 All right. So, welcome back again to Big Talk from Small Libraries, if you stepped away. Big Talk and Small Libraries 2020. We are at our 3 p.m. Central Time session. I am Krista Porter, your host here at the Nebraska Library Commission. And next up we have libraries, Spaces to Unite and Empower Communities. And Taylor Atkinson and Rita Drinkweiner on the line. Good afternoon, ladies. Hello. And they are from Union, South Carolina. It's actually partially from the library and the Union County Library System and the University of South Carolina Union Campus. The system serves about 8,000 people. The campus is 687 is the FTE. So they are definitely our small libraries on both sides of those. So I'm just going to hand over to you guys and tell us what you have been doing together there. Awesome. Thank you, Krista. All right. So, we have our little intro slide. We really like to make sure that everybody knows up front that we both identify as Slytherin. Oh, dear. Okay. But we're not evil. We're good people. All right. We're here. Sorry. It's okay. We'll hold it against you. A library staff for Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. So we work well with others. We're just really good at the leadership part. Great. So this is Rita. I've been with the library system for almost four years. My four-year anniversary is this day. I know it. Wow. So I have been in South Carolina for almost eight years, but I actually grew up in Kansas. I went to Indiana University for my master's in library science and then moved here to South Carolina about a year after that. And I've been in public libraries for almost seven years. And before that, I worked in academic and I worked in archives and records management. So I've worked in several different library settings. Hold on to everything. So this is Taylor. And I am from South Carolina, born and raised from Columbia, the capital. I attended the University of South Carolina for both my undergrad and my master's in library science. And once I graduated with my master's, I did something a little crazy and moved 7,000 miles away and was a school librarian and grant writer at a school in the Marshall Islands, which if you're not familiar with, then you're probably not. And that's okay. It's a country in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, about halfway between Hawaii and Australia. So I had that adventure for two years and then moved back to South Carolina and have been here in Union for almost three years now. So we want to tell everybody just a little bit about Union County. If you're not familiar, why would you be yet again? Or if you don't know much about South Carolina in general. So Union County is a very rural county and upstate South Carolina. If you can spy and sort of see it on the map there, it is located near that 176 sign. But you'll see that there are no major interstates that are actually running anywhere near Union. We're about 30 miles from the closest major interstate. And the closest big city is Spartanburg, which is about a 40 minute drive from here as well. And the biggest relative. Yes. Very relative, but it's very big compared to Union. So that's a small rural county, about 512 square miles. The entire county population is just under 28,000. It is a shrinking population and has been for years. That is not a growing population. And it is an aging population. So Union was a mill county, textile mills. And it's Hay Day. And how many mills were there? 30 mills. And all of those mills had closed down by the 1980s. 80s and 90s. And unfortunately, because of the location of the county, there really hasn't been a lot of economic growth since then to replace that. Yeah, unfortunately, some members of leadership in our county voted against having an interstate go through the county. So that wasn't option at one point. And because the interstate does not, a lot of industries are less interested. We are part of like supply line, the supply quarter of like BMW and Volvo. Since the main industry in South Carolina is manufacturing. Yeah, so because of this background, there's some things we wanted to share. So in Union County, there's currently a one in three poverty rate amongst our children. One in five adults are at or below a third grade reading level. And one in four of our students does not graduate high school in five years. And one of the biggest reasons for the low literacy rate is that the touchdown mills incentivized people to leave school at the age of 14 and begin working in the mills. So some information about our library in particular. So you'll see here. This is our library. It is the Carnegie Library, the oldest Carnegie Library in the state of South Carolina. So it opened in 1905 was commissioned in 1903. There were no real renovations or restorations between 1905 and 1985. And then the library was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. And then again from 1985 until 2018, not really any work, no renovating or restorations, but we underwent a $2.5 million renovation and restoration in 2018. And we'll talk a lot more about that because as part of this renovation, we are now a new partnership facility and we'll go into a lot more detail about that later on. And we were excited to be announced as a 2019 finalist for the IMLS National Model for Museum and Library Service. We didn't win, but but that's okay. Congratulations anyway. