GREG LUCAS: Well, hi it's 10 to 3. On Monty Python now for something completely different
as they say I'm Greg Lucas from the California State Library. It's great to be here. And
catch up with friends and meet new ones just in the short time I've been here I've had
at least three or four Humphrey Bogart and Claude Ray's moments from the end of Casa
Blanca where you go whoa it's the beginning of a beautiful friendship so I hope all of
you are having the similar experiences as I am the best thing about being a moderator
I shoot off the starter pistol and shut up and get out of the way while the smart people
talk our subject is "Communicating with and Beyond Our Communities". And I sort of was
in talking about this was replacing communicating with marketing part of the reason I did this
is I just finished a course in my master's program in library sciences on marketing so
it's fresh in my mind so after the summer slight it will be gone. Or there will be less
of it left I guess. But one of the things they were saying is I kind of believe that
marketing was advertising. And it's a lot more than that. That before you go out and
communicate with other people, you've got to know what it is you want to communicate.
And so that demands discussion. And decision making on what you are.
And what you're trying to do. And so at the State Library we're 165 years old and we're
now beginning to try to figure out what we want to be when we grow up.
So Renee was going to talk a little bit about some of those things you need to figure out
before you start communicating with other people. What's the foundation you have to
lay before you go out and reach out to other people in the community.
>> RENEE HILL: Okay. And before I start, there should be a slide up that has Project ENABLE
on it I'm not sure who is -- okay. That would be it. Yeah. Thank you. Well, good afternoon,
everybody. I would like to start with just a very short story before I get to what's
on the slide over there. Picture a bright-eyed idealistic 20 something
in their first career as a special education teacher. With a brand-new hot all of the press
diploma in exceptional education or again special education. And think about the first
year of school. And for me, that was in a middle school where I had what was then called
a self contained class. I had 15 students who were with me all day long. Because the
nature of their disabilities and abilities they were not able to be mainstreamed so I
had them with me all day and that was fine because I loved those students and I loved
reading to them and I loved books and I could not wait to introduce them to the school library
The problem was that our class had not been scheduled for library time. So being a new
teacher, I thought I don't want to make any waves I don't want to make anybody angry I'll
wait a little while I'll wait a couple of months we still didn't make it on to the school
library schedule. So I bounced on over to the school librarian
and said, hey, I would like to start bringing my students in now and before I could finish
asking to do that, her response was, oh, no, we don't have any materials for your students.
And I didn't know what to do. And no amount of begging would get her to change her mind
or to consider any alternatives for what she could do to help my students to enjoy the
library the way that I wanted them to. So I started out with that story not because
I like to be negative. And not to demonstrate that I can hold a long-term grudge --
(Chuckles) >> RENEE HILL: Because that did happen about
20 years ago. (Chuckles).
>> RENEE HILL: But I do still remember it very vividly but I wanted to share it more
as an illustration of what can happen if we fail to communicate with our library communities.
And so I think that there are three important things that need to happen in order for I
say to effectively communicate with our patrons. The first one is that we have to recognize
who our communities actually are. And that sounds really simple. But in the example the
story that I just shared with you it's obvious that that particular librarian did not understand
that my students were part of the community and that they deserved to be able to avail
themselves of the library program. What we should be asking is, who is using
our library? And even more importantly, who wants to use our libraries?
The second thing is that once we have identified who our communities actually are, then we
have to value those communities and not just value them. But demonstrate that we value
those values. And we do that by providing meaningful and appropriate and inclusive programs
and services. And then the third thing is that we have to
commit ourselves to becoming educated about our patrons and to becoming educated about
how best to serve those patrons. And this is where I want to direct your attention
a little bit to this slide that shows a screenshot or a partial screenshot of Project ENABLE
which is an IMLS funded grant project. Now, ENABLE stands for Expanding Non-discriminatory
Access By Librarians Everywhere. The focus of the project is to connect with and to meet
the needs of patrons with disabilities. The project has gone through a lot of iterations.
What you see now has come after a couple of more I would say on the ground type of things
so the first iteration was that there were face-to-face workshops that were given to
school librarians and teams of teachers in the State of New York. And then the next part
of the project was those same face-to-face workshops for school librarians in classroom
-- and classroom teachers but at a national level so people from all over the nation came,
not just New York State librarians and teachers. And now what is happening is that Project
ENABLE is it's own stand alone interactive Web site and I think I have on the slide,
it's free, so that's an even more interesting and wonderful thing about the project.
