 Good morning and welcome to Encompass Live. I'm Emily Nimsacont filling in for your regular host, Christa Burns. Encompass Live is the Nebraska Library Commission's weekly online event. It covers NLC activities as well as other library topics presented by library commission staff and guests. The free one-hour sessions are offered every Wednesday at 10 a.m. central time and include a mixture of presentations, interviews, book reviews, web tours, mini training sessions, and question and answer sessions. Here with me today I have Rod Wagner and Mary Jo Ryan and at this point I'm going to turn it over to Rod to introduce our guest today. Good morning everyone. We're very pleased this morning to have with us Sally Reed, Executive Director of ALTAF, the Association of Library Trustees, Advocates, Friends, and Foundations. Foundations, excuse me, a division of the American Library Association. We asked Sally some time ago if she would be willing to join us for the webinar this morning to tell us more about ALTAF, a newly reorganized division of the American Library Association. There's a great story behind this new division and how it came about through a combination of the former Friends of Libraries USA and the prior division of ALTAF that worked with library trustees and advocates. But we're eager to hear from Sally this morning to tell us about her work and her work through the American Library Association, some ideas that she has for Nebraskans and how we can participate and benefit from the various programs and services of ALTAF. So with that I'm going to stop and I'm going to ask Sally to jump in and offer her ideas to us. Welcome Sally. Good morning. Hello everyone and thank you Rod. Before I get started I have to, I wish this was a visual webinar so that we could all watch Rod Blush, but I do want to say that I think you have, see his blush in your minds. Anyway, I just want to say that you all are very lucky to have Rod and his staff. They are really tremendous. I work with a lot of state library agencies across the country and I think that you have one of the very best. I think that the fact that Rod has made available, all the resources are now ALTAF to all of you is very far-sighted because as I go through the slides today I want to show you everything that we can do for you as librarians, but also for friends and trustees. I'm really excited about it and I want to tell you a little bit more of the background about why we came together because I think the story sort of informs our future and what we're all about and that is that ALTA, the Association of Library Trustees and Advocates, was a division of the American Library Association and it has been faltering for many, many years. Interestingly, it's the second oldest division of the American Library Association, which I think it was founded in 1890 and so right away I think that tells you that the American Library Association has always seen citizen input to libraries. It's very, very important, but over the past couple of decades, ALTA had been faltering and I think because they had not really mastered the ability of delivering remote services, most of the services that they offered to trustees were to trustees who attended national conferences and as you all know, that is necessarily a very few amount of trustees. Meanwhile, Falusa, thanks to my predecessor, Sandy Dolnick, had right away understood that friends groups were not going to be traveling to national conferences but had the same needs as any other group of library supporters to share best practices, to receive resources, to help them do what they do even better. So we were actually doing quite well and ALTA not so much and the Executive Director of ALA, he feels sort of noticed this and was concerned about the future of ALTA and meanwhile seeing Falusa doing quite well with citizen supporters of libraries. So he approached me and asked me what I thought about combining the two organizations and I think it was sort of the perfect timing for that because this happened really right as our economy was beginning to tumble and I believe strongly that citizen supporters of libraries are the ones who are going to save libraries. I really believe that one of the things that we need to do is a much better job of making the case for libraries and I don't think librarians are the ones that are going to be able to send that message as strongly as those who use and support libraries. So to me uniting those voices made complete sense and within a year or year and a half that became a reality. So with that I think the focus of ALTA is sort of three pronged. At first is to unite the voices of citizens for libraries and teach citizens how they can be best advocates and promoters of libraries at the local, state and national level. The second is to provide trustees with really the materials that they need and the resources they need to be good trustees and to be able to understand their roles and to understand how they can make a difference and then the third is what the Falusa mission was all about and that is to work with friends and help them raise more money, be better advocates, provide a network for best practices that sort of thing. So here we are all together and I'm really excited about the future for libraries when we connect those citizen voices. I'm hoping that we will model at the national level a new uniting of trustees and friends at the state and local levels as well because I think that our future sort of depends on their coming together and being strong advocates. As we move along through these slides that I have I want to let you know that I'm very comfortable with being interrupted. So if you have questions just raise your hand virtually and we will stop and take any kind of questions you have. Don't worry about waiting till the end unless you feel more comfortable doing that, but I'm totally comfortable with being interrupted. So let's go to the next slide. The reason that I think it is so important for you