 All right, so our second lightning round session for today's big talk from small libraries online conference is all for fun programming for people. Adult learners at the library program for people with developmental disabilities we have Sherry Preston our second Nebraska presenter of the day gay Nebraska, who is from our gearing public library way out in Western Nebraska and your population served as you said earlier 8000 is that still. Yeah, feel about that. Take it away Sherry. So I'm not public services library at the Gearing library and with 8000 people were kind of at the bigger end of small libraries and then also we're part of a larger community. So this is may not apply as much to your library situation, but I'm going to talk about adult learners at the library or all for fun. And we would have sitting at the front desk to be like 15 people would diverge upon the library and they would kind of wander around look at magazines around socialize a little bit. There wasn't a whole lot of purpose to them being there. And obviously everybody's welcome at the library without purpose, but it really felt like a missed opportunity if we knew we were they were coming we could do something for them. And I would sit notes home with the caregivers and I'd visit with people and like you know, would you like some programming. Yeah, that'd be great, but there was never he follow up and I didn't really know how to connect with anybody. So, one day I realized that one of the ladies in my book discussion group had a daughter that was in this group and so I said hey how do we get hold of these people. Well, I learned that it's called in Nebraska the Office of Human Development. And the people that go there call it the hub, because that just seems like a lot more fun place to go than the Office of Human Development. Our county has a population of about 36,000 people. According to the American Community Survey about 1700 of those people have cognitive disabilities, and that would include children and so children, these people are age 21 22 on up to however old. And so the children are handled in a different situation. And the Office of Human Development would like them to have jobs if they can. And so there's around 45 or 50 of these adults that attend the hub day program and there's other ones out in the community that could but don't. These include people with developmental disabilities or intellectual disabilities autism cerebral palsy down syndrome and some other conditions. The goals the hub has, they wanted their, their folks to attend educational programs, and they want them out in the community to the point where they even deliver meals on wheels on one day a week. The goals we wanted to provide for a wide variety of abilities, but on an adult level and that's important. And we also wanted to meet a community need that was not being met. And this is Lori here working on the craft that we did. And I also discovered that if you work with the Office of Human Development on programming, you will have programs that people attend and it's amazing knowing that there's going to be 15 people at your program every, every month. As far as developing this program, I worked with the director, I needed to know their schedules and what their abilities were, and their interests, and I'm constant contact with her pretty much after every program I'm like, hey, how'd this go and this, I thought it went well. Those are things that I could be doing differently. What did you think? And she's been really good at providing feedback. And it's important to work with the clients as they call them, and find out what their interests are and what they like about the programs as well. I have found the director has a pretty good idea but I think obviously want to have a voice to in what's going on. Research. I attended a workshop in Colorado. The front range of Colorado has a huge program called library for all. And it's basically the same thing. It's kind of where I got this idea. Johnson County Kansas also has a huge thing so you can look online and find other libraries that are doing this with a lot of success. This book is a new book. There's a lot of books out there too, but this is the one I kind of went through. One of the things to talk about is using people first language in this book specifically and I practiced this with a friend of mine and her mother works with this group and she says, you know, not all of them prefer that, like the deaf community, for example, does not oftentimes prefer people first language. So I guess keep in mind the trends and what people want to be called and so that you're using the correct language. I took a page out of our library and children's library and story time model. I come up with a speaker. I don't usually use me because it's more of a mini conference if there's someone other than the librarian always talking to you. And I've warned my speakers that, you know, there might be people wandering around crawling around in front of you there might be people who can't be quiet, you might get some really oddball questions just be prepared. As far as the story goes, I've had some mixed messages. The book that I read insisted that you need to find materials that are not childish. I use snowflake Bentley for one example. There's not that many children's books out there that are written about adults. So that's kind of tough. I think nonfiction is a great idea. There's always nonfiction books. Talking to the director of the hub, she says children's books are fine, especially if they involve children with