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks to the first rural institution in South Carolina to receive it and only at the third library in the state. So we're pretty honored to be among the much larger and better funded systems that are the full funds that have been included in the past. The South Carolina Aquarium did win last year, so there was some South Carolina representation, which was exciting. And so again, this is the picture you see is the Carnegie Library. This is where Rita and I currently are. This library is located centrally in the city of Union and in the city of Union, there are about 8,000 residents. And Rita can talk a little bit about a new thing that we have started doing where we're trying to to branch out beyond just the city. The Carnegie Library to serve as the main and only library facility in Union since 1905. We could have a bookmobile for several years, but the library could not afford to operate it and took it off the road and sold it in 2013. So until last year, we actually only had one service location for the entire county and didn't really have the resources to expand it. So one of the partnerships we have actually implemented is with our town halls. We are using a, we call them satellite or micro branches. It's a different model than traditional library service. We are located in the town hall facility. And so what the library brings, library brings computers, which we were able to get donated from a local college. And so donating to the computers, we took them out. We worked with the federal E rate program to get the internet installed. So all of our locations have fiber internet at 100 megabytes per second. And that's free to our community and freedom municipalities free to the library and make sure that there's library service. We don't own the facilities and we are not responsible for utilities. So it's been a really good configuration for us because it requires very little staff on our part. But has allowed us to expand from one location to four and we are now looking at another four potential sites. And a lot of what we'll talk about is different types of funding avenues. So we have not received an increase in local funding. So the local tax levy in 16 years. And so going into the renovation, we did not even have any county funding for the renovation. The majority of that money came from the state because we have a really great state delegation, but no local funds. And so when I started in 2016, we were actually about half a million dollars to what ended up being a million dollars under what the project total was with the plan. I started in the board was under the impression that we were going to start the construction project the year I started, but we had no plans for revenue to finish the renovation. And so we had to look for a lot of solutions for how to provide funding. And so one example with our municipalities and our micro branches is those the initial funding for that is actually coming from economic development funds, because they view expansion of infrastructure for internet and access increased access for workforce development as tied to economic development. And for people who may not be familiar, economic development funds are a separate pile of money or separate pot separate bank account essentially for the county than the general fund. So they're able to fund us from a different account and be able to increase our funding without increasing the impact on their general fund. So Taylor is going to talk about what program starting what programming looks like when she started in 2017 to give a little bit of context when we start talking about what partnerships we have now. So again, this is Taylor. I have been here for three years. And when I came on board in April of 2017, our programming was slim. That's the word in my word choices slim. We had zero adult programs, we did absolutely nothing for adults, no crafts, no book club, no technology classes there there really was nothing happening here for adults. When our children's programs were fairly limited we had a weekly story time of course because how could you not and you know occasional crafts and that sort of thing and we did a lot more during summer reading. But in general programming was fairly limited, and we were starting to do outreach and focus on outreach to reach beyond just the city of Union, but that was also slow going, I'll say. And something like that, you know can be really difficult to start up, which we understand it can take time because obviously you have to build relationships with people. And just show up and say hey you know we're here although we do that sometimes. It does work. But yeah so between April 2017 and now there has been tremendous tremendous growth with our programs and outreach county wide and it really has been because of our partnerships. So partnerships are integral to our funding. As I mentioned we have not had an increase in our local funding in about 16 years. So while county taxes are still the largest portion of our funding as part of the renovation we worked with the partners to figure out how we could have a sustainable financial model that did not rely on local funding. So one of them is USC Union. The library the Carnegie library and the Union County library system now serves as the academic library for USC Union. We also receive state funding South Carolina has state legislation that requires every county to have a public library. So that legislation happened in 1978 and Union County did not have a public library until 1979, which is when that legislation went into effect here in Union. And so the Carnegie was originally a nonprofit and switched over to a public facility in 1979 and receives funding from the state. And these are ranked in the amount of funding so like the most the largest portion of our budget comes to the county but the second largest actually comes from USC Union and then the state that we also heavily apply for grants. We receive more than 100,000 in grant funding every year. And we rely on our partners to be able to secure those grants. We also have facility partners. We have United Way of the Piedmont's nonprofit center for the county here as well as upstate workforce board for workforce development for the county. And then obviously like many libraries we do have fines and fees. However, we do provide free printing for homework for any student. And we provide free printing for any workforce related activities. Obviously, we