 Hey, good evening, and welcome to a very special edition of Montpelier Civic Forum. No, Town Meeting Day is not coming up in a few weeks. We're not speaking with candidates. What we're doing instead is we're talking about the reopening of Montpelier. And we've got just a great lineup of shows. We have Anne Watson talking about what a mayor would talk about, the policy of how we open, and her view of what Montpelier might look like as it socially reopens. We have Libby Bone Still, and we have Jim Murphy from the Rocksbury, well I should say the Montpelier Rocksbury School District, and they're going to talk about what went down in the spring. They're going to talk about the graduation, but more importantly, they're going to talk about what the current thinking is in terms of the fall and beyond in our public schools. That's an excellent show. I have Bill Fraser on for an hour, a really good hour, where Bill talks about what is going on with the city budget, what is going on with the reopening, and Bill does a really interesting 10 or 15 minutes on police, and from his view as city manager. And that leads to another really great show that I have with Police Chief Fakos and Police Chief Pete. I have the two chiefs, and they speak of 21st century policing and community policing, and Chief Fakos discusses the evolution of policing in Montpelier towards that goal. That is a really, really good show. And last but not least, I have John Odom, who's speaking on a very timely issue, how we're going to vote in August, and what's coming down in terms of the November election and F&T ballots and the like. That's an excellent show. He also speaks about fines that you haven't paid yet to the city clerk's office. Now today, it's my pleasure to have a co-director of the Cowell Hubbard Library, Carolyn Brennan, who sits in an office in the back. Yes. You're having me. Co-director? Co-director. Yep. Yep. I'm the co-director. Also, there's a comment after that. I'm the library director. So my fellow co-director, Jesse Lynn, is the non-profit director. So the Cowell Hubbard Library is a 501c3 non-profit, and so we have the business end of things that Jesse runs, and then the library services end of things is what I run. Now you took over from Tom McCown. We did. How is Tom McCown doing? Is he healthy during the pandemic? He is. He is. So I think the most recent time I talked to Tom, he actually, he texted me. He was taking a walk in Barry, and he sent me some beautiful sculpture on this hike that he was going on with a friend of his. Well, that's great. Yeah. He's enjoying herself. How long have you been co-director? Just about a year. So we took over. Tom's last day was, I think, the 7th of June last year. And so then Jesse and I were interim co-directors until July 1st, and then we took over officially the 1st of July. So it's been just about a year. And then a pandemic happened. A lot of things have happened. It's been a very busy year, and it's been a very unusual year. But yes, we had that. Unusual in what ways beside the pandemic? Well, as if the elephant in the room never happened. All right. Well, it started out. My very first day on the job as an interim co-director on the 10th of June, whatever that Monday was, we were gearing up to do drag Queen Story Hour at the library in July. Oh, was that the one that got nationally flamed? Yes, exactly. So we were. What was that event? Drag Queen Story Time. We had two local Vermont drag queens come out. So you announced that this is going to happen. Now, I don't think that Montpelier is the only place that this has ever happened. No, of course not. No. Drag Queen Story Time. Well, this wasn't even our first drag Queen Story Time. We had won the year prior with the same two drag queens that came out. And we had a wonderful, very busy, very popular program. And so this was the second time, last year was the second time around. And generally, if you're going to have any sort of, if you're going to see pushback or criticism, either positive or negative, you're going to see that the first time you offer a program. Did you get positive feedback after the first time? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It was very well-received. And it was very well-received in our community. So this is a wonderful program. It was a wonderful storyteller. This is two individuals like any other individual. Yeah, exactly. It was reading storybooks to children. That's right. Reading storybooks, singing songs, and yeah, exactly. It's just like any other themed story time that we do. What's the age group that they're reading to? So it's parents with preschool age kids and probably through elementary age kids. We see a pretty big range, especially during the summer when we do summer story times, you see a wider range of kids. So during the school year, we're really only seeing parents with preschoolers. But as you get into the summertime, you see kind of a wider age. Now this event happened, what was the approximate of the date? I think it was July 13th. So you would have had elementary school kids as well as preschool kids. Yeah. Okay, now when did all of a sudden the controversy happen? There was a Facebook post by a Facebook personality called Activist Mommy. And yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what her name was. It's been a little while now. And she had something like 600,000 followers and said, this is happening in Montpelier. We should protest it and call the library and put our names and our phone numbers on there. And so the calls that we received, we had two local people who called in protest that