 And welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I'm 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 would be of interest to libraries. We 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 every week as we are doing right now. And we post that to our website as well. And I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can get the archives from our previous shows. 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 who may be interested in any of the topics that we have on Encompass Live. We do a mixture of things here on the show, book reviews, interviews, demos of services and products, mini training sessions sometimes, basically anything that may be of interest to libraries. At the Nebraska Library Commission, we are the state agency for all libraries in the state. So we cover all types of libraries, public, academic, K-12, museums, correction facilities. We're all over the place. Really our only criteria is that it's something to do with libraries. Something libraries are doing, something that we think they could be doing, something that we think they may be of interest to them. We have Nebraska Library Commission staff that sometimes do sessions, do shows for us on things specifically that we're doing here in Nebraska, but we do bring in guest speakers. And that's what we have this morning with us, guest speaker on the line with us. Anya Yount, good morning, Anna. Good morning, how are ya? Good morning, I'm doing all right. A little wet here today. It's been rainy for a day or two. Oh gosh. And it's gonna keep going. And she is, as you can see here, a library director at Transylvania County Library in North Carolina. And she is on the line remotely with us. She did not travel here to Nebraska. We are lucky with this great software that we have here is go-to-web-and-hour software that we can bring in speakers from outside of Nebraska, from across the country. And Anna's gonna talk to us about the Aspen Report, Aspen Institute Dialogue and Public Libraries Report rising to the challenge, re-envisioning public libraries. This is a session that you'd done previously at a conference, correct? Correct, I did this at ARSL last year and also my county manager and I have done it twice. We did an ICMA webinar and we presented it the North Carolina Library Association Conference. Well, this is a great thing with the Aspen Institute and this discussion about public libraries has been going on for a while. But they've been developing new resources for libraries and I think I'll just hand it over to you, Anna, to explain what it is and how libraries can use it. Wonderful, I'm happy to be here today to talk about how my library used the work of the Aspen Institute Dialogue on Public Libraries to create a dynamic new strategic plan for our library. And so here is pretty picture number one. This is Looking Glass Rock in the Pisgah National Forest and this is 12 miles by road from our library. So to get us started, what I want to do is describe how we took a body of work on the future of the public library that we found inspiring and we used it as a framework for developing a new strategic plan for our library. And those of you who are familiar with the Aspen Report will know that it is not designed specifically as a strategic planning process. And what I want to do in this presentation is describe how we used it as a guide to develop a process that was flexible and if I dare to say it, almost fun. So I'll be weaving back and forth between giving you an overview of the Aspen Report and describing our library, our community and our process. That would be awesome. If you can make strategic planning fun, you will have so many libraries indebted to you. Okay, it was fun for us. That's all I'll say. So, Transylvania County is located in the southwestern portion of North Carolina and we are small. We rank 70th out of the state's 100 counties in population and we're known for our 250 waterfalls. So you'll see the Land of Waterfalls logo in this presentation. And as you can see from the map, roughly half of our land area is in public lands, either the Pisca National Forest, the Nantahala National Forest, the DuPont State Forest, or the Gorgeous State Park. We have two municipalities, Brevard, which is the county seat and has a population of 7,609 and Rosman, which has a population of 587. And we've heard every single vampire joke and yes, Halloween Fest is a very big deal here. That's all. So we invite, we love visitors. Outdoor recreation, well, that slide is not advancing for some reason. There we go. So outdoor recreation, agriculture, tourism and Brevard College are a few other important aspects of our community. I always include this because this is my county manager's favorite slide. So, like every other small community in America, we have seen some dramatic changes in the last 20 years. On the left is the former Acosta paper factory which manufactured cigarette and Bible paper. It was a huge multi-generational, paternalistic employer from 1939 until 2002. And at its peak, it employed as many as 3,000 people. So today, nothing in that left photograph exists. It's a superfund site and our county is working to redevelop it as the Davidson River Village, which would be a light industrial retail area. On the right is the former DuPont x-ray film plant which operated from 1959 to 1999. Again, none of that plant exists anymore. After its closure, a high-end gated community developer outbid the conservation fund to buy most of the property, then the state stepped in and condemned it and paid off the developer. And that is now the DuPont State Forest, which includes Hooker Falls, Hy Falls, and Triple Falls, all of which were featured in the movie, The Last of the Mohicans. So if you saw Daniel Day-Lewis going over that waterfall, this is where he was doing it. Oh yes, I remember that. Yep. So, in addition to a stable manufacturing-based economy, we had and still do have a large retirement population. In fact, at one point, our county had the largest population percentage of folks 65 and over of any county in North Carolina. So after the plant closures have much weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, our county is reinventing itself. Mountain bikers and craft brewers have discovered Western North Carolina and they're dramatically changing the face of our community. Our library is a single 35,000 square foot facility. You see it on the left. We opened this building in 2006. We operate one bookmobile. We're happy to say that 54% of our service population have library cards. We have 209,000 visits annually and our circulation hovers around 317,000 annually. So enter the Aspen