welcome back everyone to day two of the grants to states conference
virtual edition uh we're happy for those of you that just joined us
uh to be learning about your aspirational travel once
pandemic times are behind us or maybe if they're not even behind us
where do you think you will be going next or are most looking forward to you
can put that in the chat um we are uh going to have a first
speaker up from it's like the greatest hits of imls um
one of matt birnbaum's counterparts who is now at the department of energy but
as we're getting started and switching out the decks
i'm going to make a few kind of standard announcements
we are recording and we will be putting these
recordings up on our website as soon as we can make them accessible it usually
takes about a week if you haven't already done so we'd love
to have you add your state initials to your zoom name so we
know where everybody's coming from we'd ask you again to mute your
microphones when you're not speaking or asking a question
and again once the sessions start we'd love to have the chat
primarily focused on clarifying questions that we can raise up towards
the end of sessions to be sure they get answered
you will have a chance to talk to each other today during the programmatic
topics so if there's any rogue terry dubose out
there we're hoping to get your name changed to your actual name today
and i'll follow up with a few of you if i see i see you in the
roster but let me turn it over now to our our first speaker of the day who's
going to continue on the theme of five-year evaluations from yesterday
uh many of you have met lisa frahill at our past
imls conferences and this is bittersweet because lisa frahill
is not an imls employee at this juncture she's now with the department of energy
and we miss her so much but we are indebted
to her for committing to coming back and being
part of this conference with you because which is a very important
perspective on the data files that will enhance
and be part of your evaluation so lisa welcome so glad you're here
thanks it's great to be here and i once again appreciate being included
in the librarian reindeer games um this has been an awesome community to
work with and i miss all of you so very much
so i am going to attempt to share my screen i actually have multiple
computers going right now so hopefully something's gonna work
and so um let's see so you should be able to see my screen right now
and i will go ahead and place this into presentation mode
let's see okay so thank you again terry and um
i hope that this um presentation helps the notion here i'm building upon
what matt said yesterday in terms of the kinds of data that you need and that
you're going to be passing along to your evaluators i like to think of
your evaluators as kind of like your cpa right who's going to do your taxes you
take a big box of stuff you put it all together and
that's what you're going to pass along to to them
so that they can work some magic and help you to hopefully find some
hidden gems things that maybe you hadn't even noticed yourself
and so the spr data is really going to be
only a small part of all of that but hopefully with what we are putting
together um the work that your evaluator will
need to do with these data will be you know a little bit easier a little
bit more facilitated so hopefully we can there we go so i'm
going to start with a quick introduction to the spr i'm not going to spend a lot
of time on it i'm going to talk about the analysis
files that are going to be made available
there's going to be data file documentation associated with them um
there'll be an excel file at the activity level
that will be state specific then there'll be a project level file that'll
have all states and then upon request
data on detailed budget information can be
you know you can get that a separate worksheet with
that for your evaluator and the notion is is that
all of these can be you know merged together
or you know synced up with each other but it helps
to keep all of the variables separate i'm going to go over just
a couple of sample use cases and then you know to hedge you off at the pass
here uh the program officers are going to be
in touch with you about how to obtain your data and these files
so um still figuring out how to get my slides to advance so you might
know that the spr has all of these very interesting
analytical capabilities there's 14 intents those get rolled up to these six
focal areas and as matt said yesterday those six
focal areas really represent areas of national
interest right but the 14 intense are a little
bit more detailed and that's likely to be something that
your evaluators will be interested in but you can get even more detail about
those intents because of these subjects there's going to be as i mentioned two
excel files an activity level file and a project level
file and that's important because there's different types of information
that are available in those files so
as matt was saying yesterday the six focal areas
really represent those national level and over the past several years
if you've you know been at the lsta conference meetings
this has been how we've rolled everything up to these six focal areas
but the system is designed to have a number of intents right these 14
intents that are supposed to align with the
five-year state goals that when the system was being designed that was the
notion was that people could find anything that their their projects were
doing in in those areas and so being able to go back and forth
and using that crosswalk that matt included with his retrospective question
two will be very handy for your evaluators
in order to do that um there's um and then in addition as i mentioned
there's a a lot of other ways that your evaluators
will find the inter data in the sp are very interesting as
you all know you can enter data about subjects and
there's like 37 choices plus other and it's these drop down menus and you
pull those down and you enter up to two subjects per intent
right and then that happens at both the project and the activity levels
and so that means that there can be a whole lot of um
of different in uh subjects associated with a project and assisted with an
activity there's also free form keyword entry
namely the tags that you can put in and based on what i've seen over the years
there's a whole plethora of things and ways that people enter data there so
what that means is that that's going to be a conversation you
may want to have with your evaluator if there are like specific tags that you
have instructed people to enter about projects over the years
to help make locating information quicker
so you're going to want to make sure that you have a list of those for your
evaluator the tags are included in the excel file
the actual text but there's no flags for the tags and i'm going to talk about
flags in a minute um and then the evaluators
will be able to use your tags so they'll be it you know so
the notion is is that like i said there's many hundreds of
different tags in there but you maybe have only used a handful
of those so they will be able to search for them
relatively easily and do what they need to and these are
all the subjects i won't spend all the time going over this and
then another thing that happens in the spr
our projects get flagged as exemplary and i put the definition from the
documentation here it's a project the state library agency considers the best
worthy of imitation or having the most impact such
projects show innovation and vision impact on targeted audience service to a
new population group and so there's many projects that could
be flagged as exemplary but as we've seen it's only about
you know 10 or 20 percent given um any subject area
and again being having a conversation with your evaluator about what
what you were looking for in exemplary projects would be very helpful for them
so i've got a couple of methods notes and i keep
using this word flag okay so we use flags and i was going to use the word
quantoid but i was not everybody knows what a quantoid is i
am a quantoid um that doesn't mean i come from outer
space um the social scientists add these flags so
that it makes it wicked easy to identify things in a data file and
the notion is is that when you have a multiple choice item
you split it up into a series of yes no's so for example
there's 14 intents but sometimes people can pick
more than one intent for a project right and so what that means is that
you'll have an intent one and an intent too
so instead of having an intent one and ten two and you have to like figure out
oh look there's this one on this i've made it so that
there's 14 flags one for each intent so if a
project has two intents it'll have a one for each of those
intense and zeros for the others so it really will make pivot tables in
excel wicked easy for um for your evaluator
flags were added on intents subjects and focal areas in the project file and
they were added for subjects on the activity file so any item that they
could pick more than one thing has been made into a flag with the
exception as i mentioned of the tags so tags are not flags flags
are separate your evaluator a couple of other things
that are kind of getting set up with these
particular files is the notion that you might want your
evaluator to do some benchmarking namely how does my state compare to
similar others and so over the years what we have
done is looked at sort of groupings of slaa state library
agencies by sort of the relative size of the um of the allotment
and so there's a variable that'll let your evaluator say oh
i want to look at other states that are in the same sort of general ballpark
of allotment size and that variable is in there
um and that's at the project level there's also
all of these flags so they could say hey i want to look at specific types of
projects and then the other kind of thing that
you might want your evaluators to do is to look at trend data and so
even though you don't have to do it it might be useful to have
the fy 15 to 17 data as a grouping to compare to fy 18 and 19 that you will
have available and so the fy 17 15 to 17 data are
included and again there's another variable added
so that you can easily extract those particular cases from the
fy 18 cases so again it's a methods note for your
evaluators and as a quick note at the
within the context of the data file only high level data about budget namely
total budget lsta budget and you know that the match
is included not all of the detailed categories
those detail categories are what's in that optional file that you can request
so these are the three um groupings that we've used over the past
few years and i'm just i'm not going to go through
this slide but this is this this is the data from last year's um
talk again you might want to have your
evaluator comparing to similar others
um and then to give you a sense of the what's kind of coming down right
now and terry and um her crew can talk to
you a little bit more about the um at a glance dashboard that's
going to be available that does some of this roll up for you
it in a visual on the dashboard terry did you want to
jump in or did you want madison to jump in
to talk about this are you going to do that later i mean i could just say
right now thank you lisa that this um this was deployed last week so it is now
in the live spr if you go to your
login page once you enter your credentials
you should be able to scroll down and see several charts
the first that's visualized on this screen is your state goals by lsta
funding and then you'll have a chart state goals
by match funding you'll have a chart state
goals by lsta funding and match together and
state goals by the number of projects and you should be able to also export
this using the little download button in excel if you say wanted to get
it out of the system and give it to an evaluator
so it's just an at a glance where you are in this cycle and if you change the
fiscal year drop down which is at the very top of the
dashboard you can actually go back to the prior five-year cycle if that
interests you thank you terry
so what is going to be in the data files so a quick way to understand it is that
over the years we've had a number of different
questions that we've posed and been able to present information for
at the national level out of the spr um you know what was the
topic area of a project why was it done how much was spent what
lessons did we learn was there a target audience what was
done how was it done where did you do it and what are the
results and there's a number of different spr
variables that are associated with you know these different types of
questions and what we've done here is giving you a little chart to show you
what's in the project level file that's related to these topics
and what's in the activity level file and this is why
this is actually a chart that i've used at ripple this year
where i had the privilege to do a session on using federal data and we
talked about the spr and what i would really recommend that
you make emphasize to your um evaluator is
that the spr is a highly
hierarchical system meaning that there is data at the project level
and data at the activity level and if you were to click on
download the csv it doesn't play well together
and you get kind of i hate to say it a bit of a mess and that's why we've got
these nicely designed excel files so that it keeps these two
levels of analysis and the variables that are available
at those levels separate for you and for your evaluators
and hopefully that will make their lives a lot easier
what are the kinds of things well at the project level they'll be able to use
these data to do analyses like this look at the median project budget by
source whether it's lsta or non-lsta funds
and look at it by focal area they also will be able to do this at a more
granular level for your projects by looking at it
by intent or by subject right so they'll be able to do those kinds of
analyses that will be able to answer some of the
questions the retrospective questions that matt talked about yesterday
namely you know has there been a substantial focus
on specific groups in the activities well
data on budget is not available at the activity level but it
is available at the project level and at the project level we also have subjects
so that's going to be the way they do that
so it's going to be possible to do those kinds of granular analyses
an example of what they'll be able to do at the activity level
is look at what kinds of activities were done
