 All right. 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. The show is broadcast live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show and it is posted to our website later for you to watch at your convenience. And I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can access our archives. Both the live show and the archives are free and open to anyone to watch, so please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think may be interested in any of the topics we have on the show. We do quite a variety of things here, as I said. The Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries in Nebraska. And that is for all libraries. So public, academic, K-12, colleges, universities, correction facilities, museums that have libraries. Anything that's a library we serve. So on our show we'll have anything that's library related. So it could be libraries doing something cool, sharing services and products, demoing resources, we're doing little mini training sessions, book review sessions we do here for kids and teens and adults, book groups. We're all across the board. So if you do look at our archives and our upcoming shows, you'll see it's everywhere and it's everywhere. But libraries you see are the main focus. We do have, do some shows with the Nebraska Library Commission staff, excuse me, for things that we are offering here. For things we are promoting through the Library Commission. But we also bring in guest speakers as we have this morning. With me today is Joyce Stevenson. Good morning, Joyce. Good morning. And she is from Crete, Nebraska, which is just southwest, southwest-ish of Lincoln where we are right now. And Crete Public Library. And she's going to talk to us about their new library, which is currently being built. Right? We'll get into that, I'm sure. Yeah, what's the statuses of that? This is actually a session that was submitted to here also for the Nebraska Library Commission. And for any of you who might be interested in small and rural libraries, we do an annual online full day online conference called Big Talk from Small Libraries. And Joyce submitted this to our Big Talk from Small Libraries show or conference. But we always get too many submissions. We have like 12 spots open for the whole day. And I got like 37 submissions. There's way too many to fill. Well, and I think 10 minutes would have been pretty tough. Yeah, and it was also, yeah, she did also submit it for one of our lightning rounds the shorter one. And I said, you know, I think you can do more than 10 minutes. And I've run out of room in one day. So she, and if you watch our show regularly, you'll see many of them. Since February when we have the conference are they didn't fit in that one day. And I'm not expending one Big Talk to more than one day. That's a long day of broadcasting. But I encompass live the perfect place for some of these ones to go. So she's going to tell us about how they did their library design in Crete. So I'll just hand over to you by using research. Yeah, don't go into it. Good morning. I've only been at Crete for a little over two years. And actually the day I was hired was the day we received the submissions from three architects. Oh, I remember it was the big pile. That's where I came into the scene. From right into the deep end to start. Right into the deep end. So the first question obviously was which architect to choose. I have a very, very strange background. I am from Nebraska, but I have an undergrad in marketing from Colorado State. So I'm the big marketer and I have always believed in the importance of research. So I have had a lot of experience in research. But applying this case, I was applying it for library design as well as the other parts of issues that you have with a new library. Marketing is a big thing that libraries do. We're inconsistent, I think, in marketing ourselves. So I think having that kind of background is probably really, really good for a library. Yeah, marketing and communications. I have another master's degree in international marketing and I just completed my MLS from University of Wisconsin, Madison. So I did live overseas for 27 years in Singapore and South Africa and then came back to America, to Nebraska in particular. Always wanted to be a small town library director and was very fortunate. And not only that, but fortunate and somewhat daunting to realize I was building a new library. Yeah. And so even though my perspective in my talk today will be about building a brand new public library, I believe what I have to say is somewhat universal. Some of the research tips and activities I went through is applicable for other types of libraries. And it's also applicable for if you're doing a renovation and not necessarily building a brand new building. It doesn't have to be from scratch necessarily. No. And I mean, we librarians are wonderful at listening to others and we are also very wonderful at helping out each other. And I have to give a shout out to all the librarians who I have contacted over the years. And I so appreciate and know I will become actually I am still contacting some of them as we speak. There was a self tax increase that was passed in Crete that two thirds of it went for building a new library. Right. So out of that, we are getting 4.2 million. We were able to get just over 2 million in foundation. And the rest from corporate individuals and we are fully funded and it is 7.4 million. Nice. So the citizens obviously were supportive of getting a new library. They were. They were. I'll get into a little bit more of the library itself, but briefly wish this is what I would like to discuss today. So I will first start with secondary research, spend more time on primary research and at the very end talk a little bit about fundraising. This is the floor plan. It has changed slightly since this was drawn, but essentially it's what it is. It's a 20,000 square foot building out of which 15,000 square feet is the library in 5,000 square feet, which is in the top right there is the community room slash storm shelter. You can see that the walls are thicker. It can hold over 450 people in in a tornado or whatnot. The construction is 14 months and knock on wood. We will be opening the 2nd of January 2020. Oh wow. It's on schedule. Yeah. So we've been very fortunate with the architects and the certainly