SUSAN BENTON: Hey, everyone, good morning.
My name is Susan Benton.
I'm here with wonderful colleagues and experts to talk about needs assessments.
I'm, for those who don't know me, I'm a woman who believes in signs, in messages from the
universe.
And...yesterday, evening, I got in late, I was working on my email, catching up on some
voicemail and finally I was just really exhausted and got ready for bed, but just as I was going
towards that bed, I noticed on the wall, a beautiful photograph, a black and white photograph
of this building from many, many years ago.
And it really grounded me that there would be, in a national, frankly an international
hotel chain, a photograph of L.A.'s Public Library.
Now, to be sure, this is a building of incredible architectural significance, but I think it
also says something about the pride and the realization of the significance of what happens
in this building.
That there should be a beautiful black and white photograph of the L.A. Public Library
in my hotel room last night.
It was great.
And, whether you're working directly in the public library or you're working in conjunction
with the public library, and you may or may not have a building like this in your community
that has the same architectural significance, what you're doing has incredible importance
to the individuals that you're working with every day and to the community that you serve,
and to the leaders that you serve.
I come to my work, not as a librarian, but many years working with city and county, topappointed
officials, topelected officials, mayors, county executives who really are working on some
of the most important, critical issues for our nation.
Education, employment, workforce development, health, financial security, quality of life.
And every one of those mayors, every one of those county officials, are being served so
well by the work that's done in the Public Library.
But how do we know where we're able to get the biggest bang for our buck?
Across all the professions that I worked with in the local government sector, over the last
30 years, I think this profession is acutely aware of what the needs are in their community.
Yet, with all of that just kind of instinctual knowledge that we have, you are incredible
in terms of having marvelous observation skills, and being able to kind of connect the dots
about what's happening in your communities and discern what's needed.
There still needs to be an ability to focus and make sure you're matching your resources
where the greatest needs are, where the highest priorities are.
So, that's the Genesis of this session and as I said, I've got great colleagues with
me to talk with you and with me, about the needs assessment processes that they're using
to not only look outside the library and what the needs are, but what are the needs inside
the library?
What are the staff, training, what are the staff development that we need to do to make
sure that we're always able to meet our public where they need us to be.
So...I'm delighted to introduce you to Kristin McDonough from the Science, Industry and business
library, Danielle Milam and Jacquie Brinkley.
>> I'm going to talk about our financial education program where we decided to train the staff.
The needs assessments that we did was that we run the very vibrant program of over 350
classes, hands on classes and presentations and financial advisory at the midtown science
and business library and we wanted to push it out to our 90 branch libraries.
And so we sent a survey to the managers and the staff there and were absolutely astounded
at the response which showed resistance, reluctance that we later realized was out right fear.
The staff felt totally unequipped to host financial programs.
We might find this also in the legal area and in the health and medical area because
of a fear they'd be asked questions, that would lead them to give advice.
With the help of IMLS, we engaged in a twoyear intensive staff training program.
Eleven modules of interactive exercises, scripts, videos, with Avatars representing typical
kinds of questions one gets in a library, games and most important, webbased resources
on topics like banking credit, savings, living on the financial edge, insurance, tax, identity
theft.
So, we have two years worth of that curriculum.
It's on the website to be freely shared, customized, used across the country.
We update the links continuously.
It's under NYPL Money Matters.
At the end of the two years, we trained over 235 front line staff.
But the proof is in the pudding, so I'd like to talk a little about how we continuously
assess to see if that core of staff who were trained then, what difference has it made
in the neighborhood libraries.
One of the things we've done in another needs assessment is that we partner actively with
trade associations as well as with government agencies who embed their pro bono volunteers
and staff at the library.
And as we trained our colleagues, we waited to see what kinds of programs were they going
to ask for.
At the same time, the Office of Financial Empowerment in New York City issued a study
of immigrant communities.
That was done in concert with communitybased organizations, banks, and consulates.
And...it's not surprising, the results that there are cultural, linguistic, et cetera,
barriers that keep people in immigrant communities, from being banked.
So, with that needs assessment, from the city of New York, we put out a call to our 90 branches
that two years before hesitated to have even the most basic presentation and we had fifteen
libraries who volunteered and again, the proof is in the pudding, to give up valuable real
estate, community rooms, where children's programs and knitting circles and after school
programs were all vying for this real estate.
And staff time.
And they volunteered not only to have the programs, but to have advisory services from
volunteers who had been trained in a 45hour program by the city university of New York.
We were able to cite them in eleven branches.
We just started maybe three or four weeks ago.
The staff is more disappointed than anyone that the community is very slowly responding.
We've gone from a staff who said keep everything in Midtown Manhattan to keep everyone so invested
in this program that we did, that made them comfortable and adept and capable of knowing
what is the difference between giving informed referrals to authoritative resources and giving
advice.