all to belong and to make sure your friends belong to ALTAP, which they actually do, is because we have so much to offer. We really have an incredible library of resources for friends, trustees and librarians and I just wanted to go over some of these again and if your librarians out there in the audience please make sure that your friends understand that there's a lot of good stuff that they can use to help them do better. We always are adding new tool kits to our friends and trustees own. Some of the ones, one of the newest one is pricing books for online sales and I know that more and more friends groups are doing this. So this toolkit will help friends understand what books might have better value online and how to determine what price that they should put on them. I've been monitoring the listserv out there and I know that a lot of library friends groups small and large are now realizing $15,000 to $25,000 a year from online sales. So it's really a lucrative way to go and we can help with that toolkit, help friends get started. We also have a toolkit on the actual mechanics of selling books online and here's one of you librarians out there I think would really appreciate a memorandum of understanding. If you are having trouble with your friends groups and this does happen from time to time where the friends are sort of not clear on their role as fundraisers and not decision makers I think sometimes when friends step over that role it creates a wedge between the friends and the director and I know directors out there who say they'll never nurture a friends group again because they've had such problems with friends sort of making the decisions well we'll fund you know we want to buy this or we want to buy that or we're not going to support your you know we don't like the direction the library is going so we're not going to give you any money. One of the best things that you can do especially if you're starting up a new friends group or you're sort of going through the work of revitalizing a friends group is to set up a memorandum of understanding about what the library will do to support the friends and what the friends will do to support the library and making it really clear right from the beginning about the difference of the role so that in the future if there's some problems and you all know that sometimes it can be just one person who changes the dynamics of everything and causes a lot of problems and it's really nice if you can pull out an objective document that was done ahead of time that says this is your role and this is my role and it's really important that we keep them separate and here's our agreement that we've always had to do that. So we have that sample for you we do have a toolkit on how to revitalize your friends and I know in these hard times many many libraries are looking to sort of beef up their friends and the friends groups are as well trying to help friends create more active members out there and not just the checkbook members and we we do have a toolkit on how to do that. You know our newsletter the former news update from Volusa is just absolutely chock-full with great ideas from across the country there is no need for your friends groups to reinvent the wheel so you can go back into that archive and look at news updates and find ideas for fundraising or membership promotion or library promotion or whatever it is that you're trying to do with your friends this is a wonderful resource and then we're really exceptionally proud of our new newsletter I hope all of you've had a chance to see it it's called The Voice for America's Libraries or The Voice for Short and it is a newsletter that combines the information for both friends and trustees it's 24 pages long and it's really I think an outstanding newsletter sharing best practices and helping friends and trustees understand ways in which they can be better at the work that they do on behalf of their libraries and of course it's always fun to have quotes on libraries and books and so we have a huge database on what we call notable quotables so lots and lots of good stuff out there and this is just a sampling I mean we have much more than this so we'll look at the next slide this is the cover of The Voice I wanted you to see it so that you would recognize it when it comes across your desk it's I think really a great newsletter and especially for librarians too to see what's going on out there in the world among friends and trustees so that some so that you can encourage your own support groups to sort of maximize their efforts and make sure that they're really helping you promote the library and be strong advocates for the library. Next slide. This is something that we were originally selling we feel like we've reached that plateau with it and we thought why not just put it in the friends zone and make it available to everybody who belongs to ALTAF and I think that this is a really great little tool for you all to raise money within your own community I know a lot of times libraries and friends groups try to raise you know they go to the big guys they want to go to Proctor and Gamble or Johnson and Johnson and get big grants but the truth is there's usually a lot of money within your own community and so this is this getting grants is geared toward helping you develop a case statement develop a great cover letter put together a proposal and it even suggests different civic groups and organizations that are typically very generous to community organizations such as the library or such as friends so be sure to check that out next slide this to me when I first took this job this was my best education right here and that is the listserv now you'll see it says falusa and that is because we are still working with ALA to move our materials and services over to them we have had some little glitches not only with meshing softwares but also ALA did not have the ability to password protect a second level so if you had an ALA password you could get into everything