so with that we're going to transition into uh one of the most exciting pieces
of content from my perspective for this conference and that is the thing that
we've all been discussing for two years now and it is culminating with an actual
Peak at the findings um this was a third-party
investigation of your cares and ARA stimulus funds experience
that Matt burn bound's office committed to and it was because we heard from all
of you over the last few years at conferences that that would be helpful
so last year Emily Plum and Frank ran the session on this topic she is right
here she's going to present later I'm going to introduce her a little more
later but uh like a good relay race she handed the Baton over here to Lisa
Heckman who is coming to this conference in person for the first time we're so
excited to have her here yay um she's here with Clifton MC
Reynolds also part of the research and evaluation
team we're sort of giving them the afternoon they have all the content this
afternoon because they are our co-sponsors of this conference and they
enjoy working with you as much as we do and a lot of this is very pertinent to
our Collective work but just about Lisa I want to say that um she has put so
much thought and Care into how to present this to you
in an engaging way um because her report much like the 30 page regulatory updates
handout I mean it is a massive report that she had to distill down into this
45 minute um preview of highlights and she did it in a visually engaging way so
I think you're going to love it Lisa also just has such a can do Spirit at
our agency that we appreciate so much like um this one is not deterred by any
challenges she just forges ahead and you're going to see that in evidence
here so it is my great pleasure to turn the mic over to
Lisa thank you so much Terry and thank you all for having me here it's really
nice to see everybody in
person let's see um oh okay there we go um so just to give
us all a little context on today's presentation um as many of you strongly
remember and many of you have heard um in 2020 and in 2021 imls distributed
funds to slas from two pandemic response and relief efforts the Corona virus Aid
relief and Economic Security Act or cares Act and the American Rescue plan
or arpa slaa expended over $200 million
across these two Grant programs um and just a few numbers again for context um
for the car's act slaa expended around $30 million and arpa was even bigger at
$171 million um that's about five or six times the cares act funding and um
notably all of this was on top of all the work that you all normally do um as
you can see um these funds resulted in a huge number of projects which we'll
contextualize a little bit later and a huge number of sub Awards and so this is
all just to speak to the magnitude of the work that you all
conducted for this evaluation um we conducted uh three types of data
collection we conducted a semi-structure
oh let's go back okay thank you
all righty so we conducted semi-structured interviews which
consisted of interviews with all the grants to State's program officers we
also invited slaa representatives to participate in our interviews and we're
able to reach 34 of you so thank you um for giving us all your input it was
really valuable and it's the core of this
report we also conducted some quantitative data analysis using records
from is imlss State program report system or spr and finally we conducted a
literature review to see what was already published on the topics that we
were studying um And to clarify the interview content is all Anonymous and
um so if you see a reference that says one state or seven states did this
that's from the interview data um we are calling out some really nice
illustrative examples from the literature riew or spr where that is
public information so if you see anything cited by name that's from
public um and your interviews um I just wanted to reassure you that your data
has been kept private
thanks a little bit of background on the funding reach which was quite impressive
across the two programs funding reached more than 40,000 libraries more than 350
museums and more than 80 tribal institutions and a made over 9,000 sub
Awards throughout the presentation I'm going to be contextualizing this data by
comparing the cares act in arpa funding to a benchmark year which is
2019 um that's to give us the Baseline to compare our numbers and so in The
Benchmark here we can see that SLA expended around
153 or $154 million um car's Act was smaller than a
baseline layer but on top of a Bas years so still a very large stimulus and then
arpa as I said before was six times that um and so an even larger um
investment next I'd like to just cover funding use again to set the
scene so thinking about projects that um that libraries and slas conducted um
each project has a focal area um that you ceriz the project within Um this can
be institutional capacity information access lifelong learning Civic
engagement employment and economic development and Human
Services this graph shows the percentage of projects in the cares act arpa and a
benchmark 2019 year so you can see where funds tended to go in each of the years
so these gray diagonally SL bars of The Benchmark year and you can see that um
in a benchmark year 2019 about a third a third and a third um of projects were uh
focused on uh institutional capacity information access and lifun learning
and I think what's striking about the cares and arpa data uh cares is depicted
in green on on the left bar leftmost bar of each of these and and arpa is
detected in blue in the middle bars what you can see is there's this big jump in
the percent percentage of projects that were um marked as institutional capacity
and a little bit of a decrease in information access and lifelong learning
and of course those were still two of the bigger areas that projects were
focused on but um what was really interesting to us was this institutional
capacity bump and so the next slide explains
that so um Beyond projects um sorry Beyond Focus areas an spr you also uh
cat cized projects by the intent which is like a suble Lev um there's 14
intents and they each Nest under a focal um uh
sorry um they each Nest under a focal area and so we were really interested
and since we saw that institutional capacity jump we wanted to see where
that came from and the focal areas help us drill down into institutional
capacity and say oh what is it about institutional capacity that projects
were focused on and what we see here um looking at The Benchmark The Gray Line
versus the blue and the um green lines the biggest jump in intent was um
improving library's physical and Technology infrastructure so that was
about 10% of projects in The Benchmark year and between 42 and 46 for the kazon
ARA program so that's a huge increase um and a lot of that can be explained I
think by procurements this is one of the um intent areas where this is the one
intent area where you'd be able to enter procurements and as you'll be seeing in
later slides there was quite a bit of procurment many of you know that um so
uh digital access and technology and Wi-Fi were big areas of purchase um
physical safety measures were big areas of purchase in terms of physical um
infrastructure um there are certain allowable ways to help improve safety
that would fall under um this category and so that was the big um increase and
then the next thing I want to do is just show you all the intents there are 14 um
and give you an idea of what changed in those covid stimulus um programs versus
The Benchmark year so um the way this is ordered is
from the biggest increases in covid programs to the small to the biggest de
decreases during po covid programs so a positive number means there was a lot
more projects um aimed at that intent for kis and arpa and a negative number
means that there were a lot fewer percent of projects um in that intent
during kisan arpa versus this Benchmark year and so like we showed you before
the biggest jump um the biggest boost was in improving libraries physical and
Technology infrastructure and the biggest declines were in improving the
library Workforce improving users General Knowledge and Skills s and
improve users abilities to discover information resources and I think
another interesting thing is that there are a lot of sort of zeros and negative
ones not huge changes um but these kind of reflect the changing situation and
changing priorities in that time and of course this is separate from the normal
2020 and 2021 uh funds so you still had all your other activities going but this
is how cares and arpa funds um tended to be used
so um one of my slides didn't show up but in the evaluation there are sort of
four topic areas we talked about Co needs goals and impacts like what were
libraries and slas trying to achieve and what did the funding do the next thing
we talked about was sustainability of um we the next thing we researched was
sustainability of funding efforts so what happened after the funding
stopped another question that we were trying to answer in this evaluation was
about equitable distribution of funding um how was that achieved was that
achieved and then the last um topic that we're covering is Lessons Learned so
this is the first
topic obviously as the pandemic progressed um there were different
conditions and different cor different different corresponding needs uh to
um uh arising from those conditions so in the earliest phases of the pandemic
mic there were questions about the safety of using physical materials and
obviously widespread Library closures and so key needs that we heard in our
interviews included but are not limited to transferring program to Virtual
formats digitizing Collections and developing digital
products later on in the pandemic um we saw reduced closures and we also saw
libraries recognizing the necessity of all the virtual elements that they had
you know um started up in the beginning of the pandemic but also trying to sort
of adapt to more of a hybrid and more reintegrated reopening approach and so
um what we saw in terms of needs from the interview was providing virtual
resources still and um providing increased access to those resources um
increasing the safety of in-person operations and providing um numerous
services such as outdoor and Community focused programming um to adapt to the
new times and new
needs digital access was a a huge topic that came up in your interview so I
wanted to spend a second on that one um slas prioritized increasing access to
broadband internet and internet connected Technologies um the result of
this is that um libraries are able to purchase laptops for Community residents
to check out so they could um access education employment communication um
health and even recreation resources libraries also focused on
improving access to the internet through hotspots and parking lot Wi-Fi
um and this sh chart just shows um the sort of magnitude of purchasing Wi-Fi
hotspots um in the cares act and arpa and also other technology like laptops
and tablets and you can see a really big spike in arpa on spending on other
technology um I'm seeing that like every other
slide is seems to be missing um
but um I I'll just speak to the side that I think should be there um the side
that I think should be there is on physical safety um so physical safety
measures were also um sorry
maybe
not I'll go with whatever slides are here um moving on to funding impacts um
we were really interested in sort of what came out of uh the
funding so um some great examples came out of this digital access and digital
inclusion um topic um these are two uh examples that I believe came from the
spr system um the Connecticut State library for example um distributed
laptops and hotspots to several different libraries and um some just
encouraging quotes came up in the reporting um for example students
earning their High School diplomas because they were able to use this
technology um obviously with um digital access um they could uh file for
unemployment benefits and access unemployment service assistance as well
and arrange things like teleah Health and Medical
Services um the Carolina State Library also um had a sort of a digital
inclusion type programming as well um and I thought it was really neat to read
that for students um finished their studies with the help of uh these
resources and also even graduated from Nursing
School uh mobile services came up as another big theme um in our um
research we found that libraries expanded their use of mobile services
increasing their reach and bringing Library services to vulnerable
populations across their communities um this was especially true
in the arpa phase of the pandemic um we saw that mobile services increased
during cares but really especially increased during arpa um and so mobile
services included um ways to deliver books to patrons who were unable to
travel to their Library um there was a great example of a mobile van with Wi-Fi
hotspots and laptops for check out and even a mobile van with Library staff to
help with homework and job applications resumés and
more a question we had were what were some new and expanded um opportunities
that arose um during the pandemic one thing that came up in interviews was
that uh at first libraries thought of their modified Services as temporary
solutions but ended up finding Val value in them and continued many modified
Services they also started using well I shouldn't say started they expanded um
using their physical space to benefit the community they've always been hubs
um places of resources for communities but um new I think this became even
greater during the pandemic for example having a health clinic at your library
or having an outdoor yoga class at your library or um building sort of like
stations where people could have private tele Health appointments um that uh was
something that uh folks talked to us a lot about in the
interviews and then of course mobile services as I mentioned was another
theme um that came out as um a new and expand well expanded opportunity at this