also provide free tax printing and we do not charge fines for overdue children's materials. So, back when I started in 2016, we had six full time staff and two part time staff. However, we had to go through a reduction in force because we were looking at a renovation and our funding hadn't changed. So, we dropped down at the lowest point we had two full time staff and I think three part time staff, we really, really caught our staffing. But now we're up to 19 staff members if fully staffed. We have five full time positions and five part time positions on payroll. All of the other positions are funded through agencies that are partners with the library. So, in addition to having them contribute to our operating revenue by paying a lease or contracting with us, they also provide staff. So, we have two AmeriCorps VISTAs, which is full time service work. They work full time for us, but essentially earn a stipend at poverty rate because it's meant to be focused on capacity building. We have two AmeriCorps financial stability navigators who are part time. These people are kind of like case managers. They don't do counseling as it were, but they do help people find resources and really look at kind of triage situations for financial emergencies. We actually also have a part time college of social work intern. She is doing her advanced field placement that is a partnership with the Office of Rural Health in South Carolina and Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation. It's a pilot program to look at placing social work interns in libraries and rural libraries throughout the state. We have a CSAP, which is a program specifically for senior employees. It's in partnership with Goodwill. There is both a federal and a state CSAP program with Goodwill. We participate in the federal program. And that is specifically for job training for people over the age of 55 or 55 and up who are hoping to reenter the workforce. And then we also have, right now we have two work study students provided through USC Union, but our contract allows for three. So really just to reiterate, if you look at our staffing structure, nearly half of our staff are not actually fully on our payroll. So talking a little bit more about the facility partners, we are the first partnership facility of its kind in the state. We are both academic and a public library, but we are also a non-profit hub. Some of the partners that are in our facility, so United Way, the Piedmont, we actually have a safe home and safe passage. They help people who are domestic violence and sexual assault victims. If somebody needs an order of protection, the county sends them to the library and they get that through ours here. We have Children's Advocacy Center, Union Cancer Services, Miracle League of Union, and then we also have, for workforce development, we have SCWorks and SCDU. So there's quite a wide range of facility partners. And we specifically designed the facility, working with the partners to make sure that we would have appropriate spaces. So here's just another picture of our library because it's really pretty and we like to provide. This is what it looks like after the renovation, but we also have some floor plans in here for people to be able to see. So beautiful building as all Carnegie's are. Thank you. I got yelled at one time for not putting that picture in the, in a presentation, so I've learned my lesson. So in the top right of the upstairs, this is our main level. Our whole facility now is 12,000 square feet. Before our renovation in 2018, we had one floor and it was 8,000 square feet. The original structure is about 2,500 and everything else was added on the 80s. One of the things part of why the facility looks so beautiful as a historic facility is that we use historic tax credit financing. This is any building that is on a national register is eligible for this funding even as a nonprofit. It just requires some legal paperwork to make that happen, since tax credits are only really provided to for-profit entities. So if anybody has any questions about that funding source, happy to talk about it offline because I don't want to get bogged down in it. But 45% of our project was eligible for tax credits, which means that we netted at least $650,000 in funding through that. And that was one of the main ways that we bridged our funding gap. One of the requirements of historic tax credits is actually that 51% of the facility has to have new tenants. So it was crucial that we had facility partners coming into the building and we wanted to make sure that we designed space that really accommodated them. So the top right of these plans, you can't really read it, but those little square offices, two of them are study rooms. The other six are offices and they're actually called, we call them hoteling offices. So our partners, many of whom are only in Union one day a week because we're the smallest county in a tri-county service area, they're able to kind of pop into an office and use it for a day, but then another agency is able to use it on a different day. And we specifically designed our spaces to allow for that flexibility to be able to accommodate as many partners as possible. The lower level is what we added as part of the renovation. It was a dirt floor with cinder block walls and you could only get down there by going outside. So we obviously added an elevator and stairs on the inside and you can kind of tell that the floor has a pattern. Union County is actually 65% national forest. So we themed the lower level to be representative of the national forest and it's actually the children's area now. So we were able to add a teen room, which we did not have beforehand, and add a lot of children's spaces. We do have another hoteling office downstairs as well as a study room and something that we're still finishing up now is an early learning lab that we are doing in partnership with Union County