 Good morning, and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show every week as we are right now, and the archives are then posted onto our Encompass Live website for you to watch at your convenience. And I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can check on all of our archives. We include a recording of the show itself, video, and any slides, any presentations or handouts or documents or anything that's included along with the presentation. We do a mixture of things here on Encompass Live. The Nebraska Library Commission, for those of you that aren't from Nebraska, I know we do have people from all across the country logging in. We are the state agency for libraries. That means any type of library in the state. So we have things for K-12, academics, publics, museums, corrections, anything that has a library and it has something to do with libraries could be something on our show. And we do a mixture of types of things here, book reviews, interviews, mini-training sessions, demos of services and products, cool things libraries are doing, cool things we think libraries could be doing. We have Nebraska Library Commission staff that sometimes do presentations for things that we are doing here in Nebraska specifically. But we do bring in guest speakers and that's what we have on the line with today. With us this morning is Tina Dalton. Good morning, Tina. Hi. And Jennifer Stigl, good morning, Jennifer. Good morning. They are both from New York State, actually, two libraries that are nearby to each other. And they actually did this presentation. I attend, I try to attend this office. They can be annual ARSL Conference, Association for Rural and Small Libraries. And they did this session there. I was unable to attend that particular one. There's just too many things going on sometimes at conference. But I was lucky to be able to reach out to them and have them come on to our show here and cover slide to share their presentation about libraries and the LGBT experience. So I'm just going to hand over to you guys, take it away, and tell us all about what you've been doing. All right, thank you. So I'm Tina Dalton. I'm the director at the Cuba Circulating Library in Cuba, New York. And I'm Jennifer Stigl's, and I'm the manager at the Salamanca Public Library in Salamanca, New York. And we both work together at one time at the Olean Library, which is a big part of where the programming that we're going to talk about took place at. So, all right. We'll get started. So in 1970, the Task Force for Gay Liberation formed as a part of the American Library Association. It later became the GLBT Roundtable. And I believe they just changed it to like the Rainbow Roundtable now. This organization is the oldest LGBTQ professional organization in the United States. This image here was taken at the ALA annual conference, July 1, 1970, in Dallas. So we just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge how long librarians have been fighting for and working with LGBTQI people. And that's something that we still strive to do today. So as part of this presentation, we sent out a survey to rural libraries in our area. It was the CCLS system and the STLS system, which encompasses six counties in Western New York. And as you can see, here's the results we had from 74 respondents. 79% identified as cisgender female, 82% were heterosexual, and 50% were directors or managers. So one of the questions that we asked on this survey we sent out was, does your library offer any programming aimed specifically at the LGBTQI community? If so, what? And if your library does not, why not? We had 66 respondents answer this question out of the 74. So some of the answers were, I suppose the lack of programming about this issue is much like our lack of programming about religion. It's personal. We don't go there. It's neutral ground. But I'm sure all of you realize that there's a big difference between offering religious-based programming and offering programming for the queer community. Most communities are going to have churches, temples, places where religious individuals can go for educational, socialization, and recreational needs. But a lot of towns, especially small towns like the ones we're from, don't have a place for LGBT people to meet. We do not, as far as I know, we don't have any LGBT plus staff members. So it's probably because there's no one pushing for it. So something that we'll talk about is you do not have to be a member of the LGBT community to host programs at your library for LGBT people. You know, we all host programs, things that aren't an interest to us personally, or maybe are things that we don't necessarily believe, but we still run those programs for the people within our communities. And I have not offered LGBTQI programming in our community because of the conservative bend. Well, those are the towns you should be offering it in. You know, the more conservative, the less likely there's other places within your community that queer people can go where they feel safe. And so the library needs to offer those kind of services and be a safe space. So one of the responses you might have noticed was we do not have anyone who identify as such in our community. So we just wanted to share with you this picture of a little cutie named Finn. He's one of my patrons in Cuba, and I did get permission from his mom to share this story. So when the only in library held drag queen storytime and it was all over social media and in the newspaper, I saw this picture of Finn. Now, Finn's been my patron since he was a little guy in storytime. I've grown up. He's grown up knowing me. And before I saw this picture, I never knew that he was gender fluid. And why should I? I don't need to know how he identifies or what his gender is to serve him as a patron. But here he is. Look at the joy on his face. He's so happy at this drag queen storytime because he's seeing someone who's a reflection of how he's feeling and how he is. And that's exactly what we want to do as librarians and libraries is offer that kind of validation and acceptance and support for our community. And you never know. I know one of those comments was something about the, you know, in our conservative area. It's just not a thing. You, you'd be, well, some people, some people would not, would be surprised