the construction companies been wonderful. The it is a whole city block. You on the top left hand corner is what we call the library park. We will have a story walk. Oh cool. Yeah. We'll have a really fun story walk, a couple of playgrounds. And what's really great about this is that the city owned a third of a block just to the right of this. That is a parking lot and will continue to be a parking lot. So we were able to really utilize the whole city block without taking much up from from parking. The parking will be in 90s at all parking available for people still available for people coming to the library. There's a little bit of parking around the park parallel parallel parking, but the majority of the parking will be on the right. So we didn't have to cut into our space for that. What was it on this block where the library was going before? Was it something else? Yeah. It was a hospital. And the hospital took up that whole block and that's why they had the adjacent parking. But what we are doing different than what the hospital did is we're actually stopping. So there's no thoroughfare in between the parking lot and the building. So nobody will run over. But that's the change from the hospital. Just thought I'd show you some photos. These are panorama photos I've taken from the exact same spot. What I find amazing about these two photos is that in the middle of February in eastern Nebraska, we had a huge snowstorm and they were still able to get this done. They're still working, still advancing. That's amazing. Yeah. I always think of the winters when it all shuts down, but sometimes you can't. Nope. They had to. And this one I just took the other day. The walls are getting in there. The glass is going in right now, so it should be enclosed pretty soon. For my secondary research, I looked at two books in particular, which I'll go into some detail. Articles. And I also used the ALA website. The secondary research, I feel very strongly, really needs to be done prior to doing any primary research. And the reason why is that for my primary research, I visited libraries. And I didn't want to waste their time by asking questions that really I should have known. You could have been able to find out yourself. Sure, sure. So to better utilize my time with the libraries, I undertook the secondary research first. There were two books in particular. This one, the countdown book is a very general book. I ordered these, both of these books from the ALA. This countdown to a new library is, you can read by the table of contents. It certainly is applicable for a renovation as well as a brand new building. The checklist book, I found to be amazing. And that's exactly what it is. It's just pages and pages and pages of checklists. Now, probably it's a little bit more skewed toward a brand new building, but certainly would be relevant for a renovation as well. This was published in 2016, so it's fairly up to date. It is broken into various sections. There'll be a section, for example, on architect selection. And then there's that whole checklist you can go to, to exterior design. And here is a page here on the right of what you should be looking for on exterior design considerations. So what I would do is I would take a, you know, wherever we were, you know, getting towards the design phase, where we were in the design phase, I would take a look at this checklist and I would look very carefully. What have we discussed? What's questionable? And what's not applicable? And some of these things, you coming in kind of in the middle, you said the architect designs are already on your desk. No. We were choosing the architect. Oh, okay. So they had to submit a design ditch, just inviting who to go with. Right. So the first round of research that I did had to deal with the three architects who submitted. So I found out where they had built, and then I physically went. Oh, to see their previous love building. Well, just to see how they got along with the architect. I went to Love Library at UNL, Beatriz had used two out of three, and just basically said, how were they to work with? Do they listen to you? Right. So that was the first round. So, yes, so what I would do with this checklist is I would go through a section and based on this particular section, these are the questions I came up with that I would send to the architects. Now, they would reply in writing, and I was told over and over again, the importance of getting everything in writing. And I have to say I did. There's a few things that I wish now I had in writing that I didn't. So it's a good goal. For example, if you look at like question 19. These are things you don't think about. What happens if somebody likes something and sticks it in? You know, is it fireproof in there? And if that room starts on fire, what's the consequences of that? So you can kind of take these questions and they can lead to other questions as well. But this is what I did numerous times relying on that checklist book. The other things I looked at was looking for articles. I was still getting my MLS at the time. So I was able to search the databases for that. And the ALA also in September and their issue in September issue, they have their architectural awards. And that I found. And I went back and I looked at previous year's issues as well. So that was something good to look for and also can be a reference for who to contact for primary research as well. Next is something I talked about the primary research, which is by far the bulk of my research. I just want to jump in here too. Well, for those of you here in Nebraska, I looked up both of these books that you mentioned. And here's the library commission. We have a professional collection of books to loan out. And we have both of those books. I know. You got them from us? No. I borrowed them from you and then I purchased them. Ah, okay. So yes, I did that. And the checklist one apparently had a previous version from 2009. But we have the 2016 one as well. Yeah. The newest version. Yeah, but both of those. So if anyone in Nebraska is interested in looking into those, you can borrow them from here at the library commission. And that's what I did before I purchased them. I mean, they're not that terribly expensive, but I just thought I would get a look at them first. Get a look at them first before you decide to buy. So going into my primary research, which by far is the bulk of my research, I started right away. So I started the end of April 2017. And in our summer reading program and our kickoff. So just a few months later, I, in the kickoff in the park, we, I put out this board and I asked the kids just draw what you want in the new library. There you go. So there is a pitch of a girl and there's a close up of a drawing, which was pretty detailed actually. Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting to hear what the kids have to say. With the rating zone, I can see there. But it's also these kind of things also help just generate interest. And hopefully that the community feels a part of the design phase as well. And that is so important in gaining acceptance. And then we held three community meetings. And here's the invite for the first one. The first one really was probably the most critical one. It was before the architects had done any design. So it was a total blank slate. And so what they did is they filmed it. And then they also had a whole list of, of comments, what people would make. And then you can, you know, there, here's a, here's a word cloud. Yep. So the second meeting was then held after the initial drawings were developed. And then the third one was when things were pretty final. And we probably had about 30 to 40 people attend. And they were very vocal in what they wanted. And the vast majority of them, of course, you can imagine are avid patrons. Sure. The regular, the super users. And then the last one, we also had an opportunity to talk about the library park to bring in the outside. What do we want? What does the community want for that park? And then on our website, I also just had a link, just a, you know, a question, one question. And that was what do you want in the new library? So that was always live for months there. I spent a lot of time visiting libraries. I personally have never had any direct experience in building a new library. So very few of us do. Although I have to say, I did meet one or two librarians that this was their second project. They had done two. Oh, wow. Two. So unfortunately, new libraries aren't that common. And so I just picked the brains of everybody who I thought. Now, the first question you have to ask is, where do you go? Okay. Now that a commission and most states have the surveys that is put out, a public library survey that libraries do every year. Yeah. Right. And there is a question in there about that. Yeah. Yes. There's a question that says, is there a construction project currently underway? And if the yes, no. And if it's a yes, then the next question is a projected completion date. So, and then the other thing that was another question that I used quite a lot was the current year that the library was built. How old is your current building? Yeah. So I was trying to visit libraries that were built in the last five years because technologically things have changed. Oh, absolutely. So I was trying to focus so fast. It changes. Yeah. I was trying to focus on a five-year window. And so I could go back with that last question, the current year that the library was built. And I was trying to focus a little bit more on libraries that were built brand new from the ground up. Because that's what you were doing. Very few. But I did visit quite a few that were renovations. But in everywhere I went, I learned something. Most of it, I learned what to do. But I also learned what not to do, which is equally valuable. Absolutely. How old was your previous sort of whatever? We had a Carnegie. We built in 1914. And then we have a 1984 extension. But when they built the 84 extension, they didn't build a basement. So I always kind of tell people, you know what, if they had put that basement in, we probably wouldn't be building a new library. We could probably just be okay with that. But we are packed to the gills as a lot of libraries are. So the libraries I visited in Nebraska are what is here. The very first one I visited was Blair. And they were fairly recent, also brand new. Ashlyn also fit that bill as well. And in particular, I went to these libraries first because not only we're similar service size, we currently, our population technically is 7,000, although we know that's undercounted. People who actually use. No, that's the population of Crete. But my service population is closer to 10 because we include the whole county. Sure. It's free for anybody in the county. But I wanted to visit these newer ones that were started from the scratch because I was at the same time setting up a fundraising committee. And I wanted to pick their brains in particular as to Nebraska foundations that we could contact for grants. Right. So that's why I focused on those two first. Then I went and I looked at Kansas, Iowa and Illinois. But every state survey is different. Yes. They don't ask the same questions. There are some standard ones that are required to be submitted nationally, but then we have a lot of leeway, which does make it difficult to compare across states. So Iowa, I remember correctly, didn't have those questions. Are you building a new library? So I just picked up the phone and called the Iowa Commission and said, hey, can you tell me what libraries are newly built? So that was how I found out what was happening in Iowa. These are where I visited outside of Nebraska. It looks like a lot, and it is quite a bit. But I have to say I did not make a trip specifically to visit these libraries. Okay. I'm sure people are wondering how did you do that? How did they explain that? Right. So I actually was going there already for something else. Exactly. And my boss was very, he realized the importance. My boss was the city administrator. He realized the importance of doing research and talking to other libraries. So for example, you see the three out in western Chicago, which is Aurora, Aurora North, and Batavia. The first Thanksgiving I was there, I was going to spend Thanksgiving with my son and my sister-in-law and brother-in-law in Batavia. And I found out that Aurora had a brand new library. So I arranged to visit. And then on the way back, I stopped at Cedar Rapids, which had a brand new, brand new downtown library because they got wiped out in the flood. Right. They got like $40 million in FEMA because they lost everything. Everything