 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Burns, at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly online event. We're a webinar, we're a webcast, we're an online show, I don't know what else you want to call us, call us whatever you want. We're here, but we're here live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time online. We also, if you're unable to join us on Wednesday mornings, that's fine. We also record the show every week so you can go to our website and I'll show you that at the end of the hour. Or you can go there and see all of our archive recordings from the past and watch our shows there if you're not available on 10 a.m. central time Wednesday mornings. We do a mixture of things here, presentations, many training sessions, book reviews, interviews, demos, basically anything library related, we put it on the show. That's our real only criteria library. We do have guest speakers come in sometimes and we sometimes have Nebraska Library Commission staff do presentations. And today, I don't know if we'd call this a mixture. Yeah, yeah. A hybrid. Yeah. This morning we're talking about, as you can see, strategic planning. Specifically, the accreditation guidelines and strategic planning and how to use them all together and I'm not going to get into that because I'm going to let these guys do that. We're Richard Miller and Laura Johnson here from the Library Commission and in between them is Denise Hardish from our Central Plains Library System. And I'll just pass on to you. I don't know who's going to start this. I'm going to take it off. Yeah. To take it away. This is Richard Miller. I get to kick this office morning to offer a brief introduction and then Laura is going to take over to talk about strategic planning. She's going to run us through some slides. And then Denise is going to talk about how strategic planning is working within local libraries because she as well as her counterparts in the other three systems work with public libraries to produce strategic plans. And then I'll bat clean up here if they don't cover something I think should be covered. I'll kind of fill in but they'll do most of the talking. Haha we kind of kidded because people who know me know I can run my mouth at the least provocation. At any rate what we want to do today as Krista has already told you is to explain a bit more about strategic planning how it relates to the accreditation process and vice versa. And we want in particular for you to listen to us talk to you about community needs as opposed to library needs. You'll hear a lot about that if you've come to any of the strategic planning workshops we put on in the systems or the video that's on the website about it you'll hear us underline that and say that term all the time community needs. What we want you to think about as we talk about this is what are the needs in your community the quality of life needs the whatever kinds of situations in town and how can you as a library or in what position are you in it's in a unique position at the library to address those needs either by yourself as the library or in collaboration with other entities within the community. So that's what kind of we'll be talking about here. Now you know that the strategic plan is required and has to be approved by yours truly prior to your being able to be accredited as a public library and you know that if you look on our website you'll see a lot of strategic planning materials you don't have to wait to send in your strategic plan just October 1st you can send it at any time even if your library is not up for accreditation or re-accreditation this year would be happy to look at it and give you recommendations. Also your system directors are very helpful in that regard they'd be happy to look at any of your strategic plans as well. So today we'll talk about those two things after Laura talks about strategic planning in general Denise is going to talk about how you can use the accreditation guidelines as a planning tool which is kind of what the whole title of this program is and then as I said all that cleanup and I'll turn it over to Laura to talk about strategic planning. Okay thank you Richard. Hi this is Laura Johnson. I'm going to talk about strategic planning so we're all really clear about what we're talking about. What do we really need and I hope that Denise and Richard will jump in whenever it so moves them. I'm going to go pretty quickly through this because this is not the deep comprehensive look at strategic planning but let's go through it quickly. We have done that though I believe there's some previous recordings that you can watch if you really want to. Okay strategic planning what do we mean? Okay why do you make a plan? Well you know because if you don't make a plan how do you know where you're going? And really we're all kind of to the point where flying by the sea to your pants is not totally working anymore. We just really need to be a little bit more thoughtful about this and I do understand that a lot of people who are very busy and don't have a lot of time this seems like an added burden but really this is meant to help you as much as anything set priorities because you can't do everything. So this really helps you figure out what's important what are the really most important things to do. So we hope that this is meant to be useful to you this truly and we truly think it is useful. So we're going to talk about plan and what does a strategic plan have in it what do we do let's look at it in terms of okay a recipe what are the ingredients what's in a strategic plan first thing the mission statement of the library one or two sentences that tell what the library does what it's doing. The community profile you really need to know your community because you're the community library and there's not much sense and you're even being there if you're not serving that community so you need to know what they need and that's the third thing then the community needs assessment what do they really need and want then you have to do a library assessment what are you prepared what talents and resources and time and everything do you have to give to these things then five and I think five is actually the key ingredient to me it is the unique contribution if the town really their big need is to improve the quality of the streets fill in all the potholes what can the library do to help no you are not going to get out there with one of those machines I mean you do not have to be on the road crew but maybe you can help by