report. For those of you who are not familiar with the Aspen Institute, it is a nonpartisan forum for values-based leadership and the exchange of ideas. And it's known for gathering experts to address complex problems with the goal of having a real-world impact. And with the help of the Gates Foundation, they did just that for public libraries in 2014 and the result is rising to the challenge, re-envisioning public libraries. So I would ask you to ask yourselves these three questions. Is the community that you serve changing? Are some of the indicators that you've traditionally used to measure your success slipping, for example, circulation drops or door count drops? And when an issue arises in your community and agencies are assembled to address a need, is your library always invited to take a seat at the table? This was our situation in 2015. It was as if we woke up and found that our community had changed overnight from a slightly sleepy mountain retirement town to a mecca for mountain bikers and micro-brewers. Excuse me, the roads were full of people we didn't know. They were from off and they didn't have library cards. We were beginning to see a small but steady decline in our bread and butter statistics and what's worse, although community leaders still loved us and pointed to the new library with great civic pride, they did not view us as much more than a warehouse full of books with nice programs for kids and old folks. At the same time, we got a new county manager after 22 years. She's a millennial and she began the development of the county's first strategic plan. Also, this was the scene when our state librarian, Cal Shepherd, who just retired a couple of weeks ago, distributed copies of the Aspen Report to every public library in North Carolina. And for me, it was as if the stars were aligning. I read it, I thought it was insightful and inspiring. It was really an aha moment. I made everyone on my staff and all of my board members read it. The Aspen Report articulated ways that communities in general, but ours in particular, could leverage their investment in libraries to build stronger civic ecologies and form new partnerships for achieving local and national goals. And this described exactly the way I wanted us to think about moving forward and serving our rapidly changing community. So we've all been asked the question, why do we need libraries anymore when we have the internet? Well, the Aspen Report is to my mind a far-reaching and thoughtful response to that question for our profession, for those who care about libraries and for those people who ask us that question. So the Aspen Report was and continues to be inspiring for me, my staff and my board members. And these are some of the phrases that really resonate from us for us. They're words that express why we're proud of what we do as librarians in our community that make us proud to get up and come to work every day and that inspire us to plan ways to do more. And we use these phrases every chance we get. One of our favorite trusted community resource, democracy's maker space and describing ourselves as stable, reliable, nimble and always there, makes sense when we're talking about the library in our community. So in addition to being inspiring, the Aspen Report was a call to action for all of us who know that change and growth are really what libraries are all about. The Aspen Report identifies four strategies for success. And this is a good time for me to say that every single one of the Aspen resources is available free on their website for anybody to use in any way they want to use it. And I'll have a link at the end of the presentation. So I'm sure that many of you are required to submit a long range strategic plan to someone. It could be your local government, a governing board, a state library agency. In North Carolina, all public libraries are required to submit a long range plan to the state library annually. It is one of the requirements for receiving state funds. Our library's plan was really long and really dull. It was very prescriptive. And when we didn't meet one of the many detailed objectives like circulate 5% more juvenile nonfiction, my staff felt really demoralized. It was like the plan had become a boat anchor around our necks. Plus, it was completely library-centric. All of the goals were about the library. None were about making our community stronger. And true confession time, it was so deadly that we had sunk to the point of just changing the dates and sending it in for a couple of years. So this is also a good time for full disclosure and say that I've been the library director in Transylvania County for 24 years. So when I criticize our previous plans, I have no one but myself to blame. So strategy number one really resonated with us. We needed a new plan and we wanted to align it with our county's new strategic plan. So when I read the Aspen report and saw strategy one, that coupled with the county's new strategic plan gave me the idea of using the Aspen work as a framework for developing a new strategic plan for our library. Our community is changing so rapidly and we wanted a plan that would be nimble and flexible to meet changing needs and priorities. Aspen's strategy number two for success is access to content in all formats. Well, broadband is key. Well, duh, nobody knows that better than we do. Broadband in rural communities is huge and it's something that here in Western North Carolina, we all work toward every day. One thing to note about the work of the Aspen dialogue is that the underlying assumption is that we are none of us in this alone. Many of these issues like rural broadband are national issues and it's important that they continue to be made top of mind for decision makers at that level. Strategy number three I think is challenging for many people because the Aspen report stresses the need for libraries to explore new avenues for funding. I have a lot of colleagues who really struggle with looking beyond traditional sources of government funding and a few grants here and there to fund their libraries. Our library is truly fortunate because the long-term sustainability piece is something that's always top of mind with our library foundation board of directors. They are keenly aware of the fact that given the volatile nature of federal funding for libraries and in North Carolina, the relatively stagnant state funding that other strategies will be called for if we're to continue to strive for excellence. Strategy number four is cultivate leadership. And in addition to looking at librarians as community leaders and identifying library champions in our communities, I found that our