 Hello, and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am Krista Burns at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is Library Commission's weekly online event. We cover NLC activities, library topics of interest in Nebraska librarians, anything you may be interested in as a librarian in the state. We have our library commission staff that do these presentations, and we have guest speakers sometimes as we have today. We do these sessions every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. They are free one-hour sessions on average, and we do record them. So if you're not able to attend a live one, you can always listen to our recordings. This morning, we have a presentation on Teen Read Week, which is actually coming up next week. We get after that next week, yeah. And we'll hear all about that. So, pass it on over to Sarah. You can introduce yourself, you are, what you're doing, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. My name's Sarah Dale-Piercel, and I work here in Lincoln for Lincoln City Libraries at Gear Branch, and I am the one at Gear who works with the teens. When we first started talking about doing this, we were gonna do it all about Teen Read Week and what everybody has planned to do for Teen Read Week. And then as it progressed, we started talking about, well, how about some background information on how you developed your teen program in the first place? So I sort of dug back into the files here and put together some information for you if you're interested on how Lincoln City Libraries put together our teen program to begin with. This got started a couple of years ago. Susan Steider, who's our young adult librarian over at Isley Branch, and then Pat Leach, who at the time was the Director of Youth Services who is now the director, and also Greg Michaels put together all of the people from all of the branches that work with teens. And we started talking about the Lincoln City Libraries teen experience and what it was exactly that we wanted to do with the teens, how we wanted to make it happen system wide and what we wanted them to get out of it. So what I'm sharing with you is just some sort of internal memos and things that we had put together at the time. We have since ceased doing these meetings and have kind of gone out on our own in terms of what everybody's doing. But this is kind of how we got started. My space at the time that we started doing these meetings was sort of the big hot thing. And so what we wanted to capitalize on was what obviously the kids were thinking about. The teen experience, make it your space, make the library your space was the thought that we had. And we wanted to make it very much a collaborative thing between the libraries and the teens. We wanted the teens to tell us what they wanted from the library. And to make that happen, one of the things we did was put surveys up onto the website and had the teens tell us the things that they were interested in doing. And from that, and then from our meetings as well, we put together some lists of background stuff, the principles, what we wanted to do, and then sort of our action plan in terms of what we wanted to make happen. So this is from the notes that got us started. This is the principles that we came up with. We wanted to make sure that the libraries were really embracing an active role. We wanted to say, we have something to offer to the teens, and we are actively going to go forth and do that with not just the little kids, but also the teens. Nurturing teens development into happy and productive adulthood. Yes, we want them all to grow up and be happy and productive. That's definitely something that we want to have happen. Advocating for teens in our community. Advocacy is something that is particularly important to us at Lincoln City Libraries. We are very much protein, and we want the teens in Lincoln to have a voice, and we want to be able to help provide that voice with them and for them, and to make sure that they know what their rights are and how to speak out and what to say and how to become productive in the community. So that's definitely something that's very important to us. Responding to the diversity of the teen experience in Lincoln, we've got all different kinds of people in the city of Lincoln. Throughout the state of Nebraska, it's obviously the same. We feel that it's important to work with the kids from their perspective and share their perspective with the rest of the city. So we want to look at the diversity that we have and go with it. Supporting and encouraging teens to succeed at school. Kind of a no-brainer. We want to work hand-in-hand with Lincoln Public Schools and with all of the private schools here in town and make sure that the kids are getting the tools and the encouragement that they need to do well. Recognizing and celebrating teens' talents, skills, and achievements, we want to make sure that the kids have outlets for the things that they are really brilliant at. And that's really a fun one. I mean, to sit down with the kids and to learn the things that they're into and the things that they're excited about. I have learned in the past couple of years from my teens a lot of stuff that I wouldn't have begun to know about, from filmmaking to parkour to stuff online. They're a fabulous source of skill and talent and learning about what they do and then providing them for outlets to do that is a lot of fun. Motivating teens through engagement, fun, and relevance. Yes, we want them to have fun. We want them to come to the library and have fun and we want to get them moving. So definitely motivation is one of our principles. Developing the status of destination of choice for Lincoln teens, that's kind of a big one. We've been talking about that in libraries for quite some time