 All right. All right, good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I'm your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show every week and you can watch it at your convenience later. And I'll show you at the end of today's show where our archives are available on our website. Both the live show and the archives are free and open to anyone to watch. So please share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think might be interested in any of the topics we have on the show. The Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries in Nebraska and many other states are called the State Library. We're just called a commission. Nebraska is to be special. But so we are actually a state agency for all types of libraries that you can think of. So there'll be topics on our show for public libraries, K-12, academics, museums, correctional facilities, anything that's a library, we could possibly have something on about them. So a pretty broad, our only criteria is that it's something that has to do with libraries, something libraries are doing, something we think they could be doing, book review sessions sometimes we have, many training sessions, demos of services and products that are upcoming, tech related things, book related things, programming related things, we're all over the place. Just library, libraries is our focus. What we do have a Nebraska Library Commission staff do presentations sometimes come on the show and do episodes on things we're doing here specifically in Nebraska or at the Nebraska Library Commission. But we also bring in guest speakers sometimes and that's what we have this morning. With me today is Tina Walker, she's the director at our Keen Memorial Library in Fremont, Nebraska. And she drove down today to join me to talk about partnerships, growing partnerships were least expected, some really cool, fun things that they have been doing in Fremont for the library. So I'm just gonna hand over you to tell us all about everything you've been doing. Thank you, Crystal. I've been going, yeah. So we did a strategic plan last year and part of our strategic plan was one of our goals is to grow our partnerships throughout the community. We've been doing it for the last, I've been there for three years and we've been doing it for three years but we actually incorporated it into our strategic plan and I've encouraged all my staff to think way outside the box. We don't wanna do just the standard normal partnerships that we usually have. So we partner with anybody from nonprofits to businesses, to banks, to schools, homeschool groups, et cetera. We don't really care what group you are. If you have a project that we are interested in or we can help partner with them for some educational purpose, we'll partner with them. So this presentation today, I had presented it to present at the conference but I didn't get selected. So it's something some people have read about in our local newspaper. I've been writing about it for almost a year now. So we had a friend's member. You guys have been in the news a lot for things you've been doing. Yes, we like to think outside the box. So we had a friend's member, you can see from the picture on the slide that owns a liquor store and he found a way to incorporate the liquor with books. This picture I have to say, I'm sure there are librarians out there who are just panicking seeing this open glass of beer on top of a stack of books. Yes. Don't do this. Yeah, don't put the beer on the books. That's not how this works. So I'm just, this is just representative of the idea. So this is Dave's drive-thru liquor and book nook. And this is gonna be our official title for it. One of the things to be clear on here is it does not say book sale, it is a book nook. And I'll explain that a little bit. And I'll go through everything. These pictures are from the Fremont Tribune. They came in and did an amazing story. It's a great history, yeah. And then the Omaha World Herald came in and did a great story on this. So I'll go through the pictures and then we'll talk a little bit about the project. You'll notice the Miller light and the Bush light and then the books in the background with a disco ball on the wall. So this is Jeff Rice. He's the individual that we're talking about. He's the idea man behind this entire project. You can see the books on the shelf. All you librarians out there don't freak out that the books are not in the same direction and they're not in order. But this is Jeff, he does this all. And this... It's like bookstores do that. Bookstores will go put things however they can make them fit. That's what he does. So I can't really see this picture very well. I can't, I hope you guys can see it better. So it's called the tunnel of love for some people. You drive in and the people at the counter come over to you and say, what would you like? They go get your liquor, they bring it to you. If you have a specific, say you want, give me a couple of sci-fi books, they'll go get a couple of books for you and give them to you, you pay them and then you drive out. You can get out of your car, you can walk around and look at liquor and walk around and look at books, then get back in your car. But it's all inside, so weather doesn't matter. That's awesome. It goes all the way through the winter time, summertime, summertime gets a little warm, but their books, nothing happens to them. They do run air conditioning in there. It's pretty well moderated because the garage door is shut when there's not a car coming. So there's like a little beeper, like you go through a bank that tells you there's somebody out there so they open the garage door. And this is the tunnel of love. This is drive through bookstore. So people ask me, how on earth did you get started with this project? And Jeff Rice is the owner of Dave Slicker and he's a member of our friends group and his mom is a long time