 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. The show is broadcast live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Central Time, but if you're unable to join us on a Wednesday morning, that's fine. We do record the show every week as we are doing today, and it is then posted onto our archives on our Encompass Live website, and I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our archives. 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 think may be interested in any of the topics we have on the show. We here at the Nebraska Library Commission are, this is the state agency for libraries in Nebraska, and that is for all types of libraries. So you will find things on our show for publics, academics, K-12, museums, corrections, facilities, basically anything that has a library, there may be something for you. So that's really our only criteria that what we have on the show is something that is something we think would be of interest to libraries, something we think libraries should be doing, services and products that we want to introduce you to, two cool things that other libraries are doing out there across the country. So we have quite a mixture of things here on the show, book reviews, interviews, mini training sessions, demos of services and products. It's pretty wide open there. We do sometimes have Nebraska Library Commission staff come on and do presentations for things that we are offering here to libraries in the state of Nebraska, things locally, but we also bring on guest speakers as we have this morning. So with us this morning is Jennifer Johnson. Good morning, Jennifer. Good morning. And she's from the Johnson City Public Library in Johnson City, Tennessee. She's joining us remotely, obviously, and she's got this really cool program that I actually attended the ARSL conference in the fall, Association for Rural and Small Libraries, and I attended this presentation of hers there and I just thought it was really cool and an awesome thing that they're doing there at the library, introducing young people to the library's librarianship as a career, and I wanted to share with an even wider audience. So I invited her to come on the show, and we're going to talk about that today. So I think I'll just hand it over to you, Jennifer, go ahead and start your presentation. If anybody does have any questions or comments, type into your questions section as we're going and we'll hopefully have a little conversation about what they're doing there. All right. Thank you, Chris, sir. I do want to say thank you to you and to the Nebraska Library Commission for giving me an opportunity to talk to people about this wonderful program. I am very passionate about it, and I'm always happy to share it. And also, if anyone will be attending the PLA conference in Nashville in February, I'll be giving the same presentation there, so if you really just want to sit through the whole presentation again, or if you want to drop by and ask me any questions or let me know how you plan to adapt it for your library, I'm always happy to talk about it. So without much further ado, we will get into how to run a librarian and training program for children. So the way that I design this program, it is a 15-week program during which children who are 9 to 12 years old spend at least two hours in each department of our library participating in focused job shadowing and working on small projects. So the two hours that they spend in each department are split between two weeks. So for instance, I work in youth services. So if a child comes to us for the first week, that first hour would be a tour day where we give them a comprehensive tour of the department, introduce them to all of our staff, talk to them a little bit about how we got into the library profession and let them ask any questions they might have, and then the second week, they would come back for another hour and we would have some sort of project or something for them to work on. Then the following week, they'd rotate to the next department and so on and so forth. The children also attend at least one library board meeting over the course of the program and the photo here are some of our librarians in training from last year with our board members. And then we end with a celebration of the children's commitment to the program. So just kind of a fun party to wrap things up. I do quickly want to mention before I dive into everything here, I have a link for you at the end to a Google Drive folder that has all of the resources that I'm going to talk about today. So you will have access to the schedule, the information brochure, all of that plus these presentation slides at the end. And that link is actually on. I added it to the session page for today's show already. So if anyone does want to go look at those now, hopefully you'll be too distracted doing that when I pay attention to it for sharing this. But it's out there right now on the page. If you go to where you first signed up for the show on to the main page there, you'll see a link to it. And it'll be also included when we put out the archive page as well. Very cool. Thank you. All right. So the idea for this program actually came from a patron interaction. A little girl had come into the library one evening to just for the sole purpose of telling us that she wanted to be a librarian when she grew up. And I just thought that was really special. And when I asked her why she made that decision, she said it was because she had taken a class at school that got her really interested in libraries. And so I came away from that interaction thinking it would be so cool if public libraries could provide something like that, some sort of little internship or something that would give kids real hands-on experience with the day-to-day workings of a library. And I couldn't let go of that idea. It just kept eating at me. And I thought, okay, I've got to do something with this. And a question that I get asked a lot is, did that little girl end up going through the program? Unfortunately, no, because I didn't know at that time what that conversation was going to spark and what this would become. If I had, I definitely would have made sure that her contact information was given to me and she would have been the first one through this program. But hopefully our marketing will reach her and other kids like her who are interested. So once I knew that I wanted to do this, I had to think about how was it feasible for our library. So I started to research just to see if anyone had done