 Hello, and welcome to the San Jose State University iSchools LIS Careers podcast. My name is Kim Doherty and I am really, really delighted to welcome Julie Sherwood to our podcast series. Julie has a job that I believe is part of a very interesting trend among public libraries. She's the partnership and community engagement manager for the Wichita Public Library. She's agreed to talk to us today about her role in the library, the types of activities involved in the work that she does, and other aspects of her job. And I'm also going to rope her into telling us about how she started out in the LIS world and then ended up where she is now. So with that, I'd like to welcome Julie on behalf of the San Jose State University iSchool students. Thank you. All right, Julie. So I have a million questions I'd like to ask Julie because what she's doing is so fascinating, but we're going to be respectful of her time and try to keep this within a reasonable amount of Julie's workspace here. So I'm going to begin by asking you Julie about the specifics of your job. So could you tell us about what a partnership and community engagement manager does within a public library? This is a somewhat unusual title so it'd be great if you could describe your role for us. Okay. I began as a partnership and community engagement librarian about a year and a half ago, and it was in recognition of the fact that there's a lot of common goals that we have with other agencies in the community. And by working together on those common goals, we can gain a greater synthesis between us and really meet community needs. Basically what we do is to try to find connections in the community. We look for what we have in common similar goals and outcomes. We create formal partnerships with them. The partnerships might include things like them doing a STEM program for us or doing some kind of ongoing community program for social issues. And then in return, the library becomes a place where they can hold meetings or offer other benefits to their organization that the library is able to offer. The each partnership is unique in the way that it comes out and it gives us greater access to a whole network of people that we may not already be connected to. The community engagement side of what I do has to do with understanding the community that we live in and what exists in that community and how it functions and making sure that we're listening to the community for what it is they want from the library. So we work with the staff on helping them as they plan programs to look for what our goals are and make sure that those are in sync with what the community is asking for and helping them to find ways of getting that data, whether it's through surveys or looking at what people are checking out, keeping abreast of what's going on in local news, what trends there are in our community, and then figuring out what our community is looking for in a way of programs. And programs are just one way of addressing service needs in a library. There's a whole array of things you can do whether it's displays or promotions or just information and teaching of all kinds. So we look for how we can meet our goals in making a better community through community engagement. Okay, and so going back to partnerships, two questions or one question and one comment. So one of the things that these community partnerships enable you to do is to bring in essentially subject matter experts from these organizations so that you guys don't have to become the SMEs yourself. That's right. Okay, and then my question is how do you identify who you want to partner with? It's actually sometimes it happens in all different ways. Sometimes they come to us with an idea and we look for where the win-win would be in that partnership. Sometimes we're actually seeking out a partner to fulfill a particular direction that we want to go. So for example, the Wichita Amateur Radio Club came to us with the idea that they would like to do monthly programs and work to get that kind of technology and experience out into the community. And they had a whole array of interesting programs on anything from Stormspotting to Amelia Earhart and how radios were used in that. And they've done some introductory workshops and that's turned out to be a really great partnership. We had nine people that came to a session in September on how to get their actual license and so now they're going to offer a class for us. We also had the American Society of Civil Engineers. It started with them looking for a place to have their monthly meetings, but they came up with the idea of what if on a Saturday morning they would do a STEM program for children and they've done programming such as how to make a better sandcastle and how a water plane works. One had to do with packaging as s'mores to keep from crushing what was inside. And they are really well attended and the kids love them. And in exchange they hold their meetings here at the library and now that they're going to have a conference coming up it looks like we will be the site for their conference. And it puts those people in contact with our library some of whom might not have been in a library in a while and we think that their expertise gives us a greater stretch and reach into the community. Certainly expands your ability to offer services that you couldn't otherwise offer. Right, exactly. So going back to the radio group then the fact that they reached out to you with this proposal would indicate that either through your own through the library's own marketing or word of mouth organizations in the community are recognizing that you want to partner. Is that something that you're actively working to to get out a message? And sometimes we actually go out and seek them and I mentioned that I didn't mention that we have a local group called the Health and Wellness Coalition