talking about different ways that streets are constructed and have or have a program on funding for road repair or a number of things but you have to think about what the library can do that's within the library's purview kind of then you talk about your goals after you've talked about okay what contributions can you make then you have a goal and remember goals we'll talk about what goals are goals are not simply oh hey maybe we could do goals are a little bit more specific than that and then you want an evaluation plan because frankly you do need to look back and say well did that work how well did that work what could we have done better what made it so special so you want an evaluation plan so here's an example of a mission statement that we thought was pretty good open public library here in Nebraska and they're saying okay they provide quality materials and services that fulfill educational informational cultural and recreational needs and they think it's important that they do this in a welcoming respectful and professional way so that's their mission they've and look it's one sentence okay here's another one New York Public Library now yes it's a big institution on the you know coast of the country but it's still they want to inspire lifelong learning they want to advance knowledge and strengthen the community I think that would be appropriate in a lot of places it's nice again one sentence um look how it uses strong action verbs yeah you know okay so the first thing we're gonna put after we put in the mission statement we're gonna put in the community profile what is a community profile it's a picture of the community and at least to start out with it should have covered five elements the geography of the community and by that we mean oh you know topography but the the what's what's transportation in and out that kind of thing population who lives there what language do they speak at home how many of the moms are working is the community aging are there is the aging population growing there's a lot of things to find out about the population then the economics how are people earning a living what is the economy of the community based on education what are your schools like what opportunities do people have for training and is there a community college nearby and would that affect what the library needs because if you have a community college then does the library need to support those students so you have to think about education and cultural what's going on in the community is if the library had a film festival would that add to the cultural mix in the community who is doing what do you have some cool artists who could come do a show in the library so there's a lot to be done with culture but at least those five things in the community profile then you want to do the community needs assessment and this is probably I think the place where a lot of people get hung up it is because you need to go out and ask people what they need you don't ask them what they think the library ought to do people don't know quite what the library can do and so you need to just ask them what they need what they think the community needs what they want how the town can be improved yeah what in their life would they like to see enhanced and you can do this in a lot of ways and this is not a an exhaustive list but you can do a survey and if you do a survey you were making the point that you don't only survey the people who come into the library because you know pretty much what they like and and how you serve them so you need to find a way to get to those people that don't come into the library yeah that's what I was gonna say this is where you start looking talking to the people who you don't know yeah the non-users of your library then another way is key informant interviews now you can't probably do key informant interviews exclusively you probably need some other stuff as well but speaking to some community leaders speaking to people who are typical of particular groups in the community might be very useful and really eye-opening and this is not terribly difficult usually people are flattered to be asked their opinions focus groups kind of group key informant interviews you you get a group of people together and you ask them some specific questions and make sure that everybody gets to talk you have a community meeting and this is where if you have community meetings maybe you can take 10 or 15 minutes out of the larger to talk to people so if there's other stuff going on in the community you know speak up and ask to be part of it if a community survey is going out in everyone's utility bill see if you can't get the results of that or make sure that you know what questions are being asked on that survey too and then there's keeping your eyes open now keeping your eyes open does not mean just talking to the people that you usually talk to it means driving around through the whole community and really taking a look it means going to a different grocery store than the one you usually go to but you can simple observation will tell you some things so there's a lot of ways to find out about before you move on from just let me make sure that everybody knows that on our website where we're talking about strategic planning and accreditation there are some sample questions that you can use for all four of those first processes there she's talking about and they're they don't ask should we have more things for the library they ask about the community so those are good sample questions so the community needs assessment as another ingredient in your strategic plan then you want a description of the library and when we say how do you describe the library well you include some of these things and maybe more collection size yes collection has always been part of part of what libraries are and do and its annual growth and that's important at the same time we don't want we don't want it people to emphasize quantity of equality I think that's a real important thing what services the library offer what kind of technology most of our libraries now have computers in February if you don't have computers for people to use Wi-Fi you know what else do you have a maker space do you have a fax people can use do you have a color copier there's lots of kinds of technology how are people using the library and you know an awful lot of this is already being reported on your annual statistical report so but if it's if you're not collecting this data it's really hard to report on it so you need to start collecting it and I