 Hi, good morning, and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I'm your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. But if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show every week, as we are doing right now. And it will be available to you later to watch at your convenience. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch. So please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you might think might be interested in any of the topics we have on Encompass Live. For those of you not from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries in Nebraska. So similar to your state library. So we provide services and training and programs to all sorts of libraries in the state, all types of libraries. So you will find shows on Encompass Live for all types of libraries. Public, academic, K-12, corrections, museums, archives, really our only criteria is that it's something to do with libraries. We do book reviews, interviews, mini training sessions, demos of services and products, all sorts of things. We have Nebraska Library Commission staff that sometimes come on the show to talk about resources and things we're doing through the commission. But we also bring in guest speakers from well, from Nebraska and across the country, actually. And that's what we have today with us today is Amy Jo Elfson. Good morning. And she is from right here in Nebraska from our public library in Ralston, Nebraska. And she's going to talk about their centennial simplification celebration that they did. I don't even know when was that? How long ago did this actually happen? It was December 13th, 2022. It's only last year. OK. Only last year. Awesome. There are so many libraries. We have lots of libraries that are having 100 hundred year celebrations and they keep coming up. And I can never keep track of which one is when. Who's happened? Who's still there? I'm going on. Seems to be that time. So I'll just hand it over to you, Amy, and let you talk about what you all did. And in Ralston for this. OK, great. Thank you so much, Krista. So welcome, everyone. It's good to not actually see you, but I'm glad to have you here. So today I will talk through our library centennial celebration and how and kind of a unique approach we took to the preparation for that. And side note, I am a hand talker, so you will see my hands motioning around. It's just it's part of the way I speak. You'll just have to bear with me. So again, I'm Amy. I am at the Baywright Library in Ralston, Nebraska. I'll talk a little bit about Ralston as well. If you're not familiar, it's kind of a unique. It's a unique community, both by situation and. Location, so I'll talk a little bit about that and why that was important in how we decided to approach this program. But again, the library celebrated its centennial. It's 100 years of having a library in Ralston in in 2022, and I was proud and excited to be part of that. So I'll talk about that. Here we go. So today I'll give you a little bit of the project overview, how we set up the project and executed it and then what we got out of this project that I did. And it was it was really a research kind of a research foundation project, and I'll explain how that all worked together. But just because it's research doesn't mean I mean anybody could do this. It's it's very it's a very it's a time consuming process, but it's not a complicated process. So, you know, don't don't you can't redo this just because it's it's termed research. But then I'll share our project results. So what we got out of it, what went well, what didn't go well, because that always happens any time you do something. It's part of looking back and assessing. And then what we're looking at moving forward with the information we gathered and maybe future projects to work on. So you can see this picture here is actually from our centennial. We had our fireplace going in the library, and we've been awesome since 1922, so that's our our little great model. Yes, there and it was Christmas time. You can see some Christmas decorations. Of course. Yes. Yeah, you know, little lights, little some bows. OK, so why did why photos and memories? What does that have to do? Well, you know, if you think about a centennial celebration, that's really what you're celebrating, right, is 100 years of memories, memories, efforts, initiatives, books in the community, the community in the library. That's that's the exciting part of celebrating that 100 years. So the city opened its first library in 1922. And in 2022 again, we marked 100 years with the city supporting a public library, which, as many of you know, is is the really important part, the support of the library. So that's that's exciting. We are actually, I believe, in the fourth. I think we are currently in the fourth location in that 100 years, if I remember properly correctly. So that it started as a in the basement of the city hall is where the the library began, and that's where they opened. And then they've moved a couple of times since then. The building that we're in now was built in 1998. So we're about 25 years into that building. We'll see where that takes us. But that's where we're at right now. So the photo voices, the term photo voices is it's a research method. And so I'll describe it very briefly. What it is is asking people to bring photographs that are meaningful to them in some way that relates to the project at hand. So it's been used before in areas like health care. So let's see, terminal cancer patients were asked to bring photographs and talk about those photographs and how they were meaningful, either to their lives or to their their treatment. And information was gathered and and shared with the public. It's also been used in other public administration situations, like this working with the city would be a public administration situation. It's also been used with specific populations of people, homeless people, houseless individuals, people who identify as transgender. It's been used to allow those people to fully participate in the research process and bring something of themselves into it and really, really connect to it and offer offer personal information, not necessarily personally identifiable information, but personal personal stories. It encourages storytelling is the is the basic idea behind it. So our overall goal for the centennial was to create some kind of visual display for the community where they could see photographs from