 All right. Welcome to our first session of the day on Big Talk from Small Libraries, the conference where all the presenters from libraries with a population-served or FTE of 10,000 or less, that's our cutoff. And our first library of the day is one of our smallest ones today. Your FTE looks like 650, is that still correct? It is. Yeah, awesome. So Kelly Inslee is director of the library at the La Grange College. Did I say that correctly? Yes, I know. Had you on before. And she was in 2017, I think. She presented previously on Big Talk, so she is back again. Awesome. To talk about redesigning spaces with students in mind. So I am going to hand it over to you, Kelly, to go ahead and take it away. Well, thank you. Good morning, everybody. So I started here in La Grange, and I love it, in about 2019. And we're going to talk, you know, about how redesigning spaces with students in mind is so important. But also, how you get your staff on board with that too. You know, that's a, it's a big thing, depending on how many staff you have. And it has been challenging, but it has been really rewarding too. So, picture it. The Lewis Library in 2019. It is a very beautiful building. This building was built in 2009. Prior to the library getting its own building, it was in an older building on campus. It was in Banks Hall. And that building was built around the turn of the century 1900. So it is, it was a very older building. So right now we have about 45,000 square feet. It is three floors. We do have a separate 24-hour space that is accessible to students, faculty, and staff 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And it's funny, the 24-hour is probably the most popular space in the library, even though it's the smallest. The students like to pack themselves in there like sardines. It's funny to me. So in terms of staff, there, if I was fully staffed, this is what that would look like. Right now, there is me, obviously. The CERC specialist, I have the archive specialist, the acquisitions and journal assistant, the circulation assistant, cataloging and ILL. So I'm down three full-time librarians in a part-time position. And one of my circulation workers is actually out on FMLA. So it's kind of fun times here. And part of this came about because of the efficiency review. So in 2021, the college underwent a massive efficiency review. It seems to kind of be the trend right now in most academic libraries, especially, or well, it wasn't just library, but for the college, most colleges and universities are doing efficiency reviews to streamline a lot of processes, also figure out what's working effectively and what's not. And so, due in part of that, we had to make a lot of spatial changes. And we're really focusing on academic innovation. So this is a picture of our main floor when I started in 2019. So the reference collection was about 12,000 volumes. On this floor, you also have the reference desk, the circulation desk and this small reading area that you can see. So the reference collection was pretty massive for the time. Upstairs on the third floor, we had all of these periodical shelving. And when I started, they were actually empty. So this was an older picture. So they were in kind of a U-shaped formation with seats in between, but there was nothing on the shelves. On the third floor, we also have the education, art, photography, music, and children's book collections, a pretty massive CD collection. Most of our DVDs, an auditorium, a classroom, and a lot of study space. On the first floor is where we have the majority of our books. So we have about 60,000 books in print downstairs on the first floor. And I love these shelves because they're revolving shelves. So it's really fun to get all the way in the back and then have to, you know, move the shelves around to get what you need. We also have a, yeah, it's fun. We also have a cyber archives and special collection and there are some study spaces downstairs on the first floor. So that's kind of to orient you to how it looked when I started. So when I started, it was still had more of an older library feel to it. The students weren't really allowed to make a lot of noise or really talk. They couldn't eat or drink in here. The study rooms had to be reserved and unlocked for use. And the laptops that we had could only be checked out for 24 hours. And as soon as that 24-hour deadline hit, you got charged $500. So it was probably a massive culture shock when I started and the first thing, you know, some of the first things that I did were immediately looking at things that we could change. When I came to interview and I had a separate, I had a small, I had like 30 minutes, I guess, with the current library director and she was retiring. She had been with the college for about 45 years. And she told me something that really has stuck with me. She said that she knew it was time for her to retire when she couldn't look at the library with fresh eyes. Everything that she saw was the way that it had been for so long and she couldn't see any different. And I really thought that that was insightful and also, you know, really impactful. So when I started, I was like, okay, we need to make some pretty massive changes. So we removed the periodical shelving upstairs on the third floor. And I moved a bunch of tables that the library already had up there. I wanted to have a nice, big, open computer lab. The library had about 30 PCs at the time and they were spread out among the three floors. And so really, if you wanted to use a PC, you kind of either had to know where it was or you kind of had to hunt for it. And I really wanted a central location where the students could be so that, you know, if they had questions about Excel or Microsoft Word or, you know, the college's LMS or something along those lines, you know, they would be in kind of one space where a help desk was so that they could get help without having to move around three floors of the library. We also moved the movie DVDs to the main floor. So they had been interfiled with our educational DVDs. And it was really hard for anybody to find, you know, just like the Marvel movies or maybe Harry Potter or something along those lines. We moved the study carols that were upstairs on the third floor down to the first