anything on this scale before and I found a lot of people had done little one-hour mini-MLS programs, things like that, but nothing that was really set up like an internship. So I realized I was going to be starting from scratch. Before I met with my supervisor, I sort of put all my thoughts in one place and these are the notes that I created. I listed out our departments and kind of what I was wanting from the program. My initial thought was that children would only sign up for the departments they were interested in learning about and even though the end program ended up being structured very differently from this sign-in sheet you see here, if this is something that would work for your library, maybe you want to structure it this way. The thing about this program is it's very flexible and the way that we did it doesn't necessarily have to be the way that you do it. So this initial sign-in sheet that I made, we ended up not using, but if it's something that you think your library would do better with, then of course you can do it that way. So these were all my preliminary thoughts that I took to my supervisor and she suggested that I meet with the rest of the department heads because of course if we want kids to go to every department, we have to have everyone's buy-in. So I took them, those initial notes and gave them out to the department heads, briefly explained my vision for this program and what I wanted kids to gain from it. And then the part that was crucial for buy-in from all the departments was I asked for their feedback. I asked them, was this even doable? How many kids did they recommend for each group? You know, what days and times would work best for everyone? And their feedback was essential in shaping the program into what it became. And they are actually the ones who suggested the library board meeting. And so a lot of great things came out of that meeting that really helped shape the development of the program. So we had to decide how we wanted to market this program. I didn't want to necessarily just put it out there the way we do the rest of our public programming. I really wanted to target kids who had a deep interest in libraries potentially as a career. And the best way that I could think of to do that was to send out a plea to the school librarians, basically. We figured who better to recommend enthusiastic kids than the librarians who work with them every day. And also it gave us a great chance to connect with them and with our local schools, which is nice. And now we have librarians this year looking forward to receiving those information packets to hand out to the kids, which is great. So the packets consisted of a few things. The first is an application. We did decide to do an application process. And I do have a picture. This is the current application. And of course, it includes of all their contact information, things like that. I did include some places for the kids to fill in, why they were interested in the program and some of their favorite books, just to get an idea of who they were as people and what stood out to them about this program that made it appealing. And then I also put a place for who recommended you for this program. That was the place where they could put their school librarian's name. And then some places where they could check off which board meeting they wanted to attend, any conflict dates they might have. And just some reminders, our policy for children in the library is that children 10 and under must be accompanied by an adult at all times. So I made sure I put that in their multiple places that if your child is 10 or under, you will have to stay on the premises the entire time and a place for emergency contact info. And then we designed an informational brochure that told them a little bit about the program. This was the original brochure for the first year. And then this year we were able to include pictures from the program and testimonials, which is really nice and made it a little bit easier to sell, I think. And this one's been updated to reflect our new branding and things like that. But it just sort of lists the format of the program and then all of the departments involved and what those departments are responsible for so that kids have an idea of what all they might be taking part in. And then finally, the most important part was the letter to the school librarians. So I put together the packets with the information brochures, the applications, my contact info. And then I sent a letter with those to the librarians explaining the program and asking them to choose the kids that they felt would be a good fit. I limit it to three applications per school librarian unless they just really have a bunch of interested kids. And then I'm willing to give them more, but I think three is a good starting point. I sent every county, city and private school librarian in our area, one of these packets, or if there was no librarian, I would send it to the principal or the administrator at the school. And then the librarian's only responsibility was to give the applications to the kids that they felt would be a good fit for the program. Beyond that, they're not responsible for collecting the applications or delivering them. I wanted the kids and their families to actually bring the applications to the library to turn them in. So all we ask the librarians to do is distribute. They don't collect or deliver for us. So also that kind of gives the kids a little incentive to get theirs in quicker before the deadline, which is nice. I also gave applications to three of our regular patrons because I figured if I was going to ask school librarians to do that, then I could recommend some kiddos as well. And I encouraged our staff if they knew of anyone that they thought would be a good fit to hand out applications. So we here at the Public Library, we're also making recommendations. And I did ask one of our clerks to put up a display board in our family study center, which did catch at least one homeschool family the first year and I think has caught a couple more this year. Again, we didn't want to advertise it too widely. We wanted to make sure that the kids were really interested. But I felt like that was our best bet at catching those kids who were maybe not in public school. And also not all of the school librarians necessarily disperse their applications. So it gives other kids another avenue to hear about it. And then for the first year, we had one child who simply came in to ask about volunteer opportunities and she wasn't old