strategic planning process and the outward looking approach of the Aspen work has really helped my staff to step up and assume leadership roles that they may not have previously considered. Sometimes those are within the library but sometimes they're within other community organizations and that has been so wonderful for everybody. That's part of it that has almost been fun. So the Aspen dialogue is emphatic. We are not book warehouses. We are people, place and platform. As more local officials recognize this and appreciate what we bring to the table, fewer people will ask why do we need libraries? We've got the internet. Both the Aspen work and our county strategic plan describe vibrant nodes of civic engagement. That phrase really resonated with us. In fact, it became our mantra. We really wanted to be a vibrant node. All of us, the staff and board members we absolutely saw our library as being the trusted community resource that is ideally suited to filling that role in Transylvania County. It's crystal clear to us the job going forward is to make it clear to everyone else in Transylvania County. Another key concept that spoke to us is that the primary goal of the public library is not large circulation numbers. It is the cultivation of an intelligent and informed community. That is a game changer for a lot of people because we've all been in the numbers race and we do have to collect and provide data on what we do but we have to remember that the numbers themselves are not the goal. So quickly, here's what the Aspen report has to say about people, place and platform. People are at the center of the library's mission. It's us and it's our customers. And I can't tell you how fortunate we are at this point to at long last have a county manager who really gets libraries. In fact, she calls our library the community help desk. Place, today's library play is both physical and virtual. We all know that, but place is still important. And platform, great. Just as Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks wanted all of his coffee shops to be everyone's third place. Well, we want our libraries to be the third place in every community. Platform is everything. And platform is probably the concept that my staff found squishiest as we were working our way through. But it's helpful just to look at it as all of our resources. Everything we have is our platform. So just as we were all revved up about the Aspen report and I was thinking about using it as a guiding framework for developing a new strategic plan. The Aspen dialogue on public libraries came out with their action guide. And again, let me stress that these folks did not design this strictly as a strategic planning process, but for us, that was the appeal. So this is Aspen guide version 2.0 in the slide. We actually were using the original version, but it is very flexible all about adapting it to your community. One size does not fit all. This is our process in a nutshell. Self-study, we had action guide teamwork, public dialogues, and then we wrote the plan. So those people having fun in the slide are some of my staff members. We received an LSTA easy planning grant from the State Library of North Carolina. And we were frankly amazed when we were able to have Maureen Sullivan, a nationally recognized library consultant, past ALA president, and member of the original Aspen dialogue working group, agree to work with us on this project because she literally helped write the Aspen guide. And with her help, we devised a process which drew heavily from the activities in the action guide, but which allowed us the freedom to creatively deviate when it worked best for us. So this is what we did. And this is how we did our homework. We had a lot of previous survey experience, which was frankly for us very staff intensive, very tedious, and very time consuming. So we decided to try something lighter and less intense. And we developed something called Letter to the Library, which let us target specific audiences and get more detailed information about specific services and programs. And there you see our mailbox. We had a pretty much blank sheet of paper with a couple of questions that said, tell us what you think. We let people turn it in anonymously. We let them mail it back to us. But we got some great feedback in just that really simple way. In addition, our reference staff gathered relevant data on the community. We looked at our own data and we challenged some long held assumptions. For instance, we always assumed that retirees were our most concentrated user group. But when we looked at it differently, we learned that 72% of the county's population, aged 20 to 34, have library cards. And by contrast, only 53% of the county's population, aged 60 and over, have cards. So while retirees may represent larger total numbers, in a real sense, we are making headway with the new families who are moving in and changing our demographics so dramatically. We studied our own county's new strategic plan line by line on our staff development day. Our new county manager developed the county plan with a process that involved actively listening to community focus groups, together input on six key issues, quality of life, public lands and the environment, county organization, economic development, transportation and water resources. So we looked as a library staff at every goal and every strategy and we brainstormed ways that the library could help achieve the goals the county had set for itself. And some of those things were way out of the box for us, like solid waste. And you'll see when we take a look at our plan that we've incorporated the county strategies into our library strategic plan. Also, I did meet individually with key people to talk about what we hope to accomplish and to learn more about what their organizations were doing and how we could work together to move the needle for Transylvania County. Talk to people like county commissioners, the job center director, economic development director, county planner, those sorts of folks. So we were, as I said, using the first version of the action guide and it consists of a series of questions and activities that are designed to guide you as you think about and discuss each area. Many libraries are using the report and the action guide in different ways, most of which really don't result in a new strategic plan like ours did. But we were inspired by the report and we were interested in the method, especially the public dialogue piece. And we wanted a new plan. So this seemed like the perfect approach for us. We had a seven member steering committee made up of staff members, some self-selected and some I picked