 Good morning and welcome to the ninth annual, yay, Big Talk from Small Libraries online conference. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Big Talk from Small Libraries is sponsored by the Association for Rural and Small Libraries and the Nebraska Library Commission. We are an annual conference that is broadcast live on the last Friday of February, whenever that happens to fall every year, that's the date we've picked. We are in the Midwest, as you may know from Nebraska, and we traveling in the wintertime, it's iffy, so February is a good time to have these kind of online events instead. Also here in the Midwest and in Nebraska specifically, we have lots of rural and small areas, 95% of our state maybe is that, and we know that that is a struggle for small libraries to get to places, to get to conferences, and to have presentations and things that are geared and focused at them. Big Talk from Small Libraries, all of our presenters today are from libraries, colleges, universities, public libraries, health libraries that all have a population served or an FTE of less than 10,000. We are the little guys. So you're gonna hear some great presentations today from some great libraries and some really awesome and amazing things. If you do have any comments, questions, thoughts throughout the day, please do use your questions section of your go-to webinar interface. You can type in your questions or comments there and I'm monitoring that here on my computer and I will pass them on to our speakers as we go through the day. Our agenda is on the website. You can always see who's coming up for each session throughout the day, but first we're gonna have a presentation. Welcome here from Jenny Garner. Jenny, I am going to hand over presenter control to you. You can put your slides up. Should see that pop up now. Yeah. Okay. Are we up and running? Looks good. Yeah. Awesome. All right, so good morning, Jenny. Good morning. I am from the Association of Role and Small Libraries. I'm on the board and acting secretary currently and what Krista said is completely true except my library is not under 10,000. Across the country, the small population is considered 25,000 and under in my library is under 25,000. It's about 18,000, but I come from the heart of small and rural from both the time I grew up in Iowa when I moved to North Liberty in the 1990s and we were about 3,500 people. We have grown exponentially since then, but my heart is rural and small and this organization is near and dear to that and to my heart. The Association of Role and Small Libraries was established in 1982 with a home base at Clarean University in Pennsylvania. And in 2007, it became an independent organization with expanded board and committee structure. So our first conference was held as an independent organization in Sacramento, California in 2008. And since then we've made a huge and conservative effort across the country to meet every year and move it out around so that many people can join us. The two of ARSL's most popular benefits are the website and the listserv. So members have access to a wide variety of rural information and sorry, I'm gonna move my slides ahead. I'm not very adept at this yet. There we go. And then we're gonna move one more. So two of the most popular benefits are the website and the listserv and members have access to rural information and news in one location on ARSL's website, a one-stop shop for things that are rural and our listserv allows members to regularly interact and share stories and problem solve on issues affecting rural libraries. Our online members only roundtable groups meet semi-regularly about quarterly and they're a great way for taking those conversations off the listserv to a more in-depth discussion on various topics that people request sometimes and sometimes those are brainstormed within our group who run those, our volunteers. Whether you're a new to rural libraries or you're a seasoned administrator, we think that we can all learn from each other and our members are at willingness to share those ideas along with the expertise that we all carry over from our previous experiences are what make us a wonderful opportunity to learn and improve our own library skills. One of the best ways that you find out about ARSL is to join us at conference and our conference is phenomenal. Yes, I have attended multiple ones and then last year in Vermont, it was here in Omaha one year. So conference and then become a volunteer. Our volunteers are what keep our organization going. They help in a number of ways from participating in committee work, representing ARSL local and state gatherings and actively participating at that conference. I've been, as an aside, I've been the speaker's bureau chair for a few years this year. I stepped back from that role, but we get about 150 proposals every year from the people with their hearts also in rural libraries and it's a really hard decision to make and what those conferences end up being just phenomenal when you attend and get to meet others who are just like you and have the same problems and challenges and also celebrations. So the membership is a great benefit when you come to conference and when you do join as a member, the rate for conference goes down so much that your membership is just paid for just from that. It's pretty fantastic. We've been able to keep our membership really, really low and our conference price is very low from some really good negotiation on the part of a lot of volunteers who work a lot of hours. Sometimes we think that people think we work for the organization, which we do, but we don't get paid, except for it. Except for in wonderful friends. So another thing that we do is a newsletter that we use to interact with our membership. We share tips and articles from featured libraries about how we can be successful in everything from policy to grants to programming and we use that as a platform to share news such as our varying partnership agreements that we have a lot of partners. And as I've watched this organization grow, I've watched those partnerships grow as well where we used to beg to be at the table. We're now invited very regularly to that same national table and it's pretty exciting. And we do pride ourselves on our commitment. Sorry, my cursor is not wanting to forward here. Just a second, there we go. There's just another lovely picture from conference and some of the member benefits. So we pride ourselves on our commitment to providing that conference with 100% things that are applicable to those role in small libraries and our sessions are selected specifically for those practical and replicable ideas. That's the main parameters when we do that. Much like big talk from small libraries, we are focused on the needs of our small and rural communities along with focused programs, ARS-L annually provides