What the project does is to provide training for a wide range of people.
Now, the training is of course focused more for people who are library practitioners.
But anybody can access the Web site. It's not just for school librarians. It's not just
public librarians. It could be anyone who is interested in learning how to provide services
for people who have disabilities who want to use your libraries.
This site can also be used by individuals or by groups. And so I'll give you an example.
If a particular librarian wants to learn more about how to provide services for a patron
or patrons with visual impairments, they can register on the site go through the different
modules and learn about exactly what they want to learn about.
With respect to groups, I use it for my classes. I teach online classes that increasingly are
focused on how to serve people with disabilities both at the school level and at the broader
level of public librarianship academic librarianship and what I do with my classes is we have our
site that is provided through Syracuse University where my students submit their work and do
their readings but then we use Project ENABLE as a parallel site that provides additional
training that supplements everything that we're doing in the course.
I would like to share a little bit about what Project ENABLE actually includes. There are
five specific modules I'll just read those to you One is disability awareness. One is
about disability law and policy. One is about creating an accessible library. There's also
planning inclusive programs and instruction and there's assistive technology in libraries.
And each of those modules contains just a wealth of information. And again it's very
interactive. There are videos. There are readings. There are exercises and games. And there are
also these very easy-to-access self assessments. I want to be careful about when I say tests
or quizzes people think oh gosh I don't want to do that because I don't want to be graded
unless you're in my class, you won't be graded for it. But you do have the opportunity to
assess what you have learned through those different modules. So I'll stop there because
I don't have enough time to talk about how wonderful everything is about Project ENABLE
I want to leave you though with just this parting comment and I know I'm preaching to
the choir but I have to say this anyway, it is important to keep in mind that we have
-- we have the need to have more than just an obligation to serve our patrons. We actually
have a privilege in serving our patrons. And if we keep that in mind, then we'll come up
with all kinds of innovative ways to engage them and to make access to information needs
and information wants available to them. So I'll stop there. And I look forward to questions
later. >> GREG LUCAS: Thanks.
(Applause). >> GREG LUCAS: Okay. So it's a panel on communicating.
We're doing it beyond our communities and Jennifer Peters is a community engagement
administer, what actually is that. >> JENNIFER PETERS: Thanks, Greg I'm glad
you asked me that question. >> GREG LUCAS: And the softball pitch goes
over >> JENNIFER PETERS: We didn't plan that at
all. I am Jennifer Peters. I'm the community engagement administrator at the Texas State
Library. As far as I know I'm the only community engagement administrator at a State Library
agency, if any of you know of anybody else, I'm dying for some companionship. So please
do let me know. >> GREG LUCAS: Well at least for now.
>> JENNIFER PETERS: Yes. (Chuckles).
>> JENNIFER PETERS: I thought I would just talk a little bit about how the position came
to be. And then pull in some -- some of the communications pieces that I've learned both
in this position and then also working for several years outside the library community
in a nonprofit sector. I'll start with that my previous job was the Executive Director
of a nonprofit that promoted partnerships in education and I learned about lots of really
great work going on in the state where schools and school districts were partnering with
local businesses, with local colleges, with all sorts of things. There was one in Corpus
Christi that really struck out to me and I believe it was an education group. And it
was the local workforce Board, one of the local schools, school districts, one of the
local community colleges, and a nonprofit that helped low income kids get the resources
they needed to be ready for school they had purchased some land or rented a place in an
old mall and created this wonderful resource for people for the kids who needed help to
go to start to go back to college. So who was not at the table, libraries. And I think
that part of what the community engagement initiatives can do is help raise our profile
so that when these kind of groups are coming together, it's just automatically assumed
that libraries should be at the table and I think sometimes that's something that we
struggle with. As a profession. So my position came about out of some strategic
discussions out of the library development and networking division at the State Library
looking at what are we doing well, what areas are we still needing to address. And out of
that there's even a whiteboard but I can see it they started to clump together a lot of
different things that related to 21st Century librarianship and partnerships and managing
change that kind of clumped together into community engagement umbrella and I have to
give credit to my division Director, Debra Latrel for kind of having the vision to create
a position that would take on some of these initiatives. Our division like probably some
of your divisions is highly structured so people have one job they are the person who
collects library statistics or they are the person who is in charge of our online databases.
