 I know you guys are all getting settled in but at this time I would like to invite to the stage our next panel. So they will be talking about successful programming beyond the library and this panel is going to be moderated by Chris Oda. Hello Chris. Hi. And joining him today we'll have Nick Tansy who did our keynote and you know he'll be talking a little bit more about some of the technical programming. We've got Caitlin Lung from Livermore Public Library and we have Ben Fernandez from the San Jose Public Library. So let's give them a minute to get set up and then we'll get started. So when we have you go up for your presentation are you both going to stand at the podium? It looks like we also have Padmasheri here. Thank you Padmasheri also with San Jose Public Library. Thank you Rebecca. Welcome back everyone. I hope you guys had a great lunch and I hope you're enjoying the program so far. My name is Chris Oda and I'm on the PLP Staff Development Committee and if your organization is not representing themselves on the committee then think about joining because it's a really good way to work cooperatively and do some event planning skills. First some jokes. Why are libraries the tallest buildings in the world? Because they have so many stories. Oh my god. I made that joke up. Why did the cardiologist recommend his patients go to the library? He heard they're good for circulation. How do librarians flirt with you? They ask you for your call number. Libraries have a history of going outside its walls to reach the public. To reach non-users or that's that's been our goal is to go out and reach get out there in the community and reach the non-users. All right. Think about a community of non English speaking groups that live in a in an enclave and they don't visit the library. We go out there. We tell them hey this is our this is what we got. These are our resources. We sign them up for library cards. Visit us. Give them e-resources. Think of a senior community where the residents they just can't make it to the library because of they don't drive or because they're just physically not able. Well you send a librarian out there with a collection. You teach them how to get on to the to the to e-books and streaming. Think about a business campus where these workers are spending long days. They're just working and they're unable to make it to the library so you send a mobile vehicle to them and you have them check out a book so that at the end of the day they open up the book and they're they're they're enriched and they're just taking a little bit of time away from their phones. All right the pandemic hit and people became disconnected and we had to close down our buildings so some libraries went out into open spaces and they met the people where it was safe where everyone felt comfortable and socially distanced and we sat six feet apart it was weird and some and some of us keep going out even after society reopened. So to talk about that now I'm gonna bring up from Livermore Public Library Caitlin Lung. My name is Caitlin and I'm a librarian with the Livermore Public Library. I am a branch librarian but also I work closely with other outside organizations in order to bring library programming to Livermore's community at large. So I'm sure a lot of you experienced this I know I did but during the COVID-19 shutdown we I saw a lot of turnover so everybody that I had been working with before in the park districts which is what I'm gonna focus this presentation on they either retired or moved on to different positions basically all my contacts were gone. So I essentially had to start over and it was a challenge especially trying to find the right people to contact. A good place to start for this if you are reestablishing connections or if you are just starting from scratch is to ask your colleagues maybe they've worked with people before in other capacities and they might be able to direct you to someone in a potential partner organization that could help you. You could also find your friends at the front your friends of friends. So for instance in the top left picture there that was at the local school district science fair night and they invite all sorts of different community partners to the science fair that have science type interests and my table just happened to be right there next to the Park Rangers. So if you don't already have those connections it would be a great idea for you to take a look at other events that you participate in and see who is there who you can buddy up to and introduce yourself to. But if that doesn't work sometimes you just kind of have to make a totally not staged cold call. So find the contact information on the on the organization's website you might need to fill out a form send an email to info at parkdistrict.com or whatever that is. Another great way to do that is look to see for the look for the programming that the other organization is doing on their end. So for instance I work with two park districts the Livermore area Recreation Park District and also the East Bay Regional Parks and at least for the Livermore Parks henceforth LARPD at least for them when they publish their newsletter they put the email address of the specific Ranger who's doing the program in the little blurb for the program so if you get in contact with some of these Rangers or other programming people in that way it's a great way for you to start establishing those connections and the first one I want to bring up with the LARPD we've actually been doing this program since 2015 so basically just after I became a librarian in Livermore we started in with this program and it takes part takes place at a local open space park which with lovely trails there's a creek there's native gardens it's really cool and what I do is I read a book I sing some songs the library handles