and I go to those monthly meetings and we were looking to get a grant going and so what we did was we talked to them about the grant and were asking for interested partners to come and talk to us. And so we got a couple of interested agencies that contacted us and then we were able to we're still in the process of writing that grant but we're working on a proposal together with that with our community partners. So sometimes we'll say okay what we're looking for is something on this topic whether it's a grant that comes to us or an opportunity like the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage is coming up next year and so the League of Women Voters was a natural partner for that. We have been doing some programming in the past on race and ethnicity and so we're working with quite a number of different nonprofits who are active in that area to help us develop our programming for a new grant that we're writing on that. And is that like an IMLS grant? No, there was a national endowment for the humanities grant opportunity a couple of years ago and because of some things that were happening in our community the State Humanities Council contacted us and asked Wichita to be the one to develop the grant and I got partners to the table and we had some really dynamic programming. We've just recently won a Voice of the People award for our city for what we're doing in terms of race and ethnicity programs and initiatives. So it's been very... Congratulations! Thank you. That's really an accomplishment. That's wonderful. And then how does your current role differ from the previous role you held as program and outreach manager? The program and outreach manager job that I had before there's a lot of similar elements to it but it kind of started with the role of reference in our system. Reference has kind of gone or gone a change over the years and what we wanted to do was to emphasize the fact that there's more than one way to get information to people and programming is one of those ways. So we moved into a new building last year in June and in preparation for that we kind of reorganized and we were looking at the jobs that were being done by that reference team and we wanted to really emphasize their role in creating programming and as that happened that department became more involved in the day-to-day planning of programming and I sort of became in the community engagement side of what I do looking at what they're planning and making sure it's aligning with our goals and guiding them in the creation of programs for our library system. So then this lets me segue into the question and I'm really excited about here among all of the other ones I am as well but that is could you tell the students how your career has developed to bring you to where you are now? Sure when I got started in a library field back in the late 80s my plan was to be a children's librarian and I started off in the San Antonio library system as a floater librarian because I wasn't quite sure that I was actually ready to take on the job of a children's librarian but after about a year and a half I changed jobs. I went to Tracy California and in the Stockton-San Joaquin County system I was the children's librarian at the Tracy Branch Library for three years. When I was done working at that location I was looking to move up to a higher position and so there was a job in Salina, Kansas for the head of a children's department at their community library so I moved back to Kansas and went to Salina and I stayed in that position about four and a half years. There came a position in Wichita for a youth services coordinator and Wichita was my hometown I'd been wanting to get back there for a long time so I applied for that position and got that position in September of 97 and about three years later our director retired and we had a new director come in who wanted to reorganize the library and rather than divide things between adult services and children's services the new plan was to divide things between programs and collections and my job was going to be programs and someone else was doing the collections and at that point I knew how the children's programs worked but I really had no clue about how adult programming was done. I had not really been involved in that side of things and began a process of learning by trial and error how to be an adult services programming librarian and over the years that's what I have been doing for the last 20 years and then as I said last year we reorganized again and this I am now the partnership and community engagement manager so it's kind of been a long transition of where I am now from where I thought I was going to be when I started but it's a great position I mean I really do enjoy the programming side of it it's very dynamic and it certainly gives me a lot of chance to be creative so and that then leads to my next question is what do you enjoy the most about your job? Well I definitely enjoy the creativity and the variety I like developing an idea and I like the out-of-the-box thinking that I get to do and I'm a very curious kind of person and have interest in a lot of things and so this gives me the chance to to do so many different things and what I what I don't like is to get bogged down in the details so what I'm able to do is to create something and then bring someone in to actually carry out what I got started and that's really fun for me then I get to move on to something else so you're kind of you that's a mindset that's like a project person you create the spark you create you know you flesh out this is what it should look like and do an address and then you're ready to move on to the next opportunity right exactly okay I also like the connections that I get with people throughout the community in a job like this much as I love the books and the collections it's really about in this