So, what I'd like to share with you are three major insights that we, that we have gotten.
One clearly that a comfortable, knowledgeable staff, who is invested enough to use those
websites, him or herself, is absolutely key.
Partnerships is absolutely key.
Throughout this whole process, we have staff that go to local consulates, we have partnerships
with everything from the Financial Planning Association, to the Customer Services Society.
They are dying, as are federal agencies, state agencies and city agencies, especially in
the wake of 2008 and SarbanesOxley, they are looking to every library represented in this
room as a channel of distribution, not only for their trained staff, but for the volumes
of very accessible, very friendly, very easy to understand, educational material that they
have been charged with producing since 2008.
They have a reknit, they being triala agencies and NGOs to do consumer education and they
are looking, actively for outlets.
Not just in the immigrant community, but across all sectors of our public.
They know that we, as libraries, are places that they can touch their public.
So...one of the things that we are doing in the library world is, is in April, in October,
which are the financial literacy months and weeks, we make a big effort to have money
smart, investing in your library week, many libraries do partner with the Federal Reserve,
et cetera.
And then, very often, those efforts dissipate somewhat to what we're trying to do.
When we have branch libraries with the willingness to provide this real estate, we are trying
to provide this kind of group presentation, hands on instruction and personal, confidential
advisory services offered by our partners.
I have a notice here.
I'm going to close in my last few minutes by giving you some informal ways that we're
assessing that we're doing well.
Even though our branches are scattered across three boroughs and everyone's understaffed
as you are, we continue to offer this handson training, as well as ten elearning modules
and libraries continue to send their staff to these.
With advisory services offered from trained volunteers through the professional associations
and through the Community Services Society, we ask the people who come to these sessions
to comment.
And to comment anonymously.
We're talking about touching our immigrant communities that this huge survey indicated,
feels culturally and educationally duracinated, if you will, from the community system.
These are some of their comments.
I met Miss Wen at the branch.
I went to find assistant for my aunt's debt.
The building borrowed lots of money from the bank.
Each unit had incredible debt.
Miss Wen is nice and willing to help me find free legal service information.
She speaks very good Chinese, therefore, for most new immigrants and elders, this is very
good service.
Especially, they don't ask people personal questions.
This is the second one.
This Tuesday, I joined Money Matters Coaching.
She not only knew about credit, but also tax.
She is a great Chinese people, the same as other Chinese person like enthusiasm, patients
responsible.
Many people can't speak good enough English.
They only speak Chinese, also, they don't know how to use computer.
Also, Chatham Square Library had the program.
I heard many persons said great overall.
We need finance help in Chinese.
Thank you.
>> Thanks, Kristin.
That's wonderful.
That's a nice example of doing a needs assessment and understanding the staff needed some new
training and orientation to build their comfort in working with community members around financial
matters.
Now we're going to Danielle, who is going to be talking about external to the library.
>> Thank you so much, Susan.
I work with the Las Vegas Clark County Library District.
I had the pleasure of arriving in Vegas right at the downturn, during the recession, bankruptcies,
house foreclosures and incredible distress for about 70 months in a row, leading the
nation in growth for three decades and for three years tumbling like crazy.
So, it's a great pleasure for me to join this great convening by IMLS and talk about engaging
communities.
As a development director, I wasn't going to get a lot of money looking for resources.
I needed to get tools in place so we could quickly assess our situation and learn more
about our community.
The
question on the table was what was the library of the 21st century?
We learned so much through the great grant program that the IMLS did in that area.
And now we're moving on to what kind of community do we want to build?
And this is really exciting work, I think, for the library field because we're getting
out of our walls and into the community in a much deeper way.
The way we did it was to use some private sector tools as well as some government sources.
So we use the census, we use the Department of Labor information and more importantly,
we used some new databases that are available called market segmentation databases.
This is the first map that we created in Las Vegas.
It told us a lot about our community.
In these national databases, they do pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to generate even one
or two reports, we created a dynamic system where every single staff person could get
on the system, in the library, or actually remotely, because it's webbased and take a
look at the community.
And we overlaid, on top of all of the data from the census, Department of Labor and market
segments, our cardholder database.
This crazy quilt map shows you that out of the 65 categories in this particular database
called tapestry, that is provided by EZRE, we had 54.
When we started the program in 2010, we had 49.
Because it's dynamic, we're able to track the kinds of changes that the community is
undergoing.
It's fragmented, it's incredibly diverse, and the story in Vegas is that every year
1/3 of the city moves in and 1/3 of the city moves out, so we need this kind of dynamic
tool.
This shows you just one of the branches.
We did code the cardholder activity at their most frequently used branch.