right how were they distributed across different topics
you know in this case this is a graphic that we've used over the years to show
basically that the mix of activities stays pretty much the same except in
years when you're doing an evaluation when there's a lot more planning and
evaluation going on surprise surprise right so this is the kind of thing
they'll be able to drill into this a lot more deeply using the activity
level file so there's going to be data file
documentation and what data file documentation does is it describes
what's in the data files says what the variable names are
gives descriptions how the variables were constructed you know so there's
some variables that i alluded to earlier that we put together either flags or
other kinds of variables so it'll talk about how those were
constructed then it also will include some helpful
hints for analyzing the data there'll be details about the
spr system some data quality information over the
years that has been one of the really rich outcomes for me
in attending the lsta conference and presenting these data
is to hear back from you all about some of the issues that you have
at the other end of the data spectrum and so
you know that has really informed my understanding of the what
some ins and outs are related to the data quality and then
as well there'll be descriptive statistics in the um
data file documentation frequencies on the categoricals and means and standard
deviations on continuous variables um there's a handout that um i
have been theoretically working on but uh it will get done i promise you um
and it will provide some information about some other kinds of data sources
that your evaluators might be able to access
to be able to provide benchmarking in context
for your evaluation and so these are also
a variety of tools and data sets out there that are
have become actually relatively easy um for people to engage with so that's
going to be forthcoming and again the program officers will be able to
help you with this when the time comes so i'm going to give
just two very short use cases um the first
one is to show you how subjects can be used to
help identify topic areas in the project and activity files and
then how those can align with state goals
and then how evaluators might use some other information that's in the spr
files to see if there are important lessons learned in project evaluations
so the first one you know last year what what we've been doing over the past
couple of years is really focusing on various topics
um and drilling down into them and i've you know sort of done the high level
like spr work and then matt and the program officers madison
michelle and dennis have been doing more qualitative work
related to understanding you know what makes projects in these topic areas
exemplary and that kind of process really
illustrates this this um method that matt was talking
about yesterday in terms of yes there's going to be some statistical
analysis some high level information that you're going to want to present
and you're going to be able to extract some of that out of the spr
but in addition to that you're really going to want to complement that
with a lot more qualitative work in terms of these focus groups
interviews and so forth to be able to understand
a little bit more about how the you know how things happen with the projects so
in the spr we can get high-level things like
how many projects what kind of budget what was the median budget
how many of these projects were exemplary and in this case we were
looking at digital literacy so your evaluator might use can use the
subject flag for digital literacy in the project
level file to look up the budget whether it was exemplary and
compare you know your state's digital literacy projects with those of
other states but then they can also look in the
activity level file and in the activity activity level file
they can see well which groups might have been the
beneficiaries of the projects associated with um digital
literacy and as you can see age groups 50
of um the public of the activities that had some kind of a focus
had age groups as the focus right then following families and so forth
and then you can also see on the pie chart you know that the library
workforce was just under a third of the um
projects or activities i should say that were
focused on in the um it you know in this particular case and the
other thing that i'm showing the blue boxes give you a point of reference
so digital literacy accounted for you know
about 50 of digital literature literacy projects focused on age groups
and that's a lot higher than all activities
so all activities about 37 and digital literacy projects
or activities tended to focus less so on library workforce
than activities overall so you can kind of get a little bit of a
benchmarking there to see sort of the you know how how this compares to
the larger scheme of things so in use case number
two your evaluator might ask you hey have you had any projects funded by
your state that did evaluations already and then are
there any lessons that have been learned from these
and the spr has a nice handy way to identify those projects
um there are a number of evaluation text fields
that are included in the um files and what we've done is we've included
some of this and the notion is is that for them this
is going to serve largely as a flag or shorthand and then
they can then track down have sort of oh so here's a
list of a handful of projects that they might want to dive
into these might even be people that they want to reach out to for a specific
kind of focus group or other kind of interview so the project
level file will have variables that will help your
evaluator to be able to know the projects that
have already had some kind of evaluation and what's happened as a result of those
so i kind of this is really just a brainstorm on
communicating with your evaluator and in terms of the kinds of things that we've
prepared just communicating with them that we've
got some excel files that will facilitate the use of the spr data
and that it includes documentation that fully describe the data that
and that they should read that documentation that the spr this i said
before is a hierarchical data set so do not
download from the web projects have multiple activities and
that's something that can be a little frustrating if you click
the i want to get a csv um and that there are different kinds of
data in the project and activity files so that slide where i
summarize the questions the kind of variables and
whether it's in the project or activity file that will be very useful for them
and that will probably find its way into the data file documentation
um how your state uses the term exemplary as i mentioned
earlier you know being able to describe how your state's using it
and what the purpose is will be important for your evaluator
there's a lot of tags associated with projects and
again messaging to your evaluator about which of those are important to you in
your state will be um will will help them quite a
bit and then something you might ask them is
you know well what insights about future directions for
lsta programming are suggested in spr data and you know this is where
um this in the activity files there's a lot
of outputs notice i didn't say outcomes and i know yesterday we have a
bit of a discussion about the difference between outputs and outcomes
and i i think in this case in the in an spr statistical sense you want to think
of those as outputs and those are things like you
know if say digital literacy were important in
your state and so it would be important to show
how many you know um how many people attended the the
different programs that were run associated with
digital literacy you can get that out of the str so being
able to capture a few nuggets of information
from the spr to help you know sort of give that high level
will be very useful for your evaluators and it
you know they're gonna need to really look at your goals as matt was saying
yesterday look at the goals think through the retrospective
questions and then take a look at okay so here are the tidbits of
information we can pull out of these sdr data that will shed some light on
that and then the questions you might
consider in addition in order to scope the evaluators tasks with the svr
how important is it to be able to compare current projects
with those of the past beer state so if if for you you know what is behind
us does not matter then you tell your evaluator just work
with fy 18 and later data but if you are interested in you know
really kind of having them make that comparison of 15
to 17 as a group versus you know the current time that
and there might only be a goal or two that you want that
then you need to communicate that with them and then that way you don't they
don't go down some some um extra path that they don't need
to or they do if you want them to and then how
important is it for that for you to have you know
comparisons of your state with others and again if
your answer to that is you know it only matters what's going on
here and we don't really want to do
benchmarking then again that will make their task a whole
lot easier and a lot less data that they'll need to pull
out of the str so um that's a quick rush through what's in the files
and what's coming um your way related to this uh
i know that the work the spr data are important
um to be able to extract but hopefully the work that we've done
will will facilitate that and provide your evaluators with a lot more time to
spend doing those qualitative things that you'd really
like them to do so um i'll open it up to questions i
didn't see um i'm gonna open up the chat here and see what i can
see we do have a bunch okay um
and i i think maybe the place to start even though it's a little out of order
was just a clarification of what imls is going to provide and for what years
because i mentioned something that is part of the spr right now that you can
download but i don't want that to be confused
with what lisa is talking about which is a much more robust
set of files that we are still in the process of sort of packaging up so that
we can send them out to you um those will just be for the year the
fiscal years 18 and 19 and because you haven't yet
reported your fiscal 20 data um the states will be responsible
for providing that to evaluators
so actually yeah i think that's an important distinction
what we've got is excel files so they are actual excel files that they
can open up and run pivot tables with so
there'll be an excel activity level file an excel project level file
and there'll be data file documentation to go along with it
the reason that we opted for excel here is that you know yesterday there was you
know some discussion a little bit of discussion about you
know the blend of methods that you'll use and what kinds of skill
sets and it's pretty clear after you know i've been i've been at imless
for about four years doing these kinds of analyses and excel
is a lot easier for people to access um i work in s in spss
other people work in sas or stata or other specialized software
but for the kinds of analyses that you need
for your evaluators to do excel is perfectly acceptable there's no there's
not a lot of real sophisticated statistical analysis
that needs to be done for your evaluations
now clearly somebody could do that but this is to
provide them with those tools and this way the
the files i've already got have fy 15 16 17 and 18 data
and that's why i was saying being able to tell them whether you want trend data
or not um is important because they can just
ignore the 15 to 17 data or you'll have it handy um i
did that because it means that then you'll have data that's completely
harmonized with how we've done analyses over the past
four years at imls so um so like i say using the 15 to 70 data
may be something you don't do but it's very easy to pull that out
because there's a separate variable um so it's separate excel files they
won't have to get you know you can just um you know
send it to them in an email um you know and be able to
do that does that does that clarify well enough
for everybody i know that that was that is a a big question you know given
that like you can go online and look at some stuff
but this is meant so that you have a designed data file
that has is already harmonized i think that's really great lisa and we
did have one follow-up question just about the 2020 data set which is
confusing to be to be sure you will not report
on your 2020 federal award in the spr until the end of the calendar year this
year we as imls don't typically review that
and sort of package it up or have it available for public consumption
until march well guess what that's when your evaluations are due
so we can't give you the 2020 data in time for this to be useful so you are
going to have to be responsible for providing it to your evaluator in some
more expedited fashion and if you need our help
with you know modes of doing that we can talk to you about it
but the the two kind of premier years that we're going to be able to give you
our 2018 and 2019 and even now we have states
with extensions and so packaging up the full national
data set has been very tricky this year so you just um bear with us you know
we'll get it to you as soon as we can if you have evaluators on board right now
let us know and we may be able to you know send you something early
but those data files will come later
and are there other questions i'm trying to look at the chat
um on one of the other computers i've got
there was one um that was partially answered in the chat but i think for the
sake of the recording it would be helpful to surface it again and this is
kind of a state perspective so what role do lsta coordinators
generally play in evaluation as compared to say a state librarian or
chief officer we have a first-time lsta coordinator in
this and just wondering what the role would be and so a few states responded
the coordinator's role is in in michigan for example to manage and oversee the
evaluation and report back to the state librarian
um and let's see iowa the lsta coordinator does the majority of the
work there may be other examples i haven't
seen yet but if anybody else wants to chat to
that or speak to that and we will have a chance in the
breakout sessions if you are part of the evaluation
breakout session to sort of further probe into that
oh and just doing a quick time check we have about 10 minutes