floor. And our first floor became our quiet floor. So to say that the staff were thrilled or less than thrilled is really an understatement. These were pretty massive changes. And I kind of started them right off the bat. And they all took place over the course of that summer of 2019 because we don't offer a lot of in-person summer classes here. So it was really easy to, you know, kind of have the time and everybody here to make those changes happen. And I'm also not the kind of director who's going to sit back and watch other people work. I pitched in and I was moving around these tables and helping out too. In a lot of ways, I think that helped because you're not just watching someone, you know, direct you. They're actually participating and making sure this stuff happens. We also had a lot of policy changes. So I tell all the students to keep it to a dull roar and we're good. Our building is LEED Silver Certified. So we are a green space. It is architecturally beautiful. But the main floor and the third floor on either ends have these really pretty open cutout spaces. So if you're on the third floor, you can look over onto the second floor. But what that means is that sound carries. And I am not a quiet person. So students can usually hear me laugh upstairs on the third floor when I'm at the circulation desk. They can eat and drink in here as long as they clean up after themselves. And we changed the laptop circulation policy so that laptops can circulate for 24 hours, two weeks, or an entire semester, depending on the needs of the student. About 75% of our students here are here on some form of financial aid. We are a private college, but a lot of our students are here on financial aid. I also changed it so that there were no late fees on anything that was not technology. And primarily even the students who bring a laptop back late, we go ahead and wave them as long as we get them back. That's just kind of something that we use as a way to be like, okay, if you don't bring them back, you're going to be charged. But it's usually like $5. All right. So I got lots of comments from my staff. You know, the students aren't going to use the computers when we put them all together. No late fees, eating and drinking. They're going to party in the library. We don't have space to store shelves. And I had somebody go to the vice president of financial operations and tell them that I was spending tens of thousands of dollars on new furniture. When in reality, all the furniture that we were moving around was existing. It's stuff that we already had, and I did not spend any money on anything. So how do you get your staff on board? Well, you know, you have to identify the change and why. And I went about this with staff meetings. So we had lots of staff meetings over the summer where I talked about how I had to get familiar with the library, the books being used, how circulation worked, the classes on this campus, and really get an idea of how the space was being used. And so one of the ways that I did that is I instituted an hourly count policy. So I created a Google form, a Google sheet, and somebody, it's usually a student worker, goes around the library once an hour, usually at the top of the hour, and every single room, every single space gets recorded for usage statistics. So this gave me a lot of really good insight into what the students were using the most and how we can reconfigure those spaces. And, you know, kind of explaining to the staff, like, what is the benefit to me? Well, as most of you probably know, if a library wants to be funded, it has to be used. So statistically, the library was very underused for the size before I started and even into that first fall semester of 2019. So stats are life. And in order for us to remain an active place on campus, there needed to be some changes. And then also taking into account their reservations and or hesitations. I've always told my staff that if you have a question about something, please ask. If you don't agree with something I'm doing, you can tell me. Like, we can have a conversation about this. You don't have to agree with everything that I'm doing. But I want to know what your reservations are, and then hopefully we can address them and work through it. But at some point, I had to be like, well, just saying that because this is the way it's always been done is how it's going to be done is not going to go well with me. Change is hard, but it is necessary. And then of course, COVID hit. So that was fun. And from the spring of 2020, really, we came back in that summer. So the fall of 2020 and on that computer lab really wasn't used much at all. There is a big push for students to have their own laptops. Because of CARES money, we were actually able to buy 80 brand new laptops for the library, 45 of which circulate, and then the other 35 we use for in-house things. We have a lot of testing that goes on here, like for the college, and of course library instruction, any presentations or things like that. We had to make all the spaces COVID accessible. And so this was a really big change for everybody in the library, for me and everybody on campus, really. And then my staff were very resistant to working the circulation desk and having to interact with the students. And that was really hard because that is your customer service point. And if I had staff constantly telling me that they were not going to be at the reference desk, if a student was there, they would sit elsewhere or they just flat out refused. And so that took a lot of negotiating in terms of how we could make that work for everybody. I've also spoken with other library directors to get their take on things. And one of them is Aaron Weimer. He's the library director in a South Carolina university. And he also spoke of COVID-related change resistance with me. So to date, it's 2023. And while COVID is still out there, it has not come one, kind of, not as bad as it was. He still has plexiglass up at his circulation desk and other customer service points because his staff are very, very resistant to it coming down. And so he originally gave them a deadline and said, okay, we're taking it down this past December. But his staff were still very reticent about it. And so he extended that deadline until around spring