 All right, we're still here, a big talk from small libraries starting, it's a little after one o'clock p.m. central time. We had a lot of good lightning round sessions going and so we're a little into our next hour but that's okay, we're going to jump right on into it. Natalie Bazan is on the line, as I pronounced that right, I forget. You got it. Okay, she's from Michigan and she's the director of both Hopkins District and Doortownship Libraries in Michigan and she's going to talk about some free low-cost training online workshops that you can do to get your staff up to speed on certain, you know, whatever you need. So I'll just hand it right over to you, Natalie, to take it away. All right, wonderful. This is going to be kind of interactive so if I ask a question, please do write in and I know that I'm going to get interrupted quite a bit and that is totally okay. That's okay, I'll do that as often as I need. Sounds like a plan. I am going to talk really fast because I'm going to try to get us back on time too. So no worries, I already emailed in my slides so you have access to those, don't try to scribble down notes or anything like that. A little bit of background, I've talked a couple of times so some of you have already heard this but Hopkins is a tiny, tiny little rural library, serves 4,600 people over about 100 square miles and my budget is about $100,000 a year so I don't have and that we maintain our own building and everything else so we don't have a whole lot of money and I don't have a whole lot of time between the two libraries to spend on continuing ed but it is a passion of mine and it is something that I think all of us need to pay a lot of attention to. So just a couple of things that I put together on why it's really important to continue lifelong learning and I'm hoping that some of you will chime in, why do you think it's important for you? For me it helps me learn new things, I don't want to do the we've always done it that way, I hate that phrase, it just drives me nuts, it's like that's nice but it's not the world that it used to be, things have changed since then and it helps me be more flexible, yeah everybody gets stuck in a rut, everybody likes the we've always done it that way but even if it's worked for you in the past other things might work for you better and you should at least hear about them so if you can think of anything any reasons why it's really important to you maybe things that you use to justify if you're gonna go if you want to go on a training write in I'd love to hear them and I think all of us would love to hear them. We actually have a bunch of those coming in right now, first one says keeps me up to date and fresh with what is happening now another person says we have to be knowledgeable about many things in order to serve our community as well and it adds value to your organization having that you know getting your knowledge bringing new things into my community I always say if you don't do professional development you don't get to call yourself a professional oh so true there's one yeah it makes me a well-rounded person keep the creative juices flowing yes see what other people are doing avoid job burnout yeah I always think about it if I'm putting money into one of my employees or into myself to attend something like this and we'll talk about that when we get to budget but it's not just investing in me I mean that's great if I leave or if one of my employees leaves they leave with better certifications more knowledge and that's great for them but before they leave it's great for me because I get to take advantage of that it's always good to learn new things it is in my screens when you guys get them there are additional notes on the bottom so that'll give you links to websites that you can use if you're interested okay budgeting it's not just about the money obviously Hopkins has a tiny budget I have a hundred thousand I think I have about two that and I have like five hundred dollars or something for continuing at but I get to supplement some of that with grants and donations and things like that but it's about time too and I know I'm not the only one out there who is running running running non-stop if you're a lone librarian which I how many of you are out there I'm gonna guess that there's quite a few hopefully you can find a volunteer who can work for part of the day or the day so you can attend trainings or thank God there are a lot of webinars that are archived so you can listen to a little bit of it go answer that reference question teach story time get back to it and not have to be tied to that computer the whole time or not have to actually invest in the time and the effort to drive somewhere or to fly somewhere or whatever it has happens to be they have to prioritize what things do you specifically want to achieve I like to write out a series of goals I don't know how many of you look at the year or look at your strategic plan if you've got one even if you don't where would you like to see your library go just think about that and what can you do what can your staff do what can your friends group do what can your board members do to make that happen and prioritize maybe you can find some webinars that are free maybe you can find some local trainings that are not terribly expensive it's about finding something that fits in with your time and that fits in with your priorities which has been really hard quite honestly because you look at the list of things that I'll give you shortly and I'm going to show you an email that I just received about an hour ago actually that has just a ton of upcoming webinars and they all sound fantastic but I don't have time for that I don't have time to take them all I want to and I'm sure all of you do too but priorities okay so how many alone librarians we have out there maybe a couple yeah if you want to you can raise your hand use the raise hand function function on your go to webinar interface and