enough for the team volunteer program. But I suggested this program for her and she ended up going all the way through it and was one of our more interesting, I feel like candidates. So that was a lot of fun. It was a fortuitous moment for her. So the first year, I had no idea how this would be received. Once I sent the applications out, I basically just had to wait and see what happened, which was agonizing. I sent the information out in mid-November and I did the same this year with an application deadline of December 17. And it was the 16th this year. So that gave me roughly a month to see what kind of response we would get and for the kids to fill out their applications and turn them back in. And the start date for the program was set for the first full week in January. And we were doing it on Thursday afternoons. So that gave me, again, maybe three weeks beyond the deadline to call all the families and get everything in order there with the schedule. We had 12 slots available for the program and 10 children applied. So no one had to be turned away, which was excellent. This year, we currently have 10 applications and our application deadline is Monday. So I'm kind of afraid that we might have too many this year because I know there's still a few that are going to come in. So I'm trying to figure out right now what my plan is in case we have too many applicants. Still have to fill, there's the limit. Twelve is the limit, yeah. I'm kind of sick of that, still after the first go-through. Yeah, I don't think that our our departments can handle more than that. So I'm trying to figure out how to deal with that if we get more than 12. I'm thinking maybe based on order received, but then also age of the children, if they would be too old next year, then I want to make sure they get a chance to participate this year. So we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. If anyone has any better ideas, please let me know. So then once we had our applications in, there were a few things that I had to take care of before the program started. Of course, I had to notify the families that the children had been accepted. And then I had to make the rotation schedule for the children to go through our departments and send that to the department heads for approval. And this is our schedule from the first year. I grouped kids who were similar ages together that first year. And I was kind of worried about that at first. I didn't know if that would cause any behavior issues or anything, but it seemed to go really well. I think they enjoyed being in a group with their peers. So it worked out and the way our schedule worked, at least one department had a break each week since we only had 10 kids in the program. And I think that was a nice bonus for the departments because not all of them are used to working with children. So even though it's only an hour a week, it's it's a lot of time that they invested in the program. So I think having that extra week off was nice. This is what our schedule is going to look like this year, based on some feedback that I got from our staff, they actually wanted more kids per group. They wanted three instead of two this year because they found that when there were only two kids, if one was absent, then the other one was a little bit more reserved, a little more withdrawn, a little bit harder to motivate, I guess, without their friend with them. So they asked for three kids per group, which I thought was great. So we're actually going to have more weeks off in there since we have fewer groups. Last year, I sent out a document, which is in that Google Drive folder for you all with ideas for working with the children, you know, things that they could do for Project Days and some dialogue, kind of what I expected from them as far as conversations with the children and things like that. This year, I've actually designed a staff training that we are going to be giving to our staff in the next couple of weeks because we have a lot of new staff who are not familiar with this program. And again, I think people who aren't used to working with children, they really need a little bit of extra training on positive discipline strategies and things like that ahead of time. My background is in early childhood education. So that's stuff that I kind of take for granted. But this year I'm working on equipping our staff with those tools as well. So the ways that I envisioned our staff working with the children were either through independent tasks. And in my document, I use the example of, say, cutting out masks for a craft, for a program, something that you would normally give to, say, maybe a teen volunteer and let them work on independently. But with these kids, since they're a little bit younger and since the idea of this program is to introduce them to librarianship, you would spend a little more time than you would with your typical volunteer. You would explain exactly what it's for, give them an opportunity to ask questions about it, and maybe check in on them a little more frequently than you would a normal volunteer. Another way I envision this working is just through shadowing. So if you don't have a particular activity or a particular task that you need the child to do that day, they could just sit with you while you work the desk or while you plan a story time or whatever it is that you happen to be doing that day. But I made sure to stress that this is not them sitting and watching you while you do your job and ignore them. This is a give and take. And you're explaining what you're doing and why you're doing it and giving them an opportunity to ask questions that they have. A good example of this would be weeding. I worked with a couple of our kiddos on weeding one day and just kind of walked them through the process, talked about our criteria for weeding. And after we had gone through several books, I didn't let them stand a few and tell me what they thought, you know, we should do with those books based on what we had discussed. So that's a good example of something you can use shadowing for. And then the third way was working in tandem. So if you're setting up for a program, you could be working alongside your children and just kind of assigning them tasks, whatever you need them to do, while you're also working in the room with them. But again, always having that discussion about why you're doing what you're doing and asking, allowing them to ask questions and answering them. One last thing I did was designed name tag, sign-in sheets and other signage for the