 Next on Big Talk from Small Libraries 2024, we are going to hear about leveraging student projects and organizations from a trio of librarians from the US Military Academy Library in West Point, New York, my home state, actually. And their FTE at the school is 4,400. Is that still about accurate? All right. So, Jennifer, Laurie and Lisa, I will let you all introduce yourselves as go ahead and tell us about how you're doing this at your library. Sure. So, I'm going to start my name is Jennifer Chast and I am the communications and marketing librarian. And then I think, do you guys want to introduce yourselves now or once you get to your portion? We will do it when we get to our portion. Let me go ahead and start. So, thank you so much for coming to our presentation today. Very excited to be able to talk to you about how we have leveraged students through student projects and student organizations at our academy in order to fulfill some of our initiatives and gain insight into one of our core audience spaces. Here is what you can expect us to discuss today. First, I'll talk about the different projects for which I've been a client and I'll talk about our student advisory group before Laurie will talk about her work as the programming librarian. And then Lisa will finish up talking about her work as the exhibits librarian, because each of these initiatives are so different with different outcomes and different takeaways. We'll be including those within each of the initiatives as we talk about them. Next slide. Let me share our why. Here are two of the 4400 students that are enrolled at the United States Military Academy. We call our students cadets and we call our institution West Point and we'll be using those terms as we go along. West Point is one of five service academies in the United States. All of the cadets who attend West Point expect to spend at least the next four years after graduating in the military. At its most fundamental core, it is a four year liberal arts school that focuses heavily on engineering in its many forms. In addition to having academic requirements, they also have military and athletic requirements that they are also graded on. Because of this, our cadets have a very highly regulated schedule and they don't have the same time for relaxation, recreation, or reflection that students at other schools would typically have. This also means that they're not allowed to work. We do not have student workers that would typically fulfill basic tasks, tackle projects, or provide that important insight into an academic library's student body. If we're not able to do it ourselves, it often means it goes undone. That's really right. Looking into ways to leverage our student body was born in some ways out of necessity. Our resources are finite and like so many of you, we often have to get creative in order to accomplish these tasks. However, I'll also note that one of the reasons why we continue to work with our cadets in these ways is because it is deeply satisfying to engage with these amazing humans. They're still learning and developing into leaders of character. The enduring relationships that we've made with our cadets is something you cannot place value on. Next slide. So all cadets are required to complete some sort of capstone project or research within both their majors and their minors. This is everything from a mechanical engineering major who has to build some sort of contraption that would be able to transport an ill visitor from the top of the Statue of Liberty to a psychology major looking at how you can actually measure someone's character. Both of these, by the way, are actual projects that have been done. We have a major event towards the end. Statue of Liberty one. They like to build this thing that they and they actually did they like made a structure thing that they could then use police for. We have a major event towards the end of each academic year called projects day where the cadets are expected to present on these capstone projects. A number of years ago, our systems engineering librarian was talking to the systems engineering faculty who are looking for people to act as clients who had some sort of problem that the systems engineering students could find a solution for as part of their capstone projects. If you're not familiar with systems engineering don't worry. I had no clue either until I started working with these cadets. This is essentially the process of finding optimal solutions to problems using multiple complex value weighted options based on research. This process can be applied to virtually any problem. Initially we did this is a favorite of the department and as a way to build relationships with the faculty. We weren't really sure what we would get out of it. But we thought we would take advantage of this opportunity anyway since the need was already built into the curriculum. What I have particularly appreciated from their work is that cadets approach these problems from a perspective that we don't have. We're not 18 to 22 year old students and seeing how they work through a problem is sometimes more valuable to me than their final proposed solutions. Next slide. I've continued to work with our systems engineering faculty as a client for five or six years now. I've also worked with our marketing department and I continue to look for other opportunities within other departments. So far I've worked with over 15 groups on a variety of problems including the ones listed here. As the communications and marketing librarian I'm keenly interested in their perspective on my marketing efforts. Tell us the best ways to market cadets. I've worked with several groups and asking them the same questions over and over. I'm able to see if they come up with similar solutions. I can look at trends in their solutions and dig a little into the perspectives and attitudes of our students. One solution could be very biased if a group did insufficient research. But if we see the same solutions come up again and again that we know that it's a valid solution that I should explore. This has also allowed me to see some major gaps in my marketing