think it's easiest to collect it either just every day collected then you accumulate it by the month and make a monthly report and then at the end of the year you collect all those monthly reports and make an annual report or you know you find ways to and use of the library for instance if you want to talk about how many people come in the library maybe you don't do that every day maybe you choose five sample weeks out of the year and do it and extrapolate from that there are ways to collect data and we can talk we could have a whole big program on that but what we're saying is if you haven't been collecting data you need to start basically then you need to talk a little about the library history not so much because we want to you know wallow in the past as because sometimes it affects how the library is if it's a Carnegie library you know let's celebrate that fact those Carnegie libraries were cool but very often they have big steps on the front and we need to worry about that you know so you know a physical description of the library how big is it do you have all the spaces you need to do the programs you want to do do you have a meeting room that kind of thing staffing how many people do you have working there remember that you do really are required to have a paid staff member in the library whenever the library is open and then your budget and budgets a funny thing because it's not just how much money you have it's how it's allocated and where you're spending it and of course some people's budgets have to cover things that other people's budgets don't have to cover so you have to look at budget a little more closely than just the total dollar figure but again you know we need to collect data so the library descriptions another ingredient in your strategic plan they have a question yes ma'am about assessing community needs yes it's more of a planning assessment I guess so it says I'd like to publicize a series of community meetings to assess community needs and do we have a sample press release a description that could be submitted to newspaper inviting people to attend we don't but we could work with the person on that okay if you want to give us the information we'd be happy to try to help yeah okay that's a good idea though publicizing in the news like you're talking about getting out the people that don't just come in the library put it out somewhere that is not just good yeah hanging up hanging up flyer in the library is good but it's probably good to have it other places to okay so the next ingredient then is a situation analysis what are we talking about here well sometimes you'll hear this called a SWAT strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats we think it's helpful to think of this as internal and external so helpful internal things in your situation are your strengths you have a very dedicated staff couple staff members speak Spanish you have a lovely meeting room those are all really good strengths weaknesses you you have they have their strength they have you don't have as big a meeting room as you'd like to have some things can have can some a particular thing can have both yes it can carnage are beautiful but they don't have steps yeah yeah meeting room but it's not big carnage is beautiful but they do you know your plumbing is shot whatever you know there's there's things that are problems or that you haven't worked on none of your staff members speak Spanish and you need to so these are the internal things that are either your strengths or weaknesses then externally you look at opportunities there's a new plant being built in towns is a huge opportunity you're going to have a lot of people the same time it's a threat it's bringing opportunity people into the community can you handle the load so you really have to think about externally what's going on in the community what's going on in the state as what are the opportunities and the threats so you kind of just list these things I would ask several people's opinion on what they think your strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats are and that kind of gives you an idea of the situation where are you actually I think it was go back to that for just a minute it was Laura who a couple of years ago came up with this internal external division which I got it from well she stole but she shared it with us whatever but what's really interesting about that is if you don't break it into talking about the internal within the library first of all on an external in the community outside the library the strength start to become or sound like opportunities and the weaknesses start to become or sound like threats and they get all mixed up so that division is really essential when you do that it seems sort of when you when you think about it seems sort of artificial but it really does help yeah see that it really it helps and of course it is true that there's a lot of double-edged swords out there that bring both opportunities and threats but the situation out analysis really is helpful then the central question and I put a red box around this because I think I think this is key what unique contribution can the library make to help fulfill community needs and desires that's so much better than I did during the introduction but this we really want to emphasize this we don't think you need to have a very narrow definition of what library does on the other hand we don't think that the library does everything there are things the park department is going to do better than the library I wouldn't necessarily want to have a little league you know you don't have to do that you can you can find unique contributions that are from the library and then remember that it is community needs and desires it's not it's not what the community wants from what the community has said the library ought to be it's what the community has said the community would like itself to be that the library is contributing to I'm picturing you on a baseball cap yeah yeah so then you you create goals from that and what are goals well they're smart and I know you've heard this it's a little smart but it does work on goals should be smart so that means they should be specific you don't want to say oh we just like to serve more community we need a little bit more than that they make them measurable you want to say we'd like to see we will see we will see 50 more 15 50 additional teenagers coming in the library each month because the teens are running wild in the community which is the community need that you're addressing yes