 All right, the start of our afternoon sessions for Big Doc and Small Libraries. We have Brittany Musil and Lizzie Bodden from the North Riverside Public Library in Illinois. And they're gonna talk about how you can make a mini-maker space in your own library. We are going to take you guys. Okay, well, hi, my name is Lizzie and I am the Adult Services Librarian at North Riverside. And I'm Brittany Musil. I'm the Teen tween librarian at North Riverside. And we are very excited to be with you guys today. And Krista, feel free, if people have any questions, sort of as we're going along, you can definitely feel absolutely free to interrupt us to ask. That's definitely, anybody type into the question section of your go-to webinar interface, whenever you think of anything you wanna ask of them and I will pass it on. Thank you. Okay, so this is just our plan for what we're gonna talk about today. Why maker spaces, we're gonna give you, we're gonna be using our library as an example. So we're gonna give you a little history about North Riverside and our library. We're gonna talk about patron surveys and feedback and our response actually, the work of actually making the makerspaces, how we make it work and then some tips and tricks that everybody can follow. So why maker spaces? Our library personally has been kind of traditional. So we noticed that we wanted to expand patron services and a lot of people have been actually responding to a patron needs that we've been having. So even it came down to crafting, it didn't have to necessarily be like a 3D printer. People maybe wanna just have more access to laptops. There was a need with anyone between grades five through 12 that had an interest in coding. So we knew that there was a need and we wanted to figure out a creative way to do it because we want to provide education, information, entertainment even because a lot of these laptops can do more than just games and a lot of the teens I noticed have been struggling with that. So it's just a good way to engage in the 21st century that this is what libraries can do for you. Moving just a little bit beyond our traditional role. So a little bit about the North Riverside Library and our community, we are a fairly small library. The estimated population of our district is 6,672. We have about 25 staff here at the library, staff members but only five are full-time and the rest are part-time staff members. Our building is actually fairly large for the size of our community which has been a really big benefit to us. We have a 22,000 square foot building that was built about 20 years ago. About 70% of our residents hold library cards which we're very happy with and our children's department is on our lower level. Our main floor has circulation, young adults, meeting room, six public computers and a sort of study room office which we're gonna talk a little bit more about and our lower level children's department has another meeting room, our story time room, a couple public computers, two study rooms and a sort of Harry Potter-esque under the stair space that was never anything that we're also gonna go talk about a little bit. And then our local schools and organizations have been a really big boon to us. Camaric is our local K through eighth grade school and according to a 2017 district report card there is about, there's a 42.5% percentage of low income students at Camaric. They're also in the middle of a referendum right now, the building is really old and doesn't have a lot of extra space for like modern education techniques and rooms. So our library is kind of trying to fill some of the gaps with the maker spaces. And then we also have Montessori school right across the street. We have our parks and recreation department that also does programming for all ages. So we do have a lot of really go to local organizations to partner with as we go through this process. So because of that, what did the community need? We have placed around 10 suggestion boxes around the library, some downstairs in the children's department, some in young adults. We have a Spanish collection we're trying to build up. So we're putting them everywhere because we wanna hear what people do wanna see at this library. The main floor circulation and the lower level help desk, they've been taking notes. They can have a more nice conversational topics with anything with these patrons that come through. They can talk to them about what do you wanna see as needed? It's more relaxed. It's not like we're trying to pressure the patrons. It's just a need that comes up that patrons have noticed like, I would like to see this happen at the library. And it's a great way we can get notes from everyone. We do have a teen advisory board meeting. It's for the grades six through 12. So they meet once a month to talk about the programs they wanna see, crafts they wanna do, any books or movies suggestions that they just wanna see more of. We had an adult town hall forum. It was for adults 20 to 50. This was actually a big hit because this age group felt like they never had a person who wanted to talk to them basically. They wanted to hear someone care about their needs. They wanted to see opportunities for them more. And then we also realized that a lot of people ages 15 older, they wanted technology help. So they wanted to have someone sit down, help them with their smartphones, help them with their laptops. Even as simple as getting into an email, it's a struggle with a lot of people. And we knew that this was something that we needed to go into. So we found a lot of success just with like talking to our patrons. We created also these surveys, which you'll see have certain ideas that we heard from patrons, certain ideas that we got from just reading library literature. And we've been asking people, hey, what would you actually like to see? And we're getting a really interesting idea of kind of the types of things people would like to see at the library. We have, now you can kind of tell, we've kind of restricted it. It's true that we do have that other line down there at the bottom so people can kind of do whatever idea comes to our mind. And we're really anxious to hear what people think in that other line. But we also, some things we're like more certain of. And so we wanted to kind of, people sometimes have an easier time saying what they want when they're given options. And if you make it too broad, they can't quite narrow it down and they're not quite sure what to think. So we wanted to kind of like direct people a little bit and still leave room for people to kind of go beyond. Yeah, yeah, it was basically the most, like a lot of people asked about Laminator. We knew we wanted that. But