strategy. Because there wasn't a strong brand recognition of our catalog which we call scout amongst all of the students. If we're not even on the same page with our students over something as basic as what terms we use to describe our catalog. Then we need to be mindful of that when we interact with them. It became blatantly obvious that some of the students had no clue about many of our resources and services beyond the most obvious such as circulation reference research guides what are those interlibrary loan what's that. And our website was so siloed that they didn't know how to use it effectively. This led to them becoming easily frustrated and avoiding using our website. Also, I myself sometimes found it difficult to communicate my wants or even key performance indicators that we could use to further analyze the efficacy of the suggested suggestions. If I couldn't provide clear key performance indicators, how are they supposed to give me realistic solutions? This has helped me better understand and define what value patrons see in our library. I'm currently working with three different groups who are looking at our website. While it would be ideal to hire this work out to a contractor that specializes in user experience and website design. That's not really in the cart for us right now. Asking the cadets to do some of this work and come up with solutions based on their own perspectives will help us achieve our goal of building a more cadet focused website. They're still in the planning phases of the project right now but I look forward to their initial solutions that they'll actually be presenting to me next week. Next slide. Because I don't want this opportunity to feel like it's only applicable to academic libraries. I wanted to try and translate this particular idea into something that might work for other small libraries regardless of what type of library you are. It does not have to just mean working with students, but looking more broadly on how you can find those pre existing needs of others that you can use to fulfill your own needs. So make a wish list of the things you want to accomplish projects that you'd love to do, but you just don't have the time or the resources to actually complete. Maybe look into how you could partner with other people in your community, who might be able to accomplish some of those projects for you. Look for a new social media manager who is looking to expand their portfolio. They might be willing to conduct a social media audit for you in exchange for agreeing to be added to their portfolio. Maybe look to new high school or college graduates who are looking for a job and are looking for ways to build out their resume. Maybe go look for an architect or an engineer who could analyze the foot traffic in your building and maybe pose some potential solutions that would either free of room or optimize traffic. You could talk to a marketer or a graphic design student who could conduct a sign audit for you and then design branded graphics for a series of signage for you. You can approach local Boy or Girl Scouts, honor societies and other local organizations through looking for volunteer opportunities to complete things like that DVD maintenance collection project that you've been putting off. And I encourage you to reach out to your local high schools or colleges to see if they do have any classes that require clients. In my experience, looking at disciplines that rely heavily on projects is where you want to go. So maybe look at departments like business or engineering, rather than a department like history or English where they would be much more likely to write a paper, rather than to have to do some sort of project or come up with some sort of solution to a problem. After many times working as a client, here are some of my biggest takeaways. The first is to realize that you can't expect a perfect solution. They are still students. They are still learning. And at the end of the day, they're doing this, not because they're doing it as part of their profession, but because they are getting a grade for a class. And at the end of the day, the systems engineering faculty place far more importance on their students learning how to go through the process, rather than coming up with an optimal solution that makes me satisfied. I just need to recognize that they're not going to give me exactly what I want and I need to be okay with that. But don't be afraid to point out when they're moving too far away from your goal. Even if you're not expecting a perfect solution, you still need to be willing to say, you know, this isn't working for me, let's regroup. Because you do ultimately want to get something out of this. You don't want it to just be a favor that you're doing for somebody else and you're not getting any return on your investment of your time and effort. Next, look at the gems in their research. Every once in a while they give me something that I just cannot stop thinking about. And those gems make all of the work worth it. One example I always think about is that a group highlighted the importance of social media influencers as part of a marketing strategy. That's not a novel marketing concept, but it highlighted the idea of using cadets as our social media influencers or brand ambassadors. And while I haven't really cracked the code on it yet, it still takes up space in my brain. Along with the gems, I always say to look at the gaps in their solutions as well. Again, our students are learning, and they are often quite biased in their solutions. Sometimes I really find the gaps in those solutions to be where the value lies for me. For example, I've had marketing solutions where they talk almost exclusively about social media. I know that cadets make up a very small portion of our social media followers, only about 5%. So while I don't think this is necessarily where we should focus on our marketing to cadets, if the cadets are looking at social media as a suggested optimal solution, then I need to find the gap in there between their beliefs that I should market to cadets on social media and the fact that our cadets don't want us in the