didn't think we should offer that program. And then the rest of the calls we received were all from out of state. They ranged around the country. Did you get any calls regarding an extended warranty on your car? No. I get those on my cell phone. How many calls did you receive? It had to have been well into the hundreds. It was many, many. It lasted about a week that we were getting these calls. And we were getting the first couple of days, the phone was ringing off the hook and every time anybody picked up, it was somebody calling saying. Were any of them abusive or was it so? Oh yes. What happens when a public library, not even a public library, what happens when the Kellogg Hubbard public library in Montpelier, Vermont gets that kind of controversy? What happens? Does your board meet? Yeah. It certainly came up at the June board meeting, which was happening right after this controversy happened. And as part of our job as co-directors, Jesse and I, we keep the board well informed about everything that's going on. And so the board was aware of it, they were aware of our stance on it and how we decided we were going to proceed. What was our stance on it? That we were going to continue with the program. And the way I think, if I'm recalling this, assuming I'm recalling this correctly, I think I am, what we said was that we might consider it differently if we received significant local pushback. Because the idea behind library programming is that it resonates or is relevant to people who live in our local community, to the people who support and fund the library and who patronize the library. Now if I remember correct, this did make the papers locally. It did make the papers locally. And it probably made the television. I was on WCAX and it was in seven days and it was in... Then you must have gotten pushback on the other side, people saying we want this event to happen. Absolutely. And so we did. Really the local response that we received was very positive. We saw really overwhelming support. And when it was time for the program to actually run, which was more than a month after this happened because it was in the middle of July, we packed the haze room with 135 people. So that's a room that normally we put about 75 people in. And we had adults in there. We had parents with children on their laps. We had people spilling out into the elevator foyer and spilling back into the nonfiction room. It was just... It was a tremendous positive response and we did not see any negative protesters the day after. Did we end up with greater attendance at future story hours as a result? I think even back out, our story times and our children's programs are very, very well attended. They're very popular and very well received across the board. So this particular one, because it was controversial, it saw a record turnout. But I think that after that we went back into our normal pattern of regular story time attendees. Did the Facebook, Ms. Mommy, did she leave it alone after that? She... Well, the nature of Facebook is that things get buried very quickly and you move on to whatever the next thing is kind of coming down the pike. And there were drag queen story time events happening all over the country. So it was just a few days later and it was, all right, guys, call in protest. This one is happening... Somewhere else. Yeah, exactly. Somewhere else. Assuming that story hours are still... We're going to get to that question of, you're never going to have 135 people during the pandemic in that room again. Assuming that story hours are happening, will we get the two drag queens? Are they willing to come back? I hope so. Yeah, they're absolutely... I'm sure they're willing to come back and I hope we have them again. Will they be invited again? Yes, of course. Yeah. It was a popular... It was a popular well-received program and they did it... I stayed for the whole thing. I've both years that they had it and it was just very well done. They're wonderful. The next would be the bond that came on Town Meeting Day. How did that work for you? How did your budget go through? It went through very well this past fiscal year for Town Meeting Day. Our Town Meeting Day prep starts in July and August of the year prior. It's almost a continuous cycle that we go through. First of all, we determine the budget of the library gets set by the Board of Trustees and then we determine what our town asks need to be. Then of our six member communities, Worcester is the first one that has... It's the first time where the process starts for town meeting funding. I have a report that I fill out for the town of Worcester. Which are the towns? Sure. Berlin, Callis, Eastmont Piliar, Middlesex, Montpelier and Worcester are our six member towns. Now, did they all come through on Town Meeting Day? They all came through on Town Meeting Day. Through the fall, we set our amounts. I visit the select boards in the winter time and I generally do about a one-page report, narrative report for the town report. Then I do a page of relevant statistics about the library. I try to keep that in the same format so it's an apples-to-apples comparison from year to year. I don't want to change things up on those numbers. Then I do the select board visits. In Berlin, I get to go to their pre-town meeting meeting and speak there and it went very smoothly. We do a couple of towns where we need to petition every year. Those are always at the front desk? They're always at the front desk. We usually post them in the children's library, in the adult library, and then we have trustee representatives from our member towns. The