member and she's a diehard volunteer for our annual book sale. So Jeff has already been incorporated in the library. He's been helping us out for years. He actually physically helps move all the books for the annual book sale. So he's like our muscle and we need him greatly. But he knew that we needed space for our temporary book nook. At the front door of the library, we just have a metal shelf and we have some books that we throw up there and you can make donations on those books. It's not very big. We've run out of room in the library. We don't have space for this. We're working on an expansion which we'll actually have a friend's book nook area in it but right now we don't have space. So he was looking around his liquor store and the wall where the library shelves are at with the books was empty. And he just saw this empty space and he was contemplating like putting a mural up there or paying somebody to paint it or something. And he was going and moving all these books every week and he thought, I can put books here. And he completely came up with the idea. He built his own shelves. That's how I wanted to know where the shelving came from. The nice looking wooden. He did a great job and he came to the friends and said, if you give me a thousand dollars, I'll build shelves all along that wall. I'll take care of all the books, et cetera, et cetera. I'll paint it, we'll make it great. So the friends pony up the money for the shelving from an arts, he put all the manpower into it and built them all himself. So he also decided on a very bright color to draw attention to the books. It's bright, bright yellow. And it's wonderful because when any newspaper or article gets written about this, they take a picture of that bright yellow wall. So it's wonderful. Had to convince a lot of people that this was a good thing. That's one of my slides. So it's, you think about a liquor store and a library. And I live in conservative Nebraska. We are in the Bible Belt. And I had a lot of pushback at the beginning about advertising for liquor. And it was a tough call to make, but we finally just said we're just gonna do it. So some of the things we had to consider, some of the responses that I received were from patrons, community members, friends, board members, and friends members, and then the response from the city about advertising for a local liquor store. So we went through, we listened to what everybody had to say, and we had to weigh the pros and cons. Overall people questioned it, but I didn't really have anybody challenging it. So like some of the folks doing drag shows, story times right now, they're getting, you know, people are protesting in actual challenges. We didn't get any of that. So I just got a couple of emails and some phone calls. The city thought it was great. They were on board. They thought it was hilarious actually. Okay. So we did get some challenges, but you know, Jeff's doing all the work. He's not charging us a dime. He doesn't take a percentage at all. And it's free advertising for him and it really drew some people in, but we don't have to do anything. And I'll show you what the outcome of the book sale has been. And it's actually been very positive for us. So we had to look at this as somebody's willing to do something for free for us to provide money to the friends group that comes directly to the library for programming and events. Right. So the questions that they've looked at questions, it was mainly about should a public entity, like the public library is part of the city be specifically promoting a particular business or a particular liquor-based business. Cause that's two different things. I mean, libraries partner with businesses all the time. I mean, reaching out to them for, will you donate the materials we need for the wood for this makerspace equipment? And then the idea is you'll get to free advertising at the library, a great thing you're doing for the community. I mean, so it happens all the time. So was that the whole, the booze part was what the issue was really? It was just the liquor. I actually had a couple older individuals tell me that I'll never go through there because I don't drink. That's fine. They came back later and told me that they drove through and loved it. So they said, you don't have to buy the liquor. You can just go in there and buy books. You don't have to go in for the booze side. And we technically have opened up a second branch of the library without paying for it because it's way on the other side of town. So the individuals are walking up there with their kids and walking through with their strollers and their bikes and they're getting books off the shelf and going home. So I've actually had people tell me it's like having a second branch on the other side of town. These aren't books that are being lent out but they return it. This is all sale money. So they're- It's donation money. Foundation, whatever they wanna donate. And the best part is, we'll go through some of the numbers here, but we made over $7,000 in the first 12 months. Wow, that's awesome. The first two months that he sent us the statistics and how much he had made, we about fell out of our chairs. We couldn't believe it. So we're averaging $450 to $500 a month on book donations. And the donation book nook is not a sale. We do not pay sales tax. So that's very important because the annual sale, we do pay sales tax because we are selling the books. This is donations only, no sales tax. Free donation at whatever you want to. Yes, right. So Jeff has seen a small uptake in his own personal business. Sure, while I'm here getting a book, I might as well get a six pack. Exactly. And honestly, one of the things I've heard from a lot of the community members is if he's gonna give his time and effort to support the library friends group like this, then the friends are gonna support his business. So it's been a two way show and