here in Nebraska, which I'm sure many people think of as red state center of the country. There is drag queen story hour Nebraska. We have a group doing that across the state. Know that, would you? But we do. And they're going to all sorts of places. And they're going to libraries, into coffee shops and bookstores and doing their thing. That's awesome. Yeah, it's very red. So, yes. And, and we're also in a very red part of New York. I know people think of New York as, as liberal because of the city, but once you leave the city, it's pretty rural. And then actually both the counties where we live and work in have voted red consistently for the past several elections. So, so here are just some statistics. We weren't able to find anything newer, but this shows you that on average, it's 4.5% of the public of the population that identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. So, my library in Cuba serves a population of about 4500. That would give us an estimated 202 LGBT plus patrons. And when I served at the Olien Library, Olien, New York has about 14,000 people, which would estimate about 630 LGBT plus patrons statistically. And that's a significant number. I mean, if someone said to you, you've just had 202 refugees move into your community, what can you do as a library to support them? You would for sure start scrambling to do something to support those patrons. And the same should be true for your queer patrons as well. So, on the survey, somebody actually posed a question to us. They asked, they said, no, their library doesn't offer LGBT programs. My question is for you, why should we? So these are just some statistics from the Human Rights Campaign and the Trevor Project. 42% of LGBT teens say that the community they live in is not accepting. LGBT youth are twice as likely to be physically assaulted. 63% plan to move out of their town to find acceptance. So, you know, those of us in small towns, we don't want the younger generations to just automatically move away to find somewhere where they feel safer to live. You know, we want them to stay here. And LGBT youth are almost five times as likely to have attempted suicide compared to heterosexual youth. And if statistics don't do it for you, the children shown here either have taken their own life or had their lives taken from them because of the way that they were treated, bullying, abuse, and harm. They were not at home because they were either assumed to be LGBT or were LGBT individuals. So having a safe place within your community like a library where your career use can go and participate in programming and feel accepted can sometimes literally save a life. Will it come back on? Probably not. There we go. Okay, so another question we asked, what is your opinion of libraries offering programs geared specifically at the LGBTQIA community? And we got a mixture of answers here. Some people said they felt it was important to provide a welcoming environment to anyone, but they thought it should be a broader, not just one specific subgroup of the community. And of course we got, if we do programming for LGBTQIA, then are we also going to do programming for Wiccans or fundamental Christians? And then I believe that they sin because the Bible says so. Well, guess what? It doesn't matter what your belief about sin is while you're at work. So it's fine to believe that if you choose, but when you're at work, you're here to support the whole community and you need to check that belief at the door and do what you can for the LGBT members of your town. And so the best answer we got was, sweet, do it, help me do it. So that's what we're here to do. I like that one, yes. Okay, so it's important that while you're working towards making your library more LGBT affirmative and creating all these great new programs you're going to do and increasing your collection that you don't forget about training your staff. What we did in Cuba was collaborate with the Pride Center of Western New York. They're located in Buffalo, New York, which is a little over an hour's drive from Cuba. So for those of you who live in rural places, you might reach out to the place in a bigger city near you because they are willing to come and drive to you. They want to share what they're doing with you. So we collaborated with some other nonprofits in the area. We sent it out to local colleges across our county and the next county over and we held an LGBT cultural competency training and we had over 40 people show up for it. So it was for not only library staff, but also for members of the community as well. It was very well received and I know our staff felt more confident in their ability to serve those patrons and they were also more sensitive in how they serve them as a result of this training. So one of the things I did at the Olien Library when we started having an increase in LGBT patrons coming in because of the programs we were offering was I started sending out emails with terminology and links to videos and things like that, instead of just having like one formal training for the staff. So knowing your terms is an important part of training. So some of the ones here up on the screen, we have the term like asexual, which means that a person doesn't experience sexual desire or attraction typically. Pansexual is an individual who dates people regardless of their gender identity or assigned sex. Cisgender, which is a word that we used earlier, that is the person who's assigned sex and gender identity match. So like when I was born, I was assigned female and I identify as female. So I'm cisgender female. Now that word was created, I believe it was by a psychiatrist in an academic journal she was writing in because she felt that we had a word for transgender individuals. And it just seemed traditionally, we always labeled the other. And so if we were going to have, you know, the word transgender and we were going to have a distinct category for individuals who identified that way, then we should have a word for those that don't identify as trans and that's the word cisgender. So as the straight person presenting, I get to tell you about the terms and phrases to avoid. Homosexual is the word you should avoid because it has been used as a medical term and it's used still by anti-gay extremists to suggest that gay people are somehow