was lost. Yeah. So what it cost me and the boss in the city was basically two nights in a hotel, one going over and one coming back. Right. I didn't charge for mileage. You were going there anyway. I was going there anyway. I didn't have to take vacation time either to visit these libraries. So the same thing with the Kansas libraries. I was on a holiday and I stopped on the way back. And they had to spend one night in a hotel that they paid for. But it was, Winfield was a refurbishment. And Mulvane is the one that I look at. Same service population, brand new library, two years old, three years old now, and is a suburb of Wichita. And we're kind of a suburb of Lincoln. Yeah. So very similar. And I have gone back and contacted the director at Mulvane numerous times. She actually just sent me a document yesterday because I'm trying to increase my FTE and getting some resistance. So she's helped me, forgive me some ammunition on that. So in total, I visited 25 libraries, 14 in Nebraska and 11 outside. So next I'd like to discuss some helpful hints when visiting a library. I'll just jump into it. Anybody has any questions or comments or anything? Don't forget, type into your questions section of your go-to webinar. And I'll grab that and enjoy the answer as you're asking. So the first helpful hint is to contact the library to determine who's the best person to give you a tour. And I know that sounds like very obvious, but in some cases it's not the director because there was a few cases where the director wasn't there when it was being built. So it could be that I ended up talking to the assistant director or somebody who was there who could answer the questions. Because to go to a library and give a tour, what was your decision in making, what was behind your decision in doing this? And they would say, I don't know, I wasn't around. Here yet, yeah. So I know that this is something that you need to do. You want to contact somebody who was there at the time, yeah. The second thing is don't waste their time asking silly questions that you could find out on your own before you go. So there's going to be newspaper stories. There's going to be reports. There's going to be things that you can find out there. Right, yeah. But I have to say, I was shocked that there was a fair number of libraries that were in the midst of a building project that really had nothing on their website, which I found in some cases it was difficult. But if it was built three years ago, you're not going to have it. It would just be a fair of a thing. If it was done, you're not going to have any more. Right. Right. But learn as much as you can about the old building and the new building. I did notice that on the CRETE Public Library's website, you guys have got tons of information. Yes. Because you're right in the middle of the project and it says, here's what it's going to look like, here's where we're at, here's pictures, here's how we came up with everything, all of this. Right. And I also have a monthly blog in a way. It's just a couple of sentences that says, I have a monthly meeting with the architects and the contractors on site. And so I can say, okay, next week they're putting in a glass and then they're doing this and this and this. So, yes, and I think I'm a little bit anal about it because I was kind of disappointed in some of the libraries not having much history of what happened. Yeah. And that's what I'm thinking that this could then be turned into, first after years has done, historical purposes. Here's a record of everything for, and now I'm sure from what you've learned in your experience in trying to research this, you want to help future libraries. Sure. Absolutely. You're going to be out there somewhere, documented of here's everything went through. And by the way, call me. Well, yeah, call me because I have, like I said at the beginning, I am so grateful for all those librarians who gave me their time and continue to give me their time. So, fresh up on the library itself, what's the service population? What programs are they offering? These types of things. So, you get a feel. So, again, you come in asking relevant questions. Write up the questions ahead of time. Don't forget what you want to do. And take lots of photos. And if you can, while you're writing the answers to the questions, you take a photo, jot down, this is a photo of this. Because in some cases, I might be visiting two libraries in a day. And you got to try to remember what was what. And of course, that's in chronological order. But, you know, you don't want to go back and say, why did I take that photo? What was it relevant? So, and the last question I always asked was this. And I learned so much when asking that question. It could be as simple as count the number of outlets you need and double it. Because we did not put that. Where's the air conditioner or the heat? Is it when you open the door, is it hidden? You know, I mean, all sorts of just really nitty-gritty specific things. But I learned a lot by asking that question. And as you leave, make sure you ask, you know, hopefully you've had a very pleasant experience and they have too. Do you mind if I follow up with additional questions? And I have done that for a lot of these librarians. Most recently, in addition to the FTE question, was I was asking questions about soft launches versus grand openings. And what did they do? So, those are questions I didn't think about asking when I went to visit. When you're first starting. You're not at that stage yet. So, I developed a report with a number of libraries and I'm very grateful for that. Here are some ideas that I have learned and I actually have incorporated them into the new library in Crete. Two-sided fireplace in Batavia. That was something that people wanted was a fireplace. Yes. And this was in Batavia, Illinois. And it just looks so warm and with ceding area on either side. Ours is not wood. It's stone. But it's the same concept where we have two ceding areas on either side. It's in what we call, I call the adult reading room. So, it's going to be kind of like the only area in the library that's going to be kind of quiet. And on one, we've got the two ceding areas and then behind them we have our Nebraska historical classic collection. And then on the other side, we'll have the periodicals. Because that was another