okay but you do want to make it measurable then you will have to assign it because you know what a goal without somebody in charge of it is a wish I'm sorry you need somebody in charge and it needs to be results oriented so you don't want to say we're going to do five more programs what you want to say is 50 more people are going to come to programs or we're going to address these specific needs with programs you want to talk about what the programs will achieve not what you're going to do and I know that's a little confused well something about that a lot something like you're putting on a program that has to do with keeping up property in the community and maybe one of the results oriented goals would be something like five more people in the community in the next six months I've fixed up their property yeah as a result of attending the program yeah yeah and then you want it time bound because again I'm sorry things have to have deadlines so they tend not to get done so you want somebody in charge and a time that needs to be done you want to say how not just oh we want to do this but you want to say specifically what you think it's going to achieve and notice the language also when Laura said something earlier about we want to or whatever when I get a strategic plan in and it says we want to or wish or whatever I say no no no that's not the language of planning we like your planning we will or by such and such this will be accomplished or whatever it has to be action verbs not wish fulfillment as you said earlier good thanks okay then final ingredient evaluation and you want to say how we're how are you going to measure this because do you know whether it worked or not it you know I'm sorry we'd all like to think I'd like to sit back and have a warm fuzzy feeling when this is over well for one thing if you work really hard on a program you're not going to have a warm fuzzy feeling frankly when it's over you're just gonna be so great but you you need to be able to evaluate it because partly because this is how you're figuring out how to spend your money too so who's going to evaluate it are you is the mayor is your board who's going to evaluate it did the goals where the goals met and you know you don't have to soft-pedal your goals you can make your goals kind of bold and if you don't get all the way at least maybe if you got 80% of the way that's good it's also true that you can have projects that are long-term and then you break them up into steps and you say this year we're going to do this and then the next year we'll get this much further and the next year we'll get this much further so you can have interim goals if you will you know funny stuff sometimes happens too sometimes something was a goal and something totally unexpected and wonderful happened because of it that you really weren't planning on so let us know that's terrific did you while you were doing it find a new need and did it all of a sudden oh no we don't need to do that anymore wow so you do want to evaluate and you do have to be realistic about it but try and you have to plan how you're going to evaluate before it happens you don't go afterwards and say oh well how do you think that went you kind of need to know how you're going to evaluate it before head okay so those are things so what is a good plan then well it's concise honestly you do not have to be verbose about this you you can be pretty on the other hand you have to give enough information but yeah concise is almost always good it's specific again we don't want to speak in generalities we do need to get to the specifics integrated you need to talk about how all things sort of came together foreseeable yeah you want a plan should probably cover what three years or so yeah generally three to five but yeah and it needs to be a little flexible in that we know that things happen at the same time you do have to push on with some goals so that's what you want to plan to be so what's going to be in your strategic plan remember we had a recipe at the beginning we talked about all the ingredients here's our cake at the end and what happened we put a summary in because having an executive summary the three paragraphs at the very front of it okay if nobody if people aren't going to read the whole thing if nobody in the town council is going to read the whole thing at least they'll read the three summary paragraphs right so you need a summary then you want the community profile and you need the needs assessment and the library description and the situation analysis because those things tell you what the background is what the situation is then you need to say okay from this situation we figured out what we think our unique contributions can be we developed goals specific things that we want to do to help bring about certain things that was an awkward sentence but that's you want your goals are how to bring about certain outcomes and that's what you want and then how are you going to evaluate how you did and that's what's in the strategic plan cake strategic plan cake is that what you said okay yeah let me say one thing about goals okay then Picasso will tell you my goals as well when you have the goals make sure that in fact there's a forum on our website that says community need and then under that goals objectives so anytime you have goals whether it's one goal or more than whatever always go back to almost like an outline form community need is always at the top then the goals or objectives or measurable so whatever and I just ended this way because Picasso was telling us you got to have a plan which you know it's like the 18 you have to have that plan okay and that's that's what I got that's the strategic planning and a nutshell kind of okay Denise is going to be talking here shortly turn it the right way and I'm going to put up I think Vicki Retzlaff is on this program today she's listening I believe or she signed up for it I want to thank Vicki Retzlaff from Grand County Library headquartered in Hianis, Nebraska she has allowed us to put up the application form for accreditation from her library this has not been filled out it's just so that you can see the application form and I will either drive for Denise or she can drive herself how do you want to do this it's like you can okay you talk I'll drive okay all right well as we've heard from Laura I know there's many of you out there that will watch this and they'll say okay that sounds great and then you're going to sit down at the table and say now what what do we do now I have to have this plan what