people's lives in the community, photographs that were meaningful to them for family history reasons. We had one gentleman who I'll talk about a little bit later, who has visited 48 countries. And so I know I know he's lived in Austin. I think he's been in Austin for almost 50 years. He's been there more than 40 years. And I think he's almost to 50. And he has visited 48 countries in that time. So he brought us some of his photographs and and talked about them. It was it was pretty wonderful. But we were gathering oral histories, gathering photographs and then showing them to the community, kind of like a mini art show as part of this celebration. I'm going to stop here for a moment and see. Does anybody have any questions right now? Oh, let's see. Yeah, anytime you have questions, go ahead and type in. You don't have to wait till the end. Just remind everybody. Yes, I just want to be thinking of something you want to know more about or you're curious about, go ahead and type it in. I also mentioned while we're paused here, too, that these slides will also be available afterwards with the archive. Amy, if you just send me a copy, we can put the link up to them. So any of the details or information on here don't have to worry about trying to scribble it all down. You'll have the slides later on. But I don't see any questions at the moment. No. OK, if I teach as well, so I understand if somebody has a question, it may need to be answered right now. And that's cool. I'm good with that. So feel free to interrupt. I do it all the time. OK, good. All right. So moving on. So photovoices, Rawston. So I talked a little bit about photovoices as a research method. And these pictures are some that were shared with me. They were shared by a newer resident of the community who she and her partner just purchased a house. You can see the little house there that they bought. It's adorable. I love it with its little drive under car park and the deck out front. In part, they said that they moved to Rawston because they love the parks, a photo of the park. One of the parks is there. That's Oak Park in Rawston. And then they were able to have pets. So their little cats are there too. I love these photos. I think they're great. But anyway, so I talked a little bit about photovoices as a research method. It's a way to really connect with the people involved in the research and to gather deep information, deep personal stories and quotes and really emblematic of whatever the experiences that that those people are talking about. In this case, we were talking about residents' connections to the Rawston community and to the library. So it was great. I loved all the stories that I was able to hear and that we now have recorded are amazing. And, you know, if you don't record those things, eventually they're lost because they'll move away or they pass away or and then and then you've lost that history. So it was great to be part of that. So the second piece of this is the city is a system. So if you think about a system, the basic definition, I think for Merriam-Webster, I looked it up quick last night to make sure I had it exactly correct. It's interdependent pieces that make up a whole. So if you think about a city, you've got city leadership. You have city workers, you have people who live within the city. You have people who travel to the city to work. You have people who own businesses, but don't live there. You have multiple city entities. So and every person comes with a unique background and a unique experience and a unique and unique needs. You know, they all some people are really interested in the parks and making sure that the parks are the best they can be. Other people are really interested in the library and making sure that the library is the best it can be. Other people just show up to work and they go back home and they are more interested in the roads and the number of people who are coming into their business. And all of those concerns and viewpoints are valid and important. So one of one of the things we were doing here is gathering information from people about their unique perspectives, viewpoints and needs. But all of those pieces work together, right? So all of those pieces have to work together to make the city function as a system. And Ralston is unique in a couple of ways. So Ralston is an independent community. It has its own government, its own public works. It's responsible for the roads, the sewers, the library, the everything that goes into running a city. However, it is also landlocked within Omaha. So it's one point six five square miles in the south central area of Omaha and it's landlocked. It can't expand. There's no outward growth possible because it's sandwiched on three sides by Omaha and on the south by La Vista. So no expansion possible. There's no way to make the city larger or to increase the tax base by doing some of the things like annexation or expansion. La Vista has been able to expand Omaha annexes property. There are there are multiple ways that cities do that. And Ralston doesn't have that capability. So they're working within this one point six five square miles to support an independent city of about 6500 residents. That is that is unique. Somebody one of my one of my participants said, you know, Ralston is an enigma and it really is. It's this strange thing within the middle of Omaha. You don't think of a city within a city, but that's exactly what it is without without the ability to expand. So they have to work with the land and the people that they have there and try to draw in new businesses and try to draw in new revenue streams. And there have been multiple ways that they tried to do that throughout history. Some of you may know about the Ralston arena that was opened in 2012. And then Baxter arena opened less than three miles away just like 18 months later. So we have an arena glut all of a sudden and that was supposed to be Ralston's big, big funding source. And it hasn't worked out that way. So there have been some significant challenges within the city. There have been some hurt feelings and some anger from the people in the community related to things like that. Yeah, yeah. So it was it was interesting to gather gather that information and see that. But anybody have questions about Ralston or about the idea of the city, the interdependent pieces working to to make the whole function? Basically, I think it is something that's unique. And it's a lot of the effect