time new Partnerships was I thought one of the really interesting um areas that
slaa spoke to in their interviews every single SLA that we talked to described
working with state and local government agencies and nonprofit organizations to
provide unprecedented support for their states so these Partnerships focused on
a number of areas anything from unemployment to education to health and
there were some creative Partnerships I have examples on this slide like um
procuring alcohol-based hand sanitizer from a
Distillery and I think that one um reason uh the Partnerships were quite
interesting is that a lot of slas reported that they started some of these
Partnerships during the pandemic but maintain them
afterwards slaa also reported a number of new practices for themselves so slas
relied on Virtual meetings more often especially during the beginning the
pandemic when there were changing rules and regulations and health information
um slas were working to get those messages out to the libraries in their
states and so they were able to do so virtually um to get information out
rapidly slaa has reported having continued using
virtual communication methods which also means that there are some accessibility
benefits um now that they able to um more easily work virtually and in
hybrid mode several slas also um reported
implementing um diversity Equity accessibility and inclusion and other
virtual training for their staff and they also reported that libraries had
similar trainings
um yeah and I do think I my slides are kind of skipping but we're going to
have uh pause for questions here so I am going to call up my um
colleague Emily pman Frank and um we would like to just hear about what
questions you may have so far
um I want to
congratulations awesome
expect
I guess it's kind of surprising than the 3033 pre pandemic I would have known
that yeah and you know um Clifton's actually going to be speaking to more
Trends in that area um and what was really interesting for me is like we
used 2019 as a baseline year um just to say this is before the pandemic things
were more normal then um but I was always curious like what is happening in
the Years Around It is it the best Baseline year and Clifton will be able
to speak to that a little bit more and I think that's a fascinating um sort of
fascinating finding as well so thanks thanks for
asking did you happen to see any um increase in digital branches in your
data uh sorry did you see any increase in digital branches um I would have to
ask my um data team to dig in more that's a great question I'm guessing the
answer is yes um but I don't specifically have that data here s
thanks I was just bringing that up because um that's something that uh we
did at our library trle County Public Library in Kentucky is we already had a
digital library in place which that was very cool because um when the pandemic
AIT and our local libraries did not have any access to Internet or computers for
kids we had kids going to um these digital branches around the county that
so they could do their school work so I was just interesting yeah interested to
see if that's if other states are doing that can can if anyone would like to
know fresher show show hands if like you heard about your States doing that I'm
just curious if you'd like to answer um you all are the experts on what your
states did
sure
yeah and I think one of the slides that I had that I don't think came up was on
um digital Navigators was one of the big findings we were also seeing which again
is not surprising to you while you all told us this so I am repeating back out
what you told us um but digital Navigators um came up as a service that
um folks either hired or hired subscriptions for in order to get people
access to the devices they need to um be connected and also how to use those
devices and access resources and that came up just in a number of interviews
um so oh
please I was wondering if you could provide a few more examples to
the yeah um I would have to go back to the paper for more specific examples so
we may want to put it in the parking lot but one thing that's coming to mind is
um one Library um set up like a outdoor bench with like places you could plug in
your laptops um I I'm not the best at categorizing
exactly what counts as infrastructure versus construction versus other things
um but that might be one of them um there were things like um creating
barriers within um the library to create physical distancing and safety and
plexiglass again um that physical in infrastructure category is a little bit
fuzzy for me and um but I'm happy to go to our data team and dig in um because
that's a great question thank
you thanks Emily
thanks Emily yeah thank you thank
you so the next topic we wanted to talk about was
sustainability of this funding so once the funding went out the door and it was
expended what happened after in our interviews we asked about
activities that um were implemented during the pandemic what activities have
ended or been reduced which have continued and which should continue but
would need more funding in order to continue in terms of ending the one
thing we heard the most was PPE and safety equipment distribution of of
course that may have not 100% ended but it it was it's dramatically reduced
compared to the times we were living in a few years
ago in terms of redu reductions um WiFi hotspot and database subscriptions were
sometimes reduced due to their cost um some states and libraries found ways to
continue these things um some had to reduce them so um what you'll see is
that a lot of the things that fall in the have reduced column ended up in the
need more funding some people were able to continue and some would need more
funding to do so and then virtual outdoor and Community focused
programming still um exists and still and and you know much of the valuable
programming um was maintained but anything that required um more funding
or more Staffing could sometimes be at risk for um being reduced based on those
constraints I think the most interesting column in this in this uh chart is what
activities have continued so hybrid programming obviously there were some
setup costs to figure out zoom and computers and how to broadcast things
but once um once all that hardware and technology and knowhow um was in place
um many libraries and even the slas um moved to hyperd
programming equipment that was purchased like laptops and tablets which was a
huge area of purchase um those purchases continue to be used but of course at
some point technology um can become outdated and so there would of course
need to be consideration at that point of more funding could be
needed um and then um community- based programming through Partnerships was I
thought a really cool area I had showed that Partnerships um slide a while back
where a lot of new and Innovative Partnerships got built during the
pandemic and several of you uh told us that you had maintained some of those
new Partnerships and that especially if you didn't have any additional costs to
um partner with those organizations you could continue some of that
programming and finally offerings for individuals with disabilities and
speakers of languages other than English um we heard that some of these uh
activities have continued um specifically uh for for uh libraries
ended up investing in things like translated materials or audiobooks um
and once you have those um resources you can continue to use them so you see this
expanding of um accessible
resources I amoss was also very interested in equity um the question of
we have these huge um influxes of funding and how do you get that funding
out to the whole state in a way where those who need it have
it one way that states approached this is to use formula funding approaches
this was of course not the only way um but one thing that some states did was
um work out a formula mathematical formula where they could figure out how
much uh funding would go to each Library um and they Incorporated soci economic
variables like unemployment rates poverty rates and Broadband
access we also learned a lot from our program officer interviews and slaa um
interviews from program officers we heard that projects really did um ended
up serving historically less well served communities which is great to hear um we
did also hear that there um were some tricky areas um some sort of challenges
in terms of equ equitable distribution of funding for example um there were
differences between states that affected distribution like the state size the
State political climate and libraries earlier experience applying for Grants
and so that last one came sort of from competitive funding where if if you were
a library where you could already um apply for a Federal grant you were in a
much better place to apply for these funds than a library that had never done
that before on the SLA a side um this was
interesting um I think the the question was an important one and um because of
ongoing diversity Equity accessibility and inclusion debates in many states um
not all SLA representatives were able to our questions but we did hear from a lot
and um some of the things that States considered um when Distributing funds
included Community needs library and programmatic needs uh geographic
distribution of the funds making sure that the funding reached their whole
state um and other local and Regional demographic statistics like the ones
I've mentioned and another thing that we
heard from slas was that um one big challenge was in states where there were
several um Urban Metropolitan and regions surrounded by um suburbs and
then rural areas one really tricky thing was meeting the needs of those different
and diverse communities and so that was a thing that states were grappling with
and so I think um what you can take from this slide is that there were different
approaches to um to consider how to distribute funding um but that
definitely varied on state context as much does
so the last topic uh wanted wanted to address was Lessons Learned From the uh
pandemic what did we learn from these uh funding
efforts one of our research questions was about using the existing granting
structure that imls has this gr States program and distributing money in the
same way um one of the nice things about nice things about the pandemic the
pandemic is not nice um but I think one of the fortunate things is having this
Grand to States program set up so that imls has a way to distribute funding to
States and states are set up to distribute funding around their states
um but we wanted to know about how well that worked in this pandemic
context we talked to program officers and they mentioned a number of
challenges including timing and so I know a lot of States um confirmed that
um ARA was a huge influx of money and it was very hard to expend all the funds
within the arbit timeline so that was one timing challenge supply chain issues
came up and so it was um you know projects could get delayed because of
supply chain issues um bureaucratic challenges came up both um mentioned by
program officers and slas um turnover and staff was another
issue and um I think uh legislator scrutiny came up as another interesting
uh topic that was sort of government-wide that of course um
responsible spending is important um and so legislators are concerned about where
spending is going but of course of course that means that um sometimes
processes can be slowed down um in order to make sure that we're um we're
transparent and then U finally Grant allowances came up sometimes and I think
this foreshadows some of the stuff that Emily will talk about with
infrastructure that some people wanted to um would have liked to use the funds
for construction but obviously that's not an allowable cost but could have
been helpful in the times of Co like if you wanted to tear down a wall and build
a window or something like that can't do that but um some states mentioned that
the allowable costs were a
challenge there were of course benefits to the funding structure and um that
came what came up most in the interviews was that having this flexibility was one
of the best things about um how these funds came to you all um needs changed a
lot during the pandemic and um the flexibility of funding meant that uh
States could pivot um um the volume of funding was also quite important because
there was just this unprecedented level of need and then other grantees
mentioned uh that the flexibility of funding aligned very well with digital
inclusion
needs we wanted to hear about the SLA experience and I know this has been an
ongoing conversation but we thought this was important just to reiterate um you
know slas really did feel the weight of supporting their communities and
libraries um some slas reported feeling as if they were sort of vehicles for
providing funds to libraries um and we had to recognize that when um funding
doubled or quadrupled that also meant double or quadruple workload um and so
that was very challenging um and then um staff also
mentioned that they were dealing with personal pandemic related issues while
simultaneously ma managing these doubling and quadrupling of work and so
um that was an incredibly difficult situation
and all that being true I do want to say kudos to you all because somehow you got
through it um and and made a really huge impact and so I think I mentioned the
stats before that you reached over 40,000 libraries over 350 museums and
over 80 tribal institutions so um it speaks to all of your hard dedicated
work that um you are able to effectively and efficiently um distribute this
funding slaa also noted that there were some issues um with our with um that
that made it more challenging for them such as strict uh spending timelines and
also um reporting requirements that was a challenge but they also said something
that mitigated that challenge was that IMS um really professionally managed
their grants um and that they put a lot of thoughtfulness and structure into