We were able to create a new kind of branch map that didn't have the old concentric circles,
but rather has a census block by census block where cardholders are that use that particular
library.
Our branch managers are doing an incredible job of managing complexity.
This has 21 different household segments and they literally change block to block.
One of the things that we say in the library world is that we serve families and one of
the things that we learned in Vegas that we actually serve 26 different kinds of households
of families.
That's just you know, quite amazing as our budget fell 1/3, I think I got there, it was
84 million and now it's 48 million.
We had to, very quickly, target our resources to the actual populations that we're serving.
And so, we started looking at the family segments.
And nearly half of the, well, 67% of the population actually is households that have families.
And as we started to dig deeper into the data, we found out that the largest segment, almost
300,000 called the up and coming.
These families are young, they've got young kids, but they've got education and careers,
they're on their way.
They've got houses, cars, lots of expenses that you know, relate to children and raising
kids.
But then the other half, almost 300,000 of the other family households are actually making
less than 50 K a year.
The aspiring families are going to be up and coming.
The rest are making way under 50, like around the 30 K to 14,000.
These are the families we're mostinterested in right now.
We're one of the states that doesn't have full day kindergarten, legislature's meeting
now.
We're really wondering where are these families who have young parents and young kids going
to get the PreK help they need.
Using this data, we're targeting in on the heart of our community's biggest issue and
that is education.
Of course it also relates to employment and economic development as well.
Once we have this data, we're able to take our staff quickly through what does it mean?
And we have a number of different exercises that sort of are precursors to maybe the,
the more intensive work you might do in a very expensive focus group.
And we just take our, we, we look at the segment and the description that's provided by the,
by the market segment folks, it gives you a lot of information where they shop, what
they do, what they like to do, what their interests are, how they like to get communicated
with and then we read between the lines and we have an exercise, what makes them tick?
This particular one, the young and restless is a group of young singles and like the name
says, you know, they kind of love the partying life, they probably work on the strip and
what makes them tick is just having some fun and some fun that doesn't cost a whole lot.
It also leads us down the path to get more familiar with the kinds of users that we use,
so...we go quickly from the market segment household type, which is by lifestyle and
life stage and we get into the user narratives.
And this particular slide comes from another IMLS grant we had called the Learning Labs.
We were fortunate to be part of the ULLC and a project sponsored by IMLS and MacArthur.
This talks about a young man that was bullied at school, not doing well at school, like
many of the kids we're seeing in the Digital Learning Labs across the nation.
Not doing good at school, but thriving in the library environment where they actually,
one of our branch managers started up a deejay lab.
That's a clear career path.
One club actually is contracting with deejays for over $6 million a year.
Unbelievable.
So...this guy, you know, we actually talked with his, his dad and his dad said, what did
you do to my son?
You know...he used to pace around the house, he was really agitated, he couldn't focus
at school, and as the branch manager was talking to the young man, you know, to the young man's
father, he came out of the lab and said, some kids don't know what's going on, what do I
do?
He said, go train them.
Mere weeks and months later, what he on his way with immense confidence and fistpumps
galore.
This information has quickly given us the ability to move into strategy development,
very, very specific to the households that we're serving.
That group that has the resources, we know how to reach them electronically, of course,
all of these being young parents with young kids are digital natives.
So, we're really looking at apps and mobile strategies, but we're also looking at the
great divide.
So that second half of the families that have low education and I'm talking less than high
school, low employment prospects, low English language, about half of them have low English
language and we know now, block by block, where do we go if we want to reach the Englishlearner
population, if we want to reach the families that need us the most.
This is a chart that we actually created a pie chart for each of our library branches.
Again, we're able to use the data, we had 54 different segments, but we sort of divvied
them into three major groups and we colorcoded them.
We had three major kinds of families.
Families that have the resources, families that have low resources and then families
that have low resources and English language learning challenges.
So...the three oranges are kind of the family segments.
Then we had the elder segment and they were both elders that have the resources.
We have a lot of midwesterners and so forth that move in, second homes, lots of education.
We also have a huge population of seniors that don't have any resources at all and so,
we wanted to sort of distinguish our strategy development for them.
And then, the second group is kind of mushy.
It's singles and couples that don't have kids in the household.
We saw a bifurcation of households that have the resources and those that don't.
We set benchmarks for getting people involved in the segment, as well as the library, as
well as finding segments that weren't using the library yet.
Finding the neighborhoods where we didn't see a lot of cardholders.
I might say also that the, using the little pie charts is helping us cluster our library
branches.
They may not have been next to each other geographically, now we're clustering them
by who they serve.
It becomes customerdriven by the staff and they feel very empowered to sort of tweak
and tailor their branch service mix, based on the population they're serving.
We modeled all the demographic information in town on a national study of adult learners.
And we came up with a high challenge, adult literacy map and this is the first time that
our community had actually seen data like this.