and falusa didn't want to make everything free we want certain things to be available only to our members so while we're in this interim of getting everything together you can still join the listserv at www.falusa.org and we're working out a way to move everybody en masse over when the time comes so that you won't have to re-app and I'm not sure that's going to be possible but we're looking at it but as I said this was my best learning tool I think the smartest people on the face of the earth are on this listserv there are people that can tell you the most minute detail about filing a non-profit tax return for example there are people who have been there done that and they are so generous with their advice and their knowledge it's just an education in itself so if your friends are not on this listserv I would highly encourage them to go on if you ever have a question like should the library this is one that comes up very often should the library staff be spending time and money for the friends and you know you can go online and people say well how much time and money and what's the return you're getting back and of course the alt-taf answer to that question is absolutely we think it's a development issue we think that staff should be spending time and effort with their friends but if their friends aren't returning with with the big bucks or even significant bucks you have to weigh that if you're spending you know five thousand dollars of staff time and effort and copies and etc a year and the friends are only giving you back five thousand you might have to say well is there helping the library become more visible and is still that worth it even though it's a wash if they're not returning anything and trust me there are some friends groups out there that like to hoard their cash that's another issue and we can certainly talk about that but if they're not then you have to assess whether it's worth it I hear laughter we do not recommend the friends groups hoard their cash we do in fact have a tip sheet on on giving to the library and we recommend that the friends try to empty their coffers almost to zero every year we think it's there people give to the friends because they believe the friends are turning around giving it to the library not letting it sit in the bank account and these days you can't even claim you're getting any interest on it so we don't really believe in rainy day funds unless the library concurs and there's some big capital project on the horizon that the friends are specifically saving for with the agreement of the library director otherwise we like them to spend their money but that's that's sort of an aside but you will find such great advice even as a library director we have a lot of library directors on the listserv who have those kinds of questions you know and the friends will come back and boy you will learn a lot just a lot I really think this is the best listserv going so next slide one of the things that you will get out of your membership with Altat is really significant discounts on the publications that we develop if you haven't seen even more great ideas it's really wonderful and I can say that without boasting because all it is is a compilation of all of your best ideas we just went out there into the friends world and asked for contributions to this book and again the generosity of friends we have well over a hundred really great practices in the area of membership building fundraising starting a friends group revitalizing a friends group how do you structure a friends group so that it continually attracts new members all kinds of wonderful great ideas that came from friends groups across the country if you buy this from Neil Shuman you're going to pay $65 if you buy it with your Altat membership it's 40 so really positive resource at a really good price I think so that's just one of the things you get with your membership we have lots of discounts on other things I'll look at the next slide here's just another example we publish this with Neil Shuman and we have their permission to sell to our members only for 40 they're selling the book for I think actually 35 and they're selling the book for 55 so as an Altat member you can order through us versus ordering through Neil Shuman and get that really good discount and while we're on the subject of trustees one of the things that Altat will be doing starting in the fall is creating a certification national certification program for trustees and I use that word certify with a small c it's not going to be anything official except they'll get national recognition for having gone through the program so they'll be a best practices trustee or something we haven't really come up with a name and it's going to be a set of courses I think six that will help them understand very well their roles and how to be better at their roles so and it'll teach them about some of the issues that they need to address like intellectual freedom and what to do when the sensor comes and that sort of thing how to develop policies and I think really importantly for this audience of primarily librarians to help them understand the difference between governance and management so that they can be great supporters and partners with their librarian but not step over that line into sort of directing how the librarian should manage the library and manage the resources because again that can cause as as some of you probably know firsthand that can cause some very dysfunctional relationships so we'll be talking about that over the course of this certification program so you'll want to watch out for that for your trustees because again all TAF members will get a significant discount over those who are not Sally we have a question coming in if you don't mind if you have a break someone typed it in in the text chat um do you have resources for non-governing advisory boards um yes in fact we do have tip sheets for non-governing advisory boards and in fact this complete library trustee handbook