program. The kids got a little temporary name badge the first day and then we took their photos the very first week. And so then they had official looking badges with their pictures on them for the rest of the program, which made them feel really special and that was really cool. So once the program got started, I kind of left it up to each department to decide what tasks they would be showing the children and how they would conduct their tour days. I didn't wanna tell another department what to do because I don't know what other departments do all the time. So I left it up to them to decide what they wanted to do and they came up with a variety of tasks and I was really impressed by our staff in a brand new way with this program, the way they all just jumped in and were super welcoming to these kiddos. So our admin office actually had the kids fill out new hire paperwork. And the funny thing about that is our human resources person, she was convinced that there was absolutely nothing interesting about her job that she could show these kids, but they love filling out new hire paperwork because it's not something that they've ever done. It seems super mundane to her, but to them it was this adult thing that they were doing. And she of course was great. She made them feel very mature and like they were coming into a new job. So that was wonderful. And then they also worked with our marketing person to create book recommendation videos for social media. If you want to check out our Facebook, Johnson City Public Library, there are videos of every child on there making their little book recommendations. And that was a great way to let people know that we were even doing this program so that they were looking forward to it the next year. That was probably our best marketing tool was putting those kids' faces on social media. Adult and teen services came up with a scavenger hunt. So after they took the kids on a tour, they would send them on a scavenger hunt to see if they remembered everything that they learned in the tour. And they also worked with them on creating displays and bibliographies. And I loved that because then there was something tangible in the library that the kids could point to and say, I helped with that. There were a couple of boys who created a March Madness display and they were so proud of it. And a couple of girls worked on a cookbook bibliography and they discovered new cookbooks that they wanted to try recipes from. And it was really fun for them. Our circulation department would have the kids check in the book drop every day. That was about the time that they would go and get the afternoon book drop. And we actually have an automated materials handler from Biblioteca. So it's been a huge draw for our library, just for our patrons even. They're absolutely fascinated with it. So the kids were really excited to get to work up close with that machine. Our maintenance department had them doing dusting and painting and setting up the meeting room for programs. And a couple of our kids were actually inspired by the meeting room setup process to create a little program of their own, which I will go into a little bit later. Tech services had them working on book processing and repair. Again, that was a tangible thing. The kids would take me over to the shelf and be like, I helped fix this book. I helped put a cover on this book. And they were really taking ownership of the library at that point, which was great to see. And then for us in youth services, we would have them help with program prep, getting crafts ready and assembled, creating book lists. And as I said, I did work with them a little bit on leading. We made sure that the parents or guardians signed the children in and out each time since we did have some who were a little young to be in the library by themselves. And as far as communication with the adults goes, I sent out a monthly newsletter that had important upcoming dates for board meetings and things like that, as well as pictures of the kids so that the parents could see what they were doing. And then of course, just periodic check-in emails if someone had a particularly good day or a particularly bad day, we would communicate that way. At first, I was not gonna offer makeup days. I didn't know if our schedule would be able to accommodate it. But we had a couple of kids who were out due to sickness early in the year and they were so disappointed that they missed a day and they really wanted to make up their time in the department that they missed. So luckily, one of the weeks that we had a board meeting, we don't typically have the regular program those weeks. So we were able to squeeze a couple of makeup days in and let those kids get their time in. I just thought that was wonderful that they even wanted to make up their time. So I wanted to try to accommodate that as best I could. And then of course, we had the board meetings. There were two over the course of the program that the children could attend and they only had to come to one. And our board members were so excited to have these kids. It was a wonderful way to show them a little piece of the difference that we are making in the community. And they were so accommodating. They gave the kids candy, which I'm sure the parents loved afterwards. They opened up the floor for them to ask questions of the board members. We had a great discussion about Robert's rules of order and they even taught some of our board members how to do the floss. So that was really fun. And our board members have become some of the biggest advocates for this program as a result of that. So for our celebration, I wanted to keep it fairly simple. I really wanted it to be kind of laid back and a time for reflection on the program and what it had meant to everyone and what the children had gained from it. So we kept it really simple. A month beforehand, I sent out invitations to everyone involved, the families, the librarians who made the recommendations, principals and teachers at the children's schools, the our board members and our library staff. I did digital invitations for everyone and then I also did paper invitations for the families and the librarians so that they would have a little memento of the program. These two girls in the photo here are the two girls who were inspired by their meeting room setup to create their own little program. They decided to do, they wanted to do a small dramatic play covering the main points of the Civil War. I have no idea why that was their topic. I don't know if they were