now. And definitely some of the things that we have done at LCL have been with the goal in mind to make ourselves a destination. Gaming is something that we'll talk about a little bit later and that's definitely a big, again, some other sort of regular advance that we have for teens at the libraries to make it so that the library is, you know, not just a place to go to get the books and to get the stuff for your report and whatnot, but to go and hang out. Using popular culture as a connector between teens and libraries. Everybody has jumped on that particular bandwagon, which yay. Yes, we have a MySpace. Yes, we have a Facebook and Twitter and all of the rest of the things that enable us to talk to the kids from where they're at. And it works well. The Facebook in particular is sort of the big thing right now. MySpace has faded slightly, although it's still big with a lot of the kids and we do both and we announce all of our events on both and I definitely have kids coming in and saying, you know, Facebook said you were going to be here doing this and this and this and responding through that. So, you know, it really does work. Relying on relationships with youth, getting to know the kids, it's huge. You need to get to know your kids and I'm willing to bet that most of you who are listening to this are doing that. And it works and it's a good thing. Seeking youth input and planning, they definitely need to have the ownership over what they're doing at the library and they have fabulous ideas. So, we'll talk about different ways to get that input and make it happen. And then joining with others to maximize your streamline the teen experiences, we want to do things that are in line with the kids' families, with what they're doing at school, with what's going on in town. We want to make sure that we are in touch with what else is going on in the city and how we can make that happen and how we can make it bigger and better. So, that's the principles that we put this all together on. That's a little bit lofty, I'm sure, but that's where we started from. And we'll see how well we've accomplished some of those things. Here's the action plan, creating these opportunities for the teens to participate. And we really did focus on these activities that they could do. And different aspects of what we thought that the teens and the library would come together on. So, of course literature, of course book groups, readers, theaters, podcasts, and book reviews. We do podcasts of all of our book talks and the teens participate in those. We have book groups that meet in-house, of course. And we do actually have online book clubs as well. Gear has an online book club on shelfari.com that has been fairly successful and we've been pleased with that. Art, visual arts, that's a big thing with us. We love to have visual art on display at the libraries and we have collaborated with elementary schools, with high schools, with private groups around town that have been able to provide us with art shows within the libraries. Music, definitely we have live music at the library when it's possible. We've had some really amazing rock and roll shows. We've had some drum shows that have been fabulous, stuff like that. We're actually planning an event right now. It's very much in the planning stages, but we're working on a zombie prom that is going- Oh, I think I saw that one. Yeah. It's going to be a thank you for our teen volunteers for probably some time in January or February. And we're working on whether or not we're going to have live music or recorded music for that event. So that's definitely a big deal. We have workshops whenever we can manage it. We've done writing workshops. We're working on some photography workshops that are coming in. Performance is obviously video productions. The big video production that the gear teens have been in on is the adventures of Library Girl and Volunteer Boy. I saw that on the website, yes. Which we've had two years running. We've had the adventures and now the continuing adventures. The third script is in process and it is going to involve both animation and be at least in part a musical. Oh, nice. So we're kind of learning how to write music for that one, which is a lot of fun. Let's see. Popular culture gaming. We have gaming events at all of our branches on a regular basis. Gear does a Teen Tuesday that meets every other week. We've continued to expand with the games that we have. We've got Chris Mario Kart, Dance Dance Revolution. We just got all of the equipment to put together rock bands. So now we can do rock band in there. And now that LCL is offering Wii games to check out, the kids can go and say, well, I don't want to play rock bands today at Teen Tuesday. Let's go see what's on the shelf and we'll pull out. So yesterday we did Naruto. I don't know, beats the heck out of Naruto's friend or whatever. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. Let's see. Chess is a big draw at Gear. We have lots of, we have Jim Wallett now luckily at Gear. And so he's able to put together a bunch of chess programs for us. And we have both the regular sit-down and play at the board chess. And we have done living chess games, which are a lot of fun too. I saw that's your event that you're doing for the National Gaming Day in November. I saw that on the website, yes. That is even if you don't play, come and watch, because it's fun. They have costumes and everything. It's really cool. Fashion is something that we have tried to incorporate in. And we had a really successful program where we did a fashion show with how to dress for going to a job interview and then had an HR director come in and speak on what to anticipate in job interviews and stuff like that. It was a lot of fun. Crafts, knitting, duct tape creations, anything you do with