is also going to address that once you get past the um the piece of the like the trustees whether they hire and fire the librarian which gives them some pretty powerful authority over the library and some different fiduciary and legal responsibilities that advisory boards have once you get past that a lot of what advisory boards do are the same as what governing boards do for example how do you hold an effective meeting how do you engage in the planning process how do you promote the library how do you become effective advocates for the library how do you present a budget that is powerful to your local funders so those sorts of things that advisory boards should and usually are engaged in are the same as what the governing boards are doing so so we do make those recommend uh we do recognize those differences in our materials and then once we're past those sort of legal uh differences and uh the authority differences we move into the pieces that really make a board effective i hope that answers the question looks like it yep we got a thanks so let's get into the question all right then let's go to the next slide whoops i think we went past um one uh there we go now this says the book lovers calendar for 2008 but actually we are ready for the 2010 and those of you who've done it before know that um the supplies at this time of year are really going fast but um i just want to let you know and if not for this year for next year that we always partner with um the publishers of the book lovers calendar we can sell them to you for 250 plus 5 shipping and they retail for $13 so it's been a fabulous fundraiser for friends and really these are just terrific if you haven't actually seen the book lovers calendar it's a page a day calendar and it has a book recommendation and a little book summary on every single page so this is a wonderful thing for your friends to do to raise money for the library and um that's the information for that is available in the friend zone still as i mentioned um we're still at www.falusa.org on the friend zone now all the things that are not in the friend zone are over at ALA so i'll talk about that in a minute but just wanted to let you know that this is another benefit of your membership with ALTAF and it's really um one that has been uh loved by uh friends across the country so now we'll go to the next slide and so you know why and why does all of this matter and i i think you all know and maybe no better now than ever before that um friends engagement is so incredibly important to libraries and you know we know about friends from fundraising and that as you know so important these days for libraries and i think with the resources that we have freely available to your friends they can be much more effective at fundraising that maybe they've been in the past and it's so gratifying it's so rewarding so make sure that they check in to those um all the toolkits and resources we have so they can do even a better job of it to help us you know get through these tough times and i will say philosophically i i don't encourage friends to sort of raise money for operations i think it's very important that our funders understand that we are so beloved in our communities that people are willing to raise money to put icing on the cake even if that cake is becoming a cupcake now um but they are not going to pay for salaries and they're not going to pay for the heat and they're not going to pay for standard collections and that sort of thing that they will add to what's not normally in the budget because i worry sometimes that if we're um extremely successful at fundraising um that we let the funders off the hook and as one of my friends said recently as soon as the uh as soon as the police department has a bake sale i'll start you know funding operations so we we have to make sure that um and friends are so good at this friends are so good at this making sure that our funders understand that we are a core service that we are essential to our communities and even though we're not putting out fires today we by our work um in the continuum of literacy from uh from infancy to death that we are creating more stronger citizens we are helping kids get through school successfully we are helping children enter kindergarten uh ready to learn and so we are putting out an even bigger fire longer term and saving a lot of money because um as my police chief in norfolk said when i got a big increase in my salary through the advocacy efforts of friends and trustees um he said well and he therefore didn't get quite as much of an increase as he wanted and he said well you can pay her now or you can pay me later and i'm a hell of a lot more expensive and i don't think true or words were ever spoken so that's the kind of thing that friends really can say with quite a bit of authority and of course librarians too and the partnership to me is librarians friends and trustees working together because librarians can do the math librarians have the statistics they know what difference has been made they know what the cost of um of education is versus the cost of libraries they know what the cost of uh dropping out is when kids don't get that support that they need for the school curriculum they know what the cost is of kids entering kindergarten without any kind of book rich environment so you can provide the facts and the background the friends can give voice to it and can tell stories and can show funders that they are not interested they're not self interested except in that they want a community that works and a community that's healthy and you cannot have a healthy community without a healthy library so they're the great ones to do that and that's why it's so important that you work with all taff and you work with your friends and trustees and engage them with the resources that we have because i think it's going to make um a difference down the road i really do i worry a lot about what's going to happen to libraries if the citizens who love