the event registration and then the Rangers they provide an activity and information about nature related to the topic we have agreed upon in the past so they range from we're doing one in November that's gonna be about migratory birds the one up top there is one we've done every year creek side story time so the Rangers their activities they give the kids little strainers and buckets and stuff and let them go wild in the creek with supervision of course and we'd read a water themed story sometimes smoky bear makes an appearance but it's a great way to get people out side of the library and it invites the people who might be more park users rather than library users to pay attention to what we're doing too another one we've been doing with the LARPD is story time in the park now we actually had something like this planned pre-COVID it was supposed to be like March or April of 2020 and it was supposed to be a one-off it was intended to be a celebration of the brand-new park that opened adjacent to one of our branch libraries and it was gonna be like a welcome to the new park check out the library ton of fun but the world shut down that didn't happen but never really let go of the idea because a lot of times post-pandemic or as we were starting to open up again a lot of people were really enjoying the outdoor portions of our programming we had been doing for story time at the library outdoors and during the nice weather we are still doing programming and story times outdoors but our Saturday story times were modestly attended 30 40 people the 2022 summer reading theme from I read was honestly a great way for us to make that transition even farther afield is real read beyond the beaten path so we got in contact with the LARPD for this one I work directly with the outreach coordinator and what he does is he just he picks parks he picks dates and tells me where to go and I just bring story time to all these neighborhood parks so we just have a field we have the people bring their blankets sit down I do story time just like I would at the library and then afterwards the kids play in the playground the adults sit in chat and it's a great time and we've been getting during like when the weather is nice more than a hundred people come to these things and it's been remarkable just how great of a feedback we've been getting from these programs because people love them and it's a great way for people to experience the different parts of the of the community because a lot of times we get families who just walk across the street and they're at the park and they go to story time and it's great a quick side note if you are planned to do any programming outside of your library where people might not expect the library to be I highly recommend investing in one of these outreach flags a couple hundred bucks we got the funding from our friends organization but it's a great way to let people know that no this isn't a birthday party this is the library and you're welcome to join us please do with the East Bay parks we've done for the past two years summer science and they actually contacted me about this one they saw the work that I was doing with the L.A.R.P.D. and they said hey you already work with the park district why don't you work with us too there are there's parks in Livermore and in fact the DelVal regional park recently had a brand new visitor center be constructed and they were trying to get people more aware of the new visitor center and of all the interpretive programming they were doing and they were having trouble reaching people and they thought hey you guys have some good reach we've got you know some work to do and trying to get people to come to the new visitor center so let's partner up and do something together so they contacted us and you can see from the map there DelVal while still in Livermore is a bit of a track outside of town it takes about 15 60 minutes to get to from the library and that's on the edge of town anyway too so we go out with them I share a story maybe some songs or the Rangers might share a song the picture up top there is them sharing heads shoulders knees and toes except the fish version where the where the fins are it was very cute but we do a different science and nature activity and these are actually aimed at elementary school children and we we take care of the registration just so that all of the we make sure we have enough supplies for everybody in the space and again for this one they contacted me but for subsequent years and subsequent programs we coordinate directly with the naturalist and Rangers over there but with those with those relationships established we can bring it back to the library so up top there we've got one of our LARP D Rangers joining us at our children's day day the book celebration at the library we also that bottom picture is from a program last week we had the East Bay Parks Rangers come to the library and introduce the kids to Harry the tarantula live tarantula they caught in the park and they were sharing information about it was really great is a great way to kind of invite the park people back to the library and get us out and about meeting people where they are in town but also in places they might not expect us to be and there is my contact information if you want to get touch with me later thank you Caitlin all right so we'll do Q&A after we do three presentations so libraries they have they get funding opportunities to obtain advanced technology and they can take it out into the community where students can get hands-on experience with it and they can they can find enrichment and steam programs so adding more exposure to science and engineering and making the future brighter so we're gonna bring up from San Jose Public Library Benjamin Fernandez and Padma Sri Gade to tell us about their maker space