 All right, so for our next session, we have reached them, teach them having a lifelong learning series in your library. Meg, oh, I didn't know. Wemp, is that how you pronounce it? Wempie. Wempie. Wempie. It's a funny last name. That's OK. And she is from just next door to us in Colorado, and is going to tell us about lifelong learning programming that they have done, and how you can do that with helping. We talked earlier about continuing education for staff, this continuing education for your actual patrons. So go ahead and tell us all about that, Meg. OK, well, good afternoon, everybody. As she said, my name is Meg Wempie. Up here, I do have my email address, which I have also put at the end of this slideshow. But feel free to jot it down, and I'll say more about that later on. I am both the assistant director here, as well as the adult services librarian, which means I kind of wear a few different hats and do lots of different things. Let's see. I would like to thank you, of course, for coming to this session and staying through kind of all these different sessions. Just as a little heads up, if you aren't sure where Pagosa Springs, Colorado is, it's in Archuleta County, which is in southwestern Colorado. The county itself is 1,800 square miles. So it's a fairly large county. We have about 12,000 people in this county. We are about an hour east of Durango. So we're pretty far from Denver. Lots of times, people say, oh, I think we're so close to Denver, but really Denver is about five and a half hours away. We do serve the entire county, and with us being pretty close to the New Mexico border, we're about 30 or 35 miles from the New Mexico border. We actually have a fair amount of people who come from Dulce, New Mexico, and other places in New Mexico to come to our library, just as a heads up if you're kind of wondering a little bit more about our library. So again, today, we'll be talking about a lifelong learning lecture series. Let me tell you kind of give you a quick picture of what the lifelong learning lecture series looks like at Ruby System Library. It happens twice a year. We hold it in the spring and in the fall. It's for six weeks, and we have it on Thursday evenings. The talks are approximately 50 minutes to an hour, with about 30 minutes or so left for questions or comments from the people that have attended. We'll be talking about how you can do a lifelong learning lecture series at your library, so let's go ahead and begin. So why lifelong learning, of course, as Krista mentioned, we talk about continued education for staff and for patrons. And I won't read this quote to you, but as you can see, ever learning understanding has been happening for a long time. People have understood going back 150 years as seen here and likely much longer. You hear this webinar to learn more, maybe for yourself or maybe for your library, but hopefully you will definitely learn more and learn more in this session to help you, to help your patrons with their ever learning. In fact, I'm guessing that one of your library's values or perhaps part of its mission statement includes learning or informing other people. So how can this process happening? By doing a lifelong learning lecture series at your library, of course, it doesn't have to be expensive. It doesn't have to take a lot of your staff time or a lot of effort. So let's talk about how that can happen. The biggest thing, of course, is finding speakers. I hope to show you and demonstrate that it isn't as hard as you might think originally or as daunting a task as it might seem. When I first was hired here at Ruby System Library and we talked about a lifelong learning lecture series, I thought, well, who in the world had just moved to this town? I don't know anyone. How can I find speakers? Perhaps you're in the same boat or a similar boat that you're just not really sure who you would possibly call on. So you might consider thinking about taking a walk down Main Street. What businesses are there? So think about the possibilities. Is there a credit union who could talk about financial planning for retirement? It's helpful to also think about something that they may know about that might be a little less direct than what the store is. For example, maybe there's a yoga studio and they could present on the benefits of yoga. Or maybe the same yoga studio, it's a personal business that she started. And maybe that or another company could perhaps be talking about self-starting a business. So again, thinking a little bit outside the box there. Staff is another place to pull speakers. All of us have things that we know and that includes your coworkers. So talk to your staff or more importantly, listen when they talk about what they did on the weekends or a meeting that they attended. Maybe they love photography. Maybe they were in a contest. Maybe, well, who knows? You may have someone willing to share. We definitely have talented staff at my library, Ruby Sisson. From quilters to travelers to Halloween lovers to authors of books, we have a range of interests. The key thing is to see what they might be willing to talk about for 45 minutes to an hour. For one presentation, we had a staff member present on her travels to Africa. She loves both traveling and photography. The biggest challenge for her was to narrow down her pictures for the talk. I think she had over 5,000 pictures that she had taken on this African safari, so she had lots of things to pull from. She told stories about her safari and people loved it. She was nervous about presenting at first until I told her that she was in pictures and telling stories of her adventures were plenty. Because she's also a birder, she was able to name, which she of course double checked before presenting to make sure that you had the right name, the wide variety of birds and other wildlife that they encountered. We often, in fact, have great turnouts for these armchair tourist talks. People get to see, experience, and learn about other cultures and places without having to renew their passport, get additional immunizations, or convert currency. Patrons, they know a lot too, and often they like to share. Maybe they'd like to share about their hobby or their business. I did