and it was a great group. We had so much fun working together. We also utilized some of our existing staff team like the group we call our M&Ms, the media and marketing team. And we created a number of ad hoc teams to work on different activities. We did not slavishly follow the action guide. If something just didn't jive with our situation, we did not waste our time on it. And we learned this with the very first activity. So we were just getting underway. We got to activity one and it looks pretty straightforward. So we thought this would be a good activity to work with the entire staff. Let's include everybody. It looks easy. Eight bubbles, identify the service populations at your library. We ended up with not eight bubbles, but 54 bubbles. And the exercise of broadening the bubbles and getting to something that looked like this picture really discouraged the team. So we dumped it. And after that, we never forgot Maureen Sullivan saying, if you've seen one library, you've seen one library. So we let it go and we moved forward. And from then on, we were free to be creative and to do what worked for us. An example that I'm really proud of is this place exercise that one of our ad hoc teams developed. So this is the library as place activity from the action guide. And we used the questions on the right and then we adapted the activity to meet our particular needs. My staff, one of our teams took the library floor plan and they color coded it to show which spaces were succeeding as great spaces, which are undergoing change like our public computer area there, the big blue blob and which areas are perpetual problems and which seemed to offer opportunities to us to do something great without much expense. So this is the grid they used. And this was another, this grid that they created worked so well and was so easy to allow all of the staff to have some input that we really don't think we would have gotten any other way. Another success was our modification of the library as civic resource activity. And that's what we did with our friends board and our board of trustees. And we gained some really valuable insights that we would not have gotten any other way. So the action guide is arranged so that the self-study activities culminate in a series of public dialogues. And from the very beginning, these public dialogue session loomed large for us. My staff wanted every single one of the 33,000 people in the county to come to a public dialogue session. And if they didn't, they thought we would have failed. So fortunately, Maureen Sullivan talked us down from that ledge. Ultimately, we held seven sessions around the county and we began with our community leaders session. So if you are in a small community, you know that this is exactly how it is whenever a group of community leaders is assembled, you round up the usual suspects. We paired our original list of community leaders down to about 25 people and they were, in fact, the usual suspects. We had county manager, commissioners, mayor, vice mayor, city manager, sheriff, police chief, superintendent of schools, college president, community college head, economic development director, NAACP president, newspaper editor, et cetera. We held a breakfast with great food. And I wrote a letter personally inviting each person and explaining why we wanted him or her particularly to come. And that was the idea of our county manager and it was brilliant. So by all means, send personal invitations. Do not use a form letter. We only asked two questions, the same two questions we asked in every one of our sessions and you'll see those in a moment. The wonderful thing about the community leaders session was that the group discussion just took off. At the end, the dialogue between the community and among the community leaders had been so vibrant that Maureen Sullivan asked if that group met regularly. And interestingly, although they all know each other and you probably cannot have a meeting in our community without some combination of those people being present, that group had probably not been together in that way. And several of them actually suggested that they get together on a regular basis. I don't think that will happen, but I was very, very proud that the energy in that session sparked the idea. So serve great food, use an outside facilitator, be respectful of their time, listen carefully and take lots of notes. For the public dialogue session, our remaining six sessions were all slightly different. We did an open to all session at Rosman High School and one at the Cedar Mountain Cafe and one at the library. Also, our community has a grassroots leadership program that's called Vision Transylvania. And we held one session for all current and past participants of that program. Then we held one for the teenagers who are members of the VIV class, which is the teen version of that leadership program. And we held a session for our Latino community at their community center. So Rosman, the population 587 is the smallest of our two municipalities. They, you know, because of their size, they always seem to feel slightly slighted and sometimes have a chip on their shoulder. It's nine miles from the library to downtown Rosman, but it's much more distant in cultural ways and other important ways. So there are school colors, as you see in the slide on the left are black and orange. So we all wore orange to that session and it was a great icebreaker and really they appreciated it so much. So here are the two questions we ask in every session. And what we heard was fascinating. We ask, what is your vision of Transylvania County? And we ask, what can the library do to make that vision a reality? What we heard was fascinating. We were prepared for just about anything. We heard people speak passionately about their community and their library. Two things that I will always remember are the woman who stood up and in a very emotional way said that she wanted to live in a community where no one was lonely. And she recognized that for many people, the library is a place they go every day for just that reason. Another was a man who stood up and described overhearing our reference staff, helping a man locate important healthcare information and how moved he was by their caring approach. Ultimately, our plan developed around the five areas that we heard that emerged from every session. One of them was getting the word out. We heard that we don't do a good job of telling the community what we do. We heard a lot about comfort and access issues, and those included things like our hours, some of our policies, allowing food and drink in the library, that sort of thing. Early literacy, in every