thing you learned is you want to put the periodicals right next to the ceding area. People want to come in and just browse and read. Yeah. So, is that a gas fireplace, I think? Yeah. More, yeah. Technology. No chopping wood on the LEDs as a sign. I think insurance would be a little tough on that one. So, this was, I found this out certainly in Blair was the first one, the technology end caps. Nice. So, when we did our library design, we had to know exactly where the stacks were going to go and at what ends of what end caps we were going to have the technology end caps. So, when, before they laid the concrete, they had to put the power and data. So, we have six technology end caps and that's going to be the card catalogs on the on the tablets. Nice. I know this seems kind of silly in a way, but you need to have adult size ceding in the children's area. Parents or caregivers are going to be there. Yeah. Or they're waiting for the story time or whatever. An ice making machine in the catering kitchen. We will have a catering kitchen next to the community room. Yeah. And it has to be ADA compliant, which there's only like about two models in the world I found out that are ADA compliant for ice making machines. But on the floor browsing bins for the board books so the kids can just, little kids can just wipe them through it. Cozy spaces. This was in Wichita. And I couldn't believe it when I saw it because we actually have, we only have one. It's kind of an interesting shape, but we had built that into ours as well. So obviously Wichita was a much bigger library and they had like four, five, six of these, which is really great. You can just curl up with the book. Yeah. I think in the children's program room. Oh, they make a mess. Yeah. So you clean up the paint and whatnot. A child size toilet. We do have a family restroom in, in our library it goes basically from the youngest to the oldest. So in the youngest part of it, we have a family restroom and we have two size toilets. We have a little one and a big one. And that's right next to the family room, which is where you can take a screening toddler or nurse or whatever. Right. Teen rooms. There are actually new libraries out there that refuse to put in a teen room because they were worried what the teens would do. So in our library, we do have a separate teen room, but it is for monitoring it. It's glass on two sides and it's visible from the surf desk. Another decision that I made, you see in the middle down there, that's actually San Francisco. And San Francisco had a huge teen room and they had their teen collection in there. And I made a decision not to have the teen collection in a separate room because so many adults like to read YA books. Oh, absolutely. I do. So it's right outside. It's not actually in our teen room. It's just right outside of it. So, but dinostyle. I like that. We're very popular and we have kind of a booth-ish kind of thing. But in order to make it ADA compliant, ours looks a little bit different. Those exact same chairs on the top right, where I saw in Winfield, we got the exact same ones because we've learned that teens like to move things around. So you need furniture that is movable. So we have the exact same furniture, those chairs, and they're actually on casters so you can sit on them and they stop. But then when you get off, you can just pull them and move on. So, a washer and dryer. Oh, wouldn't have thought about that. Yep. And we put that, of course, in the staff room, which we're finally going to have our own staff room. These funky study tables. This is in San Francisco. They're quite expensive, but we got one. Future use. So, the biggest stress I had with the design was regret. What am I going to regret? What are you going to forget? What am I going to forget? In particular, forget something that's structural. So, I can't afford to put in an RFID system. The minimum is $30,000 for a library of my size. But under, like I talked about when they put the data in the electrical before they pour the flooring, I do have RFID built in, in similar situation to this as well as another door. And you won't be able to see it. There'll be, you know, there'll be a little cat that the carpet will cover. But in the future, if we ever want to do it. In a grant and decide you want to install it, you've got the prep work done. Got the prep work done. Because to go back and install this later would be hugely expensive. Yeah, to dig up the floor. Right. So, and then we also use these wall strips so it can go up and down with art displays. And then some other examples of what we actually have taken from and this is in Blair. This is their donor, their large donor wall. And I liked it because personally, I don't like donor walls that have dollar amounts. I find that to be kind of tacky. Personally. It should be just you gave something. You gave something. And you should see by the size. See the size. See cargo. See how big that is. So that's how it determines that you have more or less. Right. So this is a big amount. Yeah. This is what it translates to us. So you can see the bigger one, the key width and the Sherwood foundation. Those, those two big ones, they gave us a half a million. Like word cloud, but for money. Yeah. Exactly. And then the smallest ones are 5,000. So this goes from 5,000 to half a million. And then you can see where it says future growth. So knock on wood. Hopefully we will continue to raise money. And fill in there with others. Yeah. This I totally stole right away from Ashlyn. And this is for the small donors. Oh yeah. The books. I look like books. And when I started talking to people about visiting and people would say, you got to go to Ashlyn and visit the, the, the, the shelf or books. And I'm like, what? I didn't know what they were talking about. And right away you can see this. So this is what it translates to us. So it's $250, $500 in $1,000 donations. And this, that donor wall will be closer to the library side. And the large donor wall will be closer to the community side. So that's things that I thought were brilliant. And, you know, I didn't want to go with the bricks and, you know, that kind of thing. I like the library things here too. Especially specific to the library. Well, and I don't know. I mean, Ashlyn, unfortunately, she was one of those that wasn't around when it was being