 All right. Okay. Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast our show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. But if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We record the show every week as we are doing today. And we then post the recording onto our Encompass Live website for you to watch at your convenience. And I will show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our archives on our website. For those of you not from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission, we're based here in Lincoln, Nebraska, the capital. And we are the state agency for all libraries in the state. In other states across the country, sometimes it's your, you know, so-and-so state library. We're the same state, arm of the state government for Nebraska. So we officially serve all types of libraries. So you will find things on our show for public libraries, academics, K-12, museums, schools, correction facilities, anything that has a library in it we would potentially have a topic for. We are across, totally across the board with that. So you'll find all sorts of things out there. So hopefully something that you will find of interest. We do all of our, both our live shows and our archived recordings are free and open to anyone to watch. So please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think that might have an interest in any of the topics we have coming up on our schedule or any of our archives. And we do a mixture of types of things here on the show, too. We do book review sessions, mini-training sessions, demos of services and products, interviews with people, led to libraries. Sometimes we do have things that are, the people we're sending are here for the library commission about services and products that we offer here. I think you should be using here locally in Nebraska. But we do bring in guest speakers from all over the country and even from outside of the U.S. And that's what we have with us today on Lio's is Patrick bodily. Good morning, Patrick. Morning, everyone. He is from the Idaho Commission for Libraries. And what is your actual library consultant state data coordinators? You get two title. So he is just a little, you know, West of us here by a bit. And he is, this is a session that you did. I know you've, I believe you've done it multiple times. Yeah. So I did it. I did it at our state library conference, Idaho Library Association. I presented at the Pacific Northwest Library Association on the same thing. And then also at the Association of Rural and Small Libraries that was held in Vermont this year. Right. Which is where I saw that it was done. I wasn't unable to attend that session. There was two, so lots of good sessions. But that's one of the great things about being the host of my own, this webinar show here. If I miss a session, I can just have him come on the show. And I guess why don't you find out what you had said that way. So I saw this is on the agenda and said for the air cell. And I thought it was perfect. There are especially here in Nebraska and I'm sure in Idaho and across the country. Lots of our small rural libraries are in this situation. We have a library. Someone needs to run it. Who fits you? Yeah, now how are you going to do that? Yeah, so we're going to talk about that today. So I think I just handed over you, Patrick, to start off. I do have whenever you want to that little poll is set up here. Perfect. That was going to be my first question. So we wanted to start off just with this poll to see how many of our attendees, if you want to just pop it up. I just want to see who was from where. So what type of academic librarians, school librarians special? Who is who is here? There we go. There you go. You should see. I should see a poll now on your screen. Yep. People are answering. Awesome. So we'll leave that up for a couple of minutes or two here. You can get all of your answers while you guys are fast. 94 percent of attendees have already voted. Awesome. Sometimes it's like, you know, drag, I'm kicking the screen. Now, if you are an other, go ahead and type into your question section. Let us know what that might mean. So far, nobody has picked other that they apparently do fit into any of these categories we had suggested. But just in case we want to know what that might be. So there might be a couple of more people that we're waiting for. I'll give another second or two and then we can look at. All right, I'm going to close the poll at five, four, three, two, one. And there are results, mostly public. 70 percent of you have a public libraries, 18 percent academic or college. And then we've got special institutional or government libraries. OK, gotcha. No schools on the line today. Um, that's OK. We like them anyway. Yeah, the reason why I wanted to ask that is because this is my background is more on the public side of things. This has been in listening to people sit in. I've presented to academic and school librarians as well. And they've found it useful, but this is geared more towards the public side of things. So that's the whole reason that that's going on there. Also, we didn't set up a poll, but if we could get everyone to raise their hand, I'm interested in if you would raise your hand. How many of you currently have an MLS or an MLIS or MILS or whatever the acronym you want to use, whatever, whatever acronym your degree gave you here. So you can go into your and you go to webinar interface to do a little hand raising. See, we've got 36 logins, people locations logged in right now. And I'm seeing one, two, three, four, six hands raised. All right, you six, seven, however many still. How many of you started your library career? Keep your hand raised with that MLS. If you started your library career and then went back to get your degree, go ahead and put your hand down. Ah, at least five. OK. Yeah. Perfect. So that is normal. That's all I wanted to talk about is that that is absolutely normal. I myself didn't plan on being a librarian. And so today, since we're going to talk about what an accidental librarian is, since we're going to talk about what an accidental librarian is, if we want to survive and thrive, we should determine what that accidental librarian is. I know people are familiar with Dr. Carla Hayden. She is important for a number of various reasons. But one of the reasons that she is so I guess so rare, so important as the Librarian of Congress is that she is the first Librarian of Congress who has an MLS, which means that in the history of our country, of the United States, anyway, everyone who was a Librarian of Congress did not have a library degree. Which to me means if they can run the entire Library of Congress, we can run our libraries as well. Another example. Besides Dr. Carla Hayden is this bright-eyed baby-faced hero, which means a whole lot more if you remember my scruffy, homeless-looking face now. But this is me and I want to tell you a little bit about my story to let you know where I'm coming from. My journey to librarianship started at this place, which I'm sure no one is familiar with. This is a building in Logan, Utah called Youth Track, Utah. And what it is is a group home for juvenile male sex offenders. And this is where I was working when I was going to working on my undergrad degree in history. I knew 100 percent that this was a job. It was not a career. I did not have the patience or the tolerance to be a social worker or a case manager or anything like that. But while I was going to Utah State, I fell in love with the history program I was in. I loved going into the archives. I love doing research. I loved reading and writing papers. And I had an advisor, Dr. Rosenband, who asked me like most good advisors do, what are you going to do with a history degree? What are you going to do after you're done with this? And I looked him square in the eyes and I told him, you know, Dr. Rosenband, I am I love the history side of things. I want to go on. I'm going to get my master's and then my PhD in history. I'll try and get a professorship somewhere. And I will teach history for the rest of my life and bless him. Dr. Rosenband looked at me and said, Patrick, that is the dumbest idea you've ever had. Do not do that. Why do you like history? And I told him the same reasons that I just told you that I loved research, that I loved hanging out in the archives. And he said, you know, if that's what you love doing, you should look at getting a dual masters in history and library science. There are tons of schools across the country that will offer you those two masters. You would be doubly employable. You could maybe teach on the side, but