break. And at this point, he kind of just said, well, it needs to come down. It's not effective because, I don't know about y'all, but even here at my library and at his, nobody ever stopped in front of that piece of plexiglass. They always moved to the side where it wasn't to speak to you. So then it's really ineffectual. He also spoke of resistance to weeding the print collection at his library as well. And we'll talk about that in a little bit. So during this efficiency review, which I was heavily involved in, we identified areas, programmatic areas that needed to be redone, or we just needed to get rid of all together. We're a very small institution. In our heyday, at most, we had 1,100 students. So having 70-some-odd majors and programs is very big and just maybe a little bit too much. So that was one area of the efficiency review touched on. But another one was utilizing spaces on campus that were underutilized. So in the fall of 2021, I mean, really in 2019, when I started, I really harped on the fact that our technical services area of the library was not being used at all. I mean, when we were ordering tens of thousands of books a year, yeah, it totally was. That's where everything happened. But when I started, it was primarily used for storage or birthday parties for the staff or any kind of staff could get together or meetings. So it was very underutilized. And it kind of is, it's close enough to our 24-hour space where it really could have been an extension of the 24-hour, and the students would then have more space to cram themselves in. So it may be a little less like sardines. And it wasn't until fall of 2021, after we were kind of wrapping up the efficiency review, that the administration really started listening to me about what the potential for this space was. And it went through several iterations before it landed on the tutoring lab. At one point, maybe it could have been a makerspace, and it would have been a fantastic space for that. But we would have had to have a donor that was willing to give us the money to buy all the awesome things for a makerspace. And then really redesigning the area. Eventually, it was landed on that it would become the new tutoring lab. So tutoring and writing already occurred in the library, but in very small study room-like spaces. So we had a donor who was willing to give us, you know, donate the money for new furniture, paint, and flooring. It also happened to be the same family who originally donated to create the 24-hour space. And so they varied generously when we renovated the tutoring lab, when I hadn't updated our 24-hour space to, and it is beautiful. So this picture is what it looks like right now. But if you can kind of use your imagination, those cubby areas that you see kind of on the right, those were cubicle workspaces. And there was a mailbox in there and carpet, and you know, the paint was original to the library and things like that. So it is really a beautiful updated space for the students. But when that happened, we had to get everything out of that space. And originally, I was told in late November of 2021 that all of the flooring and paint would be done in January of 2022. So we had a short amount of time to kind of clear out that space. So I used that as an opportunity to take the vision that I had for the main floor of the library and really kind of start working on what I wanted that to look like. The main floor of the library is beautiful. You have these really gorgeous windows on either end. It's lots of light. But about halfway through, you have the reference collection, which was about 12 shelves. And like I said, about 12,000 books. When we pulled numbers on those books, only about 80% of them were 20%, I'm sorry, were published after 1995. So we have this very old and out-of-date reference collection. I pulled the book off the shelf randomly that was published in the 60s on Secretary Etiquette. And I was like, oh, this is interesting. Wow, relevant. Yeah, but not something that needs to be in the reference collection, for sure. And the way most academic libraries are going right now is interfiling reference books into the stacks and not having a traditional reference collection that you can't check out. So I took this opportunity to go ahead and start redesigning the main floor of the library. We don't have a student union here. We're just too small and we don't have enough space. So in a lot of ways, the library fulfills that need. So as we were clearing everything out of the tutoring lab, I went ahead and told all of my staff that we were going to remove the reference collection as it was. And I got a lot of pushback. So we started weeding. The library was not weeded as it probably should have been since they moved into this building, which means that nothing was going. There was no yearly weeding that was being done, which accounts for the number of books in the reference collection that were really out of date. So I also got a lot of pushback from faculty on the reference collection. The faculty here, the majority of them have been here for 20 plus years. And they did not want to see the reference collection go. And so I compromised. It got moved downstairs to the first floor. It starts the rest of our collection. And we did weed it, but we left a lot of materials that were a little bit more relevant to. So it's interesting to me after I started doing this, the Chronicle of Higher Education had a virtual forum on the future of academic libraries, and they also published a special publication on the changes that we are the spatial changes that we are seeing in academic libraries. And one of the quotes that I really liked was the endless book stats have given way to more flexible spaces and a more flexible mission. And I really think that's how the library here needs to go as well. More collaborative open spaces. Yes, still have a print collection, but really having those open spaces where students can kind of relax and study are very beneficial as well. So I turned the main floor into a collaborative workspace. Because the students were not using the computer lab as it was anymore, and we got all of those laptops that they could check out. I took the tables that were upstairs and brought them down to the main floor after we