duct tape, people are going to flock to. That's big fun right there. Beating different crafts that we do. And we do get really good turnout for those programs. The world of work. Volunteer opportunities. The volunteer program works hand in hand with everything that we do with the teens. And I'll talk about that a little bit later as well, to make your volunteer program part and parcel of what you're doing with your programming and to use those kids as audience and as input and as help for all of your programs. It works well together. Internships. We've had summer interns the last two summers with the grant from the National Library Commission. And those have worked out quite well. Several of, I think we're up to either four or five of the teens from my Teen Advisory Board have either become interns and or employees of the library now. So that's definitely something that gets put together as well. Advisory, acting as library advocates, problem solving within the library, that's been a huge thing to get the kids input on the way the library runs and the way it's set up and the ways we can make it better and ways we can make it more friendly to them and make it more useful to them. Consulting regarding programs and spaces, I've got a giant overhaul going on right now for the teen zone and gear. And my Teen Advisory Board has been invaluable in helping me to plan that and put that all together. Creating spaces for teens. Again, we've got the teen zones that we have really experimented with and done neat things with at the various branches and online spaces as well that we have created for the teens. Ample and relevant materials to check out and ensuring that in-house that our staff are responding to the needs of the teens, that we don't run into that block that you hear the horror stories about. We're afraid of the teens. The teens have overrun the library. You know, we don't want that. Lincoln City Libraries does not want that. We want to embrace the teens and to give them the same excellent service that we give to everybody else. So there has been, you know, staff training in terms of that. For a public library, I think whoever comes through your door, they're your customers. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely, no matter the age or what. They're coming through and you need to serve them. So you're at what they want. Exactly. Since we put that all together in its wonderful and lofty language, which these are the things that I have learned in working with my kids at gear. The big is ask them what they want. Teen advisory board, almost all of our locations have teen advisory boards now. Walt is working with a game council rather than a board. The teens themselves, in most instances, dictate what it is that we need to do at the various branches. Who your teens are that come into your library are going to be the ones that say, these are the things that we want. And that's the way it ought to be. We draw from the kids who either come in and start out as summer reading volunteers. Those who are Uber presidents, the theory that if you hang around long enough, we will put you to work. And we have done that on a regular basis. Here's just sort of an example of your teen advisory board. This is sort of the things that I just put together this year's schedule. We rent it on a school year schedule. We go from fall through spring. The last thing they do in the late spring is to help me train the summer reading volunteers for summer. And then we take a break during summer reading so that they're not doing meetings. We're doing the regular summer events and they're helping out with those things. But so a year's schedule, a couple of kid-inspired events. So the things that they want to do, which usually involves games and parties and food, a couple of sort of staff and administration-inspired events, things that are going to be helpful for everybody, the parent team. That's something that we have done in the past where we invite all of the tab kids' parents to come in. And everybody dresses up and the kids serve their parents and it's very fancy and lovely. The all-ages we've passed is something that we've got cooking right now. We've got some new gaming equipment that's going to be coming into the library and we are going to use both our teen volunteers and our adult volunteers within the library to have sort of a, this is how everybody can use the Wii games and have everybody working together so an intergenerational kind of event. A couple of sort of help out the whole system events. We do, like I said, they help me out with the training for the new summer volunteers every year, which is a huge deal of gear. Paperback processing. Every summer we get a big influx of new young adult paperbacks and Susan Steider had the brainstorm several years ago that our teen advisory boards should be the ones picking those titles. Sure. And they know what they want to read. Exactly. So every year we get them all together, one of the Barnes and Nobles, and they go through and pick out all of the titles that they want to see. We collaborate on that list, put it all together, get those all ordered. Once they get ordered and come in, then the tabs meet again and process all of them. So they put all the stickers on them and all the bells and whistles and they say the trouble of having to do that huge giant influx of paperbacks. Plus then they get first crack at those paperbacks. They can check them out before anybody else can. So that one has been a lot of fun and the kids really enjoy that one. And then a couple of sort of worky things. Sometimes we have a big weed list that needs to be done or shelving or we cleaned out the craft storage area one year. You know, just different things that need to be done and benefit by a giant group of lots of energetic kids