uh left so we're in pretty good shape
great so are there any other questions that folks
have about the files or the work or what you can do
with them
uh lisa i just wanted to say um as somebody who
in a very amateur way tried to work with a raw
spr data tongue to make sense of it i have a very newfound appreciation for
all that you have to do the reason why they're not completely ready kind of
popped out of the oven as soon as we accept the spr
is because translating so many of those conditional
you know was this offered statewide yes no and all of those kinds of
if this then that threads of logic and trying to get them
to make sense in a more linear xl fashion
is no small undertaking so i am appreciative of the packaged
data files and i think that's also it emphasizes the difference between
sort of the abbreviated dashboard version that kind of mostly focuses
on um dollar amounts because those are easy to kind of point
a one-to-one relationship with and that's why those are more
immediately available to users compared to
the big the big thing that you're you're putting together
i did see a question we missed on our first pass
from debbie debbie musselman sorry can the evaluators have direct access to the
spr the answer is yes we did see a number of
evaluators last cycle that had access to the spr
and this time we have a new user role that might facilitate that a little
better it's the slaa project data entry which imls would need
to set up for you um so once you have an evaluator on
board if you want them to also have access to the system itself
in addition to these data files you're going to be getting just be in touch
with your program officer
and terry uh correct me if i'm wrong what we would give them x
the event outside evaluate access to would be the data for that particular
state correct correct although
lisa has one data file that has some national
level data in it lisa do you want to just touch on that again
yeah the the project level file and i'll go
i'm trying to think of the best slide to use
go down to this one here so um i know it may be kind of small but
um so in the project level file there's high level budget information
just total budget lsta budget match as well as some
information about the lessons learned so being able to
sort of pull some of that up for the state that might be something
that evaluators could really do is say hey well
you know ours you know your state just did all of these projects related to
digital literacy you know let's see if there are other
projects in the spr that have done something as well
you know as sort of to provide some lessons that
could help in the future with our state's projects
so this that project level file will have other state information
and again that's why you know i mentioned that one of the things you'll
need to do is to give your evaluator instruction about the extent to which
you want them to look at other states or not look at
other states and you know again there could be some
usefulness that they could pull out of that
or it could be that you just don't want them spending all their time doing that
right so it's you know you got to think about how much time
you really want them to allocate to to different tasks
the activity file is just too big to give you all of the data for all the
states and so that will be just for your state
only
and david in florida is saying so to clarify
you imless are going to make appropriate data files available to us
if so how will that be delivered
and the answer is yes we are and i imagine we would deliver it much like
we did last time where your program officer would send
you an email attachment or two if there
if the files are too large for some reason we'll figure we'll figure out
something with our um with our shared file system
yeah i don't think the files are too huge
i think that um worst comes to worst you could always zip them
up as well um you know i think that the the
you know i think that's part of the why reason why i kept the activity files
specific to a state um but still some states that have a lot
of activities could have a pretty good sized file
i have another question around the state role do state data
coordinators have a role in the evaluation in some of the states
and we welcome you in the chat box to answer if that is the case for you
there's another question to clarify the time frame
for delivering the files at this point you know having seen that most of your
evaluators would be coming on in the summer
or fall we would anticipate maybe you know very late spring or summer
being able to make these files available to you
again it is a little dependent right now on all the
extensions that we had for this year due to cobid
and getting the national level data packaged up
so that we don't have to keep resending you different iterations of files
there were a few responses to the data coordinator question
in california the state data coordinator is part of the working group
in maine the data coordination the data coordinator is part of the
evaluation of the program
but not the overall evaluation we probably didn't read that out very
clearly um and in missouri
our state data coordinator gathers the data yearly and we do a cumulative
evaluation each year to see how we were doing and meeting our five-year goals
so kind of incremental participation
any other questions for lisa we still have a few minutes
lisa any last thoughts as you um impart your wisdom upon our
group of states i have been it has been a an honor to work with all
of you um in the past four years you know and
those of you who are new this is one of the most awesome
communities um to be able to be a part of and
um i really you know i remember we went through
right when i came on board at imls we went through the
first five year evaluations and did some you know some work with that
and i'm hoping that the work that i've done here
will really help your evaluators spend less time
trying to figure out the data and more time really answering those key
questions that um that matt laid out yesterday and
that will really help to ramp it up so uh thank
you all so very much for letting me play your reindeer games this has been
awesome
thank you lisa you're getting a lot of love in the chat box right now
and cry we add to it yeah we miss you so much
um department of energy better appreciate you that's all i'll say
um we are headed into a break right now a 10 minute
all right well welcome back uh michelle and i are now going to give you a guide
through the components of developing your new five-year plan
for the years 2023 through 2027 seems so far away but it's right around
the corner um so this is your opportunity to map
out your next big adventure
so uh the purpose of your five-year plan will establish your goals
for the next five years uh you'll use your evaluation that matt and dennis
talked so wonderfully about yesterday to inform this new plan and most plans
though are written in house by the slaa not by a third party
but if you do con if you do prefer to contract out
um for your new plan you may do that if you like
we do have guidelines available to help you develop your new plan
on our website and we have a link to it here in the slide and also a nice
screenshot of what that looks like this guidance is very similar to the guidance
that we've had for previous plans not a whole lot has changed
and it also includes citations to the statute that has established the plan
requirements if that is something of interest to you
so feel free to reference that document
so what constitutes your five-year plan where these are the the
the each of the components in order of the plan
um there's a lot of them we're only going to be talking about a few of the
heavy hitters which are these that we have here
and there's the ones that people typically have questions about uh and we
want your five year plan to be specific enough
for you to use as a guide for the next five years something you can refer back
to and keep you on track but we also want it to be broad enough
for you to allow flexibility when new situations and new
opportunities arise such as a pandemic or something like
that
so the first the first section we're going to talk about is
is your needs assessment uh now this needs assessment should be based on your
most recent evaluation that you will have completed at this point
along with any additional complementary data you may have
as well as any advisory input that you collect
uh you should describe those data sources and the processes you use to
document your state's needs as well as those audiences to whom those
data sources apply to um you'll also want to discuss the
methods used for the data analysis and how you may periodically update
your state's knowledge of the library services needs
now uh you'll hear us say this a lot you heard us say it
in the evaluation uh presentations but it's really important to engage your
stakeholders in this needs assessment and really throughout the entire plan
process now next we have our plan goals and these goals
are really the backbone to your five-year plan and the most important
part and really the only part of your plan that
we would consider to be in stone all goals must stress must address needs
that align with the lsta priorities and that's outlined in the statute and
each goal should address at least one need that came through in
that needs assessment we found that we want you to keep the
verbiage in your goals pretty short pretty succinct um and
we've also found that fewer broader goals are better uh you
can see that this graph here on the right shows the
difference uh in the number of goals between the
2013 plan that you all developed versus the 2017 plan uh you can see that
in 2013 two states had as many as eight or
nine goals but by the time we hit 2017 uh
those went down and we only had a few states in the six to seven
range of number of goals we think that the sweet spot for the number of goals
you should shoot for is three to four that seems to be your
best bet
uh now for projects now we we talk about how
your your goals should really be kept broad where your projects
is uh it's an opportunity for you to get more specific
with with what's in your plan um and your projects should be included in the
narrative of each goal now when discussing your project
you need to explain what will be done for whom and the expected outcomes of
those projects you'll also want a timeline of
activities throughout that entire five-year period
now do not feel pressure at all to include every single project you're ever
going to do um in your five years this is really
just a sample um and and it's it's good to include
projects that you know uh that you you do
on a standard basis and and from year to year kind of stay the same
and those can be both sub-granting projects or statewide projects
it can be anything from you know state databases summer reading
courier services ebooks or talking books um
but again like this is nothing in stone this is just a sample
next we have the coordination efforts section
and by coordination efforts what we mean by that is partnerships or
collaborations that will help you complete uh the
projects that you mentioned and therefore will help you obtain your
goals so specifically in the statute it
outlines for you to talk about coordination
efforts around elementary and secondary education
early childhood education workforce development
but really you can include any other activities um
such uh that you know libraries are are best at like economic development and
community development or your health literacy programs uh just
any uh intended partnerships you have with with other agencies in your state
and again by efforts this doesn't uh have to include
only uh pro uh partnerships that you have a written
agreement with these can just be your best of intentions
the efforts you plan to make and they can change
along the way in those five years
now the famous crosswalk the crosswalk you heard it mentioned in the evaluation
and it's also a requirement as part of those coordination efforts
um in your new plan um and this one here is an example of a crosswalk
that you could include uh this crosswalk connects your plan goals to those
six item-less vocal areas and it will ultimately be very useful for you uh
when inputting those projects into the spr
this example here is just one way to do it you don't have to do it
this way and you can actually look at your current plan
um your 2018-2022 plan that has a crosswalk in it
and if that formatting of the crosswalk is is what works best for you you can
totally continue to do it that way but it needs to include
your state goal the corresponding focal areas
sample projects within that vocal area and the aligned
imls intent now i'm going to pass it on to michelle
hi everyone in your five-year plan there is a section
or information on how you're going to evaluate your plan
your plan has goals and each one of those goals
should have objectives and indicators an objective is what you want to achieve
an indicator is specific information that tracks a project's success so for
example an indicator would be let's say 25 out
of 50 adults who attended a basic computer
literacy skill class at 50 percent of those participants
at the end of the class could say they used word
that's an example of a working indicator indicators
help you answer the question what does a successful project look like
how will you know if it's successful well that's your objective
and your indicators you also need to include outcome-based evaluation
questions and the spr requires it and it requires
it for questions for projects that include
public and library staff instruction content creation or acquisition and
planning and evaluation and
you need to include the methodology you would use to evaluate
your projects the state program report [Music]
has has that information in it allows you to put some information
in it and on the imls website we have copies
of survey questions that you can use to provide you with that kind of
outcome data
next please
stakeholder involvement you've heard about it and how important it is
by stakeholder involvement we mean how will you involve your beneficiaries the
staff project partners mls in essence
your full community in the process for your plan
be specific about who your partners your stakeholders are
and how they how you'll be involved involving them with your work
um are you working with schools other state agencies i know a number
are other partners for instance the center for the book or humanities