them and use them are not engaged and encouraged to stand up for them and so that's what all taff's all about but it really only can happen with you at the local level so let's see what the next slide is um one of the great things i just put this up if you're not familiar with it and i'm sure you all are but maybe you've forgotten about it need to go back one of the great things about being part of al a now i think is that i'm much more in the know at engaged myself with other units of al a and have a lot better access and and not that i didn't always but it's more in my face now i guess i could see it all the time the resources that al a has for all of you out there friends trustees and librarians and this is just one piece the small but powerful guide to winning big support for your rural library i don't know if you've seen it have you all seen it i guess i can't have you raise your hands maybe i can but anyway if you have it must write down this web address and go look at it because it is a very great toolkit on how to improve advocacy at the rural for rural and small libraries and i know that pretty much wraps up most of nebraska's libraries um so do i just an aside i hope you all know i'm from nebraska it's my big bragging point i i went i grew up in nebraska graduated from high school at hastings high and whenever people and even though it's been oh my gosh 40 years or oh near 40 years since i lived there um i still tell people when they ask me where i'm from i still say i'm from nebraska so you know it does get into your heart and um that's one of the reasons i love to be invited to talk to you all either in person or online like this it it's like coming home again so anyway um that that's just to tell you i know that most of you have rural small libraries and this toolkit is wonderful there are a lot of other just general al a resources and i encourage you as librarians to sort of um you know browse around their website from time to time another great resources um w w w dot i love libraries um dot org and this is another um attempt from al a to capture citizen supporters of libraries um so it's got a lot of really interesting things and then also um american libraries of magazine is coming out with an online magazine that's going to be geared to helping librarians market their collections so it's going to be all about tying in current events with uh current book titles that probably a lot of you will have on your shelves and and uh book talks and book uh reviews and all sorts of fun things that that really have a user end point you know how do you market your collection to the user so that's something else that you can look for out there that's going it's not published yet but keep an eye out for that and that's one of the things that all tap is going to start doing is trying to via our listserv because right now that is our best way um and our newsletter but but via the listserv as well to get the um word out to all of you these wonderful new uh toolkits programs projects websites come up so that you can count on us to be watching for you in case you miss something hopefully we'll pick it out and push it out to you pick it up and push it out to you so um we're real excited about moving forward with we think that we're getting better all the time because we're building building building on that library of materials and um we so welcome all of you to send in your stories to us um i know that if you've been reading the news update in the voice you're often seeing stories that come from Nebraska because so many of you are very good about sending in um what you've been up to and what made a difference in your community and the beauty of that is well first of all I get some national recognition but more importantly um you're putting out ideas out there that could be replicated in Alabama or Washington or some other place that helped them so you know together we can make libraries um really strong nationwide but it takes everybody contributing so I hope that you will continue to do that with us and we'll continue to contribute back to you Sally I just wanted to mention for everyone who's um out there frantically trying to write down this URL and others is that we will have a list on our delicious account the commission's delicious account a list of all these URLs so you won't have to write them all down um you go to them through that that's great and I think you said that you were going to archive this uh webinar as well right absolutely yes so that's great I can watch it again wonderful and I know you all can't wait to see the rerun or those of us who didn't get to watch right right okay well I think if we get pulled the last slide I think it's the last slide yes so I gave you the falusa.org which is where you still go in with um okay here's a quiz for you all uh do you remember your username and law and password anybody uh oh no okay well I'm going to give it to you because you obviously cannot get to all this fabulous material unless you have it and I'm told that what will work for you until the renewal time is username spelling sp e l l i n g and password b b e spelling me we try to love it yeah we don't have our big fundraisers at the Lincoln City Libraries Foundation we have a spelling b for for our Nebraska Literary Heritage Association I love spelling bees I think they are just awesome so great that's a good way for you to all remember it um you could always call us there's our toll free number you can always call us and ask for your um your username and password you can call us with any kind of question like you know my trustee is coming into the library every day and you know correcting the way our circulation staff is working what do I do you can do you can call us about anything and we'll give you our two cents worth and actually it's sort of an educated two cents worth because of all the years that we have been working and listening to that listserv that's so brilliant and also working with groups we kind of have gotten