their programs which make them an asset to SL laas and the Library community and
and I'm not in the grand States program so I just want to say they're awesome um
and we heard it from you and you're
awesome in terms of overcoming challenges how did you all do this um we
asked a lot about that and we heard that there were several strategies to
distribute funds quickly that included using formula based approaches um not
everyone did that but that was one way um both procurement Solutions were
common in order uh to make it so that libraries don't have to procure say mass
or PPE um one by one uh States could do it at the state
level a lot of um or I should say some states um did not have an electronic
grants management system at the start of all this but were able to set one up um
during the pandemic um that made it challenging of of course at first but
made it more possible to deal with the arpa influx of funding um
after SLA a mentioned restructuring staff responsibilities to handle their
work increases and they also some mentioned allocating administrative and
purchasing responsibilities to Regional Library
cooperatives this actually brings me to the conclusion um I may have skipped
some slides so asked questions because there there's there's some content in in
The Ether um but um the the four conclusions that our contractor came to
that we really wanted to just sort of leave you with are um slas use different
different methods to distribute funds but worked to achieve efficient and
equitable distribution of funding slaa took advantage of the transition to
Virtual environments to expand Library access to SLA meetings through digital
teleconferencing platforms and virtual professional development
opportunities on the library side uh libraries modified existing programming
and created new programming to meet the needs um of their communities um and
libraries especially work to bridge the digital divide exacerbated by the p pmic
and finally although many libraries initially viewed new programming as a
temporary response to the covid-19 pandemic um many continue to offer the
programs and services created during the pandemic and so um the last thing I'd
like to do is just acknowledge all the hard work of everybody in this room I
was not here but I was so impressed when I saw this data so I'm just to
congratulations to you all for braving a hard time and and serving everyone that
you did um and I also want to thank you all because um you all provided the data
um that is coming here and I know some of this is a repeat of what you told us
but it'll also help um the government and other communities learn about um how
imls successfully um responded and I'm going to bring uh the wonderful Emily up
uh to field some questions if we we have a few minutes for
[Applause] questions hi sorry so um the slide where
you give the numbers of libraries tribal units and something else that got Awards
yep that was with cares and arpa together yes and are those unique
um yeah I believe that um uh so I we did have our contractor perform the data
analyses but I believe they do duplicated I'm looking yeah Terry says
yes they do duplicated unique institutions thanks s so each so 40,000
different libraries yes okay and how does that compare to your benchmark year
of 2019 that's a great question um I so I think our contractor had noted that it
might be slightly less than a benchmark here um I don't know exactly why that is
because obviously was a lot of funding um I'm I I don't have a great answer for
that but we could dig a little more it's a really good question
[Music]
um we could potentially some results bear with me for those of you
who were on this side of morning you have come into your state liar post pic
people for the people who were coming on right in the middle of it what is
especially
people what's your take from
and
Fant
J thank you
app
thank you thanks for the example that's like I love The Illuminating insights
thank you
awesome so when I I think about
that I think the were put in place right but as we look at fure
yeah and I don't know the answer but Clifton's showing data and I'm really
curious now too so thank you sorry to set you up if I don't know
if that's in yours but
pulling from The Well of knowledge um I just wanted to reiterate the the midlife
crisis thing did really um I was working with the State
Library agency but I didn't become the LCA coordinator till the middle of the
pandemic so I sort of saw what my predecessor uh was doing so it really
did resonate that we did so much work in such a short amount of time um but I
also just wanted to say I was very skeptical at the beginning I think it
was in Baltimore when when Crosby keer was talking about why we had to spend
the money so fast um I feel like I probably rolled my eyes uh quite a bit
and was like that's uh ridiculous but seeing how you know some of the other
political entities that received funding and I think you mentioned this right
imls handled this so well and it was so professionally done and libraries Rose
the occasion so well um and my colleagues right and I think our State
Library agencies did as well that um I feel really proud to have spent this
money and done these projects in the way that we did even though it was sort
of Soul crushing is a strong phrase but it was it was very challenging in the
moment but in retrospect I do think it provides a very strong argument going
forward for why libraries are a smart investment uh for federal and state
dollars thank you we will take with us jennif
last yeah sorry this is I know it's a little uh extra than above what you
asked for but I just wanted to say that even as it was kind of Soul crushing and
there was so much work I mean I I felt so um I I just felt really honored to be
able to have something I could do that would actually be helpful that I think
the for us the psychological benefits actually outweighed you know the soul
crushing work which was Soul crushing but um in you know in the end I mean I
think we came out feeling a whole lot better than we would have
otherwise
em access to information acoss State a EMP
it
seems the
you're
[Applause]
thank you all right I am feeling inspired despite how many times the word
Soul crushing was tossed out there I am reminded like viscerally there in the
time that you all were just being Heroes so thank you again it was really great
to see this incapsulated Lisa you did a fabulous job sorry about the slides um
we we appreciate you so much um now we're going to see the flip side of the
data which is what was going on with the allotment grants in the meantime and
what is the longitudinal look at what our allotment grants have been doing we
haven't actually done this flavor of presentation for a number
of years we kind of parked it all on hold because the pandemic was going on
there were other priorities happening but this year early in our planning we
said this is what we want to do this again it's really important the states
give us all this data through the spr we don't want it to go into a black box we
want to tell the national story and to do right by you as stewards of this data
and can we please have that kind of presentation again we know that the
person that gave that presentation doesn't work and I am a less anymore but
you work magic Matt bur Bal so make it happen for us and he did and let me just
say that um Clifton has only been working with this data for a few short
months and also comes from outside of libraries and so this is an actual
Miracle what you're about to see is that he synthesized all of it and put it
together in a way that I think will spark conversation
um you know Clifton is a past educator he brings a lot of good curiosity to
this work he's also very funny and very kind and I'm so pleased that you get to
hear from him today and see some of your data in action so please help me welcome
[Applause] Clifton hello um I was hired for height
so I'm not going to adjust my microphone so it it sounds like um I'm
being projecting pretty well um hello my name is uh Clifton MC reyolds and um I'm
going to introduce myself I grew up in extreme Southern
Illinois um I was not allowed in the early 80s to go to a library because
where we lived was no we were not Incorporated anywhere so I was not able
to I I was allowed to go to the library once or twice before school and wasn't
allowed to check anything out um but uh now it's interesting how it's a full
circle I've been able to visit archives um several countries and um just really
en enjoy the resource in libraries and museums and all other kind of fun things
um I have a background in education um my PhD is in research methodology and
evaluation um I taught high school music and
math so now you'll understand why I'm so weird um I I I was told originally that
you came to this conference just for graphs and charts is that that is oh
that might be correct or incorrect but I have some charts um for you um I was
reminded that there are some principles to kind of go forth um between the
communication between um the branch and the states and it's the couple
principles we wanted to remind you of was that it this whole spr is a
partnership program it's we're not going to be able to do anything with the data
unless you do something with the data and give it to us so it's very much hand
inand a frolicking through a field of flowers
of data it's wonderful um so it's it's it's great we can't do this without your
help um we and your participation and your input so it's very important we
really appreciate it uh I I am the kind of person that enjoys digging deep into
data and it was wonderful I I really liked looking at the tables um and so
one of the first things we did is we knew that we were going to exclude the
car's arpa data so what you're about to see is just some analysis some Trend
analysis some charts and stuff that exclude what um what Lisa was just
talking about so um now over the next 45 minutes um I
understand like I said I was a former teacher if you need to stand up that's
no problem to me if you need to stretch your legs it's not going to it's not
going to bother me or distract me um but you will be held accountable for the the
pop quiz at the end of it so make sure you're ready for that so um like Lisa
had mentioned there are um six focal areas with various intents that are
mapped directly to them um this analysis what we did today didn't go into um
specific intents although we did look at other kind of ways to slice and dice the
data so um hopefully you'll find that um interesting um but again you know this
is just a reminder um
so luckily when I first looked at the data one of the things I wanted to do is
summarize and High Point some highlights so uh these are some of the things that
from the year fiscal year 2015 through 2022 again excluding the um the Caris
and arpa these are some of the things that just kind of like stood out to me
so um over 10,000 projects U 465,000 presentations and performances two
billion 2.4 billion items circulated I think that's kind of awesome thank you
Carl Sean for allowing me to say billion over and over again um and just just
some really positive things to kind of know
where the your efforts are going um so and plus I got to use some really cool
sides and colors now the analysis that that I
did when I started my well backtrack just a little bit when I started my u
career in evaluation one of the things that always stuck out to me was the
utilization aspect of evaluation I don't like just throwing out information
that's just there so I wanted to really focus on what you could use um and if I
threw if I if I did some analysis that you didn't like or you didn't want to
lose guess what we're going to have some time at the end um there should be um a
couple of note cards and pens on your tables and that's how we're going to
collect some data um and small activity at the
end um so I did a longitudinal analysis so it's a lot of line graphs um
forecasting um I use a 95% confidence interval um so you'll see the middle
line is like kind of generally where it's at in the 95% and then you'll see
some um lower and upper bounds so it's not really extreme um but it'll kind of
give you an idea um and so like I said we talked about focal areas and intense
um some activities drilling down from programs to activities and the types of
activities um and just for a reminder um whenever I have some timelines um I
always put like just a CO link so you'll know that this is where Co happened
because we have all forgotten we didn't know there was a
pandemic so this is an example um so this is a number of projects um from
2015 through 2022 um as you can see there was a
general decline um up until about 2019 and then you can kind of see where the
pandemic altered a few things in as far as the number of projects but using some
analysis um and some input from the the grants EST States it's reflecting
efficiency more than is anything that the reporting into the spr is is more
like condensing things condensing the projects and and representing um the
data a lot more efficiently so this is not a negative uh thing it's not like
we're you know restricting the number of projects but given that um again looking
at the the forecast with the 95% confidence interval um you can kind of
see looking at some uh the software that we
used use some Trend analysis and seasonality as well so you can kind of
see where it could go in um 23 and 24 which we'll get that data soon so we'll
see how wrong or right that forecasting is and just to kind of drill down a
little bit more I looked at the number of
activities and again General decrease usually because of the efficiency of the
reporting into the into the software okay um and again you can kind
of see like you know the number of activities um kind of went up in 2019
but again because of the the the pandemic and so on so forth um went up
in 2021 and further down um but again fluctuations in the efficiency of the
reporting I think is the best uh the best explanation for
that um now for this um for the budget slide
I have do I have two slides that represent the same thing um so in the