want to talk for a little bit about business and different guidelines that our library has, and perhaps your library does too. So let's go back to the yoga example that I used earlier. We have somewhat strict, well, we have guidelines, I guess I should call them. If, let's say there's a woman who has a yoga studio and she's going to come and present on the benefits of yoga, again, to use that same example from earlier, she's certainly more than welcome to say where she works or what the name of her company is. And of course, in all the publications that we put out, we would mention where she's from and what her company is called. Partly because it does promote her company, but in addition, it also shows that she has authority to be teaching or talking. What we don't want is someone to come and during this hour-long talk to say, well, if you come into my yoga studio and kind of just say that over and over and be kind of very aggressive or pushy about it. So generally, the people that that might be an issue with, we just kind of have a discussion and talk about, again, they're more than welcome to bring their contact cards that people can take with them. We, of course, when we introduce that speaker, and again, as I said earlier with the publications, we will certainly say the name of their company. It's not that we're trying to hide that, but we don't want it to become, well, a big commercial, if that makes sense to you. Again, we consider that to be a win-win scenario. And let's see. All right. You might also have local government agencies that are nearby you. A lot of places, perhaps where you are, hopefully, have a Forest Service, or maybe you have a nearby national monument. Maybe there's a museum from a quilting museum to a veterans museum to an art museum. Really, again, we're just kind of looking at who's there and who's ready to share. Maybe your hospital has a wellness center that's connected to it. We here at Ruby System have been fortunate to have a range of talks, and sometimes they're included with our lifelong learning lecture series from our local wellness center that's connected to the medical center. Again, sometimes they have standalone workshops, but oftentimes we've integrated the talks into the lifelong learning series. For us, and let me say this because I don't think that I said it earlier, our lifelong learning lecture series covers a wide variety of topics. Again, as I mentioned, it's six talks on Thursday evenings. There is not a central theme. Again, if there were to be a theme, it's just kind of continued learning or lifelong learning. So that kind of opens it up to a wide variety of different talks and presentations. Sometimes agencies have designated outreach people for you to talk with, and other times not, but even if they don't have an outreach person, they may still have a person that's willing to share. Again, sometimes, and I know that a lot of us are kind of in small places, it's a small group of people that work for any organization or business or whatever. So again, maybe they don't have an outreach department like you might have if you were in a large city. Another place to potentially get speakers from, think about if there are local colleges, universities, vocational schools that you can pull from, different experts who don't mind doing some pro bono work at your library, or in our case, I often use the local Fort Lewis College to get ideas. Fort Lewis College is in Durango, which as I said earlier is about an hour west of us. They have a lifelong learning lecture series, and I often glance at their schedule of previous sessions and think about if any of the presenters would work here at this library. What I will say is that oftentimes I look at their schedule of speakers and think, well, that might be a little more academic than what our people here would like, but there are certainly people that I have pulled. In fact, there's someone that will be speaking in this spring's lifelong learning lecture series who gave the talk in the Fort Lewis College's lifelong learning lecture series back in January. Their lifelong learning lecture series runs longer and that type of thing, but that doesn't matter because again, I can get ideas for different things that might work here in Pagosa. Let's talk a little bit about money. For us here, we base it on whether or not people are having to drive. We give them a small stipend that they can use for gas or lodging, which isn't really necessary. Oftentimes, if people are coming from anywhere, they might be coming from Durango. So lodging isn't usually required because the lifelong learning lectures start at 5.30. We are done by seven, so they could very easily drive back to Durango. Again, it's an hour to maybe an hour and 15 minutes, but again, we give them a small stipend. Perhaps they just wanna use it for a meal. So again, we pay them $100 if they're coming from Durango, which I think I might actually consider cutting down because it is only 60 to 75 minutes away depending on where in Durango they're coming from. You can really make that call. One speaker that we had come from Ignacio from Wildlife Refuge, Ignacio is about halfway between Pagosa and Durango, so we gave her $50. And it certainly isn't something that they necessarily expect, and keeping that in mind, you can certainly lower your cost. And if you're thinking that you'd be better off not to spend actual money on having someone come, there are, of course, ways to do that. The first way that comes to mind, of course, is not to have people come from a distance that they may wish or ask about a gas stipend. And in fact, generally, with the lifelong learning and lecture series of the six in each series, I might have one or maybe two people that are coming from somewhere else. So again, the people are local that I'm pulling from and I'm not spending any money on that. You may also consider seeing if there are local businesses in your location that might donate things that you can give to the speakers. One thing that immediately comes to mind is a gift certificate for a meal, especially if the talk is done before or after a meal time. Depending on where you live, maybe there's something else that you can offer. I am