working on it all at once. Some of the really great successes that we've had that fashion show was a big draw. Of course, the Adventures of Library Grill and Volunteer Boy. If you haven't watched the movie, please go to Lincoln Library Star Oregon. Click on the team page and we'll look at that here in a little bit. You can watch both of those movies. And like I said, there will be a third one coming out in the spring. The Living Chess Games. Again, we've got another one of those coming up during gaming week, which will be a lot of them. Duct tape. Anything with duct tape? It's huge. It's a big deal. It's a lot of fun. My daughter's still, can I come in and blow the duct tape? Yes, yes, you can come in and blow the duct tape. And they have different colors of that now too. Oh my goodness. I went to the bank today and I had all of my change and all of my stuff that I had to do and two different beautiful duct tape creations that my daughter had made for me. I was very proud to show off my duct tape. The Facebook and the MySpace have been big hits, obviously. We get a lot of traffic on those. We have, I listed our numbers the other day. Our MySpace, we have 374 friends on our MySpace and 313 on our Facebook. That's just on the teen ones. And we have a separate Facebook for the adult as well. So that's just the teen one. So yay, I've also been good. Keep an eye out for what the people, what the kids take to that Shelfari book route. That started out as our summer book, from two summers ago. And they didn't want to disband. And so rather than try to schedule in-house meetings throughout the school year, we just moved it online. We try to deal with a title a month and we read it and discuss. And we try to come up with books that have some sort of fun tie in, whether it's a movie or that we did this fall, early winter, when Tequila Mockingbird came to the lead center. We all read Tequila Mockingbird. And then we were able to organize a group to meet at the lead center and watch that show, which was an amazing and fun and wonderful thing to get to do. Oh yeah, see it live that way. This tomorrow pierce visit that's coming up at the end of the month in October, we are all reading the Trickster book and we are going to have as many people as can make it meet up at the Omaha Community Playhouse and go to that offer visit. So we're all excited about that. We did Pride and Prejudice with Zombies and watched a zombie movie last month too. Adapt, adapt to your branch and to your population of kids. That's huge. Every branch in Lincoln is different. And we all have very different populations of kids that frequent the library. And what works for gear does not necessarily work for Isley or Walt or South Branch. It just works. That's the way it pans out. So don't try to cookie cutter what somebody across town is doing. Some other branches have had the success using those games as rewards. Others we do more organized events. Others do it as a draw. And encouraging busy teens to view the library as a destination. This is something that our teens at gear are particularly, they tend to be very over scheduled. They tend to show up with parents or only two events that are very well organized ahead of time and advertised ahead of time. One of the things that we are going to attempt to do with our new teen zone that was in the process is to encourage the teens who, when their parents come to the library for any things, um, hey, do you want to go? You know, meth. Not really. What we are going to do with our generous grant from the commission and some additional monies from the library is we are going to put gaming, not in a separate room that is 800 yards away from the collection. We are going to put gaming in the stacks. Hmm. We are ordering a piece of equipment that is very cool. And it's on wheels. And it has space for four big screen TVs so that you could actually have four different things going on at the same time. It's got locked cabinetry below for your equipment. And it's compact enough that we will be able to place it in our teen zone. And then with the use of wireless headsets so they're not making an outrageous amount of noise, they will be able to play Wii games right there in the stacks surrounded by the collection of young adult paperbacks and graphic novels and magazines. And we are incredibly excited about it. So when they're waiting their turn, they can just say look around next to them and say, hey, look at this book on the shelf. Let's see. Instead of just off in a meeting room somewhere. Exactly. And when mom and dad say, do you want to come with? We're going to go. And instead of the kids going, you guys are going to stand there for an hour in front of the new books display and never figure out what you want. And no, thank you. We don't want to go with you. They're going to say, hey, yeah. While you guys are goofing around in the adult section, we can go play Wii games. So we are very excited about that project and hope to get it completely in an accomplished, well, I was hoping for last summer, but maybe next summer we'll get it open. But it's in the process. It's in the works. Let's see. Grants, we talked about that just a little bit. And we, you and I were just, Christian and I were just talking about the previous program on Encompass here that was about grant writing, which if you missed it, was it last week? Yes. So just last week, the recording is up on our website. Go, go listen to it. And there will be an additional one coming up on what? November 12th, November 12th, yeah. We're having a follow up session that's specifically about the continuing education, training and library improvement grants that the commission gives out. So information and tips on that because the deadlines for those are coming up December or something after that session. And