same social media space as them. So maybe we don't communicate with them on social media, but maybe we take that same experience that they get, and the same types of formats that they're used to seeing on social media, and translate those into our other marketing channels, and some of perhaps our digital learning objects. Then we can post them both on our research guides and Canvas, our academies learning management system, and then maybe put it on YouTube as shorts. Maybe even on Instagram, although they don't live there with us. Next slide. I'm only going to talk for a minute about our student advisory group because we literally just launched it several weeks ago. I was interested in establishing our student advisory group because of all the same reasons many other libraries invest in having advisory group. But one reason why is because of that gem a cadet group shared with me about social media influencers. I think this group has the potential to create a vested group of brand ambassadors who deeply value the library and will be willing to share their views with their peers. As I said, our initial meeting was just a couple of weeks ago and we had some really wonderful outcomes from it. First of all, although the group was small, it was very diverse, 50% male 50% female. It included both freshmen and a senior. I really appreciated that they offered their opinions and were willing to disagree with each other. Now, the fact is our student body is organized in a similar way as the military. There is a very well defined hierarchy and we were a little concerned that perhaps the underclassmen would not be willing to share their opinions if they differed from the other classmen who were in the group. But that fortunately wasn't the case. We were able to ask further questions and really dig deeper into their ideas. This helped us to see where their priorities were, which were not necessarily where we expected and what value they view the library to hold. Having those rich conversations being able to hear the different perspectives how they varied and when they agreed was just so incredibly valuable. If you've not already established at least one community advisory group, I challenge you to start one today. With that, we'll turn it over to Lori. Oh, Jen, you are a tough act to follow. Thank you so much. My name is Lori Maloulli and I am the events and programming librarian here at West Point and I'm going to pivot now and just talk about programming here. Next slide, Lisa, please. As Jen explained, we are a surface academy library and this makes our patrons a rare cohort, their athletes, their scholars and future officers with many training commitments. So providing programming here at the library for them can be tricky as your schedules are heavily prescribed. And this makes it very difficult but not impossible to plan major programming events. So therefore the majority of programming that we offer here is passive programs or pop ups and just a word about passive programming. I encourage every librarian on this call to consider offering more passive programs, passive programming results in active learning that is self paced and self directed. This eliminates time and scheduling barriers for both library staff, us right and our patrons and it creates opportunities for patrons to interact with library staff and resources as their schedule allows. Some examples of our passive programs include blackout poetry, which we leave out during the entire month of April. We do make it takes to Wally lanterns, and then we actually just leave out a puzzle all the time. And it's great when cadets have 10 minutes or even faculty, they'll come and work on that puzzle as they come and go. We also offer a pop up program such as the therapy dogs you can see Joseph with shame is there on the slide pop ups are great for us because we can offer them as our schedule allows staff schedule. And the cadets are delighted when they happen upon something here at the library that they're not expecting. But having said that we do offer a few special scheduled events and these need to be planned out at least a semester in advance and sometimes a year out. And again, this is because our cadets are so heavily scheduled and finding space in the library to host major events can be challenging as well. We're very blessed and fortunate here in this building because on the sixth floor we have the hagram. This is a gorgeous venue space that's used primarily for diplomatic events and major conferences. However, if we plan far enough in advance, we can reserve it for library programming events. But regardless of the type of programming, we do try to address 4 things before offering anything here at the use of the library. Next slide. This is paramount. Our goal is to always align with our mission statement and we are intentional with our programming about supporting the curriculum and creating future scholars. I had just mentioned make and takes and we do offer them, but we don't just offer crafts for crafting sake. For example, we have a holiday card make and take every December and it is very popular with the cadets. They love to write home just before the holidays. But in addition to putting out craft supplies, we also put out examples of cadet letters from our special collections and archives. This way our cadets can read what cadets from 100 years ago wrote about over the holidays. And this gives our cadets a sense of history of the academy and the tradition of the long great line, which they're part of. Most importantly, we recognize the uniqueness of the space here at the library and we strive to make it a place for the cadets to become engaged with knowledge ideas and one another. Next slide. We also feel it is important to learn about and lean into the interests and talents of our students. I am a librarian in her fifties and right now my favorite thing is watching the Great British Bake Off on Netflix. That is not what our students are interested in right now. So the onus is on me to find out what they're interested in the onus is on you as librarians to find out what the interests of your communities