green you'll see the median budget for the lsta funds and then the blue is the
overall funds um I'm not going to insult your intelligence but I will still
remind what median means it's the one that's in this very middle of how 50% of
the budgets were above and 50% of the budgets were below the number that's
represented um so you can kind of see the the number in the greens the plural
numbers in the green that's the words I was looking for um going uh steadily up
to 2018 down a little bit in 2019 and you can kind of see it kind of starting
to recover again this is without the cares and Arbor funding so there's still
um median um kind of increased for that and then just to kind of look at
those the the lsta on a timeline just same numbers just in a different uh
graph format um you can kind of see the projection um would be continuing to
increase for the most part um especially through
2024 um and then you know the extreme 95% out of bounds would have it increase
faster but even the the lower increase in 2024 would be relatively what it is
in 2022 so
now um as Lisa had mentioned in in her presentation here are some uh
distributions of activities by focal area type or focal area and by type oh
and this one okay I was going to say the the last time I viewed the slides they
had taken out the even number of years but they're back in now that's fine and
just to point out that procurement U and I believe even Lisa mentioned this that
procurement is in institutional capacity capity only so that's why it's not
distributed to the others um so these types you can kind of see the
distribution um across uh lifelong learning for example the the instruction
uh taking up the most the majority and the content and etc etc now one of the
things that I noticed again not being too familiar with imls but looking at
this was like okay look we have three large ones and three small ones so I
just kind of wanted to do another set of slides that just kind of looked at
um apples and apples and oranges and oranges so these are um the three larger
uh focal areas um information access institutional capacity and lifelong
learning and you can kind of see how they related to each other between um or
from 20 2015 through 2022 um again in 2020 you can kind of
see a large reduction in in the lifelong learning because it kind of shifted I
think um fundings um as well as the information
access i' like to give a little time not not
for being weird I just want to you there's lots of information out there
make you feel uncomfortable I did that when I was teaching algebra but that was
beside the point and so here are the three smaller
ones and and again you can kind of see um the distribution compared to the the
other two um throughout the
years primarily Civic engagement remains um if not the most um always a second
but also in human services and economic and and um employment developments was
also
and then this is the just percentage of types U or percentage of activities by
type um as you can see the planning evaluation and procurement and this is
all of them all of the projects together so um just some kind of percentage
distributions um instruction taking about half most of the time um sometimes
content being um representing a little bit more especially in 2020 but again
the kesara kind of redistributed and shifted around
thing and by format so this is particularly the instruction
activities and um just the number of activities by uh format whether it be
virtual or combined or in person um so the in person is on the bottom and then
the virtual is on top and this is just a reflection of of what happens to a
planet when they go through a pandemic right it's just it's shifted to mostly
in person and now it's about you know evenly distributed and
um and a blend a mix of combination in person and virtual like we were doing
today hello people in the Internet by the
way oh are they oh cool I'm glad to know that that's
and the last um informational slide um I just wanted to show you was this is just
my curiosity was I wanted to know how the distribution of well I started with
minutes but it's hard to comprehend tens of thousands of minutes so I did um the
number of session hours um by focal area and I thought this was really
interesting um that institutional capacity was for 47 to 58% of the number
of sessions but
81% to 96% of the hours distributed so that's interesting and it just means
that probably things are longer longer sessions um instruction
instructors like to talk a lot so I'm trying not to do that um so um yeah
Library operations and infrastructure about half of the uh
sessions but only like 4 to 20% of the hours so um anyway this just an
interesting um distribution of like of how things were um and these are
thousands of hours by the way not no not just in number of hours but
these are thousands of hours so um just kind of
that now I would like to do an activity um just based off of what we
just saw what you know about the spr spr if you if you've gone to these uh
conferences these meetings before what are some things that um when
you think of the spr what comes to mind that sort of thing um there is somebody
on um you're collecting the information from the virtual
people um so if you wouldn't mind let's do the
Green Card first so everybody should have a green card and a pen a writing
utensil
and my algebra 2 class that had 28 football players in it please write
legibly I should remind you that yes that that was the most interesting um
algebra class I had ever taught 30 students 28 boys that were
football players okay that's why we're flexible
sometimes but yeah it's very interesting learning Dynamic let me tell you um so
keep in mind these are confidential I do not know your personal writing styles um
so um uh don't feel like we're going to call you out or anything this is just
kind of like an internal evaluation where are we going forward with the spr
what do you want to see that kind of thing so
um your instructions and this is the hard part don't write anything
yet take a few moments and think about only one or two
words that come to mind when you want to describe the spr reports or this
presentation okay just one or two
words just think about them for now one or two and dear Librarians if
you want to use hyphenated or that's up to you but one or two
words okay now write down those words on one side of the green
card and then on the back you're going to tell me why you chose those one or
two words just use a couple of sentences and
those sentences may not be the following dissertation describes the what the
choice I made this is really
in-depth data
collection again the spr report or the presentation what would you what do you
think about and why the sentences and if you
and if you just write it on one side that's okay and then the virtual
people type in your words and then hyphen your your sentences I guess
you're not over there virtual people are over here so just type in your your word
and then a sentence or two describing why you chose that
word you thought I was kidding about the prop quiz didn't you
okay and um when you are finished um I'll collect them later um just make
sure they're in the pile on the table that I'll be able to see and I'll
collect them um or or we can if you want to do that now you
can and then an optional thing if you want to use the the pink card to just
kind of like any additional comments like please don't wear a blue tie to
this meeting ever again okay that's fine again confidential but that's for other
that's why we can keep the the pink and the green cards separate um please don't
use the same card again I've worked with teenagers so I feel like I have to say
things like that um and again virtual if you have something additional just type
use your word as an additional
um so that's that so with that in mind um as you're write finishing your
comments and and things um are there any questions um that you might have about
the spr something that wasn't represented or
something that you have a question about that that was
um I will do my best to answer now and I've only I've only had this data for
seven weeks so I'll do my
best any
questions if there are any questions I'll start making up questions and then
answering them like can you sort them descending alphabetically well yes I can
yes lots of fun uh I would like to set you up for a question okay um which is
we now have data on Caris and arpa and we have data on covid and then we have
the wonderful State data that came out of our slaa
survey can you or anyone from the team talk about how we collectively within o
can start connecting the data how
um have we talked about it oh yes I get your question now yes we
have talked about it and and that's absolutely one of the next um steps that
Lisa um and I think are um we're going to Endeavor is just kind of like what
was the overall picture um so we've presented to you two different pictures
split apart and uh we're going to work on some analysis um about kind of
building on Mora's question a little bit and some of what we saw in Lisa slides
and I believe we have one from the virtual people we have a oh great
and because there's going to be a transcript I'm not going to use Nam
going to do that um question is are there questions you
want to answer not sure you exactly I'm assuming it's
youan the larger VI but the doesn't provide the data for that's one
question and data heavy that's their word data and
heavy is their work the has a lot of information components Tak a lot of time
to collect but it is so satisfying when it comes together oh
good yeah it it is very data heavy but you kind of need that to answer all
sorts of different kinds of questions so I found that oddly exciting about the
working with the data it's that yeah this is going to be able to answer a lot
of the questions so but
yes
yes at the Lis of these cards you know who I am but you know
that's um when when I when I watch this was Sting this report like in my mind I
was known to the way we administer programs L on the
right it's really illustrating to me the changes that we made with having more
money and you know those things I I would find it
interesting question
somay um I'd be interested in see how other
programs last like Federal programs if they're seeing the same of like
increasing project size or other things like that that we can learn from
of what we do for libraries because I think there's there's sort of two minds
that we have this one is being a grand administrator and the other is Library
stuff and like to me I'm really interested as a library guy to know more
about Grant Administration like learn more about that
process yeah well we're certainly looking at other Grant um
administrations as well um yeah you're right it is you know uh my previous role
was in um graduate medical education it was is so interesting to see similar you
know reflection of what you know different programs and and activities
and stuff too we have additional comments question
um dense the spr report is very dense with
information and data procurement the increase in purchasing technology other
items during Co was reinforced by this presentation good that's a a statement
more than a question but yeah good all right
awesome yeah it and like I said um sometimes you need dense things right
the the most beautiful W wood that sings in musical instruments are the densest
wood so right we want our data to sing a very
back data analysis of this reinforces dense I also happy that no any
vot so far yeah plenty of things no
words we can't wa great great the virtual folks are coming in h great
Su I think the way the was developed allows the information input to be Su
not everyone is for accountability it's a lot of work to
compile but is important to do in order our efforts especially in regard to our
efficient use of funds
great this is Terry in the back of the room I'm just reflecting on Ben's
observation about money and library was very Wonder we felt like we an answer in
some of's data I feel like large share of what we see invested in
and especially that last graph with the white middle I think that kind of sums
up yes like there is a lot of Library professional Workforce Development at
least in hours that is happening through these dollars so I found
that and also as a reminder if you have any any additional questions that we and
get to or like to knows we that's what we call them if the parking lot is
completely open and um more than just if you have something directed I guess to
the O um or to me I guess personally but um yeah just let us
know this might be more a suggestion but when I see the data on consultation ref
and things like that I have the suspicion that we're all we're alling a
differ and it would be really nice to
have and also what cons how many times consult sometimes
it's a quiery little B longer but sometimes it
on for days and I I suspect that
sure when they're I'm always
ofing yeah so that would be yeah thank you very
much have another word us virtual transparency plus the imls public portal
for searching projects demonstrates
I'm just going to chime in on comment because just like those valuation
guidelines went through cycle I'm a little scared the
deadlines coming up in2 so
all documentation requirements dat
all to go through the sh again and this might be a good we get
oured so no promises our be looking deep at those
and
we I believe the next item on the agenda is a break are we ready for
that yes you gently back from
break hello welcome
back we still have you here we didn't scare you away with
data thank you for returning i
c I'm really excited for this session partly because these are some of my
favorite people here um Emily plom and Frank I have to say is like if I could
personify or embody a Swiss army knife like she would be it she can do
everything um we are so abundantly lucky to work with her and she can match us
point for point on goofiness so she keeps us laughing all the time we love
it uh and Matt burn bom directs all these folks he's been sort of the silent
