at the library. I would also say that when you plan quirky and odd events, the local media will cover it. If you're sending out press releases for every event that you do and nobody's covering it, it's because they're tired of writing about the latest book group or the latest story time. When we did Hard Bound to Hard Bound, we ended up in the Omaha Reader in a brand new section just for this called Urban Nerd. That was so cute. You have to pique their interests. You can't just assume, well, where the library were important, they're going to cover us. They're really not going to and they're not required to do so. So when you do these innovative and different events, they will cover it. You know, we really focus on numbers. A lot of the time, circulation numbers, gate count numbers, program attendance numbers. We've had great success here because I think there's a real need. But if you plan an event and five people come and those five people have a great time, don't think of it as a failure because it's not. Low numbers are not a reflection of quality. And I'm reading this book right now called Satisfied Customers Tell Three Brands and Angry Customers Tell Three Thousand. They will tell their three friends that they have a great time. And so the next time you have the event, you'll have 15 people. And the next time you'll have 30 people. Don't be discouraged. Keep pushing away on it and you will get numbers there later. And then of course, the night liquor license. Exactly. And word of mouth. It is powerful. Very, very, very powerful. I strongly recommend reading a book called Generation Me. Sorry, I don't have the author's name in front of me. But it's about how young people these days are busier than ever, more connected than ever, and more miserable than ever. They are looking for community, but they don't know where to find it. And this is your opportunity to snag them and to get them into your library for fun events. And that will translate to them using it. If you can talk to them about the resources that are available at an event where they're holding a beer in their hand, they will start coming to the library. You just have to show them that it's a value to their lives. Yep. And most importantly, you must try. Don't be scared. Even, yes, exactly. So I think that's it. Yeah. Anyone have any questions? Thanks. Does anybody have any questions? If you do, I can unmute you if you have a microphone, or you can just type your question into the questions section, and we'll get it there as well. Well, if anybody has any questions, I did just want to say, as you were going through your presentation, I did look up a couple of things. The liquor license, yes. It is the Nebraska State Liquor Commission does this, and I will put the link to their website. It's the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission. It does have the one-night nonprofit liquor license available, so I'll put a link up to that. So it is a statewide thing, not a county thing. And the book Generation Me is by Jean Twinsch. I'll put a link to that as well. So people are interested in that. Great. Thank you. Thank you. We do have one here. Rachelle McPhillips, who's from Columbus Public Library, wants to know if there are any negative feedback about the alcohol in the library. Not from the participants. I did get an email from someone. When we do these events, we send out an e-blast. We pay a company. I can't remember the name we were with at the time. I think we're with constant content. Constant, whatever. What is it called, Amy? Constant contact. Yeah, that's what we're with now, but we work with them at the time. And we send out an email blast to every single card holder that we had an email for. So that was something like 25,000 people. And we got one response with a person protesting having a liquor license. That's certainly not enough not to have it. But I would say know your community. If you think your community's going to have a strong objection to it, then don't do it. It's not like it's a requirement. We've just found it to be very helpful. You can have other sorts of food and beverages as refreshments too. Does it have to be alcohol? No, it helps. If that's what you're saying. It helps, yes. But you're saying if that's something that your community would be like, I don't think so. That's okay. So you'll have sodas and juice, and maybe you'll bake some cookies or something for them, whatever. Right. Absolutely. And it all depends on how much work you want to do. We only ever have beer and wine because we don't want to have to hire a bartender. So keep that in mind. Keep it simple. Yeah, exactly. If you wanted to do some kind of fancy virgin cocktail blended thing, you certainly can. And if you're only going to have 10 people, that might be easier to do. But with 70 people, you just want to be able to open something and hand it to them. Any other questions? Rachelle says thanks. You're welcome. Is anybody not convinced that this is something that you need to do? It's okay. Well, the only other comment we did have is when you first talked about the liquor licenses. Linda Krockenberg from Wayne Public Library did say, yeah, I was going to wait until my director hears about this. Well, you know, I don't really understand what the objection is to it. We did have several discussions