see a bunch of those come up we got a few people say me I am also in the viewer solo librarian out there alright how many of you even if you're so low if you're not how many of you to have a budget line item for continuing education or training or travel if you know great let us know if you don't know then maybe you should find out just for your own information see if that money is actually being used or if that's something that you can suggest different ideas for I always try to budget line items for education and training both for my staff and for myself I am very excited when they come up with something on their own that they want to do a lot of times quite honestly I come up with a lot of things and say hey guess what I need somebody to take this training and they're all quite excited to do it because it's something new for them it's something different for them gets them off the desk for a little while but how do you pay for it like I said Hopkins has a very very small budget doors budget is not that much larger the community is about twice the size my budgets $150,000 but I have a lot more employees there and there are seven of us we're all part-time and I want to make sure that everybody gets a chance from my teenager who's working for us all the way up to the lady who just turned 72 I would like to make sure that all of us get a chance to pursue what we love and what the library happens to need but definitely what we love everybody has something that they are very excited about and I want to give them a chance to connect with the larger library community and people that are also excited about those topics and I do that a lot of times through grants and donations and fundraising and scholarships the American Library Association is a large scary organization I'm not gonna lie it's it's huge it's fantastic it covers everything there is it also has a lot of grants and it has a lot of grants that maybe maybe not as many people know about maybe not as many people put in for I don't know but they're available and you don't know if you're gonna get them unless you try the Association of Rural and Small Libraries has fantastic grants to attend their annual conferences which I believe this year is in Nebraska right I think so no no the Fargo no oh Fargo yep yep I talked about that this morning yep yep I am very sad I was here a couple years ago but yeah I made it last year to Little Rock and it was fantastic just absolutely wonderful if you get a chance go I know it's time I know it's money but on the other hand you're gonna connect with a lot of people who are in the same situation you are similar situations to what you are and you're gonna be able to create lasting friendships lasting impressions and a network people that you can lean on when crazy things happen or hey you want to do a Dancing with the Stars episode you know who to talk to besides just coming on here of course grants donations have been my number my one and two I do a lot of grant writing and you know you get some you lose some but you have to try so let's touch on some webinars that I've looked at and that I like to go to web junction I know you guys mentioned this earlier they have topics everything from WordPress community engagement things programming grants they actually cover a huge gamut and they're free a lot of them are ALCTS has sessions that are all pre-recorded and it's really nice once they're six months old they're free for you and they tend to run more on the technical side which is great if you're doing your own cataloging and you want to find out more about RDA you're starting to do some metrics you need to find out more about that if you're into grant writing grant seeking tech soup has some really great things that they come out with and they're all free info people has been really really nice for me when I'm doing surveys or I want to put together different ways to measure programming it's been helpful and they're all archived so if I'm up on the desk and somebody's asking questions or I need to go and teach a computer basics class or was the latest one I did barn quilts we painted barn quilts sorry no pictures and you know you have to go and help people taping out their boards you can come back and listen to the next section of the webinar before you have to run off and somebody one of our teenagers dripped white paint on our carpet between the table and the bathroom that was fun but it gives you that that opportunity so not so free I'm focusing mostly on webinars because travel is expensive and like I said the the grants that a la p la the association of rural and small libraries everybody has are fantastic to attend larger things to attend a la to attend p la but there aren't that many of them and although I'd love to say that all of you should get them and I think all of you should get them it doesn't mean that all of you will get them but keep applying so in the meantime webinars p la does some fantastic webinars some of them are free and they always make sure to put on there which ones are if you're a member of p la most of them are a lot less expensive and for single use if you're just going to go on there they're only 28 bucks so they're not terrible if you've got a whole group of people together maybe you've got a library system again they are not very expensive University of Wisconsin I get emails and pamphlets from you guys all the time and I wish I could take all of them yet again there are so many things in this profession it's hard to keep up on everything but everything is fascinating if you happen to be you happen to have a certification that requires continuing education units or maybe your school librarian and you need those to keep up your certification you can get them through the University of Wisconsin and some of our programs are very affordable at $65 a piece they range the gamut I think most of them are right around $200 and they are very intensive they are fantastic programs a la