session, there was unanimous agreement that we want to be a community where every child enters school ready to read and succeed. The library is a convener. We heard in every session that we are regarded as that safe, neutral place where the community can come together to discuss and learn about key issues. An important part of this was that the library provided intergenerational connections. We heard lots of people express a desire for intergenerational programs and volunteer opportunities. And outreach, remember, we have no branches and we really were charged with what we heard in reaching out and making sure that we're present in every corner of the community. And the Aspen Report is also urgent in its call that we learn how to provide library services that are untethered from the library walls. Interestingly, not one single person in any of our session was mentioning that they wanted more books or more computers. So our product was a new mission statement, a new vision statement and a new strategic plan. We wanted our plan to be short, no more than five pages. I think we are a little over that, but we wanted it to be closely aligned with the community's goals as described in the County Strategic Plan. And I do have a link to the, excuse me, to our plan that we'll try to make work in just a minute. But in the end, it's something that my staff is very proud of. They don't think that it's a boilerplate. It does not feel like a term paper. It's alive and it's relevant. We published our web version first and then the print version was funded by our library foundation. Each of our goals, as I said, is linked to one of the County's goals which are incorporated into our plan. And for each of our goals, we have strategies for achieving them. And then for each strategy, we develop one or more activities. And these activities actually go into the County's work plan and we report our progress to the commissioners every six months. And these activities also inform our budget requests every year. So I'm gonna try to go to this link and we'll see what we get. A, we'll see if we can get back. I wish we could be able to, yeah. So this is the web version and here's our mission and vision. We also incorporated, you'll see there at the bottom, I hope you can see them, quotes that we got from our letters to the library. So we were happy to be able to put those in. And here's an example of our, of a goal. We'll pick read to succeed. So here's our goal and our strategies underneath. And then at the bottom, you'll see another quote. And also the County strategies that this particular goal was designed to address. So one of our other goals is our welcome goal. And as you see, if you're interested, you can download our plan. There's a PDF available. And heck, if you want a paper copy, I'll mail you one if you just let me go. Here you go. So can we go back is the question. You shouldn't be able to click on it there. Yep. And go to the slide you were just at on the right. Yay. Okay. So we have a long list of activities that we want to pursue. And the discipline is to prioritize. And the method we use is to characterize all of the activities we're interested in in three categories. One is pursue, which means we're gonna try to do it right away. The next is develop, which is we're gonna plan to do it next. And finally, we have a category we call explore, which means that more research and planning is needed. We've also learned that it's important to pay careful attention to what we call expendable work. So we know that we can't suddenly begin all of these new initiatives and keep doing what we're doing. Something has to be let go. And that's the challenge. There are things that the staff does that they're happy to let go of, but we just can't. And then there are things that they don't feel like we can let go of, but we have to force ourselves. You all have those kinds of things. Well, we've always done it this way. And staff get very attached to some of those things. So that's the trick of trying to discipline yourself to prioritize and also to remember that you can't do everything. So the process described in the Aspen report and the action guide is outward looking, which we love. And it's focused on leveraging the library's key assets, people place in platform to help us be the dynamic civic institution that we want to be. And the Swiss Army knife on the left is my new personal elevator speech that I give every chance I get. The library is the community Swiss Army knife. We have been in your pocket forever. It feels comfortable in your pocket and it's always there, but you only use the knife. It's time to break out the corkscrew, the toothpick, the bottle opener and realize that your public library is a dynamic civic resource. It is not a book warehouse. And I have to tell you that I was giving my elevator Swiss Army speech to the local United Way director. And he said, I love that. Can I use it? And I said, no, however he probably is. That's great. I love that. Yeah, that's a very, it's a perfect description of, perfect description of what we are, yeah. Absolutely. So here's the link to the Aspen resources for all of you who may not have had a chance to visit them. As I said, they are free. They're readily available for you to use as you like. And in a nutshell, putting Aspen to work in your library, there are so many ways to use this. I have talked to libraries who've used the Aspen work as just the community dialogue piece or they have used it as a board or staff development tool. Many people use it in their staff development days. So it's all free. Community awareness. And some local and regional association workshops. My staff has been involved with helping people use Aspen in those areas. So with that, if there are questions and comments. Yeah, let's see. That was great, Anna. Thank you so much. The Aspen report, I did go to the website myself and download it. If anybody else does have questions, please do type into your question section. I can grab them there and pass them on. So we can answer any questions you have about either the report itself, the action guide, what they've done at the Transylvania County Library. If you wanna have more explanation of some things. We do have one question that can actually, I was just saying, yeah, this is great. I did say, I was saying, I did download the action guide and the report. For the action guide, it's great. They actually have you, they call it register, but you just put in your name, email address, everything. And then they'll send you updates to it. Cause as you said, there is version 2.0. Exactly. Right, there's an updated version. So whenever there is any updates