council many of you are using them some states
like kansas have regional library networks
how will they be a part of this head start etc
how will you involve them will you have meetings
phone calls surveys and how will you be transparent will
your process be in your library newsletter for instance
as mentioned in the lsda statute you may establish an advisory
council that represents the library's entities in your state to help
communicate with stakeholders that represent
library entities including public school academic special and
institutional libraries and libraries serving individuals with
disabilities so if appropriate involve your state
library advisory council next
communication very important no publicity means more than just posting
it on your website think about the promotion of both your
plan and your projects and what you're doing
be as detailed as you can is there a role for some of your
stakeholders in communicating with others about the plan the state
library must describe the channels that will be used to communicate to
stakeholders the content of the state plan as well as
any results products processes or benefits each state library
receiving a grant must make the state plan
readily available to the public and share it with the library community
monitoring yes mostly what i do but you also have to do it state
libraries must describe the procedures for tracking performance
of the projects and the progress you're making
towards what you said your goals were in the state plan
this monitoring should comply with the reporting requirements related to the
state program report and can include pre-award risk
assessments which i know a number of you do
site visits or even virtual check-ins or desk
visits which are good during this time when
many people cannot travel i'll be doing those myself
this year with a number of my states
your new plan must be submitted to imls by june thirtieth twenty twenty two
i am a less than has ninety days to review
and we may ask for some changes similar to how we asked for changes in your sbr
report have after review on mls will send
official letters of approval and your new plan will go into effect on
october 1st 2022 imls does take your
plan once it's approved and we post that on our website
which is included on our website's your state
page on our website
now your plan has been accepted and approved that's the one you're running
under and now what maybe you want to make a
change two years in only substantial changes need to be
approved by imls and those would be like a change
in one of the goals small changes like deciding not to run a particular
project do not need imls approval it'd be good to tell us if
you want to but you don't need our approval if you
need to make a change in your goals you must submit that amendment to imls
by april 1st april 1st is specifically mentioned within the statute
and imls again he has 90 days to review that change
and approve your revised plan which would go into effect
on october 1st so now we have a poll
and we can post that up how much change do you anticipate
in your overall plan
still getting some answers
and i also see a question in the chat while we're waiting from leah larson
should we be referring back to our current five-year plan to do our
five-year evaluation
well um madison do you want to uh answer yes yes yeah i mean i was going
to say yeah
yeah and by the way leah no question is stupid
believe me if you're thinking it somebody else is thinking it as well
so that's the whole point of having a training session if we thought we knew
it you folks knew it all we wouldn't be
doing this so thank you for asking me a question
and i think we're coming close to sharing the poll results do you want to
cover that madison i can't see the poll oh okay then i
guess i'll cover it okay what we have is virtually unchanged
only 11 states or 12 percent of you will be virtually not changing much of
what you have in your current five-year plan
51 of you said somewhat changed or 57 significantly changed
six of you will be doing that and that's about seven percent of our
um participants and not sure yet that that's understandable you don't have
your evaluation yet 22 answered that or 24
of those participating in the poll
okay i'm going to stop sharing the results
and i see a question in the chat because we can take questions now
regarding revision to the five-year plan can you request substantive changes more
than once during the plan um yes um
there there's no limit on changing it it's just the deadline for
april 1st of a particular year that you'd have to
submit and of course when we're saying uh substantial changes we're talking
about a change in the goal and um sometimes that happens i mean
it's not unheard of for instance you get a new governor and
all of a sudden um the governor is putting additional
money state money towards a particular thing
and you're thinking hey i think we should change our goal or i
think we should put more money towards some other
project and a lot less than something else uh
that's and you feel you need to change your plan
and go for it you know and this is where we dialogue
you know
people aren't used to it they're used to having a five-year plan it's a working
document it's not a do it and keep it for five
years and don't touch it um as a number of your colleagues have
said they at the end of every year look at
what what they've done and how they're working towards their
particular goals and each state approaches approaches their five-year
plan differently some people load up in the first year of the five-year plan
all their literacy projects and in the second year they do something else
third year do something else other people do a little of
a number of different types of projects throughout the five years
so you'll see that once you see the five-year plans while the current ones
are currently up on our imls website but everybody has their own
style and it's also the chiefs decision and
the state library's decision as to what direction you want to go and how many
goals you have so um you know those are the things that
can color um you know what your decision and what
you're going to do on your plan for purposes of the recording uh leah
asked when folks start working on their five year plan
and it looks like a many states say that they work on their
five-year plan concurrently with their five-year evaluation so you're kind of
doing both at the same time right and some people have a separate
plan besides the lsta plan so you have a state plan
and sometimes the terminology you use are are a lot of the things that are
meaningful in your state so um we don't hand you a template on that we
tell you the outline of what is required in your five-year plan
but we don't tell you how um
specific language you need to use we just tell you you need to address
stakeholders etc and the other topics we talked about
and just think about it i'm not surprised that 22
states are not sure if they'll be revising it there's been a lot of change
going on we had covid uh we don't have the new census figures
that's going to change things um technology has been changing
things so um for instance the talking book
program has changed a lot over the last few years and so you have
to think what will that be like in five years from now
so there's a number of different factors that will be coming into play
uh as well as your state budget and what you think your funding is going to be
for the state library as you develop your new plan
right this is a time check yeah we're right at 2 15. so
michelle we're going to transition into your panel now
great and while that's getting set up um if there's any other questions that
madison maybe wants to tackle on the five-year
i don't see any current ones in the box
and our three our three panelists are here we've checked for them
right okay um can i start in go ahead okay well to give you an idea
um why are we doing this particular topic
well unless you've been under a rock you might have missed that ala and many of
our professional organizations are talking about
cultural diversity and inclusion and it's so much so that it's also
shown up in our cares act and in arpa and your regular lsta program has always
said that you should not be discriminatory etc so we thought this
would be a great time to talk to you about working with native
american and native hawaiian tribes and so what we're going to do here in
this particular session is have a panel discussion i'm going to
start off with some information on other imls grants that you might want to
know about then turn it over to our panelist and
then i'm going i'm going to introduce to each one of
them now each of the three speakers and at the
end after dale is finished speaking we'll take questions so let me introduce
our speakers our first speaker is mary villegas mary has
since 2006 worked at the state arizona state library as a library
consultant providing outreach and support for
tribal libraries in addition to managing the state
library's statewide electronic resources mary has a bachelor of science in
finance and a juris doctor from arizona state university prior to
joining the state library she worked in the telecommunications industry for over
nine years managing financial operations human
resources and other internal operations she also
worked with the arizona commission of indian affairs
as a visit business development representative
and taught indian law at a local community college
our second speaker era from boys was a montana state library
commissioner from 2014 to 2020
and state library commissioner chair in 2019
she has worked 11 years at the blackfeet community college library
and the last four of those have been as director
aaron is an active member of the library community
and is currently vice president of the american indian library association
and also serves on the advisory board for ala president julius jefferson jr
dale savage is the head of the library development bureau
in new mexico he comes to the new mexico state library from the arizona state
library where he served for eight years as a
continuing education coordinator prior to that he was the la paz county
librarian and the director of the parker public
library a library journal five-star library
he's a graduate of the university of arizona
s-i-r-l-s program and works at various branches
in the pima county public library while working on his library degree
he has served on the maricopa county library council continuing education
committee and is a founding member of the asla
professional development committee he served four years on the mpla
board in five years on the asla executive board
in 2016 dale was the recipient of the as was newton and betty rosenwick
distinguished service award for 10 years of service to libraries and librarians
of arizona prior to becoming a librarian dale worked for 25 years as a linguist
anthropologist supporting mother tongue literature and
literacy in mexico belize guatemala and the philippines so now i'm going to
give a little introduction to an overview um next slide
just just to give you the big quick picture
there's 574 recognized tribes by the federal government
and over 5 million people call themselves
native americans or native hawaiians when i put this slide together i just
thought i want to make it quick and clear one of the key places you can
go for information is the bureau of indian affairs they have a bureau of
indian affairs tribal leaders directory which i have a link here to
that's a great place to find out for instance that there's
five uh federally recognized indian tribes in maine they're not all
out west folks there's one in florida for instance or
one in virginia you can find that out in the name of the
person the next link the native american organizations to know
is just a quick link to um a number of other organizations uh
native american organizations that you can work with or partner with
next slide imls offers the native american library
services basic grants these grants are six
thousand to ten thousand dollars uh they're for one year
there's no cost share and they're non-competitive grants
used to support existing library operations and maintain
core library services they can be used to buy library
materials fund salaries and training provide internet content
connectivity and computers or develop public and private partnerships
the deadline the next deadline is april 16th
and just to give you a sense of this in 2020
there were 172 applications and in 2020 19 there was a 188 and both years
all of those applicants received funding so the money is there
we'd love to see applications next slide the native american library enhancement
grants are ten thousand to a hundred fifty thousand dollars they cover a two
year period again no cost share but these are competitive nationally
competitive and they cover preservation and
revitalization educational programming or digital services
the deadline for this program is may 11th
and to give you a sense of how many applications mls gets
in 2020 we had 33 applications and or 34 applications 33 of them
received funding and in 2019
21 of the 33 applicants received funding next slide
we have a special pro program called native hawaiian library services
enhancement grant this is 10 to 150 000 dollars again two years not
uh no cost share and it is competitive nationally well competitive within
hawaii um competitive grants that enhance
existing services or implementing new library services and
they can do preservation of revitalization educational programs and
digital services deadline for this is may 11th and there
were eight applicants in 2020 and three received
funding and in 2019 all three applicants
receive funding next slide
we also have funding at imls for native american native hawaiian
museums grant funding here is five thousand to a hundred thousand it can be
up to two years the grant period there's no cost share and this
particular program supports indian tribes and organizations that
primarily serve and represent them in sustaining heritage culture and
knowledge through exhibits educational services programs
professional development and collection stewardship and the
reason why i mentioned this one is i think it's important because
uh cares and arpa mentioned working with museums
and it i think it's good for people at the state libraries to be aware
of what we actually people can get from imls besides the lsta funds in 2020
there were 21 of the 27 applications were funded