vehicle good afternoon everyone good afternoon thank you all for having us here we're honored to be here today and we want to thank you the committee for inviting us and having us host for the panel this is a wonderful opportunity and we are excited to talk about the maker spaceship my name is Benjamin and my colleague Padma Sri Gade so we are the team for the expanded learning unit the maker spaceship yes we are currently from the San Jose Public Library and we work at Martin Luther King at the expanded learning unit the maker spaceship is the library's flagship mobile classroom for science and technology we drive it all over San Jose and we we bring technology and STEM learning to the community the program was developed by Aaron Berman who was our former innovations manager for SJPL and maker spaceship was launched in 2016 so the maker the maker spaceship has been on the road for six years and we've received positive response from the community during that span we have developed strong partnerships with our school districts nonprofit organizations after school programs and city council members our team consists of four members our manager is Lauren Hancock who oversees the expanded learning unit I'm the library clerk for the unit and I'm the lead driver for the maker spaceship I handle the logistical duties and maintenance for the ship and I also handle the communications and requests that we receive from our partners I also help with event planning scheduling and when we're on site I'm supporting Padmashi and our librarians with programming and also assisting the children with their projects and Miss Padmashi is currently our program librarian and she is on site with me and when we do our programs she also variety of programs such as science story times engineering challenges coding programs and many more so the way we do it we make a program menu every half year and we send it out to schools when we're coordinating them so the schools can choose which program is applicable for the classes we go to the schools the ship is out on the road three to four days a week mostly to schools and twice a month we do community outreach events Su Kim is our part-time librarian and she helps us with programming implements new creative programs and we also want to acknowledge Elizabeth Allen who has transferred to the branch but she worked with us for five years and she had left behind amazing programs for the maker spaceship and we want to acknowledge her as well so the vehicle is state-of-the-art technology funded by the library foundation in the city of San Jose it has a collection of maker equipment including robotics 3d printing laser cutter vinyl cutter microscopes Apple devices and laptops with its latest software this slideshow shows current our current 3d printing program the Taz sidekick and during that program we have the machine running for our students to see in action and we provide laptops for them to introduce them to 3d design on this slide we have our laser cutter 8 action we introduce our students to laser engraving teach them about how laser is created how carbon dioxide and electricity combined together creates that beam that laser beam and with the reflection on the mirrors allows the the laser to cut and etch wood and this is a program that usually is one of our popular programs then here students design their own template we give them a and with using the template they create the images and then it's either etched and then and they can cut out by the big book box that's what we make over there this is another one where we have a microscope program for the children to explore the outdoors they can bring in leaves see the different kinds of different objects or the cell sets we have a set of made slides that they can see and also draw because what is biology it's all about seeing and representing it then you also have in the second image you're teaching them the engineering design cycle so that they understand and on the ship they do hands-on activity with those again here different kinds of we have programs for the very young to you have the different magnifying lenses for the very young to see and for the adults the higher end of microscopes so the majority of our visits are with public schools and we have established MOU agreements with them that allows us to visit and host programs either inside the bus or in the classroom aside from school we also go to after school programs and on weekends we're invited to community events here's on here's a slide where Ms. Padma is hosting our program inside the classroom we are hosting an engineering design challenge with the students allowing them to create their design presented in front of the class for collaboration here we teach them the engineering they're doing hands-on working as group with hands-on activity knowing the criteria and constraints and they at the end they present this thing and everybody shared their experience so this is where children are excited the materials are the same everything being seen no two designs or the outcomes are the same you see the creativity being expanded here we had an coding 5k challenge a city had had a coding 5k challenge we met the challenge but we also in partnership with the Apple grant we do have Apple iPads and a coding programs going through so this we now on the maker spaceship we do have iPads where we teach everybody can create everybody can learn to code here what you're seeing is students are learning how to learn to code with Swift so in the 45 minutes programs the students we tell them how what coding is what it is in works and in the first 45 programs they finish the first module of commands some students are familiar and they go into the chapter of functions we also encourage them they can do it on their own at the devices if not they can come down to the