you could work in the archives somewhere doing what you really love. And so look for library jobs to get experience, go on and do things just like that. And so luckily in my senior year of undergrad, a job opened up at the Merrill-Cazier Library at Utah State University. That's the giant library that's on our screen right now. And so I applied as a they they were looking for a student supervisor and the course reserves supervisor. It was kind of a dual position. And I applied. Luckily, they were only looking for something with supervisor experience. And when I'd been at that group home, that youth track, Utah, I was the supervisor and set in the schedule for all the staff. So they looked at that at USU and said, perfect. While I was there at USU, I learned to love libraries and I learned all the important things. You know, I learned since I was working in course reserves that collection development was as easy as anything in the world because all course, all collection development was was when a professor wanted something, you put it on. And when he wanted it off, you took it off of course reserves. That's all that had to be worked more with the public, obviously. And really, I just fell in love with libraries that way. And then I realized I was still going to apply for that. Those master's programs in library science and my MA in history. And I applied to various programs. I applied to University of Arizona and SUNY Albany and Wisconsin, Milwaukee and Indiana and got accepted to one of those and was ready to go. And about that time, my wife and I were expecting a child. And so rather than move across the country, the plan was that we would stay at USU where I was lucky enough to have benefits, including health insurance to have that baby there. And I started working on my master's in history just at USU, thinking that if it was a three year program for a dual master's and I had to take a year off, I could just do the two years at USU and then two years somewhere else. I was still going to take the same amount of time, four years either way. And so towards the end of my master's program, I stayed at Utah State towards the end of my second year. A job posting opened up that I was brought brought to my attention at the Richfield Public Library in Richfield, Utah. Now, I was again dumb enough to apply because they said master's degree or equivalent was preferred. And I know that job posting is everywhere. I thought to myself, I almost have a master's degree in history. So that's kind of equivalent, right? Master's is a master's. And I have all these two years of experience working at USU. And so that's got to be the equivalent experience they're looking for right there. So I was dumb enough to apply to the Richfield Public Library and they were dumb enough to hire me, which has been kind of a theme. USU was dumb enough and now Richfield's been dumb enough to hire me. And so my first real library job was that as a director. I was the director of this library in Richfield, Utah for a little while there. And that's when I really learned what library work really was. I learned that collection development actually meant something that we had to do stuff. I learned about programming. I learned about outreach. I learned about how to deal with library boards and city councils and the mayor and was kind of baptized by fire for all of these things that I didn't quite know about. What then happened was my wife was originally from Eastern Idaho. And she told me we kind of had an understanding that if a job anywhere in Eastern Idaho ever opened up that I should apply for it. About two and a half years into my directorship at the Richfield Public Library, a job opened up at the Idaho Commission for Libraries. And so I again, taking all two and a half years of my experience as a library director said, you know what? I've got all this vast knowledge that I've gained in two and a half years as being a library director. I should apply for this job. I know how to work with boards. I've done the annual report twice. And that's what they wanted was someone to do the stats. And so I applied and just like USU was dumb enough to hire me and Richfield was dumb enough to hire me. The Idaho Commission for Libraries, thankfully was dumb enough to hire me as now. So now as an accidental librarian, I still don't have my MLS. I get to help other accidental librarians throughout the state, specifically in Southeast Idaho, learn their job responsibilities and work better to serve their people, serve the customers that they have that they work with. So that's a little bit of my background there. So what exactly is a librarian? In his book, Our Enduring Values, Librarianship in the 21st Century, a man named Michael Gorman defines a librarian as a person who earns a master's level education at an accredited school and receives on-the-job training as well as carrying out one or more of these tasks, selecting materials, acquiring, organizing, all of that stuff. But there are those of us listening today, myself specifically, who do all those things and more, but don't have the right letters after our names and our email signatures. Aren't we librarians too? And I'd argue that yes, we are, you are librarians. So what do librarians really need to know? We should know the philosophy, theory, principles and techniques of acquiring, collecting, organizing, retrieving and disseminating information, how to apply them and adapt them to constantly changing environments. We need to know the role of computers, the internet and emerging technologies in libraries. We need to know basic library material resources in all formats and how to use them, methods and techniques for researching, analyzing and synthesizing. We need to know reference interviewing techniques, community needs assessment methods, library planning processes, of course budgeting. We need to know our policy creation and development methods, we need to know management and the list keeps growing, that's the worst part. And so it kind of makes you just feel like this. It can be overwhelming, absolutely knowing all of those things. And I still am wanting to go back and get my degree to learn all these things. It can absolutely be overwhelming if that's what librarians need to know. So I'd argue that librarians really need to know just three things. I'm telling you this at the risk of greatly oversimplifying, but let's talk about what it is that librarians, especially us accidental librarians need to know. So based on the time that we have today, this is obviously gonna be a short general list, but first of all, you need to know that you have got this. You can be, but you don't have to be a trailblazing pioneer. Many people have come before you. We stand on the shoulders of giants and we should use their expertise to better ourselves, our libraries and our communities. So find that book, find that mentor, know that you've got this and you're not alone at all. The second thing, all libraries should actually know something that they do teach at library school, believe it or not, but the five laws of library science is a theory proposed, apologies beforehand for butchering his name, but it was proposed by S.R. Ranganathan in 1931 and it details the principles of operating the library system. First, basically just talks about that preservation and storage are important, but the purpose of both is to promote the use of our collection. Without user access to materials, there's little value in your materials themselves. Second, a library's books have a place in the collection even if a smaller demographic might choose to read them. Third, librarians serve a wide variety of patrons so we should acquire items to fit a vast collection of needs and not judge what they choose to read. Fourth, people should be able to easily locate the materials they want quickly and efficiently. And last, a library should be continually changing institution. It should be updated over time. We're not storage facilities. That's not why we're here, but we're here to have those collections be updated and growing. And the third thing that we need to know and keep track of in our minds is that you're not alone. Those same people who have gone before you are willing to help you out. People at your state and provincial libraries and associations, we want to see you succeed. Is there anyone here who doesn't know someone at their state or provincial library that they can reach out to? Again, with the hand raise. Just one, that's not bad. Just one. All right, I can't see who's raising hands, but if you will get with me, email me after we will find you someone where you're at. Because