of Omaha doing all this annexation of different areas around them and annexing, but then saying, oh, but you're also your own thing. Well, yeah, how do we deal? Why are we doing this? What's the? Yeah, yeah. And where does how does this work? It's it's a it's and there are a couple legal legislative efforts that have made that even more. Omaha, any any city in Nebraska, over 10,000 people has the ability to look at the land next to it, as long as it's not another community of more than 10,000 people and say, you know, we'd like that. It's ours. So and that's how annexation works in Nebraska. That's yeah. That's all it takes. Yeah. That's a very that's unusual for cities just to be able just to say we we we would like this now. So you might ask why Ralston was never annexed because Omaha grew out around it. Well, in the process of interviewing people, I discovered that in the 60s, I think 64, the early 60s, the mayors of Ralston and Omaha got together. The Ralston mayor went to Omaha and said, we do not want to be annexed. Can we come to some kind of an agreement where you won't annex us? So gentlemen's agreement, handshake, you know, they the mayor of Omaha said, as long as you don't expand, we won't annex you. Yeah. So that agreement resulted in Ralston being landlocked the way it is. Yeah. But it can't be any more than it is. Right. Without but as long as it wants to maintain its independence, independence. Yes. That is of primary importance to the residents if you if you talk to them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there was this gentleman's agreement. So Omaha annex, it just kept growing and went around Ralston. But Ralston was able to maintain its independence that way. Yeah. Anybody questions about that? I don't see anything right now. Nope. OK. Yeah. I'll keep an eye on things. Yep. All right. Type in anything when you think of anything you want to ask or comment about. Go right and type into the question section, everybody. All right. So overall, the goals. So why did we decide to do this? I mean, I've sort of talked around that question, but what were our actual goals and objectives? So I have them listed out here. And this is this photo is a picture of our long time mayor. So the mayor is in the sort of green suit jacket. He's the shorter of the two gentlemen. And the other gentleman is a local. He's a bank president in the area, but he is really involved in our parks maintenance and in a foundation that is located and services Ralston. So he's kind of a gatekeeper donor type person. Delightful man. But yeah, that's who those two people are. So our overall goals were to celebrate the library Centennial. So 100 years is a long time. That's a lot of support. That's a lot of community coming through the library. I someone brought me pictures of kids standing in a in a row, moving books. Oh, yeah. The old library out into a truck to be moved to the new library. So it was like the what do they call that? The firemen's where they just pass everything down and put it in the. I don't remember what that's called. They get off. Yeah. Yeah. But there were kids there and there always seem to be kids there. The community prides itself on being family oriented. So it's the kids were expected to be involved. So they helped move the library. In the in the nineties, I think, but yeah, it was the pictures were were fantastic. So our other goal is that Ralston actually maintains a city archives and it's a nonprofit group, but they. So it's not the city doesn't maintain it. It's a separate organization. But we wanted to add more library history to the archives. One of our previous library directors is really involved in the archive. So there is a good amount of information about the library. That was a priority for her. Jan Gorman is her name and she's library in the city for a really long time. And she's now heavily involved with the archive. So she was actually instrumental in us kind of gathering materials to display for the centennial. She she was a huge help, but we wanted to add more, you know, updated oral histories, new newcomers to the community. We wanted to gather information from them. Why did you come here? Tell us about how you ended up here, things like that. And then to access information about the community's. City related wants so their needs and wants. So what what do people want? From the city. How does the library be continue to be an essential city service? You know, how do we how do we I always talk about the library as an essential community need an essential community service. So how do we how do we continue to be that we want people to see us as important and valuable and and and something that the city can't do without. Of course. So how do we continue to do that? And Ralston's great. They're very supportive. We have a great community, but we want to continue that. So asking for information was the key. So the objectives. So the short term, what can we do right now to help meet these goals? So my original goal was to gather oral histories from 30 community members. I almost got there. I was really close and I'll talk about that a little bit. I was so close and then to produce some visual data showing the needs of community members related to Ralston, the city and the library. I'll talk more about how I did that. That was successful. And it was it was cool to see people come and look at it and find their thing that they said on the picture. And and that was kind of it was very neat. And the other objective was to hold a celebration. It was great. We had a balloon arch. We had cake. We had, you know, it was kind of a reception. It was very informal. We just invited the community in, took a lot of good pictures. It was it was a lot of fun. So that's where we started. And it it became a very large project. But that was that was in part because of of me. So that was my own fault. I mean, it sounds like something so simple. But yes, when you get down to the actual, you know, OK, how do we pull this off? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And if you think about the time that it takes to schedule 30 people and then to interview them, some of my interviews lasted three hours. Wow. Yeah. Because people love to share their story history. Yeah. Yeah. And I love it. And so I just like, you know, tell me more. Tell me more. What about this? So it's it's a combination of I don't know. It's it's either the best or worst possible combination, depending on your view point. OK, so we'll get. Well, oops, there we go. All right. So what did we what so what did we gain out of this? What did we end up with? So the results I almost got to 30. I got 27 oral histories that I will probably eventually expand on. We'll see. We'll see where I end up there. But twenty seven. Twenty seven was a good number. That was it was we got I contacted some city leaders. I talked to people who had been there a long time. People who had not been there as long. Teachers are retired library directors. People from from all walks of life. It was it was great. I loved every minute of it. If you are a person who enjoys history or just likes talking to people, and I can't recommend this more. It was an amazing opportunity. So what did we collect? We collected seventy three artifacts. So I use the word artifacts because it I didn't only receive photos. I also collected newspaper articles. The city no longer has a newspaper. But it did for a long time and it shut down relatively recently. So I talked to the woman who wrote for them for she wrote for them for twenty seven years, I think. And she came and brought her favorite newspaper articles. And then talk to me about them, which was awesome. Personal papers. So I had one lady come in with her personal. She kind of keeps a journal, but she types it like it's a almost like it's a publishable story. And they were great. She was willing to share a couple of them with me. So her memory of the day that JFK was assassinated. She was in a school room. She was a teacher. So she was teaching and her her memories of that day in the community. Another woman brought in documents. Her mother had been a library director there in Ralston. And she talked about there was a major tornado that came through the area in 1975. And the sirens went off and her mother was at the library doing a story hour for 50 children. There were 50 children at the library. It was an after school story hour. So she's doing this. She's the only staff member there. Remember, this is 1973 or 1975. And the the sirens go off. So she has to gather these 50 children and take them to the basement of the library. So she sat in the basement of the library with 50 kids for hours until somebody came and said, it's safe to come out now. What an amazing story. That's like you can't you couldn't make that up. That's an amazing story. So it was it was things like that, things, writings that people had come up with, old things like old library cards, old library bookmarks, summer reading program flyers from 30 years ago. It was it was awesome what people came up with. Oh, the materials to raise funds to build the building that the library is now in. So that is the current building. Twenty five years. So it was opened in 98. Yeah. Yeah. So it was it was great. So we collected seventy three new items, which was that's that's history. Right. It's that's awesome. So and then so we also I was able to use the information that residents talked about in relation to their city related needs and wants and how the library can maintain its status as an essential city service to create word clouds. So most of you probably already know that there are internet sites where you can go and type in a list of information and it will create a word cloud for you. Yeah, all different shapes. Right. You can make them. So I tried to choose thematic shapes. So like a gavel for the city leadership requests, you know. So that was kind of fun. And then that was displayed with the photographs. And people were really interested in those. So what came up most what came up? People in Ralston really want a grocery store there, by the way. That's that's the big one. They really want a grocery store. I'm not sure how that would how that would work given the given the land restrictions. But yeah, a grocery store is very high on the list. Maintaining the parks, very high on the list. The parks. Ralston is a designated tree city. And there are a lot of trees there. And the parks are beautiful. And there's there's a good number of them for the for the that 1.65 square miles. It's it's pretty amazing, actually. We also had 75 people come to our our public celebration. Eight cake got their pictures taken, looked at all the things. There were some tears. People were happy to talk about their photographs that were displayed or their items that were hung up. It was it was kind of moving. Yeah. Yeah, it was great. So that was those were the results. So what went well? So the city leaders received positive feedback about both the project and the library. You know, people people said, you know, we're glad that somebody's doing this. I'm so glad somebody's collecting these stories and this information. Yeah. So it was we gathered really specific recommendations like a grocery store to be considered in future city planning there. And I'm in the process of writing that all up in a paper that can be used as like, okay, what did people say they want? And when you're talking about 27 people, I don't know how generalizable. It's not generalizable, actually. It's just not because that's such a small number. But it gives us a place to start for future surveys and things like that. So yeah. Yeah. So it was it gave us a place to start anyway. We did successfully meet almost all of the goals and objectives. I did not get to 30 interviews, but I was I was close. I feel pretty pretty good about getting to 27. And then, you know, just connecting more fully with our some of our patrons with a few of those people, at least a few of them. And I would like to connect more deeply with more in the future. I am a long time Omaha resident, but I do not live in Rauston and I have never lived in Rauston. So I'm an outsider, which gave me some challenges. Those were, you know, like people eyed me a little suspiciously. Like, what do you want? What are you doing? What are you really doing? You know, yeah. So that was your outsider, but you work at the library, their library. So yes, yes. And which gave me an opening and I my my approach was always, I really just want to get to know the community. I'm really here to just gather information. I promise you I'm I'm very kind. I swear. Yeah, but it gave us it gave them a chance to share things with us that we otherwise wouldn't have known. Just the stories that we heard were just phenomenal. Such great stories. People's I love listening to people's memories. So yeah, but we moved beyond the checkout process. So, you