when one person said, that'd be really cool if we had a ghost hunting kit that we can loan out, we put it on there because these were things people wanted. And so we gave them the option. This is something that we want. We don't have to do everything on this list, but it was a good way to see what people do want. Yes. And what we heard like kind of surprised us and kind of didn't. So we don't actually see much desire in our particular community for the really flashy maker space things, like 3D printers. A few people have been interested, but for the most part people haven't mentioned it. But there's a lot of interest in like really useful things like t-shirt presses, button makers, the lamp people really want the Laminator. And cricket machines, like things people can use to make crafts for parties or for like local organizations that they're part of. We've also seen that people, especially the teens want programs that are centered around new technologies. That wasn't something, I mean, Brittany can speak to this a little more, but that wasn't something teens recognized was even possible for them. They thought they could only come do crafts at the library and realize that we could potentially offer a lot more. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, every time when we do a team of advisory board meeting, people are always busting out Pinterest, showing the crafts they can do. But when I said, is there anything you want to do software related? If you want to record a song or make a movie and they said, how could we do that? Because you can do it with a laptop and they didn't really realize that. And then the adults didn't realize they could do crafts. Like the adults were like, oh, we can come to a book club and we could, you know, come do these various things. And then we were like, well, would you like to do crafts at the library? And they're like, yes, you know, it's like, didn't realize it was possible. So we're really glad that we've been having these conversations. So what have we done with the feedback? The main thing with the technology part of it with all the seniors basically coming through, we made our circulation manager, the technology manager. So he can do a device advice. He can have many programs to show how do you use a computer or Microsoft just typing things, deleting things, printing things. We wanted to make sure that when it comes to getting grants and we get the money, it's great that we can buy the things. But the main thing we realized is we don't have a lot of money for materials. So the managers will meet and we will kind of reconstruct our budget to figure out how we can pull from other. It's a painful process. It's terrible. We were crying as we were thinking about it again. And we needed material. We needed to have actually something. We're gonna have this maker space. Where are we gonna get the materials from? So we applied to a lot of grants. We had five people working on grants at the same time. It's been a process, but one of the other good things was that our friends at the library and foundation decided that they wanted to kind of form a newer, like, basically. Merge together. They wanted to make sure that there are support and their support to the patrons are kind of just all together now. So the friends at foundation are merging together and they're gonna figure out a way that we can get most of these materials. They've been really helpful. And then like Brittany said, a lot of our staff members have been working on grants, very aggressively working on grants to try and make a lot of these bigger ticket items happen. And we have been fairly successful, but not every staff member feels comfortable. Grants can be a little bit intimidating at first. So we also created something called strategic plan mini grants out of our budget, which is for staff to suggest ideas that meet patron needs and our strategic plan. And that has really helped people feel ownership of these various processes that we're going through kind of from moving traditional library to like a little bit of more modern 21st century library. So this kind of brings us to, I think the main thrust of this presentation, which is that we're not gonna be able to give you a really thorough how to point by point list of what exactly you can do to replicate exactly what we've done because a lot of what we're doing is like kind of creativity off the wall. What do we need in the moment type of situation? I think a lot of bigger libraries that have really large budgets can kind of say, okay, we're gonna create some maker spaces. And then they'll sit down and they'll figure out the space and they'll figure out the budget and what materials and the policy around those materials. And then they'll have a big grand opening ceremony and cut the ribbon and then they've got a maker space. Whereas we're going about it in a really different way. We wanted to start, of course, with the patron and community feedback. And then from there, we realized we need to do different programming for different age groups. So we've been going after grants that are specific to certain age groups. We received a grant for teens and a grant for seniors. And we are using those to buy materials that will be really useful to those age groups, which will eventually become available to the entire patron base, but it's gonna start by being restricted to those age groups because of the terms of the grants. And so we're also rethinking the library space because once we receive those grants, then we needed space for it. And eventually those spaces will become available to all the patrons. But it's a different process. We're coming at it from a really different angle. We're coming in really creatively, creatively. And what we kind of wanna, I think, get across during this presentation is that even though you wouldn't necessarily follow exactly what we've done, when you think outside of the box, it's really can be very surprising what does become possible. Definitely. We re-arranged the library at least five times at this point. Yeah, we keep going back and forth and like, oh. It's a work in progress. That will be the main theme, I think, is that we are very much in the midst of it. We are not finished with it. Every day something different is happening and we're really excited by it. Oh yeah, definitely. All right, let's talk a little bit more about what we did with the feedback kind of on a specific level. So we received a few grants and we will talk about those more in a minute, but we have been rearranging the library to make room. So the room we're actually sitting in right now is actually one of our makerspace spaces and it used to be our computer lab. So