and in 2019 18 of the 29 applications were funded the deadline
for the museum program is november 15th
so now i'd like to turn over our discussions next slide
to mary villages mary thank you good afternoon everyone my
name is mary villegas and i just wanted to share this picture
of you a picture with you it's a picture of my
grandmother she's the one in the blue dress
and she's at a sunrise dance and a sunrise dance is a coming-of-age
ceremony for young women and this is on the saint carlos indian
reservation and i like this picture because i think it
this picture represents how cultural culture brings communities together
next slide please
so when working with tribal communities i think it's a good idea to understand
the big picture and also understand a little bit of the
history when working with tribes in your state first
as we all know there's been a long history of federal and state governments
not working well with our tribal communities
in fact it wasn't until 1975 that the self-determination act um came
about and it allowed tribes to start
contracting with federal government uh to administer their own private owned
programs and services so tribes at that point could actually
have their own tribal schools they didn't have to send their kids to the
bureau of any affairs schools they could have their own roads
departments they didn't have to rely on the bia
so this was a time a critical time when self-determination really came about and
tribes could start um managing their own people
and their own tribes they didn't have to depend on the bia
and there are some considerations that that i kind of
look at when i work with tribal communities uh
and and hopefully this might resonate with some of you
and the big one is is tribal culture tribal culture is is is critical um and
we need us and i think libraries can support tribal
culture by um helping them with getting books for
their libraries that tell the history but when you're working
with tribes as far as tribal culture um the takeaway from this is when you
work with individuals don't impose what you your beliefs are
on um tribal folks and the one i hear a lot
is oh well they have their arms crossed
they must not be happy or they're not looking at me or they
seem distracted and so maybe they're not you know this isn't of interest and
that's not the case uh there are different there's just a
different culture and and don't impose maybe what you think is appropriate and
and think that they're not responding to you um as far as tribal laws
um the takeaway from this is understanding that tribes often have
different um procedures that may hinder a process so for example if
you're working with the tribe they might say well we can't do this
and that might be because they have a tribal law in place
in addition they might have different holidays
that they recognize a lot of tribes do not
recognize um columbus day and there's a reason for that
so understand that they might be open when when you're closed
um as far as federal laws this is a big one
uh when you're working with the tribe on a project
there are so many hoops that tribal life tribes have to jump through they have to
follow numerous acts like the endangered
species act um the endangered flower act
that could and there's just so many things that could tie up a project
that you might think well it's just too hard to work with the tribe
well it might be but i would just say understanding this ahead of time might
make you less frustrated um and an understanding of
how even it's frustrating for them i used to work for a reservation and used
to get so frustrated um as far as state laws in arizona we
don't have a state law that defines what a library is so it gives us a lot of
flexibility on helping tribes tribal libraries
and to take away from this as far as state laws think about the
other entities as far as you have your states you have your counties and you
have your cities and a lot of times at least in arizona
counties provide services for our tribal libraries
for example we have some awesome county libraries that
actually include tribal libraries in their ils
they pay partial the part of the salary for some our tribe
of our tribal librarians they also help them do
e-rate or help them do their annual library statistics so
so these are things i think you want to know um
if you're going to provide outreach and service to your tribal communities
next side please slide please and this is arizona
we have 21 federally recognized tribes but we have 22 tribal communities
and and it's important to understand again understand who you're serving in
arizona we don't have a lot we don't we only
have one treaty tribe that's the navajo nation and we don't
have chiefs we we have tribal chairmen
and these are just some things you might want to know before you
you you know maybe um um stick your foot in your mouth when
you're working with a tribal community understand what what what the lexicons
are and the proper terminology uh we have to
18 tribal libraries and in arizona 27
of the land is tribal land that's a lot of land
and um and also to put in perspective the navajo nation which is in the upper
um north uh the upper left-hand corner
right-hand corner they are the size of delaware and
um it's it's it takes a lot i mean to to get to wrap your head around it
there's two light tribal libraries in that community and and they're the
size of delaware it's it's it's a lot of um
it's it's pretty much a desert for libraries just as it is a food desert
um because they hardly have any grocery stores too
and and a takeaway for myself when can you go the next slide please
when i work with tribal libraries um is is face-to-face communication
and that's what we do in library development and this is a
uh organizational chart of of the library development division
we are under the secretary of state this is just one of the divisions
all our divisions support tribal libraries in arizona
our braille and talking book library they provide services our research
library has provided consulting services when one of our tribes
had questions about preservation but in library development we do a
number of things ranging from digital inclusion to tribal outreach
project support and i'll get on that just one second early education
continuing education public library stats and lsta grants
but i think the linchpin to all of this is project support
and that means that when we work with tribal communities
if you don't get a telephone call back immediately
or an email back immediately it doesn't mean they're not interested
it means their internet could be down or it means
the wind blew and it blew down their satellite and that's why you haven't
heard from their um an email from them that
actually happened with one of our tribal libraries
their internet their internet was down for six weeks
so i think it takes patience and understanding
when you work with tribal libraries there are most underserved communities
in in the nation and covid i think really put a spotlight on that
unlike public libraries uh they got to work
from home they could telework that's not the case
for tribal libraries they might have internet in their
libraries but when they were sent home we couldn't connect with them uh so i
think going forward uh we need to recognize
that um you know again they are are
when when covet happened that um they did not have the resources
and we need to be able to support them and i think that the libraries
uh our state libraries can really support those services
uh i'm gonna go ahead and hand it over to aaron
and if you have any questions i'll be here at the end
hi so i feel like i have a very unique take on this subject as i work in a
tribal library i'm a tribal member and i've had the
opportunity to work with the state library in the capacity of it as
commissioner so next slide
in montana there are eight federally recognized tribes
that's actually very new to us because about a year and a half ago we
had the little shell tribe got federally recognized after
years and years of trying to have recognition from the federal
government so out of the eight at least seven of the
the tribal communities have libraries on the flathead reservation there are
multiple public libraries the college library and a couple of
special libraries school public libraries on the blackfeet
reservation there are two libraries the college library and a branch of the
county library rocky boy only has their college library
fort belknap as well fort peck their college library
is actually merged with the local county branch and so they
serve as both public and the college library
and then down in southern montana the crow reservation
and northern cheyenne they each only have one library
through their tribal colleges so seven of us have tribal colleges we
all have libraries and so one of the
one of the things that has been brought to light
is that our tribal college libraries are often
not just academic libraries we're often serving our communities
and in all the ways a public library would serve the community
but without any of the funding for the public library
so we do as much as we can with little to no funding as far as
reaching out to our public and next slide please
my work with the state library was really
eye-opening because as a tribal um member and entity of a tribal library
i it was really great to know like why we can't be denoted as as public
libraries why we don't get state funding for per capita funding for
our libraries and a lot of that has to do with what's
in statute and so changing that statute would you
know can happen it's just going to take a little bit of
time and effort um there has been effort to
to adjust the state library standards to make sure that the tribal libraries
also can meet those and there are some things like having
community funding like tax tax based funding a lot of
reservations have a very um hodgepodge of taxable
land and so there's not a lot of taxes and there's actually federal money that
gets pumped back into things like schools
and local governments to um to help because of the the taxable land issue
so that's you know one of the things that we
we just can't do is we you know we don't have a lot of
um we don't have a tax code on the reservation
and the the funds that are the lands that are taxed
go to the county uh next site slide please
but i definitely feel like montana does an amazing job with our lsta funds as
far as reaching every community on in montana
tribes have never been tribal libraries have never been
not included in any of these initiatives and there are other non-lsta initiatives
that the montana state library has that also make sure that tribes are a
part of their advisory boards or are often you know they're open to to
grant funding and other things like that available
through the state library so consulting everyone in the state
is available to ask the consultant's questions
share catalog there are three out of the seven tribal college libraries that are
part of the shared catalog shared subscriptions this isn't always
lsta funds and has in the past been um from a very
special funding source in montana and that's a very uh volatile funding
source so shared subscriptions kind of come in out of vogue whenever we have
the money um pilots so during covid
the hot spot lending pilot has been very useful for at my community and i
know that other tribal communities have been a big part of the hot spot
lending and the college got cares act
funding but you know in our community there were still people who needed
internet access not being able to you know come into our
library and so the hotspot lending pilot has
been great i'm you know i think a lot of libraries not
just the tribal libraries are thinking about ways to maintain
those types of programs there are things that our state is so
large and so varied as far as services things like
the courier pilot didn't actually reach any
reservations except the flathead reservation
um and so you know as far as reaching out to the native tribes for
courier of um materials from library to library
that just was it wasn't just our libraries that were
excluded in the courier project so continuing education
everything is open and available to everybody
and then the montana memory project you know the state library is constantly
trying to encourage more tribal content in the
montana memory project
next slide please
so who helps make those decisions and i'm really happy to say that on
every single one of these um advisory boards task force
councils um that there at least there's attempted um tribal
participation in all of these things so if it's library specific
there's always a spot for a tribal librarian
within the network advisory council on all task force there's always a spot
there for someone who's working in a tribal library
just so that you know we have that voice at the state library
one thing that is hard to address is the fact that a lot of native people
do not live on the reservations so how you reach
all um native people within the state when you know half of them live in the
cities and you know in other other communities and
you know my my advice for the state library has always been to just
acknowledge that there are native people outside of tribal communities
and to just continue to do the best to serve every montanan
so that concludes my part next slide we'll
bring it over to dale
hello everyone my name is dale savage i'm happy to be here with you today
and i'm the bureau chief for library development new mexico
and formerly worked with arizona and i just want to say up front that
that slide that mary had with the four interlocking pieces and
considerations in tribal library were just to
underscore yeah things can be different in different states but there was a lot
of good material there for anyone who's interested in working in tribal
libraries next slide
okay and in arizona we have 19 pueblos and those are designated with the uh
with the diamond shapes 16 of those 19 have tribal libraries
next uh there are two apache reservations one in the far
south mescalero end up in the north in the central part
of the state the hikoria apache reservation and we also have a
significant portion of the navajo nation in new mexico
there are 50 chapter houses in new mexico
and they're scattered across the portions of the reservation you see
there and there's also a portion between the navajo indian
reservation in the far northwest and the hikaria
that's called the checkerboard so there's kind of an intermix between
