 Hello, everyone. I'm James Mulan, and welcome to this episode, the third one in our series, Check It Out. And Check It Out is now taking place for the first time, exactly where it should, which is at our Robbins Library in the glorious reading room. I am joined, we were just discussing before we went on air how this is a summer of transition in Arlington for sure. And this is well represented by my guests here today. I am with our current library director, Andrea Nicolai, and the soon to be acting library director, Anna Lytton. Thanks to you both for being here. Thanks to letting us, for letting us be here. Of course, it's a pleasure to be here. And now we're, I am personally absolutely delighted to be talking with both of you in this space, which is one of the absolute glorious spots in the town. So let's talk though about the fact that, you know, I'm talking to you on the last day of June and tomorrow, July 1st, which is a Friday, will be your last day. Is that right? That's correct. Yeah. So you and I spoke, you know, recently in terms of just looking back over your tenure, et cetera. So we'll spend this time looking forward a little bit. And I think first of all, let's just find out for you, you know, what's coming up next? Or do you get to take a little bit of a break before you take on your next job? Yeah, thanks for asking, James. I am super excited for this new challenge in Albany. I'm gonna be executive director of the Albany Public Library. And my family lives in Albany. A lot of my family lives in Albany now. So it's gonna be a nice transition for me personally and professionally, I think, you know, certainly full of challenges. But I have an apartment squared away and I do have some time off between jobs, which is gonna be really nice because I look forward to exploring my new neighborhood, the new area. So yeah, but I cannot believe my last day of this library is tomorrow. Anyway, thanks. Yeah, we're having a lot of bittersweet moments throughout this early summer so far here in Arlington. And this is certainly one of them in a lot of ways. But let me turn to you, Anna, just briefly and say, and ask, well, Andrea, at least the short-term prospect is for a little break for Andrea. I suspect it's the opposite for you. How are you feeling about that? Yeah, so this is gonna be a challenging summer. But it's also gonna be a really exciting summer to dive a little bit deeper into some work that has really been always in the director's hands. So I'm excited to continue some of the work that I've been doing and also pick up some really great opportunities to learn some new projects. All right, well, we will talk about those. Obviously, we will continue to talk about those here and check it out for the foreseeable future. Absolutely. But Andrea, can you give us a sense of, I mean, I'm sure you can't be too involved because you're moving on to your next thing. But I think people will be curious about just what is the search for the next director? What does that look like in general? And if any sense of timeline or anything like that, whatever you can tell us. Sure, so the job has been advertised already. So it's available on the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners site. It's also available on the ALA American Library Association job list, which is kind of, those two sites are kind of the go-to for anyone who is looking for a leadership job in libraries. That's like one-stop shopping, well, two-stop shopping. And the ALA job list post also carried with it a diversity add-on, which puts it into a marketplace that's in front of all kinds of different groups that represent, well, underrepresented folks who are seeking library leadership positions who might be underrepresented in library leadership. So that's really, really cool. And as far as the hiring process, the town leads the hiring process just like for other town department head positions, my position reports to the town manager. So the new town manager, Sandy Puehler, will be ultimately the appointing authority, but the Board of Library Trustees, which is a seven-member appointed body, will also have representation on the hiring panel and not totally sure exactly what that's gonna look like, but our excellent HR department has it well in hand and I'm sure there will be updates along the way through the Board and the public, so, yeah. And Anna, I'm curious, you have been the assistant library director for just about four years, right? Exactly, yes. July 9th is my anniversary in that position. So very close, so congratulations for that. And I know that Andrea was assistant to Ryan Livergood, the director at that time for two years, so now you've had four years, hopefully, good grounding and ready to go in that way, but as you take on the duties of the directorship, what happens to the job that you already had that was super busy? Yeah, well, obviously some of the director roles and of course some of the assistant director roles meshed well, so one of the projects that I'm really looking forward to working on this summer is some of our strategic plan implementation work for fiscal year 23, and in that, of course, we'll be teasing out where can we make gains to serve our community better? What can we do to expand our reach and make sure we are truly meeting the needs of residents here in Arlington? That, of course, ties in with much of my existing work already, so there are many places where there's overlap as acting director, of course, it'll be a little bit heavier on the plate to meet some of both of those goals, but there is so much overlap between the assistant director position and the director position, and to me, this is a wonderful opportunity to be more concrete about how our work, specifically around the strategic plan, can really extend our reach, meet our community better, and explain that to the community through our work and our strategic plan implementation tools for the upcoming fiscal year. All right, well, I actually also had a question because you were mentioning the two-stop shopping before about the fact that the job is posted on both of Massachusetts scope site, and then ALA, I assume is national, is that right? Yes, of course. So from your vantage point, from your perspective, having come, of course, to the job of assistant director from New York, as I recall, is that right? Do you think that that national scope in terms of looking for a library director makes sense in terms of, again, is somebody who's worked in a very different kind of situation coming into Arlington, how do you think that that, do you think that that makes a lot of sense? Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, this is a very attractive place to live. I mean, notwithstanding the high cost of living, which is, you know, gotta be mentioned, but it's a fantastic area. I mean, the greater Boston area is so full of culture and universities and higher education and arts, and just all kinds of exciting, you know, and the public transit and the planning efforts of recent years, like making the streets bike-friendly, et cetera, it's just a really attractive area. And so, I mean, when I was in New York looking for a job in a more livable place, and I mean, Arlington was just so attractive right from the jump, so I think that, you know, there's absolutely no doubt this will be a position that attracts a lot of attention. That said, it's a really competitive hiring market out there right now, and it's like a, what do they say? What is it? It's a seller's market, not that. Right, so it's like it's an employer's market at the moment. It's an employer's market at the moment in some ways, but. Yeah, it may not be in restaurants and retail, et cetera, but in the world of library directorship, I guess probably it always is, right? Yeah, well, somewhat, but I mean, there aren't as, you know, I think I might have had that turned around. There aren't as many good applicants for positions because there are a lot of people making different choices about their careers and there's the great resignation happening, so a lot of retirements. So that means that there's a lot of great opportunities for, you know. I understand, so we are competing in a sense as a town looking for a library director, we are competing with a lot of other towns for a limited supply, relatively limited supply. That's exact, yes, thank you for saying that much, much better than I started to. So, but that said, Arlington, again, this is such an attractive place to live and work and so easy to commute to from a number of different areas in the region. I mean, I just think for all kinds of reasons, Arlington doesn't have a lot to worry about in terms of getting a quality candidate pool. And Anna, I'm sure that Andrea and her answer just now covered a lot of the ground that I might be asking you about, but you have been here for just about four years now and you're not from Arlington specifically or anything like that. So what has been your sense of the town, especially because so much of that time has had to be a time of coerced innovation on your guys' part. Exactly, very true. This is a fantastic town to work for. The libraries are always well respected institutions in their communities and in Arlington, that respect is a little bit an overdrive. We're such a well supported library by our users, by our support groups like the Arlington Libraries Foundation, the Friends of Robbins Library. So this really is a wonderful library to work with and a wonderful town to work in, the support for the library from the community. And I think one of my favorite ways to measure that is the ways that we partner with organizations outside of the library. A good library is always very outwardly focused. It's not just about bringing people in but how we can push ourselves out into the community and find ways to work with our community partners to support the projects that the community is interested in. And there are so many examples of wonderful community partnerships that we can offer here from the Robbins Library. I'm thinking of a new partnership we're offering this summer with Monotomy Manor. So we'll be hosting a story time at Monotomy Manor and then a parade from Monotomy Manor to the Fox Branch Library to really introduce that the library to community members at Monotomy Manor who might not be as familiar with the library services that are available there, the free library services that are available there. Yeah, I'm thinking about projects that we work on like the Arlington Author Salon that was co-founded with Andrea's support to help elevate voices of writers here in this community and help our residents hear from fellow residents who are writers. So there's just so many ways that we have partnered with community members over the years, we will continue to do that. Yeah, I mean, among others with ACMI. Exactly, exactly. Really in a lot of ways our missions are so compatible and so symbiotic. And just trying to figure out how to get out and serve the community in addition to inviting people in to our respective facilities so that they can enjoy the services that we provide. We do want to just create those connections at ACMI. You guys are so good at that, as you were saying. Well, we couldn't be good at it if it weren't for your openness and ACMI's flexibility in partnering with organizations. I mean, ACMI has been phenomenal for the library especially during the pandemic. But any time I've reached out for any kind of help or assistance or even for a special event that you weren't necessarily expecting, you've been there for us. So I do want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being such a great partner to this library during my tenure and I'm sure going forward as well. Well, thank you for that and I promise I wasn't trying to make this into a mutual admiration society kind of thing. But it is, I did notice as you were speaking just kind of how well our sense of