fortunate that Pagosa Springs we have, well, as the name implies, we have hot springs. So we have three different locations for going and taking a soak in hot springs. So maybe I could ask one of those or ask those places to see if they would donate a soak in the hot springs. I also, my little town has a few different breweries, so maybe it's something that you might have something like that that you could ask if they might donate a drink and an appetizer. Again, oftentimes speakers and presenters are happy to be sharing their information. So these are almost just more kind of like little boosts and just another way to say thank you essentially. Perhaps you have a local bookstore that will donate a gift certificate. One thing to really keep in mind and I'll probably say it multiple times during this presentation is to remember that this series is your series. So you can personalize it to suit and we are gonna do some brainstorming later where you can kind of think about what might work for you. But again, this is your series. So when I say different things, just keep in mind there are no rules. So try to think outside the norm, particularly if you're trying to make the series cost you nothing other than publicity. And I will talk about publicizing later. It is very important when you're looking and brainstorming on these speakers and their particular presentation topic to think about what might work in your community. Hopefully you have some sort of feel for who your people are or the people that you might want to get in. Relative to our population here in Archuleta County, we have a very large proportion of older people. It's why we have a hefty and well used large print collection. The talks do well. Oftentimes we have a lot of people that are older and they're retired. So then they're just happy to learn. We certainly also have a wide variety of people that don't live here full time. Maybe they just come in the summer because we have a pretty mild summer compared to other states. Or maybe they're just here in the winter to go skiing. But again, think about your demographics. And they're quite possibly different. Maybe you have people that are older. Maybe you have different cultural backgrounds. Are there a lot of married people with children or young business people? Again, think about who is in your area. The Lifelong Learning Lecture Series is a great opportunity to get people into the library that may not have been in before. And I certainly find that's true with most lifelong learning lecture series that somebody will say that they had never been in the library before but they saw that this talk was happening and now you've got this new person coming into the library. We also certainly have lots of people that are very dedicated to the Lifelong Learning Lecture Series and they come and they're common faces that I am happy to see. So when you're looking at your community, don't just look at who comes into your library. Of course, look at who you see around town when you're grocery shopping or taking a walk. Because again, lifelong learning, you don't just wanna get the people that already come into the library. I know that it's certainly always one of our goals to kind of think about how to get more of these 12,000 people in the county into our library. The demographics of your community might also help you determine when you might wanna hold the series, daytime or nighttime, weekday or weekend. We all work in different libraries with different situations. Perhaps where you're located has other potential speakers. So what I'd like to do right now is kind of take some of that time, as I mentioned earlier, to take a few minutes to think about some of the things that apply to where you are specifically, people that could possibly come and talk and how they may work at your place to have as a presenter. Is there a local brewery, winery, a bike shop? So is your thinking of places? Please go ahead and type those in the comments or into the chat box. And then in a couple of minutes, I'll ask for this information to be shared out. Great, yeah, everyone just go ahead, use your questions section, even go to our webinar interface if you haven't yet and start typing in your ideas. Think about your town, what's available out there. You can go ahead, Meg, if you wanna continue or... Okay, I was just gonna give a minute or two just to kind of let people type any ideas that they might have and then go ahead and share them out. There's a little much coming in, yeah. Yeah, I was gonna say, unfortunately, I cannot see what people are commenting. Yep, that's a lot. I would imagine there's probably some things that are maybe some common things that are coming up. Let's see. So are you noticing? Yeah. Do you want me to start reading them off to you? Yeah, I was just gonna say do you see some recurring ideas? Nah, it's all over, which is good. There's Contact Your County Extension Office. They always have various... Yes. And that's therefore, Master Gardeners. My mom is Master Gardener. Have the Master Gardener, they had the Master Gardener come in and do a series on gardening. A local meadery. So it makes mead as opposed to drinking wine. Okay. Yeah. Retired teacher who has traveled to many places and would be happy to speak. Ooh, Spanish rodeo and cowboys. Wow. Yeah. Tables and estate planning. Farming, another farming one. Local history, beekeeping. Oh, there's gardening again. Civil War Museum is in their town. That'd be definitely great. Interesting to partner up with a tulip farm. Oh, our library is on the edge of a small wine region in Oregon. So in a town of less than 4,000, we have six wineries, one meadery and one brewery. Wow. I will be visiting there at some point. That's funny. I actually gave this talk at one other place and somebody was like, where's Pagosa? Because during the talk, they found out that we have multiple places to soak in hot springs. Some of you might know that in Colorado, cannabis has been legalized in this town. We now have, well then, we've got like three to five dispensaries and we have three breweries and people are like, what in the world and how many people are in your town? So yeah, it's kind of. You'd be surprised, yeah. Apple growers, if