about liability because if people get drunk at the library and then they drive and they get in an accident and someone gets hurt, we just decided that we would... Well, the result of that was with hardbound and hardbound, we restricted people to two drinks. That was until about halfway through when we realized people were not getting drunk. People were not getting crazy. You can certainly think of the worst case scenario, but I'm here to tell you that for the most part it doesn't happen. And when we are a large urban library, there's the chance that people will show up who will get falling down drunk and cause problems, but it has not happened. And those people who are falling down drunk, I honestly think they're probably just going to go straight to the bar and not to the library event, in my opinion. So I think people who come to library events, yes, they like to drink socially, but they're not the ones that are going to be, you know, we need to bounce them out of the library. Absolutely. And remember, you can always cut people out. Cut them off if you think they're getting to whatever. Just say no more. Have a water. Get more free water. As I was exploring the Lancaster counties, the liquor control commission website, they do have brochures and information about that, about how to do these kinds of things. There's a nice brochure on there of just, like, things you need to think about. Now that you have your liquor license, what? Right. And the other thing, Linda, to say to your director is that this is an opportunity to use this for other sorts of events. If you do any kind of fundraising event in your community, or if you have something with a party with your director, I mean, you can get a liquor license for anything, and it really is just a nice thing to do, and we are adults, and we'd be happy to speak to your director if he or she needs any reassurance. Yeah. What other question from Rachelle again at Columbus Public Library? How long is the librarian in that one when you go out? How long do they stay there, wherever they are? Since we've neither one of us were involved, I would expect they were only there a couple of hours, wouldn't you? Yeah, that would be my assumption as well. Especially since we all know we have references to cover, and it's hard to let people go. I mean, you can set it up with the, you can call ahead to the Panera and say, can we come and sit for two hours and put up a sign that says the librarian is in for the next two hours or something like that. You do want to make sure you sit there long enough to pique people's interest, and you want to make sure you go at high volume time. So go at lunchtime, that sort of thing. To assume it's similar to your reference desk shift, it's the same idea. It's just as a remote location. Yeah, exactly. Because we all know that sometimes we have to go out to them and not wait for them to come to us. Yes. Any other questions or comments or anything? Not seeing anything new? Okay. Anything else you guys want to? Mom and I are probably going to be working on some more fun adult programming here soon. She just got back from PLA, and we're excited to think about what's going to happen next. I'd be curious to know if anybody who's here today has done any successful programming for this group that they would like to share with the group, because we did this at PLA, and I'm going to steal an idea I got from there. Anyone got anything? We do have one coming. Thank you for all the great ideas I've inspired. That's from Lisa Flaxbeard from Bennington Public Library. Thank you. And Linda again from Wayne. Thank you so much. This is definitely one we underserved. Absolutely, yes. I'm going to switch back to myself here. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. And just want to tell everyone that this session was recorded, as usual. Thank you very much, Amy and Mania, for jumping in at the last minute for us. We did have some scheduling issues with this week. It just came up last week that I just found out. So they were very gracious to jump in and do this for us. I'm very happy they were available. So thank you very much to you guys. Absolutely. The recording will be available to you tomorrow or the next day at some point. We do do these every Wednesday. As I said, I hope next week you'll join us when our topic is WorldCat using WorldCat. What is it and how can it help me do my job? Susan Nisley from here at the Library Commission will be doing a presentation on WorldCat database. And if you do have any ideas for other sessions for Encompass Live, they are always welcome. I come up with my own ideas as I can. But if you do have a request for a topic that you want me to try and cover, try and find someone to cover, let me know. Or if you want to present on something, as you saw today, we love and encourage outside people to come in and do presentations for us, guest speakers, and we would love to have you. We have a hundred number here at the Library Commission and the website for Encompass Live, so you can see the sessions we have currently coming up and our archive sessions are all out there. Perfect. Well, thank you very much. If there's no other comments or questions, we will wrap it up for this morning, I think. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Amy. Thanks, Mania. Bye-bye. Bye.