do I do so in a practical aspect what I want to mention to you is that it's you need to get to know your community I know you've lived there your whole life but you need there are people you don't know there are things happening that you're not aware of and it's important to look outward so many times when I have a library call they say what am I making a plan that I'm looking not at the library what so yes you need to look at the community that's why it's strategic to quote Richard you use us you want to be in a strategic position which means you need a strategy to get there I've heard him say that not exactly that way so because if you don't if you're not strategically aligned with what the community needs they don't need you so it's important to look at what the community needs and in order to do that you need to get to know your community something else that you just got rid of my no it's okay I should want to see you while you're talking oh well no that's okay but you can it's important to talk to people who are not in the library on a daily basis or a weekly basis when you get done with all of the the vehicles that you're going to use to find out about your community you'll probably use American fact finder that's one that we always recommend and American fact finder gives you all kinds of information that's the census the census right yeah yep so as you are looking at that and you are reporting that in your community profile be aware of that when you're talking about your community goals because it's not just an exercise and looking at the census it is a means of finding out about your community you'll find out what percentage of your community is under the age of 18 you'll find out heads of households and incomes and so there's a lot of information to be gleaned from that particular website you can look at it and say oh my gosh I had no idea that a third of our community falls between the ages of 65 and 85 a full third of the community is in retirement age and we offer story times but we don't do classes for seniors on how to use the computer or have attached a document or open an attachment so they can see the pictures of their grandchildren we're doing nothing for that age group so that is another way in addition to key informant interviews and community meetings and surveys use that information from American fact finder as well that's that's something you can get all by yourself you don't have to involve anyone else and that's what people say to me when I'm out asking them about how their strategic planning is going they say I don't have time to call people in I don't have time to wander around the street I don't have time well that's what we're asking them to do I don't have time to come up with a survey so the Commission has a number of things on their website that will help you with it and yes it takes time but if you are choosing to not go out and do this particular activity number one you won't be accredited because you need a strategic plan to be accredited so that's the first thing you have to plan and here Richard is showing you that we have example plans if you you think okay what what does a strategic plan even look like you can go there if on key informant interviews if you don't know what to ask or if you're going to do a survey what should you do but so we're trying to help you so that you don't have to spend so much time but trust me it's time well spent you need to have this information and it will be helpful to you in the end so that's the when you are worried about I don't know how to do this come to this web page or call the system offices because we're more than happy to help you with all of that so Denise may I have something at this point certainly I have the cursor right now on something that says worksheet to community profile statewide figures I asked Sam Shaw who of course you know does our statistics to put up there some figures of statewide interest to people because you know we ask people to go to look at the census data and then they'll know about their community either their county or their village or city but they won't know how for example to take your example about how old the population is you said a fully a third in that population you mentioned are 65 and over why does that compare with statewide figures well now we have some statewide figures up here so that you can use that comparison sake and we didn't come up with this by ourselves we found that there were some people who sent in their strategic plans and said this is 20% below the statewide average or whatever so we thought oh why don't we have those up there so Sam has done this that's something new watch also for another strategic plan example we're going to be putting up here I won't embarrass the city by telling me what it is because they haven't gotten the beefed up goals into us yet but once they send in their beefed up goals we'll have another one up there as well good sorry okay well let's go back to the accreditation form the application and this is the part can I get rid of this picture over here now how do I do that just oh well okay okay so in the beginning something that is there is peer libraries and this program we're going to tell you how to use both the strategic plan and this document in your everyday planning and if you are wondering about your peer libraries you can click on that and see a list and it shows 15 people or libraries from communities that are 15 percent above and below your population and generally you're somewhere in the middle and that's where Grant County fits in this particular group of of peer libraries so as you go through this document you'll see that you're compared to other libraries in the state that have a comparable population instead of using the box like we did for a number of years and we did this because and this is a lot of work by the way but we did this because we thought it was fairer yes instead of people just fitting into fairly artificial categories it means that you know if you have a population under 1,000 well that's a big range there's a lot of difference this really compares you to people who are very similar in size to you and I agree I do think it's fair I want to go back to did I lose my you close the browser well close that okay I'm sorry this is one we make a mistake in letting me drive here all right I'm gonna go back to where we were open up fire fox you get your right there on a second one thank you very much okay let me go back to that sorry well this is like this is a learning thing because people want