those are the, those are the very grants that have helped us do this new teams and projects. So definitely take a look at those. Summer interns, that's another thing that we've used the grant funding for and that has been a fabulous help to us to have those summer interns. And like four, I think it's four or five of our team advisory board kids have graduated to being either grants or pages grant funded interns or pages or both. So we're definitely making those transitions with those kids and it's it's a good deal. Sounds like a lot of that what they do in the summer interns and have under the processing of the books is even nurturing if you're lucky some of the next generation of librarians. I mean, if they're actually seeing not just come to the library for fun, but how it happens behind the scenes, it might definitely suck some of them. Yes, and we hope that we are impressing them and pleasing them more than we are scaring them out of them. So we're keeping our fingers crossed about that. But yeah, the last summer intern I had one of her big observations was I had absolutely no idea sort of how much was going on behind the scenes. Yeah, so that was, that was a big deal. And, and she's still coming back for me. Okay, team read week. Now that we've gone through all of this sort of background information, we can look at what is going on for team read week and then how do I come over to the website? Okay, so this is the linkinlibraries.org and the website and actually let's see before we go into this, I just want to see if anyone has any questions about anything. Does anybody have any questions they want to ask about anything that Sarah's already talked about? You can, you can raise your hand if you have a microphone. I can unmute you or you can just type your question into the questions section. Someone's asking what is gear? Oh, it's the one of the branches. Yeah. The gear branches is the largest one of the branches that for linkin say it's on 56 a normal boulevard. Martha, I see you look like you had some connection problems but you're back. That's good. Nobody has any other questions at the moment. Okay, we'll go on too. Okay, so we'll just take a look at what we have scheduled for team read week. We're going to click on the team cafe here and from here you can get to book lists. You can get to events at the library there. We do actually have a team post place which has seen more activities some days than other days. Some links to cool sites and homework help. But we'll go here to that's up at the library and here is the business with National Gaming Day. Of course, November 14th is coming up and Isley Scott and then they've got video games and board games that they're doing. We're doing the chess tournament at gear on that day. That's not a live chess game. That's actual. So that's actually turn a board again. Exactly. Let's see and then team read week. Okay, on Monday the 19th we've got ghost hunters coming to Walt Branch that are going to talk about the instruments they use to communicate with paranormal which should be a problem. This is local people that you know who it is that they're bringing you know. I did not have to marry to play that the exact group that she is working with but if you have questions about that definitely call Mary Luckner at Walt Branch and I'm sure share with you the group and the contact information that she is for that program. I'm actually kind of looking forward to that one. Yeah just not very interesting. Friday the 23rd they're going to do the Scooby Movie at Isley Branch and that's a dress up movie party. So come as your favorite Scooby character or your favorite zombie character. Again at Isley on ever ever feb make a monster at the library that's an craft program like I said we have really good luck with crafts and monster craft should be a lot of fun. Pride and Prejudice ends off for Zombies book group. That's going to be sort of a one time book discussion on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The Jane Austen and Seth Graham Smith book. That's an interesting book and there's an additional one that has come out to in the series Sense and Sensibility with Seam Lusters. This is the second one. Yeah there's a third one coming out as well. We like so we did that for our shell sorry book club. The response that I got from my kids was if you've read the original then this will make a lot of sense to you. Let's see Saturday November 21st we are having our movie party and that's going to be sort of a movie marathon party. We're going to do crying and then some of the selections from the Valley War Collection I Walk for the Zombie. They're black and white classics from the 1940s. They're a lot of fun. They're sort of more suspenseful than horrific. And yeah they're a lot of fun. I know a lot of the blood and gore that they get now because yay. So those are our events that we have coming up for Teen Read Week and are all available for your perusal here. If you want to go over here to get involved and here is where you can find the continuing adventures and the continuing adventures of Library of Grill and Volunteer Boy. If you're interested in taking a look at those please be my guest and be looking forward to part three coming out soon. But are these they put up on do you guys have a YouTube account? They do these put these out post these out to are they just on your website? You know that was discussed and the feeling was that given that these are young people that we would prefer to have it a little more closed and so we limit it to posting it here on the website. So no it is not really on YouTube. Although there was much discussion about what there has to do with that one. Some libraries are doing that some aren't. Yeah it's all it's a local choice of what the kids say and the parents and