built. So I didn't know how they came up with that, but it was brilliant. And I stole it. Lastly, I like to end with fundraising. Again, like I said before, one of the first libraries I went to visit, not only was a design part of it, but it was also, who did you ask for? And this is something that's very regional because the $2 million we got are all from Nebraska-based foundations. So it's very specific. Yeah, it definitely looks locally. We have so many, I think, organizations that are specific to your state, your Nebraska, your community. We have a Nebraska Community Foundation that has lots of brands. That's Nebraska Department of Economic Development. Talk about that. Yeah. So, yes. So, well, I also talked to these librarians about best practices for reaching out to the business community as well as individuals. And they had all sorts of different ideas. But one thing that I was very interested in is in the naming rights. So I would take a photo of a study room and I would say, okay, they asked $50,000 for this or they asked $5,000 for this. So then with my fundraising committee, I could go back and say, okay, this is what these people are doing. And then we would look at their income level because Crete is below average for Nebraska. So if Blair, which, and Ashlyn, which has much higher income level, we could say, no, we don't think we could get work for us. It doesn't work for us. Yeah. But that was a real good thing to ask them about. I had mentioned before about a fundraising committee. Marketing, marketing, marketing. I know I'm a marketer initially, but every step of the way, I would get articles in the newspaper in the existing library. We would print out checks three feet by one and a half feet. And they would have the name of the donor and they're all along the wall. So you can walk into the library and you can see who's donated. And then we'd have a check passing ceremony with the photograph and they would make it into the newspaper. So constantly marketing yourself throughout the whole project is very important. You can get other people to want to be in that, to do that as well. I want to be handing a big check to the library. I want that kind of promotion for me or my organization or my business. Most people did. We did get one anonymous 88,000 from an individual. But yes, most of them were quite happy with the publicity. We also hired a consultant from a group called Library Strategies. They're based out of St. Paul and they do advising for only library, obviously. And I heard the head of it who used to be the head of the Friends Group for St. Paul. And he started this consultant. And very first summer I was working here. I did go to the ALA because I had purchased a student ticket already. Before I got hired. And I went to a free conference and was absolutely blown away by them. And I thought I want to hire them. So for $2,500, she came and had a half day seminar with my fundraising group to kind of kick us off. And I think it was money well spent. With that, you see I have the CDAA, the Community Development Assistance Act, which is Nebraska-based. And it is wonderful. So basically you get a grant and we ask for $25,000. And now we've gotten it again, second year. So what it is, is it's a tax break. Okay. So let's say somebody gives us $10,000. Okay. They get the federal tax relief through the 401C who is the Friends Group. And then my fundraising group decided on $10,000 or more, you get a 20% tax break. So that means instead of giving $10,000, you are net giving us $8,000. Because you can deduct $2,000 off your Nebraska State tax liability. And you can decide what you want to do. Okay. You can go up to 40%. Now, there's another small town who got it and they gave everybody 40%. Ashlyn had a much higher bar and we decided on $10,000 and above, you got 20%. $5,999, you got 10%. So Windstream gave us $50,000 for the technology room, for the naming right. Right, of course. Right. But the net is only $40,000 because they can take $10,000 off them. So for those of you in Nebraska, I highly, highly encourage you to do this. They've been really lovely organization even though it is a government organization to work for. And there may very well be something similar in other states as well. So that's pretty much all I have to say. All right. Yeah. And some of these other organizations, yeah, we're looking for funding in general. Definitely good. And then we're looking for funding centers, one that we recommend to libraries for all sorts of things. Yeah. All right. So anybody have any questions? Type them into your questions section of your GoToWebinar interface. Nobody has typed anything while you were talking. But if you do want to ask anything, get it in there. And we will ask it of Joy before. And by email addresses there as well. Yeah, of course. You can reach out to her at any time. Yeah. This is great. This is exactly, you know, perfect information. I think that people need. You know, we do presentations on here's a new library and everything cool in it and what we did. But I think the, the before ground, how did you get to the new library is something that I haven't really seen a lot of, you know, presentations or information about it. I mean, so this is. Well, and I think I'll be very honest with you in our case. Yeah. There is a particular architecture company in Nebraska that is known for building libraries. And if you do get an architectural firm that has a lot of experience in building libraries, you may not necessarily have to go through all of this. I'm sure they have the experience. That organization did not submit a proposal. And I talked to the organization later and a lot of things they just flipped through. They didn't. Yeah. They didn't realize they're looking for something. Don't know they did. But they didn't know it was happening right then. So therefore, our architects really didn't have a lot of experience. They had experience building schools, which have a library. But because of that, I had, I really was much more hands on as far as the design goes. They don't have their own experience yet. Well, they have an interior decorator who came back later and moved back to Omaha. And she's been absolutely brilliant. Oh, wow. Because she did the Cedar Rapids and she did something. She moved to Des Moines for a while. And then when she came back, I was