it's been great. But we're also getting larger donations for our books. So somebody goes in, they have a $20 bill. They buy $14 in liquor and they get three or four books. They just tell them to keep the change. Keep it for the books. So we're getting $6 for those three books. So it's easier. It's more than we're getting. And because it is to support the library and programming and the friends group, people will buy $5 for this stuff and give them a 20 and just tell them to donate the rest. So it's been a very positive outcome. We haven't had any negative comments since it opened and it turned out to be so successful. Once it's a success, the complaints go. Yeah, nobody cares. So even though we're recommending $0.50 to a book, we almost always get more than that per book. We have to or there's no way we'd be making $500 a month for book donations. So right now I don't have the slide number in here. He keeps about 3,000 books Okay, I was wondering how many were there. And he comes back over and gets the books and takes them over. I think that's on my next slide here. So sustainability, as long as Jeff is physically able to do this and he owns the store, we'll keep going. He does all the man labor. He does, comes over, they sort through the books. He takes the boxes, he transports into a store and he isn't a librarian, has never been trained in librarianship. He loves sorting the books and putting them up on the shelf and being one to decide what's gonna go on those shelves. And putting them in categories. Mini collection development or? Absolutely. And he hasn't... So if somebody comes in and says, I want a book about something, he has things organized so we can pay or his staff can know where to go to find. Very broad categories. That's a long wall to try and find something specific on, I would think. The three categories I know about are the big sellers children's books. So they keep those all on one end and then fiction and nonfiction. So they don't break it down into a romance or sci-fi or anything. We've actually taken his lead. So next year for the annual book sales that have 42 categories, we're going down to 20. So it'll be easier for us, less time involved, et cetera, et cetera, people will still get their books. But it does also help the friends out, reduce the storage costs. We have so many donations. Not this... So many books to libraries. It's amazing. Well, and especially with the flood, it's been crazy, but we've had to turn away a lot because of the damage. So that's the thing we heard, we did do here at the Library of Cures to Permission to be in the state agency. We did reach out to all the libraries in the state to find out what happened, how was your dam, what was your, how are you doing? And miraculously, most of our buildings did not have much damage. People's homes, and Tina did experience that in her own personal home, mostly people's homes were damaged. The library buildings were fine. And almost no libraries lost any materials or books or things. I think I remember one library they had in a storage unit. So once again, not at the library, the things for their upcoming summer reading program. But people, other libraries donated stuff, and so they got, so that got damaged and destroyed. But, and so we keep getting calls from places outside of the state, you know, I'm sure everyone in the Midwest, I have books I wanna send to your library. It's like, actually they don't need them. They actually did well. Now if you wanna do something else, you can, or if you wanna donate them, realizing they're not gonna go into the collection, but they may go to something like this instead. They will be part of a book sale to help earn money from the library. But we actually got weirdly lucky, lucky that the buildings themselves of the libraries in Nebraska at least, came through pretty well. And you reminded me of the next topic. I was gonna contact you about being a library in a flood zone. And then you deal with that afterwards. So I kind of, on another encompassed life. Future, look for that future. Yes, I'd like to talk about how we, how we got through it, what we did and how the public library assisted with that. So, but yeah, so we're getting a lot of books. The friends have not this past year, but the year before, we had like seven different estates donate their entire estate. They had to purchase additional storage units because we had too many books. Well, now that Jeff is rotating 3000 books out through his store, they have one storage unit and they never have to go more. It's going out so much so quickly. And he's also helping keep a better eye on the books. So sometimes we don't always see the damaged stale, wet, moldy books that come into these giant boxes that we get. Yeah. Because he's rotating books and looking at them more often, we're able to weed out a lot more damaged books and items. So it's keeping the smell down, keeping the, you know what, spread the mold to other books. Exactly. You don't wanna sell those kind of books in your book sales and haven't moved that mold into someone's home. Exactly. Those are the ones that go, and it happens, they go in the dumpster, they have to. They have to. And we're allowing more families opportunity for children's books and new material. So for them, it's new material. Us, it's not, it's older donated things or things that we've weeded out of library collection, which means it's probably at least five years old, but for these families, they're new. So because we're on the other side of town with this library branch, these families are coming in and getting all these books throughout the year for their kids and they're swapping, they'll bring books in and donate it to Jeff and he'll take them and take them to the Friends Group Forum. So he's also a drop-off site for our donations. Oh, from the other side of town. Yes. They don't have to go as far. And because he has an easy