So to kind of create a position that was kind of vague and I actually wrote down some of
my -- some of the things on the job description panel, develop and implement projects to address
identified priorities and initiatives. So there was a lot of vagueness about that. And
I actually had a lot of people at the beginning when I started the position say, well, what
exactly are you going to be doing? So luckily I had been working with partnerships, I had
be working in nonprofits so I kind of understood that it's not really a thing that you do.
It's a process and it's a mindset and I think that's what drives community engagement so
as I came into the position, it was a brand-new position in March of 2014 we needed to do
a couple of things to get going and first of all was to develop a plan because again
it's so broad, community engagement, it touches everything, doesn't it so we needed to focus
in on what it was that we were going to be doing to start off with so I came up with
a two-year plan which has kind of changed here and there.
But the kind of things that were focused on in this first year and five months is creating
community partnerships and engagement for the agency. For the Texas State Library. Some
of these were extremely easy we had a formal partnership in place with the literacy Texas
group within a week. Some of them we're still working on the Texas Workforce Commission
we're trying to still meet trying to figure out who we need to talk to to get things done.
That was a piece of it. I'm also in charge of the Edge Initiative which is an Urban Libraries
Council program that has a strong community engagement component to its online assessment
tool for public libraries. Workforce development is a key priority for our Director and librarian
Mark Smith and that's a piece I've been working on and also providing opportunities for local
libraries to build their capacity around engagement that includes trainings we have used some
of our Edge findings to drive some webinars in trainings the most recent thing we did
which literally finished just last Friday was three three-day trainings by the Harwood
Institute for Public Innovation which is part of ALA's Library Transforming Committee program
we were able to bring those to the state and offer them to librarians for free over the
past month. So that's been mostly what I've been doing. We have also convened a library
community engagement Advisory Committee to help give us advice and guidance we haven't
quite figured out what that's going to be yet. There's talk about a Web site. There's
talk about a listserve. There's talk about best practices, a toolkit. That's kind of
still coming together. But I have to say we had almost 90 people
apply to the positions in that community so that to me indicates there's a lot of interest
in the state around that. The other thing I may not be able to get into
communications as much but part of what I see this role doing is being out at non-library
events. Representing the library community. That includes being at literacy conferences,
nonprofit conferences, workforce meetings, municipal league meetings. And this is where
there was a question that we had a question about what is a barrier to effective communication
in the library world my answer immediately was bookmarks because we love bookmarks and
guess what, not everybody else in other axis have any concept of bookmarks. So for us learning
the vocabulary that other axis use so we can effectively communicate with them is I think
the most important thing. So time is up. But I would like to at some
point come back and talk a little bit about the nonprofit communities role in libraries
and communications >> GREG LUCAS: Thank you.
(Applause). >> GREG LUCAS: So like our host and several
other members of the audience here Rivkah is one of California's rock star library directors
and sometimes she gives me like the laminated staff and I can come backstage and party with
the band. It's really cool. (Chuckles).
>> GREG LUCAS: But one of the things that she does extraordinarily well is reach out
to what I think of anyway as non-traditional communities to link up the library with them.
>> RIVKAH SASS: Yeah, we kind of like that. We kind of like doing that.
So I feel totally intimidated because everybody is so organized. But I want to talk a little
bit about -- I don't want to do the how I did it good but some things that I perceive
as these are my opinions only But I think sometimes we're our own worst enemies. One
of the questions we were asked to think about is what are the barriers to effective partnerships.