first steps. An additional thing, we're talking about our facility partners. So again, like Rita was saying, if you look in the top right hand corner, those are those hoteling offices that are used by these facility partners. You'll notice also on the side that there is kind of a separate entrance that just goes to that portion of the building. So all of our facility partners have a key specifically for that entrance. And it's been really beneficial for them because the library closes at 7pm on Monday through Thursday, and then we're only open from 9 to 3 on Fridays and Saturdays and closed Sundays. So if somebody from safe home or safe passages, which like Rita said, they work with domestic violence and sexual assault victims, if there's an after hours emergency, if those staff members need to do some sort of counseling, file an emergency order of protection, anything like that. So they're still able to come in and access the building after hours because they have a key specifically to their wing. So again, just kind of another thing to show. This was all, you know, in the original designs. Rita was the project manager for this renovation and restoration, which was a huge undertaking for a library director. And she made really, you know, certain to work closely with these agencies and our partners so that we weren't just saying, you know, alright, here's your space. You either like it or you don't. Sorry. No, she wanted to make sure that their thoughts and ideas were heavily incorporated. Yeah. And as Taylor mentioned, the facility is essentially divided. So we have 3 different zones in the facility. So the partners can be in the facility after hours and still access the bathrooms and the resource room where the computers are. And there is an accessible entrance on both sides of the building, the front. And the back and going downstairs. So. We, it's actually the most accessible facility or public facility in Union County. So what types of partnerships does the library have? And are there any legal documents? So, like Rita said, we'll kind of go through all of our partnerships. So our facility partners again, South Carolina works and South Carolina do so the Department of Employment and Workforce. So both of these organizations work with unemployment workforce development. And it's been essential to have them in the library and having them in here has also increased our foot traffic tremendously. We're excited that people are coming into the library that might not previously have. And that's something that we've noticed with all of these partners that we're hearing from people saying, you know, oh, I had to come to the library to do this, but hey, look, they also have a lot of things that we really want to focus on as part of the renovation is making sure that the library became integral to the community. The county is required to have a public library, but when I started, they told me if they could have closed the library, they would have to have a public library. Because they assumed nobody used it. And to be fair usage had been declining for a long time. And so when we were talking about a renovation, obviously the county didn't want to put money towards it because they didn't see it as a high need. Because they weren't thinking about what it could be. Instead, they were focused on what it had been. And it's hard because the Union Library was actually the best small library in America in 2009. And to kind of go from that to, you know, less than 10 years later, almost a non relevant entity. Because of funding. We really had to be creative, but we had to show that the library has an ability to have a tremendous impact on the community if it's leveraged correctly. And so a lot of this design, not only was it focused on how do we fund the library, so how do we continue to operate, especially if we have a shrinking population declining revenue based and not necessarily as much buying them at the local level. But it was also really focused on how are we moving the library and therefore the community forward. And that shows you just, you can't just rest on your laurels when you've gotten some sort of major award like that. It's an ongoing battle. You got to keep your eye on things and be aware of what's going on out there to keep your library sustainable. Absolutely. I think on the public library side of things, you know, we in general, especially small and rural libraries, you know, really have to fight for funding. But also like Rita saying just to remain relevant to remain important or to remain beloved within your community. Yeah, people really like the outside of our building, but weren't necessarily coming inside. So, so as part of this for the legal documents, we do have sub lease agreements with all the tenants in the facility and the union does have a five year contract with us. So it's a little bit more about that and how that came to be. The University of South Carolina is the largest university system within the state of South Carolina, and has numerous campuses summer four years summer two year campuses across the state. So one of these campuses is here, the University of South Carolina Union was a two year campus. It is growing exponentially, which is very exciting. They're adding a lot of new degree programs that they've recently added like a four year nursing program, which is going to be really exciting for the community. And while we were renovating this facility, the Carnegie Library, we we moved out of the facility while this was happening. And because it was obviously easier, easier for them to renovate the building with all of us in it. Right. And we won't we won't go into all of the gory details that needless to say that was a we moved ourselves out of this building, which is quite labor intensive. We moved tens of thousands of volumes of materials on your own and long story short, we ended up working out of the University of South Carolina Union