drive-through, easy way to get them there, he can take them to like 18, 20 boxes at a time where we only take four at a time. Right, people who just drive in with their car full of books. Yes. I wanna trade up my books for some beer. And they drop off all their books, they'll get a couple off the shelf and then they'll swap out for new stuff. So it's been wonderful that Ease of Access is an absolute bonus. They don't have to, we have no parking in our library. So it's really hard sometimes for people to come in, find a parking spot, get in the library. Sometimes you wind up walking like a half a block to a block just to get to the library. But now you just drive into this liquor store, you park your car, yeah, you check out the shelf, you get what you want and you get the car and you leave. You don't have to buy a liquor. No. But if you do, it's a bonus. And all of this is free money for the Friends, like I said. And the Friends, their mission is to support our programs and activities and they just give the money back. So for instance, I was telling Krista this morning that our summer reading program is going so gung-ho that we right now are where we were at the end of last year's summer reading program for prizes. We ran out of prizes. So the Friends were willing to donate more money to buy additional prizes because they're getting a steady income stream. And it's not normal for them. They're used to every April having that book sale and getting that $9,000 to $10,000 a year. Well, now they're getting the annual sale plus $500 a month. So they're more willing to assist us. A lot more wiggle room there to when you need something on the fly like that. Exactly. Usually it's we're planning, programming for the next year and can you budget that out? But this is a surprise. We need more now. Now they don't even really balk when we go to them and ask for money for things. They're like, yeah, here because the- The point is for the money to be used. Yeah, they don't want to hold on to it. And as a private 501c3, they have limits on their checking account. They've had to transfer money to a Pre-Money Area Community Foundation, just like a pass-through account because they had too much money in their checking account. So we've been asked to please make a large expenditure on something. Victim of their success as they say. Exactly. So now that we have the expansion project going on and they're the fundraisers for it, they're able to move some of that money over to the expansion project fund. But it's a volunteer group. These are all retired teachers and librarians and community members. And they don't have time to be managing this amount of money. And so they're like, just spend it because I don't want it in my checking account. And it makes it easier to balance the checkbook. Sure. So that's how we're gonna sustain it. And I think it is gonna be sustainable. It's a huge success. Yeah, absolutely. I'm just absolutely amazed. And all of this because my staff and I've been talking since I started that I get things have been done this way for a long time but we were all in agreement that if we wanna become the hub of the community and the center of the community and we wanna become important to the community, we have gotta start looking outside the box and doing things differently. So this is definitely an outside of the box project. Yeah. Being where they don't expect you where you've never been before. No. And I actually got asked once by the city administrator why I was participating in a certain event. And I'm like, because it's educational I have the knowledge to provide to these people for that. And what do you get in return? Well, they were donating items to the library. So it was a great partnership but people can't understand why we're involved in that event or activity. Well, anything in the community will try to be a part of it. So this is great program. I do recommend very few communities have a drive-through liquor store, so. Yeah, that's a particular situation is unique. Well, I've seen drive-through liquor stores in various places. But you may not have the same thing but you could do something in it with some other kind of. Absolutely. So I was laughing when I first moved to Fremont. The first thing I saw was this drive-through liquor store. My family's from winter, South Dakota and they have five drive-through liquor stores up there. Haven't seen it since I was a child. So I laughed at it and I thought it was hilarious. Just like home. Just like home. And I'm like, wow, drive-through liquor. Turns out they're one of our best partners. They are amazing to work with. I couldn't ask for a better partner than Jeff. The business is wonderful. They're very nice people. And his staff is doing all this for no additional pay. They just really enjoy the community coming in. Well, it's just for them, on their side too, making themselves important to the community. Absolutely. And we're not just some drive-through liquor store to get your booze. We care about the community and other and this kind of service and education of the children and literacy and everything. And so it's good for them as well. I mean, there's really no downside to it. Not really. From both sides. And this is why we do encourage libraries to do all sorts of partnerships and looking in your community. And that is a struggle that a lot of libraries have is budget. Yes. Even if you do have a friend's group or foundation is how are we gonna do this? How are we gonna have the budget and the time and the staff? And it's just talk to your businesses in your community. Talk to anyone. You never know who might think, oh yeah, the library's great, but I never thought about it. But let's figure out a way we can do something and check it out there and ask. And we do. We've hit, we go to nonprofits, for-profit businesses, individual groups. So Kiwanis, Rotary, we've received grants from them for