removed all the reference books. And I really wanted the library to be a place where the students felt welcome, because there's been lots of research that has been done that students have a fear of the space. It's not the people and it's not the books in the library. It is the building itself. It's this huge scary thing. It holds the knowledge kind of idea. But I wanted the students to be able to come in here and just hang out if they wanted to. I mean, if they happen to fall asleep while studying, hopefully they're getting it through osmosis. But really be comfortable in the space. Because if they're comfortable in the space and with the people, they're more likely to ask us for help when they do need articles for their papers or they need a book source or something along those lines. Again, I got all sorts of comments from my staff. I was told that it's going to look awful, that nobody was going to like it. And one of my staff actually went to some of the faculty about the books that I was weeding. And then I got to hear from the faculty as well. And that was really difficult. I wish they could have seen what was in my head. I am not a graphic designer. So I couldn't really draw the space out. I tried to show them some pictures of what I really wanted it to look like. But it's the way that it had been forever. And it was a huge change. And so they were very, very hesitant. So on your left, you have the before picture. And on the right, you have the after. The picture is taken from the reverse. So on the left, you're seeing it from the window side. And on the right, I took it from looking towards the windows. But we were able to pull down nine tables. And we moved all of the reference shelves. Some of them did have to go into storage. But this is probably one of the most popular spaces now in the library. The 24, I don't think that's ever going to change. They will always go and use the 24. But this collaborative workspace, the students love it. We have study halls that meet here. We have cultural enrichment events on campus that the students have to have a certain number to graduate. And so occasionally, they will host these in this space as well. And it works so well because it's a way to attract more students to these events. So instead of having it in a traditional classroom or an auditorium, you're in this nice open space. And you still have students coming in the library and sort of like, oh, I wonder what's going on back there. And then they can just join and there is no opening or closing of doors or really an interruption to the presenter. This past summer, it was fantastic because we got a number of new HVAC systems. And so our dining hall is one that had to have one. So it was closed over the summer. But we still had orientations for incoming students. And they did it all in the library. And I loved it. So they used the tables. They were eating in here. So they had their meals in here. It was a really great way for me to have an opportunity to go and talk to every student that was incoming before they even started. It was really fantastic. So now we have this really beautiful open space. I love that picture on the right there. It reminds me, my first thought, it just popped in my head. It reminds me of the pictures you see, the overhead pictures or something like the Library of Congress or where it's just rows and rows of tables. And you think of a library as rows and rows of shelves, but that's never what the Library of Congress has been. You look at it and you see tables and people doing things. Right. Well, and that's really what you want. I mean, the books certainly have value. And it's interesting to me because before I came to LaGrange, I was at a school in the university system of Georgia, which is the public colleges and university system. And Georgia Tech, actually a couple years ago, went to a book list model for their main library. And so the library is just floors and floors and floors of open spaces with different table setups and maker spaces and things that you would need. And they were able to completely take their collection and move it to an offsite repository. And it works great for them. But I think you'd be hard-pressed in this day and age to find a library that doesn't have some sort of learning commons or collaborative learning space for students because they're desperately needed. Okay. So after we did this and it was all done, these are the comments I got from my staff. It looks great. The students love it. Administration loves it. It was kind of funny to me because, you know, I had to get approval to do all of these changes. And I was specifically told that it better look good or we'd have to put it all back. I was like, oh, do you realize how much work this is? So thankfully it does look good. The president of the campus uses the library as a, I don't want to say a showpiece, but that's kind of what it is. Anytime somebody comes on campus, he might be a potential donor. We had a legislator here not too long ago. She always brings them to the library and shows them around the library. It really is one of the most popular spaces on campus. And it's one of the fewer spaces where I am actively trying to do academic innovation, which is part of our current QEP. And if you're not in an academic library, that is our quality enhancement plan. And that is directly tied to our accreditation. Okay, so what's coming up next? Because I'm not done. So when the library was moved to this brand new building, they significantly weeded the collection, but that was back in 2009. And like I said, they haven't really done much weeding before I started in 2019. And so that would have already been 10 years later. So two years ago, I pulled a report and I wanted to see what books hadn't been checked out in the last 10 years. It was approximately 40,000 books. So well, not just books. That's anything in the library. So any materials in the library. And I waited two years before I did that because I needed to have a better idea of what was being checked out, which programs were using print resources more than digital, which ones were using digital more than print. So that was very strategic on my part. But when I pulled this report and I told everybody that we were going to start weeding it, I had one