diseased or emotionally and psychologically disordered. Sexual preference. It's not a preference. This is just who they are and how they are. So take out that word preference out of sexual preference, gender preference, anything like that. Just get rid of that word. The gay agenda or homosexual agenda. It's not an agenda. They're just people living their lives. They have the same hopes and desires as everyone else. And dead naming is one that's especially pertinent to libraries. When you have a patron who comes out or transitions, they may pick a new name that better represents them. And refusing to use their preferred name is hurtful and considered a form of aggression. Also refusing to use their proper pronouns is the same thing. So as a library, you should take a look at your policy. What can you do to make sure that your staff is calling their, your patrons by their name that they ask you to call them by and not their dead name. Maybe find a field in your ILS where you can put in their preferred name, whatever you need to do to make sure that you do what makes your patron feel most comfortable. Okay. So when greeting others, you can avoid gendered language, such as these examples here, ladies, gentlemen, ma'am, and try to use more all encompassing language such as friends, everyone, and for you, can I get you all something, or for those of our attendees here who are in the south, they have a great term, which is y'all. So feel free to use that. It's very all encompassing. Okay, so let's take a minute to talk about your current and future LGBT plus staff members. It's important to make the work environments inclusive and welcoming. So we're going to cover a couple of things regarding LGBT staff. So deciding to come out is always a very personal decision. But deciding to come out in the workplace can be pretty tricky sometimes, you know, as a queer person myself, who grew up in rural conservative America. I've kind of learned how to read people very well and pick up like the vibe of a place and decide, like, is this a safe environment for me to truly be myself in. I worked at libraries where I was 100% closeted and nobody had any idea. I've worked at libraries where like a small handful of people that I trusted and felt comfortable with knew who I how I identified, and I've worked at libraries where I was completely out of the closet like here at my current library. You know, I don't hide that part of myself. I have a rainbow pride flag on my desk in the office. And at the only in library, you know, I was 100% out. But in that case, it wasn't that I came out on purpose to everybody. You know, I came out to my core group of people that I felt comfortable with. And then I got outed to the rest of the library. So one thing I really want everyone to take from this section of the presentation is just assume that you're the only staff person that knows that your coworker identifies as LGBT. You know, you don't know if they've come out to everyone. So just play the safe route and assume that they haven't so that you don't accidentally be the one that ends up outing them to other employees at the library. So we all know what blatant outright homophobia or transphobia looks like. But in my personal experience, the biggest obstacle in creating an inclusive workplace is microaggressions. So these are comments, questions, statements that make you feel different or less than. A lot of times people who say them don't even realize that they've said something that, you know, you're perceiving as something wrong that they've said in that the bad intention isn't there. You know, they're just making comment. They think it's totally fine that they said that they don't get that they've said something wrong. These comments are based off of like implicit bias and stereotypes that people have. You know, for example, if I came out to someone and they were like, oh, you don't look gay. You know, they're they're fitting off a stereotype of what they think a queer woman should look like. And in their mind, I don't fit that. And then they tell me that thinking it's a compliment to tell me that. Assuming that all queer people know each other, you know, I've had where someone came up to me in the library and was like, oh, we just hired this new employee. She's a lesbian. Do you know her? And I didn't. You know, and so there's the assumption there that, you know, even in a small rural area, that doesn't mean that all queer people know each other and their friends. So harassment can also be a big issue for LGBT people. You know, I had a staff person, several staff people that I've worked with in the past that I've had to deal with harassment issues. You know, people who felt the need to almost use my identity in a manipulative way. You know, like constantly bringing it up, trying to make themselves make me think that they were very open and accepting when in reality they were secretly behind my back. Doing things that clearly show the opposite of that, like sprinkling holy water in my office. It's a fun story. So, you know, so there's a lot of different issues that LGBT people have to deal with in the workplace. So there's, you know, microaggressions and different forms of harassment and then there's outright just homophobia in the workplace. It's very important that, you know, as a co-worker or supervisor that you take all reports of homophobia or transphobia in the workplace seriously, that you listen, that you investigate the matter and that you don't just sweep it under the rug. I have a personal experience that I'll tell you about. So I dealt with a lot of microaggressions from one individual person that I worked with, dirty looks, you know, leaving the break room when I walk in, little comments about the types of programs I ran. And for years I just went on, but, you know, some people ask me like afterwards like why didn't I report it, but how am I supposed to go to my boss and say, you know, so and so looks at me funny and report that is like harassment or discrimination. You know, there's no way to really prove the intention behind it. You know, but eventually it did come to a head where this individual actually did make comments and said that because of their religious beliefs that they found it uncomfortable to work with me in the library because I was openly queer. They didn't like