opportunities to come face to face at that conference. So ARS-L is super affordable. This gives you a little idea about that. You don't have to feel, you won't find a better deal anywhere for your membership dollars. The rates begin at about $15 for membership and provide access to development for professionals. Advice on the list, fondly dubbed as the collective wisdom, ample ways that we can network and the roundtables and other opportunities to volunteer. And recently one of our newest benefits to our members is that you can, as a member, you can join the Library of Commerce Credit Union and actually have a visa with the Library of Congress pictured on the front. How would you not want that? That would be fun. Yeah. Here we go. This is Phillip. Phillip is one of our active members. I had to contact him. I knew he wasn't working at the library that was listed on our slide show. But he is at this lovely library in Starkville, Oh-Tibija, if I'm saying that wrong, I'm really sorry, County Public Library. So probably one of the things that we hear most when we ask people about the best thing about ARSL is the warm and welcoming nature of our members. This group is people who are all about doing and serving their communities, no matter what the obstacles are. And that community not only means where they are at their home base, but also that ARSL community. I really believe that in my heart. When I first attended ARSL, I felt like I'd found my family, a second family, and it's been like that ever since. Relevant ideas are shared and lasting friendships are formed, like not only at conference, but on the annual listserv. There are many of us who just walk away feeling so good and like we've met our tribe. I know that's how I felt. It's wonderful to meet people who understand the unique challenges and special joys of just working in that rural setting and in small libraries. Let's see if we can forward. There we go. So our board meetings are open to our members. Some very scintillating stuff going on at those meetings as we all know how board meetings can go. But we do have a lot of really interesting things that go on and we encourage participation by membership. The board meets every month and various committees meet on and off on the off months. The dates and links are all available to meet in Zoom online and they're all posted on our webpage. So in 2019, ARISL went under a huge organizational assessment. And as a result, we have just obtained our first executive director and transfer and are transitioning to a governing board. That has been a really interesting process. We've had a lot of meetings about that process and what it looks like and how we can let go and have our members do even more for us. ARISL is led by volunteers and the board spends their time now leading that organization rather than putting in some really blood, sweat, and tears which is what we've all done quite a bit. And you'll find that you'll want to do that too if you join us because it just makes sense. Oh, did I skip one? Sorry, I think I'm going backward. Let's see if we can... No, no. That's okay. Okay. Pop back into your slides. I got to find them first. Hmm, sorry guys, this is not my... Why are they not showing up? Krista, I'm not sure what I did to get myself off-camped base. Oh, that's okay. Now you're still on camera. We can see your slide there. Can you get to your PowerPoint itself? Yes. Okay, if you just should hit from... You can go from beginning in the upper left there. Or can I do from current slide? Current slide to where it'll pop you into. Let's see if I can go down and just go to that current slide. Sorry, friends. Yeah, that's all good. Now let's try it. There. Yes. I do have a question that somebody did ask when you were talking about the same information on it. Someone wants to know if you list jobs. We do. We have a job posting on the website. And in fact, I've posted some jobs there and gotten some great responses and actually hired someone who came from another state. So that does work. And they did find it there. They were not from Aerosol, but they found it there. So that's pretty awesome. I'm trying to gather my thoughts again now that we got out. So why does it keep doing that? There we go. Okay. I'm gonna, now I can forward, I guess I don't need to keep going there. So we do hope that you'll be able to join us. Our next conference is in Wichita, Kansas in September, on the 30th of September to October 3rd. So for us centralized folks here in the Midwest, it's an easy either drive or flight. When we, there we'll share our amazing resources again and our early bird membership registration starts on May 1st and is expected to run about $290, which is really great. We pay $49, I pay $49 a year for my membership and so that is well worth it. It goes up well over that when it goes to the non early bird rates or the non-member rates. So the other exciting events that will be shared will be coming up on our Facebook and our website and our conference venue this year is way larger than it's been in the past. I don't know if you know about Aerosol it sells out really quickly. And in fact it's sold out during early bird a few years in a row and we've done a lot in negotiating to get more people crunched into our space. They're sure they don't expect that to happen. So we don't expect to have to limit our registration at all which is super exciting. That also means that we leverage different places where we've been and I just am looking at the slide that I swear I did not create this but it's not Wichita, Kansas, it's Wichita, Kansas. That's a little tight, but I think we all know. So we encourage you to also talk to your fellows and friends in other small and rural libraries to join us for the conference and we hope that we'll see you at Wichita this fall. I'll be there. And there's me and my contact information. Feel free to reach out to me if you have questions about the association or just to reach out and say hi. I love talking in libraries. So thank you for letting me come and play with my technology and I will hope you wish you all a great day today with the conference. Mm-hmm, great. Thank you so much, Jenny. We're really happy to have Aerosel as, or sometimes some people pronounce it Arsel, I've heard. I don't know which is the appropriate. Well, people do say that. I don't say it because my mom used to call that, my dad that as a joke. And so, it's a different meaning to me. So I say Aerosel. People speaking for rural and small libraries will go with that, yeah. They've been co-sponsoring this with the Nebraska Library Commission since our first big talk with small libraries in 2012. We partnered up with them and we're really happy to have you guys always join in every year and help out with it and promote and everything. Spread the word, all right. So thank you very much, Jenny. Thank you. All right.