our respective missions really aligns with each other. And I do expect very fruitful collaboration for many years to come. So let's talk a little bit about what we may be able to, well, what we can expect from Robyn's coming up and how we might be able to help. So what are any, like this is check it out. So we should figure, we should also find out about things that are going on at the library. Yeah, absolutely. What's the big stuff that's going on? So summer is one of our very exciting times of year here in the library when we host our summer reading programs for kids, teens and adults, special programs for all of our age groups here in the library. Children's summer reading is a mainstay in public libraries and our summer reading program again because of our great collaboration with our community partners, librarians visit elementary schools here in town and are able to really share the word with kids about what summer reading looks like in the library. We currently have over 700 children from Arlington signed up for our kids summer reading program, which is amazing and is running much higher than our year to date for kids signed up there. Teen and adult summer reading programs are newer in the library world and so enthusiastically embraced here in Arlington. It is just a joy to, particularly for adults who don't know that summer reading for grownups is a thing, for them to find out, hey, you can do this fun bingo card, you can get raffle tickets and enter our fun raffles. There's just a palpable joy when people find out that we want to bring the same joy to summer reading that kids have to adults and teens. So it's wonderful to see those programs taking off really well this year. Our summer reading kickoff was on June 18th. There were lines around the corner, so much excitement and it's just really fun to introduce the community to those programs then. And are there any, there is a deadline coming up? That program is open for sign ups through, excuse me, August 19th, so open all summer, people can come in whenever they want throughout the summer and sign up for those programs. Children sign up in our children's room here or at the Fox spirits library. Adults and teens can sign up at the adult reference desk or again over at the Fox branch library. So I have one more thing that I want to ask you guys about in terms of library operations at the moment and that is I've talked to both of you relatively consistently over the last two and a half, three years and seeing and we've covered a lot of the ground of what kinds of innovations you guys had to introduce in order to continue to make the library the center of a lot of town activity even while we were all isolated, et cetera. So now we are back to some form of normal. I noticed when I come into the library that even though there's a mass or a recommended sign at the front that there's a real mix between mass wearing not, et cetera, everybody seems to treat each other just like we want people to which is whatever you're comfortable with we'll accommodate, et cetera. But you guys had to introduce a number of new programs and some of those probably were very, well not probably, were very successful. How is it that you are moving forward kind of integrating the things that you did before in specific response to the pandemic and the way that you normally do business? I think this is a great time to talk about hybrid and what we're doing in particular with the Arlington Author Salon that's happening on July 14th. In partnership with ACMI. Oh, there we go. Okay, what a setup, what a great setup. So Anna, can you talk about how that program is being supported and actually I'll note that with respect to some of our other book discussion groups and public programs, we're seeing a lot more online participation as opposed to in-person. So that's been an interesting thing to see, to observe and that's been for sort of smaller scale like book discussion group type programs. So it's interesting to see people taking advantage of that option that was of course a pandemic, well not innovation, but it was a pandemic evolution going into the virtual world of programming. But take it away. Yeah, so the Arlington Author Salon is a quarterly program that has been running since 2015, 2016, 2015. And that program of course pivoted to Zoom Only program in 2020. And here, sitting here in the summer of 2022, it was time to bring that program back for some in-person programming. This play out that we see with online attendance and in-person attendance, we definitely took that into consideration thinking about how to bring that program back and decided to bring that back as a hybrid program. That program has historically been hosted at Kickstand Cafe. So finding a way to create this live program with speakers and a little bit of a sensory kick added to that piece was a little bit complicated. But again, we partnered with ACMI, Katie Chang, the amazing ACMI staff member was able to really, was really able to help us think about how we could convert that program to both a Zoom program and an in-person program. So that's gonna be happening on July 14th and signups are available. Hoping many people sign up, either for the in-person ticket or the Zoom ticket, both of those options are currently available when you go to sign up for that program. And I'm really looking forward to really offering programs moving forward in a way that works for the community. So does it work to offer this as an in-person program? Does it work to offer it as a Zoom program? Or can we offer that as a hybrid program? And I see we are moving to quite a few hybrid options. Yeah, and I'm wondering whether, you know, whether both of you can kind of, as you cast your eyes forward, whether you think that that hybrid option is going to just kind of stay in place simply because you can get to more people that way or you can make things a little bit easier for people to take in whatever the particular event is. And