We know we had a tremendous number of adults that had low educations and marginal occupations
and were probably in those years in the category of totally out of work.
Probably close to losing their homes, et cetera.
And so, this, this map actually helped us, this is the hot hot hot spot.
These are all high challenge adult literacy census blocks and you can see some of them
are really super high challenged.
And those are the ones that we found actually were in the category called new west.
Which means they moved to the U.S. in the last ten years.
They're the foreign nationals.
We used this to reposition the library in town.
Before the recession, nobody in Vegas worked together, it was a very low collaboration
city.
And we were able to take this to the United Way, to our Economic Development Authority,
to our School Board and to the executive staff at the school district and say, we are now
targeting our adult education classes with him.
Now we are moving one of our libraries closer into the area that is the spur hot spot.
Those are actually also families that have low English and low income and low occupational
opportunity.
The latest grant we received from the IMLS is called the Power Patrons Survey.
All the data we're using is based on checkouts.
That's the only data our particular system has at this moment.
We want to get more data in terms of what are the what's the behavior in downloads?
What's the behavior in computer use?
What's the behavior in program attendance.
This particular study is really looking at power patrons and the vendor we've been using,
Civic Tech has ten other national libraries we're doing the study with.
We're able to see the long tail of use, a lot of our cardholders are in that one to
forty checkouts a year.
This is 2014 data.
There's a long tail of folks that are using up to 400 items a year.
We looked at the 20% of the long tail and then mapped them out to the market segments.
This is telling us, are the power patrons mirroring the kinds of households that we're
seeing across the rest of the community?
And it becomes, for us, a way, not only to do a community needs assessment, but to benchmark
our future progress as we try to get more of the households into the library using it.
This particular study will come out in September, I will have a few highlights that come out
in ALA and we'll go ahead and put the publication out in September.
So take a look at that when it comes out.
Of course, the closing thought is that as we don't have to do so much with managing
the things, we actually get to do the very, very exciting work at building our community.
And...for Vegas, we're really thrilled that we were able to use these private sector tools,
quickly assess our community and then use the other kinds of community engagement strategies
so we know who we're serving and better able to use and get as Maura said, the biggest
bang for the buck for the resources we still have after the recession.
Thank you.
>> Great, super.
[applause] >> Thanks, Danielle.
Danielle's given us a broad view, now we'll go to a narrower view.
Jacquie will talk about working with a specific group of individuals in the community.
>> Thank you, Susan.
Thank you, IMLS for inviting me to be here today.
I'm delighted to be representing Infopeople and I'm talking to you about a California
state library, statewide initiative, the Veterans Connect at the Library.
Now going into its fourth year with IMLSfunding and a significant amount of local resources
as well.
So...it is absolutely appropriate that California be taking the lead in this.
The military continues its draw down in spite of what's going on in the news today.
Military troops are being sent home from southwest Asia and the military force is being drawn
down and reduced overall.
Approximately 160,000 military service members are discharged every year and over 10% of
those Veterans come to California.
They're either discharged at a base in California or they return to their home state or they
relocate here.
So...it is, again, it's perfectly appropriate and it was spot on for California to recognize
that Veterans in their communities are in need of connecting and what better place than
a trusted and confidential, with professional staff, and help, than at a public library.
So...sadly, a very high percentage of Veterans across the country are not connecting, not
tapping in and not receiving benefits and services for which they may be eligible.
A lot of that, we've been told that every Veteran or every discharged service member
goes through a week before it, of debriefing.
It's called transition assistance program, TAP.
It's a one week of very, very condensed, very structured, information dumping.
One Veteran told me it's about 100 pounds of information received in maybe, they get
the week and maybe they're out of town that week or they're on duty somewhere and so they
don't get the full week.
Nevertheless, they come out of this with all this information that couldn't possibly, could
they retain after one, one session and so many are anxious about returning and they're
nervous and they're excited.
So really coming out of it, someone else told me, all I can think about is the next In and
Out burger they're going to get.
Some are young, some are not so young, they've had a lot of information given to them and
couldn't possibly remember everything.
What they do remember, the younger Veterans are connected to the Higher Education.
They went in for those benefits, they come out knowing.
That's often the really strong link.
They go to their community college or they get enrolled with their GI bill and they know
those benefits.
But so many come out and they are totally off the grid in terms of what they're getting.
And this goes back, we talked with Vietnam Veterans who had very, very little assistance,
but you, and you'd think there would have been progress, but even today, Veterans are
coming out, not knowing their benefits and services.
So...without getting those services, they're leaving a lot of federal money on the table
and then they turn to the state.
So it's a drain on the state services.
So, it's really to our advantage to get these folks connected to what services and benefits
they can, that they're eligible for.