person here actually refused to help. And they said that we had spent so much money on these books and we didn't really need to get rid of them. And it was such a waste. And I hadn't been here long enough. These classes were being taught on the cycle. And so my point to him was what I just said. I intentionally waited two years before even doing that. I needed to get everything else under control and I needed to see what was going on. And it's taken a lot of time and effort to really get everybody on board, but we are not a repository. If it is something that we have in print that is not accessible in a copyrighted legal manner or digitally, then we're going to keep it, of course. Or if I know that it's a book that is used very heavily in-house, but it is not being checked out, then we're going to keep that too. So there's a lot of give and take with this. The CD collection has been a point of contention, though, because we have over 500 CDs. So we have a pretty big music program here, but none of them have been checked out in the four years that I have been here. We have access to Nexus Music Library, which is a really fantastic database. And so the students don't have to come and check out those CDs anymore. And it's not like they're popular music CDs. They tend to be more classical or scores. There's a wide range of them, but they're not something that your average person is just going to come in and check out. And because of streaming, they're not doing that anyway. Well, I had a staff person that was adamant that we are not getting rid of them. And so I made them a deal. I said, if you go through every one of these CDs and what you cannot find in Nexus Music Library, we will keep those, but we will get rid of the rest. So that was about, let's say like three to four months ago, and he hasn't touched not one of those CDs. So I'm going to give him a deadline and be like, you have to do this by this deadline or we will just go ahead and withdraw them. We really don't have the space to keep them, and they are just collecting dust. And similarly, Aaron Weimer had some push back from his staff when he wanted to weed the collection. And so his take on this was to gradually weed it, the reference collection, and then begin interfiling it with the rest of the books. And he was telling me that when they did this, they had about five ranges of free shelves, and they were empty. And he laughed because his staff didn't consolidate the collection at that point. They just had these five ranges of shelves that were completely empty. So we need to start looking at supplementing the print with digital. I really want to transform that third floor space into another open area collaborative space, too. I want it to be a little bit different in design, maybe not have like the tables as they're set up now. I would love some modular tables and seating. Maybe those, I don't know if y'all have ever seen them, but they kind of look like something out of an alien spaceship where it's like a semi-circle booth style seating in the backs come up kind of high. So it offers you some privacy. But right now upstairs, we have our education collection, all of our art collection, and then our music collection. And it is very extensive. But when I go and do instruction or when I talk to the faculty in education, nursing, business, or science, they don't send their students over to look at our books in print. They rely solely on our digital resources for their research. And part of that is because we can't keep up with a print collection for them anymore. Information is coming out way too fast for us to be able to do that. And when you're going into these particular fields, you're going to be using a lot of digital resources books. Yes, but you're gonna rely more on those digital resources. So we really need to look at those collections and see what we can weed. And if we can weed enough of the stuff that is upstairs on the third floor, then I can move what's left of the collection downstairs to the first floor, and then we will have that other really nice open pretty space. But again, lots of staff pushback. Libraries are supposed to have books in them, and we can't completely get rid of the print collections. And so I have challenged my staff. Show me research, show me statistics that tell me that these are the books that we need to keep in this space. And don't rely on you not wanting to part with this information. If I have a book in front of me and I can find it digitally, and it is a book where I know for a fact the students are not going to come check out this book, they are going to go to the digital resource, then we most likely will get rid of that one that's in print. So it's been very interesting. And some of the things I learned that staff buy-in is fantastic. You want everybody to be happy. And you want them to feel like they have a voice, but it's not always feasible to make them all happy at the same time. And at the end of the day, we have to do what we need to do for the people that we are serving. A lot of our students didn't grow up with print books. In fact, the majority of them. Or if they did, it was kind of nominal use. And having a print collection that they can use is very, very helpful. But we have to stay with the times that we are in. And most of our students, some of them I call one-click wonders, because they want information at lightning speed. They want to immediately be able to click on something and get the answers that they need. And of course, we know that that's not always going to happen. But that's one reason why I wanted to move the reference collection downstairs to the first floor. Ease of access. So these students did not want to go on three different floors to find what they needed. And then this way, there's the reference collection on the first floor. If they find what they need in the reference collection, but they want to look at other books, then they can look at that same call number and then just go straight back to the circulating books in that same call number range. This has actually increased our circulation by about 50%, which was fantastic. And primarily, I know now that we circulate more books for history and religion than we do for any other program on campus. Our print collection is in some