are. Fortunately, there are over 160 official clubs here at West Point. These range from athletic clubs, religious clubs, diversity clubs, many clubs. And so this provides an endless line of inquiry for us when thinking about programming. Everyone on this call has heard of patron driven acquisitions. This could be called patron driven programming. And so if they want it, the library will make it happen. Also, when a cadet wants to take the lead on a program here at the library, we let them. We let them the talent and drive of our core cadets is truly astounding and has made every program so far a tremendous success. Next slide. Okay, it's my favorite slide. Every program we have is an opportunity to point our patrons back to our resources. You'll see her on the left Lisa Gomez, who you're going to hear from next. She routinely will create an exhibit for our events and she'll include items from our collections. For example, for our open mic that we had in the hage room Lisa pulled war poetry from our special collections and archives for display. Also, we also include book displays as you see in the middle, or we'll even create a custom lib guide that gives our patrons the opportunity to discover items in our collections that they just may not be aware of. And importantly, we're not just pointing back to our physical collection, we are making our patrons aware of our services as well. Our librarians prioritize attending our programs, and this gives them an opportunity to meet with our cadets in a setting that's not the classroom and it's not the reference desk right so we're planting those seeds and creating those connections face to face. Next slide. Finally, we treat every library program as an opportunity to make further connections. As the programming librarian I am very intentional about interacting with both cadets and faculty. When they attend one of my events and I'm straightforward about letting them know that I'm open to collaborating with them on further projects. This is old school networking and I can tell you it really works. Next slide please. It's almost like a ripple effect you can think of it as one interaction leading to concentric circles that get wider and wider and this is just one case in point and this is our tiny art show. Two years ago our library offered our first tiny art show and I know most of you that are listening in library land are familiar with these tiny art shows. It was extremely successful and the canvases that the cadets painted were very well done you can see the four in this slide this is just for examples. I'm going to turn this into a major exhibit on the second floor of the library. It was extremely popular. It was so popular that she digitized those canvases and created an online exhibit and you can see that on our website if you'd like to. But this one program and this one exhibit has led to numerous collaborations. Next slide. So let me hear how if you follow on the left members of the English Department which oversees the Center for Humanities visited the exhibit the tiny art exhibit and based on those conversations during the visit the English Department asked if they could borrow our tiny canvases for their annual night of the arts, which is one of their major events and we happily agreed so our tiny canvases are like little ambassadors that go out across West Point for other events. We went to their event and I shared that I've always wanted to have an open mic here at the library something spoken word where the cadets can write their own poetry. The English faculty say they would love to work on that with us and in fact, a member of the English Department agreed to serve as our emcee for our first open mic. The jazz club came to that first open mic and they were so excited about it that they came to me and asked if they could create an event here at the library that would cover the history of jazz. Next event. The next slide. So we're actually in the planning stages of this new event. This program is entirely cadet led you can see Josiahs there with Kenneth. Those are two cadets that are in charge of this. The jazz group is collaborating with the history department in the West Point music research center so you can see those circles getting bigger and bigger right. And because the cadets will be looking at the history of jazz through the lens of civil rights. This is an opportunity for students to investigate and challenge existing narratives about race and history. As I mentioned before we expect our cadets to be part of the scholarly conversation and as you can see this upcoming event. This upcoming library program will truly be a work of scholarship and this is just one example. Next slide. So some takeaways just to summarize from the programming perspective. Some tips you can use recognize that each program is an opportunity to widen your network. Remember members of departments talk to each other students and patrons talk to each other right, no matter how big or how small your community is it really is a small world after all okay. And if you have a reputation for being collaborative and supportive patrons with programming ideas will literally come to you. Okay, also find out what the interest of your patrons are and let them come up with their own programming ideas your students as well. This triggers an intrinsic motivation as well as a sense of agency. Let them drive but be sure to offer guidance when needed. Everyone on this call knows what it takes to host a successful library programming event we've all been there right. And as I mentioned we're working with those two cadets right now in the jazz event and Lisa and Jen can back me up they have they have major ideas but they almost have too many ideas and they really haven't ever planned a program like this. So we still need to work with them on implementation and we want to give them the support they need so that their program is a success. Okay. And then finally lean into the existing groups that are on your campus or in your community and also lean into their workflows. I mentioned that we have over we have 160 official clubs here at West Point. Every club here has