so grateful. But she missed that whole design statement. She's been there for the furniture and whatnot. But the other guys really didn't. So I cannot tell you how many times I would say, no, this has to go here. I was in this place. I was in that place. I was in this is what is common in libraries. Right. I mean, they even had the audacity to say, well, nobody comes into a public library to use the bathrooms. And we all just, yeah. Because I was very insistent on not only having the family toilet, but on the adult side to have an ADA unisex toilet. Yeah. And they couldn't understand why it was so, because the other restrooms are way up by the community room. And people just using that. Yeah. And so they just thought, nobody comes to a library to use the bathroom. And I thought, oh my God. You have no idea. You need to train. You need some instruction on what libraries do now. Yeah. People are there for hours. But they came around programs. Yeah. They came around. But because, I think because of that, I really had to be. And because of the research I did, I could stand up and say, look at this photo. Look at this photo. This library. This is what they do. This is what libraries do. You had to advocate for your library and educate your. But I had that backing. Yeah. Because I had physically gone to see these libraries. Right. And that makes a huge difference. You had to be able to see what's been another library. Yeah. Yeah. Give me some street cred. Yeah. As it were. Yeah. And you were talking earlier about the Public Library Survey where we had the questions about what libraries are doing. We actually do have also on our Nebraska Library Commission website. We have a page of buildings that are in construction. So we take the information from those surveys. And we have a constantly updated website of where different libraries in Nebraska are at in their process. So. Yeah. Another state can do the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. Because they have the, well, like you said, if they're asking the question. I mean, because I had a call in Iowa. Right. Right. I mean, we pull it from the survey we already do. So if anybody in Nebraska or anywhere is looking to see, if you go to our, and I'll show you when we get over to the website. Yeah. We've kind of put that out there as well. So you don't have to dig through the survey. The surveys are out there too, you know, this huge spreadsheet. Huge spreadsheet. Every single question. Which can be very useful for all sorts of reasons. But that we do pull out as a special website. I think there's some of us here at the staff wanting to know, you know, who should I be talking to to help them out with anything? Does anybody need some assistance? Why did this library call me with this weird question about ADA toilets, you know, because they're doing a new building. Right. Or renovation or whatever. Yeah. Well, it doesn't look like anybody has any urgent questions right now. I guess that's okay. You either answered every single thing they want to know. Or their heads are spinning. Yeah, their heads are spinning. Maybe sit back and think about it for a while. And that's perfect. Reach out to Joy at any time when you do have a question or anything you want to ask her. So I think we'll pop off of the presentation now to our website so I can show you. And I should have it open. There we go. This is the Nebraska Library Commission webpage. And I'll see that Nebraska.gov. And if you go to the search, and I'll show you this building thing. I think we just searched like buildings is where we have building activity. That's what we call it. Nebraska Library's building activity. And you can see here this is very much based on what you were talking about. Is planning underway? Is fundraising underway? Is the building underway? And when do you anticipate completing it? And there's you guys. Yes, yes, yes. 2019. Ah, 2020. Now you're saying. Oh, it always happens. Okay. But I mean, not sure where. Well, no 2019. We're going to move between Christmas and New Year. Okay. So it will be completed in 19. We're going to move in January. We're going to open January 2nd. Right. So it will be completed by the end of 2019. Yes. Yes. So you can see where some of them are just in the very beginning planning stages here in Nebraska, where they're just trying to think about it and where they're at and what we know. And some of this does come from the survey, but some of it you can see here. And you know, we don't know. We don't have all the answers. You don't require questions if they don't know if they're just in the. Oh, yeah. So Nebraska City just did a renovation. Right. And that's the thing too is it and then this here just that you can specify on this particular. What we put up here, we don't, we don't differentiate between the full brand new building or just renovation or updates. Right. But just is there any sort of activity going on? But if you do look at the full survey, then you'll be able to see what they were talking about. Is it a complete replacement or a brand new building or just an update or a van chin or something? Yeah. So and I'm sure any of these will be willing to talk to you about what they are. This is just things currently in process. Like you said, things are completed already. They fall off of this list. Right. Because this is just. Yeah. Because you did have on your list that you went to Lincoln City Libraries. Because they did build. Right. A couple of new. Buildings in the city. How long ago that was? Walt and Isley. So they did have new branch libraries built. Right. What they're on here for right now is they're in the planning for doing something to be determined yet. For the main. Their main library downtown. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, good luck. Yeah. Hopefully. All right. So that's where that is on our website. But show them where the survey is too. Oh yeah. The survey. Not that I did. Let's see. Survey public libraries. So let's see here. The best that collect is what we use to do the survey. So this is the for logging into. Answer the questions. This survey is this is a national thing. Like I said, it goes live like in November. But I think we go to library data services. This is where you can see the most recent survey data. And we have our 2017 18 is most recent stuff that's compiled and out there. And there's an express spreadsheet. Some things more. Highlights are here. Just open it up. I'm not going to show you everything, but huge. Yeah. So it's got everything here. And questions and questions and questions. So everything on here. So you can just search for whatever you want to know about all our different libraries that submitted the public library survey in the state. Yeah. And then you can just, you know, highlight it and then sort by that particular column that says, you know, when when when was your library built existing library built and then you can get your current library. So there we go. Yeah. So, you know, you don't want those like mine. And then here's date of latest edition renovation. Yeah. So that's very helpful. Yeah. We do also have I'm hearing the active funders and campaign for a new renovated building. So this is where all that information comes from. Right. You can also get historical data going back all the way to, I think the beginning was started in 1998. So if you do know, like I said, the Lincoln City libraries were built in a previous date or shown historical information about any of the public library surveys, they're all up here as well for all the previous years. So if you're interested in something older for whatever reason, something is going on in a certain timeframe. Whatever. What not to do. It's there. Yeah. They're all up there. Yeah. And these change over the years to each year, sometimes different questions are added or deleted or changed. So the questions are asked the most recent one might not be the same that we're asking the previous one. So keep that in mind if you are looking through this for anything. Yeah. So good research. We have a lot of good information put out that we try to keep anything we collect. We try to put out there as much as possible for life to help libraries, but other states don't know. You never know. But call whoever is your library commission or your state library, they may be the people keeping this gathering this information somewhere that you just don't know about and they can possibly get you some of this more broader information rather than trying to call randomly each library themselves and see if they what there's what's going on. Yeah. Go to them for some help. Absolutely. All right. So that will I think wrap it up for today's show. Nobody typed any other questions when we were talking, so that's fine. I'm going to go to our Encompass Live website and you see I popped up here actually into my general search, not on our library commission website because so far you can use the search engine, your search engine of choice. So far Encompass Live is the only thing called that on the internet. So nobody else can use the same. And it will bring you up to our main page for the show. They see here today's show and our archive is here. Underneath is a link to our archives. Today's show is being recorded. It should be up and posted. I do this by the end of the day today. If everything works correctly. If you go to Webinar and YouTube and everything cooperates. It will be the top one on the list here. You must read the ones at the top here. We'll have a link to the recording like this one and this one at hand and a link to the slide. When it is ready to go, I will email everyone who attended today and everyone who registered for today's show to let you know it's available. We'll push that on to our social media and whatnot too. I'll show you here while we are here on our archive, as I said, we archive all of our shows. This year, 2019, it's actually the 11th year of Encompass Live. It's been around for a long time. And this is our full archive going all the way back to the very first year. So keep that in mind when you are watching a show on here. Everything has a date of when it was originally broadcast. Some things on here, maybe old outdated information, just dated information. Links might not work. Projects or services might no longer exist or have changed completely since we did a show. But we are librarians. It's what we do. We archive things. And if we can keep them all out there for you, we will. And we'll always have these all going all the way back to 2009. Just pay attention if you are watching any of our shows to when your original date was to see if it's something just so you know what we're talking about. You can search this for the entire archive or the most recent years worth 12 months if you want to make sure you're just getting something current. Encompass Live is also on Facebook. So if you're a big Facebook user, we have a Facebook page where we post your reminder log in today's show. When other shows are available. When recordings are available from previous shows. So if you do like to use Facebook, give us a like over there and you can keep track of what we're doing there. We also use, as you saw on the intro slides, we have a hashtag we created for the show for when we share anywhere else like on Twitter and Instagram and whatever Encompass Live. We kind of abbreviated it a little. So search for that if you want to find us elsewhere. So that will be the rest of the show. So if you're a big fan of Facebook and for any of our other shows, but next week's topic is about eliminating late fines. This is a huge thing happening in libraries lately. Actually it's been happening for years if you look into it. But it's become just really more a big topic of libraries are just getting rid of late fines no longer late fees for anything. And so we were talking about that last week. Just before Christmas. Right. Yeah. So it's a popular thing. Beth Christ is from the Colorado State Library and Meg DeFries to the consultant out of California are going to be with us remotely if they're not traveling here in Nebraska to talk about what's going on with that and how you can do that to benefit your library. And it has a good thing in your community. Libraries are getting huge press and huge positive comments. And so we're going to be talking about that in a couple of weeks. And then any of our other shows we have coming up here with all our September shows books. I'm starting to get October up there as well. So keep an eye on our schedule. Thank you everyone for attending. Thank you for popping over here this morning. Thank you for inviting me. And hopefully we'll see you another time and then hope