And it's really our responsibility.
They have served us and for what we can provide to them, it's, it's really on, on us and it's,
it's, it makes you very proud to be part of their life.
And just to give you an idea of what the diversity is, I attend a VA women Veterans event in
Chico, California.
It's a rural northern California county.
The VA has a Health Care system targeting women, Veterans in these rural communities
and really trying to bring down barriers of service to these women Veterans.
It was an opportunity, and the library was offered to host the event and so, it brought
these women, about 50 women had signed up through their VA connection to come to the
Chico Library and spend a day of rejuvenation and rest, they had healing touch, massage,
makeup and manicures.
While the public was circulating still, these women were going to different offices that
were little nooks and crannies set up so they could go and have this day of refreshment.
But just to give you an idea, we had a luncheon at the end of the day, they asked, who is
the oldest in the room, and there were two, 91 and 90yearolds from World War II really,
really special women and boy were they in great shape.
A real inspiration.
As well as a young 28yearold, recently discharged.
So...talking about diversity of a population.
This is just one room.
So you know that over the, over the span of the country, we're really dealing with folks
that are looking for burial rights for their spouses, and hearing aid help and then to
the extreme of trying to connect to those education waivers and what's in their GI bill.
And drilling down to what's my DD214, the piece of identification, when you get discharged
from the military, you have to have that and if you, if you left the military and you don't
remember what it was or you didn't, you lost that piece of information, you now, a lot
of libraries are helping Veterans find that identification so that they can connect with
VA or whatever it is, the benefits they're looking for.
So...just to give you some background, how it started in California was our department
of, the California Department of Veterans' Affairs.
CalVet approached the libraries in the communities, how can libraries help in getting Veterans
connected to these benefits?
When a military member's discharged, the Department of Education immediately shuts down the email
for that person.
There's no communication between Department of Defense and the various state departments
of Veterans affairs and how to try to connect with those people.
It's really on the Veteran to make the connection.
Unless they go out with the medical discharge or that, like I said, they go directly to
their community college or their university, there's a gap of communication and so, we
don't have the ability to connect with them.
So, it's up to the state Department of Veterans' Affairs, in our case, CalVet that do outreach.
They depend on the Veterans service officers, they depend on a different notforprofit Veteran
organizations and, and sadly, the younger vets that are coming out, we found out, don't
relate to the other organizations that have been around a long time.
They're not so genderfriendly sometimes, and age is a difference, so they just don't see
themselves as a Veteran of that group.
So, again, if they're not connected through their school or some other affiliation, they
really do miss out on a lot of these benefits.
So...through CalVet being our guide and partner in this whole development of how can libraries,
what can we do in communities, they suggested to us, if we could create some kind of, even
a person on the staff or a volunteer, that could just listening, could we get good listeners?
We could create an in a box model.
What could we do that would be as least of a burden as possible and create a collection
of materials that would be specific to Veteran issues in the current.
We could build a volunteer core that would be the point people for the, for the Veteran
to come into and provide, and CalVet said if we could get a laptop, a printer, that
would be huge.
A lot of organizations still depend on printing and faxing.
It's very dated, but even in the four years they've been involved, we're seeing progress.
It is statewide and growing, we do field a lot of questions and support, we provide the
support, but it's really a, it's on that point person at the library to be the outreach and
the contact for us, but, another really key thing is to get involved in what the organizations
are already, who is already serving Veterans in your community?
That's why we found the project level, the statewide level, it's really about the community
needs assessment, drilled down to who's in that community and what's already going on.
We never intended and we made that very clear to all of the partners that we made, we're
not here to duplicate any services, we're strictly about referring and getting that
Veteran, maybe just being a good listener.
Our volunteers are Veterans themselves or military families.
That's who we're targeting as volunteers.
They really have a sense of, of what that Veteran may have been, what their life might
have been like.
Because as much as I want to be part of that community, I am not and I never will be and
I really feel that when I'm in a group of, especially young Veterans.
They just have a real camaraderie and I so respect that.
Getting the volunteer to be a Veteran or military family member has been pivotal.
But knowing the community you're in, and in every community, we're in currently, it's
all very different.
Some are really connected to the employment development department.
They've been a really good resource for us.
Others have been to their county Veterans service officers or other organizations within
the community.
So we have found that to be really key in making this successful in each community we're
in.
I'd like to say we've been at, we're 24 now, but after July 1st, we think we'll be at 40
different sites.
One of our branches is Sacramento Public Library.
One of the branches has opened up her branch one morning every month, ahead of the public
library schedule and offers them, the Veterans that happen to live in a residential facility
down the street, they come and it's a special field trip for these vets.
It's actually now, there's a certain amount of time they were.
They're house restricted, but at a certain level, they can go to the library, that's
their field trip perks.