job it's about meeting people listening to people it's about working collaboratively with people and I just really like getting to know people out in the community that it's almost as if you are in many ways the public face of yes the library in the community so yes and and I go to so many of the programs I actually had someone say to me recently do you live at the library or you're always here when it's just coincidental that I'm frequently here when there's a program and that's when they're here so it may seem like I'm always here but but how wonderful then to see that realization of the idea that you had come to fruition that would be so fun and so rewarding so another question would be from your vantage point and and from your connections in the profession and with other librarians and other communities and other public libraries are you seeing an increase in these types of community collaborations around the public library sort of universe or is Wichita fairly unique in what they're doing there you know I am beginning to see more of this in other places when I first got this title I wasn't sure I thought maybe I would be the only one but I have seen occasionally other people that are having similar titles or similar job duties to what I'm doing and I do see it as a trend there was um there has always been um sort of the uh an expectation of what the library is but my experience is that that's changing every every year and even every month you know there's something new something different and I think that the whole concept of a library is changing and one of the ways that that's happening is that the the collaborations and the way that we interact with the community um there's so much now that's happening with data collection surveys and it's not just in libraries in that way I mean every time we go shopping somewhere there's a receipt that wants you to respond back to them because people do want to know who are the people we're serving and what is it that they're looking for from us and the closer you can come to um matching what their expectations are um the better you'll be at um at what you're doing so I do think that one of the the keys to be able to to be able to serve the community best is to find out who is your community and what is it that they are doing and interested in and that they want from the library and partnering with other agencies these are formed for a purpose and they are fulfilling a need and if we can help them and they can help us then it's a win-win for everybody it really multiplies to such a a wonderful degree the impact that both organizations can have in terms of right having a positive outcome in people's lives so a question then based on that we've got students who are going through grad school they're looking at you know what is what is the field going to look like as I continue to grow professionally in this field for someone who would be interested in doing the kind of work that you're doing what skills do you feel are the most important ones to be successful in the work that you do um I would say that that one of them is to be able to manage lots of different things at one time um point basically there's a whole lot to project management that so the more you know about how to meet deadlines how to keep things in budget how to keep your team on track and not get off into the weeds I think those are helpful skills certainly communication is really really a key and making sure that everyone is talking to each other and stays in the loop being able to be um a positive encourager of other people sometimes when we're working on a project like the big read and we invite other community agencies to be a part of our project sometimes they come up with things that they wouldn't have been what we would have done but but as a partner you say okay we're gonna let you run with that and we're gonna stay in our lane here and we're gonna do this part that's right and you really um get a better outcome I think when you accept your partners for who they are and let them do their best and communicating your vision for the whole the whole thing is really important um I also think that even though I think I'm a big picture thinker that being able to manage details it's it's me working left-handed on the detailed side of it but that's really really a critical thing there are so many elements to any program that you do the date the place the length of time the description that you're using and the contracting and the the managing of things and so all of those details are really important and so clerical accuracy and and communication is really important and I think that just being able to create things and to be able to to look at a situation or something that you think people are interested in and and just have curiosity about things I think that's going to help a lot in programming um sometimes there's things that I become interested in not because I I wanted it but because I can see other people being doing that and I'm just curious about what it is I think sometimes that I've seen problems where people want to create programs that satisfy what they themselves want but it really doesn't resonate with interesting others in the community and basically I think that that does a disservice to the community in um in our programming and just taking something that you've seen that looks really cool in one place doesn't mean you can cut it out and press it into a mold in your community that someone else may be doing that work already and no reason to duplicate or compete with them so being able to understand well enough what what's already existing where you are and what what new things you can add that would be beneficial so how can you that analytical that analytical oh good point good point I I think that's a really important point about complimenting rather than competing with