private and navajo land across there there's
currently one official chapter house
library on the navajo reservation but one of the projects that arizona's
working on and we're also working on is the navajo nation would like to
establish uh libraries in those 50 chapter houses
that are in new mexico as well next slide
uh significant issues that we have here in new mexico
one is there really is a very strong sovereignty of pueblos and tribes
and uh you might say it goes back to the 1680 pueblo revolt which
some people refer to as the original american rebel revolution
the spaniards had penetrated into northern new mexico uh prior to
that and in 1680 the pueblos rose up
and they drove the spaniards out of new mexico for 12 years
and sort of reset the relationship it still wasn't great when the spaniards
were allowed to come back in 1692 but it set a tone where
um even as early as in the 1860s president abraham lincoln
recognized the sovereignty of the pueblos and gifted the pueblos
with ceremonial canes that are still kept by
the governors today and the pueblo governors
meet and meet annually and more in new mexico there's a strong
legislative rep representation of tribal members
in new mexico and that really sets a tone
uh there's also a state uh state law that mandates that
government agencies here cooperate and
work with the tribes and each year we have to present a report on tribal and
state collaboration so it there really is a
tenor and a tone here uh for that one of the things that
uh mary alluded to in new mexico in arizona rather is
the state laws aren't terribly specific with regards
uh to libraries on the other hand new mexico is a much more
uh bureaucratic state and there are new mexico administrative codes that
define what a library is that define who's eligible for funding
and they can be very strict they can be a barrier to establishing and funding
libraries and in fact that's one of the problems
that the navajo chapter houses uh have right now there's a
we're working to be as supportive as we can
but there's a fairly high barrier in those administrative codes
as to what libraries actually are eligible to receive funding
next slide
the services that new mexico state library offers
to tribal libraries of course are tribal library
our library consulting services and we like arizona
actually have a position within library development
for a tribal library's program consultant
it's currently vacant and i'm feeling a lot of those duties but
it's one of the salient features within new mexico salient enough
that we have one person who's dedicated to work with each of those 19 pueblo
libraries there's also funding that's specifically
available there's a state grants and aid program
uh that currently provides about nine
thousand plus dollars a year uh to each of the
libraries there are tribal libraries program
grants which again are they're a line item in the state library
budget we have money set aside to give
grants specifically to libraries that they can use on
salaries materials professional development
things of that nature and another feature of library funding
in the state of new mexico is every two years the state legislature
votes on general obligation bonds for public libraries school libraries
tribal libraries and also academic libraries
and then in the next year that goes to uh the public to either approve or not
approve the bonds uh for example though right now
the libraries have active uh general obligation bond money from 2018
uh which amounts to anywhere from 39 to 42
000 uh per tribal library there's a there's an allocation per library and
then there is a a per capita amount that's also figured
into the calculation the 2020 go bonds
have not yet been totally allocated but they're expected
uh to be worth 26 to 27 000 plus per tribal library
and also the state of new mexico two years ago established a rural
library's endowment
for communities with fewer than 3 000 people and that takes in
most but not all of the tribal libraries in new mexico
the eventual goal is to get 50 million dollars
in that endowment and the interest once it rises to that would pay 40 to 45
000 a year per library which would include the tribal
libraries
that's not fully funded yet but it's something that the state has put out
there uh the state libraries also worked with
several tribal tribal libraries on broadband and e-rate
initiatives including helping to get fiber optic out
to several of our tribal libraries there's still several that are
underfunded for that
i also wanted to mention that
michelle had asked us to comment on our working with the tribal libraries
uh and one of the things that mary had in her considerations was culture
and one of the things to realize uh
and it's fairly salient here as well uh since
there's so many pueblos and uh different tribal culture is not
the same from pueblo to pueblo tribe to tribe
they're they're similarities uh but it's not always the same and it
is important to understand and
to get a grasp of what the uh what sort of the cycle of life
among the pueblos and the tribes is uh and in fact it's it's interesting
some of our tribal libraries tribal librarians work in tribes
that are not their own and some of them discover that you know the their
linguistic and their cultural barriers that they
have to work with as well
but one of the big things and pre-pandemic
was one thing the pandemic we're in now is another
but it's frequent communication as i said we have one tribal library
consultant whose job it is to stay in constant
contact with those 19 pueblo and tribal libraries but in
addition our other library development staff
who work with state grants and aid who work with youth
programs who work with the general obligation bonds
each are in regular contact on those areas and in fact pre-pandemic
one of the things that we would do is every two to three years
we would have a site visit with our library development consultants
all of us sitting down at a tribal library
at actually all of the libraries in the state but tribal libraries
as well as the others and so there's not just uh
frequent contact through one consultant but all of our consultants
uh have very frequent contact uh another excuse me i'm sorry i
we have uh just a minute left in this session i hate to break it up but i just
wanted to do a time check okay thanks and i think we can open it
up for questions i'm sure we can all say a
little bit more but i really want to thank
mary aaron and dale for their wonderful uh information on working with the
tribes and we can take some questions
reading our state attorney general has required us to use
okay our state attorney general has required us to include in project
contracts a provision stating that any court cases would be heard in the state
of oklahoma court system we recently had one truck
that was going to receive funds dropped from the program
as their leaders saw this as a threat to their sovereignty what advice do you
have in navigating this situation we want to remove all barriers possible
to funding access and project participation
any of our speakers want to uh respond sure this is mary and and
i completely understand that so one of the things we went to
is it might not be similar is we set up accounts at the state library level
and then we drop and shipped products to a tribe to get rid of the middleman or
to to not have to go through tribal finance
so that was one workaround
i don't think i'm seeing any more questions
and we're getting right down to the end here i really again can reiterate
you you my speakers have been wonderful today
and i hope you all appreciate what they had to say
uh right now we will be well let's say this way
if we were actually in person you'd be making your taxi
reservations and making sure you were checked out of your room
so for now we're going to take a break and
return back at 3 10.
hope to see you then welcome back welcome back uh and welcome
to the virtual version of programmatic topics uh this is our
conference classic and as we always want to get you all together to discuss
great ideas about certain pressing issues or
current events uh we got super technically savvy
uh to be able to do this over zoom and online so a huge shout out to uh
dennis uh can everyone hear me okay yeah great thanks uh shout out to edis
for for coordinating these these the
technical side of things you won't see um so
how how is this going to work we will break you out into groups based on what
topics you selected in your conference
registration form and we have two rounds of of breakout
groups and there will be 20 minutes of discussion
in each group uh you will be automatically put into these groups
and then after that time is up you'll be automatically brought back
brought back into the larger group so there's no need to think there's no need
for you to do anything um on your part in terms of where you go
you will need once you're in your group you will need to designate one person
to take notes and report out on the highlights of your discussion
and each group will also have an imls staff member as a moderator
and that person will also have some suggested questions to get the
discussion going but really you can talk about anything
concerning that specific topic now if you can please be sure to uh
turn on your video during the breakout groups
um after the first breakout we'll have a quick five minute break
and then we'll reconvene and do the second breakout
now keep in mind if you registered late or if you're
in the room as a terry uh you won't be able
to be put into a breakout room all terries have to stay in the big group
um except for the real terry uh but uh after the after the second breakout
group um we'll all reconvene together and those
people who were designated to report out will will share with every on everyone
with uh what was discussed and you'll have about three minutes
to do that so um session one these are the the breakout
groups with the corresponding moderator uh you'll notice that if you um
if you chose the working with partners session as your first choice that we
we put everyone together into one group for that and that will be in the second
the second part but this was emailed to you
beforehand but just as a quick refresher these are the folks who will be assigned
to diversity inclusion with laura
these will be the folks who are assigned to lsda
virtual management with terry the real terry
these are the folks who will be signed exemplary projects with michelle
pandemic issues and ramifications will be with me i won't be in your group
quite as automatically because i'm a host but i'll get there as soon as i can
and then we have five year evaluations with
matt birnbaum all right i think i'm going to go ahead and pause the
recording morning very briefly
to just review our next review groups really quick
breakout session two we have uh the same sessions with the same moderators along
with the new working with partners that will be paired with dennis
for diversity inclusion these are our folks in that breakout
with laura
virtual lsta management with terry will be these folks
exemplary projects with michelle
pandemic issues with me
five year evaluations with matt
and lastly working with partners with dennis
cool all right i'm going to pause
and now that i believe everyone is back and apparently we've been recording that
whole time no i just i just started okay no worries thank you all right great
we're gonna go with uh the first two the first breakout from
diversity inclusion
whoever our reporter router is
well in in our group we didn't really design one so
i had a yellow pad so i took notes uh so for the um diversion and inclusion
session uh people talked about whether to add
edi to their sub grants and we we got into a
discussion of what unserved means whether that
extends to uh racial and ethnic groups or is it
just poverty and disability status
and in virginia they have definitely added
edi to their state plan in fact there's a cabinet level
officer that was added to state government
uh on this subject uh oklahoma said they feel like they're doing pretty good
because while they're only oh they're gonna have
more conversations about edi uh they've always offered grants and
services to try by libraries that's just something they do standard over time
so they they feel like they've got a leg up on that
nevada talked about um she's not sure where to start with edi
and there have been some real pushbacks on edi
in her state that uh one of the libraries was
uh posted black lives matter uh statement
and it's it's like the the sheriff and a bunch of other people came down on them
and there's been an internal investigation so that's sounds like as
it sent ripples through the uh through the library
community um um i talked about the fact that you
know we've we're not as far as long as other states
are but i'm looking at two of my vacant
positions in library development to add an inclusive services component
to one existing job and a tribal library component to
another existing job so we at least have some coverage you
know small staff many hats um wisconsin talked about using the
division of public instruction data um to understand who the
underserved are and so they've got some pretty clear um
configurations on where that is uh and and he he said that it's been an
interesting conversation within his agency
in that they don't they they're they're coming to the conclusion that
they can't give one grant and solve edi in wisconsin
that all they can do right now is move the needle on a huge
problem and that's something you know if you want to think you're going to solve
a problem that's sort of a hard thing to get your head around
is that this is going to be a very incremental process
um we talked about the lack of diversity among our staff
uh we also talked about when we do workshops for library staff is it always
to the director or do we need to reach down
further within within the staff of libraries um
talked about staffing issues and we talked about sometimes even when
you do make an effort to address this that sometimes
the results aren't great in alaska we've had a scholarship we've
given out since 1992 with the preference for alaska natives
87 scholarships have been given out and we only have had
seven with alaska native ethnicity so sometimes you know you try and
something doesn't work and it's like what do you do next do you
do you change it so anyway that was our discussion in one group
we didn't choose anybody in our group either but i'll go ahead and report i