to know how to get to this you go to our front page you click on and you get the fly out box it's really easy to find yeah and then you have to go through the 12 things and if you are unaccredited these are the 12 things that you need to get started on the whole process the minimum requirements then you have the strategic plan and then you have the accreditation form and so many people say well I've tried this before and it didn't work we weren't accredited now don't look at this because this isn't your library I know but you're still not you're still not in the right spot we want to take you in we want to take you into a live form so we're gonna go back to we're gonna go back to Mickey's library and get back in the form itself thank you sorry okay then as you scroll down you see that you can it's 175 points there's 275 available so there's a real great possibility that you'll be able to rack up 175 points it's a people who have never been accredited and if you can get your 12 basic things fulfilled I do believe you can get to the bronze level so there's nothing anymore that knocks you out completely what happened before it other than the strategic plan what happened before is if you didn't have enough funding from your from your village you were knocked out you couldn't be accredited or if you didn't have enough programs you could be knocked out and not not be able to go forward so this form is more fair like Laura mentioned earlier that you're being compared to libraries that are very similar in size in the communities so once you have your strategic plan then you go forward and you think well all these policies what those policies will help you run your library better and they will give you a point so if you're focused on the accreditation process get the points but then you're already because you have great policies to help your library run more smoothly notice they do have to be reviewed but if you write them this year that's right then they're reviewed as soon as they can be older than three years old and we are starting the library policy class I think it's next Monday so okay the basic skills policy class so that's what you do as you're looking at this document you say well what don't we have and could we do that could you write a policy for gifts and donations number one I hope you already have one but if you don't sure you can write one contact the system office will send you some samples and all you have to do is cut and paste policies are one place where cutting and pasting is encouraged so though that's a way to get some points and that's a way to plan to be accredited is to look at some of those things and and have the policies ready for your board to review so that's how I think this document works very well as a planning tool in that you just look at it and see what can we do do we need a friends group or do we want a foundation well maybe you're not up for the getting a 501c3 that's okay just you're gonna lose four points because you don't have a friends group but to get accredited you can lose up to a hundred of the points out there that's why it's nice that there's so many points available so then as you go down into the resources area here's where you have a lot of comparisons to your peer libraries and that's what the green check marks are on this form already they've been filled in because of the of the information that is sent in on the public library statistical report so let's say there was a red X under open hours okay you would look at that and say okay my local hours are less than the peer average or the peer median maybe that would be a way to talk to your to your board and when you're listening to people in your community out on your key informant interviews you can think about what they're really asking for do you need more hours that might be some a way to fill a community need if you're in a bedroom community and most people don't get home till 6 30 and the library closes at 5 it might be something you could feel a community need for for information or computers to use or homework help by staying open until 8 you would do two things you would fill a community need which is what your strategic plan helps you do and you would get points you get three points because you would increase your local hours enough to fall in with the peer average or the peer median that's the planning part yeah so all of these categories give you that opportunity if you have a staff person besides the director have them take the basic skills course it doesn't cost any money there's no charge for it anymore and you'll have a better staff person they'll have a better understanding of how libraries work and you'll get three points so just because you have a part-time staff member you don't need to say well they don't need to be certified I'm already certified it's okay have them do it at no cost and get yourself three more points so Richard do you have any of them that you want to highlight well yeah I think there are quite a few in here as Denise has pointed out this can be a really good planning document for you I want to go back to the one up here about the local income for just a minute when the group that worked with us was doing these new guidelines about four years ago now you guys were both on that thing the local income was considered such an important guideline that that is worth ten points so that's an interesting thing to keep in mind if you're making the case as Denise is saying with your local funders you can say you know what this is obviously a very important guideline let's see if we can get ourselves up to at least the median of income from the other library so that's something you can use now one of the things we notice on here is that Grant County Library is actually doing pretty well on some of these areas when I talked to Vicki about this yesterday I said do you mind if we put your application up here because you know a local funder could look at that and say wait a minute they're getting about in their last statistical survey they're getting 41,000 plus dollars their peers are quite a bit lower than that maybe we don't have to put so much money into it and so I said to Vicki is it okay if we put this up and she said yeah that's okay they're not going to be watching but this is something you have to be careful when you're a library director or members of the board to not let these this information get you at a disadvantage for example if some county commissioner looked at this and said well jeez they're almost double what their peers are I'd say yes