offices during this time. They were very gracious and gave us a spare room and you know said here take over and so because of that we actually you know really devolved more of a relationship with the people over on campus which was great. And the Dean over there, his name is John Catalano is actually a librarian, which is pretty cool and he's a big proponent of libraries. And because of us being over there and this relationship that we developed this kind of idea started forming of, hey, you know what if we combine forces. So the library, the old library now that was over on campus was a fairly large part of this building. And because USC Union is growing so much, they need classroom space they need classroom space, they need offices. They need more room for their faculty and students. And so it kind of was the best of both worlds for us to take over here at the Carnegie and to to become the new academic library as well. They saved the campus a lot of money because they didn't need to build new space and it's important to note that that are the Carnegie facility is two blocks from the campus library. So it was not a, there is a campus building or two that's one block over from the library. So in terms of thinking of a campus and the size of the campus and how spread out it is the libraries were both pretty close to together. So it wasn't really a barrier in terms of distance for the students, which is part of why it was a good fit. So the process for establishing partnerships, it really depends on the partnership. But for us, the first step was really thinking about the renovation. So we started there. We really looked for what is it that we need, and then started just asking people what they needed, and then looked for where that was a good fit. So the nonprofits, they were in a different county facility. It was not secure. There was it was in a neighborhood with a higher crime rate. They, the nonprofits because they're only there one, one day a week and many of them are not there at the same time. Some felt unsafe being there alone. It was also hard to coordinate. So somebody would not know when a nonprofit was in town and when they could get service and there was no one to help direct them. So those were their two biggest barriers coming to the library. We created a space that was secure and confidential, and we provide the staff stability that when somebody comes in and a person is not here that we're able to take a message or connect them in a different way. And for workforce development. That was a little different, like many library, a lot of people coming to our library were already coming for workforce, so they were working on resumes or applying to jobs. And the workforce development location was, of course, like three blocks away, because it's a small town and everything's nearby. It was on Main Street, and the county actually wanted to move what people normally refer to as the unemployment office off of Main Street. And so they were supportive of moving it to the library because we say we serve the same people. And it solved a problem of having something that's maybe not the best marketing tool on your Main Street. Rita said here is really key for establishing partnerships that we really just went to people and asked, what do you need, because so much of the time we're really in the same boat, right? We're underfunded, we're serving the same people, we don't have enough resources. We're all facing the same problems. And so just to be able to sit down and start having these conversations, realizing, you know, hey, we're on the same team, we have the same goals, we serve the same people, you know, it kind of helped us come together, essentially. And obviously people really appreciate when you go to them and say, you know, hey, how can we best help you? What would improve, you know, things for you? And then so that's kind of talking about the facility partnerships and Taylor can really talk about building partnerships in terms of programs who also provide us with that sort of in kind support. So that we do similarly, really. And it's about just the key is just building relationships, you know, I think so much of the time we go to people and we just say, hey, you know, I need this, I need XYZ. But if you, especially in a small town, if you know you live in a small rural sort of place and everybody knows everybody, that doesn't necessarily work here. You know, the people have to know who you are. Rita, this is something Rita and I talk about a lot that if you're sending an email to somebody and they don't know who you are, they're probably not going to respond to you, because they don't know who you are. And so that has been one of the number one things I've learned in union is just start with just making that connection and just start building that relationship and then it becomes very easy to move from that towards creating an establishing a partnership. Yeah, some examples now of a story time. Yeah, so like I said when I started here we had a weekly story time because how could you not. And that's something we've always continued but a lot of times we don't have library staff lead story time so we've started a series called a community leaders story time. So we have folks from around the community such as teachers in the school district, for example, the director of Union County first jobs, and they'll come in and they'll lead a story time for us. And we also have a South Carolina State Park here in Union County. We have the Rose Hill Plantation and the park rangers there actually come and once a month they lead a story time here too we call it reading with a ranger, which is a lot of fun because they're in their full uniform and the kids love seeing that. So, once, but again, like we've said, you know, we kind of had those pre established relationships or we built those relationships over time. And so that it was much easier to go to them and say, Hey, you