or changes or things going on, you'll get notified of that. And we actually did, you know, cause we were working through it when 2.0 came out. So some of the things that we gave them as feedback to make it more useful, I think they've used and that's good. Great, yeah. And they do have a Facebook page for the Aspen Institute and a Twitter account for the library vision, which is what they're calling the whole concept, I guess. So if you're interested in following them in social media that way, definitely. And there's some interesting community stories on their side as well. Yes, yes. Colorado is the most recent one that I noticed and there's been some previous ones of other states using it. We do have some questions and comments coming in, let's see here. So I'd love your elevator speech in your presentation. What do you think fostered such good discussion at your community meetings? This person says, I asked because I've been at several very sterile community discussions that felt forced and not authentic. You know, I think that the facilitator is the key. You know, one of the earlier slides, using an outside facilitator is really important. But it's not already that people don't already know. It's like, oh, well, they're just come from the library, talking at us about the library, they don't. Exactly. And now I went to all of them. And one of the things I said up front was, please do not be afraid to hurt our feelings. We need to hear honest comments from you. And so that plea for good solid feedback coupled with the fact that we only asked two questions and we let them, you know, when we ask somebody, what do you want Transylvania County to look like? That's when we got the really rich discussion about things like early learning and services for seniors and those kinds of things. So we have, and we had a recorder. So someone was standing by writing notes on everything that was said. So that openness, I think, you know, the fact that we weren't asking just about the library but about the community and what can the library do? How do you see our role? So it was interesting, but they all, you know, most of them said, don't stop doing the good things you're doing. No, no. I hope not. So I think it was that that made it not feel sterile because it was, first of all, we had food everywhere. Of course. That's the key to any library event of any sort. Exactly. Meetings or programs provide, food is good bribery. Food is great. Fake. So I was wondering, too, in these discussions, that sounds great, yeah, get someone to come in and just don't overwhelm them with things. But I know some of our libraries have had trouble. We have libraries here. As you were saying, you have to do a strategic plan for certain reasons. And here in Nebraska, we have what I call, used to be called a strategic plan, community needs response plans that libraries do to get accredited, to get our state funding. And a lot of libraries have trouble with getting the people in their focus groups or in their meetings to talk about the community. Like, as you were saying, what do you want Transylvania County to look like as opposed to what the library can do, looking outside the library's walls? Yes. Did you have that same kind of, trying to guide them? Don't just talk about the library, think bigger. Because the first question was not about the library, we really didn't. If you start out by saying, OK, tell us what your vision is for your community, especially with the community leaders. They knew they were there to talk about the library, but they really took off in some broad brush areas. And then when you bring them back and say, OK, you've mentioned all of these things like living wage jobs and affordable housing and better management of the landfill, what can the library do in those areas? Help us, help us. And the answers were things like, well, you can have programs on recycling. You can help us bring in speakers on what is the living wage. You can be just the neutral space for meetings on these topics when the Economic Development Board wants to work on it. When we talked about workforce development, one of the things that they thought of for us was, which surprised us, it wasn't using the public computers for job seeking, which is what we all think of. It was, can you do workshops on soft skills? Which had not been on our radar screen before. One of the things that has come out of the piece on early learning is a series of community dinners that's held here. So once a month, a coalition of people who work with children come together. They have a speaker. It's like a potluck dinner that's catered. And kids can come and we provide a space for the kids to be and everybody pitches in with supervision. But we might put out Legos or something. And the dinner is in our community room. And it's not about the library. Right. I think that helps to try and get them thinking about the fact that the library can, what you're talking about, host all of these things. We are the place for you to use for whatever topic, for whatever organization, whichever county group, county department wants to do something. That's one of the big things we're here for, to be more, yeah. And it's exactly what we meant when we said we want to be a vibrant node of civic engagement. That's what we aspire to be. And I think that it's not going to change overnight. There are a lot of people who still think, you know, I don't need a book. I don't have to go to the library. It's an ongoing, it's an ongoing work. It is. Struggle for us, yeah. Yeah. We'll get there. Okay, we have another question. Can you tell us what were some of the new services created as a result of your plan? Well, we have a lot of new program series. And we have some things we have let go of. Like we are changing some of our policies. A biggie for us is in starting in July, we're going to eliminate overdue fines on juvenile material. Yes, I love it. So that was identified as a barrier to early learning for us. One of our big new things is a preschool outreach. It's called Out and About Hullabaloo. And we take our bookmobile and our youth services staff. Right now, we're in two locations and we're doing story times, what we call Hullabaloo, which is story time with Kraft and time on the bookmobile in two remote locations. So that is something that was directly born out of our plan. And as I said, when we adopt a goal and a strategy, it's also got to be tied to our budget. So we were asking for funding for that part-time staff person to do this program. And we got it because we could show that it was part of our plan and it also spoke to one of the county's strategic goals. Did I answer the