Institute of Museum and Library Services 2020 Grants to States All States Conference May
13, 2020 Virtual Proceedings by: CASET Associates, Ltd. caset@caset.net
Agenda Item: Lightning Talks: Interaction between G2S and Discretionary Programs
MS.
BOLLS: Welcome back.
This is Madison from IMLS.
In addition to the value of the Grants to States Program, IMLS also offers discretionary
awards, as you heard us mention a few times throughout this conference.
For these awards, eligible institutions may submit project proposals that are reviewed
by experts in the field and the highly ranked proposals are awarded funding for the projects.
For these discretionary grants, we have two main programs.
We have the National Leadership Grant program, which are for projects that will have national
impacts on library services.
Then we also have the Laura Bush 21st Century grant program, which are for projects that
offer professional development and further the library profession.
From year to year, there are also some additional special initiatives that come up like the
APP program that you have heard of, and obviously the most recent one is our COVID-19.
We are going to be sharing some of those with you today.
I do want to mention that some people have been having audio issues and the session is
recorded so you can come back and review the recording later if you have missed anything.
But the great thing about these discretionary awards is that we often see a dialogue in
what is happening between them and our LSTA project.
Some of these projects are even – these discretionary grants are even funded to the
SLAAs or the SLAAs are a partner in one.
These projects are super innovative.
No evil will escape.
We want to allow some of these folks today to showcase these projects and hopefully inspire
you to apply for a discretionary grant as well.
Again, feel free to put questions in the box as we go along, but we will not review the
questions until after all of the presentations.
I am going to let North Carolina kick us off.
MS.
WALDRUPE: Thanks Madison and thanks IMLS for having us here today.
I am Abigail Waldrupe from the State Library of North Carolina where I am the Digital Inclusion
Librarian, which is a position created by our grant.
And my co-presenter today is Catherine Prince, who is the Federal Programs Consultant.
Our project, Addressing the K-12 Homework Gap through Broadband Adoption, is a two-year
national leadership grant originally wrapping in December of this year.
We often just call it the Homework Gap Project In it, we hope to address the multiple barriers
to broadband adoption for families in our program – our middle school students borrow
a filtered homework hotspot for one school year.
During that year, they and their parents attend digital literacy workshops.
The state library partnered with the North Carolina Broadband Infrastructure Office to
apply for this grant and we now partner with local libraries who lend the hotspots and
teach the workshop.
They, in turn, partner with schools to identify participants and often provides the facility.
Local libraries were selected to participate based on their proximity to a school with
a take-home one-to-one device program, which was not quite as common of about three months
ago, as it now.
Their counties’ broadband adoption and availability rates were also considered.
Participants simply needed to be middle grade students at those schools who were lacking
internet at home.
Just to take a quick look at the project details.
We are implementing in four regionally diverse counties and each of these has lent 35 hotspots
this year.
Those hotspots are on three of the major mobile carriers depending on the coverage at the
homes of the participants.
Families attended eight digital literacy workshops in the school year, each with content geared
towards both the students and adults for each topic.
Since COVID-19 has affected our program, the last couple of workshops were cancelled in
person.
We are working to deliver this content through a combination of self-guided modules and phone
conversations.
But these are not necessarily the best long-term solution, but what we were able to do quickly.
Online options are not necessarily always ideal for our participants.
We have to keep that in mind when we are looking for alternatives as we are adapting to the
current situation.
Obviously, the hotspot usage is up.
They were not meant to support a full day of school.
These are running into some trouble with data limits and that sort of thing, which are a
problem with our hotspot vendor and something to be considered moving forward.
We realize that our upcoming toolkit based on our projects need to introduce some ideas
for remote training due to the new reality.
And the needs of the families have changed as well, so we will need to include some content
that reflects these changes, for example, instruction for web video conferencing has
become extremely relevant now when it was not quite as relevant when we started the
program.
MS.
PRINCE: We are looking at applying for discretionary funding for LSTA funds.
We saw that applying for the discretionary grant allowed for additional funding to support
libraries in our state with a budget that our LSTA program did not have the capacity
to support at the time.
Our partners were very interested in this grant and since our project partners are sharing
responsibilities and duties across the project, this was the feeling for all involved to allow
for a more collaborative process.