know, how would you like to be involved. It's the same program just with different people leading it. And that really helps us because then we're able to have community partners do the programs for us. And so it saves us that staff time and those resources. And that's part of what we look at. So we look at we ask, how can we help you. But then we'll really think about how does this help us. So, some issues resulting from partnerships. And there are a few, they're very few, we will say there are and I would say that the biggest issue is making sure that staff are informed of who is in the building. I think my staff still yell at me pretty regularly about not being aware of what partners are in the library because their hours are so varied. And also not knowing how to get in touch with them. My staff are very dedicated to providing great service, which is something we're very proud of, which means that they're all used to not telling somebody they don't know. So they really try to make sure that if somebody asks a question, they get an actual answer. That's actually helpful. We've learned, you know, okay, this agency is typically in the library on these days and times. And so, you know, that that has taken time for us to learn other schedules. I call our facility partners are roommates. And so it's really just like living with a roommate right it kind of takes a little bit of time to to adjust to each other and to adjust to to essentially living together. So as far as engaging with our partners for library programs and services. Like Ria said, we're starting to rely on our partners really to help us a lot with our programming and outreach, which is kind of a win-win for everybody. It helps us like Rita said, kind of free up some staff time and some of our resources, but we're also ensuring that our partners are being seen and are having a voice within the community. So I think we're also helping give them exposure. Yeah, I always say one of the biggest assets of any library is access to people. If somebody wants to talk to the public, the public cuts to the library. So if agencies are having a hard time getting people coming to their agencies, we say we'll go ahead and come to the library. We're having to work with you. We have the public. Right. We have a built-in audience. Yeah. Yeah. So one major initiative that we have undertaken in Union, something that Rita and I do we often is we take it very seriously that one of our roles as the public library is to fill service gaps within Union County. And several years ago, we recognized that mental health was a big service gap here in the county. So there is one hospital that is located in the city of Union that serves the entire county. And that hospital itself even provides limited services. So fun fact, you actually cannot give birth in this hospital. So you cannot give birth in Union County and a medical facility. You have to go to Spartanburg, which is the neighboring county, about a 40-minute drive. And mental health resources are also incredibly limited here. The hospital is doing some really neat things with telehealth if anybody is familiar. But, you know, there's not a lot of hands-on practical resources in the county. So if anybody is familiar with an organization called Mental Health First Aid, this is something that's becoming very big across the country, especially with libraries. If you've ever taken a CPR or first aid course with the Red Cross, this is essentially the equivalent but for mental health. And so we received grant funding from the state library here in South Carolina so that I could become a certified mental health first aid instructor. I'm actually duly certified so I can teach both the adult and the youth courses to unknowledge. I am the only, this is Taylor, I am the only certified librarian and instructor in the state of South Carolina. And since I became certified, I have taught almost 150 people in Union County and have certified them in Mental Health First Aid. And through that have been very fortunate to work with numerous partners. So I've trained professors over at USC Union, teachers and coaches within the school district, all of our library staff, sheriffs, deputies, public safety officers, the director of EMS, 911 dispatchers. I could keep going. It's been just really a great undertaking for us and I think has really cemented our relevancy within the county. And it's been an opportunity for us to grow these partnerships and our programming. That's great, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, it's something I'm personally really passionate about and I really enjoy doing it. It's something we tell libraries all the time here, community response planning, what's happening, what's lacking. You can do something, you can potentially do something about it and think a little outside the box. You might be surprised what you can do. Yeah, we have a phrase here that we stole from a state agency where we refer to ourselves as education adjacent. And it means that our job is to support people's ability to get an education. So our job is to provide anything that somebody might need in order to be educated or to get an education. And that our true job is to provide access to opportunity. So our future plans are really just to keep growing what we're already doing. One of the biggest areas of growth for us will be in partnering with USC Union. So like we said, we're kind of the first hybrid facility of its kind in the state and serving, you know, both public and academic audiences has been, there's been a bit of a learning curve for us, I'll say. Because again, you know, we're small library, small staff on the academic side of things with the university. Obviously they're using different software, different systems, there's different policies and procedures. And so that has been quite an undertaking for us, but we're thrilled to work with these faculty members and students