different things. We've partnered with the Hope Center, which is like, oh, it's kind of an educational center for kids after school, before school, summertime, et cetera. We partnered with Jefferson House, which is a boys home and just different groups around town. We go downtown to the businesses on the local downtown area. We partner with them all the time. Downtown of the bricks kind of businesses. We partner with Three Rivers Library or Three Rivers Health System. And we're providing them a space to do some different testing and some informational, educational things. And that's the thing too, a thing about partnering. It doesn't, like this one is obvious. It's benefiting the library with, physically getting the books out, getting the money in. But sometimes the partnering isn't, and this is, I think, because some people have trouble making the sleep, it isn't always something the library is doing for the library. You are providing space for an event, space for this, usually medical testing. Yes. Has nothing to do with the service the library is doing, the traditional service as in, in addition to when you come here to do this testing, we will then throw our books at your people or do whatever. It's not that at all, it's just the space to do the, for them to do the thing. And then everyone thinks, oh, the library can do, I can just go there for a meeting. I can just go there for the space or they will provide what I need for this event or something. And that's where you've got to think how my, what's going on in the community that I need to do. And even if I don't physically get something back, and this is what I think a lot of them have that issue is, well, what are we getting out of it? It's the notoriety maybe, is the way to say the fact that the library is in people's minds all the time, and that will eventually turn over into something else done and throw it in the future that could be money or donations of books or donations of time, doing a presentation of the library on something, it'll all come back in the end. We're partnering with Blue Yoga in Fremont and we were providing them space to do free classes for individuals. So we're doing two different types. We're doing an English-based and Spanish-based yoga class. Following the flood, we had a large population of our Hispanic community that was completely stressed out, depressed, they lost their homes, et cetera. So we're providing Spanish yoga for the mothers and the children to come in and just get some relaxation and rebuild and release. Mental health is important just as much when these things happen as physically getting your home back and yeah. So they've seen an uptick in their people using their yoga services, but she comes to the library and provides. We do a baby mommy yoga, which you have your baby strapped to you or you're holding them or you're playing with them while you're doing yoga. And then we have the Spanish yoga, the English yoga. We do chair yoga now. So older individuals that have trouble getting on the floor doing the moves. And the chairs, yeah. So it's just thinking outside the box and my staffs, they're so different, each one of them, and the different things that they like to do, their hobbies, their activities, things of that nature. So when you start throwing it out there and say, just think about stuff and go do it. There's a quote about failure is one of the best things in the world because you learn from it. So well, I'm like, go out there and fail. But if you don't, you wind up with a drive through your liquor store that makes a ton of money for you. And it in turn helps the community and increases literacy in your community. I mean, who would have thought a drive through your liquor store was gonna increase literacy in our children? That's just- They never know, yeah. It's amazing. So did you have any questions pop in there? No, let's see. Does anybody have any questions? Is there anything you wanna ask about what they did and any other issues that happened with this? Are you sure? I'm gonna hit arrow and I'm gonna get the last slide. Yeah, here we go. I'll go show you the pictures again. So this is, the wall is like- So yeah, there's a yellow behind it, yeah. Yeah, so it's like six foot tall. Wow, yeah. Six or seven foot tall. I think that top row on the right side is almost eight foot. Yeah, there's some extra books up there. So you can see on the left-hand side, there's just some sticks going up. He's actually finished those shelves now and he's added more because he likes having the books there. So he, I mean, that was just dead space. Yeah, so I see there's letters and stuff or does he have stepstools? Yeah, stepstools. For people that are up there, okay. And he goes out there and lets people look around and they'll crawl up there and get the stuff down for you and- Which is good, yeah. It's great. I mean, in a library, we would never go that tall. No. But he can at his, drives your liquor store and- You can put it up against that wall there, yeah. And it's really bright because usually it's sunlight that they're working with in there. And I think it helps that that garage door is open pretty regularly and you get airflow in there. So these books aren't just sitting in some storage unit in boxes and just getting- Oh yeah, we can get damp and- They're airing out and they're drying out and it's probably being very helpful for them to be sitting there on its shelves. But Jeff's an amazing man. He just, how he ever came up with this is just, I think it's because he saw the books every day. Yeah. Because he came to our little building and sorted with his mom and moved all the boxes. And I guess if you look at something long enough- Something will click and you're thinking about what use space you have available. So this is something you've got going with the liquor store. Has any other business now or organization come to you and said, can we do