This project allowed us to create a new position that works with the partners in new ways that
the state library has not been able to do before.
With the funding, we were able to leverage resources and submit long-term partnerships
outside of the state library.
Looking past December when the grant period ends, we are looking at the Digital Inclusion
Commission as critical for continued success.
There are a few paths forward in achieving this goal and we are excited to see what 2021
brings for that.
As Abi mentioned, the toolkit is especially important as students and adults are navigating
this new normal and moving into a synchronicity.
The relationships between the local libraries and the local schools that were facilitated
by this project will be crucial to provide long-term success for the students and parents,
as well as allowing the schools and libraries to see each other and partners in the future
because we all know that establishing that relationship can oftentimes be difficult.
And the existing platform that Abi and our project partners have created will be used
as a launch pad to start a phased approach across the state.
That is it for us.
Thank you.
MS.
NELSON: I am Jen Nelson.
I serve as the Director of State Library Services, the state library here in Minnesota.
I am going to talk a little bit about what I call are G2S and NLG Wash and Learn Initiative.
The project – before we get started with projects, we really think about how does this
particular project really start to reflect the commitments that the state has to equity.
I like to just use this as a slide at the beginning to remind folks that that is kind
of at the center of a lot of the work that we do.
For this work our LSTA five-year plan had several goals in it related to barrier-free
access to diverse community needs and to digital equity and literacy.
As we look ahead and have looked back a couple of years how we are working with these funds,
we are really looking to find different ways to make a difference in the lives of people
who may not have an opportunity to visit the library or otherwise be involved in digital
kinds of things.
With our Grants to States program funds, back in 2017, we established a contact with Libraries
Without Borders, which is a national nonprofit located in Washington, DC, to establish what
we call library installations at laundromats.
In Minnesota, we took three partners and we worked with two county libraries and a city
library over in the City of St. Paul, and really developed out the program to really
get that proof of concept.
Does this actually work?
Is it sustainable?
How do we respond to community needs to really learn some of that information, as well as
that the library capacity for outreach and being able to provide services at the laundromat
were?
The picture here is from our location in Chicago so I cannot get credit for that.
The National Leadership Grant part comes in – Libraries Without Borders last year applied
for a National Leadership Grant to expand the work.
They are looking through the work in Minnesota, scaling out to be working with other kinds
of organizations and particular manufactured housing communities.
The Leadership Grant is helping us to do a couple of things, to investigate that, to
scale up the laundry project and has moved since into more of Minnesota, which is up
in Northern Minnesota and has been exploring other locations in the state for installations
that can be supported by the local library.
And then the Leadership Grant also is allowing for that capacity for evaluation that is kind
of difficult to achieve with the limited LSTA or Grants to States funds that we have.
I believe it is a yearlong project.
We are a partner on it, but we actually did not receive money.
The Libraries Without Borders was the main applicant for that.
We tried to leverage the state investment we had already made into larger projects with
better scope for the state.
And then we are also just now starting to look at how we can scale out into those manufactured
housing communities.
We have had several conversations with the Blandin Foundation, which is up here in Minnesota
and devoted to rural broadband.
We have done with our previous Grants to States and NLG, we have done some community meetings
at manufactured housing communities and have done a lot of conversations with folks in
terms of what the needs are.
Again, we are really trying to hit people who may not have good access to the internet,
may not have good access to a library at their place of being.
We have hosted a couple of town halls at those locations and really learned from the communities
what their needs are, whether it was homework help or digital literacy for adults, job seeking,
that nature of things.
This year we hopeful.
We have our fingers crossed for the Blandin Foundation that we will be able to expand
into more rural areas of the state.
That is a high interest of the Blandin Foundation, and is also something that as a state we know
that there are some pockets in Northwestern Minnesota in particular, but also North Central,
where the broadband service just is not there.
The little bit that is, is not meaningful.
We are looking at some of those additional locations for the next step or the next iteration
of this project.
Overall, the COVID impact has been we have had to pause.
Laundromats in Minnesota actually are open.
They are an essential service.
But with the library staff being mostly either working remotely or furloughed, we have not
had the opportunity to continue that.
It is putting a little crimp in our plans, but I think over the long term, it is not
going to be a big – it may be a big deal, but we are going to learn a lot from it.