ways unique. We do have books that have publication date ranges of all the way back to about 1880. And so the history students rely very heavily on those resources. But like I said, those other programs tend to just look at things that are digital. So I have tried to make changes gradually if it was possible. When you rip the band-aid off of someone that is not paying attention, it is kind of scary. And it causes a lot of strain for that person. So if you can build people up to all of these changes, then I have found that that causes a lot less people to kind of freak out and they can adjust to those changes. And at the end of the day, you can't please everyone all the time. It would be great if we could, but it's just not possible. One of the things that I have also done that was a huge change that I didn't include on this was we have a super archives and special collections downstairs. It primarily houses the history of the college. So we have meeting minutes all the way back to about 1880. And a lot of photographs and things like that, really cool information that is down there. But it is a very small space. And when I started, my archive specialist desk was out in the middle of the archives. And it was very messy and people didn't use it a lot because they felt like they were walking into someone's office. So for three years, I had to warm her up to the idea of us making this huge change so that she wasn't, her desk wasn't out in the archives. And it was not as messy. And it also had one of those, gosh, I don't even know, like 12 foot long tables. I mean, this table was massive in the space and it was really too big for the space. So this past winter, we moved her into an office where she still has access to the archive. So she's always available. But now she has her own office. And we reconfigured that space so it was much more open and more of a collaborative style. I'm big on the collaboration. And every, it's getting a lot more use now and people are really enjoying it. We also came up with a immersive experience. This seemed to be pretty popular right now. So students or faculty or staff or community members, alumni, anybody really can come down to the archives and do this immersive experience. So there's a six minute video about the history of the college that she created. She's done a lot of oral history interviews. So we have taken clips of those and put them on laptops. And then people can go from the video to the clips of the oral history interviews and then into the reading room, which has a lot of the history of the college on display. So making those kinds of changes has really helped as well. But getting everybody on board, like I said, has been quite a challenge. So if anybody has any questions or comments, I'm happy to take them. Sure, yes. Thank you so much, Kelly. That was an awesome transformation there at the library. And the struggle, yeah. It sounds like something we've heard from many, many libraries. The same things that you were still struggling with. So recently, which is interesting, because I know I've been hearing about these things forever. These same issues, the same pushback. And it's, you know, people have to know it hasn't changed. It's still out there. So with some staff and that's something. Right, well, in figuring out how to deal with it, I mean, I have talked to lots of friends who are directors. I mean, I talk to my staff constantly. I always want them to feel like they have an open door with me. And their feelings are valid. Absolutely. And, you know, just kind of reinforcing the fact that I hear you and I understand what you're saying, but we cannot be stagnant. We have to move forward. Yeah, absolutely. All right, so yes, we do have some questions coming in. So for anyone who wants to, yes, you can use the questions section in your GoToWebinar interface. I am monitoring that here on my computer. So go ahead and type in anything that you want to ask or comments, anything in there. And I will share it with our speakers today. Speakers, all of our speakers today. So first up, we do have someone who said, when you were just getting started, they're so excited for this session as we are currently redoing our library space to make it more student-friendly. And this person is in a small one-room rural library with under 350 people. Wow. So I've been there. Yeah, I mean that is challenging. So the first library that I worked for, it was a library that was basically in a classroom. And like trying to figure out spatially how everything was going to work and what you can put where and then computers and then somebody has to work there. That is a huge challenge. And I did a lot of research, honestly, to kind of figure out what would be the best fit for us. I Googled a lot of academic library learning commons spaces so that I could see images and kind of took it from there. It's really hard though. I feel for you. All right. So let's see some other, lots of questions coming in here. We got plenty of time in this first hour to answer them too. So we'll get through as much as we can. So first question came, what did you do with your weeded items? Well, so our collection development policy, let me say this, when I started, any books that we weeded from the collection or we got is donations that could not be used. We would send them off to Better World Books, which is a fantastic organization, but you have to pay for shipping to do that. And then COVID hit and we saw a decline in enrollment, and so we were not able to do that anymore. So instead, we do a couple different things. We have a couple of local organizations that take them. So one is called the Harmony House here in La Grange. It is for women and children of domestic violence abuse. And so they have taken a lot of our resources so that they have, as they transition from those situations out of them, they have books that they can read. I've also partnered with the local halfway house so that as inmates are released, they go to these halfway houses and they have a library that they can access a good number of resources. And I have also partnered with the local jail. Nice. Yeah. And so there's your ways that we can give back to the community because they're outdated for us and for our academic needs, but that doesn't mean