something like this too in our place? Because we see how successful this is. And I mean, I mean, here, you're reporting to us on the amount of money you're making. The fact that it increased his business is there. Has this been reported back to the community, to the city, to the public in general to say, hey, this is what is happening to side effect of this to the liquor store side? Yes. We advertise all the time. I write my articles, weekly articles about it quite often. We talk about it at our friends group at our library board meeting. I could inform the community, the city. I've had a couple of people have mentioned it but nobody's ever moved forward on it. But this has also drawn their attention to, like we do some very strange story times. So the mall called, they just wanted us to come take one of their empty stores and do a story time. So we went up there for six months and we just parked our little pads and the kids could come in. It worked for a little while and then malls are so fluctuating around the holidays. So it was hard for us to send staff up there when we weren't getting any kids but it was a partnership that was created because of something like this. So whether it's actually having our materials in their business or just how can we partner and let's work together because we are getting such recognition that they think it's wonderful to be partnered with the library. All the news stories out there, definitely. Absolutely. And our local radio station, our newspaper, they're very supportive. Tammy McKegan from the Fremont Tribune comes on a regular basis to our library board meetings and she writes articles about us all the time. Colin does as well and it's great to have that support in the community. So this is helping, it's giving us a good vibe. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm loving everything about it. I really, I had that moment where I sat in my office for an hour and just thought about it because I knew this was a big step forward and it could really fail. But I just had this, you know what? Just do it moment. Try it. Yeah, it didn't, like, I mean, especially having the, and the other thing at Library Central is how are we gonna do this with the staff? Our staff is already doing so many things. You didn't have to have yourself do it. That's, and that's the thing too. You've gotta find the people like Jeff who will be the outside staff, I guess. Absolutely. And can do it. And you never know who you're gonna talk to in just conversation. That's why you're always on, I guess, when you're out and talking to people about the library or even not talking about the library, just out socially or going to the grocery store or whatever and someone knows who you are or says something, you just mentioned something and you never know where, well, snowball. It's hilarious. I took my car in to get repaired and the auto shop gives you a ride to work while they had other people in the car. And as soon as they found out I was from the library, I had all these questions about the book nut, I had questions about the expansion project, et cetera. So the whole car ride back to the library was a pitch for the library, but it happens every day because of the news coverage that we get. That's awesome. So he only has this one location, right? There's no other, okay. Yes, just this one. It'd be great if he opened another one, but that would be... Well, that would be an open hit, yeah. And you said as long as he's still the owner there, there's no chance of him, he's not having a moving on or something or anything, right? Nope, and he's a younger guy, he's my age, so I don't think we're at risk of losing this for any time soon. And the funny thing was when the friends agreed to do it, they're like, you know, we'll give it a shot. If it doesn't work in the first four months or so, we'll just call it quits and that's... That's a good attitude to have actually. And I mean, I think this is actually kind of a good show leading up to what I'm doing next week and what's coming up, which is Public Library Accreditation here in Nebraska where libraries are working on strategic plans, community needs response planning and everything. And one of the things that we have them think about is coming up with a program or a project or a goal for what you're gonna do. And I think, and it's the thing, we need to do a whole show about failure because that's a thing. But what if it's not gonna work? What if we can't pull it off? That's okay. You can go into it with a completely, like, I don't know if this is even a thing, but it doesn't hurt us much to try it. So meh, whatever. That's an okay attitude to go into. Can't you never know what might come out the other side? Absolutely. Yeah, you can go into it. It doesn't have to be, I'm so gung-ho, this is gonna be the perfect thing and everything is gonna work and we have it all laid out from beginning to end. It doesn't have to be that way. This is a perfect example of they weren't all in really. They were kind of iffy. The city and some community members were not all in, but your response to that is, we're just gonna try it. See what happens. If it doesn't work, we'll try something else. If we discover it needed some tweaking, maybe. That's what we'll do. And that's okay. Just thinking outside the box. You're very, very first slider. That's all we're talking about. And it's okay to come back later and say, you know what, it didn't work as a complete failure. Yeah, it didn't happen. We're gonna have to regroup and try something else. Absolutely. And that's just how you get anything done and that is perfectly acceptable way to do it, yeah. And I will say, if you're gonna go outside the box and you're gonna try something, one of the things I've tried to get through to my staff repeatedly is you have to give it time. So. Yeah, it's not gonna be instantaneous. No, and you need time to market what you're