we moved all of the computers out, which has some really good benefits. Patrons can ask for help more easily. The computers are less private, which doesn't necessarily sound like a benefit, but in a library it can be. And the room can now be used as our mini makerspace. And then we also began merging storage closets and like study spaces and old offices to open up more rooms that are accessible to the public, which has given us space to make three more mini makerspaces around the building, a memory preservation lab, a kids makerspace, and a hangout nook under the stairs. The Harry Potter nook. The Harry Potter nook. So we'll talk a little bit about it. Yeah, the first one that we're in, it basically came from Project Next Generation. It's a state-funded grant that's basically helping at-risk students get more access to software technology, just computers in general. It was our first time applying, and because we had absolutely nothing to start it off with, we did get $25,000. We had to buy everything from scratch. Yeah, and I mean, yes, it is a nice thing, but you didn't have to ask for that. If you have things, I mean, it works with you. So a lot of times you wanna look at your state to see what kind of grants they have. With this grant, we had a higher five mentors. I mean, the rest of the money went straight to the technology, and we were calling it the makerspace, so it's where the computer lab was. We didn't get to change any of the signage. We're just putting basically pieces of paper out of windows to show this is where we're doing all these programs for the grades five through 12. It's centered towards anyone after school. We're keeping it on Tuesday nights. We're doing it on Saturday afternoons. We're keeping everything inside of this room right now, so that's been also one of the pros like we were talking about with finding grants to help make this room be more accessible and easy. It's sometimes messy-looking. I mean, we're finding just anything that we have left around. We have old mail trays. We're using that to do some storage. Bulletin board. We just found some whiteboard sheets and we just bought frames from Amazon. Yeah, we have everything just kind of sitting out. When we have to do anything with robots, the cords were getting all tangled. We didn't have the ability to move these counters that came with the room, so actually the team was sitting on them. The smaller that they are, the more they have to stand up if they're taller. It is a nice height for basically anyone in high school, but if you're in the fifth and sixth grade, you have to stand, so that was another problem that we had to go through. All the materials have to be laid out, but then we run out of room very quickly. And then here's a picture I took. I was walking past the room the other day and I saw Brittany teaching a class to the teens and I was laughing hysterically outside the window, so I grabbed this picture of her. But I think that the main thing we kind of want to get across with this is we got this grant. We've been able to buy the technology. We're starting to offer the programs, but the room isn't perfect. It is a worthwhile, semi-usable space and we have big ideas for how we would want to make it into a really good makerspace, like you see in the pictures with the pegboards and the metal carts and everything like that. But for now, even though it's not perfect, even though we didn't do it all at once and have that big ribbon cutting ceremony, we're offering the programs and we have some of the technology and we're making it work. We are really interested in the usability of the space and I would recommend a book to everybody who's interested as well. If you're going through this process and you maybe can't make the space perfect immediately, but you know that you want to, there's a book by Steve Krug, K-R-U-G called Don't Make Me Think about usability and he talks about various processes that you can use to make a space. He talks a lot about websites, but also about space to make a space work using observation techniques. So we have been observing where the needs are, what the students are doing, like the kids can't even sit down in the chairs and still really reach the computers here and we're realizing the types of things that we need to fix. So this is like a work in progress. And there's no fancy way. I mean, I just ask them, I sure have to say what would make things easier? What can we do better? It's just very conversational. It's not like I'm trying to, they need to give me this really fantastic answer. It's just saying, hey, what worked and didn't work and they're just telling me straight out, they're the ones using it, they're the ones who knows what the need, where it is, what we need to do better and we're going from there as best as we can. It's working. Okay, next is our memory preservation lab. So we received another grant. It was our first time applying again and it sort of like fell out of the sky. Like our director got an email about this grant and we applied and we just got really lucky and it was $12,000 to create community spaces and programs for seniors. And it was actually, there were 20 available grants, only 18 libraries applied. So we just kind of want to stress, like there's money out there that you'd be surprised that not everybody can find. So if you're like really looking for it, you can find it. So we've developed a robust programming schedule for seniors centered around the theme of preserving our memories. And we were able to use some of that money to create our digital preservation lab, memory preservation lab, that unused first floor office we talked about that old study room office. We have a VHS to DVD converter, slide converter, photo scanners, eight millimeters converter and more. And we actually, in order to make that work, oh well here you can still see it's that study room. We haven't, you know, the signs are still slowly, but surely we're getting there, right? There was this like old TV we had lying around in the basement. I think libraries tend to sort of collect old things and have a hard time getting rid of things. And normally I would be against that, but it actually worked out really in our favor because we were just like, okay, we have this VHS thing, what are we gonna do? We need a TV and we're like, ah! We have one. We have one, great. Yeah, a lot of donations, a lot of the stuff that we got were from donations. And I know you don't have to always accept things and it's tough because you don't want to let the patron down who's trying to legitimately give you something. But a lot of the times it will work out for you. So you just want to want to look at it critically, see if it will