know, normally your interaction is pretty limited and we had a chance to move beyond that with with at least one set of people, which was pretty cool. Yeah. All right. So what didn't go well? There are always things. So the project ended up being much larger than originally. I was like, oh, interview 30 people, no problem. And then it it became it became large. So I again, I'm not from Ralston made some of those connections difficult. I did have some people helping me facilitate connections, which was very nice of them. So I had some some residents some longer term residents facilitating that. And then transcribing, so I audio recorded everything. So transcribing, if you've ever done any transcribing, it is very time consuming, especially when you're talking about long interviews. So I had how many hours? I think I ended up with 77 hours of recordings. And that is a whole lot of words. So a whole lot of words. And if you have money, you can have somebody transcribe it for you. Unfortunately, what library life is like? Yes. We don't have money for those things. So I ended up doing it and it was it was pretty time consuming. I also had some difficulty recruiting. You know, like I said, I'm an outsider and that people were reluctant to schedule. They were a little suspicious. I had a couple of people flat out tell me, no, I'm not going to talk to you. And I was like, okay, no problem. Do you mind me asking why? And some of them would elaborate and some of them wouldn't. Yeah, some of the elaborations were interesting enough that I held on to. I made little notes and held on to some of that. Like I don't want to talk to you because that'll be valuable for me in the future. So I do hold on to that. And do you feel comfortable elaborating on any of those reasons? It'd be interesting to know like why people didn't want to talk about the history of the library. Sure. So we had one long time resident and I'll talk a little bit about this person. I wonderful, sorry, my phone is ringing. Wonderful person, very involved in the community, very involved in the library. Really a solid part of our, the community there who said, you know, I don't think I'm really comfortable talking about the history. My parents did not have an easy time here in the 70s. And so I don't think I want to talk about that, which makes me want to talk to her more. Right. Yes. Like, wait, you need to tell me more about that. Yes. And so, so, right. So to get a full picture, you need the full picture, right? So it can't just focus on the happy, joyful memories you need. Oh, that's something. Yeah, absolutely. That's very important and is a big issue going on in the world today. We'll say. Yes. Definitely. That whole thing. Your bad history is just important as the good history. And you can talk about all of it to understand and learn from all of it, the good and the bad. Yes. But I understand you, though, something very personal. It's up to them when they're ready to talk about it to someone. Yep. Yep. So eventually I'm hoping we can circle back around. And I can, I can gather some of that either through a second project or a, you know, I, something, I, yes, I'm hoping to gather more in the future. And I'm hoping she'll be part of it. But she was not the only person to say that to me. There were a couple of people who were and, and then they'd kind of question themselves. You know, they'd say, I, but I keep living here. So. So I must like it. Yeah. Yeah. So that was, that was very interesting too. And that, although that wasn't part of the centennial celebration, I didn't make those things part of this. It, it will be part of my, my eventual writing about this. They won't be identified in any way, of course, but it'll, you know, I'll note that there were some people that didn't want to talk to me for this reason. So yeah, yeah, it'll, it'll come up later. Yeah. So photo voices, it proved kind of a difficult sell. People were happy to talk. I had people who were thrilled to share their histories with me, but they did not care to share photos, which I was kind of surprised by. And maybe a generational issue. You know, especially, I mean, I have, I have young adult children and my 18 year old, I think photographs everything. And that's just very much a part of the way they exist. But I think older people are a little more hesitant. That is not part of the way they communicate always. Unlike younger people. So that'll be something that I'll need to think about going forward to. Yeah. And think about the way I approach it and the way I explain it. But yeah, I had people who flat out were just like, I'm not interested in that part of this. Okay. So I adjusted a little bit and we, we move forward. So I asked for other artifacts. That's how we ended up with, with a lot of other things. Yeah. So that was, that was a tough, a tough point. And then so going forward, I've mentioned this a couple of times. So what comes next? I will complete the paper that I was talking about that will help, hopefully help future or guide future efforts by the city to gather information from community members. So what did this small section of people say they want? Does that apply to a larger cross section? Can we gather maybe questionnaire data saying, yes, no, this is ridiculous. I don't know where that came from, whatever it shows, but it can, it can help guide writing those questions sent out to the larger community. So, and then the other piece of it is that I desperately need to write my dissertation. And I have all the information. I just need to, as I say, put myself in a chair and do it. Yeah. And so, so people know, I mean, any issue works the library, but she's got this whole other life too. I do. You are working towards your PhD. I am, I am home. Yeah. And so this, though, so this project then is, is a part of that. It is the research piece. So it's, yes, yes. So it is the research piece. Oral histories, fortunately, don't require IRB approval. So I can use the recorded oral histories. And I will not identify anyone. You know, there won't be. Yeah. So I'm, yeah, I'm careful about that. So, so someone is asking, I know this is kind of not off-topping, necessarily, but so what is your actual degree, PhD, you're going for going to be official, like long title, Florida, whatever. Yeah, no, communication studies is the subject area. So the dissertation will focus on the city as a system and how if the pieces aren't talking to one another, how that affects the