yes, I work in Idaho and Chris works in Nebraska and it still doesn't matter because we're gonna find you someone who you can work with wherever you're at. So email me, chat, whatever works best. My contact information will be on the last slide and we will find you someone. So thank you. So let's talk about a little bit about some of the tools of the trade that we do have. We wanna talk about a few different aspects of the day-to-day part of running a library. I'm assuming that's why you're all here. Not to hear my awesome background, but to give you a few tools that you can use to feel more comfortable doing your job. So what we're gonna do is we'll go through each of these and we'll listen to MySpill and then we will open it up. This is when it's going to be you either chatting or talking through. And so we'll go through each section and then after MySpill on each section is when we will open it up and have everyone else share what has worked for them. So my first thoughts on collection development. First of all, again, since we're not in this alone, we should either create or locate or update our collection development policies. Policies are so important for everything, yes. And a good collection development policy, of course it's gonna be individualized for your community, for your, if you're a school or an academic or rural, you want it personalized for the library and the patrons that you serve. It can include, doesn't have to, but it can include things like the library's mission statement, the purpose of the policy, maybe a profile of your community or your community's information needs, a description of your library's collection, general collection policy, which would include things like the age of materials that you collected, what formats are you collecting them in, what do you do with multiple copies or what different languages do you collect items in, how are your materials funded, things like that. You're also gonna want to include your selection criteria, what do you do or do you take suggestions for purchase or is it all just up to the selector? A section on collection maintenance, so how do you weed, how do you repair things, what do you do with replacements, do you replace anything at all, what do you do with donations, what subject areas are collected and of course some collection assessment information so that you can say, hey, how are we going to continually look at our collection over time to make sure that we are fulfilling our needs of our patrons. When you do weed, look at one section of shelves at a time and you're gonna pick your section, look at the use, look at the turnover rate, the circulation rate and what's also really useful is if you will look at the ILL stats for items in that both going out and then if you have to interlibrary loan items in that would fit in that section. Also you're going to visually scan the section for appearance, make recommendations for acquisitions and weeding and then most importantly, you're going to move on to the next section. And then I also have a couple tips, just a few I guess for being a good selector. So of course, review your collection development policy for currency and accuracy and you're gonna wanna read reviews in a variety of publications by a wide range of reviewers. You can look into subscriptions to the library journal, publishers weekly, book list and the New York Times Book Review. Also consult bibliographies and core collections, what are things that every library everywhere needs to have and then also know what's going on in the world and in your community. Read the paper, go to town and council meetings or at least read their minutes, listen to NPR and remember if you get nothing else out of this for collection development, you should avoid coming to gut conclusions about what subjects or genres your community members are or aren't interested in and abandon the just get what you like method. Make sure that you're representing all points of you. So those are some tips that have worked for me. Over the years and what I've seen work for other libraries, what do you have as far as collection development? What do you use to get the materials that you need? How are you best waiting? How are you up maintaining your collections? We'll open that up to everyone. Yeah, so this is where you start, you contribute. So type into the question section and you go to webinar interface, what your thoughts are on it or if you have a microphone that you know works, anyone to use, raise your hand and unmute you and you can share what you're doing that way. Now I do have a question myself that I'm not sure if this is where you would recommend putting this in about challenges, book challenges. Absolutely, a challenge materials policy should also be included in your policy manual and some people, some libraries will put it into their collection development, some will put it into circulation, some will put it into patron code of conduct, but it's absolutely an important policy that should be there regardless of where it's at. I was wondering, because it's hard to say, I'm trying to see where student libraries put that and I've seen it in various, it depends I guess where you think about it in your work day. In the workflow, yeah. Yeah, but you're absolutely right, that should be included somewhere. So people trying to, so please type in and say where are you finding out how you, how do you do your collection development in your libraries? Type in and let us know. Raise your hand, I can unmute you. Where are you finding materials? Now if someone does not have a policy, do what's the best way to get started with working on that one? I know some of our libraries in Nebraska, not all of them, do you have their policies posted on their websites? Yeah, absolutely. My first suggestion would be that you find that person at your state or provincial library. That is one of the hats that I wear is as the public library consultant is I help people draft or revise their policies or point them in the direction of other libraries, like you said, that do have them online. And so that's why we're here. That's why we have a job is to help you do those things that way. Yes, we do that here too. In Nebraska, for Nebraska libraries, we have a couple of, we have a public library director's guidebook online, like an online manual, and one for our library boards as well that has some of that information and links to good resources and tips and tricks about it. And looking at what other libraries have done sometimes is a lot of, find a library that's similar to yours, similar in size, similar in population, who they serve and see what they are doing. And that's something too, I think, if you don't know who at the State Library or you're not sure about talking to someone, other librarians, we wanna share with each other. So even just reaching out to someone who you know is in a town that's similar to yours and asking them for their advice and networking with them, that'd be a good way to get some ideas as well, I think. And one more, you mentioned size. I would also look at type of library too. So in Idaho, for example, public libraries, there's three different types that can be established, either city libraries, district libraries, or school community libraries, and they all have different laws that go along with that type. And so if you're going to reach out to someone, it's also smart to reach out to that same type of library and follow their lead. Yeah. Oh, you have a question here that has come up, actually. How do you decide, and this would be something that for you, Patrick, to answer, but also anyone else who's logged in, give your answer as well to type in here to answer this person's question and let us know how you've done it. How do you decide whether to add a book as a print book versus an e-book or both? I wanna see what other people say first. Yeah, so let us know how do you decide whether you're gonna get something. Is it gonna be print? Is it gonna be an e-book? Do you do both? What about audiobooks, just to make it more confusing? Yeah. How do you decide where that's all gonna come from? Okay, and then we have another, sorry, I'm reading another comment that came in at the same time, so it's something different. So while I'm reading this one, start entering, how do you guys decide between doing print versus e-book at your library? Is what is your decision-making process for that? Do you just do one? Do you do the other? Do you do both? Do you have some sort of a policy written out that explains if it's this we do it this way, if it's that we do it that way? But meanwhile, this person has a description of how