doing. So if it doesn't work after 30 days, you need to keep going because you've gotta give that marketing time to get out there. So we, like I said, four months, that was a pretty good number to wait and see how long and does it work, et cetera, et cetera. But if you're gonna try something out of the box and three days later it's not working, you can't just stop. You need to take into consideration that you need to give it time to get out there and give it time to become the norm and then people might participate or get the information out there. Give it some time. Let it go, try it. Don't just keep doing it cancel. Do it cancel, do it cancel. Give things some time, get it on a calendar, get it out there in the community calendar, the what you're doing, et cetera. Just give it some time. Yeah, people are gonna have to have time to hear about it and tell their friends about it. And then, you know, when you share things with your friends about something cool that's going on and it's like at the library, it takes them, well, I'll check that out, but I'm busy this month and then next month I'm going on vacation. So it might be after that that I'll get around to checking out this cool thing or any, not just libraries, this cool restaurant you mentioned to me or this show that I want to see or something. It can take time for everything to trickle down and get out there. Yeah, it's not gonna be a mad dash all at once. It's not like the first day of summer reading. No, and we- Which has been probably when it first started was not a huge six, I don't know, I'm just guessing the very first summer reading program, people are probably like, what's this? But now the kids and parents go crazy for it and yeah. Absolutely, it's not like we got all that news coverage the first day that you put the shelves in. No, no. But that's something you can do too, if you want, I mean, they eventually hear about it and then come to the story, but you can proactively reach out to them, say we want you to come and do a story or we've written a press release about a thing we're doing. So can you put this out there to let people know? So you can be proactive with that or you can wait for them to hear about it too and come to you. But they can still do more than one story too. They can do your opening press release saying, here's a thing, and then come back in two, three, four months, whatever it is to follow up on if it's successful mostly. Yes, if it's successful about how it's going, it's still gonna be going, any changes that might be happening with it. And I know that though Omaha World Herald, when they came out to do the story, we didn't reach out to them. They just heard about it. They heard about it and they reached out to Jeff. So it was awesome. So are there any changes he's thinking about doing to this based on what? Bigger. Where more, does he have more room? I don't know what he's doing. He wants more, he wants bigger, he wants. Well, you can only go so tall before it's just not gonna open. Exactly. And has he filled the whole length of the building? I think you can really tell them what it is. Now, today it is all full. And dead, okay. It's amazing. And so like their staff, I walked in one day, I actually went in there to get wine and the staff member was sitting at the little desk cause when there's not customers, you don't have a lot to do. She was reading a book off the shelf. Sure. So it was great to see that his staff is reading as well. And they're very, very helpful. And they know where the material's out on the shelf. And they're like, if you're looking for kids, it's down there. And they are just loving it. I think his staff is having a really good time with it. Yeah. And if it's slow, like just go there and check out the books and see what's come in new, especially with a such turnover. Absolutely. And there is with it, like you said, wow. And the community interaction that they're seeing that they don't normally see with the folks dropping off 10 boxes or eight boxes, they're helping them unload their vehicles and they're talking and they're communicating and they're talking about the library. And so it's a wonderful community interaction as well. That's another side effect you wouldn't think about cause probably usually people sit in their car said, for me a six pack of this and a box of that wine and buy. I'm gone. Yes. But now they're chatting and they're browsing the books and what kind of books do you like? Oh, I like that kind too. Let's. Absolutely. I've read a good book on that topic. Yeah. It's like having a community book club without having a community book club, so. A readers advisory. Absolutely. Yeah. If they've been reading books off the shelves there they're just gonna sit in there. So this is very cool. I'm glad we got to your books. I've seen the news stories about this. Yes. Yeah. And I shared them all over the place of course. It was just so amazing. I remember hearing about when it was first happening and I was like, well that's really creative and different. It was amazing. She keeps kind of getting reported on and how successful it is. And being able to see it, these huge row of books. Yeah. Yeah, it was very cool. Yeah, this picture doesn't even do justice how long now. You can't fit the whole thing in. Actually is. I mean she's as back as far as she can get on the liquor side and still couldn't get the whole thing in there. So, and there's 30. Those are probably 30 or half the shelves at our library. They look like very good, not just like plywood or something. No, they're two by fours and one by eights and he did an amazing job. Attached to the wall? Attached to the wall in some way? Okay. Absolutely. He knew what he was doing. I don't even know the safety of him, yeah. Exactly. All right, does anybody have any questions or comments or anything? Oh, okay. Well, this isn't a question about this. It's a request for Tina. We