inspired by the flags or if that was something they were studying in school at the time, but that's what they decided they wanted to do. So I had a little session, a little breakout session with them one day, kind of working on developing their program. But pretty much everything came from them. I gave them a little guidance on timing and props, but they put it together. It was about 10 to 15 minutes long. Myself and one of our other staff members in youth services got to guest star as Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. And that was really fun for them, I think, and I think eye-opening for them too, to think about designing a program and how nerve-wracking that can be. They were very nervous beforehand once they saw the room filling up with their peers and their families and their teachers, but they did a great job. I also designed and printed certificates for the kiddos and I wrote thank you cards to the families. And I had the kids also write thank you cards to their families for taking the time to bring them each week and printed off some pictures of the kids from the program to include in there as well. So at the celebration, it was very simple. I just thanked everyone involved in the process, presented the certificates and the thank you notes. Then the girls did their program and then we had pizza and everyone just kind of reminisced about the program and talked about what it meant to them. I also had laptops up in the back with feedback surveys. I created two separate ones, one for the children and one for the caregivers and asked that people take those feedback surveys during that time as well, but I did send the links out later too in case they didn't get to it. So afterwards, the feedback was very important. Not only did I get it from the children and the caregivers, but I also created a feedback survey for our staff. And that one was the most crucial in tweaking and reshaping the program for this year. But it did give us those great testimonials as well that you saw in the brochure. So some things that we've already changed this year based on the feedback. Again, I designed the training for staff ahead of the program just so that they kind of know what to expect and to give them some tools to deal with when the children might be having a difficult day. We did the three children per group instead of two. Our maintenance department needed to opt out this year. They're very short staffed and they put in actually some overtime last year for this program, which I didn't realize. So I'm working on, he might be able to do a crash course one day for all of the kids, like a one day only thing because I do want to include them. I think they're a crucial part of our library, but as far as doing something every week, they just weren't able to do that. And then last year, adult and teen services was combined into one because our teen services department consisted of one person and that was not a fair demand on her time, but now we have an additional person in teen services. So they asked to be their own department this year. So they're gonna take on some kiddos and show them the world of teen librarianship and a little more in depth than last year. And all of the surveys that I created are also in the Google Drive folder. So if you need a chance to look at those there on there as well. Now, when I gave this presentation in September at ARSL, I felt horrible because we are not a small library by any means, which you may have figured out already. We are a rural library, but we are not small. And I realized that a lot of the things that I've talked about here with us being so departmentalized may not be feasible for some of you. So I really wanted to include some ways that this program could be scaled down for a smaller library or smaller staff. I talked with several library colleagues, many of whom work in smaller libraries and got some of their input. And these were some of the things that we came up with. Of course, if you have a smaller service population, that could actually work to your advantage because you're going to have a smaller, theoretically smaller pool of applicants for your targeted marketing. So that could actually work in your favor. And if you have a smaller staff or you don't have as much time to dedicate to this program, again, as I said at the beginning, this program is very adaptable. You can work with fewer children. You don't have to accept 12 kids into your program if you don't think you can accommodate it. You don't have to do it every week if you don't think you can accommodate every week. Just schedule it as frequently as you are able to. You could schedule it every two weeks or so, or if you'd rather get it all done in one fell swoop and do an intense week of librarian and training and that's it, you could do it that way too. You also, again, don't have to do it in 15 weeks if you can show them the ins and outs of your library in five weeks or 10 weeks. Another option is that you could scale the age range up so that you're working with children who need less constant supervision. Our age range is nine to 12, but that's partially because we have a teen volunteer program here that serves kids 13 to 18. So that's one reason that I didn't include older kids in the program. Even though our teen volunteer program is different, it is not super library centric like this and it's not necessarily for kids who are interested in it as a career, but there is something for those older teens to get some experience here if they want it. We have had some patrons asking if we're gonna do something like this for older tweens and teens. So I'm gonna defer to our teen librarian on that one and see what she decides, but if you don't have something for teens at your library and you wanna work with older kids, this could definitely work for them as well. You also don't have to do an application process if you don't think that would work for your population. Again, you can do the signup sheets and have the kids pick which departments they're interested in. There are so many different ways that you can structure this program to fit what you need. Some other suggestions that I got from a friend of mine, she works at a library in Sullivan County here, which is a neighboring county that the community's population of almost 7,000. Her library has one full-time and one part-time staff person, so very, very small. Her suggestions, if you have one to two staff people, is that while the first person takes care of operations, you could utilize the second person to provide