that they can't be used somewhere else. Absolutely, yeah. How many librarians are on your staff? I'm not sure if you mentioned that previously. Right now, it's just me. So a librarian, absolutely. Right, so I have three full-time positions. I am currently searching for a digital resources librarian because they are going to let me fill one. And then hopefully, eventually, they'll let me be able to fill another. But I have to say that even if I had three full-time librarians with the FTE that we have, it would probably be a little bit too much. It is not something I will ever tell administration though. But I don't ever want to just be an administrator. I really enjoy being in the classroom and doing instruction for students. So I would be happy if I had two other full-time librarians. Definitely would be helpful, yes. Okay, I'm just reading through these different questions we have here. Oh, here's an interesting question. And you mentioned research and data and whatnot. Were you able to get any student input? Did you use student input before making changes? We did. So every year, the SGA president comes to see me to tell me how much they love the library, but how much the students want more space, specifically in the 24. And that's kind of how the idea to revitalize and reuse technical services kind of got off the ground because they were coming to me and they're like, we need more space. And I'm like, well, I don't really have much more space to give you for a 24-hour center. But the library also sends out a survey to students, faculty, and staff every spring. And one of the questions that we do ask is, spatially, what would you like to see? And I talk to a lot of the students that I know personally. And these students tend to be the ones who are involved in lots of clubs and organizations. And I really solicited their feedback, too, about what they thought about as having this big, open, collaborative space. And they all love the idea, thankfully. And that helped a lot, too. Definitely important, absolutely. Let's see. Lots of comments come in about great. Thank you for the presentation. Love seeing a lot of the changes. And here, we're like, bless your patience. Someone says, I've had to use the line. We're not a book museum. We're a circulation library. Oh, definitely. And that's where I keep telling everybody that we're not a repository. And honestly, it's really only one of my staff who is super hung up on us, not getting rid of any of the books. And it is challenging. But we're getting to the point now where I think that we're just, I'm going to start putting my foot down a little bit more, because it has to happen. It's just, it's wasted space, and those materials aren't being used. Someone did comment about the staff resistance. Did anything possibly come up about that? Maybe working in a library is not the best fit for you anymore? Maybe find another. Find another. To be honest, I can't lose any more staff. Well, so yeah, there's a line that you want to, yeah. Yeah, you kind of have to tell the line. And a lot of how I lead is a direct result of how I was led before I became a director. And this is not my first time being a director. Before this, I was the director of another small academic library. And I have, I've had experience in public libraries too. So it's not, I look very young, and that has been interesting in this too, because most of my staff are older than me. And they have been here for, like I said, 20 plus years. And I think that has played a part in it too. Oh, somebody has a question about weeding, which is, and they mentioned, they said, how did you figure out what to weed? I come from a public library background, and I struggle adapting crew to academic needs. How do you balance print versus digital needs in your budget? So yeah, how did you do, I know you talked about when they had last checked out. So we do two things here. So I did, I do weeding according to how often something has circulated and how often it has been marked as used. And of course you take that with a grain of salt, because no matter how many times we tell the students don't put something back on the shelf once you pulled it, put it on this cart, they're still going to do it. A lot of it is looking at a couple of different things. I actually have a book on my desk right now that I just bought, and I'll show it to you. It's called Right Sizing the Academic Collection, Academic Library Collection. This has been very helpful. Right now I would compare our collection to a car loan that is upside down. So if you think about it in terms of that, and you spend some time really kind of getting to know what the professors are requiring for them to use and use whatever resources you have available to you, it'll be helpful. And because this is so different from a public library collection, it can be hard to adjust to, well, what do we keep and what do we don't? Can you get it via interlibrary loan? And do you have any partnerships in your state or if you're part of a consortia or something like that, where if you got rid of something that wasn't being used, but then later on down the line, six months a year or something like that, somebody needs it, is it something that you can get through interlibrary loan? So we do look at the books in WorldCap to see where everyone is, if anybody has it, how many libraries have it, if it's something that we can get if it's needed again. Right. You're not a museum, not to be interactive. And yeah, there are other places that own some of these things that you can get to. Absolutely. Someone said they hopped over to your website and you have a floor map graphic? Yes. Oh, yes, it looks great. So that's something maybe to take a look at on our, if you'll notice on our schedule page, I do link to all the different presenters' websites of their libraries. So definitely a recommendation to take a look at that and see how, you know, that's, you know, a visual representation of here's where all everything is. And it's really very useful. I got a couple more questions I want to do here. I don't want to run too much into the next hour. Oh, someone says that we struggle with campus departments wanting to use the library during hours that we are closed, especially during summer when we have a skeleton crew