because when you can compliment what someone else is already doing or extend the reach of it or the breadth and depth of it or the library resources available to enhance it that that gets to your point about really responding to the community it it is having I've worked for a number of founder led startups and that issue of I think this is a really cool idea so everyone is going to love it it's it's really easy to fall into let's put it that way you know that's that's also one of the benefits of listening and of asking people and of doing surveys and those sorts of things is that if you ask those questions and probe a little bit more deeply they will tell you well yeah that's kind of a neat idea but that's not really what we need what we really need is this thing over here exactly you know I think that's a really really good point that you've made there so to wrap us up I'm going to ask you what advice you would give to students who might be interested in this career path since it sounds to me like people don't sort of say I'm going to have a career as a program or a partnership in community engagement manager it sounds like you you find your way to this kind of a role through a number of different pathways and channels so if that's the case what advice would you share with students about this kind of a role and how to how to get there I think that one of the important things is getting experience in actual team teamwork whether it's on the job experience or outside of the job experience if you're a part of a team actually look at how the team functions and what your role is on that team and see what works and what doesn't and the more practice you get at doing that I think the better it's the easier it's going to become to think of what options you might have in doing programming I think that a wide variety of things of whether it's wide variety of work experience or life experience or even positions within a library as I mentioned I was a floater a children's librarian a manager and I think all of those things helped me develop the skills that I needed to be able to do this job so building all of the different strengths that that it takes to do this kind of job happens a little bit at a time and so I also think that being open-minded to different ways of doing things is beneficial trying to I also think keeping up with the literature as far as what's going on there's a LA weekly thing or it's actually maybe every other week it's called programming librarian and it kind of helps if you subscribe to the programming librarian resource you can kind of see what other people are doing in programs there's also the national endowment for the arts the national endowment for the humanities and then a lot of other organizations in the nonprofit world keeping up with what's happening in your community through the news the local news for example this coming year in Wichita we've got a new stadium that's being built and we're also celebrating the 150th anniversary of our city so one of the projects that some of our staff are working on right now is involves the history of baseball in Wichita and it kind of connects to a satchel page played one of his earliest games in Wichita so it kind of connects to our candid conversations programming on race and ethnicity and so we kind of want to loop all of those things together and create we're looking at doing a drama called Mr. Ricky calls a meeting and as a grand tricky yes yes about Jackie Robinson and yeah we're we're just looking at at all of the different ways to celebrate and so I think that that when you're part of a team and you're brainstorming that that is developing that that functionality of being able to develop ideas so it's being very broadly really beyond the library itself exactly to the whole community yes okay and if I were to place this in a a sort of category of LIS work I was thinking marketing but you're saying programming yes and actually we have a person that I work very closely with our communications manager works really side by side with me on all of this his name is Sean Jones and he I'm the one who's working with the staff on create getting the programs described and created and they're helping to find you know the partners to do I mean the speakers to do the programs and I'm working on like larger initiatives like big read and candid conversations and things like that so we give that to Sean and then Sean takes that and creates the actual print pieces he does the social media okay and he is doing the marketing and promotion of what we're creating okay and clearly he's doing a good job of it oh he's doing an excellent job yep he's he's really fabulous and basically I think that in other libraries they work it a little differently some of them have graphic designers and sometimes the person who does what he does has some elements of what I do so it can be a little bit different depending on how you choose to allocate those roles but but this one I like I said I think I have found a really good happy place for me and and to all the students I would point out on behalf of both myself and Julie we've been doing this for a long time we've been in the LIS field and throughout that time our jobs have changed a lot and and we've worked with different organizations and one of the cool things about the profession is that the more often you take on a new role as Julie has done over and over again the closer you're likely to get to exactly where Julie is now which is her happy place her sweet spot right you know I just think that's terrific well Julie thank you so much for sharing your your time and your expertise with us and I look forward to talking to you again this has been really wonderful and on behalf of all of the students thank you so much for sharing you so much for inviting me I really enjoyed it all right take care all right you too bye bye