physical disabilities. So I haven't actually got to that point yet, but I will probably, I've got some books in mind that I think would work for this situation. This is Derek. He's working on a craft we did for the nutrition talk that we had. I thought this would be really lame. It was a challenge, but it was the right kind of challenge because they could accomplish it. They didn't always do it the way that we would think, but a lot of them have some limited mobility issues. And so it just trying to find that sweet spot is kind of tough. So I've worked hard to try and do that. And I also worked with our children's librarian to figure out what excess material she has in her craft stash. He said, I don't want to short her on stuff. And so far I've been able to kind of use up some stuff that she had that she had no intention of using. Sometimes we have a game or we had a snack to one time and handouts, if you can come up with a handout, even if it's a bookmark, they love handouts. So that's something they like to take home with them. This is Stacy. She loves balls. All I did was stack up cups and I had some stress balls. And I had three different stations and some of the folks sat and watched and because they're used to that they're always in a group together. And some of them lined up again and again and again. So it doesn't take a lot to come up with something fun and they really enjoyed that. As far as programs go, I will never be able to use up all the ideas I have. Some of the stuff I don't have on here. I have a next month I've scheduled an open mic night, not night event, it's in the daytime. But so a lot of these folks have things are very interested in the Titanic, for example. And I thought, you know, my kids are on the speech team and I'm totally about public speaking. So I said, hey, if you guys want to sign up and for five minutes on to talk about something that a hobby or an interest of yours. And so then I also contacted the mayor. We have a former Miss Tabrasca here, who's my financial advisor. And we have a city councilman that worked for the zoo. And we also have a world-known bareback bronch writer that's been in the National Piles Radio sometimes now. And so he's going to come hopefully if his schedule works out and talk for five minutes about that kind of interspersed. And so that brings the community in with it. And having the mayor and the city council member there, I think it's going to be really important so they know what's going on and why we need a new building. Flower ranging, we made a deal with the cemetery after Memorial Day. We're going to swoop out there and collect some stuff and then we can use that for flower ranging. We're going to have a summer reading kickoff dance. That's one of the things they talked about in the programming book that I read. I have found that people are really pretty willing to help. I haven't had anybody say no yet. So this was our spider program. It was a huge hit. We had the zoo come with the spider and he talked for a little bit and we had a craft and I modified the craft because these people aren't developing skills like little kids are where they would learn to thread the string through the paper plate. So I punched the holes, but then I also cut a slit to make it easier to be able to have a successful program. And we had a little trivia thing and so I gave out rings, the spider rings so they could thread those on there. And so anyways, that was a lot of fun. And we have, I had the local weathermen come talk for our snowflake one and they're paying good attention because one of the guys came in the library later and he goes, I saw a guy that looks just like the weatherman that came and talked, but it was a different guy. Like, yeah, I think that might have been the same guy. But anyways, this is Kayla. She absolutely loves arts and crafts. And so she had a blast. We have a bazillion donated puzzles. So we just spray painted some puzzle pieces there and we ran the hot glue guns. I also scanned smells like Bentley and I made a PowerPoint out of it. That way everybody could see the book because I didn't have that one on a big book. As far as the future goes, we're going to continue to promote inclusive programming and make sure that the other adults in the community know that they're available if they're, they're willing. That's the word I'm looking for. Welcome to come to these programs. I really want to do some outreach. I know there's some folks that don't have jobs and don't go to the hub and I'm thinking I might ask if they want to volunteer. Because I always have volunteers. I need someone to run a camera and sometimes just help me with stuff. So I'm thinking that might be one way to include some of them. These kiddos here are from the what they call the Meridian school. They go to the educational service unit and they're kind of ages eight through 21. And so we've a friend of mine works there and me opened up a Lego club for them and they had a blast. So they're going to come back next week, I guess and do something else with balloons and Legos and cars. As far as resources, there's something out there called the next chapter book club and there's more than just that. But it looks like an amazing way to do a book discussion group with adults with developmental disabilities. I don't have the time but I think that people should know about that. As far as our collection goes, I'd like to add books that are mirrors and not so much windows. There's not too many books out there written by adults with developmental disabilities. There's the cow tipping