offers several certifications if if you can get donors to fund you these are very very well worth it the CPL a the certified public library administrator is seven classes I just got accepted into the program and I'm working on it now and those classes run the gamut from marketing to finance to I'm working on buildings right now which is great because we're looking at a building addition at the same time and those classes run about $300 each so they're not super cheap but they're very very well worth it again I this is my second class and I am meeting up with several people that I had in my last class so we're forming a wonderful network and I have talked to these people at conferences it is very very helpful and info people info people has lots of classes California librarians I don't know if there's anybody in here but I get emails all the time telling me you California librarians get these classes really cheap and I have to pay a little bit more but you know what they're great classes national state and local co-ops and associations I we have quite a few in Michigan we have a fantastic rural library conference coming up in a couple weeks we are very very lucky the library of Michigan does programs and collaborates with us the Michigan Library Association does things we have MCLS we have a lot of different organizations here along with our local co-ops that at least my co-op has a great continuing education group that puts on things every couple months for us but if you don't happen to have those you can learn wonderful things from the learning roundtable if you're an ALA member join up with the learning roundtable if you're PLA member look at the webinars on demand look at the ALA archived webinars list serves I want to touch on and I am going to go over to my email so this is live so if weird things pop up I don't know anything about it but I just received this one from ARSL so the Association of Rural and Small Libraries on their lists serve and these are conferences for March look at this massive list it is fantastic they put together a wonderful comprehensive list for anything you can think of and if I keep going you'll see that they include descriptions for all of these things fundraising I think I want to do all of those at this point since we're also looking at the building addition and programming and outreach are both my passions I enjoy doing them very much but there is no way that I can fit in 15 to 20 webinars in a month there's just no way so prioritizing is going to be something that I have to work on I like how I do like how this list and some other ones do this arrange them by topic yes I'm interested in or I work at a school library so I need to know what are the things that are appropriate for school librarians to potentially watch yeah which is really really helpful especially when you don't have the time you know you don't have the time to go looking for these things on your own being part of a listserv that puts out things like this seriously helpful now how do you get on so much know how do they get how can they get on this listserv for ARSL is this public thing for members I'm not exactly sure myself you need to be yep you need to be a member but membership is really really cheap I think individual members membership might start at like $25 something like that it's not very expensive at all yeah this morning in their session in their presentation yeah I I have no desire to ever leave small libraries I really love working at small libraries and I have to say that it programs like this and groups like this are wonderful ways to get together with other small librarians and get an idea on how to do assessment how to do a strategic plan for your library when you don't have one of the people in a class that I'm in it said that they're looking at doing $10,000 for a plan like this I don't have $10,000 to put towards a plan like this I don't have $10,000 to put towards anything quite frankly but when I can take a class like this and maybe it's free maybe it's a little I can do it with the help of some community members it is very very helpful for me okay does anybody have questions let's see we do have some we had some comments before when you're talking about funding if people have funding yes most people said they did some not very much a few people said no there isn't anything specifically for as you said specifically for professional development but a lot of mixtures of things sometimes a separate budget one for travel one for training some can use their tuition reimbursement monies for towards that for the if they're in school and one person says I'm using it for ARSL this year oh fantastic so yeah someone because you mentioned getting grants to actually attend some of these sessions is I guess is there anywhere you can go to find more information about how to write a winning grant how to I think I saw on that list there some grants yes but it might be a different of writing a grant for like programming at the library or construction and maybe different from writing for attending a session of some sort right TechSoup does a great grants program they do wonderful topics on grant seeking and grant writing there are several others Web Junction has some nice grant writing programs but if you're going to you're applying for a grant to attend some professional development you want to tell a really good story you want to make sure that people understand that one you need the money because if you're applying for it in your library has the budget for it then why would we give you the money into that you're going to use this this is going to be really necessary for your day-to-day life this is going to be a huge boon for your community it just make sure that you can write a good story be passionate about it make sure that they understand that you know they don't have that much money to give out you know that it's really special for them to pick somebody whether it's you or somebody else