So, Kristi, the branch manager has opened up the library on these Friday mornings just
to these Veterans where they can come in, they get computer access, they can get staff
assistance with creating resumes or working on their, any other research they're doing
or they could just sit and read the newspaper in the big living room of this library.
They've told us through these focus groups we held how special that makes them feel and
these are, these are guys that are not prone to being touchyfeely ones.
This makes them really feel very respected and honored.
So, I, that's been a great, a great learning piece, but...so, we have a 12step model that
we've created that we're trying to kind of package and refine so we can make this as
simple as possible for libraries to take on, again, building that collection, getting the
laptop and the, the chrome books, that was another CalVet suggested if we could have
something people could work on on their own.
So we check out chrome books inside the library for the Veterans and/or their family members.
And we really do try to make that, make that clear that family members are often the connection
that we have initially.
A Veteran, through this project, we found that Veterans often don't selfidentify as
Veterans.
One of the basic questions we've learned and shared with our library partners is not to
ask the question are you a Veteran?
But have you served in the military?
Interestingly enough, women in particular are a very, mostlikely not to identify themselves
as a Veteran.
I met a woman who had a long time friendship with another woman and neither of them had
ever mentioned together that they had served in the military.
After knowing each other for years.
It's a mindset.
We're learning it's a different look.
It's not our parents or our grandparents, it can be someone very young and very unassuming.
But, some of these vets don't selfidentify, but they do so consciously and they don't
want to be part of that organization.
It is through a family member or friend that is often the person that will make that connection
for us.
So...I think that's, I think that sums up my, our Veterans Connect project.
It's growing and we're very proud to be part of this community.
And...we have, in fact, in this library, I was talking to some volunteers.
A gentleman was going up the escalator, showing her the key to his new apartment because of
the connection he had with the woman that was sitting on the floor next to him.
>> Thank you, great.
[applause] >> All right, we're going to stop talking
for awhile and ask you to think about questions that you might have of us.
And happy to answer.
And we've got questions that can come in live stream as well.
I wonder, is there anyone that has a question straight away?
Yep?
>> I have a question for Danielle about accessing the tapestry resources, is that something
you got grant funding for or did you get it in kind?
>> We actually received our first LSTA grant, it was 2009 money, we got it in 2010 and started
to set up the system, which is this dynamic system.
We worked with the vendor Civic Technologies and since that time, they've gone out to many
different public libraries, so over the last five years, we continued to get a bit of grant
money here and there to refine that.
And...now that we're working on the Power Patron Project, we identified ten libraries,
small, medium and large, who, and, together, I think we have over 18 million checkouts
and you know, all of the data that we're looking at, not only in terms of each of our systems,
but across the country.
So that we can actually start to see which library systems might have similar kinds of
community populations and we can create some learning communities around sharing information
on what works there.
>> Good morning, I'm with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a new federal agency.
I worked with some of you here, we're doing a slot of work with libraries.
I actually have a question, but before I do, can you repeat the name of the database?
>> We are using, we started out with EZRE's tapestry and Civic Technology's has added
a second database called Landscape..
>> Thanks.
My question is what kind of assessment work have you done in terms of serving the walkins
versus people who access your services online?
I hope I'm making sense of my question.
>> Is that for Kristin?
>> For any of you.
We feel we have patrons that come to the library and get books, but a lot are accessing your
services online.
So have you done work in that space?
>> I'd say that's our biggest challenge in the industry.
Is that the online services, it's very, well, unless they're doing a database, we are lacking
data.
In terms of who is walking in and coming into the programs.
We have great and vibrant partnerships.
We have found, like Kristin found, that some of the more helpful programs that we really
spend a lot of time developing, we're not getting the kind of program participation
that we want.
That would be our biggest challenge.
Trying to get a bar code scan or find out they don't have a card.
We're working on a database where they never have to show up to the library to get an activated
card.
They can work from home or their office.
>> We, we certainly try to service people who come in through our, we have very, very
vibrant, very, very busy, always underresourced, virtual telephone and email reference service
called askNYPL.
We make sure that staff from that service are part of the librarians who are continuously
trained with the online training modules we have.
So one of the ways we help people who choose not to come in or are outside the city is
to ask NYPL.
We also have advisory services in the entrepreneurship area and in the job coaching area.
We have 20 volunteer career coaches.
All of whom are certified.
Some work on the outside and out placement.
They give about four hours a week onsite, but more of them now are starting to offer
Skype coaching.
So, we have started in the advisory services, working, we have one job out placement coach
who Skypes in from Singapore, for example.
Of the eleven modules where we did an intensive three to fourhour handson training of our
front line staff, eight of those are also available online.
So that, with both our volunteer financial coaches, as well as our library staff and
people who come through Ask, we are able to refer them, not only to the vetted web resources,
but to the whole process of going through a module on insurance or identity theft or
living on the financial edge.