trustee representatives will also help us get the petitions filled out. The board is also talking about capital improvements, aren't they? Yes. One of the other unusual things from last year was we were in the middle of a $600,000 capital funding campaign called Give the Library a Lift. Capital funding being building. Being building. Yes, being building improvements. Yes, exactly. What type of building improvements will $600,000 funding? The biggest, there's a number of projects, and so I'm not going to remember the complete list off the top of my head, but that information is all available on our website if anybody was interested. Which is? Which is www.kellacovered.org. Our biggest, our flagship project, the actual lift, is that we need to replace our elevator. So the elevator was originally installed in the 1970s and has been faithfully maintained from that day to this, but is starting to show its age and needs a replacement. So a chunk of that money will be towards replacing the elevator, and we're anticipating that that work is going to happen sometime early this fall, but we don't have a set date yet. Have we met our goal for the capital cost? We met our goal by January 1st of 2020. So we closed out the last calendar year by November. So we're back on the perpetual book sale. Yes. As soon as we can open our doors to visitors, we'll be back to the book sale. We're in February now, we're right before town meeting day, and on town meeting day you get all your towns in, and then a pandemic hits. And then a pandemic hits about a month later. So we still have, in the library, after town meeting day, when we know that we've been successful in all of our member towns, the very first thing we do is we put a big thank you to all of the voters up on our website. And the banner goes up. Yeah, and we put thank you signs all through the library building. And because the pandemic happened so shortly after that time, those signs are still up in the library right now, actually. So I have one of the tasks ahead of me for the end of this week and beginning of next week is to update all of our signage. What is the, we're in March now. The library closes along with the rest of the town, seemingly. What did that mean initially? And when did the decision come that people could pick up books in front of the library? Sure. So we actually did, before we closed entirely, we had a week of just filling orders and filling holds for people where the building was closed to patrons. So before we shut down entirely, and then it became clear as things were shutting down and the orders were coming down from the executive orders were coming from the governor. And we actually closed our doors just prior to when libraries across the board, across the state closed down. And that would have been around the 20th or so of March? Yeah, something like that. I think it was a week prior. I think it was something like the 16th or the 17th of March. It was right around St. Patrick's Day. And so immediately, so we had to, so the library closed to visitors and then the library closed to staff. Originally we were thinking, oh, we can use this time to weed out our collection and to do all of these building projects. And then it became very rapidly clear that that was not possible. So we still had a lot of virtual work that we could do. What is virtual work? Virtual work. So distance-based work. So for library programming, that meant that within a week, our poem city, which we had been planning for April, had to move to a digital online format. So there were some presenters that canceled their programs outright and others that were amenable. What would the digital program for poem city be? People on Zoom reading their poems? Yeah, that was some of it. And there were some things that were pre-recorded that, you know, similarly to this that we then posted on our website as videos. We took the entire body of poems that normally we would have professionally printed and put up all around our communities. And those became virtually browsable electronic documents. There were landmarks. And you could see people's poems in front of the house. Yeah. Yeah, well. Or is that different? That's different. But so anyway, so, so everything had to move to a digital format. Our story times, our preschool story times moved to Facebook Live almost immediately. Are we catching a market for that? Yeah, I think so. I think we've got a pretty, I think, I think it's pretty steady. I'd have to go back and look at what our most recent numbers were. But we were, Melissa, our children's programming librarian does them primarily now for a little while at the beginning. We had different library staffers and library friends presenting them. And yeah, and they were they were pretty well received. It was a nice spot of normalcy. Did our staff stay on or did we furlough some of them? We did not furlough any of our staff. So we assigned them professional development opportunities that they could pursue and clean up work in our electronic database. Their remote programming work. So there were there were plenty of projects and things that needed to rapidly change exploration for how we could increase our digital presence. We had to ramp up our social media presence and and what would your social media presence be right now? Well primarily. So right now we do weekly postings on on front porch forum and Facebook and Instagram that have kind of our news and events. What's going on at the library? What is going on at the library? Well right now in adult programming we've got a pride poetry reading coming up at the end of June. How can