and give them a really good reason to pick you why me as opposed to someone else who is presenting is submitting the same grant request yeah right and it's hard it's not easy whatsoever but if you have something unique maybe your community has a special need maybe the conference is going to have a particular speaker or a particular session that is going to be really really influential for your community for your career then make sure to bring that up it's the little things that seem to count a lot and people are asking about ARSL someone mentioned and I did look it up that the ranges for being a member of the Association for Rural and Small Libraries anywhere from down to $15 up to $59 that's individual membership and it's based on your type of a employee you are whether you're a student retiree friends trustees volunteers get the $15 and then it's based on salary more salary you make it be a little bit the highest is $59 a year so it's fantastic for all of us because I don't know about you but small libraries don't pay the best so I don't think it's going to be terribly expensive and like I said they have a couple of grants to attend ARSL as well right and definitely put in for them and someone did ask if it is available ARSL members are available to Canadians I do not know I don't know if someone can tell us that is it is anybody still are you guys still on from ARSL Jed or anyone let us know if it is because I'm not sure okay I yeah I don't know I'm at librarians from all over the country when I was in Little Rock but I don't remember meeting anybody from Canada yes sorry Becky is a previous one of their officer says yes it is available for Canadians ARSL so go ahead Canadians join them wonderful they've tried to reach out yes it definitely you've got anybody here who's on go ahead and go to the ARSL website you've got it linked off our page and you'll be able to join up okay the only other thing I wanted to touch on and ask everybody else about is outside of the box training so where do you go for any type of training that maybe it's not strictly library related I have a couple of sources here but I was going to talk on some other things I we're working on this building project and yeah it's going to take a while but I don't know that much about buildings let's be realistic I spend most of my time in a library I do not spend most of my time out building things however I stopped at our local code inspector and they said they sat me down and said what do you want to know I tell them well this is what we're looking at is this feasible what should I ask contractors what should I be looking for what should I be asking their references and they went through oh my gosh I think I was there half the day they went through everything they could possibly think of it was very very helpful very knowledgeable people and I don't think that many people go in and ask them these questions I think most of the time they're dealing with builders so they were having some fun but that's one of the things that you need to know that you certainly need experience with if you're going to do any kind of project even if it's just a renovation and you need to know hey can I accommodate that extra bookcase here or is that going to be too narrow is this going to have an effect on ADA requirements is this going to have effect on our lighting requirements do we need more sprinklers or well heaven forbid you have sprinklers if do we need more fire extinguishers should we have different types of batteries in our smoke detectors which I found out that we should our fire department came in and they did a wonderful assessment of our building in door in Hopkins it's pretty small and I don't really have that issue I have about 1200 square feet of usable library space and then we have the township offices in there and all kinds of weird stuff but in door it's about 7500 square foot building however it was built by a pool barn builder so there are a lot of issues that hopefully none of you have to deal with with a huge big open building it has been really interesting but the code inspectors have been very helpful with that our fire departments have been very helpful with that so where do you guys go for training that maybe it's not strictly library related have you ever gone to is anybody gotten creative with their education we've gone to the health department we're talking about the possibility of putting in an industrial kitchen so we've had them come out and do an assessment of our area and tell us what we would need and talk to the staff about what they their needs would be and their expectations would be to keep this a commercially viable kitchen if we wanted to be able to rent it out to patrons or to do classes in it or different things like that okay here's a few someone says our local chamber of commerce has a speaker at their monthly luncheons and the luncheons are $10 and they the library can present but then other speakers they would see there that are not obviously library state labor commissioner fire chief disabled services advocate so they attend those chamber of commerce presentations that's someone has gone to the county sheriff for security training that's something they maybe need to be aware of it went to the fire hall and learned how to use a fire extinguisher learned defensive tactics from a police officer yes we had a SWAT team member come in and teach us all self-defense and defensive tactics and then we had him come in for an additional couple classes for our community which were really really well-received our libraries offering universal class to patrons and our director our director also encourages staff to also do it someone else mentioned that as well but women in business groups the Red Cross oh we attend storm spotter training for out here with in tornado alley heck yeah definitely that's something I don't have to deal with you never know where you might find a tornado nowadays that's true I have the