to know what really works and what doesn't and we certainly have an organizational or maybe institutional position on certain things like how much money should a friends group give every year to their library and um whereas the role between friends and libraries and the role between libraries where are the lines the trustees that kind of thing so feel free to call anytime we're here for that um we love doing it and I would like at this point to um open the floor for any kind of questions yes feel free to go ahead and either type your question into the text box or raise your hand and I'll unmute your microphone so you can go ahead and ask it over your microphone well while people are thinking of the question I have one for you Sally um and you mentioned this early on that uh many people are not in a position to or able to attend the um conferences the American Library Association mid-winter meeting or the annual conference but may they may have uh sometime in the future a chance to do that um Altav will be offering some excellent programs during the conferences uh what's what do you have lined up for uh uh the annual conference that will come up in late june in washington in 2010 well thanks for that we do have some wonderful programs and you know ALA meets in some really very wonderful cities across america washington dc being the one that rod is referring to so you know if you have an opportunity to sort of combine a vacation with an ALA event that is a great idea I think for you because um Altav offers quite a number of wonderful programs for friends and for trustees coming up um at the conference in dc we have our traditional annual nuts and bolts for friends and trustees so if your friends or trustees are coming um it's a great round table discussion on best practices and we always bring in a speaker to talk about fundraising or membership building or um advocacy or any number of issues that are of particular interest to friends and trustees so that's that's going with every single conference you can count on that and that's a program that we have now created a day long program it's going to be off the ala campus hopefully every time in the central library of the city where we visit um so that you don't have to even register for the conference to attend that we also have some really great author programs every single annual conference and um this we have an author t it's a ticketed event and it's always four to five best-selling authors um and i'm trying off the top of my head to remember who our headliner is this time Sharon McCrum you all i know are familiar with her and we always get really great authors for this we've had Joyce Carol Oates we've had Frank Delaney we've had um gosh uh Eileen Gooch um Mary Kay Andrews i'm trying to think of them off the top of my head but always wonderful wonderful authors nicky Giovanni um so we have that the new thing that we've started doing about now it's going to be in its third year at annuals a program called the laughs on us it is headlined by uh Paula Poundstone she is altaf's national spokesperson and by the way if you have not seen her psas for friends of the libraries you need to go to www.falusa.org um and fine and click on the Paula Poundstone picture she has downloadable 30 second and 15 second um psas on why you should join the friends and those are available for you to put on your own library's website and they are so funny they are really great so that's another thing that altaf does for you so please go there and get that ps a anyway she comes and does the laughs on us and then we have about four or five other comic writers who get up and it's like nightclub style they get up and they just do like a 10 minute reading or a 10 minute shtick and it is hilarious and we serve wine and cheese plates and soft drinks and it's just a great great evening then we have about four or five um author panels that are free um that um we always have a first author first book panel and i think our biggest uh prize on that was that we had james uh james grogan a marley and me on that panel before anybody knew who he was so now we're all sitting around with these first edition signed copies of marley and me i you know i can retire soon i think um the the other panel discussion we're going to have in dc is that we're having a diversity panel called authors come in all colors we are having of course since we're in dc we're having a political and policy issues panel um of writers who are talking about our current uh state of affairs in america and um we're having a isn't it romantic um a genre panel on romances so lots of good things at ala for you to attend and this is very typical of what we have every single annual conference so if you get a chance to be in um in the same city where ala is happening it's really worth your while and it's worth your friends and trustees while to come trustees always have three or four programs on best practices for trustees as well so always something really good thanks for that question rod okay we have a couple of questions that people have typed in while you're answering that one um we have a question from a trustee at the umaha public library system who says please tell me more about the library trustee certification program oh great well we're going to start in the fall we're going to have about six uh classes and of course they're going to be offered online they will be uh there will be a modest charge for them very modest for all taff members so i you are an all taff member since you live in nebraska all nebraska trustees friends and librarians are um we are going to discuss um the issues of uh planning and intellectual freedom and effective board board meetings and board management we're going to talk about director evaluation um director recruitment and evaluation we're going to and that by the way i got the earlier question if we're an advisory board are there materials for us and even though um if you are a city department and you're only an invite