work, can this TV do something for us than any maker face? And in our case it did. So in this room, you can kind of see, this is our just our normal library shelves. We had some extra shelves in our basements. We brought them in there to hold the material. That card table came from our meeting room. We had a couple old laptops that have been like... 12 years old. Probably 12 years old, but they work well enough. So we're using them. And we're using these for programs for seniors, but eventually when the terms of the grant run out, we will then be able to open this up to the whole public. So if people want to come in and make a gift for their parents for Christmas with some old family footage, they're gonna be able to use that. It's gonna become really, really... Well, it is already very popular and it's gonna become a lot more popular soon. So again, we're kind of coming at this from a different angle. All right. Oh, here. Yeah, there's that card table you can kind of see. Okay. So making the hangout note, this is gonna be your little Harry Potter section We're kind of aiming this at... Before you go on. Yes. Oh, we do have a question here. One of the few questions that have come in. Great. But one, just talking about the grants. What was the name of that, the $25,000 grant that you got? That was called Project Next Generation. It was funded through the state of Illinois. Okay. That was a local thing for you guys in your state. It is a local thing in the state, although I wouldn't be surprised to learn. I mean, Illinois is broke. And somehow this grant still exists. So I wouldn't be surprised if other states might have similar things. Yeah, I wouldn't. Right. Here in Nebraska, we get funding from the federal government that we can pass on in the form of grants, even if our own local funding is, like you said, broke. There's other money that, it's our job as the state library to pass on to the libraries in the state. So yeah, just gotta look. There's gonna be something out there, yeah. Yeah, it's surprising how much is like kind of hiding, but you have to be really actively looking. Yes. Was there another question? Oh, there's a couple of ones here. One I wanna ask now, yeah. Someone interested in how you, what's the best way to inquire about individuals to help lead your courses? How did you get people? Oh, it's like I'm the mentors. Hmm. There's a few ways we went about it. Yeah, we kind of, we networked first. We kind of asked the staff, did they happen to know anyone who was, you know, into engineering robotics? Can they come in and help out with like kind of leading things? I was one who personally made the programs to go. I knew what the needs were. I knew that the Comarque school, they used ozobots. So we ended up getting more ozobots because of that. And then because of that, the Finch robots was kind of like the next step to learning, doing all that stuff. And so like the school can provide mentors. Yeah, it was a lot of just networking basically. We just kind of put it out there in the local community who has the skill. And one resource that our area has is, so we, I think actually meant to say this at the beginning, but forgot to, is that we are a nearby suburb of Chicago. So even though we're a pretty small community, we are surrounded by larger ones. And there are a lot of mailing lists. We're part of a system called Rails in the state, which like has a lot of libraries in Northern Illinois near Chicago, but also kind of extends all the way down to Southern Illinois. And Rails has a bunch of mailing lists where you can ask people questions. So like, hey, do you know anybody who can teach using Ozobots? And often you can find somebody that way. So I know that that's not a universal thing that people can do, but librarians love the service more than I think anything in the entire world. So I think there's probably options for a lot of people. Yeah. All right, go ahead. Okay. So making the Hangout, we're kind of aiming us to grades two through five. It's just gonna basically be kind of a crafting because Makerspace, it doesn't have to be the technology, but it's kind of more so, is there a place for homework? Is there a place for hanging out? Can they color? This is where we can do a make and take. Lizzie kind of talked about it briefly, where basically crafts can get put into a bag. They can literally open up this bag, make a really easy craft and take it home. They can show what they did at the library, and that's also the best way to do marketing as well for us. So it's kind of like the age group that they're not exactly a kid in like that children's department, but they're not exactly a tween yet to be in the young adult department. So we knew that this was a grade, like basically grades two through five, there was a need that they wanted to have their own area. And I don't want to call this like our biggest failure, but it was one of those situations where we got everything in here to make this cute little bit that you can just fold down, lots of places to hang out, and then we ran out of money to actually get the materials to put in there. So it's waiting for the next budget year, which starts in July. It starts in July, and this is our work in progress. So people are seeing it and asking questions, and we could talk it up. And it's kind of our ribbon cutting. So when it finally happens, we can't show off. This is now open to everyone. And it'll be really exciting. And, hey, maybe we'll get a grant in the meantime. Exactly, because we're gonna keep a plan. That's like we're gonna keep a plan. Okay, so next we have the making of the kids' maker space. And this is something that is the very beginning of the process. Like we don't have a lot to show this. We know what we wanna do. We've had a lot of staff discussions of like what we can actually make for that younger age group for maker space. But that is gonna be an, it's gonna be an expensive, expensive process. So we're not there yet. We have applied for grants to help us construct the room appropriately. We'll see if we get them. If we don't get them, we're just gonna go really slowly. We'll put a little bit in the budget next year. We'll put a little bit in the budget the after that. We'll just make it happen, but it'll take a lot longer. And then we're gonna have a toy library. It's gonna be an extra programming room. And it's gonna be technology and STEAM programs for the K-4 grades. And I think we're gonna be really reaching out to our local schools and resources to see what parents are actually looking for for their kids. So when I say it's the very beginning of the process. This is what it currently looks like. There are no walls. There is no floor. Well, there's