And truly the No. 1 barrier in my mind is ourselves. We have met the enemy and he is
us. We don't always think of ourselves as being relevant to solving a community problem
or an issue. And I think we're much better at it than we were 35 years ago. But I will
tell you when I was a young baby librarian I was so excited because I was one of those
rare people who never worked in a library I decided to go to library school because
I liked people and I wanted to hope them and I remember talking to one of my manager saying
if people knew what we did we would have more people coming in and the response the -- the
response I got was shut up we have more people coming in. That's not true anymore. One of
the things we have had to deal with are those kind of now assumptions. Libraries are no
longer relevant I have the Internet I buy my books I download everything why do I want
to engage with the library. And also the one that hurts me the most is you think the library
has a role in solving the communities problems. What do you do -- what do you have to do with
homelessness. Welcome visit my library any day and I'll show you. What do you have to
do with Veterans? Well, let us tell you that 30% of the homeless population based on a
census we did are homeless -- are Veterans. Those are the kinds of things people will
understand in solving these communities issues then there are tools and talents that we have
to help do that. I think internally we have a scarcity mentality
we worry very much just as my manager did 30 plus years ago we don't want to tell people
about what we do because we'll be inundated I think sometimes we still suffer from that
sometimes in our own minds we think we don't have anything to offer the community and that
also hurts my heart a lot. And that we even actually think libraries are irrelevant I'm
just here until I can get my pension and then the library can close. One of the things that
I think we ought to really embrace, we do have a brand. And I think librarians are very
much a part of that brand and I think we are critical to the brand and I embrace my geekiness
and my nerdiness in everything that I do because people think librarians are really smart.
We need to -- that needs to be part of our brand but I'm going to say something and it's
a bad word. Often in groups like this. I'm going to use the B word, books really
are our brand. And I will tell you why I know this. We subscribe to, I don't know, three
dozen databases, whatever, not a lot. We're poor. We're not like LA Public. We're a poor
little library. (Chuckles).
>> RIVKAH SASS: I look at the stats every month of what's being used. Top five Always.
All around books. What are the new books coming out. What are the bean stack How many -- are
there our bean stack libraries here if you're a Public Library? Our patrons love that tool.
Because it's connecting the two things we do best, our really smart librarians who know
our childrens books with our childrens books and with the community. You set up a profile
for your kid. You don't even need a library card. That's heresy and we're bringing people
in for the first time who have never used the library before. I have three minutes,
wow. So we have done some pretty interesting partnerships at Sacramento. Everything from
getting a local microbrewery to brew a beer when we did an Edgar Allan Poelithology. I've
been trying to get someone to make an Edgar Allen Porter for me for 25 years. They did
it. I go the Chamber of Commerce Civic Engagement Committee every month and at first it was
like why is she here? And if I wasn't going another staff person Why are they here? Why
are they here? And now it's oh, you can facilitate a Strategic Planning session for I say and
help us with that? You bet we can. So I think part of it it's Woody Allen 85% of it is just
showing up. For me, one of the best sort of paybacks for
that is then when there's a thing in Sacramento called Cap-to-Cap where local politicians
go back to Washington D.C. and talk about issues that are important to us like water
because there's a lot of water we send down here so we can all drink water when we're
in LA. And -- but a lot of other issues, too. >> GREG LUCAS: Easy killer.
>> RIVKAH SASS: Sorry. (Chuckles).
>> RIVKAH SASS: And I was talking to -- water, education, employment, you name it. But I
was talking to somebody from the chamber and they were so excited. They said I went to
Cap-to-Cap and it was so great we saw Congresswoman Matsui and she talked about net neutrality
and mentioned you and how you know about all of this that was a great connection that's
a businessperson who didn't think it was relevant to our community and now understands that
it is. I think some of the things that we have to
be aware of in terms of our successes and our failures, just keep showing up, just keep
doing it. We need -- internally we have some work on our own cultures. And we have to help
people overcome the fear they feel about changing what we do. I think we also depending on our
governance structure have some stakeholders who are not terribly invested in seeing us
change what we do so we have to educate them. And that's a real opportunity. And the more
we do that, the more comfortable they will be with that. And I think externally there
are stewardship issues like why is the library doing that? And we have to be aware of how
we interact with who we are interacting with. I got a call recently from somebody who is
doing development for a very large yet to be named fill lan throw pis he said I have
this guy who wants to give back to the community I said what's his name have him call me here
are the needs we have, we are trying to do a high school graduation program, early literacy
issues, where does he want to put his money we can help with that he said I have to tell
you where the money comes from and he made his fortune from medical marijuana I said
we can figure it out don't worry it's an education issue.