a person access that song? They would go to your site to find out when at the end of June. Exactly. It's well I wrote it down. It's June 27th at 6 p.m. But you would go through our website and that's going to be a virtual program. So that you so there will be a link where you can connect into it. 6 p.m. Yeah. And then we have a we have a haiku story walk going on right now in front of the library. So so local poets wrote haikus and put them together with photography and so those are posted on garden stakes all around the library building and then we've had those out in out in different neighborhoods around Montpelier as well. So that's what I'm saying. Yeah that's what you're seeing right now is the haiku story walk. And then in children's programming the summer reading program has started so we have that's some of that is virtual and some of that will be outdoors and we'll do some outdoor distance based programming and then and kids fill out reading logs and say what they've read over the summer and then they get a prize at the end. When can we get in. When can you get in. That's a very good question and it's a little bit of a moving target. So right now is that under your control or is that part of where the governor's office is dictating. It's both. So so for a long time it was dictated by the executive orders and the guidelines from the the Vermont ACCD. What is that. Oh God. The Vermont Association of Commerce and Community Development. And that's pretty good. I'm glad I remembered it because I've been just calling it the ACCD for a very long time at this point. So the ACCD is who sets out all of the rules for how businesses can how businesses are closed or how they can can safely reopen. And so libraries were after libraries were closed the we were allowed to go back to curbside service. So which is what curbside service is that table that's in front of the library. How do I get a book onto that table. You get a book onto that table by either logging on to your library account. If that's we have some folks that do it that way and placing a hold or you can call the library and request a hold. What is what's the library's number. It is two two three three three eight. And what are the library hours that that phone will be answered. That phone will be answered Monday and Wednesday from two p.m. to seven p.m. And Tuesday Thursday Friday Saturday from ten a.m. to three p.m. So you're saying go to the website to remember the hours. You can go to our website to remember the hours. So you so you call you get on your library account or you email us at info at Kellogg Hubbard dot org and you can place a request any of those ways. And then what will happen next is as soon as that book is available assuming it's on our shelf one of our librarians will go and pick it up. They will place a hold for you and then they will give you a call. Also it's not the standard protocol of the email when the when the hold comes in. No you get an E you are getting people that are signed up for automatic email notifications are getting emails. But the email they're getting is saying something like your hold is almost ready. A librarian will call you shortly to arrange pickup. And so then a library librarian will call you and say what day would you like to come pick up your book is ready. I've got it in hand. What when would you like to come pick it up and you arrange a day we and we put it on the table on the day that you're you're scheduled to come pick it up. Now at that point if you have the email protocol it will remind you that the book is due within two weeks. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. You get like a three day notice and a and a date due notice and like a two week overdue notice are many people availing themselves of that. Of the of curbside surf. Yes. Yes. We're doing the last numbers I took. I think we're on the 10th of June. And at that point we were up to about to just under 60 percent of our regular circulation while we were what we were circulating in the same time period a year ago. Now you're not circulating those books that I still have from early March that I haven't returned. Well a lot of you haven't returned them yet. We can't. Oh a fortune on those. What what's the policy on those books. The minute we close down our book returns we obviously could no longer charge fines that would have been very unfair. So and we are still still not charging fines. Some day we will have to reestablish fines and we will make sure that we notify when we do that and give people some lead time in front of that. But for now we're not charging fines. So we're still working out what quarantining our books. That's 72 hours. Would you explain that because I got a notice in the mail saying hey your book is due when I had returned it the day before. And it was caught up in the 72 hours. Yep and we're and and we're just we just about have that resolved at this point when we first started that process we had a backlog of of books that had been returned that we needed to get checked in and we were limited to how many people we could have working in the building at any given time. So getting everything checked in was a was a challenge and meeting all of the requests that were coming in for books to go out. So but the other piece of that. So when books get returned to the library they have to quarantine for 72 hours. So how do you do that? What what's involved in quarantine just it sounds a lot more serious than it actually is. So the librarians that empty our book drops put on gloves they empty the book drops and right now because we don't have visitors