a floor. There's a floor. You wouldn't want to put a toddler on it. I know a ceiling really. And there's no ceiling. We didn't take a picture of the ceiling, but it's all pipes. We do have very classy exposed brick, which is very popular these days. And you can kind of see this was an old storage room, just like a lot of kind of random stuff that we've been keeping for years and years for no particular reason. So I realized we could probably use it in here. So we're putting it in there and we're slowly building it up. So the things that we can get donated, we're looking at it, can it be used? Yes, it can. We'll put it in this room eventually. Yes. So work in progress. We still have big goals. Nothing is finished. Nothing's ever complete, but nothing ever will be complete because the more finished we get, the more our goals are gonna shift. So I know a lot of the people watching this webinar are probably of a similar library size to us. They might not necessarily be near a big city. They might be more rural, but have like a more people than we have. Everybody has a very different type of library. And I also know that there's probably a planning of people listening who don't have the amount of space we have in our library. We've kind of got these extra unused rooms, but not everybody does. And certainly we have a lot more staff and a slightly bigger budget. Our budget's roughly a million dollars. So we probably have a bigger staff and budget than many of the people listening today as well. So we did wanna talk about some options if your library doesn't have the space or the staff or the budget's just really not there that it can be. I mean, it's been really hard for us to sort of move our budget around and I know it could be even harder on a tighter budget. So some possible options, some kind of workarounds that we found. We have created a craft exchange. This has been wildly popular. We set it up directly outside our new makerspace to kind of so people in the makerspace could take materials from the craft exchange or vice versa. But of course you wouldn't have to do that. It's a very low staff impact project. Patrons can take a craft supply or they can leave a craft supply. Nobody's policing it. So there's relations just kind of helping clean up in case anything gets too crazy. That's the most stress that we have. And it has really generated a massive page and response. We've gotten a wealth of donations which we also have picked through for our programs and to bring into our makerspace. And we made a Facebook post about it that in my opinion went viral. We probably got maybe 150 shares and like 700 likes which is definitely the best at any of our Facebook posts have ever done. And it really furthers the library slash makerspace mission of expanding creativity and learning. I'm gonna use some shelf space for this. This was where the rearranging everything came in. We didn't have the shelves looking like this at all. But when I was in here doing programs with the teens they kind of were looking out and saying what are you starting over there? And it would be, oh it's like a craft exchange if you bring in anything. You can put them in here if you have anything laying around you don't want but if you need something you can pull it from here. And one of the teens actually is getting into painting. And she saw that we had one bin at the time that just said paint and she just tackled it. And we realized that this is the best way for us to actually have this marketing for it again because people are in here looking out saying what's that but also people over at the craft exchange are looking in and saying what are you guys doing in there? Yeah and it didn't start out with this many bins or anything like that. We've been getting them from big lots for like $3 a bin and as people bring stuff that we don't have like a bin for we're just like creating a little sign for it. And so it's expanding quickly. And it wouldn't have to be done in this biggest space if you have less space you could just make a smaller one. So another option for libraries that don't necessarily have space for an actual room is a library of things which of course has been a really hot topic in the library system. We are doing that as well. We're starting really slow and buying as we get the budget. So right now it's tiny. We have wireless hotspots for our patrons which are extremely popular because a lot of our patrons don't have internet at home. We got some donated stamp sets that we're lending out if people want to do some stamping and we got a very generous donation from a patron to buy like sort of retro technology. So we bought a few turntables which have also been popular. In the future our ideas are to like lend out game consoles cooking supplies, tools like drills and stuff that people don't have like easy access to. Roku's with Netflix as a sign with X. Well, we've been buying movies that are like that Blu-ray DVD digital combo. We've been keeping actually the digital combo and we're using it eventually to put into the Roku's. So that's always a good thing to have. We didn't have the money to maybe buy more movies or anything, but we're just using what we have. We have digital dominoes, right? And so it's like not a makerspace in the traditional sense of the word, but like things like cooking supplies or tool sets and things like that are still getting people making things and giving them access to that technology that they might not otherwise have. So right now, I mean, this is kind of what it looks like. It's on the shelf right behind where the craft exchange is. It's getting a bigger really slowly. And the templates that we use is just something on Microsoft Word. We're not like anything is we're going super crazy. We just want to have the bare minimum. What's listed in here? Their instructions in there. They have any questions they can always ask, but we're giving a very low maintenance. Yes, that's our goal. That's our goal. And then another option is maker kits. So our director came to us from two smaller libraries in Michigan, the door library and the Hopkins district library, both with budgets of significantly less than ours of around 180K and 100K. And they have either seven part time staff members or three part time staff members. They definitely don't have a big enough library to create a separate room for a maker space. But they do offer these maker kits. So it's things like this is like a scrapbooking kit all the way on the right, like knitting kits. They I think also have ghost hunting kits there. Types of things like to see if you're like your home is energy efficient. Like there's like a lot of possibilities, exercise kits, canning