and aren't you proud of that and that means we're doing well that doesn't mean that the other people should be emulated you guys are the ones who should be emulated on this whole thing so that's something to keep in mind and then when you get down to collection down here is what the one that I usually talk about now here the Grant County Library and Vicki and I talked about this yesterday you'll notice has one red X Denise was saying to you earlier that with the annual statistics you send in you're automatically compared to your peers and if you meet or exceed the median or the average figure there's a green check mark well here's a red X under turnover rate but I want to talk to you about these four guidelines right here because this is where you as the library director in your library board have to use these guidelines but make some judgments based on that whole thing for example their annual expenditure for materials is above their peer average and their peer median their annual circulation is above a little bit their peer median their collection size is just about at it's above their peer average a little bit below their peer median figure but then their turnover rate is below so what's turnover rate turnover rate basically is the circulation of materials you have divided by the size of your collection and this basically measures the number of times if you divided up that circulation of all those books the number of times each book in your collection would circulate it's a fraction obviously it has to be less than one well the peer median is point one four the peer average is point five two five they're at point one two that means that their collection turnover rate is less than that of their peers now okay does that mean that they have to address that in order to earn those five points perhaps it does perhaps it doesn't it might mean you could draw the conclusion that when you look at the size of their collection they're a bit over their peer average a bit under their peer median does it mean that they have things on the shelf that need to be weeded when you look at the amount that they expend on their materials they spend quite a bit more than their peers on this does this mean that they could cut back on what they're spending and spend it on something else on the annual circulation they are okay on the annual circulation so that probably means they don't have a lot of crap in their collection things are checking out but when you take into account the circulation was how much you have in your collection if you want to address this you address that either by increasing your circulation or decreasing the size of your collection that's how you do it mathematically but you have to as a library director on the board have to look at this and say well is that worth pursuing my guess is it's probably not because they're pretty close to their peer median in the turnover they may want to look at a little bit more vigorous weeding but maybe not and again as as Denise was saying this is five points this is not make or break it right but if you're thinking hey look how close we are yeah maybe if we increase our circulation by doing a few more displays and a little more promoting a certain topics then that would go up yes it's also when you see a number like this you want to look into it more deeply yes you want to say is it because we don't have as many DVDs and they circulate real heavily is it big you know I mean it may be that there's one particular kind of thing in your library that isn't circulating as well as you'd like it to or that you need different materials so you really do need but this really then does give you guys you a basis for making those that further investigation or planning changes or whatever yes I think this is a good example of relating to what Denise had said before that a lot of libraries have told her well I never made the accreditation before I never was good enough for it so why should I bother trying again well I know you guys want to get a lot of libraries accredited but just going through this process can help you make your library work better yes you might not make all the all the points to get accreditation but you just found out something here and these four questions that might help your library work better and you have another chance next year which is really important what you want is your library to do good for your community right there by just going through this checking off the boxes figuring out doing the peer connection relation can we just really use can we show them how you check off a box sure if you have broadband internet access at speeds adequate to meet growing user needs in your library you put a check mark in that box and watch the point to go out total thing to automatically in the corner in the upper right-hand corner once or by default put in there yes the peer I don't want you to emulate I don't want you to emulate this but what had I had a library last year that said I'm getting a hundred seventy five and I'm quitting now let me point out one more thing about this application for because we've got to wrap it up here I notice we're getting toward the end of our time there are it by almost all these guidelines a line that says library goal or goals and there's kind of a grayed out area this we're asking you to as you're doing your strategic plan and as you're filling out your application if there is something in your strategic plan that talks about having your catalog on the internet 24 hours a day or talks about better access to your catalog through having it online then in this gray area please indicate which part of your strategic plan that's addressed in page four section two or even have a phrase from the strategic plan that's entirely up to you I have to admit that a lot of people are not filling in much in these areas but it says at the top of this thing here that in each thing it says list the pertinent goal or goals in your library strategic plan if the plan touches upon that subject if it doesn't touch upon that subject you don't have to put anything in there but if it does please put it in there because what this does is it allows us and allows you to see this connection between the strategic plan and your accreditation process okay what else do we want to say before we wrap it up here well that no one is probably going to get every single point here no and that was one of the points in having it be it a point total yes you make the decisions what's important for your community and you can still be accredited and