 Next up on our lightning round sessions is Sherry Breachin. Breachin? Oh, I didn't ask. How do you pronounce that correctly? That's okay. It's Burkeen. Burkeen? I need to. That's all right. From Alaska, Texas, public library down there. And she has, many libraries have special collections of items that they lend. And she has a Cake at the Lake program that she has there. I'm just going to hand it over to you to tell us about what you're doing down there. Thank you, Christina. We lend bakeware here at Alaska. So I invite any of you that want to, that are in Texas, to come have cake with us at the lake. On Alaska, Texas is located on a peninsula that extends into Lake Livingston. We are west of Livingston and east of Huntsville on U.S. Highway 190. It's settled in a really pretty setting that's surrounded by the piney woods of east Texas. The lake was constructed back in 1969 by the city of Houston. It helps with their hydroelectric plant. And we are the second largest lake in Texas. Houston is just a little more than an hour south of Alaska. So that kind of gives you an idea of where we are in the United States. And these are pictures from our website. So if you happen to Google us, those are the pictures that you're going to want to see. So because of our location in the heart of Lake Livingston, we've become a popular vacation and recreational area here. And we have a great retirement community. Despite its growth, on Alaska still remains a small town quality with country atmosphere. When I first started coming here, back in the late 1990s, just as a vacation spot, we had about 800 people. And officially we have 1,700 now, but we really service close to 3,000. Since a large percentage of our population is retired and weekenders, many spend their time here relaxing by the water or just fishing or making memories with their friends and family. The shot that you can see right now is of a fishing tournament that's ready to begin. And that's the sun rising off of one of the piers that's here at the lake. And that's actually just a really small inlet in the lake. It's hard to show the whole lake. So we decided that once you drive over an hour from Houston, who wants to go back just for a cake pan? So we decided to share what we could have, what others might have in the community. And that way you wouldn't have to drive back. So people can start by the library and choose from over 65 cake pans that we have now. We have lots to pick from. We have simple ones. Or we have some that are more elaborate if you're celebrating a special occasion. So here's one of the simple ones that we have. It's just a bun pan. This particular one is very heavy. And so cakes always turn out really well out of that one. And it's one of our more popular bakewares. But if you were having some sort of anniversary party or something like that, you can not only check out the cake pans, but this tier that's here and the candles and the whole thing. So you could actually have a really nice little party if you were going to do that. We also have some cookie cutters. And I didn't list all of our cookie cutters, but these are one of the most popular. And this is actually some gingerbread cookies that someone made. I always just ask them to share their pictures with us if they will. All of our bags that include the cake pan, they all come with really simple recipes and easy to find ingredients. And I did this so that you would have to, or you could read the directions. So I'm always promoting reading in one way or another. You can, of course, choose to plan ahead and bring, you know, all of your own ingredients and have fancy decorations and all. But you can also do the more simpler ones. We have character pans if you're doing a birthday celebration for a child, or holiday themed ones. We have some 3D ones as well. So we just ask that people come and make memories with their friends and their family without a lot of expense, and just come have cake at the lake. We've also had people that have come in and met other residents there. And so they, you know, one will invite them over, and we even had a cookie share in one of our subdivisions. And not everybody rented the cookie cutters from us, but some of them did. Now I would suggest that if libraries are planning to offer a collection like Bakeware, that one of the first things you have to do obviously is decide how it's going to work better for you. You know, when you consider your circulation times, it doesn't take a week to bake cookies, but we kept our circulation rules very simple, and we followed the same seven-day plan that we already had in place for DVDs and audiobooks. This way we weren't investing a lot of time in changing our computer system. I just kept it really, really simple. We use social media to get the word out, as well as display photos that people send us. We always ask them for permission, and almost always if they share, you know, a picture with us, they're going to give us permission to share it with everybody else as well. And then sometimes we just go ahead and display the cookie cutters or the cake pans, especially if it's seasonal. We'll display them right there on the circulation desk, and I'll have people say, I didn't know you had this. I hear that, like, all the time. We found it's best to make it really clear to the patrons to check out dates, the returns, and what we expect for them when they come back in. So we label each bag with a little label, and it says, please wash before you use and wash and dry after their return. I always check them when they come back in, and if there's still some cookie crumbs in there, we just wash them again. And every once in a while somebody will bring in a sample of what they had. They'll bring me a piece of cake, or they'll bring me some cookies. And that's really nice. We just wanted to add new services for our community and to get people to come into the library that might not otherwise have visited with us. Because people just think that we're still just books. So when we tell people what we're doing, it captures their attention. And in the future, I'd love to have, maybe we could lend fishing poles or bicycles. There is a neighboring town that lends bicycles, and we do have some proposals, although I don't know if they'll happen or not, but for bike tracks around here in our community. And if that happens, then I'm definitely going to apply for grants so that we can have some bike cycles that we can check out as well. Of course, once people are inside the library, then they found out about other popular services that we have, like a notary service, Wi-Fi, DVDs. And of course, we have books. And that's the end of my presentation. Okay. Does anybody have any questions? Yes, great, Sherry. I thought this is a great thing that you do, the cake at the lake as the theme of this whole thing. There are lots of small libraries and rural libraries around the country. I know, and we have them here in Nebraska that do share cake pans, lone cake pans. And it's very interesting when you talk about it. There's like a 50-50, the people that say, oh, yeah, of course, library lens cake pans. So does ours. And then the other librarians or even people I know saying, what? Think about it. Those character pans, if you want to make one of those kind of cakes, just needing to go out and buy one of those? No. Exactly. Having the library, having them all collected together so often. And having them because you are like a tourist destination, definitely is an awesome thing to offer. You can come here to celebrate your child's birthday or your anniversary or something, and then you can make something here. Right. Someone did say that you said that you will also provide the ingredients for the different recipes that you have? We don't provide the ingredients. We don't provide any consumables. But we just give a list of really simple ingredients. And I try to make sure that I have recipes that have things that they can find in our local grocery store or that they may already have on hand. I think that's what it was. You said you'll give them a recipe of different choices of recipes that they can use along with these. They don't have to think about what am I going to make, that that can all be provided when they come. And then there's grocery stores nearby that they can easily get to to get what they need. Yes. Yeah. So we do have something to say. The idea is people are really hooked onto this bicycle lending scene. If you do do that, you'll have to come back and tell us about how that goes, apparently. That sounds great. The idea of checking out the bicycles and connecting them to bike trails or tracks that you might have, hopefully if they do get those going. Somebody wants to know if you know about that. You said that a neighbor library does check out bikes? Yes. Well, I said a neighboring library. They're actually in a neighboring county. There's Lake Conroe. And so the Montgomery County Library has those as well. And from what I understand, they're not the only library across the country, but they're the only other one that we know of in our area that does that. And we're the only one in our area that lends cake pans. That does the cake pans, yes. People have come to you for that. Awesome. Oh, and here's someone else. You're looking for other interesting things. Someone here says they actually love an electric food dryer or a food dehydrator that they loan out and a pressure cooker. Anything that's great. Anything that is not something that you'd use regularly, but you'd be like a once a year thing or randomly, that's a good thing to offer up place. I know there's some tools, but I know there's organizations that will rent you these things. But as the library, you could do this for free. Absolutely. Pedometer, somebody loans. All right. I think we'll move on to our next lighting round session. We want to get through all of these. Thank you very much, Sherry. That was very interesting. Thank you. Very cool to hear how you guys are doing it there at your library. All right. I've learned a lot today. Oh, thank you. Stick around. I got a whole afternoon full of sessions yet to go.