kits. The technology that you just can't really get. If you can think of it, you can lend it out to your patrons pretty much. So of course I have to ask what's in a ghost hunting kit. You know what? That's like a really good question that I also asked my director because she said that I was like, what are you talking about? It's like stuff to like, that's like supposed to be able to detect like ghost radiation. Yeah, radiation, like microphones, like little mini night vision cameras. Like pick up stuff that happens in the middle of the night. Yeah. So you know, if you're ever like in a haunted house or like spending the night in a cemetery, like sometimes you do. Yeah. You can do that. And it's not the type of thing you'd ever go out and buy for yourself. But if you can get it from your local library, why not? You can buy it on a few ghosts. Yeah. Shows all about it. And maybe you want to try it for yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So maker kits are, and you know they at these libraries, they use literally one cart. And you can see they probably got a good 25 or 30 kits on there. So recycle bags too. Yes. So they even buy the bags. It was just things that they had from other materials that they bought. Boxes that you have, just decorate them up and they're good to go. Yeah. So there's some options. Okay. Next. So our strategic planning mini grants are a way to really get staff involved in the process of the library. They have the ability to submit an application for an item or program that they feel will help them promote the library's mission. The grants can be up to $500. And there are quarterly meetings that take place with two managers and our director to review them and either prove, turn down, or give them like only maybe some of the money they requested depending on how many grants we have each quarter. And like especially with the previous picture with the carts. I mean, we have a situation where one of the staff members had circulation. Somebody literally said, your carts are too loud. You should get new carts. So this isn't a situation where the staff member could make their mini grants. Say we need new carts, that old cart that we now have that's all noisy can now be used as a make and take situation. And it really gives people a feeling of like ownership over their ideas and over the library. And like staff will have really good ideas and not feel like they have anybody to talk to about it or that they're going to get turned down. And this is a way to like really uplift. I think. People are listening. People want to hear what you want to say. People want to especially hear what the patrons are saying to you. And we want to show how can we make this a nice place for the patrons. Exactly. Okay. So making this basis work again, we'd have the rails classified. So any other library who's giving away chairs, I mean bins, anything, we will look at that every single day and see what we can use. As Lisa said, the big lots is where we're basically getting most of our bins from, it's going into our supply budget right now, but old filing drawers that we had in our basement, we decided we can use them again, extra bookshelves, that's how we ended up with the memory preservation room. We've been getting a lot of stuff from IKEA, Amazon, because Amazon has that smile. So you can actually, if anything you do, you purchase it, can get donated. Walmart, we are personally tax exempt. So that's been a really big help. And basically everything's been coming from donations from patients. Yeah, patients have been very, very generous. We've kind of put the call out on Facebook and through our social media channels. So also, there's the question of usability. Like when you're building a space with like donated materials or you're working with a space that wasn't, isn't doing what the space was designed to do, it's not always gonna be a situation where it's working exactly. Like we might be standing on the counter to write the notes. But if you keep your eye out and you have an idea of what you want this space to look like, you can be surprised like kind of what comes up that you can pounce on. So this is probably, I think a question everybody has about finding the grants. I don't think there's any sort of like really easy, like bulletproof, like if you go to this website, you'll see every grant listed. Unfortunately, you have to really be on top of it. There are a lot of other webinars out there about getting grants for libraries. If I'll have my email address at the end, I've listened to a few of them myself and I'm happy to send out which ones are large. Those are which were recorded. There are grants out there that help with library construction and space reconfiguration that we're trying to get. We really recommend that people apply very widely. You certainly won't get them all. I was like two days ago, got turned down from what I applied for, which was really sad. But like if you applied a lot, the chances of you getting one or two are much higher than if you don't apply. And it's good practice. And it's good practice, yeah, yeah. And we do recommend like, you know, I know that a lot of the people listening come from libraries with like small staffs, part-time staffs. But if you can find a staff member who's willing or excited to take it on. And we know that grants can be intimidating, but if you can find somebody who's like willing to do that work, like take full advantage. You know, give them the time and the resources. I think that's the biggest thing that we find hard at our libraries. There's always something going on. It's hard to get away from the desk and it's hard to concentrate. But if you can give your staff like even an hour off the desk a day, just like look for grants, because that takes time. And to apply for them, it's worth it. Like, yeah, okay, you maybe take five staff hours applying for this grant. But if you get it, now you maybe have $10,000 you didn't have before. So, yes. And how do we manage to keep it all together? Personally, I don't. I'm having nightmares of having melted plastic on me like all the time and stickers all over my face because of helping out with the dream. We all are dreaming about it. True. Yeah. How it's going with the team to the maker space. One that we're in right now. It's run by me. I have the technology manager helping me out and the five mentors. They're basically helping update the computers. They're helping think of ways, creative ways. Like again, we had the robots on the ground rather than on the table. Is that terrible to sit down? Yes, but we can now sit on these counters for the moment. So it's having a lot of people who are looking into it as an outsider