in shorter hours. Any advice or policy recommendations for managing security, staffing, et cetera, for groups using the library when it's technically closed? We want groups to use the library. So maybe saying yes, we'll be open, but no library staff. I know when I went to the University Library, there was times when that was the situation. We had our 24 hour during finals and you're not going to get librarian help because we're not there, but we'll have like a security person just to keep an eye on things. So that's super interesting because prior to me, that would never have been allowed. Either there was a staff person here if you needed to use after hours or it was just not going to happen. And I can tell you that my big push right now for the main floor of the library is to make it open 24 hours, but not staffed. And it would be pretty easy for us to do. We have side stairs that we would just need to figure out how to block off and I keep envisioning something like one of those small gates. But the rest of the floor would be inaccessible to the main floor and the third floor. We actually have this come up kind of frequently because for example, right now, the students are on winter break. So they have to yesterday off and they have today off. So the library is only open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. But yesterday evening, a professor had reserved a space for a departmental meeting. And he called me and he was like, well, it's at seven o'clock, so does that mean I need to move it? And I said, no, please still come to the library. And I said, I will let security know that you're able to be in the building. They will let you in. And I was happy for them to still use the space. Excuse me. I will say that it would be different if it was a student group, if it was a student club or organization, then they would have to have their faculty or staff sponsor here. I've occasionally had our student life department use the library after hours. They streamed the World Series, for example, in our auditorium because we have a ginormous projector screen. It's kind of like being in a movie theater. But there was someone employed by the college who was monitoring that. But it's fine with me because the more space, the more use the space gets, the happier the students are going to be, the more likely they're going to come back. Of course. Yes. Yep. Absolutely. All right. I'm going to do one last question. I know we're not going to get everybody's, we don't have time for everyone's, but you can reach out to Kelly at her library if you do want to ask her anything we don't get to. This one last wrap up question. Now that you've been through this process, or most of it, I know you still have things to do, have you, thinking back on it, would you go about the transformation differently if you could? So. More staff buy-in, or, you know, in retrospect, what are you? So, yes. I have been told that I am too nice. And by, not necessarily by my staff, but by other library directors, and they would have taken a more, I guess, heavy-handed approach with it, and just been like, this is what we're going to do, and this is how we're going to do it. I think that if I had to do it all over again, that I would start with a lot more gradual change. But. Instead of ripping off the band-aid, so when they weren't looking. But at some point, sometimes that's what you have to do. If you have people who have been in a certain space for so long, and they are used to the way it's done, and then you have this new person come in, and they're like, but I see all these awesome things that we could be doing. It is very difficult. And for some people, I don't know that they will ever be comfortable with changes here. True. So, for those people, it's always going to be a rip the band-aid off kind of thing. And then you have other staff who are going to be like, okay, I can kind of see that maybe you know what you're doing, and we're just going to have to trust you. So for some things, yeah, I think I could have gone a little bit slower. I will tell you that that 40,000 book material weeding project, we started nominally. And then we had to stop because the two librarians I had moved on to other institutions. And it's just not something that's really easy for me to do by myself. But we are picking that back up this summer, and my staff are going to have to get on board with that. And you mentioned a weeding. We do have a comment here that I did want to share just before we do wrap up. Someone did say that you talked about what you did with the books that you should realize that there are sometimes laws or restrictions about what libraries can do with discarded books. This person says, for example, in Iowa, public libraries cannot donate withdrawn books to private organizations. So that's just something to look into. Make sure you're doing what you're doing is something you're allowed to do. We're kind of in a unique position because we're a private college. This person is talking about public library restrictions. The public library restrictions are a lot more heavy. And so are the public schools and universities too. They are very restricted. That's what they can do with discarded books. So I'm a little bit fortunate in that area that as long as our accrediting body doesn't have anything to say about how we're doing it or any organizations that we're a part of, then usually it's fine. Awesome. All right. And one last thing. Now that you've shown that you've had increase in usage and circulation, have any of your staff come around to this and are becoming being more open to change potentially? I guess you could say in a roundabout way. It's a lot of like, oh, look, because I can show them the numbers and they're like, cool, more people are checking out books. And I could even say, well, you know, that's probably directly related to the fact that we moved everything down to one floor and it's easier to find. And they're like, maybe. Okay. Not totally convinced. Oh. All right. We're going to wrap things up here. Thank you so much, Kelly. This is great. Yes, you've done an awesome job there. And some other company. The outcome for the better community is gratifying. So this has been awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you.