overall operation. Yeah. So if those interdependent pieces don't work together, how does that, how does that affect it? But the opening to the dissertation is a, I've written this part. It's probably a 20 page brief history from the founding to current day. So it's, like I said, brief, it's definitely abbreviated, but it's, it goes, yeah, it kind of shows the evolution of the town, how it became the, the small city that it is within a city now. So it's about the city of it, the whole city, not just the library's history, the dissertation. I mean, yeah. Yep, it is, it is. So I've done, I'll do some, yes, I have to do some work in the archives, but a lot of that, a lot of it is available online now, so you can piece it together, which is, which makes writing a dissertation much easier than it was 30 years ago. Oh gosh, yes. That was very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And useful, definitely. Well, I hope so. You know, you have to be able to say, this is why I'm doing this, and I, and I hope that it's useful. Ralston is pretty unique. So, but I do feel like a lot of the challenges that, challenges that they are facing are also being faced by these mid-sized towns, these cities, large towns, small cities in rural areas too. Yeah. I think, I think some of the challenges, and people, people are people, right? They, you know, communication is not always our strong point. We're not very good at saying what we want sometimes. Yeah. So I'm hoping it'll be useful. We'll see. And then the other piece is, so we haven't yet physically moved the materials that I gathered to the Ralston Archive. So we need to make that happen. I have everything put together. We just haven't physically made the move. So that's a future, a future thing. And then I would like to do a follow-up project, maybe going back to some of the people that I interviewed and then focusing on some of the newer community members too. We have a, our demographics are rapidly shifting. So if you look at census data, since the 2010 census, our population is pretty rapidly diversifying. It was almost completely white identifying folks in 2010. And now we have 17% Latinx identifying people. So that's a pretty rapid shift. And our population is also aging. Our, our white identifying population is aging. And our non-white identifying population is young. So it's kind of a, I don't, I don't think that's unique to other places. I think that is valuable and important to consider. Yeah. So that is, I am at the end. This is a photo, I'll tell you a little bit more about the photo here. This is a photo of our celebration. You can see our balloon arch. We were very proud of our balloon arch. And this is our little fiction and non-fiction stacks leading back there. We put the arch on the stacks. I know some of you are probably horrified. This is this some of our staff, some previous leadership. Yeah. So it's just a picture of us. All right. People have any questions? Yeah, we have plenty of time. Yes. And if anybody does have any questions, yeah, type them into the questions section, any questions, comments, thoughts on what they did here more, you want to know specifically about how things were done. Our, as information was gathered and how it was presented, go ahead and type into the questions section. We have plenty of time to get through any of the questions you have. And for anyone who came in late, I know we did. I do see a few people that did. The slides will be available afterwards. Amy, you can send me them when we're done here. And I'll post it up with the recording of today's show, as you always do. So this is great. It was so good, so cool to hear about what you were doing there. Also, I know, as I said, at the beginning, we've had quite a few libraries having 100 year celebrations. But many libraries maybe started at the same time, if it was Carnegie Libraries, that kind of situation, that very similar timing. So we've seen lots of celebrations happening, but this photo voices concept, putting that together was, I thought, very interesting and unique. Like you said, Ralston is unique, that putting those two things together. So I was very interested to hear how all this happens. Yeah, I feel pretty fortunate. I actually was digging through research articles one night, late at night. It was probably two o'clock in the morning. And full disclosure, I had had probably one, maybe two glasses of wine at this point. And I was looking through research articles, and I stumbled across photo voices I had never heard of it before. But I started reading about it, and I emailed our library director in the middle of the night and said, there's this thing that I think we could do. I want to do this for the 100 year celebration. I want to gather this information. And I sent her this big, long email. And the next, I don't know, maybe I went in, I only worked there part-time. So maybe I went in a couple days later, and she's like, okay, so tell me about this. Yeah, re-explain this again. Yeah, she's like, I don't think I get it. And I was like, oh, my email's kind of incoherent. Sorry about that. This is what I want to do. And she was really supportive. So she was like, yeah, yeah, do it, go. Yeah, and so I presented it to the library foundation and the city council and the library board to get approval to go ahead. That was, I guess, I left that out of my presentation, but that was an important piece is to get the people to go ahead and do it. So someone was asking too, was there any costs involved in this besides your time? And of course, what's the cost? Yeah, at minimal. The biggest actual cost was framing photographs. So, and that we actually got, we have a funding. Oh, to make them nice to be displayed now first. Sure, yeah. Right, so the display was the actual cost. I mean, paying, I mean, I got paid, but I mean, so you've got hourly wages there too. Yeah. But like I said, I'm extra, just your usual. Right, right. There was some extra when I got to the point where I was doing a lot of transcribing, there was some extra, there were some extra hours in there. But I, yeah, it was not, I'm pretty fast. So it wasn't a huge expense. And you could, there are different ways to do that too, where you could minimize that hourly wage costs. But I would say the biggest expense was the display. Yeah, and I'm sure this is something that has been on the mind of the library in the town for a while. They knew this 100 year, the Centennial Celebration would be