did take a couple of notes um several people said they had them as
projects in their current plan and will make them bigger and more
inclusive in their next plan and kind of spread it
out throughout all the projects and make sure
it's covered everywhere instead of having a limited focus
massachusetts did talk about they've changed their scoring for
sub grants to include an edi component which i thought was a really
good thing to do um and that that you know that then becomes a basis
for being funded
one of the other things we talked about montana is revising their standards
and looking at making it an expectation for
having edi in order to be compliant with standards statewide
which again i liked not that i want to revise our standards again we just did
it recently and that they also have a different imls
grant that is working on writing strategic plans and helping
the smaller rural places i think this is what i heard
in in doing including edi and that implicit bias in their
strategic plans and so kind of taking that focus on it moving
forward too um
oregon talked about um
focusing on understanding the communities and putting
thinking into that so you're underserved communities and
um and how do you you know putting that's where their money is going is
is serving the underserved communities which then gets you into some of that
diversity and equity um we talked some about barriers
there are legislation legislators across the country who are
making new laws that limits what you can talk about when it comes to edi
and what you can train on um massachusetts talked about doing an
audit and and which i think like an edi audit
throughout your whole program which i think also is a good idea
and then california talked about the training that's required to
learn the language and make sure everybody's on the same page when it
comes to it that that is much harder and i think that's what
patience was talking about moving that needle incrementally and really
making sure everybody understands what you're talking about
when you start talking about edi thank you so much nancy and thank you patients
um now we're on to virtual lsta management the first group
okay that would be me um so basically we i think in the pro column
we had improved communications um sharing
support for each other and opportunities that we didn't anticipate
um and in the con group i'd say time so um and who knows what time meant
in this last year but also bandwidth having enough you know
being able to juggle and balance different things
so it was kind of interesting because we had
you know of course all these unexpected things happening
and lots of people went online with meetings
and for example in colorado they said they started off with
meetings twice a week and then they went down to weekly and now they're doing
monthly and it was a safe place for people to
come and talk about what was going well and what
wasn't going well and it's kind of hard to carry the
weight of everything and navigate everything
gracefully so it was good to be able to to share
that and communicate that in north carolina they actually did they
established special cohorts so if libraries were doing hot spots and
maybe they hadn't used them before they could come together and meet and
talk and they said it was very successful because
different library types were involved they had
um academic two years and public libraries and school libraries
um i think i think i got that right anyway but
it was a good fun thing that i think is something we could use
going forward with lots of different programs um
and then one library i can't remember which state this was now had actually
digital surveillance in a library so for their checkout it was
just digital um and they said that one of the drawbacks with
this is that it might actually lead to people thinking
well they can do it all digitally why do we even need librarians
so um so we're we are challenged by capacity and
trying to find a balance with um being sure that we're keeping all of
our regulations in force and being able to monitor and
of course it's so different to try to monitor from
a distance but um on the other hand there are
things that have been wonderful like being able to send people
for virtual conferences and some of us had very limited
to almost no success with that whereas with other states it was a wonderful
wonderful opportunity so i think that's that's all i've got
thank you maura and two um i'm building off that i'm the group two one
and well group two spokesperson um we had a lot of the same similar things
but one of the things that i'll notice was very different for us
is that we had a person who was able to one of the states
was able to do more monitoring with the zoom meetings and find things
quicker with especially acknowledgement like on the
plexiglass and if we bought this put a little imola sticker on there and
they we thought that was a great idea we
really were all excited about that we noticed that some people were able to
attend more meetings when they were shorter and
smaller and we reached farther areas especially when
i'm traveling as a distance as a problem but
then we also noticed that sometimes it was harder for the people who were going
to longer things to take that block of time away
because they just they were busy trying to do
other things and they couldn't be gone with all the other stuff going on with
the pandemic we also had that some of our libraries
were able to reach new libraries that they'd never worked
with before um because of like the cares money and
things like that so they were able to reach people they had never granted with
on some of them who did sub grants some people were feeling like it's hard
to do everything because of limitations in the technology especially with phones
and forwarding phones and access to get um you know to be able to
communicate with everyone and a lot of people were able to do more
but um also some were talking about if they would be able to hire more
people to keep up with everything because of some of those restrictions
also um i feel like that's just kind of some
of the things we also had a lot of the same things that group one had so i
won't go over those again but i think that's kind of a little
snapshot of what we talked about in group two
thank you so much wendy now we're gonna move on to exemplary projects and if i
could ask the um the people who are reporting out to
just limit your talked about two minutes okay um so you can stay on
time yeah this is debbie we had a real good discussion um some
states say they use the box some say states say they don't um one of the
criteria that one of the states uses is would we
want to use this as an example to show libraries how to manage a grant
and what kind of impact it can have on a community
um as well as if the project has excellent planning and management and
impact it has on the community as well and does
it go above and beyond what is normally expected
um and also is it innovative is it moving libraries forward
is it sustainable replicable and also somebody said that is it a unique or
different from what other states are doing then they would
tack it as an exemplary and we had several different
um examples of like a teen writing project day by day literacy counter
and calendar and then consortia collaborative projects
um an action research project and then somebody said um what was once
exemplary is now expected and then if there was an
exemplary project that was done several years ago
and it hasn't been done but but it's outdated and needs to be updated
once it's updated it would be an exemplary project again so so we had a
really really good discussion
thank you so much debbie how about group two all right uh i had group two
um so we did uh express an interest in figuring out what we should designate
as an exemplary project and some of the examples were would it be something that
had national impact did it win a national
award some states said that they always pick
at least one or maybe they try to always pick
two but some generally don't bother we did hear from
michelle that it's kind of helpful to imls
if we do sort of tag some of those projects
that they might want to look at in sharing
sharing out to some of their stakeholders about the work that they're
doing one person said that she asks herself is
it something that michelle would put on the blog
in order to determine whether it's exemplary or not
and one even said that they sometimes have or that they at least have heard of
a state trying to pick one exemplary project per
congressional district but we pointed out that these can be
decided on a state-by-state basis what the criteria is
and definitely if you want to see what other states are doing
look at the other sbrs on the imls website
and see what you find there some of the exemplary projects that we discussed
were peer coordinators working with persons
who are experiencing homelessness or close to experiencing homelessness
health literacy initiatives a state book festival
upgrades or improvements in the talking book project
stem pro a stem project for middle schoolers to make hovercraft
chronicling art and architecture in the state's libraries
and a state literacy calendar and cindy boyden owes me a beer
thank you so much jennifer and i will say to the whole group that
as program officers we really do love to see it when you highlight a project and
your spr report is exemplary we're always looking on the lookout for
those uh next is our pandemic issues group one
of angela okay so that that was me i'm having new issues today um
so we kind of learned all our questions together uh
as far as cobit impacting our grant projects those of us with sub grants all
talked about how the sub grantees had to pivot because they could no longer do
virtual or in-person programs things like that
most of the state libraries reported having some challenges on the staff side
just because we were all taking on extra projects um or in the middle of
large projects when the pandemic hit and all of a sudden
we're still doing all of those required work but we're also
trying to distribute money help libraries pivot
you know make those changes and be even more responsive to libraries during all
of this many of our libraries reported having to
shut down their statewide courier services
there was a lot of talk about statewide database use some people saw increases
some people saw actual decreases north dakota talked
about joining overdrive during this time they were able to join the
consortium and they saw a huge takeoff in ebook use
um let's see there was a statewide summer reading program kickoff this was
also north dakota and they talked about how they were able
because it was virtual they did this week-long partnership with academic and
school libraries that involved everyone and one of the things a lot of libraries
touched on was that the virtual programming that happened
as a necessity is something we're all looking to do moving forward
a lot of people talked about wanting to continue
offering things like continuing education and professional development
to our libraries via these virtual and streaming
platforms because it offered a way to reach libraries that
might not be able to get in person and it's really meeting them where they are
so a lot of this year has been about learning how to use those platforms to
better reach our libraries and someone mentioned this in an earlier
reporting out but the idea that there were some libraries
that we had not previously worked with or reached or really met
before that we were able to because we were reaching out with cares money or to
help them with these new projects and so we want to keep that momentum
going and let's see oh i thought this was a lovely
note that there is a renewed recognition of state libraries and what they provide
and then just a couple other random notes it's going to be hard convincing
some staff to come back to the office because
we've been home for a long time and feeling very productive
we've seen lots of retirements throughout our states
and i believe was this in illinois where one school library reported that they
were going to keep their access to ebooks because they
were so popular and do away with their library
so some interesting ramifications but let's go back to like everybody
appreciating their state library and recognizing what we can do we're going
to end on that one so that's group one all right group two wow it's really hard
to go after that when you hear all the things
that came up in your group so um exactly pivoting was the key word
here for how coveted impacted our grant projects couldn't say that enough just
had to restructure programs and not only
restructuring what we're doing at the state level but also
supporting libraries as they restructure everything so it's like you know
double double the the pivot there um people were able to take
advantage of vendor offers for all those different
additional free support products and services that they were so
freely doling out and every grant opportunity
under the sun and every vendor had a free thing for you for a little while
what happened to all that stuff where that all go um
and then the sort of bummer things like having to cancel projects
the backlog and the supply chain came up and that's been very frustrating for a
lot of folks that made it difficult if not impossible
to obtain some of those products that we were charged with going out
and getting with some influx of some different monies that we were seeing
and then even having the lapse grants because of the inability to meet project
goals let's see new projects statewide
licenses like read squared bean stack those came
up participation in continuing education programs rhode
island specifically saw a 400 percent increase in participation in
ce programs which is like that's awesome we also have similar data to support
that like skyrocketing and virtual ce um near the
start and then you kind of see when people get tired of
get that zoom fatigue as it were um provided guidance on reopening delivery
quarantines i liked this we became scientists
overnight someone said um and then if vendors had
their way you know i'd be buying every virtual reading program that was ever
created i don't think my phone really stopped ringing for like six
months straight and it was a vendor every single time
and give me the hook if i'm going too long here
and i'm just again echoing that more people were able to participate you
know we're still not reaching everybody but we're reaching some more