they do some of their collection development. I have an assistant who does most of our book buying in person at Barnes & Noble. However, we have our newest employee has made some very good recommendations and we have since added graphic novels and manga to our collection, cool. We have gone to the internet, to eBay and found some excellent deals, eBay, that's an interesting one, allowing us to purchase adding and complete sets. Yeah, lots of these graphic novels or manga are like long runs of things and it's hard to get a hold of them. That's a good idea. I'd recommend you go to eBay and look for things that people who were previous collectors may be sharing or selling. Going back to that, how do you decide? My first thought was cost. Obviously everyone has enough money. They never need any more. But if you're one of those few libraries that is a little low on funds and it really comes down to cost. A lot of libraries in Idaho, for the most part, if they have e-collections, it's done through a consortium. It's not done on the individual library side there. So they can make those suggestions that way to the consortium to add that format that way. But audios versus print, let's say you're buying either one of those. That's gonna come down to individual policy. And what you do, I mean, even something as simple as do we get the old book on tape or do we get a newer format of CD? The CD is gonna be more expensive than buying this used on eBay or Amazon somewhere. But it really is the format decision that your policy is going to be written by either your board or yourself. So we do have a couple of suggestions from people here about how to do it. We only purchase physical books. We offer overdrive, but do not have e-books available. So I overdrive for the audio. And I think of the information, their town population is 1,300. So quite a small location. And another library says we have Hoopla Digital. And it has been a policy that if the book was on Hoopla, we would prefer they go there rather than purchasing the book. So it's already in there. Some others here say, and we also, we have a group subscription here out of consortium for overdrive in Nebraska as well. e-book versus book versus audio book is often decided by our patrons that we're reading them and in which format they prefer. They would, if they want it in a particular one, they'd say, well, then that's a while, we'll try and get it. How smart to actually listen to your patrons. That's an idea here. That's awesome. Yeah. And all right. Debbie, I see you've raised your hand. I'm gonna unmute you and see if you have a microphone there. Debbie, Lustin Cities Library, I see you just typed in. Did you have a microphone as well or no? Yeah, all right, that's okay. She says, we tend, and this is in Idaho, this is your state, Lustin Cities Library. We tend to purchase more books as our CD collection is not checked out as much, but we do try to purchase best sellers. So in the other format, yeah. And that's a part of it. Remember as you're looking at your usage, so we're required to look at that. Yeah, and then we do have another library typed in about their collection development policy in general. Omaha Public Library here in Nebraska uses various input for collection development. We have an adult collection manager and a youth collection manager do a lot of research and a management of community requests via handwritten requests at branches, request an item option on the website. They have biblial comments so they can request there. And companies like Baker and Taylor provide our lease materials, make suggestions based on popular demand for the new releases coming. Right, your vendors are gonna say, hey, we know this one's gonna be potentially popular. We allow people- Yeah, that was something. Oh, excuse me. That was something that I used a lot as a director is those Baker and Taylor manuals that come with the star or the bold number, whatever saying we expect this to be popular. That was how I, especially coming from the academic side of things, leisure reading wasn't a thing. People only read because the professor told them to put it on. So learning all of it that way, the vendors actually can help. They're not all out to get you. Yeah, we allow patrons to reserve copies of books that have yet to be released and we add temporary items to the collection at a minimum of four holds for copy. We take donations that are in excellent condition to add to collection as well. We pay particular attention to the geographic area and the needs of the immediately surrounding community. That's what you're saying. Look at what your community, yeah. And then here's a good question answer to the ebook versus print book. And this is good that we're talking about. We do have some people here online there from academic that academic libraries tend to lean more towards ebooks since some of their students travel for study abroad or games or taking their classes remotely doing online. So that is a good thing to think about too is where are your patrons going to be using your materials from? Yeah, I know there's a lot of libraries that will have at least that I've been around there's trucking companies. And so they know that their patrons are big into audiobooks more than reading because they'll get those for the long haul that they've got going on. And so they have in their collection development policy, they rely heavily on purchasing more audios than they do physical just because of their patron base. So a lot of it is just knowing who your community is. Yeah. Oh, and also the lover says if you they hold two formats having both formats it tells patrons or putting in order for both versions helps patrons the access to a non paper copy faster if they don't want to wait so long for the actual paper copy. So that's something to think about too are your users willing to take that? Do they not care? Whichever is the quickest? Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely something. All right, lots of good thoughts. Well, good. Let's get to the pre ruling. Do we have any unanswered questions as far as this goes? No, not at all. So let's go on to the next one. At the very end, we'll take some time if something hits you. We'll hit those questions again. But let's move on now to read. I need to move this. Let's move on now to readers reference. And as Patrick's talking you through, feel free to start typing in your thoughts and comments and things. You don't have to wait till he's done and I'll just start reading him off after he's done his little bit. Yeah, because I can't see the questions come in. So just go. Go for it. But readers reference or readers advisory, all kinds of libraries provide those readers advisory services, whether they're school, academic, public. These services are what we use to help match the library customer with the materials they want. Readers advisory also promotes the library and reading and encourages the concept of the library as a community center. And of course, they can increase your circulation, which if you have to report your circulation annually to say the state data coordinator in Idaho, who is me, or whatever state you're in, then having those circulation numbers are always important. It's important to remember that readers reference is not format specific, which means that it can be challenging. I don't care who you are. No librarian can know enough about the collection and the customers to make good recommendations to everyone all the time. The longer you do work in a particular library, the more familiar you become with its customers and their reading preferences. Well, then the better you'll be at readers advisory, but it does take time. And so first of all, you should give yourself a break understanding that it's going to take time. But ways that you can help yourself out, make learning the collection in all formats a priority. And the best way that you can do that is read books and listen to CDs, even just reading tables of content, help watch movies, listen to audios, whatever. Also, you can monitor those best sellers lists, read reviews, and know what the popular reading club selections are. And then listen to author interviews and book review podcasts. And remember, if you're lucky enough, I'm sure there are some single person libraries. But if you're lucky enough to work with others at your library, work with them on this as well. You can keep reading logs with short notes about books and feedback from not only your other staff, but library users. You can ask your library users to make comments about what they're currently reading and watching. One thing that I've seen work