We have a lot of information in reporting kinds of things about the Library Without
Borders projects that we have done over the years, and happy to share that with folks
that might be interested who might be interested.
So feel free to reach out to me.
Leah Larson is on the call.
She is our LSTA coordinator in Minnesota.
She can also get you started and getting some information.
Thank you.
MS.
COLE: Good afternoon, everybody.
My name is Natalie Cole.
I am a Library Programs Consultant at the California State Library.
The Reimagining School Readiness for Libraries project is funded by the Laura Bush 21st Century
Librarian Program.
It is a multi-state professional development project that provides library staff with resources,
training, and a community of practice.
The project is an expansion of the Reimagining School Readiness Toolkit project which was
developed by the Bay Area Discovery Museum, known as BADM, and the California State Library,
which was originally supported in California with LSTA funding through the Grants to States
program.
We applied for the Laura Bush funds to expand the toolkit project from California to other
states.
Both projects are based on research conducted by BADM and both the state and national projects
respond to an identified need for school readiness programming in libraries and demand for in-person
training in this area from the library community.
The School Readiness Toolkit at the heart of the project, is a set of evidence-backed
school readiness activities and resources that are available for free online, and that
are designed to equip librarians with tools and processes to help families prepare children
ages 0 to 8 for success in school and life.
I have included at the end a set of resource slide that show parts of the toolkit and how
the toolkit is being used in libraries now.
We can look at them quickly today and then you can look at them in more details after
the conference.
The research from BADM has shown that we need to think about school readiness as a robust
developmental process that spans the early childhood years through age 8.
And the BADM research shows that by 8, children should have developed complex thinking skills
as best evidenced by their grasp of conceptual mathematics.
They should be effective at self-regulation and control and should be able to independently
make and carry out plans and they should know how to get along with peers and adults.
We know that children are capable of developing these skills if the adults in their lives
provide developmentally appropriate and rich experiences to boost learning and cognitive
development.
However, we also know that since many library staff have not been trained specifically in
early childhood education, they do not always feel confident to effectively meet the needs
of the families in their communities.
The original project provided library staff both with the toolkit and with training based
on the toolkit.
And through a combination of in-person workshops and webinars, nearly a thousand library staff
members have been trained in California.
The new three-year initiative scales California’s toolkit project nationally through a train-the-trainer
model.
And this project will train librarians in the current research around preparing children
ages 0 to 8 for success in school and life, tools to assess their own areas of fixed and
growth mindset, especially relating to designing programming for families, and the hands-on,
open-ended pedagogy that underlies the activities and resources provided within the toolkit.
Each library can choose what activities and approaches are right for them and their community.
And the train-the-trainer model will help other libraries and library staff adopt the
tools through existing networks.
In this, the first year of the new project, we are evaluating the toolkit with four libraries
in each of our new Year 1 partner states, which are Arizona, Kentucky, and Wisconsin,
and we are assessing the impact of the toolkit in California with the librarians who are
already using it.
In the second year, we will train 24 library staff from the four Year 1 states, and 8 new
states as trainers, who are then responsible for training library cohorts in their own
states.
In the third year, we will train 20 library staff from 10 new states as trainers, who
will also be responsible for training library cohorts in their own states.
In this way, we will reach over 500 librarians and over 60,000 children and their adult caregivers.
And the Pacific Library Partnership will engage an external evaluator to evaluate the toolkit,
the train-the-trainer program, and the project overall.
We believe the project will make a unique and essential contribution to the field in
part because of its multifaceted approach.
First, the toolkit was designed specifically as a set of adaptable resources that can be
used alone or together with existing school readiness and literacy initiatives already
in place in many libraries.
It is intended to complement and enhance the work of librarians and not necessarily replace
any existing programs.
Second, the resources are powered by the research drawn directly from the BADM position paper
and focus not only on developing skills beyond literacy, particularly early math and science,
but also on children through age 8, which provides relief for many families whose child
was unable to attend preschool and enters kindergarten already feeling behind.
And third, the professional development training program and community of support is designed
to help library staff to improve their skills, feel more confident stating the research-based
intentionality behind their programming, and evaluate their mindset when it comes to designing
new and effective programming for the families they serve.