So we have several levels that we can use virtually.
>> Maria, will you identify >> Maria Carpenter from Santa Monica.
Kristin, your program sounds amazing.
I was wondering, who designed the curriculum?
>> I should have mentioned that, I was so I tend to go off on segues, I was so determined
not to go over that I left out some crucial things.
A fabulous, fabulous team from Rutgers University from the Cooperative Extension program at
Rutgers.
She is considered, Barb O'Neill, is considered one of the deans of consumer personal finance
education.
The reason they were such dreams.
Anyone who is really interested, I should say that I, I'm, I didn't look as closely
as I should have.
I'd be happy to answer any other questions, but my email or my web address there should
be, for this project, should be NYPL.org/civil (?) Not underscore.
And she, one of the byproducts of this project and why I underscored the point that regardless
of how wellresourced you are, where we are, I don't think libraries, I think IMLS helps
us, I think Urban Library helps us, ALA helps us, but I don't think we truly appreciate
we think of ourselves as serving the end user, our patrons in these 64 different kinds
of households.
We are a huge partner, and we truly serve NGOs and the trilite government agencies.
In the case of Barbara O'Neill, she's tapped, I'd say, by six or seven different consumer
academic organizations or whatever.
But having worked with us now, we taught her how to create Avatars, for example, we were
able to give her team, which had this incredible knowledge and created these, these scripts
and these interactive exercises, and the vetted websites, but we gave her 21st century technology
tools and as a result, she goes all over the country talking about libraries and the role
they play, she, we've become not only a consumer of her, untouchable personal finance information.
We have done what we do well, which is teach and she goes on military bases and does the
financial planning there.
>> Hi, Susan McVey at the Oklahoma Department of Public Libraries.
All of you use volunteers in the programs and outreach that you do.
I'd be interested in your comments about how you go about recruiting them or what you found,
I think Jacquie touched on it briefly in terms of working or selecting military family members
or Veterans themselves to use, but any tips or observations you found about how you went
through that and how it all worked out.
>> I'll start, thank you.
Yes, that was our goal.
The goal of using volunteers was because they are already so connected in their communities,
but also to take the burden off library staff, it would be one person managing the volunteers.
What we have found, however, it's a challenge, volunteers come in and they're very excited
and very passionate and ready to serve and ready to help, but there is not this steady
flow of Veterans coming in the door.
So we ask that they were doing actually a series of webinars now to train volunteers
and these are highly skilled, ready to go, volunteers.
Like I said, often Veterans themselves.
We're trying to give them new sets of skills, like how to help a Veteran transfer their
military skills into civilian language, so, on an employment resume, they can speak civilian.
And...and really, and showcase what they, they do.
We're trying to give our volunteers more sets of ideas to incorporate while they're on the
job.
Sadly, volunteers are leaving because they're not getting the hours of service they had
hoped or the interaction.
We tapped into, to make up for that or to supplement the VA officers a workstudy program,
with students from in their, when they're in their, using the GI bill that they can
be placed in community resources, so we've got four sites now that are approved by the
VA as being workstudy sites and one as already placed their students.
So these are great, these are Veterans sitting in your library bringing really great sets
of skills and they're being paid by the VA.
So, it's a winwin.
We're hoping to build on that.
The volunteer piece can be a challenge, but they're ombudsmen, that's been a great experience,
thanks.
>> We have a multipronged approach.
NYPL is huge, there's a fabulous volunteer office run centrally, but we get most of our
volunteers by strategic partnering with professional and trade associations that have a mandate,
as due these federal offices have a mandate to do consumer education in their, and they're
evaluated on it and we provide a place for them to get the foot traffic.
The same is true for these professional associations that have a pro bono mandate and some certified
financial planners or CFA, Chartered Financial Analysts or CPAs, New York State Society of
Certified Public Accountants.
They're providing a service, we're providing them a service.
And I, I, I can't underscore that enough.
In the financial education arena, which does involve financial products, et cetera, one
must have a QC, a Quality Assurance element and the way we have found works wonderfully,
I mentioned that throughout the system, we do, well, at, I should only talk about SIBL,
if you take all our advisory services with the entrepreneurs, the financial advisors,
the credit coaches, the tax advisors, the Medicare advisors, the entrylevel job search,
the executive job search, if you take all of those together, we have about 4500 of these
oneonone, 30 to 60minute sessions.
We do it using an online platform that you can subscribe to called Genbook [phonetic],
where people can sign up.
We have the same problem of eager volunteers who become less eager when they give up their
Saturday for four hours and two out of the four people don't show up because it's a free
service.
So, there is the ability to comment and it is amazing.
I read you from people who's language, first language is not English.