blizzards but not so much the tornadoes thankfully let's see training and organization and curriculum through universities hosting on Coursera that's always meet a few other librarians in those classes that's interesting to if you encounter other librarians are doing the same thing you are and some of these more national or international type of online sessions that you can attend see CPR and first-aid training from the first from the Red Cross that's all very good when you have a lot of the public coming in using your facilities we had a local organization a salon actually that donated an AED to the library to both libraries actually and we had local ambulance service came in and did CPR training and AED training and got us all certified for it oh here's when someone says they became certified in first-aid CPR and now I have a Red Cross trainer to come in to teach a babysitting courses for the for the kids for the youth anyone who's going to be doing babysitting so that they can then be promote themselves as you know hire me to be your babysitter Red Cross has also offered to do things like just regular first aid and cleanliness and different things like that for little little kids they did pre-k for us and they do all the way up to high schoolers for yet the babysitting classes and things like that but they like to do different first-aid classes for us which is really helpful in our community what about hunter safety is anybody team up with the DNR I I don't know if everybody has DNR if it's different in different places but the Department of Natural Resources does classes for us and they do trainings for us on you know how to safely handle a gun if somebody comes in what open carry act really means yeah it does something you definitely want to know if and if that is something in your state area that you'd want to know what is and isn't allowed I don't know if anybody else has issues with things like that but occasionally we do have people who like to open carry and it is not against the law they can open carry we just try to make sure they do things responsible and some said Red Cross the Red Cross is a wilderness first aid wilderness first aid class and that'd be good for those preppers out there nice those near absolutely community emergency response team oh have the local banks come in to do something money related has anybody done active shooter scenarios at their library yeah we actually just went to one here the state of Nebraska did for us it is frightening and horrifying and a fantastic class to take yep we just people saying yep yep we did it here someone did an online version of that as well yep ours was run by a local sheriff was did the better to our presentation for us or disaster scenarios you can talk with your emergency manager I have a wonderful friend that I went to high school with who's an emergency manager at a county just north of me and I've talked to her about putting together disaster manuals for the library and doing possible disaster scenarios and how can I back things up and how can you keep the library going during a disaster if if that's possible which it may not be right and here's something it's interesting they encourage our libraries to put training opportunities into their technology plans so that specifies the library is actually closed for two days a year for the entire chef go to tech training at no cost from their regional library system and the board signs off on the technology plan and allows them to do that so build it into the actual strategic your technology plan for your library that this is something that is important and that is a part and then have them get them to go and do it yeah a network national network libraries of medicine offers training resources for disaster planning and response for libraries that definitely somebody reach out to I know they do some we have the national network libraries of medicine do workshops and webinars here in Nebraska they have local offices all across the country but they will come and do something specifically for you as well I have seen some of those preservation webinars and preservation preservationists we have some wonderful ones at local universities and they have come and given talks for my co-op they've given talks to I have sent various staff members there on everything from just the basics on how to repair a book fast easy and cheap and how to repair something that is of historical significance or how to handle something like that versus your your typical paperback that we just want to make it last as long as we can and they have been really very realistic and have given us really great advice so a mental first as a couple of them mentioned this mental health first aid class for patrons that may be coming in with issues such as that yep the there's a mental health organization just north of us we don't the one in our county has not done very much with the libraries but we're close enough to another county that is much larger and they have a lot of outreach so they have come in and done talks with us and different scenarios if you have somebody say you're in a group of three and you're trying to understand what it's like to have a voice talking your head the whole time they had one of the group talking in the ear well you're trying to talk to another person and carry on a conversation and it is hard really really hard that's nice to have this is what they're actually experiencing yes yes practical application is a wonderful but on the other hand it is it is difficult and you get a new sense of what people are going through so here says that they're required by their city to take FEMA classes for disaster training and emergency management so it's sort of the city requirement if you're a city office that may be something as well and that it comes lots of places we've heard this with lots of disasters that have happened both natural disasters or some of these like community disasters will call it that