the pride month book display I had put together and made them uncomfortable. They didn't think it was appropriate. You know, at that point I was running the rainbow alliance, which was a gay straight alliance for teenagers, and they were, they referred to it as a sex club for teens and questioned why the library would be running something like that. So when I went to the initial supervisor about the issue with this staff person, it was blown, you know, she blew me off. She was just like, you're taking things to personally shouldn't mean anything by it. It's fine. Don't worry about it. So I went to the next person in the list. And they said the same thing. You know, she told me you have to remember where we live. This is a conservative area. Not everybody is going to like or agree with you or what you do. Just stay away from her. And again, try not to take things so personally all the time, but here I have a coworker that's literally saying how who I am as an individual makes her uncomfortable and that she doesn't want to work with me because of it. You know, eventually it went up to the level of the director who did take care of the issue and handle it in a more appropriate manner, still not 100% to my liking, but in a more appropriate manner and listen to me. So it puts the person reporting in a very vulnerable position to come forward and say, you know, I need to tell you that I'm being treated less than less than this person is making me feel this way. It's a very vulnerable moment to like do that. And then to have someone not listen to you or take you seriously, you know, just kind of escalates the emotions behind the situation. So you really need to, you know, no matter how small or big the report is to take it take all of them seriously and investigate the matters. And in New York State now, they just implemented much more stringent sexual harassment laws, and it includes LGBT coverage. And if a library were to ignore such a complaint, there would be legal repercussions for the director for the board. So it's definitely something that needs to be taken. Just as seriously as any other type of sexual harassment complete or issue. Good. Glad to hear it. So in the United States, you can be fired from 28 states for being lesbian, bisexual, or gay, and in 30 states, you can be fired for being transgender. And this is from 2017. And this issue is still a very hot topic, and it's still being battled out in the courts in our current time. So, you know, these statistics may very well swing and get worse. Hopefully we can try and get them better, but this is what it is, unfortunately. All right, we're going to move on to growing your LGBT collections. So when I started at the Cuba library, we had one book, and it was from the early 90s, what to do if your friend is gay was a middle school nonfiction book. And so the first thing I did was start making sure each month when we did our order that we included some LGBT books to try and grow our collection. So my display is the one on the, well, it's on the left side here. The June is LGBTQ plus Pride month. And Jens is the one on the other side. Talk about that a little. So only in library, we made the decision to create an LGBT plus special collections, because we were offering so many LGBT programs. And there was such an increase in queer identifying patrons that were utilizing our library that we increase the amount of money that we were using for purchasing books and decided to specifically seek out more LGBT books and shelving them in a special collection. Books that were taken off the regular collections that we had had for years that hadn't been checked out in like three or four years suddenly were going out all the time, the circulation went up on these books. They were an easy to browse area. And, you know, some people have said that, you know, they didn't like that we did that because by going to those shelves it was almost like we were forcing patrons to come out. But we had double copies. So we had one copy that existed in the LGBT collection. And then we had copies that existed in with all the other shelving areas in the library so that people could choose which they felt more comfortable with. And then this display here is from the Salamanca Library. So when I started here, again, same situation, much smaller community than only in, we had like five LGBT books or something. And so I started going through and purchasing more. And this was the first time that we did a Pride Month display. And I'll have to admit I was a little nervous about how that was going to go. And nobody said anything negative about it. People checked out the books and, you know, I was pretty happy with the result of it. So. But didn't you even get some positive feedback too? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we put I posted a picture of it on the library's Facebook page and said like happy Pride Month to our LGBT patrons, you know, and somebody commented and thanked us, you know, for acknowledging the queer patrons that are community and saying something. So it was good. It's good. That's a perfect example. You don't know who is in your community necessarily. So we're going to move on to talk about programming that we've done and that you can do at your library. So one program that I used to offer is called the Stonewall Cafe. For adults. It was a informal meetup group. Once a month I would set up the meeting room that we had at the library to kind of look like a cafe, you know, tables and chairs and coffees and snacks and people would come and just have a safe place where they could be together and talk. I remember the first meeting of it. We had, I don't know, like around 20 or so people and there was like a 19 year old trans girl and like a 60 year old trans woman that were sitting there having a conversation, you know, with each other. And it was amazing because they never would have like interacted or met, you know, without that program. You know, and to have like two individuals, you know, that shared a similar identity from different generations, you know, talking about like how it was like when they went through transitioning and how did their families accept them or not. You know, it was it was a pretty amazing experience to be able to set that up and make it happen. We also did a reading the rainbow, which