in the building the reading room right in the front of the library is our quarantine room. And so those great big long study tables that have been there since forever for 125 years all of the books are getting stacked there. And then we label the day that they were returned and then three days later we're checking them in. So now we've got a system update actually in our in our catalog software where we can check the books in now the day that they're returned and then they will show a status if you look look them up in the catalog they'll say unavailable in quarantine for 72 hours before they go back into regular circulation. So so those email notices where you're like where you're saying I already returned this book why am I getting an overdue notice those should be stopping probably with the beginning of next week will be will be caught up with that piece of workflow. Are you seeing an uptick in the people who are using the states the connections to ebooks? Yes, we absolutely are. So one of the very first one of the things that we did in March after the library closed we immediately put collection development money so money that we would normally use to buy books and DVDs into our into Libby. So into what is that Libby is the app that you use to borrow ebooks and audio books to digital ebooks and audio books. It's also the older version of that app is called Overdrive. So that might be the one that some people are more familiar with. And all of that is run by the Green Mountain Library Consortium of which were a member just just for the ebook and audio book service. So so we put we put money into Libby to increase the collection size for our digital downloads because at that point that was the only thing that we could make available to people. And we did see an uptick. I want to say so the last statistics I have for Libby are for the month of May and we went from about 2000 circulations in May 2019 to 2700 in May 2019. So we saw a seven hundred circulation increase almost something just a little under a third increase. Let's go to the future. OK. How many square feet does that building have? What's the what's the maximum occupancy that under the rules that the governor is set? Well, the the entirety of the building is over 18000 square feet. And that includes the perpetual book sale in the basement. That includes the perpetual book sale in the basement. I believe that's every every last square foot of the library. However, when we first reopen, we're not going to be able to allow browsing. So people aren't going to be able to go into the into the stacks. They're going to be able to come into a limited amount of the library in a limited way. So can you explain that a little bit? I can explain that a little bit better. So when I walk, OK, let me walk in from the front door. OK. Well, so when the library first reopens, if you walk in through the front door, you're going to see somebody in the foyer at first, it's going to be me, actually. And I'll the greeter. I will be the greeter, exactly. And I'll be the head counter. So we'll have you'll walk in the front door. If if we're not at our occupancy limit, I'll say, how can we help? How can I direct you or how can I help you today? And and at first, you'll you'll be able to request a book in in person, but you won't be able to pick books up from inside the building yet. So you can request a book. You can ask a question if you have a reference question or we answer questions, all kinds of questions. You'll be able to use the public bathroom. We're still figuring out exactly how that's going to work and what our sanitation schedule is going to look like for that space. But but as of right now, ostensibly, that's that would be an option or you can use a public computer. So the area which is to my right as I'm walking in, which has new books, those tables from forever and the magazines, is that closed? That will not be closed. So the areas that will be open when we when we first reopen will be that front reading room, the quarantine area is going to move. We're going to put those in the haze room, the room being the haze room being our first floor conference room. So and I'm not sure when which is where the story time is exactly right. Yeah. And I don't know what will next be packing one hundred and thirty five people into that space. So it's going to hold many hundreds of books that are waiting, waiting through the quarantine process in the meantime. What happens to the children's story hour then? Is that the children's story hour is upstairs? No. Well, so at that point, we're not going to be having in person programming in that way in the building. So I imagine that when that happens, summer story, the the summer reading program will still be going on. And all of our story times are either going to be distance based out on the library lawn or out in outdoor locations in all of our member communities. We're going to be bringing programming out as part of as part of outreach. Will you be required to wear gloves and your calf during the winter? Well, I have no idea. I don't think I'm alone in the fact that I have no idea what this winter is going to hold for us or for I mean, for us collectively, for anybody. So we'll see if we're still doing curbside service and what the library looks like when there's snow on the ground. So upstairs, people won't be going up. No, so you'll be able to you'll be able to access the foyer, the main floor bathroom, the reading room and will that side door not be available. It will simply be front or it will be front or access only. The caveat to that is the so the school