People are very frank and out of, in the five years we've been doing the financial planning,
there've been only three instances, but in it, they said, I was a little uncomfortable
because I felt like I was being pushed a particular product.
As soon as that comes up, we're able to go to the professional associations with whom
we work, we know who the person is, because it's and they deal with it.
You know, it's not a guillotine or anything, but they're told if it happens again, so there
is a that is another issue with volunteers.
Just like we sit in on our own library colleagues classes, et cetera.
There is always that issue.
And because we're a business library, the other thing we do that I think other libraries
are a little hesitant to do, we're a business library.
Our mission was to help level the playing field in New York City so that small businesses
would have a lot of the resources that the larger corporations have.
So we spend almost a million dollars worth of premium databases that we provide absolutely
free, handson training, et cetera, et cetera, but we, we also provide a venue for small
businesses that are getting started to give public programs, someone who is going out
on his own has become a Financial Advisor.
This makes a lot of libraries uncomfortable.
If I offer these programs and we put them out in a newsletter to 26,000 subscribers,
am I endorsing this small business as the best website developer or self promotion newsletter
organizer?
Your programs, your presentations must be totally generic and educational.
Your deck doesn't have your corporate information, but people develop relationships afterwards.
Of course you can hand out cards, et cetera.
You didn't ask this, but I had to say this, because we are working now with a roster of
over 300 volunteers.
Some in the corporate sector.
One of the things we have to do is acknowledge that through this, they do get some visibility.
And they may pick up customers.
We're a small business library, we don't argue with that.
We're just not in a position to endorse them.
>> While the microphone is going that direction, I wanted to throw out a question to my colleagues.
You all have created a tremendous body of knowledge about your communities that you're
serving.
You have information, you have insights.
You have market intelligence that probably many of your colleagues in the local government,
sister agencies may not have but would find really valuable.
Are you sharing that and communicating what you've got?
>> I think I started to say with the slide that we're actually using it to reposition
ourselves.
We are now invited to tables that we were completely left out of.
It's across all sectors, education, economic development, small business development, folks
who, we have a lot of folks who are moving in, who have tremendous amount of information
and career backgrounds and they will find us because they see us now as a very datadriven
and customer servicedriven organization.
So...I think that it's been just a tremendous resource to the library and repositioned us
very quickly as sort of the goto organization for community information.
>> I was very curious about your power patron assessment, you mentioned you were using primarily
circulation data.
What are the data you wish you had?
>> We wish we had all of that overdrive, Zena, Fregal, all of the downloadables.
We have, on occasion, just done snapshots with computer use.
There again, our culture of privacy is really killing us.
We are in a, you know, as I mentioned, working with people who every day live on social media.
We really need to get over that hurdle as an organization and somehow or other, capture
the data.
When we were doing, we did a threemonth snapshot on the computer use just to see if we were
reaching the right populations, but that's a onetime shot.
We did summer work with our summer reading program for two years.
We were using the evanced registration and capturing their library card, and their student
ID number.
We were able to go to the school district and see is our data replicating that national
data around preventing the summer slide.
So...you know, there's, I would say that really, those are the two biggies, the program attendance
and the downloadables that would be the most helpful to us in terms of the future and getting
a real sense and being able to make that compelling case of who are we serving?
Who's in the building and what are they doing?
And online.
>> I just wanted to add, I hope I've interested some of you in looking up NYPL.org money matters
and taking and doing, customizing it, improving it, doing anything you want with the fabulous
curriculum developed by Rutgers, but...I would also like to say that every, every community
should have a think tank.
We're just blessed.
When you have nothing else to do, Google Center for the Urban Future.
Acronym is CUF.
And libraries.
Not incentivized by us in any way, they have put their fabulous researchers, they have
used a team of six or seven fulltime, they may not be fulltime, but their own employees
and then they bring in contract employees.
They have done, that I'm aware of, maybe five reports on New York City's libraries and the
role they play in acclimating immigrants, fostering small business, they did another
one on the crumbling infrastructure, et cetera.
The question was about sharing the data and they asked us for the names of people, the
names of organizations, the names of associations, residents, communitybased organizations that
are willing to talk about their use of a library and then they put together these readable,
very wellrespected reports that when they're issued, get a notice in the Times, for example.
That is a wonderful use of our data and our constituencies experience that ratchets up
the whole role of the library in our community which is New York City.
>> What was the name again?
>> Center for the Urban Future.
CUF, New York City.
>> All right, well I want to have you join me in giving a hand to our wonderful presenters.
[applause] >> Thank you for getting us started in such
a great way this morning.
>> Thank you, Susan.
>> Thank you all for that tremendous start.
There was, there were so many great insights and so much good information.
I'm really just here to say, we'll see you back here in 15 minutes after a short break.
Thank you.