was an LGBT club but I will be honest that one kind of fizzled because no one really came to it but I tried every month I still put out there what book to read and but no one showed up so hopefully if you try it at your library you have better results than I did. It's like every program sometimes they don't work. Yeah, very true. No until you try. Yeah. And then so in February 2017 only and we started the rainbow alliance, which was our first LGBT program that we did. It was a gay straight alliance for teenagers, the local school district would not let them have a GSA at the school, which is illegal. And so we allowed the teens to meet at the library. Our first meeting we had like 3035 teenagers come to the library and then once they realized that they were in a safe environment, and they just started coming every single day after school and it ended up being that we had so many teens in our library that, you know, we got a grant and opened up the teen room to have a designated space for them to go and hang out and bought computers and all kinds of different things for them. They still run it today. I'm not at the only end library anymore, but luckily the program is still going on without me there to run it. And there's still gaggles of teenagers hanging out at the library anytime you go at all the teenagers, which is amazing. So this is my program when Jen first started running her rainbow alliance. I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm really excellent at stealing other library's ideas. Yes. And so when she was running and it was so successful, I thought, well, I would love to do something like that, but I don't know if I'm allowed to because I'm straight and would it be weird. So I just talked to Jen and asked her what she thought and she said, go for it. And that's one thing we really hope you guys will take away from this. Just go for it. You don't have to identify as queer to run these programs and to be a support for the community. So ours was called prism. The light keeps not detecting us. We're not moving enough. So we, I asked a member of our community to help. She grew up in Cuba and she is a queer woman. She's the one in the pink sweatshirt with the pink hair and she helped me run the program. So we got an outreach grant from our system and we use the funds to take the kids up to Buffalo for the pride parade. And it was just such an amazing experience and you can just see how happy they are. And they just said things like I feel like so accepted and look at everyone here is queer and I'm so excited and so happy to see that I'm not alone in this. It was, it was a very beautiful day and we did have to, you know, jump through some like insurance hoops to take a field trip like that. But it was well worth it and very valuable to the kids. I'm jealous you got to do that. It looks like you had a lot of fun. Okay, so offering programs to children and families and this is where people start to maybe get a little hesitant about the idea of offering queer programs to kids. And this is where you might start getting complaints. So, so one of the things that I did only and was a story time program called rainbow story time, where we read books that specifically had like LGBT characters in them. One book I read was the prince and the night which is like an absolutely adorable love story between a prince who falls in love with like a knight in shining armor. I remember reading it. There was one grandmother there that clearly did not realize that she was at an LGBT theme story time program. She just thought it was our regular story time because as I watched the emotions go through her face as I got further into the story. And you can see like the light bulb moment of being like, Oh, this is what this program is about. Okay. I was waiting for her to say something, but she did it. And then when it was revealed at the end that like the prince and the night, you know, get married. Her grandchild that was with her turned around and was just like grandma they love each other. And it was just such a sweet moment. Also read like tillie the teddy, the boy with the rainbow heart, which was written by like a local author for his sister who identified as queer. So, you know, the story time programs are an easy way. You can also make sure, you know, if you don't want to run like a specifically LGBT related story time program. Just include, you know, queer books in your regular story time programs and, you know, put in the effort to be inclusive, you know, during regular story time. All right. Drag Queen story time. Most fun program ever. Also scariest program ever. So back in June 2018 at the Olean library, we hosted our first drag Queen story time. You know, like Tina and I said, we're from rural conservative New York. It's very red here. You know, and I definitely found out how conservative the community was, but also how, you know, welcoming the community was at the same time. You know, it was definitely interesting experience that we went through. So it's all Tina's fault that we went through this. In April 2018, Tina sent me an email asking if I wanted to go in on a hula hoop program for summer reading with a guy named Benjamin Berry. So I went to his website to see who this guy was and it turns out not only is he a fantastic hula hooper, he also was a drag queen. And, you know, I had read all the different articles and stories about the libraries that did drag queen story time and I really wanted to do one. So when I saw that there was someone pretty local to us, I had experience working with kids and also had experience running drag queen story times with children. I jumped on that immediately and sent him an email and hire him like that day. Not everybody in the community responded well when we started advertising the program. The first complaint came in an email. June 11th the program was scheduled for June 20th. We got an email saying that, you know, we should be ashamed of ourselves for trying to host that kind of program. They were disappointed in the library. They were never going to come back to the library. You know, and then like three minutes later the next email came in to complain about it. So it was very, once it started happening, it happened very fast. Yeah, so these here are posts that were put on our Facebook page for the library. There