street entrance, the back door that has the elevator that does have the elevator. So that will be an emergency exit or if somebody if somebody needs, if that's the way that they need to get into the building, if there's somebody that's a person with a disability and they need to use the elevator, then I will go around and I will open that door for them. But just because of our staffing levels and coordinating two entrances that you can't see one from the other, we're we're going to really be primarily using that front door. What's the what's the summer reading list during the pandemic? What are people reading during the pandemic? Does it differ from normal? It's interesting. So so I did some research with this this morning and I looked since from the middle of March until yesterday, what were the highest circulated books in the library? And I broke it out from adults to young adults to children. And in adult, our most circulated book right now is Pleasure Activism, the Politics of Feeling Good by Adrienne Brown. Can you tell me what that is? I haven't read that one yet. So I can't tell you what that is and I don't have the snaps. It's off the top. Interesting, interesting title. It is an interesting title. It was recommended. I remember that it was recommended by a former employee of the library. And anyway, I encourage anybody that's watching. One more title and the author. Pleasure Activism, the Politics of Feeling Good. And the author. Oh, sorry, Adrienne Brown. OK, what else is. So Emma Straub, other people we married stories. So this is an author that wrote a book called The Vacationers. It's so this is a short story collection by a popular author. Then we've got Fine Gardening, Fine Gardening Magazine, which is very seasonal, a collection of poetry called Ledger by Jane Hirschfield, City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert, The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabeldon. The Graves Are Walking, The Great Famine in the Saga of the Irish People. And then we've got The Great Gatsby, The Impeachers, the Trial of Andrew Johnson in the Dream of Adjacination, and then White Trash, the 400 year untold history of class in America. So the interesting thing that we're seeing is that people aren't checking out. Normally when somebody comes into the library, they go right to that new book section. Right. And with that removed, people are going back to familiar authors, familiar titles. So we're not seeing as many checkouts of our newest books. So, which I find interesting. So we've got a mix of stuff that's topical or seasonal, and then we've got kind of some classics and some familiar authors mixed in there. Now, does this speak to Montpelier that you didn't tell me, oh, David Valdacci or Lee Child or Stephen King? I think so. Montpelier, the patrons of the library in Montpelier, they're very well read, and they very much know what they like to read. We see so many requests for new materials, and... Are we still taking requests for acquisitions? Absolutely. Are we still making acquisitions? Absolutely, yeah, yep, exactly. We definitely are. So the only pause we saw in buying new materials was in the month of April, and that was when we were really focusing on that Libby collection, that online collection. But for May and June, we made our regular orders across the board. We are taking requests. We now on our... One thing that we're doing at the library is trying to move a lot of things to our website, so things... I was just about to ask, if you're not standing there browsing those new books, will the website accommodate better to the new acquisitions? I mean, as best we can. I'm a traditionalist, and I don't think there's really any substitute for browsing the shelves, but we do the best we can digitally. So a couple of the few things that you'll find. So requesting that we purchase a book. We have an online request form. We have an online form now for renewing your library card if your library card is coming due, or for requesting a new library card if you're a new patron. So we have some of these processes that used to be analog. You have to come into the library and you have to do them in person, and now they're available through our website. Also on our website, something we've always done is we take our new book lists for the last six months and we post those on our website. The ones that used to be in color. Exactly, yeah, they used to be in a different color. We would print them in a different color for every month. So those are available virtually through our website. So is there, are there any decisions that you're really pondering over on the reopening right now? Well, the very most current thing that we were talking about this week is what does it look like to reopen a public bathroom? What is, how do we, who cleans it? How often do they clean it? And what does that look like? And based on the square footage of our bathroom, can we have anybody in there at all? So we're doing a lot of thinking about our space and thinking about how we interact with it. We're thinking about how we staff the building to have patron foot traffic while we still have an increased digital presence. We have new digital services that take time and care to manage. And we have a really robust outreach program and a really robust curbside service. So none of that is going to go away when we reintroduce foot traffic. So with a limited number of staffers, most of whom are part-time, how do we get visitors in the building and still do all of these other things that are quite frankly, very time consuming? If there are limits to the