a cadet in charge. All right, and these cadets are already in a position of leadership so whenever I have an update. I push out that information through the CIC through the cadet in charge and this is efficient and effective for me right so lean into existing workflows and communication protocols. The last thing you want to do is herd cats every time you have program. So with that, I will now turn it over to my colleague Lisa Gomez. Thank you so much. So good afternoon everyone. So I'm Lisa Gomez and I'm the exhibition librarian here at East from the library. It's a pleasure to be with you today. Thank you so much for joining our session. We work hard to incorporate many different types of displays and exhibits throughout the year from formal exhibitions where we work with rare materials from our archives and special collections that take quite a bit of long term planning to pop up displays that will support classroom instruction conferences and special events happening across campus. Each project is an opportunity for us to assess how our patrons are cadets have engaged with the exhibit. So it's important to think about for an exhibit that's lasted several months and also a display that maybe was only up for about an hour thinking about how our cadets are engaging with it and how we might be able to do better. So, what drives student engagement with our exhibits so research on the topic has shown that students are really looking for some sensory motor experiences. They're interested in immersive exhibits. They also tend to have a higher level engagement when the presentation of abstract topics are done in a really tangible way. It's also incredibly effective when the presentation or the exhibit is going to have several different anchor points that are going to be highlighted throughout the library so there's going to we have our designated exhibit space but then Lori and Jen often assists me and several other of our amazing staff of creating signage and different book displays throughout our space to reinforce the exhibits theme. So on our own evaluations and review what our cadets love to learn about is themselves and each other. So what better way for them to do this for us to help them do this than to have the cadets drive these exhibits and create them themselves. So the photographs here on this slide. This is a fun exhibit that we created around Halloween this past fall of one of our most famous cadets Mr Edgar Allen Poe. I was really atmospheric and was incredibly popular with cadets in humanities majors, lots of English majors or classes they stopped over. So the cadets in general everybody really just love to hear about Poe's antics. Why it was court marshaled and I ended up having to leave West Point so these displays are some really great opportunities to help connect cadets to their past which is now going to be their legacy. So as with the library and profession as a whole I'm sure everyone out here has been thinking themselves talking with colleagues in 10 attending professional engagements on diversity equity and inclusion and we are super committed to providing a welcoming and enriching environment for all students faculty and staff. And we really have been talking about and we want to do so in manners that are deep and effective and meaningful. And one manner to which that we're finding we we've been able to do so is being a place and a space for our students and cadets to research West Point, the army, and also their world histories and as Lori discussed to be truly active in creating understanding and promoting their own stories and narratives. You know as an as enlisted soldiers which they all are and soon to be officers are cadets are under different regulations and many traditional college students. So it has with federal employees like we all are we have to stay completely non partisan. So our students maybe they so they actually they cannot engage in activism as we might traditionally think about college campuses with different protests and things like that. However, there is another extremely important and effective manner to participate in the social justice conversations that we know are incredibly important to this generation of students and cadets. And that way is through academic academia and scholarship. So that's something that we can help with. We were incredibly lucky this last fall, fall of 2022 to it and then an exhibit in February in March of 2023 to be part of a major exhibition collaboration between the West Point Department of History, us the use of the library and also the West Point Museum to create an exhibition title foundations black experiences of West Point. So black history project at West Point is part of the history department, and it has cadets and faculty working together to study West Point history, and to conduct new historical research regarding the experiences of black persons at West Point. One of the cadets hope is to create an exhibit to display their findings. So for cadets, along with their faculty advisor spent hours in the library's archives and special collections conducting the research with primary and secondary sources, looking at memoirs, looking through administrative records. I spent hours myself and our team writing exhibit label copy vetting oral histories, looking at marketing designs, and also completely driving the exhibition design itself and an interpretation and selecting which materials to include. Really one of the most rewarding projects I've ever been a part of and my career and the response that we received from the cadets and alumni that felt inspired and seen I'll just I'll never forget them. So what it also did this project is it allowed cadets to further engage with their research as true scholars, as they're seen here presenting here with the digital version of our foundations exhibit on projects day that Jen talked about. So this experience and allowed them to understand that the historians work is not done once the book is written once the papers written, or the project is complete. You want to go you. It's important for them to learn that the, you have to engage with the experts in