library and borrow iPads to here where we hosted a robotics program for the students using dash and the software Blockly so students are given opportunity to a code first a very for the very young we give them the devices so they can navigate and get excited about robotics as the little higher middle school students we teach them the coding with Blockly so these are some pictures of those this is another one this is a structural engineering program that they are doing they are given supplies and for the very young they can build their own working in teams and for the higher grade middle elementary one school elementary school students we give them the challenge tell them the criteria constraints and they do three challenges and after each challenge they share their designs and that's what it'll help them improve for the next challenge so these are some examples of structural engineering this is another one for the very young we take the first image on the top is about code and go mice unplugged coding activities which is very popular with all the people who come on the board just introduce them to coding a simple way unplugged activity and the other one over there give them the supplies and give them a topic and ask them to build their own vehicles so that's what you see the child being there creative with the supplies building their own future vehicles during the pandemic we saw a community needed to bridge the digital divide and our city a city of San Jose and the library said we gave out hotspots we were lively was giving hotspots we also saw that the maker spaceship could be a integral part so the mobile maker spaceship took out the hotspots which was a part of sja access and distributed to the communities which were far to reach so this was very popular where people who didn't know but really needed it got to have the hotspots and borrow the hotspots from the library and also during the pandemic we hosted our programs outside so we would still bring the ship to the site but because of COVID we couldn't be too too close so we would have our programs outside the ship here to you see all these students who have finished a program on the ship and taking a group photo so we want to do how do we make it impact in the community we give hands-on learning as fun activities fun as learning activities we also bridge the remove the commute for schools because we go to the schools the doing the baddies of community commuting because if they have to go to a tech interactive or other museums it takes them time so the teachers really appreciate that we are making easy easy easy for them to come and having programs which is fun and learning of course to the end we we library has a partnership with the schools where they get their own library student library card we connect back don't stop this here this is just the beginning come back to the library follow your passion you are all great so that's what we build our resources back to them put them in the children's hand thank you so much thank you thank you so now for our final presentation ebooks and streaming content are now as ubiquitous to libraries as patron barcodes and physical books so much content is in the digital realm and so how can we not include programming in a virtual setting we found a lot of success during the pandemic in virtual programming and so we're just going to keep going to bring back our this morning's keynote speaker nick tanzi is going to talk about best practices for virtual and hybrid programming i just got a pop up on my phone about flights i was like oh is it a bad thing but it's not a bad thing so virtual programming hybrid programming how do we get here i think for a lot of us it was the pandemic kind of brought us to this i know many of us had dabbled in virtual programming but this was kind of the the focal point for us and kind of the the big thing that gave us that push to really dive into virtual programming and one of the things that i find interesting about it is we and i'm speaking broadly okay to be clear but i know you know in our library one of the things that we found was we had shut down we had our physical location was unavailable and we were kind of trying to make do right and a lot of what we did was about continuity of service and it was with our power users in mind we were trying to keep that story time going we were trying to keep some of our popular exercise programs going and accidentally discovered new audiences and we found that partially it makes me feel excited partially it makes me feel like we made some mistakes because we found that we could serve our community so more fully with virtual programming and it was an area that we had ignored i think about our homebound patrons how much more fully their library experience could be if only we had done some of the stuff sooner so a lot of it was initially about serving continuity of service about continuing to serve power users and inevitably we discovered new audiences when we talk about virtual programming though i want to play to strengths i think we probably know that we're trying to figure out that new normal and what's the proper degree to virtual programming what's the balance between in-person programming and sometimes we i think artificially try to do virtual programs it's not always a good fit hybrid programming is not always a good fit so when we do virtual programming when we do hybrid how do we play to their strengths one of the things that i've discovered is and i discovered like i invented it right one of the lessons i learned was to capitalize on the immediacy of virtual how far in advance do you have to start planning your physical newsletter how it's like kind of steering a a cruise ship right it takes a lot of lead time in order to do that and when we pivoted to virtual we found that we could get things out