And if your state would like to participate in Year Two of this project, please contact
Lisa Regalla whose contact information is on this slide.
Here are just a few slides that show some of the concepts and the research that has
driven the development of the toolkit and the training, some images of how the toolkit
is used in libraries and some of the resources that are available in the toolkit that you
can look at in more detail after the conference.
Thank you very much.
MS.
SOUCIE: Hi, everyone.
I am Mary Soucie.
I am the State Librarian of North Dakota and I am going to talk about our Coding at Every
Library project.
The goal of our project is to reach thousands of youth and teens attending code clubs in
small and rural libraries.
And we are going to do this or we are doing this, by supporting code clubs in 50 small
and rural libraries with hands-on training, ongoing support.
And we were able to expand this and so we were able to add an additional 25 libraries.
The libraries applied – we had way more applications than we were able to accept,
so we were glad that we were able to expand and get some additional libraries.
The goal is to build competency and confidence in small and rural librarians.
Often librarians who are in small or rural libraries just do not have necessary training
to teach coding.
We have about 50 or 60 STEM kids that we send out to our libraries right now in North Dakota
to a different partnership grant with one of the Air Force Bases.
And what we hear a lot from the library community is we would love to use these, but we just
do not know where to start.
That was sort of the basis for the idea behind working with our libraries to create these
coding – and we realize that really there was a lot of applicability not just in our
state but nationwide.
The goal is to create long lasting community engagement by giving the libraries the tools
that they need to build partnerships that help them not only assist them with this project
but build those long-lasting relationships after the project.
The team consists of the state library.
Prenda provides the training, the support, all ongoing work with the librarians and Prenda
had already been doing this work but had not been able to reach out to many small and rural
libraries where cost was a barrier.
And through the grant, we have been really able to expand the access to the materials
that Prenda has created.
Crystle Martin is our project evaluator.
Linda Braun is our project – she did project design and then she is also doing consulting
to the libraries.
And the Association for Rural and Small Libraries assisted with project design as well as outreach
assistance.
Ten of the slots were – priority was given to members of the Association for Rural and
Small Libraries.
One of the reasons for going outside the Grants to States was that we wanted the project to
have a larger scope than just our libraries.
We knew that there was a need in North Dakota, but through my membership on the Board of
the Association for Rural and Small Libraries and then we had several staff members who
also participated at the annual conference and just in that networking and through our
membership in the Mountain Plains Library Association, which is a regional library association,
we were able to talk to rural and small librarians across the country who were all struggling
with how to introduce coding, how to introduce STEM and that sort of thing.
This is really a jumpstart.
We partnered with Prenda because they had already demonstrated expertise in this area.
They were ready to expand their network and to provide the assistance and the materials
were already developed.
We just had to modify them for the small and rural libraries.
As I said, our two-year grant is in the third year so we were able to add some additional
libraries.
Our intent is that staff will continue to offer the coding clubs beyond this program
and that more libraries will learn about the program through the work that we do and the
information that we published and be able to start programs at their library.
And then we will be sharing our evaluation data and our research findings with the library
community stakeholders.
We plan to present at the ARSL conference if we are able to have the ARSL conference
again.
We have also been impacted by COVID because nobody is having in-person coding clubs right
now.
We are working with Prenda and with our other team members to take the training materials
and present them in a different way that does not require in-person meetings with our librarians
although most of those were done over Zoom, but also allows the librarians to push out
the information to their code club members in the way that they can do activities at
home and not be required to meet in the library.
It has been a learning experience the last couple of months as we switch from in-person
coding clubs to virtual coding clubs.
As for what the future is going to hold, hopefully some day we will be back to some sort of semblance
of normal where we can do coding again in person.
But if not, we are prepared to share the materials for the virtual coding clubs.
Thank you to IMLS for including us in the discussion today.
If there are any questions when we get to Q&A, I am happy to answer them.
MR.
DENNISON: Hello.
I am Michael Dennison, a Public Library Consultant with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
MS.
FESEMYER: I am Cindy Fesemyer.
I am also with the Department of Public Instruction of Wisconsin.
DR.
DENNISON: We are going to be talking about the Libraries Activating Workforce Development
Skills or LAWDS discretionary grants.