people and i think that's that's pretty important but also just like who aren't
we reaching is a is a big thing here and making sure that
we're finding ways to connect to everyone
feel people who are feeling more connected as a statewide group of
librarians um and then everyone was sort of forced to learn
technology that they hadn't known before too so it like sort of sets us up for
future success now that everybody's kind of had a taste and been involved
and then just being able to remain open as a state library
um you know to some extent in quotes right open
um to make sure that the library's still there to provide those curbside
talking book and braille offerings that patrons
need so um awesome sounds good thank you all right
uh next group is five year evaluations breakout one
all right so five year evaluations we had a nice q and a with matt
and we had a lot of relatively new folks in our group
so there is definitely some trepidation or a lot of questions about
how this whole process works and so matt asked the question what is your
greatest concern as you go into this process
and staff who are relatively new may be intimidated and would like to
understand how to break it down into more manageable pieces
some advice it helps to consider your timeline organize your goals and data
before you get started start with your spr data obviously do
some follow-up as needed to collect the new data
decide how you want to work with your evaluator do you want
to have data coming in from them throughout the process
or do you want to receive one report at the end as you're starting to work on
your next plan we had some conversation about the rfp
process it's much more cumbersome in some states than in others while
waiting for the rfp process to wrap up what should we be doing to prepare
so we can make sure that we have our administrative records ready to go
on day one as soon as our evaluator is on board make sure
we know who our stakeholders are and think about how we want to
involve them in this process what depth of information should we
expect the evaluator to ask for again all the sbr data and any state
level data that is required of grantees that may
help the evaluator to better understand our progress on state
goals how much time should staff anticipate
spending this is going to be really variable probably
depending on your budget and your state size and all that so matt reminded us of
the community of practice that will be
coming together later this summer that may help to answer that question
and matt also said don't stress if you don't have the most
comprehensive data possible for your evaluation
especially for staff who are new and may have inherited some programs and
we're not here to collect all that data the evaluator is going to be able to
identify where those gaps are and they will
be responsible for finding ways to collect that data to fill in those gaps
what should we not do in this process do not push unnecessary self-interests that
will impact the development of your next plan
don't allow the evaluator to influence decisions you are
currently making and be prepared to hear things you may
not want to hear it's how we learn to do better a few
more responses um in the next plan some
states would like to spend more time on fewer
larger pro projects that have a greater impact rather than on a lot of smaller
projects someone was interested in understanding
who they are not serving and how to measure that
and how that could be written into the rfp so
um talking about the development of the rfp
it's good to consider what skills we need our evaluators to have
in advance in order to address whatever our goals are
for the evaluation in addition to the requirements
and uh matt also added that it is really important
to be able to trust your evaluator whoever you select
that whether or not they have lots of experience specific to evaluating lsta
it has to be a good fit for your program and so
just make sure you have a good feeling for your relationship with that person
or group maybe a group would be better look
for someone with evaluation skills and also someone with
subject matter expertise such as library administration
and matt also gave us a couple of different resources to look for if you
need a a place to start looking for an
evaluator the american evaluation association
they have a subset of evaluators in arts and culture
and another group focused on public administration
and so that might be a good place to start another entity was
on the museum side called the visitors study association
and then finally um the folks at ripple linda hofshire may be able to
offer some suggestions so in summary take time
to determine your needs articulate those clearly
in the rfp and good luck everybody cool thank you how about group two
uh i was volunteered by matt to take the notes for group two
so thank you car actually i'd say dude you did a great job of
reviewing so i won't repeat some of the things that kara mentioned but
i would say let's see um as far as concerns uh staffing veterans
in some state library agencies who've retired i'm
taking a lot of institutional knowledge so again concerns for folks who haven't
done the evaluations before wanting to make sure that you know
they're they're taking into account all the things that imos was looking for
um and then there were some some there was some discussion about comparison
uh among states and whether it was required or recommended and then i
mentioned actually the uh i was at imls when
the two evaluations ago when i mls actually did
a publication called catalyst for change which really looked at
uh as a national comparison and i don't believe we did do one
for the five years ago so that was really just a question
as to whether or not i must might be doing that matt did say he's been having
some discussions um with crosby camping with the director
and then of course there's this the new sbr has been
instituted since 10 years ago so that that makes a
difference as well i did mention that as uh i'm at the
chief in massachusetts and we're a causeline it's the console
of state library agencies in the northeast
uh we have a history of doing a group rfp
for evaluations and i believe i was actually in new jersey
when and i was the lsd coordinator in new jersey
five years ago we had talked with uh the folks we hired about possibly doing
a regional evaluation just having a summary and i think
that would have been interesting i don't believe that actually did happen so i'm
hoping we might be able to do that uh going forward but as matt
did point out of course as everyone knows every state library
agency if you've seen one you've seen one
we're really quite different some of us do sub grants some do not so
it i think there could be you know pluses and minuses or something like
that a couple of things i would mention um
just really uh it was mentioned in our group to make
sure you want to make sure you're asking the right questions and and
so hopefully it will really help to inform
the next five-year plan um and then as far as hiring an evaluator
we did talk about the pros and cons of hiring someone who
actually did your prior evaluation or two
in some cases you know having a a new newer outlook on the evaluation
potentially so plus as much there we did also talk
about the timelines it sounds like some states have already gotten started
they're hoping to finish by the fall that's not actually what we've done in
massachusetts yet but again i think with causeline i believe
it's something we're going to be looking at pretty soon getting the rfp together
um and i think let's see everything else i think was
pretty much said i just asked anyone else in my group if i've left
anything out because my note-taking um leaves something to be desired
thank you thank you james sure all right now we're with our our final
session working with partners yep that was a really interesting
conversation i kind of wish we had had more
time to kind of get into some of the challenges a little bit
more deeply but generally the question was how do you identify potential
partners and there are two aspects to that one is
the strategic aspect that is very purposeful
and then there's the serendipitous one as well so strategically you could look
for mutual benefit and alignment with a partner
organization do they have the same target audience
same goals or you could also look for partners
and organizations who do things that you could support
sort of complement their work with what you're able to do and vice versa
examples of partners could be other state agencies and non-profits
such as arts humanities organizations historical societies and so on
um know also what your sister agencies are doing
so some state libraries are connected or structured a little bit differently
and where they sit in the state and um some of them work closely with
their sister agencies and and really know what the work is that
they're doing and kind of are able to insert themselves
that way as well getting in with other state departments has
been a challenge has been listed as a challenge
for i think all of us labor and education came up
more specifically and some solutions to really engaging with those groups was to
offer resources for example offer databases for school
libraries so even though they i think this was
maine i'm not certain right now but even though they
don't have a formal relationship with the department of education
they're able to engage with school libraries by offering resources
oregon and i know some other states have a school library consultant
to kind of build partnerships that way um maine made inroads with department of
labor by working on a specific grant and kind of got in that way so a lot of
it is really up to um working on individual
things that then might grow the relationship based on that
we all agreed that ultimately partners partnerships depend on personal
connections being at the table at the right time
listening for opportunities connecting the dots so
if my state librarian is is in meetings and identifying opportunities here
and connects that to things that i'm doing at my level
it it that's how these opportunities grow so
very very much up to chance problems uh that we identified actually
the question that we hadn't been able to delve more deeply into was
how do we gracefully bow out of partnerships that no longer
that are no longer beneficial or that no longer work
and the the best solution that janet from maine suggested
is to use the five-year plan to exit those relationships and kind of
change your focus so that was one solution that
came up and we hadn't gotten beyond that so i don't know if my group wants to add
anything to that wonderful janet thank you so much
well that concludes our virtual programmatic topic session thanks
everybody
thank you madison yeah and it was so let me just say it was so wonderful to
see your faces and the voices of those that we just
heard and to be in the breakouts with you um we
had a little you know technological set of
issues there but you all pulled through like troopers thank you
so much uh for being flexible with us um i will ask you to advance to the next
slide please i think that one's got the survey on it
we would love if you would take the time right now
to grab this link this survey and i don't know if it can
be put into the chat if someone if someone from my team is
available to do that or or one of you handy people out there um
just stick it in the chat and and start answering the survey um at
this moment while i'm talking if you would
or immediately after the conference we we have gotten official approval to give
you this survey and your feedback means a lot to us it helps us
adapt our conference every single year and learn what worked and what we
probably need to work on a little bit so please be honest and uh
and let us know how we're doing because we like you we're learning from our
evaluations too um while this is up i'm just gonna say a
few housekeeping things we will be sending for those of
you that got awards yesterday we will be sending
those certifications um to i think coordinators in the coming
days and we will comb through the chat i
think we did pretty good in answering a lot of the questions
but if there were questions that remained unanswered we will be following
up with individuals after the conference
we will do a round of sending out this survey link
if you happen to have colleagues who jumped off
couldn't be here right now we will do just one more
email blast to make sure that everybody gets this survey link
and of course we've been saying throughout the recordings
uh will be available but not immediately so just bear with us we have to make
them accessible and do all the things that are required
of us as a federal agency and it usually takes a little bit of time
uh with that can we forward to the next slide
i have some people to thank um the imless team
in grants to states in particular did all of the planning for this i had very
little to do with this you heard a lot of my voice on this conference
but we have a tremendous team and madison and dennis and michelle
and laura just did so much to keep this thing um
a planned to you know to what we thought would be the most pressing topics that
you needed to know and keep it running on time
so thanks to all of them uh we appreciate our guest
speakers from other offices matt and lisa
and cam and of course crosby and we had um
our it staff sort of on call in case things weren't really haywire so thank
you to sarah as well next slide we appreciate also the
state presenters that we had this conference particularly on our
evaluation panel yesterday so thanks to kelm karen and janet and
our native american panel today i don't think they're with us
anymore but we really appreciated hearing from mary and erin and dale
next slide and thanks to all of you um i mean we've
certainly heard about zoom fatigue and a few of our breakouts
and we know in a time when you are busier than ever
we appreciate you taking so much of your time to be with us over the past several
days thank you for being the kind of people
that we can laugh with in a time that the world
probably needs more lightness and thank you for upholding this program with
integrity and giving your best day in and day out
to make a difference with federal and state funds we
collectively have a big year ahead of us we're not
going to lie but we look forward to doing the hard
things together with you thank you attendees
and we'll see you again soon
you