in front of republic much quicker we were able to be more responsive now there's benefits to that there's some drawbacks to it but one of the examples i'll give is we had a pretty bad storm during the pandemic took down a lot of trees there was a lot of flooding and then we had a forecast not too much you know not long after that that we knew that bad weather was coming again and so it's obviously it's got a community's attention and it's a real need it's a matter of safety so we found that we could offer on the fly in a way that we couldn't with a print newsletter programs on identifying hazardous trees do it in a virtual setting and make that pivot much quicker so that was advantageous now we know that there's a digital divide we know that's part of the trick and this type of approach it relied on effective marketing it relied on and that was some of the signage in building that was some of the social media marketing that was our e-newsletter ties very much into this but when you're thinking about virtual programming capitalize on that immediacy the fact that you can respond to trends much quicker i i think is a sweet spot we also use virtual as a force multiplier we have limited space this is a beautiful space i don't have this kind of space where i work virtual takes space out of the equation right at least as long as you're paying zoom for the size of the room but it also allows you to be in many places at once and so what we used was what we're doing for example chair yoga classes we have multiple senior centers we have multiple assisted living centers that are scattered throughout our community we could do one program and we can reach all of them at once and we work with their recreation department so that they know when these things are happening and it's part of their offerings so for us it acts as a force multiplier we do one program and it reaches many people in a way that for outreach team would require multiple visits we still do those but this is another way to help get the most out of these investments pre-recording i think everybody thought virtual programs it was all so easy remember everybody thought we were on vacation when we're doing virtual and the reality is virtual programming takes a long time pre-recorded programs takes a long time i would always prefer to do it live but when we do pre-recordings that can give you some versatility and you need to lean into that guess what seasons they come again holidays they come again so if you've already done the work on that gingerbread house assembly right why not reuse it you can still come up with the craft kits all over again but it gives you the opportunity to get the most out of that investment it also allows you to do programs that are scalable sometimes you don't know how popular program is and then you discover it somewhat delayed italy and that is an opportunity to quickly scale up so that's another thing that we can lean into to get the most out of virtual programming one of my favorite things that came out of all this is just improved collaboration we came up with all of these ad hoc consortiums now we have the suffa cooperative library system that's 55 member libraries sometimes we work together really nice uh sometimes we don't sometimes we only work within what we call our zone it's our immediate geographic region and being able to just deputize four or five like-minded libraries and offer a virtual programming option allowed us to do programs that maybe were niche maybe for just the south huntington public library i didn't have a large enough audience to justify the cost when you bring in other libraries and you collaborate it all of a sudden made that that cold calculus that we sometimes have to do that cost per patron much more manageable it's also a way to engage in more expensive programming and of course spread the cost so it's not just those traditional partnerships but also those ad hoc that you can create it also creates new program partners virtual takes distance out of the out of the equation sometimes that means getting an author that you might may not be able to bring in sometimes it means a partner who is unable to travel or is prohibited to you know from traveling that's an advantage and then finally with hybrid hybrids one of those tricky ones where just like not every program is good for virtual just because you're having a physical program recording it is not necessarily now i have a great hybrid program right there's some things that we don't want to be recorded um when i'm doing an exercise class nobody needs to see me exercise nobody should have to watch that um i don't want to be recorded right so not everything is the perfect fit however stuff that really does work well kind of melding the to the in person and the virtual small conversations and book discussions and also those larger ones where the talk is maybe more one-sided that's lecture right and then you can engage in a q and a and we have found with a little bit of technology things like meeting out are very helpful for managing the active speaker in hybrid situations so i want to i know we need some time now to engage in a panel discussion that's my contact information you've seen that before and i'll turn it over to chris now you're going to open it up to questions also if anyone out there has any questions um i guess um one question that i had for all of the panelists was how has the community need for programming changed since the opening of society after the pandemic what are people looking for what do you what have you guys noticed well i just noticed especially this uh past summer um we were incredibly busy like more so than we anticipated for instance we did a an ice cream science program the idea was bring in the kids um give them some cream and sugar and a ziploc baggie with some rock salt and shake