really well for this is that you keep some blank index cards at the desk just for that purpose so that they can fill out, hey, I just read this. It was awesome. Or, hey, I just read this. It was the worst thing ever and I waste my time. But all feedback is good feedback, as far as readers advisory goes. You can use the library's website if you have one to recommend books. You can create lists of materials similar to current best sellers, so those read-alikes. And of course, discuss new materials and the kind of readers who might enjoy them at staff meetings. If you do have more than one staff member at your library, then remember that you are lucky enough that you don't have to like everything either. If you can't stand fantasy and science fiction, but there's someone on staff who that's all they read, then you obviously can tap into them and work together so that you can know the basics just through them. That's what those lists and talking back and forth can help out with. Again, what have you guys seen works well for readers' reference? Yeah, so go ahead and share. What have you done or what has worked for you? I know it's always been one of the difficult things is I can't read everything. But I like the idea, because I know like at bookstores sometimes there's the, it's just something I thought of, there's the managers recommended and they have the little blurb on the shelf. And I know libraries have done this for their staff, but maybe something similar to that of the patrons recommended. And like you said, have a patron either tell you or write down what they thought of the book, ask them if they'd be willing to have it, and it could even be done anonymously if they wanted to. Can we share this on this display we wanna put up and say, it's one of your community members, one of your people thought this about this book. And those staff pick shelves are also ways that people learn the staff. And they say, Beth and I have the same reading interests. And so then I see Beth working in the library and I know, hey, she's someone that I can maybe have a conversation to or talk about the latest book or get a suggestion from her. Yeah, I just found out that she is into the fantasy. I didn't know that great. Now I know who I can go to whenever I want more ideas because I saw her name on the thing on the shelf. Yeah, let's see, got some comments coming in here now. In the children's fiction collection, the director and the assistant director put a small colored sticker on the spine of books we like. The patrons can then just scan books for the stickers. So for kids, rather than having something written out, they have to read just look at the ones that have the stickers. Those are the recommended ones from the library staff or the kids books. And it can do the same thing if you don't like them. Don't like the pics from the director, then you avoid those stickers. So you're still providing reference, right? Yes, people have different opinions on books, and that's okay. Some people like one book and other people hate it totally. Oh, Rita likes, that's a good thing too, to look up things that are Rita likes. And this person recommends a site called Fantastic Fiction, has helped for Rita likes to help for children and adult fiction. So if you know that you've seen this at the bookstore too, if you like this one, try this one. Things like that are available online, yeah. I also know- A novelist, yeah, novelist has that as well. If you're in Nebraska, we subscribe to that for our libraries at the state. Novelist has the Rita likes too. I was gonna put a plug in for Idaho's novelist subscription as well. Yeah, I do, yeah. So I can at least vouch for our state and you can vouch for yours. We'll find the other states as well. Yeah, check and see what group or statewide consortium things your state is offering for you. And someone else says, we are driven by patron recommendations, yeah. Listening to your patrons, I love it. I'll put them chat, be friendly, just say, what did you think of this book when they returned it, or when you're just wandering the stacks, hanging out with them or whatever. Yeah, this one, this person says, we have a staff about 20 and we lean on each other and so, so-and-so likes fantasy and me being in youth services, I'm called upon to suggest kids books. So that's the thing too, if you have somebody who comes up to you and wants to know a particular topic that you don't know, I think it's okay to say, you know what, that's not my folk. I don't know much about that, but I do know so-and-so does over here. Let me go bring them to you or bring you to them to ask them because they are the expert in that field, suppose. It's totally fine to not know everything. Yes. Ooh, this is a cool idea too. We have a young adult book recommendation display. So they let the young adults, the teens, pull their favorite books, put a star bookmark in the book and put it on display. So having the actual patrons do the display that way, yeah. So these are ones of your other teens just like you have to like this book. Good crowd sourcing idea too. To get your patrons involved. I like that a lot. Interaction with them, yeah. They give them ownership of the library too. Like it's for us and we help contribute to it too. Got anything else coming in? Cause we can move on if they're... Yeah, let's go on to the next topic. Okay. So our next one we wanted to talk about was outreach. My Idaho people might recognize the Fremont County Bookmobile. They just got this, just put the wrap on it last summer. It looks great. I love it. There's a few of the Tetons from St. Anthony and Ashton. So they had to brag about that a little bit. But by outreach, all I mean by outreach is outreach services as reaching people you serve who are not able to come into the library. And so that's done by things like this Bookmobile or books by mail, homebound services, nursing home services. A lot of people will go and reach out to children and it in daycares or at preschools and kindergartens. And then of course we have to put a plug in for the talking book service that's provided nationwide. That's another way that we can reach our patrons who aren't able to come in to the library. So keeping those sorts of things in mind, what have you guys done to outreach to your patrons that aren't able to make it into the library? All right, yeah. So type in, raise your hand. I can unmute you and you can use your microphone. How have you gone out into your community? And we have Bookmobiles here and some of our cities here in Nebraska too. Some of our big ones and some of our new ones. Here, we have someone who is their Bookmobile driver. Awesome. We go to daycares, preschools and apartment complexes. Ooh, I like the apartment complex one. One of the best ideas that I heard was that people will go to laundromats to do storytimes. Ah, that would be great, yes. You're always sitting in there bored. You have to bring the kids along. They don't want to be there. You don't even want to be there. All right, here we go. I got some more. We have a homebound program that follow the Volunteers Run. Oh, someone specifically, we regularly do home delivery of books to a 97-year-old patron in town directly to their homes. Awesome and individualized, great. Well, on Fridays, we go to a town and stay most of the day and have a tech day to use the Wi-Fi and get books. That's the Bookmobile driver version. Home delivery for shut-ins, head start, storytime. Go to the head start for stories, yep. Oh, yeah. Storytimes at schools and daycares. That's things school, working with the schools. I know you had mentioned, Patrick, the Combination School Public Libraries. But even if you're not officially a combo, reach out to the school. Even if they have their own librarian and their own media specialist, you guys can do things back and forth together. Once the school's closed, the kids may want somewhere to go and if you guys are working together already and you're coming to theirs, they're coming to your library, they're gonna see that connection. Partnerships with other libraries are not a bad thing. Yeah. You're not in competition. Not at all. We are looking at starting a home delivery service partnering with our pharmacy delivery and the senior center Meals on Wheels. Oh, that's a good, they're already going to these places. That's awesome. Going into the parks in the summer. Yeah, going out to the parks. And specifically partnering with Parks and Rec. We do the storytimes and they do games. Working at a university, I work at Interlibrary Loan and Academic Library at University with a growing number of online only distance students. So it