in fact at a high level yes if you've made decisions about what your community needs and if certain things this list isn't meant to say you have to have everything here it's meant to say what your priorities were yes and look at these and it'll help you because of the connection with using it as a planning process as Denise is saying it'll help you address some of these things perhaps things you haven't even thought about yeah if you are accredited at the silver level you get the additional 200 bucks in state aid if you're accredited at the gold level you get additional $400 in state aid so there are incentives as well not large incentives but mostly it's the glory it's the glory yes that's it do we have any other questions that came in well no does anybody have any questions you know they were typing things get that one as you were talking so sure but he doesn't have any last-minute questions you want to get answered before wrap up get it typed in there and we can ask them so we just had that one from before I wrote that down we'll address that yeah anything else you guys want to say before we're well and even if you're not completely comfortable on on using internet forms this one is really easy because you can save it yes thank you and work on it later yeah so you just save as you go save and resume don't submit it until sometime after October 1st or by October 1st excuse me by October 1st so I have a month to look at these things because otherwise and when these come in three of us here at the Commission received messages that you have submitted a form and then if you submit the final one it says the final one submit it if you just leave this application form and just close out of it it'll say do you really want to leave this page and if you say yes nothing that I did fiddling around with this form is going to be saved when I close it or if you want to save and resume later you can save and resume and you can change what you did before too so up until you submit you can make changes back and forth yeah yes and make sure that you put down if there are any corrections that need to be made here make those corrections because that comes in so we can make it changes in our database as well great well no urgent questions came in so I'm going to assume that means we're all good so that will wrap it up for using your accreditation but the accreditation guidelines for strategic planning for strategic planning for your guidelines they go back and forth really kind of the point of this and they are yeah they're both related to oh okay we do have one last minute question that came in do we have to send in a copy of the technology plan no do you need a copy that no if you want however to have your technology yes if you want it want someone to look at it and give you advice on it or to look at it before you make it your final version you can send it to me Krista I do the reviews of them as an aside technology plans used to be a requirement for doing e-rate as of this year they are not a requirement so we don't actually do approvals so to speak anymore I don't like send you that a little official letter saying it's approved because that is no longer needs to be done we're not requiring a approvals for this purpose either but if you want me to look at it send it to me Krista and fax email whichever and I can give you tips and advice on it but no it does not have to be submitted in paper as along with you just need to check off the box whatever reason they're saying you have one and unlike in the past you also do not have to submit to us all the copies of your library policies unless you want to send them in we'll put them in your file but I do not review all those policies I quit that last year after they almost hauled me off to the insane asylum so those are just for you and your board have them approved we at least but if you want advice on them while you're creating them that we could either that or talk to your system director right yeah right talk to somebody about you okay all right cool um actually I mean can you type in encompass live I'm gonna hand that to don't wait let me screw it up you don't spell it wrong we're good oh and there's what he's just talking about because we didn't hit save yep it is now asking me I'm trying to go off the page are you sure you want to go so if you accidentally try and close your browser it goes somewhere else and you have done work you want to save it's gonna stop you first to make sure so but I'm gonna say yes we don't want to save the changes all right so that will wrap it up for this week's encompass live then thank you very much everyone attending thank you very much these and Laura and Richard for telling us everything we ever wanted to know about accreditation and planning the show has been recorded and will be posted onto our website here our archives are there we go right underneath our upcoming shows is a link to our archive sessions I have a copy of the PowerPoint that Laura had at the beginning will be included as well a link to that it's his last week's show just showing you and the links to any websites I put the form itself not the form but the blank one on the page about accreditation and then the two ones you might had earlier near public library and the other one I found their sites too so you want to see what they have written up there okay those will all be concluded in the show notes afterwards as well for your reference so as I said that wraps up for today I hope you join us next week when we will be meeting the unique needs of teens Michelle McPhillips who's from our Columbus Public Library here in Nebraska's I talked to us about how at their library they worked with some as she says here some complaints about the teens and they worked out how they get the teens in the community both be happy with how the library is used by both of them together so go ahead and hopefully join us for that next week or any of the other topics that we have coming up on the show in the next couple of months also if you are a big Facebook user and Columbus live is on Facebook get up here so go over there and like our page there I post notices of when a new show is coming here's my reminder for this morning saying the new show is about to start in about ten minutes when the recording is available I post on here so if you are being on Facebook definitely like us over there and you'll keep up to date on what we're doing other than that that wraps it up this morning thank you very much and we'll see you next time thank you guys bye bye everyone okay