that more immersive training. You could also pick a topic for each visit. Obviously, they don't have departments like we do, so everything is kind of centrally located and if you want to talk about circulation for one visit, you could do that. If you want to talk about storytime planning for one visit, you could do that. Just pick which topics you want to cover and hit those. She also suggested recruiting qualified volunteers. She said that she particularly has a stay-at-home mom who is a former librarian, so retired librarians and library workers, if you have those in your community that would be willing to help facilitate this program, please, please reach out to them. You could also stagger the learning levels if you want, so if you want to do younger kids, you could pick more basic things like learning the Dewey Decimal System and then let the older kids learn the actual library operations. She suggested different tracks, so a literary track and a career track or something like that to help differentiate and help you plan. And then again, use patron interactions as learning opportunities and that's something I tell even our staff here, you're always going to be interrupted when working with these kids because inevitably you're still on the service desk or you're still doing your job, so use those interactions to kind of help the kids understand a little bit more of what you do. You can introduce them to the patrons, explain why they're there and let that be a learning opportunity for them. Anything can be a teaching teachable moment. Yes, absolutely. Both the kids and the patrons too coming in and seeing that you're doing this. Yeah, it's a great way to talk this program up to patrons too. So also her library is part of a branch system and she even suggested utilizing staff from other branches so either they can come to you and help you facilitate this program or if transportation is not an issue, you could even send the children to different branches for different topics or at different times. And that way too, they can see how not all libraries are the same, different libraries operate differently. So I thought those were some really good suggestions for smaller libraries. And again, I'm sure there are tons more that you guys can probably think of to adapt this program. As far as being a facilitator, so if you're in my role and you are kind of the liaison between the staff and the school librarians and the board and the kids and everyone involved, some advice that I would give. And this one was the big one for me and this is why I designed this training this year is to empower your staff to feel confident in working with children. Again, my background's in early childhood ed so I take a lot of stuff for granted when it comes to working with kids but some people don't have that in their wheelhouse and it's not a bad thing. It's just a learning opportunity. So I think it's very important to set up expectations for behavior both for the children and for your staff. I think sometimes if people aren't used to working with children, they have some strange ideas about how children of a certain age should behave that are just not realistic. Yes. I think it's important to let them know that children are distractible but that doesn't mean that they're not listening and one of the best examples I can think of of this from my experience in the program, I've had two boys and they were helping me set up for a program and it was a magic treehouse program and I had strung up a laser maze with yarn in the hallway and we were setting out the snacks and oh my gosh, that laser maze was irresistible. They wanted to run through that laser maze so bad and I kept reeling them back in, redirecting and I kept thinking they're not paying attention to anything I'm saying. They have no idea what's going on in this program, why we're doing any of this, all they know is they wanna run through that laser maze, right? So I actually did let them run through the laser maze once we got finished with everything else but we went out to the youth services desk and a patron came by to ask about the program and one of the little boys was like, oh, can I tell her about it? And I'm thinking, sure, okay. And he did, he told her everything that she needed to know about that program even though he was super distracted by the laser maze the whole time I was talking. So I think it's important just to let other adults know who don't work with children every day that they're paying attention a lot of times even when it seems like they're not. And these kids are the cream of the crop. These kids were handpicked by school librarians because they want to be here. I think that's important to stress as well. And I also think it is important to teach them disciplinary strategies, to teach them those redirection strategies, how to model tasks for children, how to break tasks down for children. Those are all things that I'm including in the staff training this year. And the slides for that training are also available on the Google Drive as well. So if you're interested in kind of what I'm teaching our staff about working with children, you can take a look at that. And then this is a quote from one of my colleagues that worked in a smaller library and he now works here with us. And he was heavily involved in the program. And he said that he thought the most helpful thing was the schedule so that you know when the kids are coming and you know whether it's a tour day or a project day and you can sort of plug things into that. He said examples of tasks are crucial. So that little document that I created with those examples was good for them to kind of plug things into that. So finally, this program, it does take a lot of time and work but it is well worth it. And I just wanna share with you some of the feedback that we got from the kids and the families on those surveys at the end of the program. I liked that I got to see what was behind the scenes of the library and how to do things I've always wondered about. We did fun activities and worked with amazing people. It was a wonderful program. Thank you for giving us this opportunity. Thank you for letting us join this awesome program. This was awesome. These are obviously the children they're using emojis and things. Thank you for making this program. We enjoyed it so much. I have loved being a librarian and training. I think the first year was very successful and that you did a phenomenal job. That little girl was my favorite. Yes. And then this feedback is from the families. This