just has to be what it is. There's largely gotten by with a lot of e-books and digital delivery articles. But, and this person does have a question and for ideas about this, but I have no idea how to handle requests for print books from these online only distance students. The few times we've mailed out our books, it hasn't gone well and I have no idea if or how we would handle an ILL request from a distance student for a print book from another library. That can be done, actually. We actually do that here at the library commission, the Nebraska Library Commission. We actually do ILL on behalf of a lot of our small libraries in the state. They don't have their own Interlibrary Loan accounts with OCLC or whatever. And you can act as a agent for them, so to speak. But even I know too, sometimes in ILL requests, you can say, as our academic library, we are taking responsibility for requesting this book, but we want you to ship it, because what we do is they don't come here. We tell them, we're just doing the behind the scenes work for it, but we want you library to loan to this library. Send it directly to them. And when they're done, they send it directly back to you and just let us know what's going on, but we handle the requesting of that. So that isn't, that could be done. There are other distance education programs out there. That might be something we need to get you in touch with someone who does do that as a regular thing. If that's something new that you're dealing with is these online only students, because I know there's libraries, academic libraries that do this already and haven't figured out, I guess. Yeah, and that's one of those, going back to our keys at the beginning is that you're not alone. You don't, yeah, I mean, it's not a groundbreaking thing. It sounds like other people have done that. It's just a matter of pairing you up with people who have. So reach out afterwards and we'll help you find those other libraries that are already doing that. Yeah, some other ideas. Senior centers are located across the alley from them, that's convenient. So they do movie matinees every Thursday for the seniors. Someone else does a mobile maker space they can take out into the community. Smart. Awesome, there's a lot of things that are in those make spaces. They're very transportable. Another one to working with, working with Meals on Wheels. We have a preference sheet they can fill out and the volunteers who deliver the meals will deliver the books as well. So reach out to your Meals on Wheels people who are already driving around to these people and just say, we just wanna work with you and have that, you know, so you don't even need the extra person to delivery, they're already going to these places. When you do things, oh sorry, when you do things like that, make sure you're offering the Meals on Wheels people something as well. So it's not just, please do this for us, this is what we can also offer you. We partner with the local school district who have the summer lunch program. So they offer the lunch programs during the summer when school's out and they go where the free meals are set up and reach a lot of the kids there in the summertime. Yep. Take a friend's group, taking books to the bus station and food bank. Anywhere where people are gonna be, you can go there, yeah. Yeah, well perfect. I know we're coming up on our hour. Yes, and that's okay. Yeah, I know we have a few more topics to get through and I was gonna mention that too. Yeah, officially we go 10 to an hour long and we did start a little after 10, so that's okay. But we will keep going as long as it takes to get through all of the presentation that Patrick has and any comments and questions you guys have. We will not get cut off at 11 a.m., we'll keep going. If you do need to leave, because you only allotted an hour of your own time for this today, that's fine. We're recording the whole thing. You can always come back and watch the rest of it later. But if you're able to stick around with us, please do and keep chatting. We'll go as long as it takes to get through everything that we want to discuss and all of your good ideas and suggestions. Okay, and as far as I'm concerned, I've only got a few more slides, but I really do wanna hear what everyone else has. So let's move on just real quick to advocacy. What I mean by advocacy is the act of pleading for or arguing in favor of something. And so in our case, obviously it's the library. And the best way that I can explain what libraries need to market like is that libraries need to market and advocacy needs to be treated like it's many's. Let me explain what I mean by that, please. So libraries need to market the way that many's markets. Best foods or helmets, depending on the side of the country that you're in, same company, different name, but they advertise everywhere. They have billboards, they have magazine ads, they have bus flyers on the outside of buses, inside of buses. They actually sponsor a NASCAR hood every now and then if you're watching the NBA, the little scroll that goes up on the score table will have a mayonnaise ad right there, they advertise everywhere. And with all of that, I guarantee you that no one has ever been watching NASCAR race and seen the hood of the car drive by and said, oh no, I need to leave and go buy mayonnaise right now or jumped off the bus at the next stop to go to the grocery store to buy the mayonnaise that is needed. But with that in mind, I have some mayonnaise in my fridge at home and it's actually best foods because I recognized a need, I was out of mayonnaise and when I was at the grocery store, that was a brand that I was familiar with that I had seen the ads for and I knew that that was going to fill the need that I had. Many of us I know have and myself included, we've advertised for a program and then been super disappointed that one or two or no people showed up for it. And that's because we were advocating for a library or marketing for a library, maybe we put a flyer up, maybe we went on the radio, but we did it just once. What we need to do is we need to be that constant source of the library has genealogy databases, the library has genealogy databases and we put up flyers and we put them in the laundromat and we put them at the preschools and we talk about it on the radio and we send out our mailer once a month that talks about, hey, these things are going on and we have flyers up at the desk so that when people come, they see, oh my goodness, they have these genealogy databases, for example. And then one day down the road, they're going to be saying, hey, you know, I wish I knew more about my family history, maybe there's something to this, oh my goodness, and the light bulb will go on and they'll realize the library has these databases that I can use or car repair manuals or whatever it is that you are promoting, we need to promote it like Manny's. Libraries need to be more like Manny's and advocate everywhere all the time. And so how are you, maybe Manny's related to maybe not, best able to advocate or market for your library? Yeah, share some success stories with how you've done some marketing or struggles, maybe we can help with some of those. That's a good point that you never, you know, your program didn't go well, but you plant that seed and that's the thing. When they need it, they'll remember that they saw the thing, but you've got to keep it out there constantly. It's not just a one shot. We did a program, we put the flyers out, nobody came. Yeah, we still have the database, but oh well, it's got to be a constant over and over again, repeating that this is the thing that the library has. And social media works really well for us. Someone says here, we share on Facebook and patrons, share, share, share. So they share and then their patrons repeat it. So that's the thing too, if you're sharing things out on your pages or on your Twitter or Instagram or whatever it is, the social media app of the day, then hopefully your patrons will also reshare those things and get the word out, you know, the trickle down theory that does work. Any other advocacy ideas you've done, ways of marketing your programs or marketing the library in general, that it's a good resource for people to go to. Ah, okay, doing things that look, doing flyers and handouts and things, bookmarks that look professional and attractive. This library says they have a Canva account. Oh, perfect. Great resource. If you're not a graphic designer, like me or like many of us, but you've got to put out something that isn't the clip art that we've still used from the 90s, it is great. You can go in there with an idea