press is the place in Minnesota, and they have books that they've books kind of long pamphlets that they've published. But they have essays and poetry and stuff like that by adults with developmental disabilities. And then the Schneider family award is a book award that goes to books that embrace or discuss the disability experience. I was looking around and I found the Ed White Wiley autism library. I haven't looked through it much, but it looks like there's some good stuff in there as far as books about people, but also for maybe parenting and that kind of thing. And so then I came across Shane Burcott and Tyler McNamara. And I know that Shane Burcott does not have a developmental disability. His disability is just physical. He has spinal muscular atrophy. But both of these books are nonfiction books and they're written with short chapters that you could read during a program. And we had a program on relationships and my lady went long and so I didn't actually use it, but I had a chapter out of the Shane Burcott book that I was going to read a chunk of. And it just talks about, you know, how having a relationship with somebody was so much different when you're in a wheelchair like he has. So anyways, that's pretty much it. Does anybody have any questions? All right. Thank you, Sherry. Yes, we do have a few questions here. This is a great program that you're doing here. Definitely. I'm sure very rewarding for you and for everyone who is helping out with it. And someone did ask, which I see you just had that on the previous slide. They want to know if they could contact you for the craft ideas. And you did have there your email and it's on here to definitely reach out for all that. But my lesson plans have pictures on them and they're not for my personal use and they're not copyright. I mean, they're probably things that are not open access. So I don't know what I'll do about that. But yeah, I have only been doing this since August. So I don't have a ton. And one thing I guess I didn't mention there's 50 people and there's only about 15 come. And so she said if you want to do the same program two months in a row, that's great. So that takes a huge amount of planning off of my schedule so I can kind of make sure we can do it twice. But yeah, I'd be happy. Another question. Have you noticed you said that they that the these people they had already been coming into the library and doing things. Have you noticed a change in how they use the library now that they come in and have this program like are they going to books more or differently has it had any kind of side effect like that. Okay, so we're across the river from a town of about 16,000 people. And so they're about twice as big. And they're their libraries a lot more accessible than ours is as far as just getting in there. So, I don't know, we've I've noticed that like some of these people are living in group homes and some of them live independently and I've noticed that some of the group home people are coming in more often. They don't as a group of 15 or so don't come into our library as often as they came into the Scotts Bluff one but they have been coming in. And actually, we can't have the, we can't have the meetings in our meeting room because it's in the basement and there's kind of a suicide slide that goes down and it's, it's new and it's safe but so many of these people have mobility issues that we actually have it at the city council chamber which is right next door and I try to be as loud as possible. But unfortunately the city council is probably not coming in while we're there. But yeah, they do. I don't know that they use it much differently but I think that you know they see me, and it's a whole, you know, there's a lot of familiarity, I guess. So I would really like to have a better place for them in the library. Sure. A question about logistics I think how many staff or volunteers do you have at a typical craft program. Well, I, I work my resources. It's me. I think everybody in the library would be willing to help my children's librarian has story time at the same time. And so they kind of need most everybody at the library. But I have friends that taught special ed, and they come and help. And they have between my mom I have one of my daughters come help. And I was amazed at how good she was. But I just have, I just have a volunteer but if you have two volunteers that would be that much better but they have helpers with them. And so there's usually two or three helpers and so there's someone that can run the extra hot glue gun. Right, right. And this last one will ask and then we'll go on to our last lightning round session disability awareness month is coming up in June. Do you have any plans for anything related to that or anything specific to that coming up. You know, I guess I hadn't thought that far ahead. My June, I'm going to have a tour of the baseball park in May and maybe June depending on the guy has the time to do it twice because she thought that they would everybody would like to come to that. I will probably do some writing a weekly column, I will probably make a big point of what we're doing here in column. But with summer reading going on and I'm also the adult programmer, I'm not sure we're doing things special for that. But now that I know that I will definitely highlight it. Yeah. All right, great. Anyone else wants to reach out to her someone is actually actually mentioning they have a virtual new chapters group that they might reach out to you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much, Sherry.