was one of our moms. She told me this was the most fun she's ever had. She looked forward to her weekly program and it made her feel really good about herself. She felt special for being invited to participate by the librarian. That was one of the kiddos I recommended. So that made me feel really good. It was awesome. Can't wait until little brother is old enough to apply. We were amazed at how great this program was. My child would participate in this program for as long as it could last. And finally my family and I adore the library and I believe this program is an excellent way to share the joy of libraries with children in a technology saturated world is important to see the importance of books and services libraries offer. So what greater testimony could you ask for than that? And one thing I do want to add about my child would participate for as long as it could last something else I'm doing this year to include our alumni. The week before the first official start date this year we are going to have a Q&A session with librarian and training alumni. So our kids from last year are going to come in and I'm going to kind of moderate a Q&A session and discussion with the new kids so that they can share their experiences and have that conversation about what the program was like with our veterans. So the one about wait till the little brother is old enough. Obviously this is something that they're not going to let you stop doing. We're committed now. Yes. But I'm okay with that. So this is the link here, the LIT.muchhambsters.com where you can find all of those resources I talked about and these presentation slides. And I do update it periodically. So whenever we do a new year of the program I'll put new schedules, new information in there. So just keep checking it. And of course there's all my contact information. If you think of something after the webinar today and you want to get in touch please feel free to send me an email or seek us out on social media because I would love to see how people adapt this program at their own libraries. Yes, definitely. All right, well thank you so much, Jennifer for sharing all that with us. If anybody has any questions go ahead and type them into your questions section of your GoToWebinar interface. Any questions or comments or thoughts on doing this at your library or more detailed questions to ask of Jennifer here. There we go, sorry. Moving things around on my screen. I think this is a great program as I said. I think it can be. And I remember you did mention that at ARSL that you said that, you know, I'm sorry we're such a big library but there are lots of things. And here in Nebraska we have mostly small libraries but we do have a few, a couple of large systems too with multiple branches. And it's interesting, you know, there is ARSL which is very focused for the smaller libraries and there are certain things that, you know they can speak to each other about very well but a lot of things are eternal. They fit any library. And like what you were saying, I was even thinking about that you have different departments that do all these things but even the smallest library still does all those things just maybe one or two people do them. It's really just show them everything that they can learn in a library. Here in Nebraska we do an internship grant program and your description of what you've got set up for these kids is the same thing I try and tell have our internship libraries do as well. There we have them doing older, generally it's like older high school and college students ideally ones that are potentially interested already because they're older and thinking about college, graduate school careers might be interested in actually becoming a librarian. But it's the same process, the same in learn all the different parts to see what you like, which part that really gets your attention. And that's what I love about it is that we include everyone, including maintenance because I definitely want to stress that your stereotypical view of what a librarian is is not every aspect of the job. And some of us, our little, our smaller libraries, they are the maintenance. Yeah. You do a janitor to come and say, please clean up this mess or please go clean the bathroom because somebody did something bad in there. It's you as a librarian, you might have to actually do that. Right. Yeah. So another thing I was thinking about too, I mean, these are the younger kids and you were talking about the, I think it was the first comment about one of the kids made about learning about what's behind the scenes, what goes on behind the library. And that made me think that this, I mean, ideally, you're talking about librarians and training is what you call this. And that this is, you may become a librarian in your future life, but it doesn't have to be that. This is also a way of getting the next generation to become, even if they don't become library employees, library advocates or library supporters and that they will understand when they are adults, even if they don't need to use the library themselves or don't work at one that it is something important and what is done there and what needs to be done to keep supporting the library and voting for all the bad issues and levies and everything for them and keeping them open. Absolutely. Something that someone else who attended the session in September pointed out the idea of, ensuring that your community has hireable, qualified people to work at your library in the future. But I do agree. I love what you said about them becoming library advocates, if nothing else, because they've seen everything that we have to offer and that we do for the community. And all the work that you do, some people don't suggest to the library is, why do we need it? It's just books and everything's on the internet now. But they see behind the scenes, this is what, which is actually what goes into running a library. It's not just checking out books and reading the newest, cool novel. What is your, I became a librarian because I liked your books. No, there's a lot more behind it. And it's, because there's, I think there are sometimes too many people that don't know how libraries are run and what they do and so they don't understand it. Why do you have a degree? Why is it such a big deal that you have people, like you said, who are educated enough to know what to do. These kids grow up knowing that and can tell other people this is what actually happens. Yeah. Do you wanna do all these things that they do behind those closed