was a very much like mob mentality thing, you know, that took place on the Facebook page. Once that first person said something that was a little over the line and nobody responded negatively to them. It just escalated it and people started to feel real comfortable. They were like, you know, keyboard warriors behind like fake names. They made fake accounts so they could post really horrific things. And we talked about, should we shut off comments or let them just keep saying these things. And we decided unless they were specifically threatening violence, we were going to let them expose themselves, you know, for what they really were. With the hopes that, you know, in the long run that would benefit the community. I also had to deal with in-person complaints. You know, I had a local pastor that came in and was yelling inches from my face, calling me a demon saying, you know, that I was going to burn in hell, that God would stop this program from happening. You know, saying that I shouldn't be allowed to work with children because of how I identified, you know, it got pretty heated and intense. You know, and I even remember like at one point like literally crying in the children's office, like looking at the Facebook page and just being so overwhelmed by the negativity that was just coming at us during this process. And then just as we thought, you know, it couldn't really get much worse. Daniel Burnside showed up. Now he's the regional director of the National Socialist Movement. He lives an hour from the library. And I mean, he is a well-known Nazi. He was on a by-slam documentary called Hate Thy Neighbor. He's been interviewed on CNN. He's a very large gun enthusiast. He's a very scary dude. His wife, Sabrina, is much scarier than he is, but he's also not someone you want to mess with. So he took notice of our program and said that he was going to come and protest at the day of. He started posting on the library's Facebook page, as did Sabrina, which was scary because now all of a sudden, you know, it was one thing to have like members of the general public complaining or something. But now we have like real-life neo-Nazis complaining about the program and threatening to say they were going to come. We also started to have talks of people saying they were going to come to the library and like do like a moment where they had like the local churches when they come and they were going to cut up their library cards and protest. We only ended up getting one library card cut up, and I kept that as my souvenir of the event. But, you know, no one showed up the day of the library card cut-up protest. People threatened to burn the library down. So we had threats of arson, and we had the neo-Nazis, and then it got to the point where like the death threats, you know, started happening against me. Thinking that it would basically, I don't think anything was really ever going to happen. I think the intention behind those kind of threats was to make us afraid to continue the program and to close it for safety reasons. You know, but like my director said. I think these people are in real in-person cowards, yes. Oh yeah, definitely, yes. You know, and like my director. Of course, as you said, it's a different, yes. Yeah. You know, my director said during it, she was like, that was the one time when the death threats came in that we ever even slightly considered canceling, you know, even though this thing had gone kind of viral and out of control. And there was so much going on with people coming in and calling and emails and Facebook and protest and everything else. You know, she was like, now, you know, whatever decision you make, if you want to continue doing it, or if you want to cancel it, the library is going to stand behind you for whatever, whichever you choose. You know, and I literally was just like, I cannot back down to Nazis. Yeah. No. I'm not going to find that you did not want to be crossing. No, you know, and it's just like, yeah, you know, if you're making Nazis mad, you're doing something right. Yeah. Exactly. You know. Yeah. Exactly. It's all bad. So a lot of really crazy things were happening. You know, it got really intense, but then, you know, people started showing their support when they saw that we weren't going to cancel. You know, when we just kept refusing, no matter how intense things got, we started getting like messages of support from different people. We were contacted by like the Office of Intellectual Freedom from the ALA, the New York chapter of the ACLU, and librarians from all over. I even got a phone call from a lady in Texas who said she'd met at her gas station and she overheard them talking about this crazy library in New York that was going to like host a drag queen storytime. There was Nazis involved and all this other stuff. She went home, looked it up online, found us and called us to tell us that Texas was thinking of us and supporting us. It went pretty, it went national, you know, during all of it. So we got a lot of feedback and support from all over the country, especially librarians. I mean, librarians from everywhere were like coming to our Facebook page and, you know, encouraging us to continue doing what we were doing. And also on the night of the program, it was like a mini library conference, all the librarians in the area were there. It was kind of fun. So this is the day of June 20th, 2018. These are the protesters that showed up about a dozen or so, you know, with the, I mean, we had comments in the thousands on our Facebook page, which is rare. Usually we'd get like four comments on like a post on our Facebook, but it was up into the thousands from all over the country, you know, and 12 people actually came in person. The Nazis did show up, but they never got out of their vehicle because we had so many supporters in the front lawn of the library. The program didn't start till 6.30 that night. We had people started getting there at three o'clock in the afternoon with rainbow flags and signs. They had like a cookout in the front lawn. It was just a giant party, basically. So when the Nazis showed up to protest and they came around the corner and this is what they saw, they didn't get out of their vehicles. They just yelled like offensive things out the windows. Whereas, and then the people who were there to