and a thought and it will, you know, what do you want? Do you want a bookmark? Do you want a flyer? Do you want a banner for your Facebook page? And it will help you figure out and find things that has links, it has information in there that is allowable photos and things that you can use. This person said they do have a professional account too and I believe Canva has something for non-profits, maybe. That library's- You're correct. Okay, let's try to remember if that was the one that I was thinking of, yeah. So if it looks attractive and professional, it's gonna catch people's attention. So use something like that Canva. C-A-N-V-A, go look it up. Oh, here's something that you, I assume, know about, Patrick, I have posted to the Idaho community calendar. Oh, yep. There's a thing, okay. That's a good idea too, yeah. Is there somewhere else where things are promoted in your community? Is there a bulletin board at the grocery store at the post office? Is there some online resource that the city or the village runs? Get on that. Get where people are going too. And this is similar to the outreach that you're just talking about. Put your stuff out where your non-users are. You know, where you don't, don't just promote in your library to the people that are already coming into your library. Get out, take a handful of these flyers you made and walk around all the businesses that you can get to and ask if we can put some out, could put something in your window, whatever. And that's one of those times that partnerships can really help. Back in Utah as the director there, I was lucky enough to go monthly on the morning radio show, the one radio station in that town. So they had a what's going on at the library, half an hour section at segment once a month. But I, because I reached out to them, they let me come and do. Oh, here's a good one. They're talking about the, doing the partnering on this person says, our bank will advertise our movie nights. You know, banks have those scrolling marquees and stuff. The bank advertises their movie nights, teen after hours, all our fundraising events. And I know a lot of people partner with their cities as well to put it in utility bills. Yeah, and this one says, we have a portable TV where we have all of our events posted at the main entrance of the library. So your own kind of version of electronic signage, a TV or a monitor, anything out the window, right in the, you know, something more animated that catches people's attention too. Yeah. And that's the thing too, with all this advocacy, you've got to do multiple roads, you know, you can't do the one thing, you're going to have to go to a lot of different ways. But the idea is you come up with one idea, one promo looking thing, one design using Canva, and then just duplicate it across all the different places. Yeah, just like mayonnaise, it's not just on billboards. Yeah. Ooh, church bulletins. Yep, people go to church and things are in the bulletin. If they allow you to put things in there, yeah. This one says, I've had good success with teen events where I copy the event flyer onto a four by four on one page of four different ones and cut it, hand it out to the teens and then that little piece of paper goes home to the parents and the parents can see what's happening as well. Oh yeah. Well good, let's hit on to programming now. So what we really just need to think in programming, I know a lot of us public libraries and I even use this picture, but we think of programming as story times for preschool or younger kids, but let's not get stuck presenting the same programs with the same presenters year in and year out. So we can ask our community members to share their hobbies or experiences. We can also education programs at local museums will routinely make community presentations. So reach out to those other others in your community, especially also local fire departments and police can do a show and tell on a variety of topics. You can ask veterinarians, doctors, bakeries, karate instructors, newspaper reporters, artists, musicians, authors and TV personalities, not only to present programs, but ask them for ideas. What would they be interested in? And then of course, I mentioned it briefly, but don't forget your adults. Use book discussion groups, classes on how to find health information, classes on the databases the library offers and how to use them from home, computer skills for people with disabilities, computer training in basic skills, such as word processing, email and spreadsheets, English as a second language classes, exhibits and displays, maybe a knitting group or a local author top. Any of these things would work. We're really just trying to use the library as a resource for people to learn something in these cases and that is those are some of the ways that I've seen work. What about you? What have you seen? What programming has worked best for you? Yeah, I think this one goes again to what is your community want? It's gonna be very specific to each of your areas. Do you, are you really full of lots of kids and you need that story time? Okay, armchair travels with seniors to children who have traveled the far of places. So adults doing talks to the kids about places they've traveled to that the children have maybe have never gone to before. That's a really good idea. The connection there, yeah. I know I've seen some libraries do where they just have someone coming in to talk about their travels, but specifically targeting it to the children is a really cool idea. The mobile mammogram bus is coming to the library. Cool. The mammogram bus. And paint a masterpiece, one of those painting court classes, like you go to those paint things, yeah. Anything that, and that's the thing too, if you've seen things in potentially, but maybe in larger towns, if you're a smaller one, that there are these businesses that people go to for things like doing the, everyone does the same painting thing or a cooking class or something or a place that does these, bring that same idea to your library. Sometimes you can charge for a small amount for materials or something, not necessarily as much as playing for a whole course or something as you go to the business, but that is definitely something you can just recreate in your library for people to do and do it as an adult thing, do it as a kid thing. Oh, they partnered with a local college theater professor and their students are putting on a puppet show. Ooh, that's very cool. Oh, that's cool. Well, thank you, everyone. If there's any other tools that you have that you wanna share, now is the time. Please share those tools with us. But other than that, thank you very, very much. Please, please reach out. The whole point of this presentation and this webinar today, was to remind you all that you're not alone and hopefully to hear some of the amazing things that people are doing right now to better their communities and that you can as well. So thank you, thank you. That is all we had. If there's anything you guys have, let's answer questions if we have time. Yeah, we do have one question that did come up a little earlier, but then I wanted to get into some of their topics too. Anyone does have any questions, comments, thoughts, other suggestions, ideas about anything? Shoot them out there, start typing them in. We'll get them all right off and they'll be in the archive for people. So someone does have a question about, does anyone, as it goes back to the outreach? Okay. Anyone's library allow access to homebound services for all card holders. I know that some folks who could truly benefit shy away from using the service because of the name. They feel like they are able enough they shouldn't take advantage of it or has to do with them wanting to maintain their dignity and pride for not to see themselves as homebound. Specifically this person says, my grandmother can drive but doesn't always feel well enough to do so. I want her to feel comfortable using the service but no matter how much I insist that it is, she won't believe that the service is for her if she knows that she can drive sometimes. That might be a renaming or remarketing of the service or a way to promote homebound and delivery services. Does anybody have any suggestions on that? I mean, we now have actually, I wonder if it would be even easier now at Just One of Me. We have these food delivery services, the door dash. I mean, you can get McDonald's and Taco Bell delivered to you. We have the grocery delivery services now where your local grocery store will come to you or like going to Walmart, you call ahead and have them do your shopping for you and you just pull in, they