you have any sort of orchards. Beekeeping at Mammoth Cave National Park, historic homes. Anybody from, yeah, a local park or something could come, horse farms. A funeral, have a funeral home come in and talk about end of life and what you would do for that. Quilt shop, bike shop, local musicians, cheesemaker, local artists and soap maker, maple syrup, carpentry, taxidermist. There's some great ones in there. I am jotting down some of these to kind of think about for the series because again, we do it twice a year. I was somewhat disappointed that I had actually gotten in touch with the credit union. That there's one in Durango. We don't have one here in Pagosa to see about doing a Wilson and state planning because again, as I mentioned, we have an older population and I thought, oh, there would be lots of people that would be interested in that. And I was disappointed that they said they're short staffed and just weren't able to attend. Yeah, a lot of great ideas in there. So folks that are listening, thank you so much again for coming, but I hope that you kind of keep thinking about things. But let me go ahead and now that we've kind of shared out, let me kind of keep going on. Yeah, go ahead, continue. Yep, and speaking of sharing out, let's talk about how you can get the word out. As this true workshop or event or really anything at the library, new or not new, of course it's important to get the word out. If they don't know that it's happening, then it's almost, you know, it's essentially not happening. This picture I thought was kind of cute because it shows 25 different ways to spread the word. Some may work better than others, but I thought the graphic was interesting for brainstorming on how to share this new series. And again, depending on where you are, you may have some of the things that I'm about to mention in terms of how we publicize it that work for you or that you have available to you. We, of course, use our usual methods of pro-motion through our website, our Facebook page, as well as on our twice a month, we have a local radio station that lets us come in and they have a little time, this variance corner, and we go and we talk about the different events that are happening at the library. And so, of course, we talk about that. I often, because it is a generally well-anticipated series, I go ahead and give dates out once the dates have been determined. I don't wait until that week to share that with them. Living in a small town, we do have a local paper that comes out once a week, and so I write a special article that will be included on the paper on the week prior to it starting. In addition to the special article, we each week in the paper kind of have an ongoing where events at the library are listed and there's kind of a community calendar and so all of them are listed there as well. But I do like having that special article that people see that's in the main part of the paper. We also have two different types of handouts that people can give, well, maybe three if you include our monthly calendar. So, of course, each month, and I'm sure that most of you all do this too, we have a calendar that comes out for all of the events that are happening. We have a lot of events here at this library, so we actually have to break them down into an adult calendar, a teen calendar, and then a kid's slash tween calendar. So we've got that calendar, of course, that mentions the series and has it on the calendar, but I also make a pamphlet or a brochure, whichever you wanna call it, that really goes into the specifics of who is speaking when and a little blurb about their talk. And so that's something that I can easily hand out to people or that people can grab when they come in for different things that are happening in here. And then I also have a kind of abbreviated one page thing that shows at least who is speaking and what they're speaking about that gives maybe a sentence or two about their talk. Then that can also be used as an easy way to display in our display case or if I'm needing to make it briefer to put on our Facebook page. So again, a couple different types of handouts for people. In addition, you might also consider mentioning the series that other workshops or classes that you do. I generally teach a weekly computer class in addition to two tech times a week. So I always have those pamphlets nearby and I am sure to mention them because I know that I cannot always assume that people know what's going on at the library. And I'm sure that you know that, but again, I think that it's something good for us to kind of remind ourselves that if people don't know that something's happening at the library, in my opinion, that's our fault and not there. So again, just kind of thinking about how to get that word out. If you're fortunate to have places in town to hang a flyer, you might also consider going around to stores or a coffee shop or maybe other meeting spots that have a community bulletin board. After years of having a twice yearly lifelong learning lecture series, people ask about the series months before it starts. I have actually already had somebody ask here. I actually think that they probably asked back in January about lifelong learning and we generally don't have lifelong learning until it will start actually in the middle of next month. So as I mentioned earlier, for us here, we hold two lifelong learning lecture series per year, one in the spring and one in the fall. This spring usually goes from mid-April to mid-May. And I did just a minute ago say next month, but I'm already thinking about March, thinking that we're in March. So again, we're going from mid-April to mid-May. The fall series, I generally have it set up so that runs for the six weeks prior to Thanksgiving. So it runs based on when Thanksgiving is and then I just go back six weeks. We hold the series on Thursday evenings at 5.30. The library closes at seven. So again, the lecture or talk is about an hour or so and it gives time for people to ask questions before they need to be out of the library by seven. That's what works for us. Again, as I said earlier, you have to kind of figure out what might work at your location. I found it helpful to ask patrons for