only in quotes if you're an advisory board you still normally have or should have some role to play in um recruiting and evaluating the director so if you don't i think that's something that you should lobby for because it's really important i think as citizen representatives to have a say in who is managing this precious resource and you should be able to have input into that evaluation process and that's that's pretty typical so if you don't have it um you know you should and so we're going to go through all those issues we're even issues of effective meetings and even issues of how can you be a more effective advocate for your libraries and your library's budget so it will be six to eight courses over the course of probably i've imagined six months and there will be criteria we're still working this up but there's going to be criteria um to establish recognition for um boards of trustees who've gone through the process and we don't know exactly what that's going to look like yet but there will be some kind of national recognition for trustees who are have gone through the um curriculum and are quote certified unquote as um altaf recognized that uh trustees i'll just add into that um nebraska does have a public library board certification program so this should be a very nice match to uh the national program for trustee certification that's right that's exactly right okay we have another question that came in what should we be doing with the multiple copies of the newsletter that our library receives well i think that you should spread them around i i think you're receiving three is that correct i believe so okay our our idea is that one would go to the board president and maybe be circulated there by the way you can also get copies um online as members of altaf so um one hard copy to the president one to the librarian and one to the friend's president with the um knowledge that you can go online to that ala.org slash altaf um those who don't receive the hard copy and still get copies online um we think it's really important for all of you all three uh uh what do you call them the legs of that stool to be seeing what's going on in the world we are also in in our newsletter by the way we're trying to isolate and identify and push out to you national issues that are going to have some kind of impact on you at the local level so that you can see them coming because a lot of times um for example remember when the lead for uh children's materials children's toys and everything came out and looked for a minute that library collections uh children's collections would all have to be tested which of course would be not only impossible but impossibly expensive um but those kinds of things really do and could have impact on you at the local level so we're going to try to stay on top of that for you so everybody should be looking at the voice okay are there any other questions sali what about friends groups for uh schools and colleges we do have a pretty good membership for academic college um friends because academic libraries have been really ahead of the curve on developing some kind of support group for their library fund raising support group primarily um and most colleges and very often college libraries have a development officer so they also work with the friends of the academic library and we do offer particular materials to academic libraries the book even more great ideas is at least 30% academic ideas so many of those are transferable back and forth so um you know what if academic friends group does and what a public library friends group does very often are very similar like author programs or book signings that sort of thing school libraries I think is the toughest nut we've got to crack and as you all know we're listening to this every one of you knows school libraries are in great danger across the country they are being zeroed out even before any kind of sports team before even you know even sometimes art classes or other things library media centers are being either closed at worst um and or having their media specialist eliminated and put in a paraprofessional or some kind of clerk at best so it's a real tough situation out there and I've been a firm believer for a long time that if they had friends groups none of this would happen as a parent I know that oftentimes libraries close without you even knowing it till your kid happens to say well we don't have a library anymore and you didn't even know about it because if you had known you would have raised holy hell excuse my language but you know no parent is going to let their media center close so they're done sort of in the dark of the night and friends the beauty of friends is that they don't have to they can relieve the librarian of getting in trouble especially those of you who are director reports to your city manager or your council you know you can't go out there and wave a red flag and say oh no you don't cut me but your friends can and in schools the hierarchy is even more intense than in cities really there are librarians who've told me in schools that they don't want to start a friends group because their principal won't let them um and the principal doesn't want friends because the principal knows full well that the friends are the ones that are going to go out there and say no you're not going to close us um so my idea with school library um librarians is that they start a volunteer group of parents to shell books to help read stories you know in other words something benign enough that they can let that group in the door and then keep that group informed as if they were a friends group so that they though that group call him something else but so that that group can get the word out when there is a threat to the school media center i went to the american association of uh school libraries conference last time and our booth was absolutely swamped and we got absolutely not one single membership out of it and i don't care about the membership but it tells me