your field, and really the wider community to ensure that your work continues to be discussed in the broader conversation. And so what I really took away from this experience was how transformative a project is when cadets create these, they create the work, and they are fully engaged in the research, and they write the stories and, and also how powerful buy in from an academic department or partnering organizations where you live can be so super super important to to join other groups as Laurie discussed with all of the different cadets groups on campus so many different opportunities for that. And so that I was incredibly lucky that the person in my position prior to me she was had a very strong relationship with the history department so they felt comfortable reaching out for that that really big exhibit. I've been thinking about ways so that so that was lucky and that was really great that they came to me so now my job is thinking about every opportunity. Any person that cut any cadet any patron in the library staff that comes into our library thinking about how to leverage their expertise every every cadet here is brilliant and has amazing amazing insights to offer. And on this slide. So this is an incredibly gifted he was a senior back in the spring of 2023, and his expertise were in Chinese history. And it just so happened that I was doing rounds one evening when I was closing the library and he was at the first floor circulation desk talking to one of our wonderful texts. And on that day that he was having great night he had just turned in his thesis on the history of China right around the turn of the century. And so my ears perked up because we were looking into doing an exhibit on the China relief expedition and West Point's role in it. So I ran down and I asked if he would have any interest in taking a look at some of the items that I'd selected from our archives and special collections department or if he'd want to engage further and he said absolutely the next day he came to our collections and then he just drove it home. He did an incredible job bringing in narratives and threads and really really important. Cultural understanding and knowledge that made us really think about what we wanted to say and how we wanted our cadets to feel to understand their role as as West Point officers and then also connected to the community and then in the world itself. So we're super that that I was incredibly happy and then I thought about, you know, every single person that comes to the door. If you if you just find the right connection for them and then everyone has a really really important expertise that could be interesting on so many different levels. So some exhibits in the work so as Lori and Jen spoke about that ripple effect is so real. So because of the, the success of the foundations and the China relief expedition exhibit. I've had faculty from the history department reach out this semester and they are interested in actually they're already hard at work with creating an exhibit on the Colombian exchange. So this particular professor, she's actually having her cadets create the exhibit during class time, and she had asked me to come in and I've been going in and giving a formal instruction on creating exhibit copy and different ways to effectively create a label which I'm sure a lot of you have experienced this yourself you know you tell cadets. All these labels are going to be, you know 100 words max, and they get really excited because they're used to doing 2500 word papers and it's all, there's a lot and they think oh this will be I have no time so this will be great. But as we talk about in class and some of the hardest writing you'll ever do to really effective effectively convey a message. It's such a short amount of time but it's something that the instructor will say to them the it's it's incredibly important as officers to be able to deliver a message to a wide group of people with really important concise messaging. You never know what type of a situation you could be in where you have to quickly and effectively communicate. So that's been really, really wonderful to be involved with that. So, and something else that I've been really lucky to experience and want to continue to leverage is our connected community and creating lifelong relationships so our alumni they're incredibly influential and brilliant individuals. Many who love West Point, even if and when their experience was difficult or complicated. So I have, I was very lucky. A class of 2020 West Point grad contacted me a few months ago and asked if she could be involved in the Black History Month project for this year I said absolutely. She was so generous with her time and her expertise and her. And her creativity. And so I realized how fantastic understanding the power of alumni because she has a big network of fellow cadets who graduated with her and she's in touch with many current cadets. So I'm able to tap into their world a little bit and be able to, you know, I have this trusted person who can say, you know, they're the library is great to work with. And so activating those relationships is something that it's invaluable to the job and something I wouldn't be able to do my job without it. So some takeaways. So, even when exhibition projects are student led they still take an incredible amount of time, Lori, Jen, all of my co workers they every exhibition is an entire library project we have everyone helping from cataloging to editing to help fill the slate and marketing to signage and even still it always ends up taking, I hate to admit it but like double what I originally planned. So definitely, definitely give yourself and your team tons of time to do these because especially when you're working with themes that are there so important and involved. You might find that you're going to go in a different direction than you originally thought you were going to go in so give yourself time and grace to do that. That way, your final product can be something that you just that that's super reflective of the hard work and the people that you're doing and to so something that I, I think about