uh voice until now and you're going to get to hear from him he is a partner in
this conference always committing to it appreciating you he actually predates me
and the rest of the grant to States team in terms of working with
you um the sheer amount of work that he brings to his team is
astounding um he has put this office on a course with
Destiny and um and and he manages to still be very collegial and
collaborative in all of this work with other offices but my favorite part about
Matt is that we're sort of Partners in doing occasional fun morale building
activities at the agency and I think um for both of them here all of us can
reflect on how we are as leaders in our work and that we don't have to choose
between the fun and the compassion side of life or the getting stuff done side
of life these two make sure that we do both so it is my great pleasure to have
them tell you about this new thing at imls called The Learning agenda Emily
Matt take it
[Applause]
away Emily you can pull bring that up and I'll bring it
down um I think I'm decided like a new career for myself whatever I've left in
my career it's um Talent acquisition I want want to thank Emily Clifton Lisa
today uh they r a third of our team another member of our team who is been
here today just to be observing is Marissa I think about half of you know
her from the public library survey the SLA survey and as we start moving into
the future we're going to be more systematically relying on her knowledge
and try to tell a more comprehensive story from all the data and evidence
that we have together so while we're here please don't hesitate to reach out
to M or the other members of our team the um I also want to start by
again thanking Cindy who's our leader and our inspiration um for this
particular topic today about the learning agenda um I'm going to turn it
to Emily pretty soon and she's going to Jazz you up but just to set a little bit
of the context um is if you can go back to that to
2020 21 and um we're in the middle of
covid the agency also as a member of the federal government it is uh doing its
required updates of its strategic planning and I'm Les as it finished its
strategic plan we had a conversation about should we do a learning agenda and
we'll talk about a learning agenda in a second but the story I want to tell
right now is we weren't required to do it we were too small and it's not really
essential something for the bigger agencies and Cindy Crosby larer
migz agreed yeah this makes business this makes good business sense we don't
need to be mandated to do it let's do it because it makes it makes good sense
it's good use for the taxpayers it's a good way for us to be effective and
meaningful so 22 we finished the Strate iic plan and Emily Cindy Crosby Lara
were meeting regularly in trying to think about what this learning agenda
would be and within it comes child reading and it's going to be some of the
infrastructure study I'm just trying to set the context now so this learning
agenda in real simple plain English not that Federal goblook of a learning
agenda what it really is is it's a strategic multi-year plan for an agency
to figure out what research and evaluation should it do and it should do
the research and evaluation is if we can transform the data into evidence in a
way that will make a meaningful difference on
decisions we start with a premise that people have strong values that really
help dictate complex decisions people have their intuition people have a lot
of historical knowledge and you have the con the knowledge that comes from
informal conversations these are all really vital
bases and when we start thinking about research and evidence we're trying just
to fill the Gap thinking about how this other base of evidence from research and
evaluation can supplement what you know intuitively from your own history from
your informal conversations so we were having this
conversation what would a learning agenda look like in imls what are the
types of questions what types of ways could we go and collect the evidence how
can we use it how can what would the process look like for making sure there
learning so we have this kind of this abstract exercise where we go over all
the various types of research and evaluation we can do and we can do some
tradeoffs in terms of how scientifically credible these different methods are
and we can also then think about well they all take different amounts of time
they all cost a lot of money and we don't have the luxury of having that
time of having that money so how do we make a strategic decision and what's the
best evidence that can help us make a meaningful difference in having to make
certain
decisions okay so we're spending 2023 in these conversations with star to
shapit and we look we had just finished the Strategic plan and we're trying to
identify those parts of the Strategic plan where we wanted to make some change
but our intuition our informal conversations our
values weren't providing enough evidence to know how to move forward so we're now
starting to think about what would that research might look like and most
importantly as we start being future oriented if we can get some insights
into this research before we launch any new Grant making is there some way we
might be able to structure those Grant making in a way we can get some credible
evidence and that's the controlled
experiments okay so the leadership Cindy Crosby Lara in these conversations with
Emily and me over a year we looking at all the things that IMS is trying to do
and they identify three key priorities one is looking at the
contributions of libraries to advance child reading and Emily's going to talk
a bit about that the second one is looking at where
the future of the museum sector is going 22 23 coming out of Co coming out of the
social justice movements and we're starting to look at some demographic
shifts lots of things going on in this sector what does that suggest for where
that sector going and then for our grant making
particularly our competitive discretionary Grant making
what do we know about how Equitable it might be and these three issues form the
basis of learning agenda where we dictate certain questions that we want
answered with evidence we dictate the methods for collecting those evidence
and then the processes for trying to disseminate the
learning while that's going on we've got a big plate and we've got some other
stuff we've got Marissa and another one of our colleagues Jake they're running
our statistical surveys you already heard today about
the evaluation we were doing of covid there's another evaluation that we're
wrapping up now of our four Native American native Hawaiian Grant programs
and we're going to talk a little bit about this Congressional mandate for
imls to assess the needs of INF of the country's uh infrastructure of the
country's libraries and museums so that's our portfolio within it we've got
this prioritized set of questions in our
learning agenda that we're going to try to collect any
evidence course I go back with Cindy a little bit a couple of years and we got
to have a little coffee today I'm going to just put her on the spot and ask
Cindy if you might want to just put any some observation about from your eyes
the perspective of the acting director about where the learning agenda is
sitting in in imess Vision um so first of all thank you Matt
for calling on me uh that Dr Matt teacher and Mentor um so when I think
about the learning agenda and what we what will come out of
it um it is my hope that it will then begin to shape some things in terms of
uh some of the you know 22 we finished a a strategic plan as Matt said and guess
what in 26 we'll be ready to do another one I know that seems so far off but not
really um so I think that there's a lot of it's a learning agenda so I think
there will be a lot of learning that will come from this that will inform
that and I do think that it will shape um our grant making in ways that maybe
are uh different or discretionary Grant making and ways that are different than
they are now um and then I will say that the child reading actually I cannot take
any credit for that that was our former director Crosby Kemper he had a real
passion for this and I think it you know we we already understand I think as
Librarians that we play a seminal role in literacy and but really being able to
evidence it and then for us from a grant making perspective thinking about the
ways that we might invest in support of libraries and their role in that reading
ecosystem as we move forward is really going to be something um that we'll be
thinking about as we learn from these different uh sort of sub research
agendas of the larger learning agenda thanks
Cindy so I'm going to turn it over to Emily and she's gonna talk to you about
where we've been advancing with our learning agenda topic around child
reading
um I'll also be talking about the status of our infrastructure study so like any
good thing o we have way more content on our slides than we have time for so I'm
going to zip through some of this pretty quickly um but I did very intentionally
leave a lot of content on the slides um so that you could go back and look at it
later I wanted to make sure it was available um
and uh ector loo para Rapido um I'm GNA go fast really quickly
I I am a I am a person who is Thoroughly Midwestern I grew up in Northwest Iowa
my parents and younger sister live in Minnesota my older sister is in Missouri
I currently reside south of here in Chicago um but I
cut my adult teeth here in Wisconsin um undergrad graduate spent 10
years working here including in this building as a banquet chef and met my
husband here um this very building yeah um so when I found out that we were
going to be here uh there was a lot of excited yelling and also that there was
an opportunity for me to think of a great theme about Wisconsin or Milwaukee
that I could incorporate in my slides and I spent way more time that I needed
to thinking about what I could do
and I say I'm thoroughly Midwestern because out of all the states Wisconsin
is my favorite um
so we'll talk later um so just to say um my Wisconsin slides
as a data person are the most obvious evidence I could find of myself being
excited about the state of Wisconsin so that if there is any kind of vote later
SL superlative um it's G to be me so uh we'll just you know go back to
this first slide just in case you wondered how I feel about Wisconsin and
where we are okay so let's get into child reading
and less about me um this particular piece of literature
this is a piece of re search that is public imls has issued it's available
we've presented to KLA we've presented to a couple of different folks we were
at ala on this um it's out there this this the purpose of this presentation is
really just to make you aware of kind of the Core Concepts that are in the paper
and how you might be able to use some of it when you're looking at your literacy
programming so there's a bunch of background here again I'm going to go
through these slides pretty quickly um basically just saying we are building
this child research literature review on some past meetings that we've had it was
conducted by the American Institutes of research um people who are way better at
me with stats uh went out and did the research and I just get to present on
their interesting findings and what we're really trying to understand in
this paper what we brought to the original concept of this paper is this
idea that libraries have been wanting to measure their impact on reading in
particular for a long time but it's been really hard to find a direct line
between Library influence on reading and reading skills and I'm not going to tell
you anything that most of you don't already know um but getting that direct
contribution trying to understand what is it that libraries really do to help
with reading in particular is just so hard to get to because if we look at
school scores and we try and map where the library shows up there's so much
role that the library plays in informal learning that isn't measured in what we
see in standardized tests so the hypothesis that we're trying to work
with here is what are the things that libraries really contribute to as a
significant factor when it comes to child reading literacy so we're not
talking about financial literacy we're not talking about adult literacy we're
just really looking at kind of the core like kids learning how to read and
libraries we hear so often that people love libraries and they learn to love to
read Because of libraries and so if there's this potential if we can find
evidence that there's a that motivation the concept of motivation and
engagement influences how kids
read and we can find evidence that says libraries are
motivators are are motivators they bring motivation to the idea of reading then
maybe we can start to actually find evidence that could say Li that could
help us tease out what that role libraries play in the literacy space
it's not to say that libraries don't do formal education it's not to say that
libraries don't do literacy in other ways but we're looking at motivation as
like the measurement that we might be able to actually pull out of this set
data and see if we can get to some evidence so more stuff about the
research questions these are the research questions paper looks at they
inform the um learning agenda as we have it in place right now Lisa is doing an
outstanding job of keeping the current reading research going so next year
we'll be able to share you share with you the next iteration of research
that's come out of what we learned from this paper and what we're setting up in
the learning agenda again this is just the structure of the literature revie
that air did um it's really again we're talking Under 12 years kids reading
books um could be hard books mostly hard copy
books we'll touch a little bit on uh Virtual Reading but we really aren't
we're trying again to just put boundaries on something we could go