Then the last thing I want to mention going back to the book brand is that we are heavily
invested in social media at Sacramento Public Library. We have -- we are very active and
try to engage with our community and again, where they want to engage with us, the things
that we know, we know from using the analytics. We know we buy a lot of Google AdWords to
try to push things out. We know that the things that people really
want to talk about when they are engaging with librarians, guess what, books. So that's
okay. It's all right. I think we need to embrace it. Because again, I met another philanthropist
the other day we're now going to do a book club you can be in the book club Greg because
you're in Sacramento the whole point was I love to read you're a librarian make me a
book club it's like you bet it's like let's give him a really good book to read honestly
the last thing I'll say is we just need to pay attention to what's going on out there
and make sure that we can share our message about what it is that we have to offer. Because
trust me, we have a lot to offer our communities. They just need to know about it. Thank you.
(Applause). >> GREG LUCAS: Okay. So we have 15 minutes.
What do you want to have Renee, Jennifer and. >> RIVKAH SASS: Can a talk about?
>> They want another break (Chuckles).
>> More cookies. >> GREG LUCAS: It is 3:15 in the afternoon.
>> They want a cookie. Where are the ringers. There's the ringer. Okay. Good.
>> I'll be a ringer. Question for Jennifer. Are there conversations -- I'm sorry; this
is Christy Hill with OCLC are there conversations happening at the State Library layer about
this shift in the staffing and the Texas State Library and are other state libraries considering
doing something like this that you know of? >> JENNIFER PETERS: Do you mean having a community
engagement administrator. >> Yes.
>> JENNIFER PETERS: I'm crowdsourcing this one because I have not heard of this anywhere
else. And I would love to have other colleagues. >> I will say in Georgia we have a Director
of Communications and strategic partnerships. >> JENNIFER PETERS: Excellent.
>> And everything you described is exactly what he does so yes, you do have a compatriot
in Georgia. >> JENNIFER PETERS: I will want to get his
name definitely >> GREG LUCAS: Daphne, did you have your hand
up? >> Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Daphne Delion State
Library and archives of Nevada. So we don't have a position like Georgia has mentioned
that has your title those duties fall to my deputy, they get to do all of that. So -- and
I do it, too. I don't know if Oklahoma wants to chime in or Oregon.
>> What are they clustered? >> I'll chime in for Arizona.
>> Here we did >> Yes, Joan Clark from Arizona. I was just
going to mention that we have just been running a series on community engagement to help train
library staff in how to be good facilitators. Some of the basic skills so they feel a little
more comfortable going out into community organizations. And we actually assigned each
of the participants in the program a mentor. Gave them assignments to go out and practice
and then we also had a facilitator come in so we did an initial sort of learning session,
go out, practice, lead something, come back in. It's just our beginning in fact your idea
-- in fact I was just texting Holly Hinley our library Director that we want to pick
up on this idea on the State Library level because we are looking at what we can do to
be the role model for other library staff to be out there.
>> that's a good point. >> JENNIFER PETERS: Before my position was
created, there were community engagement programs that were going on someone would have extra
time from outside their general duties of doing small library management training and
they would take it on but they weren't able to devote themselves full time to it. So having
my -- this position kind of helped pull it all into a single place.
>> GREG LUCAS: Maria? >> Hi, I'm interested in -- this is Heidi,
-- Heidi Silver-Pacuilla from the US. Department of Education. I'm interested in the work you're
doing to go outside of your libraries and models that you might share about taking the
library out of your buildings to the community. >> RIVKAH SASS: One of the things we have
determined is pretty successful is we created a popup library to serve a community that
doesn't have a library. It's a really poor community In fact I got a call while we were
on break and I knew it was from one of the advocates in that community? So -- and we're
hoping actually to work with the State Library on this Last year we had a booth at the State
Fair. And we had a tremendous success with that. We did story times every day. We have
a library mascot. Our mascot is otter Breading. He is an otter. And otter B is turning out
-- you want to talk about rock stars there was a charitable giving day in Sacramento
on May 5th the Big Day of Giving I think it happens around the country. We went to the
half time event at noon and otter B other nonprofits who were there to raise money were
coming to get their picture with otter B reading and tweeting it out. So part of it is -- he's
invited -- we're so excited he's going to Dinger's birthday party. Dinger is the mascot
for the local Giants affiliated baseball team that Sunday we're taking Dinger a library
card for his birthday present but part of it we try to get out there and be where people
are. We just did the county fair and had 500 people come through in an hour on one of the
days. So those kinds of things help with that, gee, I didn't know the library -- fill in
the blank Because most people don't know. But trying to partner, we do a play summit
we're doing our third annual play summit this year in September. We partner with a nonprofit
called fairy tale town to really focus on the importance of play and its role in learning.