and to serve in that capacity. Interesting, we're part of a statewide consortium for public libraries and now we're part of the academic statewide consortium. And so to be a library that navigates in both circles has been really advantageous because also able to help facilitate conversations on a statewide level that helps build library access statewide between all libraries. So that's the majority of our presentation, we could talk for ages about tons of them, but we do want to open it up for any questions. And here is both of our contact information in case anybody has any offline questions for us. Yes. We love being helpful. I think it's because we're very proud of the library world. Yeah. It's part of our core. Great. Thank you so much, Taylor. I mean, that was great. I was definitely very interested and wanted to hear about your setup there with the public library and the university. It's, you know, we know we have a few here in Nebraska of public library and K-12 school libraries that are a combination and have a partnership deal, whatever, but not heard of any of the universities. So I think that was really interesting. And there's always, you never know who you can work with that will help, you know, make it what you were saying make you relevant and important to the community. So anybody have any questions for Taylor and Rita type into the question section of your go to webinar interface and we'll ask other of them. Only one thing at the very beginning, there was a little cheer for Bloomington. I guess somebody else was. Yeah, Bloomington. Also rock chalk because my undergrad is KU. So and I think one of the other important things too is about the Carnegie library renovation that is a huge thing that I know many so many communities all across the country that we've got these beautiful Carnegie buildings as you said on the outside. And on the inside, maybe beautiful but not necessarily usable ADA compliant the usual issues. There's only a few. Is it for for Carnegie libraries in South Carolina that are still operating as libraries currently. Exactly. That's what happens a lot of them other other groups. The library has to move somewhere else to be more accessible and other organizations who don't need our bike, you know that as much can go in and use them in some way. Yeah. Well, there's definitely funding out there. I know a lot of so something I didn't mention we also use hospitality and accommodation fundings for renovation, because we are the first Carnegie library and we're on the heritage trail we were eligible for tourism funding. So there's, there's a lot of ways to leverage money. Yeah, and that's thing too. I mean, I know a lot of the smaller rural libraries money. Where do we get it? What do we do? And I think you don't have to. It's not just one source of funding apply for eight different grants for your renovation project. It's okay just reach out to don't just do one if you don't get it. You know, I guess we didn't get it now there are so many opportunities out there both local one state organizations foundations. Inside or tip USDA rural development grants. If you get multiples you can apply for multiple and you can use them for equipment. If you use them for construction there's a lot more hoops to jump through if you're using them for equipment there are less. We had to we used one for each back equipment and the elevator and then we used another one for technology. So we got $100,000 through that and did not require any sort of architectural or environmental reviews for that money. Yeah, the computer development block grants. Yeah, public libraries. This is when I was talking about an early presentation that you never know where libraries might fall into. They fall under public works along with sewer and water streets sidewalks fun reading that from the fire stations and then libraries are in the middle of all this stuff. And if you didn't wouldn't have thought about that necessarily. Yeah, we have to be creative creative and resource. Right. And the community development block grants and you've got USDA facilities grants they're all the kind of things that you don't library wouldn't necessarily pop into your mind about it but that's there you're in there. Just look. Absolutely. We got here. Amazing renovation to include the community partnerships absolutely and that's the get more. You're talking about the different staffs are paid by different people get creative absolutely. Oh, and we were just talking about the name of that the USDA grant it is actually. We use the rural development grant so it was a it was not a CDBG. Okay, it was development grant. Long story short, we did have a CDBG grant and we had to resend it. It was it was something. Yeah, so the real development ones. There's also USDA community facilities grants. The community development block grants ours was done through our Nebraska Department of Economic Development. So look to your local states department theater that then filter down these different grant opportunities. See any other questions get them in right now before Taylor and Rita are done. We'd have one more comment. This one says a library here in Nebraska. We still have a Carnegie building in online Nebraska but it's actually a private home now. Hmm. Interesting. Living of Carnegie building. Yeah. There's a one of the libraries that's still a Carnegie in South Carolina is now a private library. It's in Charleston. So still have the setup for being a library. Yeah. All right. All right. Well, it doesn't look like any other desperate questions are coming in. All right. So thank you very much Taylor. Thank you Rita for being here. It was great to hear about your partnerships that you have there. Thank you for having us. All right. So we're definitely welcome to contact us if they're wanting to later. Yes. There's their emails. You reach out to them if you think of questions after the fact. All right. I'm going to.