broad we could go way broader we all know we could go way broader we're
trying to just put some boundaries on one piece of it where we might be able
to see a high concentration of where motivation is being
delivered and of course we all know that there's not a lot of Library research
out there so the paper itself basically goes through all of the evidence based
research where there has been some kind of attempt to measure engagement and
some type of attempt to measure engagement as it relates to literacy but
as you will not be surprised the library literature out there is very anecdotal
um it's very story based case study based so a lot of the evidence that we
did find even though it says motivation is an important factor comes from
school-based uh research that said you're going to see in the slides in a
couple of slides that um the motivation activities that come out of this
school-based research are straight out of what libraries do so there's a really
good it's not a onetoone um research comparison but there's a lot
there's a lot of really good overlap in terms of what we're looking at in the
studies that are out there so first of all we start with this
idea is is does reading does motivation influence child literacy and we didn't
try to the the paper isn't about arguing yes
or no it's assuming it's starting with evidence that says motivation
matters um and so we have a good basis of research that's out there that talks
about why motivation can improve literacy um and why engagement is
important why positive feelings about reading is what can help someone who
knows how to read move from just knowing how to read to wanting to read right
because we can all read instructions on how to set up our mic microwave but no
one's going to do that by choice hopefully
um so like that that trigger for moving from I have to read something to I want
to read something is really that point that's the point that we're looking at
here so the literature review looks at four different ways that four different
core components of literacy instruction literacy delivery
and it looks to see if there's proof of um proof that motivation when
incorporated into any of these four Concepts improves reading literacy and
so we're really looking at that line between motivation
engagement and does it does it show up when does motivation matter when we're
trying to get kids to read hey the findings if you haven't seen the bronze
FS find it is that a bingo card thing should be oh should be he's on the river
we love the fs in milwauke Milwaukee loves F okay so long story short
motivation matters it does matter getting and again this shouldn't
surprise you you're in the field but getting kids to want to read makes them
better readers it's it takes a want to read
combined with literacy development to really see reading performance change so
you're not just going to sit in school and tell kids that T and H make a th
sound and those kids are going to go on and be excellent readers you need
something that's going to motivate them to want to read about things that have
the in the sentence that was a terrible example sorry um also this one's super
interesting so you know there are some hypothesis out there that books you get
more books to kids kids are going to read more books if I have a table of 100
books in front of me and those books alone are the only
thing that I have that help me learn how to read or want to read that that would
be enough for me to become an Avid Reader and what the research says is no
that's not true you need motivational principles Incorporated with those books
because books alone cannot get a child into competent not competent they can't
move them move the needle the way we want them to so everything really is
integrated again this should be self-evident to what you're
doing it makes a lot of sense that one activity on its own standing alone
wouldn't help us get more literate readers but I am just so fascinated by
how the motivation shows up in these things so I'm just going to touch really
briefly on these four princi principles content-based approaches are the idea
again that you are um putting an English book in front of a child and you're
having them read from a textbook right that's the content that you're having
them read the read of I don't know what happened to my slides here they look
better anyway sorry um again and these are also a lot of non-library studies
but this idea that you're putting narrative content tied to
reading instruction content is very compelling and obvious
if you have a book about a wizard and you're trying to help kids learn how to
read and they're interested in Wizards you're going to want to pair that
phonics based learning with information about Wizardry and that will help
increase reading comprehension so they will understand that when they see the
word word the it could be the broom or the magic ball or the witch's hat um but
they will connect how to sayth they will connect whatthe means when they're doing
it surrounded by things that they're interested
in the second piece does any of this all of this is
Library all of this is Library the second piece is having practices
activities integrated with practices these are all things that you all do but
just having it's like having wraparound activities that
reinforce reading and literacy concepts are what help informal
instruction move kids from just reading to want to read um and if you think
about it like there are so much that libraries do in this space with kids
with families that to pair it with a
school project a program literacy goals um where the library is bringing this
and the schools bring in the formal instruction like that's just such a
powerful way to help to help with literacy
goals um supportive resources literacy reading comprehension reading
performance gets better when you have other types of resources available the
the reading to dogs of course like that one shows up time and time again in
evidence um things spaces we have a lot of movement around helping libraries
reinvent spaces so that books are more logically accessible to kids and not
tied to the you know tied to the the system of organization that we might
have been formally trained in um I'm not going to T touch technology with a 5-
foot pool that's mixed evid 10 foot pool 30 foot pool um that's mixed evidence
Tech in some instances helps with accessibility and helps kids get closer
to engaged reading but in but we also know there's evidence out there that
says it can really harm engaged reading so when you look at the paper and you
see the examples here you're going to see some mixed results I should also say
the evidence that they lay out in the paper
um it's there are some areas that are stronger than others and I think that's
also really interesting too where you might say like oh I see really clear
evidence in the instructional content piece but um we didn't shy away from
talking about things that were interesting and compelling but not fully
developed because if we had to wait on that we never would have been able to
get this paper out the door um Family
engagement if you haven't been screaming family engagement in your head by now
um this you know will it should lead you to do that where family engagement of
course is core to helping improve reading comprehension help improve kids
learning how to read this is an area that in in kind of
reflection of how the lit review came out and in reflection of what you'll see
in the learning questions it is so critical that we figure out how to
incorporate the role of family or caretakers in the reading space in
research because we can't you can't separate those two
um if a family is not involved the kid is not you know it's it's rare to see a
kid learn how to love reading or see have strong reading skills but that's
almost its own path of research so we're trying to
figure out how we can explore that in the context of
motivation you know in some instances there are questions where are family
stronger contributors to literacy than libraries or schools and um you know we
certainly don't want to find ourselves down that path of of needing to make an
argument for one or the other because it's really when we think about the
literacy ecosystem it's a whole and that's what we're finding from the
research it's a whole it's not one thing that is the winner it's it's an
integrated contribution so I'm going to stop here I
was going to do a round table discussion I'm going to keep going though because I
think talking about the infrastructure study study is going to be also very
interesting for you um but I do want to prompt you to just think about what
about this research resonates with you you all are on you are you are entities
that are helping direct L literacy efforts in your States you're hearing
from your libraries about the challenges they're facing around child literacy
you're hearing about what libraries are having to do in a post-pandemic world
when it terms when it comes to trying to help promote reading um you know just
think about this food for thought I would love to hear afterwards or if we
have time what some of your thoughts are about this um especially as we continue
to invest in literacy I know it's not I know that literacy isn't the hottest of
Hot Topics right now but it's so core and so
critical to what libraries Provide support for in their
community that sometimes just making sure we're backing up what we already
know to be true um is a good it's a good priority to have um so this is really
great research we're really excited about it we're going to have like I said
more information coming out next year um these are the actual learning agenda
child research questions Matt did you want to say anything specific about them
okay um it gets you know it's definitely a
little wonky when it comes to now we're talking about research and what that
entails um one thing that I think is really compelling in these in this
question is understanding the role of the library as a literacy contributor in
the literacy ecosystem so instead of starting from the point of what is a
library what do Partnerships look like what do literacy Partnerships look like
we're actually taking a step back further and we're saying all right let's
look at the whole literacy ecosystem in a community what is the contribution
that a library makes in the literacy system literally C ecosystem we have
other entities out there like the Dolly Parton Imagination Library we have
Barber Shop books and the laundromat um laundromats and books uh we have the
schools we have other nonprofits that have mentorships or um after school
tutoring that are contributing to literacy so we look at all of those what
is the you know what is what does the library look
like um and you know hopefully we'll have some really interesting answers to
bring with you next year so um come back in a year and we'll tell
you so you can get this online um we'll make sure that we send the link around
afterwards take a look at it what's really awesome about the paper is that
these are this is for for you to take ideas on things that you could do you
know encourage other libraries in your states to take take on or if you're
looking to partner with someone um you know take a look at what you know
libraries offer what you might offer for literacy and
then you know see if you can find ways to strengthen that literacy activity in
your community okay now we're going to do a
90 degree turn and we're g to talk about buildings infrastructure before we do
that does anybody have any questions or comments that what Emily just Shar with
child
reading Qui questions or comments does this work is it working yeah before we
move on to infrastructure study anything that anybody wants to
share about what you've just reflected on listening to Emily talk about child
reading or similar if we were to come back a year from now and talk about
child reading is there anything that you'd be interested in learning more
about at three EOS definitely want more info okay
yeah just to give people a little bit of a metaphor em Emily was touching on it
so rather than starting as the library is the subject we really want to talk
talk about the child and the family and think about their journey in their
Community who goes to the library to learn to read who goes elsewhere what
does that how does that Journey fa how do the kids Fair based on who they're
interacting in other circumstances and that's really what that whole ecosystem
piece is intended to help explore i j forward that to our
Consultants I think that lii
I
add
me yeah yeah thank you Ben me again
uh I I assume in this in the context of the study when you talk about libraries
you're really zeroing in on public libraries and that school libraries will
be part of the larger reading ecosystem okay public libraries yeah yeah
yeah I we we know School libraries are contributors they're a little bit harder
structure to tackle so we started on the okay so for followup you know Emily
and others are around for office hours we all around today and tomorrow in the
interest of time now as I look at Terry we're going to move on to infrastructure
study one more Lindsay Lindsay you want to do oh we got one
more um my question might will be on the scope of what you're looking at I just
know that Public Library SP
yeah yeah yeah and the summer reading they
had the summer reading they focused on that they got evidence from around
motivation was in schools and not in libraries and that's really interesting
because we know libraries measure summer reading so um how can we get to that
data better okay I'm going to move on to
infrastructure
um goals of research goals of a study are always painful to read on paper um
this is me in 2010 doing the polar pron Madison or 2008 okay so goals of the
study this is a congressionally mandated study looking at the state of
infastructure of public libraries and museums across
the United States um these the goals that we have outlined
here are intended to inform Congress based on what Congress told us they