if so, if you do see that being kind of more of just a permanent or indefinitely, for an indefinite amount of time, exercise option, is that more work for every individual event? I assume so, because it is from our perspective. Definitely. I mean, it also depends on the nature of the event, I mean, with the salon. It was a particularly intimidating challenge because of the sensory elements that we like authors to be able to offer the audience because of the number of people involved in the program. So that's definitely an example of a more complex program to finesse in terms of hybrid, but there are much simpler options like the genealogy program we had the other night where, you know, it was a very simple setup. The speaker just had, you know, was on Zoom and the audience was in front of him. So the in-person audience was in front of him. So it was a little bit of a lighter lift in terms of setup for that. So I think it'll come down to the complexity of the program. Yeah, the complexity of the program, the audience for the program, children's programs. We are really not offering any virtual children's programs right now. Kids do need that personal touch. As we all found that, because really, you know, parents of younger kids. Exactly. So really, our goal is to meet the appropriate audience. So I think the salon, the genealogy program, our great examples of programs that offering this as a hybrid program is opening up that program to the right audiences who are able to access those programs via Zoom. Children's programs, I can't see us going back unless we need to. We definitely saw that it is better for kids to have those events in person. Yeah, I have to say that that is a great way to, a great place to end up this conversation because my experience of the library under your leadership and my anticipated experience under yours to come is really about what you just said, putting the, you know, figuring out what the audience, what works best for the audience and whether the audience is a group of children or a group of seniors or the community at large, et cetera. That's something that you guys have been clearly dedicated to. It's been a kind of guidestone for you as you move through your daily operations. So that's what we want. That's what we get. We appreciate the fact that you did that so well and we wish you the best of luck in continuing in that tradition, obviously. I just want to invite you, in particular, Andrea. I know, again, we spoke recently and you had a chance to address the community. You had a farewell garden party, so to speak, very recently also. But just any final words to share with our audience? Oh, boy. Well, as I said at the garden party, I think it's never been more important to support public libraries and it's because of the role that we play in promoting a pluralistic society, a society where opposing viewpoints, where different perspectives can be honored and respected and civil discourse can happen. I think that what we see in society these days is a horrible divide in so many ways. And I think that information and access to information and access to community events that bring people together can only help this society. He'll grow, change, help people be good citizens and thoughtful voters and thoughtful people in their everyday lives. So I mean, that's how I think of public libraries these days and it very much is tied to that idea of social infrastructure and how we undergird all of that. And yeah, support your local library. Absolutely, and that was very well said. In that, within the larger context in which we're all living and we're highly aware of such atomization, such division, et cetera, libraries connect. Libraries connect people around simple and pleasurable things but also around difficult and naughty and kinds of conversations that have to happen. And let us hope that we can continue and I'm sure we will be able to continue to count on the library to provide that glue for us as a community here. And hopefully for libraries in general as you were just saying for public libraries throughout the country to be able to operate in that way because God knows we are in desperate need, as you say. Anna, last word goes to you because you're about to take all this on. So whatever thoughts you'd like to share with us and with Arlington. First, of course, I think on behalf of so many people in Arlington, I of course want to thank Andrea for her amazing service to the community. Our library is in such a strong place right now because of Andrea's leadership over the last 10 years and I'm really looking forward to continuing the work that we have seen in the past few years. Of course, to continuing our deep community relationships with our other departments in town and our other community partners and continuing to look for ways where we can better serve the community. All right, well thank you for that. I have to say Andrea that you are the third as people are well aware of three kind of high-profile town leaders who are going to be leaving in a short period of time. And I put you and your influence and your contributions right on a level with Adam Chapterland as the town manager, with Jenny Raid as the director of our Department of Planning and Community Development. You've left us in a great place. We will do our best to continue to keep it so. I'm honored by that statement. Thank you. Thank you. Everything's going to be fine here. Everything's going to be fine. Everything's going to be fine. Yes. Here at the Robbins Library and here and check it out. I have been speaking to Andrea Nicolai regrettably for me for the last time officially. She has been the director or the ABLE director of our libraries for 10 years now. And also to Anna Lytton who is about to step into that role and we look forward to getting together with Anna many times in the future. Thank you both for being here. Thank you for being here. I'm James Milan. This is Check It Out and we'll see you next time.