they are becoming safe zones that people will come there first you use the Wi-Fi to keep up what's going on just in this libraries are lots of times in the first lines of we are open we are here come here if your internet is down because there was a blizzard a tornado or whatever another thing to look at is finance training the I know that our local IRS office has different classes there are a lot of people who maybe they're bookkeepers maybe their CPAs that will do little classes or come in and do little tutorials for you if you're just getting into a director position or position where you have to deal with financing and budgets they're very helpful even if you're just going to look at writing grants they're very helpful to understand exactly how to put together a budget for that program and how to carry through with it and what forms you need to look at and who do you need to 1099 and what is the cutoff and all of those things oh this is a good one sign language classes take sign language classes so you can assist any of your heart of hearing patrons if they do that oh that is a fantastic idea oh and also this year someone says the National Network Libraries and Medicine can also train those training to help libraries to help your patrons apply for health insurance the new health insurance marketplace that's out there that they will help you figure out how to help them or bring in trainers to help you get your patrons on the health insurance Michigan has a wonderful department of finance and insurance and they will actually send people out to all the libraries and do programs on how to apply for insurance what do you do if you have a teen driver how do you take care of that on your your car insurance how should you change things how should you prep for social security how should you prep for retirement all sorts of different things I just got at the updated list of what they'll be teaching coming out that's pretty exciting yeah and also this one yeah someone here just mentioned the university extension offices here in Nebraska our university in Nebraska extension does programs on all sorts of things so that would be somewhere good to look into and see what kind of programs they have available that you could and what kind of trainings you have they've available that you can participate in I'm so jealous you guys have some neat things coming up okay guys that's about all I had for you I was hoping to leave lots of time for questions because last year I did not leave very much time for questions and I was trying to keep us on time and on topics so that's good yeah we do have some questions that did come up to great let's see what do I have here I mean it does if you do have any other questions for Natalie or for anyone else wanting to know how we can get info info from other librarians on the line here if you're looking for some sort of training in some area or you have no there's some sort of issue what where you can you go for training you go offer your ideas so what's to know besides price what is the difference between the different webinars you're mentioning earlier the ones that are free or not is there you know how would you a lot of them cover different topics so you can look at okay the paid ones often especially the University of Wisconsin and some of the PLA once will offer you continuing education units so if you are a school librarian maybe went for the certified public library administrator program I know that you do need continuing education units to keep those certifications going and I know that some state certifications also require you to continue doing education units Michigan is not like that once we once we get our certification we have different classifications and once you get it you have it yeah here in Nebraska there's a certain number of continued education credits and it's a three-year rotation if everything's last for three years and then you'd have to start over and do some more training so some of these might be really useful for you also some of the webinars that are free do offer continuing education units I'm gonna go back to that that one this one meme here the first one that I have it's a Michigan organization I believe anybody can take care to can take these classes they're not specifically library they're actually for teachers but a lot of them I I have a teacher on my staff and she said you know what I use some of these things in my classroom but I'll use a lot of these things in the library and for her it was ten bucks to get the continuing education clock hours that she needed that they will send you know they'll send you the certificate after you finish up the program and you have to it's a six week course you turn in a couple of things of homework and you participate in conversations a lot of the free webinars here that I have a lot of them are recorded not all of them some of these are live but you know the recorded ones you don't get that chance to interact with people you don't get that chance to ask questions which you know if you're just looking for the information that's fine right but if you really want to be able to talk and discuss and find out if your ideas would work or what they think about different things that you've done it might not be the topic for you yeah depends on how you how you do best yeah how you learn exactly your learning style and your learning preference we have our we do a weekly online webinar here and we also record it and post their archives up and we have noticed that statistically about twice as many people attend watch the recordings and I know it's just because not everybody's available at the time when these are being done live I wish very much with some of these recordings and I know you know some of these are six months older older so it's not realistic but I wish with some of these recordings that you could go on there and ask questions so that would be very helpful but realistically there are a lot of webinars