saying what we can do because as I'm running this program, I'm thinking of like how we can make this just as quick as possible and easy as possible. But there are other ways we can go around it. And that's why it's been very helpful to have the mentors around just having someone else as an outsider saying, hey, look, you can do it this way. And it will great, you know, work well. Memory preservation room. That's run by our senior services librarian. Also our adult services librarian, was it? The technology manager again, because he's updating everything and the circulation staff because they're the ones actually getting the most amount of questions asked them. What's going on in there? What can I do? How can I sign up? What exactly will this help me with? And so the technology manager is running like the little classes, the senior services librarians kind of making the programs that are like for story tellers to come in to kind of help like speak. The adult services is basically when finding the materials. I've been helping out as an admin needed basis for everything as well. And also create, we're working together to kind of create policies. Like once we make the materials available to the public, we're creating policies for how well we used. So that is like a really broad task. But the circulation staff definitely needs to be really in the know about what's going on and how it works so that they can spread that information to our patrons. The children's maker space, that's gonna be the one that's in her room with no walls and no ceiling. Eventually, this will be how it is. Yeah, eventually the perfect world. Our youth services manager is gonna be the one kind of policing like what programs are gonna be in there, what kind of staff time is gonna be needed to help out in there. The youth services assistants, one buying all the supplies, the staff members are basically gonna be around to kind of help encourage parents to be in on there with it. They really want parents to be active with their children in this room. Then again, the staff are just kind of gonna be around to help with any messy cleanups if anything terrible happens. The hangout new questions are Harry Potter section. Again, is run by the manager just to kind of have an idea of what's gonna go in there. The youth service assistants gonna buy the supplies and this is in direct view of our help desk downstairs. This is where the part-time staff members at the desk are just kind of gonna keep an eye again just to see if we need more crayons, we need more paper, do we need to print out more coloring sheets? It's gonna be very low maintenance. Okay, and then once again, how do we manage to keep it all together? We're taking it one day at a time and step by step. We have a lot of things kind of happening all at once. We're sort of throwing it all together. We got these grants so we're throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. But there is a resource that I really recommend that talks about kind of exactly what we're trying to do called Making Space for Active Learning in your library. You can find it through Web Junction. It is a free resource. It's kind of like a class you go through. And it talks about like a lot of the steps we have been taking, surveying your community, figuring out what's needed, making a plan and then like putting it all together and making it happen. So I think that's a really valuable resource that I would recommend to anybody who kind of wants to go through like a similar situation to what we're going through and kind of revamping the whole library. But it is step by step. It is going to be frustrating and nightmares some days, but more often than the frustrating parts, you'll be really excited and the patrons will be so excited. And it's just- It's been a good turnout so far. Yeah. A lot of talking. Oh, people are just like so jazz. Like people come in and they're like, what's changed, what's happened here? And we're hearing really good feedback. So most days it feels really, really good. But it's not going to all happen overnight, right? And I think that that is, it's still very worthwhile to do it. So our tips and tricks, just sort of our advice from what we've noticed as we've been going through the process, apply for grants, just apply for them. Are you unsure if you can get it? Do you think you maybe don't fit the terms perfectly? Apply, less people apply than you think. Hey, Lizzie, I have a question. Can you ask for me? Should they apply? Well, you should. Just about a curiosity. Yes, we recommend it. You didn't write apply enough. Apply more. We recommend you survey your community. Don't do something just to do it. Like it's a hot, like makerspaces are a hot topic in libraries right now. And so I think there's a tendency to be like, we're gonna get a makerspace and we're gonna get a 3D printer and this is what the community wants. But we should ask them first. It might very well be what they want, but unless you're sure, unless you're really engaging them and figuring out what's actually needed and how you can partner and how you can build programs and what programs people want, it's not worth your time. So we regularly recommend before any other steps, talk to your community. Yeah, definitely. Like in the 3D printer sense, we actually found out that there was an aid for 3D pens, which most of us came in here. Yeah, I mean, but it was that they wanted to actually make the 3D thing with their hands on. That's kind of that blending of technology and the crafting before we get to the step of software, 3D printer. And that's where we're realizing is that there's a need. Yes. And then getting staff on board. I mean, that is, it's a big transition. Like when a library is making all these changes, I think it can be really stressful, especially if staff have been there for a long time. A lot of what we're doing requires extra work on top of everything people are already doing. This isn't like, we're gonna take away job responsibilities. This is like, you're gonna be doing what you're already doing and we're gonna add. So it really needs buy-in from the staff. That's part of what those strategic mini grants are. And that's part of why we're surveying the community too. Like in addition to helping know that this is actually what the community wants, we can then say to staff, here's the reason we're doing it. Like we're not just doing it willy-nilly. Like there's a genuine need and we as librarians are filling it and that can make people feel like their work is really worthwhile. I'm not saying it's like an easy thing. You're gonna really need to have a lot of conversations and you're gonna need to be really like transparent and