anyone else want to do. Want to keep everybody safe and happy and so for this year. And also it's nice too there is I can see I can see there that more recent one 11 minute there is a time limit on how long the videos can be on YouTube too. So unless you have a special account like a director account or something 10 minutes is the max anything you could go up in there. So if these guys did get you can see they're getting longer it looks. They wouldn't even be able to do that and if they wanted to. Yeah we had two different directors for the first film and the second film. The second film the kids did completely themselves. And so the editing is a little different and a little more experimental. And again this year's is going to be a little more experimental. Some of the animation they have planned is a little wacky. So it'll be fun to see how it turns out that yeah this the second film is completely kid generated and kid produced so we're real proud of it. I was just wondering is there anyone on the session today who it has is doing any teen programming in your libraries that you'd want to share. With us if you do you can type into the questions and I can unmute you if you want to. Any any things that you're doing at your library any teen events whether it's 14 read week that's coming up or anything else that you want to share. Rochelle okay do you uh let's see. Rochelle do you have a microphone there you can go ahead and talk I've unmuted you. I'm not hearing you let me see hold on a sec here let me check these settings. Go ahead try again Rochelle I turned up our volume here I can hear you breathing. Okay I've got you turned up as loud as we can can you try and say hello Rochelle. Fortunately I'm just getting some static on our do you have a mute or anything on your side possibly that you might have almost sort of here yeah it's not coming through sorry. Does anybody else have anything that they'd like to share about what they're doing at their libraries oh I'm gonna leave you unmuted Rochelle from now um and see if uh something start coming through um you could also if it's a quickie thing or if you could type in into the questions and we can um go ahead try again say hi okay hello there you are yes now we hear you I found the switch all right well next week we are going to actually start young adult programming at our library we haven't had any yet um our first event is on Monday after school we're going to have gaming we'll have board games and a wee and we're gonna do that for sixth grade and up oh yes thank you um also on Wednesday we're going to be making some zombie finger puppets and that will happen after school as well are you using actual zombie fingers uh well no not exactly I'm taking I'm taking this idea from uh Gordon Wyant at Bellevue he did this program with his teens last week and he shared that so I am using it we're going to make out of felt and googly eyes thread yarn um just little finger puppets that look like zombies and we'll have snacks no brains just popcorn while we close at five on Fridays I'm going to open at five thirty four seventh graders and up to watch a movie nice they like that kind of thing when you open up just yes absolutely I think you've hit on two really cool pieces right there number one food if you feed them they will come everyone likes them and number two anything that they can do inside the library when it's closed is huge and exciting and wonderful are some reading parties the last several years have been after hours and we do things like play tag and hide and go seek and things like scavenger hunt within the library and any opportunity for the kids to run around and be loud in the library they love it no one's no one else scowling at them it's huge it's a big ownership thing for the kids and they absolutely love it so way to go sounds great yeah thank you anybody else have any events that they want to share tell us what you're doing at your libraries okay let us know if you do uh don't go back to our library tour or page door the the libraries well you know if we wanted to take a look at the facebook page if any of you are thinking about doing that one I think it can I think it goes from here this is our blog that we've done and you can see that sometimes we get input and sometimes not so much and I can log on to our facebook page if I just the facebook started as uh well actually we started out with the myspace and we just did kind of experimenting with it and it has grown if I can remember the login here we go so you can see um the fact that we have 300 almost 400 friends on here makes for a really interesting wall it has been really interesting to keep track of everybody's flu symptoms over the last couple of months because the kids definitely post those um but they talk about the stuff that they're doing and they talk about school and and it's educational to look through and see what they're saying and it gives you know I I just go through and read it periodically and kind of get an idea of what the teens are thinking about and granted a lot of it is sleeping and it was great now I don't want to get out of bed but you know that's that's good to know as well and they're talking about Twilight here and um again you know it I do keep track of what the kids are are doing you know health wise and and which school has 300 kids missing in a day because they've called in sick and you know it's a good thing that keeps us in touch with what the kids are experiencing during their day at school so um and the myspace is quite similar um you get a lot of comments like onto the things that you also post on your you know coming out of your page um some items more than others I always make a point of putting you know when our Teen Tuesday events are and when our various other events are we've got we've invited