wanted to learn so I want to make really clear that this is like a gaps and needs
type exercise that goes back to our funders um and then what comes after
that is TBD so this is really the we are at the very front edge of trying to get
our arms around the national infrastructure needs of libraries and
museums across the United States and we know that they're
there um these are the research questions
themselves that are directing the study the study is about eight months in it's
a 16 to 18 month study um so these questions have been vetted this is what
we're working on when we're going out and doing the research I'll talk about
what each other the research elements look like for those of you who were on
this end of the room and have feelings of a time when there was funding for
infrastructure um infrastructure funds and for those of you who know that you
have construction needs that libraries come to you and ask you about um there
are various ways we're trying to get to as much data as we can in this time
frame but really there are a couple of things that are important to call out
out here one is that we're looking at areas of need which are rural
underserved and disaster prone communities um Congress directed us
specifically to focus on those three key indicators when we tried to look at what
infrastructure needs were uh in those facets um ultimately it's kind of
everywhere like if they're underserved communities in cities disas you know
everyone's feeling some kind of effective climate change
right now so um for the sake of people maybe being concerned that
they might be excluded from the study more or less this is going to cover most
of the United States and we're just focusing on a couple of areas that um we
know put physical buildings at higher risk of either being under repair at
risk of um you know collections being at risk
etc for those of you that like Congressional language
I highlighted uh the Senate language that says you got to do this study this
is the house language that says you got to do a study um so we're doing it there
is a another report if you hear tell of this being done by the GAO they have
almost the exact same language as come out of the of both the house and the
Senate um we are coordinating with GAO I like to say we are both on the same
dance floor and we're just making sure that we don't bump into each each other
as we're out there doing research so GAO is going to have some information that
they're going to publish there's going to be information we're going to publish
um and I think it the two reports combined are really going to tell us
this huge story about infrastructure needs uh
imls and under the direction of our fearless leader Matt um are overseeing
the project um we're working on it in collaboration with basically every other
office at imls and then we have a a research contractor that we've hired
called fed writers who are bringing on a lot of the Staffing that we need to be
able to do this research well um I just get so excited talking
about data collection um and this is my husband and
this is when we went to a Packers game if you couldn't tell um we have we have
a whole host of researches going on with this report where um we're really trying
to make sure we know we can't go to every state and site and location in the
United States um and so we're trying to make sure we get as much coverage about
infrastructure needs as we can so we have secondary data where we're doing
lint reviews we're looking at administrative data um and then we have
primary research where we're going out and doing interviews and facility sites
and the one thing I want to really make sure that we we're integrating all the
data that's what this says we're doing interviews these are the people that
we're interviewing we'll eventually be able to share that more data about that
this is the information that no one has yet seen so you're welcome hot off the
presses um these are the 10 library locations where we are going to be
sending Engineers on site to do a facility condition site assessment these
are going to help inform case studies that come out of the report so um
Missouri Louisiana North Carolina Colorado Alaska Maryland Texas Michigan
Oklahoma Kentucky and New Jersey congratulations we got an engineer come
into your state um and this is new data that we're going to be collecting we
know that there are so many different types of libraries out there and so many
libraries that would love to have someone come and do an assessment of
their buildings what we tried to make sure is that we had diversity in the
types of governance structure of um public libraries um the rur the
urbanicity and we also wanted to make sure they met one of those criteria
around underserved um or disaster so we're really trying to make sure we
take into account as much diversity in these 10 sites as possible
um and we're going to be taking the data from those sites rolling it up in
Aggregate and talking about some giving some context um about those findings but
I want to go back here to the um things that we're doing again like it's this is
one of many things that we're doing so the sites are the exciting piece for
sure um but we are doing what we can to not not miss all of the other important
places that we can get infrastructure data because I bet that you probably can
think of a hundred libraries off the top of your head that need help with their
buildings um we've even talked about it with allowable cost today so we know
that there is a much greater need than just going to 10 sites across the United
States this is our timeline I talked about it um in
brief wait for next spring that's when we're going to start bringing out some
of our results um there's a whole host of activities that are going on between
now and then that are around data collection analysis report review all
those fun things that go into issuing a report
um and if this is not proof even more proof that I am Wisconsin's number one
fan um my husband and I have a beautiful daughter Esther who's about to turn one
uh she is our newest little Wisconsin fan um we took this this summer and I'm
really hoping that I win the prize for the most excited person to be here today
these are all the questions that I know you're thinking about and so there are
the answers for you um so let's not ask any of those and we can get them out of
the way and we have a couple minutes for questions from the
audience or online
conru
so we looked do do you want to start you start you're in a roll okay all right um
so we started with the criteria of under sered disaster prone and Rural um
Atlantic City is you know right on the disaster
prone right they're significantly disaster prone underserved and
underserved um and so so what our researchers did was
they pulled the list of all the libraries in the United States they
applied those criteria so they winnowed the list down and then from that
criteria they they developed a rubric of looking at again the diversity in
governance structure um and then Geographic
diversity um and from that they started selecting the pool of libraries
um we didn't look at other factors like past Awards we didn't look at um
other contributors because we wanted we knew that there was going to be a big
range in some of these buildings are new right that doesn't mean there aren't
needs I lived in a 2008 townhouse for a while like there's a lot more needs in
that house than the 100-year-old house sometimes
right so it doesn't mean that a newer building doesn't need something it
doesn't mean because they might have money and they might be able to talk
about how they're prioritizing investment for that um so it really was
around diversity um but you know certainly if there are things that you
want to we can talk later if you want
um we didn't we did intentionally did not try to account for things yeah yeah
is this on
yeah yes yeah you got
it yes we we are and the folks at GAO are
interested as well yeah yeah we're looking at so so on the administrative
data side what we're looking at is Grant dollars that would go towards
infrastructure and then seeing how much of that goes to
libraries or museums and then seeing what kinds of funding libraries and
museums need F FCC of course has its little asteris of you know big old eay
over here um and then we're also looking at imls data because what I was thinking
about when we were looking at the allow cost slides infrastructure construction
is part of infrastructure but there might be parts of
infrastructure that are not construction that we might be able to parse out with
an imals data especially within covid whoever asked the co question um to see
like where where we have showed up as I aess in the fringes of the
infrastructure space okay Emily dena's got the question that's on everybody's
mind I'm going to ask her if she'll ask it
again and it's it's probably a dumb question but how will the research be
used um I think we are hoping in Kentucky that some of the money could be
used for some of these infrastructure and construction projects we do
administer a construction Grant through State funding but we're finding that our
legislator doesn't want to open up the purse strings on that as much so we're
looking for other sources I'm gonna let the big boss answer that
one first thing I'm going to tell you is our principal client is Congress they
the ones who requested the analysis done and we're going to stand by the
science we don't want any perception that the evidence that we have collected
and analyzed is biased by any preconceptions by any uh ideological
objectives the second piece is we're going to make it
accessible and maximize utilization by other audiences outside of Congress we
are hoping that come next summer when ala has its annual meeting for instance
that we will be there and presenting the findings the third piece as we are
talking to the White House and Congress right now we are in our own agency's
interest interest of being worried about unfunded mandates we are very much
talking about what the study itself can answer and why there'll be different
additional demands for follow-up research the last part is in terms of
making it accessible is we hope to be making the reporting data in available
in multiple ways including trying to make sure that when GAO releases its
report that the two reports will be able to read well together
well
said okay any all right oh we have one last
question one last question and then we'll wrap it up
working on the working on the what the I didn't hear you sorry it's the echo
is oh okay
yeah I mean yes let's talk um I haven't I haven't come across that or I
don't think our research team has come across that group yet um it's a that's a
really interesting concept
um we haven't talked about Federal versus state level construction
comparisons like we're really looking at Federal level right now but um like the
mountain of information we expect to get in the data collection portion of the
study it's going to inform any other research that we do down the road so um
even if that's not something that fits now like I think it's good to know
everything that's out there so thank you Shameless plug for office hours later
we'll be there if you have other questions thank you team Gran thank you
Emily rockar than
you okay Matt and I have a challenge which is we're going to take our
15minute presentation and see if we can do it in eight Matt are you up for the
challenge yeah let's do it I would be betting against
me but go ahead okay Matt's gonna start us off do you want to stand here what
are we going to do yeah sure
okay so you know little bit after the dinosaurs kind of expired I joined IM
mes Karen was around sorry Karen um but for four 14 for 14 years ago we were in
Baltimore and we were talking about how can we tell a story a better story of
how the State library administrative agencies are contributing to make
healthy libraries and we used to use the metaphor of can we better describe the
way a summer investment in a summer reading program and say Michigan differs
from Mississippi or looks the same and back then the way the reports used to do
for your lsta grants you had probably about 3,000 projects we be getting
nationally and they were all basically a lot of words and stories it made it
really hard to tell National story so the whole spr
dense um comprehensive but it's also structured so that we can tell stories
about where the dollars go and what it looks like for State libraries and the
other libraries within those States and territories and so we built it out over
four years and it was this Federal partnership that we had like 15 states
who were partnering us piloting coaching others and we kind of kept building on
it and um it's kind of the big picture we want to talk a little bit today about
that big picture and about what we might want to be looking at different talk a
little bit about some of the things and also some of the things that happened
compared to last year and I'm also one who spent a lot of time in Wisconsin and
at 4:05 p.m. I used to teach in Madison and ashkash and I has a you know great
fascinating classes on statistics and experimental designs so we used to run
the hypothesis of what would put you to sleep more effectively at this time of
day ambien or me so you know that's going to be the big pictures but on the
bottom right we've got Leon's custard about four miles from here also in Ash
gosh where I went went mly two two times the far left is that uh tesen yeah so
that's you know you can go about two hours to the west and the Southwest that
hour west of Madison right in the prairie is where Frank Lloyd Wright uh
had his first architectural school and um you know one of the great
architectural planning Giants of the world and in the center we're looking at
about 45 minutes to the northwest of here an area called Huracan Marsh which
for those of you who um like cranes and other amazing birds in this really
fascinating migration path card or here the Huracan Marsh is just an a amazing
Place particularly this time of year so back to you