question? Yeah, that's just want to know something new because you were talking about how there are certain things you do have to keep doing and some things to let go yet. So, yeah, letting go of fines and ramping up outreach have been big for us. And we are hampered by the fact that we only have one building. So something that is in the planning stage is there are a number of community center buildings around the county and our county is working to provide like a menu of county services that we can provide in those community centers. And they're putting Wi-Fi in, I think nine of them. So we're looking to develop a couple of menu items that we can add to that to take on the road. All right, okay, so they do have a follow-up question which now does make sense here. Now you mentioned eliminating fines, but what's any other services that you dropped as a result of this work? Well, see, we haven't been as good as dropping things. It's hard, yeah. It is very hard. Was there anything that in these discussions of your community members, because you were talking about, you said you told them, don't worry about hurting our feelings. And they all talk about what more, and you mentioned things that they could do. Is there anything that you were told by the community not to do, or that you don't really use, or? You know, the biggest criticism that we got was that we don't do a good job of letting people know what we're doing. And so one of the things we are thinking, considering dropping is either dropping or revamping our print newsletter. Because one of the biggest discussions was people, because we said, well, how do we, tell us how? How can we get the word out to you better? And they were all over the map. We have people who want something in their physical mailbox every day. We have people who don't want email. So we didn't get a clear answer on that and we're still grappling with it. So I think there's gonna be a drop that comes out of that piece. I think that we may see some programs that we've had for a long time, maybe be scaled back. So just so that we can try some new things. But one of the things we have done is develop a, and this is the discipline piece, we've developed a program matrix form. So when somebody comes up with an idea, it is a guide so that it helps either the staff member or we put it out there for the public. But it helps them see, is this new program or service something that fits in with the plan? Where, which gold is it address? Is it something that needs to be beta tested? How much staff time do you think it'll use? So once you enforce the discipline of looking at it at new ideas and my staff have unfortunate, they have a wealth of new ideas. But if we have to sit down and figure out how does it fit into our plan? Then sometimes it makes you see that now is not the time to do that. Not that it, I don't think it hampers any creativity but it does make everybody understand that everything we do comes with a cost. You have to look at the big picture of everything, yeah. Yeah, and it's also wonderful to have the whole staff looking at the big picture. I mean, if you look back at our vision statement, the last statement is we want to be the place in the community that no one can live without. And that huge statement came just bubbled up in our staff development day and it was wonderful. Everybody knows that, you know, it's a huge vision. But if you don't dream big, you'll never get there. Right, yeah. And was that something that maybe because it's such a big vision intimidating or scary, or you had said before the very beginning that your staff, if they couldn't get all 30, something thousand people in the county to come and tell you what they want, there was a failure. Which is just insane. You know, good on you for talking to every single person, but do you, yeah. I think that's something, I mean, at the end, I guess maybe as you work through it at the end of the process, were they less scared that it's okay? You know, we'll reach for that and... Yes, and I think that they, the piece about numbers not being what drives us. Yeah. And the fact that it's incremental, every person we reach has the capability to tell somebody else. And that's how the word gets spread. And I think that they all believe that we are the place the community can't live without. Oh, yes. We're so... No. So it's not intimidating at all. It's just a matter of spreading the word to everybody else. If everybody else knows that, yeah. We have another question about the report. How do you measure those human interactions activities for your state library report? Those are such number heavy reports. How do you tell that story? Because in some cases, you know, for the state library, they do need the public library survey. They need just, just give me the numbers. Right. And you know, our, I don't know if Nebraska is this way, but our state library survey has, it's like every year, they're changing what we're asked to submit. Yeah. And it gets frustrating. And we know that it's driven by the feds. Yeah, we have to follow what they give us. Yeah, yeah. And so it may not, we may not look quite as good, but we're okay with that, you know? It's not, if we are doing the, for instance, with our out and about hullabaloo, that number for us is gonna be bigger because outreach hasn't been something that we have done a lot of. And the state report here does have a figure for programs that are presented outside the library. Yep. So that's gonna be a win for us. A lot of the things that we're doing are getting us bigger numbers, not necessarily bigger print circulation numbers. If that makes any sense. Sure, there's lots of things, lots of different numbers and statistics you need to look at and hold what the library is doing. Yeah. And a lot of those are in the public library survey that we have the library that comes from the feds, as you said. So I think there, and that maybe that is part of the changes they keep doing is that there are so many new things libraries are doing and we want to end the feds and us at the state want to know. So how do we get that info from the libraries? It's great to have the more anecdotal telling the story, all the comments in like in your strategic plan and that's great and I love reading those but you need that plus show me the numbers so you can get the money you need so we know, you know, it's gotta be kind of a balance I think. Right. Well, and we have not of course stopped counting everything we do. Yes. And some of them you kind of come out sideways. So the get the word out piece for us a big aspect of that is getting the word about our electronic resources out more effectively. And when we do