a lot and talk a lot with my colleagues is understanding so because you know exhibits and worries programming and marketing and pretty much everything that we do as librarians now is so visual it's online everyone can look at it. There's going to be a lot in constant feedback, especially with our exhibit space it's right on the second floor everybody walks by there. There's constant feedback. Most of it is so amazing and so supportive. Some not you know sometimes it's important to keep talking to yourself and you're going to get feedback all day every day some of it's going to be critical and all of it is important. But mainly focusing on sort of that bigger picture that if these are cadet led exhibits and projects, we can really rest on the fact that we are serving our mission and our patrons. So it's comforting when you're wondering if you did everything right. And then, lastly, definitely don't underestimate your community members and how proud they are of where they live and communities that they've been involved with. They're super invested in creating honest historic legacy so they had worked in the public library prior to here and we had started working on oral history projects for the community and it was unbelievable the outpouring of patrons and constituents that wanted to be involved. And so, so here for me my my big takeaway is always working with the current cadets because they'll eventually be alumni and they'll come they'll want to continue to work on projects with us or or lend their connections to us as well. So thank you so much. Here are the here are our contact emails, please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions, comments, or if you just want to talk about exhibits I love talking about them. So please don't ever hesitate to reach out. Great, thank you. All right, thank you so much, Jennifer Lori and Lisa. All right, if you want to be able to take questions now, if you want to pop back to your contact info there so people can get that if they need to grab it. If anyone has any questions, you want to ask we have plenty of time here. Type into the question section of your good web at our interface, and I am monitoring that and I will pull those questions for our presenters. We do have a few are that have already come through so in while we're here. So first question we have is so this is great for sorry. This is a great session. Yeah, lots of work. I know that you all put into these exhibits and working with I know I worked in a university library for nine years and working with the students and faculty is is. It takes a lot. Yes, of time and effort and energy and more power to you all for doing this. Thank you. Definitely going to check out some of those sessions yet I love those the one that I love those tiny paintings I've seen other places do that. So, so good. So I'm going to definitely check out the ones that you've done I'm going to do one of those someday I just see where someone's doing that. So let's see some questions we have here. Do you think. So first question is, do you think that these tactics would be transferable to working with a girl or Boy Scouts and for each clubs or other type of school clubs. Yes, definitely. And you know, I'll refer back and say that I think maybe have some projects already sort of or ideas of things that you want them to do right because so oftentimes they'll come and be like, I want to volunteer. What can I do. So having some some projects already sort of that they can do and you know obviously a, you know, my daughters are nine and they're in girl scout their capabilities are very different than an 18 to 22 year old adult or a senior citizen might have. And so maybe looking at the different projects and seeing where, you know, the sorts of things you know, doing some collected collection maintenance or things like that are maybe not things that a nine year old would be able to do. You know, kind of thinking through your projects, so that you can be honest with these organizations and say yes we can do something with you or, you know, maybe not right now or something like that. Absolutely killer to them and I know when they get into the 4h they do get the kids get older and older and they're still in 4h so definitely you could be working on things that as they advance. And I'm going to add to that too, just because you know I was a girl scout leader for 11 years. It was crazy. It just had two daughters anyway, it fulfills their requirements as well right they have leadership hours that they have to do for age I would imagine as well so you know it's it's a win win for them, they can do book displays they can come up with their projects and have them hosted at the library for the greater community to so it's again, it's patron driven if they need that. That's something that the library can help. And that's, that's when those card rails come into play, just kind of guiding them through. And maybe that could be your chain advisory group, right, or you could look at them as I call them brand ambassadors right and so, as people that could go out into the community and other ways and help promote you and your library. Absolutely. Promotion advocacy all libraries and all types need that outside of their little bubble, definitely. Absolutely. I'm thinking back I wish that. I knew what I know now is when I was working in a public library because I think that would have been so fun working with a troop on a display, especially at the archives and such a collection materials are amazing, but you have so many limitations with how you can mount them to preserve their library. When you're working with different kinds of papers and not rare materials, you can be so creative and the, and the kids really are so I, that would be, I'd love to see what the truth would come up with and in all the different public library spaces would be awesome. Absolutely. Yeah. If anyone's done anything like that share with us. Please. I don't know how it's gone at your libraries. You know, I don't know if this is, I sort of think that this is like a normal thing, but our troops in our community, they are getting ready to do