So finding those partners and then doing things out in the community has I think really helped
us. >> GREG LUCAS: Yeah, I think I stole it from
the ALA. But the slogan about how libraries change lives and I think the more libraries
can change the different ways that they change lives, the more value you have. And it's like
what John was saying this morning. There's so many different ways that libraries help
people that you can't -- it's hard to measure like in kind of a quantitative bean count
way so if I come to your library and you help me write my resume so that I look like I might
be actually employable, I don't send you a note afterwards like I got this super cool
job thanks to you helping me. >> But actually Greg they do.
>> RIVKAH SASS: That's exactly -- we get these experiences all the time.
>> GREG LUCAS: I'll stick to my punch line. >> RIVKAH SASS: I'm sorry, I'll shut up. He's
the state librarian he can give us grants. Shut up.
>> GREG LUCAS: That's okay. >> RIVKAH SASS: But truly I get these stories
from staff and the branches saying here is so-and-so he was so excited they sent a Christmas
card. We have health benefits now. Thanks to the help we got from the library.
>> GREG LUCAS: The program you talked about the career online high school thing did you
do that in Georgia or was it something else. >> GED program.
>> GREG LUCAS: Yeah, but John tells the story about graduating I want to say 500 something
-- >> 522.
>> GREG LUCAS: Thank you. And how demonstrating that his Public Library system was a tool
in workforce development I'm paraphrasing it pretty close that was the only number that
the people with the checkbooks cared about they didn't care how many people walked in
the door or how many books circulated they didn't care how many hits there were on the
Web site he helped create 500 improved workers in the workforce. Just briefly shortly after
I started a year ago at the library, there was a grant proposal in front of me from Contra
Costa county called War, Inc. which was about Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan and telling
their story both to help them recover and to share it with other people Rivkah was saying
get out of your preconceived notions of libraries I'm going we're going to spend $6,000 on this
you've got to be kidding me the smart people I work with said it's $6,000 go with this.
It's not a traditional sort of library thing but the films that they made, -- the films
they made are stunning and you watch them and again it's not like a library but it sure
makes you want to go to a library to see more of that. I'm glad I work with a building full
of smart people. >> JENNIFER PETERS: As we're talking about
communications and going out into the community which is so important this is whereas libraries
we really are all things to all people and I think it's our tendency to want to show
that when we're doing strategic communications we just want to say look at all of this amazing
stuff that we do. And I think we have a tendency then to overwhelm people we are too wordy
we put too much stuff out there for us to really think strongly about strategic communications
where we prioritize and identify, so I am leaving my library and I'm going to all of
the workforce meetings that I can attend because that's one of the things that we're prioritizing
and I'll try to get with the municipal league and city managers groups that's one of the
things we're prioritizing I can go pretty much anywhere and talk about how awesome libraries
are but we need to do it within the framework of a plan because we can't do everything so
having a strategic communications plan where you have identified who those key stakeholders
are and who you're going to really focus in on in Year 1 and Year 2 rather than just throwing
out everything and seeing what sticks, I think can be really important in the way that we
do our work. >> GREG LUCAS: And Jennifer hit on something,
too, just the desire to share all of the awesome things that libraries do like I don't know
about you guys but I go to a lot of Public Library Web sites they look like a ransom
note. (Chuckles).
>> GREG LUCAS: There's all of this stuff happening on it.
Seriously you look and say there's too much here, I don't want to be here. And I think
simplifying it and the message, they used to tell me growing up, what's your Hollywood
pitch. You've got two minutes in front of a Hollywood producer, how are you going to
sell your movie or your plot idea I think we're at guilty of it as the next we'll have
a wonderful exhibit of Yosemite so the photo of Yosemite is super teeny and all of those
words describing it it's like how awesome the photo is.
>> RIVKAH SASS: Our communications team wanted to meet with me the other day part of it is
what can we get rid of what's in print I walked into the room on the table there was a pile
of three feet across of bookmarks and it was all of these things and we got it down to
about a dozen pieces. More than they wanted. But it was -- I mean it's just all of this
detritus of civilization that they are going to throw it away anyway.
>> GREG LUCAS: I'm going to be tweeting out detritus of civilization.
(Chuckles). >> GREG LUCAS: Maria.