their feedback. I've used this suggestion when starting a new book club instead of making it kind of wide open for when to hold them, you could decide a few times that might work for you or for your library and then kind of have a loose vote on it. The times could be based on when your library's open or when the person who would be in charge of them is available. You might even give a time when the library is closed. Many years ago, before I worked here, the Lifelong Learning Lecture Series was held on Saturdays at 3 p.m. At the time, the library closed at 3 p.m. So they kind of had this overlap and the person who was in charge of the Lifelong Series back then would just come in and kind of stay and have it open just for the people attending the lecture. But keep in mind, as I said earlier, that there are no set rules. You can do what works for your library. Perhaps you wanna just start with doing just one a year and see how it goes. Maybe you think that you might get more people in the summer, perhaps you'd rather hold it then. Another thing to consider is what else might be going on during that time of year? You have to think about your situation. Do you live in a town with a big high school basketball team that, you know, does really well? And so then you probably wanna look at what their schedule is and not have a conflicting time that you're having your Lifelong Learning Lecture Series. That's just one example. I mean, again, there might be other things that are going on in your town, so certainly you want to consider that. Personally, I think it's really empowering to think that you get to decide so much about the series. As I mentioned earlier, we now hold our series on a different day and time than several years ago. Keep in mind that you can try something and if that doesn't work, then you can try something else. I hope that you've learned a lot from this and feel empowered to host a Lifelong Learning Lecture Series at your library. You may have limitations or other things to consider for your specific location, but I think that you'll find that you can plan a Lifelong Learning Lecture Series at your library, again, without spending any or a lot of money without taking too much staff time or effort. I encourage you to give it a shot. Again, I've posted my email address up here. I'm gonna, in just a few minutes or in just a moment, kind of open up for any questions that you might have, but I wanted to be sure that if you had any questions that you thought of down the line, I'm happy to answer those. And I'd also love to hear about any successes or obstacles that you have and I wish you good luck with that. Once again, I'd like to thank you for attending this webinar and I wish you the best of fortune and I'm wondering if there are any questions that people might have. Yes, Meg, thank you very much. Yeah, if there is anyone, there are some questions we have, but I also wanna say if you have any questions, anyone who haven't typed in yet, get them in there. And if you have done something like this in your town, yeah, definitely let us know about your experiences. See who else is doing this out there. Yes, we're working at libraries. We're into recycling stuff, so please. Yes. Hearing, borrowing. That's right, be resourceful. Out of the sessions that you've done at your library, what were the most popular, what's the highest attendance you've had at these events? Okay, so as I mentioned earlier, the armchair, the people's travels, people seem to love those. So those usually have a pretty solid attendance. I'm trying to think about other ones that have had. We had Wendy Sutton, who was the Forest Service Archaeologist. We have just kind of right down the road from us, we have Chimney Rock, which a few years ago was made a national monument. And so she came and she talked. Okay, what's that? Chimney Rock here in Nebraska. Oh, okay, yeah. Well, we also have a Chimney Rock and so, and it was very well attended because she, and I don't remember the exact title of her talk, but I mean, it's kind of very interesting to think about us living on this land now and people living on this land long ago and she was able to kind of talk about that and different recent findings that they had at Chimney Rock. I'm trying to think about other big talks that have gone well and that people really seem to appreciate and like. Gosh, if I thought I would have gone back and jotted down how many people had come to different talks. Okay, so I'll keep thinking on that though. Sure, and how about from the other side? Someone wants to know, did you have any that didn't work at all? That just nobody, yeah. Yes, unfortunately, yes. And that is, I mean, and it probably happens to all of us, you know, you do your best to publicize it and promote it and talk it up and get people. We did actually have somebody come from Durango and I thought the talk was interesting. He was actually talking about women in Islam. And I don't know if the, and it's of course always hard to figure out what the issue is. For him that he was presenting, of course, on a Thursday, but it was October the 30th, so I don't know if there was maybe Halloween stuff happening. I don't know if there were sports in town. Again, it's hard to kind of know. And I always feel bad when it's somebody else that's doing a talk or a workshop or something that we're doing and then the turnout is low. And I don't really know that I have great solutions for that because hopefully you've done everything you can. I mean, when there weren't many people, I think he maybe had two people come to his talk. And again, I did what I, I've publicized his the same way I publicized the person who was the week prior, which had 22 people, which I consider to be a large number for this small town that we live in. So I said, Archuleta County is 12,000 people, but in this town it's 1,500 people. And so 22, I'm pretty happy with. You know, I don't really have other great suggestions. I did kind of walk around the library prior to five or 10 minutes before it's starting saying, hey, you know, we're having this great talk. And I think that's how I got one other person in there. But yeah, of course, there are gonna be talks that just don't work out. And