that even though they're interested school librarians are not as a large group moving forward to save their media centers and i think it's a real pity i really do i hold school media libraries school media specialists um responsible for a lot of this as well i just think they've done a very poor job of nurturing um a group that can help get the word out about their library ironically they do it because they don't want to get in trouble and then they end up fired so i don't get it but that's where school libraries are right now we only have a couple school library friends groups with our membership right now selly just a kind of point of bring back something you talked about earlier right now the best place for people to go is the falusa website www falusa dot org correct yes um the ala dot org altaf won't allow them access to the resources they can get to with their password and username yes that that's that's right that's correct at this time that's correct just checking thanks sally thank you i'm glad you brought that up we do have another question that was typed in um could you talk about the statewide membership for all the rest of public libraries and how all our public libraries could take advantage of that free membership well that's exactly um pretty much what we've been talking about and that is i think a really wonderful thing a wonderful gift from your state library to have purchased memberships for all libraries in the state of nebraska and that membership includes membership for your trustees it includes membership for the library uh staff and it includes membership for the friends and um all the materials that we've been talking about today are available to you free or those discounts are also available to you as members when we launched the trustee certification program your every single board of trustees in the state of nebraska is going to be eligible to attend at a very very low price as members um so all of the things that we've been talking about today and i will tell you again um are available to you using the username spelling and the password b and going to www.falusa.org and right on the front page you'll see a member login and once you log in all of the materials we've been talking about today will be available to all of you in your library community we're and and honestly we we're perfectly happy for you to post that on your website if you want um your citizens to also be able to go in and look it might be a good recruiting um there might be some good recruiting materials in there for new members to come into the friends uh we just want everything that we have to be freely and fully available to your library community great well we have about five minutes left before the end of the session if there are any last minute questions up there rod and mary joe do you have any final thoughts we certainly appreciate sally being here well thank you it's always delightful to be there um i was telling rod before this program started that i was in nebraska i was at mohoney state park two weekends ago with a having a family reunion and we had a wonderful time and as if you recall that was a gorgeous weekend it was uh beautifully sunny and about mid 60s it couldn't have been more perfect oh sally that was a beautiful weekend i do remember it i just wanted to mention if i could that i have been blogging this session on the encompass blog so i invite everyone who's listening uh to go on to the nebraska library commission website click the bot the blog icon at the bottom of the page and uh please share your comments about how you think you might be able to use these resources with your library trustees advocates friends foundations all your library supporters and um also other things that you think might be useful for uh the library commission to consider supporting you and your uh library supporters we do have one more question coming in what one thing should a new executive director do regarding the library support groups i think the the first thing i would do as a new executive director is i would have a get together and i would have like maybe a potluck dinner or wine and cheese event or something like that for the friends and the trustees and the library staff to all come together and maybe um a little time for talking at the microphone about where the library is going what the environment for the library looks like are you facing cuts or are you really excited because a planning process is coming up whatever's on your agenda and let them know what's on the horizon and let them know how they can help but i think by bringing them all together you will set in a in a really nice and formal and fun atmosphere you will set the agenda that you all work together and the library's future health depends on all of you working together i think that would be the first step i would take hey we also have our first raised hand of the session so barbara i'm gonna go ahead and unmute your microphone and you should be able to go ahead and ask your question now i hope barbara can you hear us okay it seems like maybe that's not quite working the way it should barbara if you have a question would you mind going ahead and typing it into the box marked questions i'm not seeing the question coming in from barbara but you do have our contact information and so yeah barbara to feel free to call barbara we're i'm here all day every day so give me a call i'd love to talk to you let's see oh i oh barbara was just letting us know who attended the session with her so i see that the text box and i will mark that down thank you very much barbara that's always good to know but then we get an accurate count of how many people actually attended okay well if there are no more questions then i'd like to once again thank sally reed for joining us and thank you all for attending and please come back and join us in the future for more encompassed live thanks thank you everyone and thank you all for joining us this morning thank you bye bye so long sally bye now