out there so hopefully the topic that you want maybe it wasn't at the time that you wanted it and it will come back up at a time that you can attend that's true that's time they redo a topic absolutely or update a topic that was in previous one here's a good question is there a source for training specifically aimed at solo librarians and not that I know of specifically doesn't mean there's not I'm sure there probably is somewhere but not that I've run into specifically at Hopkins I have two part-time staff and me and I'm also part-time so depending on the day any one of us is a solo librarian so I'm very familiar with the the trials and tribulations that you could be going through which is why I like the recorded webinars because it gives me a chance maybe I want to watch it on a day off or well if I want to do library stuff on days off maybe you know like I said you can get back to it after you're done with storytime or after you're done helping somebody paint their barn quilt or you never really know a lot of some of things maybe if you look into things that are done through the Association of rural and small libraries I mean that's kind of what rural and small libraries that lends itself totally to a solo librarianship because that's the situation and that's how we are in Nebraska lots of libraries that are individual independent just by run by one person with maybe a couple of volunteers we have a lot of those I'd say that some of the classes they do attend and look for do assume a staff or an organization that doesn't exist that there is a staff so it's hard to find yeah okay a very quick note I applied for some of those ALA grants that I was talking about earlier and I did get one to attend ALA and to attend a pre-conference I attended a pre-conference I'm hoping I'm not going over time this time I'll talk fast I attended a pre-conference on library media centers thought this is great right I have a tiny little library hundred thousand dollar budget maybe I can do some of this stuff it be cool I would love to be able to offer it to my community I get in there and they're talking about staffs that have dozens of people who don't have library degrees they have technology degrees they're spending 78 million dollars on putting in this one small area in their library I'm just sitting there thinking what am I doing here at the end of the program I asked them so what gets used the most they said our VHS to DVD converter and our photo scanner so I go home and for $400 I put those in that actually totally what your experience speaks totally to why this conference exists we heard the same thing from people saying I've gone to PLA I've gone to ALA and they got great stuff but it's so not focused to me it doesn't I can't identify with what they're trying to tell me ARSL conference totally does oh yeah but the ability to travel to them and that's what your whole presentation is about you know I have the ability to travel wherever they're going to be in the country this year necessarily so that's what we're hoping this is that it helps out people yeah I think it's very important to just find that one little thing even if you find one tiny little kernel out of a webinar or out of a program that you go to like that media center program I went to that you can use and you can adapt it's a huge benefit for your community I mean we didn't have any way to preserve VHS's in Hopkins but now people can come in with their homemade VHS's make them into DVDs make a bunch of copies give them to the whole family nobody's fighting over them when somebody dies anymore very helpful okay just a couple of us few things we are about done at the time here someone does say that they think the special libraries association might have a solo librarians division so look into that potentially special library association and someone wanted to know what was the organization we talked about the National Network of Libraries of Medicine NNLM so Nash it's a weird phrase but National Network of Libraries of Medicine is the one that does a lot of they have local people in each state that can help you out with lots of different training and just as a quickie last thing could you Natalie review your population search by your different locations and how much staff you have at each one like what are you working let me go back to the beginning Hopkins library serves about 4600 people it's in a village of about 600 people actually but I'm within walking distance of the elementary middle and high school which is fantastic it's over a square mile a hundred square miles give or take which for me is about three townships and it has a staff of three me and two part-time ladies and I'm part-time there I'm also part-time in door door serves about 7400 people it's only one township so that's 36 square miles for me and it's it's located right off an expressway so I have a lot of commuter traffic but it's a mix between commuters and the old farming families that were there so leads to a lot of interesting things that come up yes I have a staff of about seven there and everybody's part-time again so you do have some people more than some these individuals but everybody being part-time is a different thing to have to deal with yeah all right thank you very much Natalie this is great really good resources this is the kind of thing we're definitely trying to do here as well get your education get your continuing education someone did say I'm a volunteer would that be would this be good for me of course if you're anyone who's in the library this kind of professional development and continuing education is going to benefit you in some way anything that help you do your job yeah like I said if I'm investing time and money in something like this for one of my staff I look at it as it's going to benefit me until they possibly leave and then it's going to benefit them later in their career absolutely all right thank you very much Natalie thank you for joining us