I haven't noticed a theme of, oh, these talks don't work or whatever. Again, I've avoided a lot of the, I mentioned Fort Lewis College and pulling talks or at least looking at their talks and seeing if any might work over here. Some of the talks just looked really academic. And so we don't. Sure they would, yeah. Yeah, someone else commented that they're, I'm very reluctant to schedule speakers because our program attendance is very low. It's sort of a chicken and egg problem. And that may be part of your marketing. Some like, where are you promoting this? I don't know. Where are you asking me that question? Yeah, well, we're just gonna help them to figure out how can they get people to come to their programs more. Well, so again, think about what kind of media you have access to in your town. If you have a library page with like a slide show that talks about different events that are happening, the library, of course, broadcast it up there. Put signs up around the library. I know that people don't always read signs, but if you put something that is kind of right in their face, maybe. In fact, one thing that I actually, when I first heard it, I thought, well, that's a little crass, but I know that it has been very helpful is putting the information on the back of the bathroom stall. So then when people close the door, they're seeing this information. So again, just kind of thinking about where you can put just signs up in your library. We've got a couple different places in town. We've got like an ace hardware. We've got a couple coffee shops where we can post things about what's going on. I mentioned the radio, our Facebook page. If you use Twitter or, of course, anything like that in your library, put it up there. I would be sure to mention it to, or within other events or workshops that you're having at your library, not things that are necessarily even connected to it. I mean, you know, maybe it's story time. Mention it there. Yeah, you never know what interests are gonna cross over. Right. Right. I mean, that's exactly right. You don't ever know. I generally, when there's a program, I'm really trying to push. I usually put flyers, or in this case, brochures, in my car. So, oh, I'm going out to eat. And I think, oh, well, I've seen other, you know, and I can just quickly run out to the car and ask if they'll put it up with their other thing. So again, having that information ready and ready to just kind of hand out instead of thinking, oh, well, I could go here and go here at the time. Having it and being able to run out there. I mentioned the radio here. The newspapers has been great to us over the years in terms of kind of letting us, or at least having like the community calendar that they include us in. But I certainly understand. You asked a couple of questions about that, actually, about your newspaper. How did you get that set up? Does it cost anything to have things in there, in the paper or on the community calendar? It actually doesn't in our town. We have a couple of different things. So, when we send the special articles, I mean, the only parameter really that we've been given is that it has to be under 500 words, which generally, this is just, I'm able to talk about the dates and when it's gonna be held and who's coming and their talk and maybe a sentence or two and include it all in there for under 500 words. They do not charge us for special articles. And I've used that with other events that we're having here as well. The community calendar, we are not the only organization that's set up in there and no, we don't pay for that. We did at one point, but we canceled that just kind of for budgetary reasons and kind of tightening it down. We used to do a weekly, it was called Did You Know? And it was just simply an ad in the paper and we could use that. I mean, we used it for a wide variety of stuff, but we could say like, oh, did you know? And then something about the library, but we've canceled that. So, we really try and limit the, I mean, we just don't have a huge budget to be spending on. So, we pull from what we can. But I mean, I can certainly relate to the person that was saying they're hesitant to get speakers because they aren't sure of their turnout. One thing that you might also consider, I know that worked well is that we had, it was actually one of our staff, she no longer works here because she retired, but she came and she talked and she's pretty well known in the community. So, she was talking about it at her church and her friends. And so, she had a lot of people that came to hear her talk. They can promote them. I mean, that's when, absolutely. Right, right, you know, I mean, if it's something that they put on their Facebook page or on like their personal Facebook page or they send out maybe a blast email that's like, hey, I'm doing this thing, come and support me. I mean, I know that it's not really the speaker's job to do that, but it certainly is a way that to think about getting additional people in. Yeah, we have a lot of tips from other people about how they've done it. Someone says they put the info on a screen saver on their computers. And depending on the group that's targeted, they send out flyers to the local schools so the students can learn about it or they can then bring the flyers home to their parents. And a couple of comments about the bathroom stall thing, they've seen it work really well in a department store announcing their job fairs and another library does it and actually had a, particularly specifically branded it, the bathroom stall and called it the Stahl Street Journal. Got it, yeah, that's funny. And then someone is really ambitious, but they say in my small town of under 600, we have a friend, a member of the friends group who actually calls the phone book as they call it, which is their phone list to remind people of programs. So just call, yeah, I mean, you're a small town if you've got someone as volunteer to do that, sure. I mean, I will say that, so I teach a weekly computer class and that's something that people sign up for and so I get their email or phone number and I call to remind them and people often appreciate it. I mean, it probably wouldn't be that hard to finagle me or a volunteer