support, you know, started like chanting things and then the Nazis just like drove away and didn't protest that day. So that was great. Some more pictures. We even had drag queens from Buffalo, which is like an hourish away drive down to show their support and just walked around in drag interacting with people while they waited for the event to happen. Normally, I mean, we would get like 75 maybe 100 people at a program or something would be like really great for us. And the police that were there because we did have police officers present because of the threats. Estimated like around 450 people were at the library that day. You know, and only 12 were protesters. Yeah, it's not too bad. There's a little fan again. Yeah, and you know, I mean, look at how happy like look at these kids faces like how can what we were doing that day be seen as something wrong. You know, I mean, they're so ecstatic to be there. They had so much fun. The meeting rooms only supposed to have about 45 people in it and we jam like 100 150 they were sitting on each other's laps basically to fit in that room. And it was overflowing out into the library because people couldn't actually get into the space. You know, there was camera crews from like the new stations and stuff were there that day to that recorded the event. So if you're interested all you can always go on YouTube and find actual video of the drag queen performance and stuff that day on on YouTube. And then this is Benjamin flow leader in drag. He read a couple of stories, lip sync, frozen songs, and did some dancing and I mean, it was a really successful great program. I totally recommend even though we went through as much as we did I recommend you do it yourself. If you feel that your community is ready. And if you feel they're not ready, then you should definitely do it and get them ready. Keep working on it until they are. Exactly. Only and did the program again this year I wasn't there anymore, but they did run a drag Queen story time with Benjamin again this year. Nobody protested. And they had about 50 people show up to the event and it was just like any other program that happened at the library, there was nothing, you know, no one made a big thing about it just took one time, and everyone got it out of their system apparently so they learned the truth about their community that it's it's a supportive great thing. So these are just some comments that came out so I did a Buzzfeed article. Some libraries are facing backlash against LGBT programs and holding their ground. So I was very honored to be one of the people interviewed for that article. Then of course as soon as like it came out then I started getting the attacks on Twitter and stuff again. And up the corner the librarians deserve death along with the drag Queens. So do the relatives who are taking these innocent innocent children to the slaughter. You get really used to those kind of comments after a while unfortunately you kind of desensitized to, you know, I mean I had one guy that messaged me and said that he was going to come to the library and drag me outside and shoot me, you know, but unfortunately, I mean you do, can you do it? You shouldn't have to, but you do. So yeah, but then we also got good things like the ALAs roundtable, you know saying we recognize and appreciate the good work you are doing for your community. Yeah, and it also had quite a lot of ripple effect in the community. So one of the people who made negative comments on the library's Facebook page turned out to be the title nine person for the high school, which if you're familiar with that position their job is to investigate incidences of bullying against queer children at the school. And she was typing negative things about the queer community. That led to her being reassigned to a different position, which I was thankful for as a parent of kids who go to that school. And then the other thing that happened was we had a pride coalition in the community, but it was not active. And now they're quite active. They really got a rejuvenation as a result of this. And, you know, every year now they hold a big pride picnic and drag queen show and yeah, it was definitely all a catalyst because the library held this program. Yeah, it was really good to see that, you know, it didn't end up being just like a one time event that we suffered through made it through it, and then nothing happened afterwards like it did make changes within the community and it was really good to see that and be a part of, you know that experience. It's good. Like, I love to say libraries being leadership leader taking leadership and so many situations like this. We have so many relationships with all these different facets of the community that we really are in a key position to help bring people together. You know, public libraries they are they're open to everyone and anyone you're going to have all sorts of people coming in the door. Yeah. Right. Well, just to wrap up as part of this project because we've given this talk. I don't know. Is this our fifth time? I think so, yeah. It's been probably over the space of two years now that we've been doing this. So we sent out a community survey to ask. Have you experienced any positive changes as a result of these programs of our LGBT programs at our library? And we got really positive feedback. The chance to be in a social group helped me make friends and helped with my social anxiety. New friends, new friends, new friends. Yeah, the community is becoming more educated and somewhat accepting. We met new people and had fun. I mean, wouldn't these be the feedback we'd want from any program that we had, especially in this time of, I don't know, an epidemic of loneliness. People are becoming less connected in real life. And so this is an awesome result of a program, any program. Yeah. So here's some more feedback that we got. It was a safe place to connect with others. And it brings the community together. The teen group has helped kids that I know find support and feel less alone. The sense of community has blossomed. I mean, you could put any of these results in your strategic plan, right? Yeah. So, questions? Yeah, let's see. So, yes, does anybody have any? Nobody typed anything while you're talking. You guys had some great, you know, presentation that you're doing there. But does anybody have any questions or comments or thoughts about anything? Type in the question section. If you've been doing this in your communities, you know, maybe share your experiences too. I've got a great presentation with lots of information. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. So I was very glad to have you guys on to do this presentation. As I said, we have lots of rural, obviously, Nebraska is mostly rural and small libraries. And we do, as I said, we have the drag queen story hour, Nebraska group, but we have quite a few organizations that are for the LGBT type all across the state and different communities. So I'm glad to have this out there so that people can watch this recording and learn more about how they can do these kind of things in their communities. Because I know there's lots of areas I'm sure that have are wondering about what to do. How do we handle this? How do we do this in our own community? What should we be doing for our staff who are encountering people of different types? And I think this will be very helpful to a lot of our people across the state. Thank you for having us. We appreciate the opportunity. All right, so it doesn't look like anybody has any actual any deep questions. If you want to go ahead and type them in. We got some thank yous insightful presentation. So that's lots of thank yous. If you do have any questions or anything you can reach out to Jennifer and Tina at their libraries. I'm sure they'd be happy to chat with you all. And I think the slides that you have here are, you may just send them to me or post them somewhere that you have them available. Yeah, we can send them to you. Okay, all right, cool. So you guys will have the slides as well afterwards to look at. Yeah. All right, another one. Thanks for the presentation. This was great. Yeah, looks like you're just getting lots of thank yous. And that's great. All right, so thank you everybody. I'm going to pull back, present your control to my screen now to wrap up for this morning. There we go. All right, so we did have one question that I will answer didn't listen for you guys. We will be sending out everyone does get an email after watching the live and compass live here from us saying thank you for attending and it does have a it is your proof of attendance if you need it for continuing education credits and does have a little certificate attached to that will come from go to webinar the software use that you will have that for your records if you need that for your library. So as I said the show is being recorded. And this is our and compass live website. Right now, if you just use your search engine of choice Google, whatever, and type in and compass live the name of the show. We are the only thing called that on the internet. Yeah, nobody else can use our name. But this is our website and these are upcoming shows we have December and January but you scroll right to the bottom right beneath them is linked to our archives. This is where today's recording will be. The most recent one is at the top of the list. This is the one from last week. So today's will be there should be done and processed enough by the end of the day today as long as YouTube and go to webinar cooperate with me. Everyone who attended today and everyone who registered today show get an email from me letting you know when it's here. We'll also push it out to our very social media with mailing list Facebook page Twitter the usual. We will have a link. This was last week's a link to recording and a link to presentation that you'll be able to go ahead and watch it at your leisure. While we're here I will also show you this is there's a search feature here for our archives where you can search the entire archives or just most recent 12 months. That is because this is all of our archives and Compass Live premiered in January 2009 and we do have our recordings going back all the way to the very beginning. So just pay attention when you are doing any searching or watching our archives. They all have a date showing when they were originally broadcast. So some things may still be accurate and good and useful. Some things may be expired some services or products might not be available anymore may have changed drastically since we had the show. Some links might not work anymore because of things changing over the last 10 years. So just pay attention when you are taking a look at our archives but we are librarians and this is what we do we archive certain things and so we always have our recordings up there for everyone to watch and go all the way back to the beginning if you like. We also do have a Facebook page as I mentioned this gives a link to it and I have it open over here. So if you are a big Facebook user you do like to use Facebook give us a like over there to get notifications his reminder to log in for this morning show. When we have our recordings are available when new shows are added anything else going on. We do post onto here in our Facebook page so a couple of times a week. So if you do like to use Facebook you can keep up with us over there. We also do have a hashtag and come live that we use we post it on other social media places like Instagram or Twitter or anything. So that will wrap it up for today's show. Thank you everybody for attending. Thank you Jennifer and Tina for being with us this morning. And I hope you join us next week when our topic will be librarian in training for kids. This is another session that I'm bringing in that was from the ARSL conference that I was able to attend. This is a library in Tennessee who has actually started a program to do a little introducing kids to being alive what it means to be a librarian. And it looks like a really fun thing to do that they spend a couple of weeks just learning all the different parts of the library. So if you're interested in something like that give log sign up and register to join us next week. And you can see of all of our shows here for the next couple of months are up on our calendar. As we get more things booked they'll be added as well. So please do sign up for that show and any of the future ones. And that wraps up for today. Thank you everyone for attending. Thank you Tina and Jennifer for being here today with me. And hopefully we'll see you on another Encompass Live. Bye bye.