do have, this is a side effect of our show here. We do Bookface Fridays here at the Nebraska Library Commission posts onto our blog and our Facebook and Twitter and Instagram posts. Those Bookfaces hold a book in front of your face or body or something. And whenever we have someone who's coming in from outside the commission for our Encompass Live show, they get snagged to do these. So I just got a notice from our staff there to make sure Amy gets brought down so she can do a photo. So, no, Amy's asking to bring Tina down. Sorry. So we'll look for Tina to be on, I assume this Friday. This Friday, this Friday, yeah. I'm not sure what they've got going for yet, yeah. It's always fun and creative that they do that. So, I think nobody has any questions or anything about the presentation, but that's great. You guys can always reach out to Tina at Keen Memorial Library in Fremont, Nebraska. Look that up and ask her more about it if you want to. Her slides will be available afterwards with the archive as well. Oh, I got a hold of those. So, you'll have all that information and the data and statistics there that you can look at if you want to try and sell the same kind of thing if you have a drive through your store or something similar to show how this kind of, the success of this kind of thing can be. The recording will be on our website and I will switch over to, we do have a browser up here and I'll show you, let me get on the right. There we go. On our Encompass Live website. This is their library commission website, but if you use your search engine of choice and look up Encompass Live, so far we're the only thing called that on the internet. Nobody else can ever call themselves this. And you'll come to our main website for the show. So, here we have our upcoming shows for the next couple of months shown. But at the very bottom here is where our archives are. So, this is where today's archive will be. These are the most recent ones at the top of the list. So, this is the one from last week and we had the recording and the presentation of links to both of those will be for today's show. We'll be right up there. Should be up by the end of the day today. Everyone who attended today or came in remote or registered with an email from me and also shared out to all of our various social media places. While I'm here, I'll show you, this is our archives and you see we do have a search feature here. Encompass Live started in 2009. So, we're in our 10th, 11th year now. So, we do have all of our archives here on the page. So, our IT people here, thank you Vern, has created a search feature finally for us because it was just getting very unwieldy to go through this long page. You can search the entire archives for something and or you can just look at the most recent couple of months and you want really up-to-date information. So, when you are looking for archives, I just wanna point out, be aware of the date on them. Whenever we post on here, it does show the date that something was originally broadcast. So, keep that in mind when you are watching in-air shows with 10 years worth of information. There will be things in here that are old, outdated, some links might not work anymore, service might not exist anymore or might have completely changed since our show. But, so pay attention to the date of the original broadcast. But we are librarians, as we do, we archive and historically save things. So, we'll always have everything up there even if it's old and outdated. But it all does have a date on it so you know exactly when it came. Wasn't originally done. So, we do have, that will wrap it up for today's show. We do a Facebook page for Encompass Live. So, if you are a big Facebook user, you can give us a like over there. Here's where we have a reminder to log in for today's show. We have, go away, I do not wanna log in right now. Thank you. Reminders about coming shows, when our recording is available. There's the last one. We put it up here. So, if you do like to use Facebook, give us a like over there. The Library Commission also has a Twitter account that some things, or things we'll be pushed out to as well. Mailing lists that you can sign up for. So, everything gets pushed out there. So, that will wrap it up for today's show. Hope you join us next week when, right here next week. Oh, we will be talking, I just mentioned about public library accreditation. I just added this to here. In Nebraska, we have a public library accreditation program where each year groups of libraries are re-accredited, gives them some funding, get into, just take a look at their library, do community needs planning like what Tina has done at her library. And the program, the process starts in July. So, next week, right before we open up for our re-accreditation or new accreditation, I'm doing a one hour session on the whole program. So, if you're interested in that, if you are in a Nebraska library who is coming up for renewal this year, you're gonna wanna take a look at that. Or if you're just interested in being coming accredited. This is the short version of my longer workshops, which is like two or three hours long, that'll give you a smaller version of everything that you might need to know about accreditation. So, please just sign up for that. And any of our other upcoming shows we have here, I've got dates filled in. I've got, you can notice, I think I've got a date in July still that I'm working on filling, but keep on our schedule. We're always adding new things there throughout the year. And that's it. So, does anyone have any comments or questions? Thank you so much Tina for coming down and telling us all about this. This is great. I think I need to go to Fremont to pick up some wine. There you go. We're going on a road trip. So, thank you for coming down. Thank you everyone for attending and hopefully we'll see you on another time on Encompass Bye. Thank you. Bye.