number of visitors in the building, will there be time limits as to how long a person can stay in the building in order to maximize the number of individuals who can use the building at a given time? We haven't yet set a time limit, but what we have said is that in our first iteration of allowing foot traffic into the building, it will be for brief purposeful visits. And we do have time limiters set on our public computers. So we're going to move some of our public computers that used to be out in the nonfiction room. Those are moving out into that reading room space and we're only going to move enough so that there's one at each of those big tables so that everybody will be six feet apart. Will the time that you're afforded move from 60 minutes to 20 minutes or 30 minutes? It's going to move from 60 minutes to 30 minutes, yep. So it'll be a half an hour max time. Theoretically, we haven't stated this explicitly yet, but I suppose theoretically, if you weren't done with your time, you would have the option to leave the building and maybe come back a little while later and have another turn, which is something that we always used to do with our computers. And it'll depend on if we have to make reservations for people, it will depend on demand. So some of this we're not going to know until we get to the point where we're opening for foot traffic. I think that some people will self-select. I think that curbside service, I think for a long time, people will still choose to pick up their books via curbside service or use digital, the digital aspects of the library instead of coming in the door. But we don't know how many people will want to come in. We'll choose to come in at first. Do you feel that that diminishes the town? I mean, we're talking, when I talked to Dan Groberg and when I talked to Ann, we discussed the town as a social cohesion. And if there is a cohesive factor in Mount failure, it's that a lot of people relate to the public library. People of all ages come into our public library and see it as a gathering place where you can see other people you know. The vision that you're spelling of Kellogg Hubbard. It's gonna look very different for a while. And it kind of breaks my heart because when I started out as a librarian and decided to go into this career, it's because I see a library as the great civic space. It's one of the spaces that you can go into without it costing you anything. And you can go in and you can just exist and you can hang out and you can stay. It's the living room of the town. In a community of people you know. In a community of people you know. And in a community of people that are going to be like-minded. So you're going, if you attend a program, the other people there that are attending that program have a similar interest to you. So it's a wonderful way for people to connect. If you're a new mom and you're taking your baby to story time for the first time, you've probably been home with them on maternity leave for a while and it's a chance to have an adult conversation while you're doing something that's wonderful for your baby as well. So the library is a place where people connect and it's an incredibly important hub of the community. And so the loss of that and is something that we all feel very, very keenly. And I'm not sure when it's going to look like anything resembling normal again. Are you looking at the best practices of other libraries across the country, across the state, across the world? Absolutely. So Vermont has a wonderful department of libraries. It's over in Barrie. And so they give out best practices and educational resources and guidance to libraries across the state. And we contribute. All of the libraries across the state contribute to each other. We have a very, very active listserv that has an ongoing conversation about all of the challenges people are facing. So none of us exist in silos. We're all communicating. There's a very robust page on the department of libraries website where they're saying here are some of the, here are some of the reopening plans for other libraries across the state. There have been lots of opportunities for conversation and meetings via Zoom where different library directors have been able to get together and talk about what reopening means and what it looks like and what are the things, okay, this is what we're doing. What are you guys doing? Or where are you in this reopening process? So we can all compare notes and make sure that we're following the guidance from the department of libraries, the guidance from the ACCD and then supporting each other. Well, I'm gonna hit you with a curveball now. Okay. These people have watched us talk. If they have any other questions, can you write to info at kellochhubber.org and have your questions answered that I didn't ask? You certainly can. You can ask us anything you like and, or you can call us during the open hours. And your phone number again? 223-3338. I wanna thank you for this conversation. I thank you, the staff at the catalog, Hovered, for holding it together during really tough times. Yeah, I appreciate it. And we've seen nothing but positive support from people during all of this. People are so grateful for curbside service and they're grateful to be able to reach out and connect even if it's only virtually and not in person. So we've had a very positive response. We felt very well supported. And when you start to open again, can I have you again on Orca? Yeah, it would be my pleasure. Thank you so very much for watching. Watch the other shows. They're really good and they're well worth watching. Good evening.