be talking to people and listening to people's frustrations. But when you get your staff on board, that's when like the magic can really happen. Definitely. Again, it's that relaxed conversational tone. Just see what's going on. See what the community wants. See what people wanna talk to you about. And that's been the biggest thing for us. It's just we're having these conversations. It's nothing that we can't, if we can't promise it, we can't promise it, but we know it's a need that we're gonna have to get eventually. And it's not like we have to drop everything by a 3D printer, we tell the person wants it, but it's something that we can put on a survey eventually to say who would this be something that we do want and if we don't, what do you want? Exactly. And then so we're going fast and we're really going whole hog. Like we're in the process of doing four spaces at once. You don't have to do it that way. I don't know if I'd recommend it actually. We're happy with it, but it's like a lot. The work can be undertaken slowly. It can be done in a piecemeal fashion. Again, you don't have to have the ribbon cutting ceremony, right? As you get the resources to do it through your budget, through your friends. If you get a grant, it can happen. It doesn't have to happen in a set way. I think librarians tend to like, I know I tend to like it when things are like, this will happen and it's a plan and you've planned out exactly. It doesn't have to be that way though. It can happen in a piecemeal way. Our spaces are still very much in process. We haven't even changed any of the signs yet. See, this is how we're doing it. We're putting posters over our old design and so it's not gonna say movies anymore or anything. It's gonna just say, yeah, here's what we moved around because we had a need and whoopsies. What we see, here's the thing. We have a silhouette machine that goes vinyl cutting and we can now make a sign before it, but we can't keep up with the changing. So that will pretty much conclude what we had to talk about. We were really excited to get your questions. Here's all of our contact information. Please do not hesitate to use it. Our emails, call us, Facebook. We have a library Instagram and a specific teen Instagram. Yeah, please don't hesitate to reach out for any questions, but also ask us your questions now. Great, yes. Thank you so much. This is great to hear all the ideas and creative ways to do a maker space. And actually, one of the first questions we got was kind of a heavy question. I don't know, that was at the very beginning, but I'll ask you now, but I think you kind of explained it as you were talking, but what is the definition of a maker space? And I know that's something that is like what it has been originally and what it's people are doing now isn't always the same. It's all types of, yeah. Well, like you can see, we have four different spaces and we're calling all of them kind of maker spaces, but they have different goals in mind. Personally, to me, I feel like a maker space is like that area of the library where somebody can come and tinker. Like you can make something, you can leave with something physical, you can learn a new technology-based skill. Technology also is a broad term, like it could be robots and it could be coding, but it could be also, I think that we're gonna get a T-shirt press eventually and I think a T-shirt press would come. It's a mix of crafting involving technology. Can you make it on your own at home? Do you have a T-shirt press? No, but you can do it at my work, so you're making some things and we're just generically providing a space for you. So I feel like that's kind of how we're taking it as like we're literally making a space to make something. We're going very broad in our definition. I mean, we're considering our memory preservation to have a maker space and what you might leave with is like a DVD copy of your VHS film, but like you're definitely learning a new skill and you're getting something really pivotal out of it. So, I mean, it's a tough question to answer because I think everybody would answer it a little bit differently, but I think at its heart, it has to do with the library providing that space to learn and to tinker. I really think to tinker. Active learning, active learning, education, yes. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. And one other question here that I'm going to ask as well, which may be that I know some people I've asked about before when I've done other sessions on maker spaces things, has this affected your liability insurance at all? How is that handled? Or was it just... Ooh, that's actually a really good question and it would probably be a little bit better opposed to our director because she's been handling all those things. And if you guys would like to email us, I'll ask my director and get more information about that and we can pass that along to anybody who's curious. But to the extent that I am aware, our insurance has not changed. I think we already had a pretty comprehensive liability coverage for what happens in the library and I don't think we would, yes, I would hope, yeah. Yeah, so I don't think it has, and also we are going to be, when we start making the room available publicly and not just on the terms of the grants, we are going to be having open lab hours where there will always be a staff member present unless somebody has been certified by us to use the machine. So that's kind of another way we're going to be sort of handling the risk of injury and fire and explosions and policies, yeah, so. All right, that's a lot of thing. I know a lot of maker space people with all these equipment are doing is either the whole he's having staff but then whole certifying other people to be able to use it. Have something in place so that you know that someone has been trained by another expert rather than just, oh, I know how to use this thing. Yeah. And then we kind of trust them to be alone with it. And you know, that is a question of staff time. Let's say we're going to have maybe 10 open lab hours each week. We're going to need a staff member in there for that time period, but somebody could bring a laptop in maybe and be working on other work if nobody's there. But I mean, these are like really kind of tough questions that we need to sit down and figure out like as the terms of the grant get closer and closer to the end, you know, staff time is a really, really valuable thing, but we also think that these services are so valuable that it warrants to kind of changing things around. Yeah. Sure, sure. All right, I think we'll wrap it up for now. Thank you so much, guys. This is great. Yeah, thanks. Yeah. And I am going,