people to um review books and post them uh on the teen page and as well of course on the library catalog we have the opportunity to do that um and we've got a little bit of give and take they're mostly from tab kids so mostly from the volunteers who are if they look at the profile page you can see the things that you guys have posted out to um slowly there we go ah the zombie walk yeah yeah last weekend a big hit so yeah so here's the things that the teen page is sending out that anyone whose friends can see and get notifications of um that's a good way to promote anything you are doing if you put it out there put it as you saw on their page put it on your teen page let them know you've got this they may already be in facebook a lot of the teens aren't and we've got the notices up to friend us on facebook and this is one of my teen advisory board kids who she and another girl have made the um challenge to one another that one of them is going to read I think it's a through f and the young adult fiction this year and the others going to read through z and and they're going to post their findings on here so we'll see how that goes but yeah it's it is it is quite interesting to see um we get little bits and pieces of uh here we go there's flu hits right at playa's and some business about that tomorrow appears here so it's a really good opportunity to talk to the kids in a place where they're looking and it's it's quite useful and a lot some libraries I know have the concern of we're what we do we really want to push ourselves onto them in their own place you know is this a horrible thing or are they going to like backlash against us and it's not really what it's about you do not go out and find your kids and friend them you just let them know that you have a page and have them come and find you something and they may have different attitudes about it so we just wanted to be a thing with them and their friends and that's fine um they can do that but if they just know that you're there and one of their friends sees it they're all going to start seeing it and coming to your page you know I know some I've heard other librarians have that concern that you know more so with my space because it was generally thought it was more teen oriented Facebook was not originally and should we be there should we even be imposing on what's their private little area or they think might be their area no you're not just put yourself in there create a page and wait and see what happens absolutely where they're already coming on there on your website um if they come to the events to them no by the way don't you know we've got a Facebook come and find us and they will and the ones that want to will the ones that don't okay and they absolutely have a hundred percent control over whether they friend you and and even they can continue to friend you and hide your posts if they want to do that they're tired of listening to you for a little while they can hide you and come back to you later that is a nice feature of Facebook yes if someone gets too chatty or you decide you know I don't want to be mean and not friend you but no I don't want to know about your boyfriend troubles exactly you can definitely hide things on there so yeah it has worked out well we have gotten nothing but positive feedback from the kids in terms of the Facebook page and we really do just get a lot of people that get their views from the site and so if you've got stuff going on putting it out there for them to where they can pick it up it's it's quite useful and it works well yeah I get a lot of my information about what a lot of libraries in Nebraska are doing from if they have a Facebook page um and also Twitter accounts and all the Twitter and I see I've gotten you know learned about a lot of cool things going on by just paying attention to both of those things that just get pushed right out to my Facebook exactly we've gotten to the point where it's nice to have sort of home delivery of the information that you that you choose and this is one of the great opportunities to do that so definitely we encourage it if you haven't done it already take a look at if you just go onto Facebook and search libraries you can get a lot of opportunities to look at other people's pages and what they've done with them so and actually I think that that is another session an encompass live that we did in the past as well earlier this year um Susan Franklin from Hastings College this session on setting up Facebook for libraries um so that's another recording that you can go to and listen to and watch if you want to learn more about it um we're contemplating doing a a updated version of that too Facebook is always changing um and maybe like a advanced version I suppose here's was mainly an introduction why you'd want to do this what it's all about what you gotta think about when you're thinking about getting out there um so take check out that look at the Facebook session from a previous encompass live and when it you can put sort of mini groups together on your Facebook page as well as like my team advisory board has its own specific group that's available to them that way I can set up sort of broadcast emails just to those people right it's quite useful that way and they can communicate just amongst their own exactly and so anything that's private to my tab gets done that way so which we can't look at because it's private to my dad that's fine any other questions you may have about volunteers for programs uh Rachelle does have a question where do you find volunteers for the programs Rachelle is asking I definitely draw on my team advisory board um when I need to help with specific programs that's the first place I go to um I have I've gotten to the point where actually have sort of a an auxiliary group as well now that