it up and ice cream science great um we ended up getting twice as many people as we anticipated we didn't require registration for this i think people are really nowadays trying to find ways to come back in ways that they're comfortable with um and doing programs outside but also um away from the library is a great great way to do that especially if you don't have necessarily have a great outdoor space um the branch i work at is very small and we do not have um much in the way of outdoor space but being able to um bring programs to that neighborhood with story time in the park for instance i'm going to some of the local parks in that area it has been fantastic so you know sometimes we're always wondering like what's your most popular program right that's the question we like to uh to answer and oddly enough with virtual programming one of the real community interests has been cutting the cord um figuring out with all these streaming services what's the best way to do this what's you know what does that look like a lot of questions um and it's part of just the changing media consumption that we have so that's one that works very well virtually in a lecture style format and we found that we can't offer it enough i would like to tell about our community outreach events when we do the community outreach events we do see the community coming up and really saying less screen time more fun activity hands on so it's more of a family thing that they are doing and they're engaging very well all every each member who's there they are doing it as a family event as for the schools the teachers are very happy because we come them come to them and the students who not participate because of their whatever group is in this class they say they are working well as a team so they see the team building activity going on in school after the pandemic want to add something then yeah so when we're out to the community underserved communities um some schools don't have maker space or the devices that they could use to educate the children so since the pandemic we've received a strong demand for us to visit and provide that resource for them and are you able to meet that demand with just your vehicle i would say yes yes because of our devices all the creative programs that the librarians have implemented it's been a successful one and we're we're fully booked for our the school year already and we hope that the that we can get more funding for maybe another one another vehicle do you do you like make an effort to visit the schools like equitably like like don't double up on one school before everyone's got a chance or something like that we try we try but yeah our priority is schools that are underserved but we do get like repeated requests from previous schools and we try to yeah we try to manage that yeah yeah it's true i've noticed that a lot of people come in and they want hands on they want hands on and they want inner community they want to like be able to relate to other people but i also i had a really successful film club that was all virtual during the pandemic and they keep hitting me up because i ended it and they were like when are you going to bring it back when are we going to meet again and so i think the next step is for it to be in person but the but there was there was a lot of success i had a lot of success virtually and and i had to stop that community and i think that they that some people lost that that sense of community even though it was virtual it's tricky because sometimes for some folks it's a convenient option for some people it's the only option and you know you're serving different communities with different needs that's part of the tricky piece and i feel like that's been a lot of this past year is figuring out what is the proper balance what is the right resource allocation because at the end of the day we have limited funds we have limited time and we're trying to navigate that appropriate split in physical and digital surveys surveys are important but then even the survey you got to make sure you're reaching the folks who are underserved okay well uh now we have a couple more minutes left so we could take questions from the audience so meeting al is a speaker that actually will focus and broadcast the active speaker so if you're on a zoom call and we're at a roundtable it's very good at showing the active speaker i think she knows what to write so i had a question for katelyn um you know like you guys are doing um story times in the park and so do you like i'm wondering if is it geographical and do you see people who live in that neighborhood attending that story time more or is it like the power users that come to every story time we get a little bit of both um as i mentioned before sometimes i anecdotally see that um people hey we walked across the street and get to story time but then again we also have the people who come every week we have some people who stop in when they can um again my my story times are on saturdays so people are busy people go on vacation people have fun things to do on saturdays and i'm honored that anybody comes and includes us in their saturday fun time but um it is really cool to see people enjoying parts of the city that they've never seen before and honestly i grew up in livermore and i'm seeing parks that i've never experienced before or have not since they have been renovated because a lot of the parks are have been have gotten refreshed in the past few years so it's been really nice to be able to meet people where they are in a lot of ways and maybe introduce people to new parts of livermore that they have access to um and they're welcome to be in but might not have explored on their own awesome okay well um padmashery benjamin katelyn and nick thank you for coming and and giving us your expertise on programming thank you