that if somebody wanted to kind of be reminded about it, then sure, we'll give you a call or if people do email or if you have kind of an email distribution set up, you know, just people need reminders. We have a lot going on, you know, in our life. Online newsletters, whatever you use, use it, yeah. So some other people have some ideas that we'd ask for input on what other people have done. So here's some other places that have done something similar. Someone said they had a very successful end of the gardening season series covering winter gardening, putting gardens to bed, planting bulbs, which will come up next spring, sharpening and winterizing tools. We did it in late fall, which isn't gardening season, but it's, you're prepping for that. So that was very well attended. Someone else said they were one of their most popular ones. Our largest attendance ever was on solar and wind to power. Yes, we did a, yeah. We did a solar eyes archeletta here recently in the last fall. Mm-hmm. And someone has. And a famine in people came. Someone has, go ahead. We partnered with the extension service for a lunch and learn series. So over the noon hour, we supply a lunch and the extension service does the program. So financial planning, eating smart, whatever they want to. Someone else says to be very good, and this is good too, going, not necessarily having people come to the library, but going out. So this would really be good to do a senior center during their lunch hour. Everyone is there, they're being fed, and then you've kind of a captive audience. Sure. Someone had a very successful talk with a mushroom expert for about foraging for mushrooms. Ooh, someone, oh, here we go. Up in Northeast Nebraska, in our South Sioux City Public Library, their largest event was a Sue Medicine Man from Pine Ridge. He had 180 people that showed up for that. Wow. That is awesome, yeah. I think I would fall over if we had to watch. I don't know where I would put them. I don't even know if our whole library could hold 180 people. I don't know, you'd have to find a place to hold it. And hopefully it would be prepared to know that that was going to be happening. Right, right. Ooh, someone did a 3D printer demonstration for retired engineers. That's the thing too, you could focus on a certain group and say, we'll do a thing for you. And it's related, the library then gets, like you said, connected to them. Okay, I have some questions. Oh, the stall thing. It was a stall street journal. So like Wall Street Journal. That's the one that somebody got me sent. I jotted that down, I like that. It's the stall street journal. Someone wants to know, oh, you're willing to travel people. And someone wants to know, do you call it armchair travels? That would be a nice tagline for those kind of things. Well, one thing that I didn't really go into is I do have, and just to kind of keep everything clear and make sure I have everything, is that when a speaker agrees to giving a presentation, I have a kind of, it's somewhat generic form that I send to them that does a few different things. It asks for their contact information so that I am sure to get their mailing address because of course we want to send thank you follow up cards of course to people. It also asks for a short biography about them, which is what I usually use when I'm introducing them. In addition, it asks about like AV requirements and that type of thing, but it also asks for the title of their talk. And usually people offer the title, but I often use the armchair travels or armchair tourists because that's something that I feel that people kind of are familiar with or at least kind of understand the concept. It's fairly easy to understand if you've never heard it. It's good to let them brand their own session if they wanted to. This is what I want to be the topic or the title of my event that I'm doing, yeah. And then in addition, I usually ask them to provide two to three or five sentences depending on how long the sentences are. Description that is what I use to put in the brochure that I then maybe have to edit down to put in that one page flyer that I was talking about. But yeah, I think that people often appreciate kind of having that level of involvement when there have been other people that have been interested but aren't necessarily sure what to call it or aren't necessarily sure how to present it. I'm more than happy to kind of give some input or help them with that because if they have the knowledge, I'm gonna do what I can to get them feeling more comfortable to present it. Absolutely, I do the same thing here. They're happy talking about their topic, but they're not a marketer. They don't know what's the best way for me to get this into phrase it, but from experience, you know, well, other people have said this, this, and this, so how about, how does this sound? And someone asked that form that you send them, could you make that available? Like a, yeah, if you send that to me, I can post it up when we post up the slides so that if you wanna borrow that as a way of reaching out to some of these potential speakers. And one other thing is we're kind of talking about publicizing and, you know, I did kind of promise that part of it is kind of doing it with a low amount of effort. I mean, some of this certainly, I mean, it takes work to write a special article, but again, I keep it and can generally cut and paste. I mean, I have to put in that specific, you know, this series that's coming up in the spring, but a lot of times I just kind of change it up a little bit, but the brochure, what I can tell you is that the brochure from spring to fall to spring to fall, you know, I mean, it looks the same. All I do is I cut and paste from the form. And some people might think that that sounds kind of lazy to not like change the colors or whatever, but in my opinion, I think that, one, it saves time, but two, I think that people get used to kind of the form or the brochure looking a certain way and that's what they're looking for when they come in wanting to know about the lifelong learning. It's not changing it. Yeah, you're recognizing it. That's exactly right, to speak. You know, your newspaper, your Wall Street Journal, you can