the tab is kind of full and um we've got about one more school year before we lose about half of our people to graduation and so I've got a group of younger kids that have been summer reading volunteers and who are very interested in becoming tab volunteers but aren't quite there yet so that's sort of my secondary group of kids that I that I draw from but yeah it's it can move in on the other exactly exactly they're my my younger group um but one of the things that I do at gear with volunteers the the primary source of sort of regular volunteering that I get for high school kids during the school year is kids doing their government politics hours I do allow those kids during the their 20 hours that they have to do to help with events as part of their volunteer time so they if they want to come in and help set up and tear down for team Tuesday they can do that um but I don't shut it off to other kids who just want to volunteer for the heck of it so they come in and train at the same time that my government politics kids come in and train and then those kids we refer to as either youth volunteers or long-term team volunteers and those are the kids that come in after school and maybe do homework for an hour and then put away books for half an hour those are the kids who are regulars at the team Tuesday and to I can say hey I've got this special thing coming up and I really need some extra help on do you think you can make it and so and and again that's kind of the the show up and if you hang around long enough we'll put you to work sort of concept those are that's one of the places where I get where I get those teens but summer is a big draw I have usually in the neighborhood of 100 to 125 volunteers during summer and that's my middle schoolers for this for the summer meeting program and I I do kind of cherry pick from that group and say you know be be sure to be in touch with me be sure to be you know from the team page and be sure to give me your email and make sure that you know I can find you if I need to call on you and and usually they're like yay this is good we can do this you know um Rachelle I'm gonna unmute you again um how have you been if you were asking about getting volunteers how did you guys get started with doing your program did you have the teens come to you did you reach out to them how have you been working with that actually this this programming is the very first programming I'll be doing for teens um the the contact I've had with teens so far has just been after school the ones who come in after school so um this is we're building from the ground up here do you use volunteers during your summer reading program at all I I plan to I just don't know where I'm going to get them yet okay then that's been a huge resource for us so if I were you and you're getting started start talking about that now start talking about having them sign up to be to help facilitate your summer reading program at gear we have we're staffed at all times with volunteers we have two kids on the desk every hour of every day of June and July and those are the kids that accept the little ones when they come up with their with their program staff and they give them the stickers and the stamps and the encouragement and all of that um they love it the teens absolutely love being the ones to interact with the little kids it's a huge thing for them and it's responsible for them to come in you know whatever an hour a week or two hours a week and then there's a big party at the end of summer which you know who cannot have that it's nice the timing rachel that you're yet starting now and this fall with getting the teens involved and stuff that it's a good time to start rooming them for upcoming stuff the summer reading program next summer um you have a lot of time to get them involved interested in it understanding what it is maybe even coming up with their own ideas between now and then of how they could help do things or what kind of events and stuff you could do for the younger kids a good jump ahead for that kind of thing absolutely anybody else have any questions or anything they want to share if anyone has a microphone we can unmute you if you don't you can type into our questions section yes rachel is furiously scribbling notes yes the session is being recorded so you will be able to um listen to it again and the powerpoint presentation will be available for you to look at as well um there's a lot of information on those slides so um you'll be able to see that as well afterwards yeah lice is very helpful thank you anything else you want to share we're kind of getting close to the end of our hour no thank you for listening to me it's been lovely and um i hope you get some use out of the powerpoint presentation online and anybody's welcome to give gear a call our contact information is all on the website there and i'm happy to answer questions or you know i'm certainly no expert i'm not the professional librarian here i am you know the la3 in charge of the teen experience at gear but um you know i scramble through and we have a good time and so i'm i'm happy to share great well thank you very much thank you very much sarah this is very cool very interesting um a lot of good help and ideas and i hope a lot i hope everybody has a really fun teen week coming up it's always a good way to interact with the kids especially in the fall so um thank you very much for attending um we'll wrap this up now we're at our end of our hour as i said um next week what next wednesday our topic for encompass live will be trusty tips richard miller from library development here at the library commission will be talking about how to deal with your trustees and things you can do for them and with them um at your library so hopefully you will join us for that thank you very much bye