>> Maria Carpenter Santa Monica library Rivkah it's actually a comment but I wanted to build
off your comment about peoples' love of books so we've been doing a series of community
forums facilitated by Maureen Sullivan who is in the room and we just wrapped up a community
survey and I just got the initial results back. And the No. 1 thing that of course people
love, the highest priority are books. Which we actually heard echoed, mirrored, at the
community forums But then the top service that people would like that we don't currently
provide, 60% of people said co-working spaces. So I think that that's really interesting.
It's the old and then the newer idea And really probably meeting a different user group for
the co-working spaces. And then one thing that we're doing that's
really -- it's fun but it's also "Connecting Democratic Deliberation Theory to Practice"
ed to a well-being strategy that the City of Santa Monica is really working on is we're
doing popup beach libraries this summer so we're going to actually be out on the beach.
We're working with the parks and rec department community and cultural affairs including Annenberg
Beach House which is a historic place we'll be throughout the summer and of course our
staff eagerly volunteered to do it. (Chuckles).
>> But the idea actually came from frontline staff members. Somebody was talking about
innovation before somebody maybe Portland or about creating that -- making sure you
organizationally create that space and this is kind of a lessons learned for us because
it we applied for the Knight Foundation we didn't get moved onto invite a submission
but because of that we asked people to submit ideas and we tabled some of those ideas and
placed with those ideas and the popup beach library idea came from that so I think it
was a really good lesson for all of the staff, too and they can see that these guys, reference
librarian, tech service librarian they put together these ideas and they are going to
be on the beach this summer and having a lot of fun.
>> GREG LUCAS: So is there extra space for volunteers.
(Chuckles). >> GREG LUCAS: You remind me of reference
librarians in Fresno so they took three or four reference librarians sent them to this
training like Dale Carnegie whatever it was not Dale Carnegie so now they cold call people
in the neighborhood to tell them hey did you know at your Public Library for absolutely
no cost whatsoever we can help improve your bottom line of your business when you read
all of these things like the heart being ripped out of reference libraries here is a way of
giving it life >> RIVKAH SASS: That's great.
>> GREG LUCAS: They are also the worst performing reference libraries, too, it was a killer,
too, I'm not sure she would like me to publicize this.
>> JENNIFER PETERS: Yeah we are live streaming I believe.
>> GREG LUCAS: She'll be emailing me any moment. (Chuckles)
>> I would like to ask Renee to comment about some of the outcomes of your face-to-face
workshops and trainings and stuff both about lessons learned and I'm sure you did like
pre and posttests about what people thought could be provided or some of the changes that
came out of that training as well as your online.
>> RENEE HILL: Sure. Well the face-to-face workshops were I think really enlightening
especially for the classroom teachers. What we had was to bring school librarians brought
a team of -- well, two of their colleagues from their schools that presumably they already
had a relationship with but they didn't necessarily really know what the school librarian did.
And then through these workshops, they had a much better understanding of not only what
a school librarian did but also what they could do to partner with them to then increase
literacy to increase love of reading in their own classrooms.
I think you asked about -- >> The differences what people came in with
and what they left which is what you're talking about but then maybe some other lessons.
>> RENEE HILL: One of the lessons that I think that was learned was that school librarians
are actually teachers, too. And even though we think people already know that. A lot of
people don't realize that. That school librarians are actually certified educators, as well.
And believe it or not, some of the people who came to the workshops, though they were
very excited about coming, weren't aware that there has to be a school certification to
be able to be a school librarian or I'm sorry; teacher certification to be a school librarian
so that was a big thing that came out in that we can plan lessons with you. We want to collaborate
to plan lessons with the classroom teachers That was something that was very eye opening
that even though they already had a relationship, they weren't exactly 100% sure and in the
know about what their colleagues were doing. And then now with respect to the site that's
available now, I think it's phenomenal that now anybody can access the site. And I encourage
you all I know the slide is not up there now but I encourage you to log into projectenable.SYRedu.
Take a look at the modules. You're not going to be graded I promise. But you will learn
a lot. And it's not only for people who are going into a library every day and doing the
work in the trenches. It's really for anyone who is interested in information provision.
And I think that's what makes this such a great project. That anybody can learn from
it. And then be able to share information out. Thank you for asking that question.
>> GREG LUCAS: Thanks, Susan, we're out of time.
(Applause).