coming up. So budget or funding would be already thinking about, okay, what are we going to do? And what do we need to pull off whatever we're going to do? And we actually ended up with, we ended up with more funds than we needed. And we had backup funds. So if I was surprised, people in the archives were very enthusiastic about this project. They had money that they were willing to use for it. And then our foundation did, it was, I asked for $800 is what I asked for. And that covered everything, it did not cover my wages. That my wages didn't come out of that money, but it covered everything. I don't think there were additional, in fact, I think we were under budget. Nice, yeah. So, so photo voices, the whole concept here is that people picking a photo that is meaningful and then talking about it. And that's where you get photo voices, the whole story. So how did you, so you had just, you still incorporated the people that didn't want to provide photos though? I did. So was there, how was that then presented if there wasn't a photo to go along with there? So I pulled, I would pull out a quote from them, something that went along with the, either the being part of the Raulston community or being, or related to the library. So I would pull a quote or two from their interview and I made big, like half feet sized this person and then put the quote underneath it. So like one of the teachers, one of the teachers that I interviewed, her quote was something like, people want to be part of this community. It's a great community for kids and families. So it was things like that. You know, it was, it was all the, it was all the happy, good, feel good things. Because that's what this particular thing was about. And that would be something that you said in your write up and your, when you're writing it up on a white paper or in your dissertation that whole, and here's the things that didn't go as they were supposed to, because as you know, like not everything does and here's, so here's the outliers or whatever that didn't follow the exact. Right. Yeah. Do you know, I almost know what percentage, I mean, how many, was it a lot that didn't want to do photos? Like what percentage of the people that you, there were, there were quite a few people who resisted the request photos or they would allow, they would bring items. So we had one person who had, was very involved in our community theater there in the, in the city. And so had like every program going back, I don't even know how long since the community theater had been in operation, I think the early nineties is when it started. And so she had stuff, no, it had to be longer ago than that. I don't know. Anyway, it was a long time and had all of the programs. So I took photos of her programs. Sure. So I arranged them on the table and took a photo. I think some people didn't know what to share. I think there was some confusion about and so going forward in the future, I would be very clear about these are the types of photos I'm looking for. Instead of leaving it maybe more open, I would be more specific about the types of photos I wanted. Right. So something related to the library or that, yeah. Right. Right. Because I think that was part of the hesitation is a little bit of like, I'm not sure exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. Yeah. Yeah. Which was on me, not on them. But I, percentage-wise, I would say, I would say at least half of the people were like, I don't think I have photos for you. Yeah, they might not have any. Yeah. That's true to me. Yeah, if they don't, it didn't take a picture of something happening at the library, something library related. I think, yeah, should the town or my house and that's nice. But if folks are just on the library, sure, sure. Right. Right. And I, I expanded it. Initially, I was like, we're going to talk about the library. And then I realized that the, when you think about it as a system, the library is part of a much bigger whole. And so you can talk about the whole and not just the specific piece. So I expanded it a little bit as I went. So we do have a question here about the, I guess, what you, what you gathered the photos, the audio on the recordings and everything. And you did mention that you still have to get some stuff into the Ralston archives. Correct. The question is, are any, do you have any plans to include some of the content into your catalog for ongoing access? Like would these also be things that would be like, you know, items in the library available to library, library catalog, then that makes me think is how do people search the Ralston archives too? So two kinds of questions. What about putting into your catalog and how do people find this stuff now that they're in the, they're Ralston's own archives? Right. So unfortunately, the archives is not digitized at all. They do not have any kind of online access. There's no digitization. So there's not, it's one of those things where it's run by volunteers. So it and people who are not archivists. So there's a, so it is a building with lots of stuff in it, headed by people who are very passionate about the keeping of the stuff and the history. But yeah, it's not, there's no access once it goes in there. So that's a really good question. It would be great if the library could do some digitizing and have like the historical photos and things like that available. Yeah, I don't, we don't currently have any plans for that, but that is a really, really good idea. And I will take it back. Yeah, is there, if you do go to the archives, do they have some sort of a catalog database in-house thing where they can find, oh, are you, you're looking for? Yes. You know, they haven't organized there in the building in some way. So if you want to know, hey, where are these pictures? You know, 20 years from now, they'll be able to say, yes, they're down that hallway or they're in that shelf. And if you have audio recordings already, so they have some audio recordings that they keep. And I'm, but I'm not sure how they have those organized. What format are they in? Yeah. So mine are all digital. And I don't, I suspect theirs are not digital because they're from, from probably at least 20 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not sure or something. Yeah. Probably, probably. You remember when you used to sit with your cassette player at the radio to record? Oh, yes. It's probably something like that. So if you're going to, so you have these digital recordings of these, Earl histories. So how are you going to get them in the archives? Or is that still to be determined? Yeah, well, so I can either, I'll probably put both the transcriptions and the audio recordings. So that if someone's looking for something, they can still look for it through the transcriptions. But the audio recordings, they're just, it's digital files on my phone. They can be transferred to another, they can be put on CDs or on some other physical media if we needed to do that. So is there any restriction then since you're, you say you're going to put these things in the archives? You could also put them in the library's catalog. There's no rule that you can't. Right. Yep. Be both places. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. All right. We just hit 11 o'clock, central time. Does anybody have, so that's all the questions we had that had come in. Okay. If anybody has any last-minute desperate questions you want to ask, I mean, me about this project, go ahead and get them typed in. We can answer any of your questions. We won't get cut off here just because we're hit the top of the hour. I also included my contact information that's my cell phone that's on there. Feel free to text me. But yeah, so if you think of something later that you're like, oh, I wanted to ask this or we're going to try to do this. We need, I need to ask more questions. Feel free to reach out. Yeah, absolutely. He has contact Amy at any time. Oh, hey, we got a thank you. Any thank you, Kristen. Amy, great ideas. And Tony says Shelton Public Library is celebrating 109 years and he's currently planning for next year's celebration. Oh, great. So maybe you'll use some of this information. That'd be awesome. Like I said, everything, we keep seeing these hundreds something celebrations coming up. I know Wahoo just had theirs as well. I can't remember all of them. That's awesome. Keep going, keep going. Yeah. While we're waiting to see if anyone has any other questions, I'm going to bring presenter control back to my, over to my screen here. So I can do my little wrap up, but I'll keep an eye if you have any other questions or comments or anything, definitely get them in and we will have Amy answer them now or reach out to her with her contact info that was there. So as I said, we are recording the show and it will be on our main page and click here to go to our Encompass Live page. If you use whatever is your search engine of choice and type in Encompass Live, the name of our show, it's the only thing called that on the internet. Nobody else is allowed to use that name. We haven't trademarked it or copyrighted it or anything, but and you'll get our main page or archive page. These are upcoming shows for the rest of the month and our archives are right here. Today's show will be at the top of the list. Everyone who attended today's show and registered for today's show will get an email from me, letting you know when the recording's ready. Should be done by the end of the day tomorrow at the latest. As long as go to webinar on YouTube, cooperate with me. We'll have a link to the recording on YouTube and Amy's slides will be there as well. While I'm here I'll show there is a search feature here if you want to search and see if we've done a show on anything you're interested in. You can do that and see what we've done. You can do the full show archives or just the most recent 12 months. You want just something just very current and that is because this is our full show archives and I'm not going to scroll all the way down because as you can see it's huge. This goes back to when Encompass Live first premiered which was in January 2009. So we're in our 15th year. Well, so just pay attention to the original broadcast date of anything that you do watch. Many of our shows will be great. Stand the test of time. Still be good, useful information but some things will become old outdated. Resources and services may have changed drastically. Links may be broken. People work at a different library than they worked at 10 years ago when they presented for us. So just pay attention to those dates. Everything has a date when it was first broadcast live so you'll know when that information is from. We do have a Facebook page that we use for Encompass Live. If you like to use Facebook, give us a like over there. Here's your reminder about logging in today's show, information about our speaker. And then we do, where's last week's? There we go. When the recordings are ready, I post on here as well. So if you like to use a like over there, we also use the Encompass Live hashtag on Instagram and Twitter. So if you are on any of those, I don't know where else we are thinking of going social media-wise at the moment with things that are changing, but that's where we are right now. So give us a like in those various places or be signed up to the Library Commission's mailing list too. So I don't see any other last minute desperate questions. Amy, do you have any final words you'd like to share? Nope, I don't think so. Again, if anybody has any questions, I'm happy to talk to you. So please reach out. Absolutely. Definitely. All right. Thank you so much, Amy. Thank you everybody for being here then. I hope you join us for, well, you'll see I've got this month's shows here. I'm working on shows for August, so keep an eye on the calendar. So I hope you join us next week. We're going to talk about a very Nebraska-centric topic, the Nebraska Open Meetings Act. There have been some updates to it. We did a show about this less about a year ago. And with our most recent legislature, there were a few tweaks that happened to Open Meetings Act. And Scott Childers will be with us. He's our director of our Southeast Library system. He's kind of our main expert on the topic. And he will be presenting about that next week. So please do join us for that. It's kind of a companion show too. And I'm going to, our previous show he did with me on the Nebraska Public Library Laws, Chapter 51 and Beyond. Open Meetings Act is a Nebraska statute, but it is a lot, so it deserves its whole own show. So we did do a show. Those are the recording and slides about other public library laws. And then next week we'll be talking specifically about the Open Meetings Act. So please do sign up for that. And any of our other shows we have coming up. So thank you, everybody. Thanks, Amy. And I hope we'll see you all on a future episode of Encompass Live. Bye.