glance, you know, and from the corner of your eye, you can tell the difference between your local paper, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, you know, because they all have always formatted and colored and looked the same, yeah. Right, right, and in addition, like I said, it also saves you from having to kind of recreate or, you know, and again, kind of cutting down on effort. Yeah, and also, this is something I do here when I suggest for people doing marketing. If you have multiple places that you're doing this in, like you'd mentioned, your Facebook page, new online newsletter, website, paper, you only write the article or the promotion once and then you can just paste it into all these separate places. You know, it can be overwhelming to say, I have to market it in, like, four different places? Well, no, you've got to write it once and then just paste, paste, paste, paste. You can't paste it in your account, that's great. Yeah, that's all you have to do. It's not nearly as terrifying as it could be. That's exactly right, and as with many other things, you just kind of get faster at doing it, so, I mean, sure, maybe it'll take you longer the first time you do it, but, you know, after you've done a few of them or, you know, a couple years of them or however long it takes us to kind of adapt, yeah, things just get faster and just, that's exactly right. Yeah, someone else, one more person had an idea of a way to promote the event, and specifically in this case, using Twitter, but offer a free book to the first few people who attend, sort of like a door prize type thing and that that could be something, yeah, promotional. And then for the next one, you could say, you know, these people, one last time, here's, you know, you could win the next time. If you have, like, book sale books or something, just a few that might be able to let go is just a freebie, absolutely. Well, and it might help people to come earlier. Sometimes we, and sometimes we have people that come in late and I often leave it up to the speaker, so, in theory, the talk starts at 5.30, but if they don't like the idea that they're gonna be kind of interrupted, they're certainly welcome to wait a few minutes. Usually they just go ahead and start on time, but people come late, so yeah, that's a good idea for a few reasons, but especially to get people, you know, in their seats by 5.30. Exactly, the first five people in, get this paper back, whatever, yeah. And we have a little, just we'll do this final one, since you're about up with your time here. Do you ever do talks on current events or things that might spark debates? For example, political issues, climate change, so things, supreme court cases that might impact daily life, something that might, you know, create more of not just a presentation, but a actual really back and forth interactive type thing. Yes, we have had a few of those, and I think that they've gone relatively well. We have, coming this spring, we have Judith Reynolds, who is, she's kind of a political cartoonist, and she is the one person who's coming from Durango and it was part of the lifelong learning lecture series at Fort Lewis, and she's gonna be talking about, kind of, when satire becomes sacrilegious. And I do wonder, with this being a political year, I mean every year's a political year, but since this is a voting year, I'm considering it really a political year. I do wonder kind of what level that will bring people. And then we also had last fall, I think it was, we had a gentleman come and he was speaking, he had done a lot of traveling to other places, and you wouldn't really necessarily think that would kind of spark a big discussion in terms of kind of culture and how people are viewed, but it really did, and I remember thinking, okay, all right, you know, just kind of wondering, is this going to become a heated debate that's going to be a problem, or just kind of a heated debate that people will be interacting with? Right, an interesting discussion. Right, I don't necessarily, I mean, I would say try it. I mean, you know, if you find that you have higher attendance at those, then keep on scheduling them. Yeah, I haven't done a ton of those, but I have certainly had some that I'm like, okay, we're having a good discussion here. People are asking questions, or people are making a lot of comments, really, and there's a lot of back and forth, and that's... It's good, and it can be good or bad, they're engaged, and that's what makes a difference sometimes. And there was one that, that same one that I was talking about, the guy that had kind of traveled around and was kind of talking about that, I mean, there were so many people interested in what he was saying, that the library closed at seven, but because I'm here and I was like, well, okay, let me see if I can get a co-worker who's willing to stay after, and we just kept, like, the library closed, and they turned off all the lights and all the computers, except for the room that we were in, and people stayed, and... If you want to stay, and I was like, okay, yeah. The talking will facilitate that, absolutely. I mean, and I don't usually do that, because again, what that requires is that I get an additional co-worker to say that they're willing to stay, but I'm fortunate that on that Thursday night, there's somebody that it doesn't take much to say, hey, can you hang around for a little bit? And yeah, totally, no problem, and so it's nice. That's cool. Because again, you have community engagement, then keep them engaged, you know? Yeah, keep them happy. All right, that was the last question we had up here, so I think that will be good to perfect place to wrap up for your session. Thank you so much, Meg. That was very useful, and lots of cool ideas that I want to see some libraries around here doing. I would attend to so many of those things. So many of those. Thank you, thanks again, everybody, for attending, but also, like I said, I was jotting notes because we're into sharing, so yeah. And I would love to hear from some of you, so I hope that some of you did take up the offer to jot down my email. I'd love to hear about how things go there. Yeah, share, absolutely. Great, thank you so much, Meg.