international day. So that could be something that the library could collaborate. You know, everybody has to make signs and talk about the different parts. Well, maybe you could plan to have that become an exhibit after the fact and take some of those materials. And then you do definitely want those guardrails and be like, okay, these are the types of things that we want from you. If you're going to then put them into an exhibit and maybe pull some books and have a book display to go along with the different materials and that kind of thing. Absolutely. All right. Next question we have one and I don't know if you mentioned this or not. It's from earlier in the session. How did you recruit students for the advisory group. So, I put a sign up, and I put up a sign for a year and literally the minute like five minutes before I was going to send out the email to people. I got one person who was like, hey, I saw your sign. The signs didn't work. So what we actually did is Lori was so gracious to allow me to put in a question in our registration forms for our different programs and say, would you be interested in this. And that actually got a lot of people. So, I don't know how many people we had registered total for different several hundred three 400. And out of that I got 89 people who said yes, that they would be interested in joining and so I sent out the email to 89 people. We did only ends up getting. We had about 10 people say that they would like to come to an event but that ultimately we only got four people. But still, like I said, it was really diverse and so even though it was only for those conversations were just amazing but it really did sort of have to come from these registrations and maybe other places and so I actually found in general that adding on a question to the registration is also sort of how I, you know, collect my data for marketing and how did you hear about it and do you want to join the newsletter. And where he's been really, really kind and patient with allowing me to add that kind of stuff to the registration with our programs. There are very type of things like that when you're trying to find him from get asked any of your patrons, what they want or what they're interested in. You have to figure out where, where they are, and where they're going to respond be more likely to click a thing answer something right. As a marketer I would also say that that evolves over time right so we have a bunch of marketing channels that we have seen as effective but that has actually changed over the years. It's interesting to see how that changes, even in sort of like the little bubble sphere of West Point being sort of this like weird little microcosm that even how they get information and how they want to get information has evolved over time. Oh, sure. Yeah. Let's see here. Oh my God. So here's someone who has just typed in that they've done this kind of thing. So here's some ideas for people. I partnered with my local national state park and a Girl Scout troop. We created a pollinator garden in the park and created several different learning bags that check out when visiting the park seems like the life cycles of amphibians and insects the water cycle etc we also had book lists for further reading. Getting outside part of the park. Oh, I just love how all the resources from the library or we're baked into that. That's, that's exceptional. I love that. And then we have a comment here about the passive programming you talked about that way back in the beginning to and I agree with this definitely and this is something that I think. Another thing that we mentioned in previous session about traveling to promote the in the things that aren't. They don't bring the bodies into the library but they're just as important. And they're not something maybe you're interacting with these people but it's still something to keep track of excuse me. Excuse me. This person says we need more recognition from our reporting agencies of the importance of passive drop in anytime and pop up programs. Word people won't commit don't show up. But when there are things for them to do whenever they visit, then they come back. Yeah, don't, you know, don't be discouraged by the, this happens to all this I scheduled a thing I went through all this work and nobody came at the thing at, you know, 2pm. Just put some things out and see what disappears of the passive programming or crafts or whatever. And see some of that is also where joining, you know, aligning with different groups, you know, is very helpful. And then you can maybe reach out to them like Laurie mentioned about going through, you know, perhaps their, their, their communication workflows, right. And we, we've had that in the past where maybe some of our events weren't well attended or whatever and then the word gets out to the right person who has that interest and all of a sudden, they're all gone. But again, too, just because the event didn't work first time maybe the word had to spread. And then, you know, let's do another one and see if it, you know, finally people show up and then, oh yes, we talked to each other and now we're here. It's hard to get those things going definitely. So those last question and comment we had, does anybody have any other desperate questions or comments you want to share right now with Jennifer Lauren Lisa about their presentation, and their programming and exhibits that they've been doing the exhibits are the coolest thing I know, you know, libraries always putting out exhibits ourselves but I think getting your whoever your patrons are in your case the students of ours is so cool gets some more invested in the library. And, you know, as a thing that's theirs to, you know, absolutely and just it's there. They're so brilliant. It also frees up some of the time for me to do other things. All right, you don't have to come up with the ideas that come to you with them. All right, so I don't see anything else come in that's great, but there is their contact information for Jennifer Lori and Lisa so if any of you do want to reach out to them about anything. Do do so. All right, so thank you so much.