that, we see an increase in those uses and that is reported on our state report. So, you know, it's a cart and horse kind of thing in some situations. Sure. Sure. All right, so we're just a little after 11 o'clock here which is about when we started a little after 10. Anybody has any last minute desperate questions they wanna ask of Anna about the ask and report about what they've done. Get it typed in now and get your questions answered. I just like to say this is great. I'm so glad that I got you on the show. So as I said, I'd seen that you had presented this at ARSL Association for Rural and Small Libraries Conference and I thought it'd be really great for our libraries. As I said, we do do accreditation here and libraries have to do a plan like this. So I think we're gonna be definitely, I've been looking to use this to push into our training. Oh, well, you know, anybody who would like a copy of the plan, of course it's on our website, please feel free, we love to share it. And if anybody has any questions they would like to ask directly, I'm easy to find. Yeah, and we're gonna include, we do have a link and I'll show you when we get to the archives here to the Aspen Institute report, the action guide and I'm gonna add a link to, I just wrote myself a note, add a link to the URL you gave for your library of strategic plans. People can have that as like an example. Great, let's see how you did it all, yeah. All right, so I didn't see like anybody's typed anything in yet right now while we've been just chatting here. So I think we will officially wrap it up for this morning. Thank you so much for being here with us, Anna, coming in remotely from the East Coast. Oh, well, thank you so much. I would love to be there in person actually. I'm tired of always just doing presentations on this. We will see, yeah. So I am going to pull back, presenter control to my screen so we can show you what we're doing here. There we go, switched. Yes, all right. So that will wrap it up for today's show. Thank you everyone for attending. Thank you, Anna, for joining us this morning. We will be posting the recording to our website. This is the info for just today's show. But on our main Encompass Live page, we have our upcoming shows. Encompass Live is also very easy to find online if you just Google or use your search engine of choice and type in the title of our show, Encompass Live. So far, we are the only thing called that on the internet. So it will come up with our page, our archives page. This is our upcoming shows we have, but right underneath them is a link to our archives. And these are the most recent ones at the top of the list. So today's show will be right here at the top when it is done, should be later this afternoon as long as YouTube and the GoToWebinar cooperate with all the uploading and processing of the archive. We'll have a link here as you saw on the session page. We will have, we have links to the actual page for the rising to the challenge, the re-envisioning public libraries. And this is where you can download the report. If you scroll down through here, there's a whole thing where you can download the entire PDF. I did it, it's about 80 pages long, but then you have the PDF and you print out just whichever part you want. Or you can actually look at it here online and just jump to different sections, executive summary, forward, et cetera. We also have a link to the action guide itself, as I mentioned, that you just give them your name and email and then let you download it and keep you updated to that. When we put the archive out there, I'm gonna add a link to Transylvania County Library Strategic Plan. So you all have access to that as well. When the recording is ready, everyone who attended this morning and everyone who registered for today's show will get an email from me letting you know it's there. We'll also post it to our various social media, email, Facebook, Twitter, the whole spiel. In our archives, just wanna let you know while we're here, we do have a search feature. Encompass Live this year, 2018 is the 10th year of Encompass Live. So we have a lot of archives, 10 years worth on this one page. So we do have a search feature here now. You can search through the entire 10 years worth of our show, or you can just look at the most recent years, worth the most recent 12 months from whatever this month is to just get current information. So do keep that in mind when you are going through our archives, you will find things that are old, outdated, products or services don't exist anymore, links might be broken from in there, but we're librarians and that's what we do. We archive things and hold them for history. So if you did scroll through this list and all the way to the bottom, you will see our first show from 2009. I'm gonna scroll down right now really quick. Close your eyes, you get dizzy. Near, there we go. First show, Meet the NLC, January 2009. And you'll see every one of these is dated so you'll know when the arc of the show actually happened. So you'll know in context of time when this information was relevant to. So let's scroll back to the top now. And back to our main page, there we go. All right, so that will be for today's show. I hope you join us next week when our topic is actually related to today's topic, which I'm glad we had these together. The 2018 Public Library Accreditation Process. This is about accreditation here in Nebraska. Every year, our libraries do have public accreditation that they can apply for and our process will be starting up in July. So next week I will be on, I will be our speaker on the show talking about what we are doing for the upcoming year. Not too many big changes, but if you're interested, if you're a Nebraska library who is either up for re-accreditation this year or are interested in being accredited, this is the show for you. So please do sign up for that or any of our other shows. We've got everything booked here through July and August. So sign up for any of our shows that we have. We are also on Facebook, we do a Facebook page. I've got a link here to that page in here. I've got it opened over here. So if you are a big Facebook user, we post reminders of shows. Here's one reminding people to log into today's show. When our archives are available, we post on here. Here's an announcement from last week's show saying that recording is now available. So if you are like using Facebook to keep up on things, give our Encompass Live page over there a like and you'll hear from us that way. Other than that, that wraps it up for this morning. Thank you very much everyone for attending and we'll see you next time on Encompass Live. Bye bye.