doors? No. Interestingly enough, on the children's survey, I threw in just for fun, the question, what was your favorite department to work in? And the majority of them said either maintenance or admin. And I think their reasoning, at least for admin, was because they loved working on those videos with the marketing team. So I thought that was interesting that they were drawn to that side of things, more so than the book side of things. Yeah. Or the public service side. Yeah. More technology-based sort of to using the video software. Yeah. So it might, even if they decide librarianship is not for them, it may open their eyes to other things that they could do as well. You just never know. Moving into PR as a career or something. You just never know and lined up. Cool. All right. Well, it doesn't look like anybody has any desperate questions they've typed in right now. We've been chatting, but that's fine. You guys can reach out to Jennifer with her contact info there. And definitely take a look at all the resources that she's supplied to us. I'm gonna actually pull back, present your control to me. And I'm gonna show you where we have this here. There we go. So this is the session page for today's show, which will then become the page for the archive. And here's the link that you were talking about. The LITmuchHampsters.com. And that opens up on my screen here. The Google Drive with everything of the PowerPoint presentation. And as you said, brochures, scenarios, schedule, all the different things, the application. So take a look at all of this. All of these resources. And if you do have any questions or anything, reach out to Jennifer. Or come see me at PLA. No, actually, yeah. If you're going to Nashville, yeah. So that's local for you, huh? Yeah, it is. Easy access for me. Yeah, great. All right, well, thank you so much, Jennifer, for coming on the show today. This was great to have here. Thank you everyone for attending. And so that will wrap it up for today's presentation. The, as I said, this will be in our archives and I will go to our main page. This is our main Encompass Live website. If you do use your search engine of choice and Google the title of our show Encompass Live, so far we are the only thing called that on the internet. So nobody else can call you that calls anything that because it will come up with the top of your search results. These are our upcoming shows but right underneath them is a link to the archives where here is a last week show where there will be a link to, oh, I gotta get the, well there's already a link to the presentation resources you saw but we'll be added to the one for today's show is a link to the recording which goes out to the Nebraska Library Commission's YouTube channel. That's where we post all of the our own recordings of our archives. When that is ready, hopefully by the end of the day today, as long as all, you know, everything's technology cooperates with me. Everyone who attended and everyone who registered today will get an email from me letting you know that it's available and that you can go there and check it out. While we're here on the archives, I'll also mention you'll see we have a search feature here so you can search the archives of our show where you can search all the way back to all of our archives or just the most recent 12 months. This is because Encompass Live has been around for a little over 10 years. Now our first show is in January, 2009 and we have all of our archives here going back to the very beginning of the show. So you can search for any topic you want if you wanna search all the way back to the beginning or if you want something very current, just limit it to the most recent 12 months. Either way, do pay attention to the dates. The date when a show was originally broadcast will be on here so you know when it actually happened. Some of the topics we talk about may no longer be relevant, may no longer be accurate. Services or products might not exist anymore. Links might not work to certain websites and things. So just do pay attention as you're looking at some of the older things. Certain things are always eternally gonna be useful to you but you never know. As long as we have the internet and YouTube hosting our things, our full archives will always be out there for you. We also do have a Facebook page, just a link to it here and I've got it open over here. So if you are a big Facebook user, you can give us a like over there. We post reminders to your reminder to log in to today's show and when our recordings are ready and posted, they'll post up there as well on here. So if you do like to follow things on Facebook, two or three times a week, we post different things out there. We also share onto Twitter using our hashtag and comp live. We'll abbreviate it there for that so you can also see what we're doing out there. So that will wrap it up for today's show. I hope you join us next week when our topic is advocating for libraries. Actually, we were just talking about the advocates of all ages. Specifically, we're talking here about getting some more people under 40 to become board members or trustees or near friends groups. So the millennials, the Gen Z, those ones that as they call are labeled now. We are gonna have some people from the American Library Association United for Libraries. That's for your friends and foundations and trustees group. We'll be with us. The page is the president elect of that along with some other staff that will be joining us to talk about how to recruit younger people to as it moves very similar to what you did. I forget the younger people involved in supporting and keeping libraries going. So please do register for less next week. Show it any of the other ones we have here. You see we have our December and January and even into February sessions booked. Do note that for the last two weeks of this month we're usually as I said originally the income slide is on Wednesdays. For the last two weeks of this month, Wednesday happens to be holidays. For Christmas day and New Year's day we are closed as many other places may be. So we've bumped our shows to Tuesday. So you'll know that it does say when you go into these sessions due to the holiday it'll be on Tuesday. Same time, just a day earlier. So that'll wrap it up for today. Thank you everyone for attending. Thank you for being here with us. Jennifer, hope you do okay with the snow that you suddenly got there. Thank you. We too. Y'all survive, okay? Yeah. And hopefully we'll see you another time at Encompass Live. Bye bye.