put the groceries in your car and you drive away. So maybe remarketing it in that way instead of, this is for people who physically can't get out, it's this is for people who want the convenience so we'll bring it to you. Book dash. Book dash, yes, that's awesome, steal that. Book dash. Copyright, copyright, TMTN. Use it. Yes, please do. I think that's what that would be is totally just rebrand and change how you market that service so that they don't feel that it is something for people who are physically unable, it's just people that want the convenience. We all want things delivered to us. We want instant gratification, the less hassle the better, ordering things online rather than going to a store for some people, it's a thing. All right, any other thoughts or comments or things? Nobody's typed anything in when we were discussing this yet so Ali, I hope that helped you a little bit with you and your grandmother. Yeah. All right, so it doesn't look like any other desperate urgent questions or comments have come in while we've been chatting, but that's good. All right, so yeah, we will officially wrap it up. This was great. Oh wait, of course one question just comes in now. Perfect. What would be the best way to get cards for patrons who can't come in? Oh, get the library card to them to be able to become a user? Many libraries now I know have electronic versions of their cards. It doesn't have to be a physical card like an app on your phone. That's the actual card. So it gives them a way to sign up for an electronic version of the library card. And I know that if you're worried about getting the patron information, you could do a quick Google form to gather all the information and then even just mail out the card. If you're wanting to get that physical card to them, that's also a way to do it. That's just someone just said, get library cards by mail. Just do it by mail. They don't have to come in. They got a Houston public library card by filling out an online form and they mailed me a physical card. Yeah, so have them do the online form. It says, thank you, good answer. Thank you for that. And the person who asked about the homebound services says, yes, thank you. Those are all good ideas too. So yeah, you can totally do that by mail. It doesn't have to be, and this would be a policy thing if you have a policy of how people apply for and get cards, get your library cards, change it and just create a, we will do it by mail. We will send it to you physically by mail. Just do this form. Yep, policies can absolutely change. Of course, and you should change them, keep them up to date for whatever you need to do. All right. Anything else anyone wants to ask before we do, we do wrap it up. Make type of your questions there. You can reach out to me. As Patrick said, he's at Idaho. I'm here in Nebraska. We are the state commissions for each of our states. Look for the one in your state for more help with all these kinds of things. And please do. All right. So thank you everyone for attending and being so chatty today. This is great. I know I think Patrick, you said this is the first time you've done this particular presentation as a webinar. Yeah, it worked out great, I think. I'm glad it worked, yes. I know we do get some good conversations on our show usually. So that's great. That was glad we could get some great ideas for you and for everyone on the show, I hope you got some good tips and tricks here for how you can be your best accidental librarian you can be. Perfect. Awesome. All right, so I am going to pull back, present your control to my screen here. Yes. You need to wrap up for today. And one, two, there we go. All right, so that will wrap up for today's show. This is the page for today's show, but if we go to our main page for Encompass Live, if you do just Google or use your search engine of choice and type in Encompass Live, so far we are the only thing called that on the internet. Nobody can use our name. So you just Google Encompass Live, you will find our main page and our archive page. This is our upcoming shows for the next couple of months for the rest of the year, but to find the recording, so please do sign up for any of these coming up, but find the recordings, we have a link right under here at the bottom called Archived Encompass Live Shows. Today's show will be at the top of the list, most recent ones are at the top of the list. And we will have a link to our recording and a link to the presentation. I don't know if you were gonna send me that, Patrick. I know it was mostly just screenshots, but I think it's gonna be the PDF of that just for... Yeah, I'll get that to you today. So you'll have it. So we'll have a link to both of those there. Everyone who attended today and registered for today's show, even if you didn't attend live, we'll get an email from me letting you know when the recording is available and ready here on our site. Hopefully by the end of the day today, if go to webinar and YouTube cooperate with me for the day. While we're here, I'll just mention our archives. This is the archives for the entire history of Encompass Live. We do have where you can search the entire archives or just the most recent 12 months. And that is because Encompass Live premiered in January, 2009. We've been a little over 10 years and we have all of our shows here on this long, long list. So you can search on any topic you want to and you will find things going back to the beginning of the show. But if you want something very current, just limit your search to the most recent 12 months, you just get that. But if for anything you search on here, there is a date of when the show is originally broadcast. So definitely pay attention to that. But when you are watching something, you will find things here that may be old, outdated information, services and products that have changed or maybe don't exist anymore, you never know. So just pay attention to the original broadcast date. Some things though are eternally good, like summer reading program, reading lists, books of good books for kids and teens are always gonna be good. But some things may be older. So just pay attention to that when you are going through our archives. But we are librarians, this is what we do. We do archive things for historical purposes for certain reasons things. And this is something we will always do as long as the internet is out there to help do that for us. We also do have a Facebook page when I put the announcements about the show and the recordings we post to our Facebook page, our Twitter, someone was mentioning social media. We have mailing lists here in Nebraska. So if you are a big Facebook user, please do give us a like over on Encompass Live. We link to that from our page. As a reminder about logging into today's show is on there. Our previous shows are on here. So two or three times a week I send something out onto our Facebook page. You can also follow our hashtag Encompass Live as abbreviation on Twitter or we post things there. So that will wrap it up for today. Hope you join us next week's show is a local program, Nebraska Extension's Read for Resilience program. This is from our Nebraska Extension program through the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. They're early childhood extension educators specifically. And this is programming for children here in Nebraska and across the country. We had major weather disasters this past year. You may have heard about the entire state flooded and it's still having problems and children are having struggling dealing with that. They've got a new program specifically for helping children deal with these kinds of disasters and emotional and traumatic events, their Read for Resilience program. So Holly, Amy and Linda from there will be with me next week to talk about that. So this is all things available on their website. Obviously it is Nebraska specific, but anyone can use their resources on the page too. So please do sign up and join me for that. And any of our other upcoming shows we have here for the rest of the year. As I add new ones on, they get added to our list and this is what we've got confirmed for now. So that wraps up for today. Thank you everyone for being here. Thank you, Patrick for joining me. This was great. I'm glad we got this out here. So many accidental librarians as we saw from those hand raising at the beginning who has the degree and who doesn't. It means more and this here leans more truly not than having. And that's what we're here for. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you very much. And hopefully we'll see you next time on Encompass Live. Bye bye. Bye guys.