Terry I'm gonna I'm gonna give you the lightning round of my slides so this is
what Matt was describing also um tell us about this slide this picture slide yeah
yeah so about 2 hours north of here in Hayward Wisconsin there is a intern
ational race of cross country skiers every year it's sow permitting called
the uh burken and the burken has got literally tens of thousands of people
from the most elite races who we see in the Olympics to just people everyday
people who really going to make the adventure like doing a marathon or a
century bike ride this is kind of one of the rituals for Wisconsin Winters is the
burken nice so yeah last year we had a long conversation with you we talked
about these principles for engagement which you've seen a little bit on
Clifton's slides uh we heard a lot of what you had
in terms of feedback last year and we have started to implement some
enhancements in the system um I want to thank all the states that have been
giving us feedback um and tell you that we're still working on the Preparatory
work for the multiactor authentication which is going to be
login.gov but the real story and so these are just
um yes also Wisconsin related things Madison Bulls is actually drinking a
sper rot beer as we speak and if you'd like to visit dor County or Wisconsin
Dells I'm sure our Chamber of Commerce could tell you all about it here but for
the big picture of what's been happening since last year it's really we're
getting the system back to good we got a new developer who is very very competent
and after he started looking under the hood there was a lot of stuff that
needed fixing you have also helped us identify a lot of stuff that needed
fixing so For Better or For Worse that's where last year's energies were going we
still have all of your feedback logged we're hoping to make more progress on it
um and we thank you thank you thank you for your patience in working with us on
all of these little fixes and bugs um some of the new spr enhancements
that we are thinking about just preview of hopes and dreams we do know that the
beneficiary age ranges in our spr don't align perfectly with PLS data or the SLA
survey data and we want to align those eventually we do want to lock down the
Dual user thing in other parts of the spr where data loss could happen like
the site visit checklist we want to potentially Implement data validation at
a more discret um level in The spr increased file size and possible
public view inclusion of additional materials so coming soon soon and then
we login.gov has not been forgotten it's just we had to back burner it for all
that other stuff on the slide so we're going to start to message you when this
is coming and we're going to do it in phases so it's not going to be like a
switch flipping overnight we're going to give you a warning like it's coming here
you can preview it in our test system okay guys it's coming but you still got
a little grace period if you still want to use your passwords and then phase
three the switch is is flipping and so if you have subrecipients that are
actively engaging in the spr we want you to at that point you know start
messaging with them as well so we're going to send you more stuff on this
that is the coming soon but the real this is like the treat at the end of the
day Matt has the treat slide yeah so we're back on Frozen Custard which is
going to be a theme for the day then we got some fried cheese curds um to the
right okay if you go back 10 years in time with just rolling out the spr we're
in this type of meeting we're doing all the training get everybody ready to do
it we were also getting ready to start launching uh the last part of the which
was surveying of beneficiaries and we knew we weren't
going to require it for every project if you were procuring a piece there really
wasn't much sense of going ahead and surveying somebody but if by contrast
she were doing some programming of maybe a certain target audience maybe it
really would make sense to see how was that touching that audience and that
idea made a lot of not specific to Grants to States for libraries did it
make sense for this particular program but it reflected about 40 Years of
interest in public and philanthropic Investments people taxpayers or
philanthropists who are paying for these Services they want to know what's the
return Returns on investment so we're going to be spending
this types of hundreds of millions of dollars for libraries using Federal
taxpayer dollars what's the outcome so the intent here was where it made sense
could we start to survey beneficiaries and we knew it was happening outside the
library sector we also knew outside of imls that the Public Library Association
was working with a number of libraries to start doing the same thing 10 years
ago Emily she didn't show us the photo today but she was wearing that hat in
terms of developing project outcome for Public Library Association so when we
were in this conversation 10 years ago it wasn't so much should we do this
surveying but how can we do in a way that really limits the burden for those
public libraries who were getting the formula grant dollars from the SLA
through imls and also participating in Project outcomes so we aligned it so
people weren't having to do two separate surveys be the same type of
survey that being said the best Ambitions the best hopes don't always go
as intended and we know that there's been real mixed success and we don't
really really haven't studied it yet but you know I've got a hypothesis out there
that says that the way the surveying is going even when it's done right it may
not be as utilized the way we initially had aspired
but before we throw the baby out with the bath water we
might the um sorry Emily no no no no offense that
um we really want to make and ask for you everything we do is federal state
partnership we'd like to put to use this year and come back next year to do some
homework to really start looking at what are the types of outcomes that we can be
assessing how effective and useful is that
evidence for you and other key audiences and what would it look like if
we suddenly stop doing the surveying to reduce that burden what would be some of
the costs or benefits of trying to do either nothing or something
else so I want to stop there and Terry do you want to add anything to
this just in case you're wondering what those outcome surveys are it's the
questions like I learned something by using this
Library resource I plan to use more Library resources because I'm using this
resource and so they're like formulated questions that we have given you to
deliver to some of your end users who go to programs and we know they're very
hard for you to collect and and give back to us and enter in the spr so that
that is all what we are talking about here like what is the ROI on that and
we're going to investigate that the Smart Ones at that table yeah okay I
think we did yeah any questions or comments about
this you know we're keeping them from we know the ambient is really kward no no
but we've got exciting things to come so don't fall asleep on us yet not
yet okay thank you hey Terry thank you for giving our thank you everybody for
giving our my team here a chance to par
participate thank you officer of research and
evaluation we are transitioning into the funnest happiest time of the day the
kind of madeup awards that we create each year they they have no basis in in
things except what we really care about as your program officer staff at imls um
so I'm going to bring up Laura McKenzie who's GNA sort of read you this part of
the program and then our program officers are going to give you your
Awards should you choose to accept them and um we'll get it in a minute I'm
going to stay right here and just continue to introduce Laura she's our
program specialist for the program she is the glue the bridge that holds us
together she's helped project manage us through all the conference planning
she's been nobly working the virtual channels all day and this is the one
chance we get to really hear from her um she actually stepped up and created the
cute award categories that you're going to see in the next section and um so I'm
just so thrilled to welcome up Laura and the program officers and I will get the
the awards props one
[Applause]
moment just want to say it's a cheese platter
all right well uh before I kick off the official
Awards portion I just wanted to uh remind everybody that we have our office
hours uh here in this room uh after this session and if you had any parking lot
questions uh please feel free to put them on the easel
and don't forget the peer-to-peer appreciation wall uh which we'll also
revisit tomorrow and now for the fun
part so every year we really look forward to celebrating all of you here
based on different achievements and we know that several of
our recipients are joining us virtually uh so we will recognize you as well uh
you won't be able to come up and get a picture and a certificate
but I will email you your certificate after the
conference and so we have some certificates cheese stress balls for
each uh awarde and we'd love uh if you're here
in person if you stayed at the front of the room for a
picture and in keeping with our Wisconsin theme we will kick it off with
the sharp Cheddars award this
recognizes uh those who did their earliest uh FY 2023 interum ffr
submission and we'll start with uh Madison's portfolio uh North
Carolina and Cindy uh Utah
and Dennis we have New Mexico and I know that they are joining us virtually so
[Applause]
congratulations uh next up is the Ina compliance award for same day
certification submission
and again uh we'll start with Madison's uh portfolio we have
maryn
[Applause]
uh and Maine I know they are also joining us virtually congratulations
uh Michigan and we have a couple inperson and Michelle Bradley's
virtual and Ohio
and Puerto [Laughter]
[Applause]
Rico
congratulations all right next up uh
Massachusetts
[Applause]
Oklahoma and Utah yes Utah again
all right and now for Dennis's portfolio uh
Alabama this was before the award was even issued this was
remarkable thank you then they are joining us virtually so
congratulations and we also have Pennsylvania
and New York [Applause]
right all right this is our largest category uh which
is the greatest Spenders award acknowledge ing arpa spending down
to the penny kick it off with
[Applause]
Connecticut and DC
[Applause]
Hawaii Maine uh virtually yes uh
[Applause]
Maryland Michigan
North
[Applause]
Carolina Ohio [Laughter]
and Rhode
[Applause]
Island yes all right now we have Colorado who
is with us virtually Georgia who is also with us
virtually uh Kansas [Applause]
thank you
Kentucky
that's Massachusetts
[Applause]
uh Nebraska who is online congratulations
[Laughter]
Nevada and Oregon also with us
online South Carolina
[Applause]
Utah again
[Applause]
yes Vermont
[Applause]
Washington and
[Applause]
Wyoming all right and Alabama hello virtually congrat conratulations
[Applause]
Arkansas
Indiana Iowa
[Applause]
Louisiana also virtual uh
[Applause]
Mississippi and
[Applause] Montana and New Mexico
congratulations online uh New
[Applause]
York and Pennsylvania
[Applause]
Tennessee their virtual uh West
[Applause] Virginia and Wisconsin
[Applause]
you
all right our next category is the big cheese People's Choice Awards um this is
from the registration form uh some of you uh submitted some uh award here uh
starting with Karen reach of
Michigan um she was nominated by Dina ratl Warren
uh who said always willing to help answer questions and share her time and
talents she was also nominated by Mora Walsh and Erica
McCormack Erica said Karen always contributes a response to the list serve
and has good suggestions I keep my lstc lsac messages to go back and see what
she says about a certain topic congratulations
[Applause]
and next we have sulin Jones of
Nevada she was nominated by Mora Walsh and Erica McCormack uh Erica said that
suin Jones is always a wealth of information uh in Zoom calls and in
person she is eager to share her knowledge and experiences and she was
also nominated by Claire imamura who said I appreciate suin Jones sense of
humor and cander she was a great help to me when I was new to the lsta and a fun
grants to State's buddy
congratulations and Mara Walsh of New Jersey is also
[Applause]
nominated she was nominated by Erica cormi who said that Mora always
contributes a response to the list serve and has good suggestions I keep my LST
AC messages to go back and see what she says about a certain
topic [Applause]
congratulations and I also wanted to recognize a couple of nominees who are
not here in person uh but Terry Taylor was nominated uh by you La wsh we do
have a certificate for you to take home uh to
her and Michelle Killian uh formerly of California was nominated by Amanda gamon
uh who said she helped support the lsta program team daily is always thinking
about how to best help lsta awardees and is a great advocate for California's
libraries and we have a certificate Amanda that you can take home to
Michelle and then Rachel cook uh formerly of Utah um she was nominated by
Shannon furo of of Georgia who said I know she's not an lsta coordinator
anymore but she was super helpful to me this last year we need to overhaul and
update our subgrant process she took time out to show me a demo of how her
grants management system works shared templates and it was available for my
numerous questions so congrat congratulation to
all the
[Applause]
recipients and last but certainly not least we wanted to recognize all of
you I mean there are so many things here to recognize uh for example a full WP up
of arpa including cares and arpa interviews spr goal updates close out of
the 2018 to 2022 cycle uh we also appreciate how many of you shared press
releases and news about your projects and there were so many strong
site visits this year Arkansas Colorado Delaware Iowa Hawaii Kansas Maine
Mississippi Montana Nevada North Carolina South Carolina and
Wisconsin and that formally concludes our recognition event