This grant is focused not only on improving librarians’ skills, but also improving access
to workforce development services throughout the state.
As you all are keenly aware, this type of work is already taking place in libraries
throughout the country every day, and this grant is going to focus on formalizing and
cementing the roles that libraries play as job centers in every corner of Wisconsin where
more often than not, the library is the closest thing a community has to a job center and
those library staff are filling in gaps as workforce development staff.
The last point on this slide refers to our 16 regional federated public library systems
that support all the staff in public libraries in each of our 72 counties.
This collaborative project would not have been possible without our regional Workforce
Development Board, regional public library systems and through a state agency partnership
with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development.
The Workforce Development Board is already interested in what is happening in public
libraries and they leverage their relationship with the Department of Workforce Development
to approach us at the Department of Public Instruction, and collaborate with our libraries
and lifelong learning team to help build those connections at the regional level with our
public library system.
This has been a really great model of collaboration between state agencies and our regional partners
to make this project a success.
And the simple fact that these relationships were strengthened because of the grant was
a huge step forward for our state, and those preexisting relationships gave us the ability
to react quickly to the COVID-19 pandemic.
MS.
FESEMYER: Thank you, Michael.
Along with the partners that Michael just mentioned, Wisconsin DWD, our local workforce
boards – DPI and the 16 library systems, we also partnered with the University of Wisconsin.
Those library systems, on the ground librarians, and universities helped provide expert advice
along the way.
Speaking of expert advice, the reason we were not using LSTA funding to do this is because
it was not specifically called out in our plan, but we had the opportunity to be nimble
and reactive to a partner request to help bring this to the State of Wisconsin.
Now before COVID, we had intended to carry out this four-part plan where we started with
defining workforce roles within the state.
We were in the midst of carrying that out as COVID struck, and some live in-person relationship
building events were held and the remainder of them were cancelled.
We were in the midst of developing the next module, the Career Planning and Resume Development
when COVID hit, which made us pivot.
Since COVID, we have cancelled those in-person events obviously, like the rest of you, and
we have really prioritized those seeking health with unemployment insurance and are in the
midst right now of a two-part webinar series that is helping library staff understand better
what the sign up and application processes for unemployment insurance will be like from
the patron standpoint so they can provide better assistance when we open our doors and
people start coming into our libraries.
After we have deployed that portion of the funding, then we are going to prioritize job
seekers, because clearly as we are in recovery, at some point, life gets back to normal then
those unemployment seekers hopefully become job seekers and we just flip the script a
little bit, but with the same partners.
On Monday, we will be hosting our second live webinar.
The first one we did shoot well past the 250-seat capacity that we had on the platform we used.
The platform that we are using on Monday has a capacity of 10,000.
I think we will be good.
And we will record it and make it available for folks across the state.
Many thanks to IMLS for making this possibility a reality for us within our state in such
a timely manner to be able to do a very small pivot in this time of COVID, to serve what
is a national global need really with those who are needing jobs or being furloughed and
seeking unemployment at this time.
MS.
CADIGAN: Good afternoon, everyone.
My colleague Eileen Morales and I, are here today, very happy to talk to you about our
IMLS grant.
There it is.
Reconnecting Returning Citizens with their Communities at Public Libraries.
I am Peggy Cadigan.
I am Deputy State Librarian for Innovation and Strategic Partnerships at the New Jersey
State Library.
MS.
MORALES: And I am Eileen Morales, Grants Manager at New Jersey State Library.
MS.
CADIGAN: We branded this program as Fresh Start @ Your Library because that is exactly
what it is.
It is a statewide library re-entry program that will provide assistance for people returning
to their home communities after having completed their prison terms and it will help to give
them a fresh start.
MS.
MORALES: We were inspired by a local reentry program begun by Tonya Garcia at Long Branch
Public Library in New Jersey.
Tonya invited the New Jersey State Library to consider taking the Fresh Start concept
statewide and Mary Chute, our state librarian, heartily endorsed the idea of applying for
a national leadership grant.
Our LSTA funds were allocated to other important statewide projects and so we felt that the
project could provide a model for reentry services and public libraries across the country
and so the NLG program would be a good fit.
We partnered with the New Jersey State Parole Board, the New Jersey Department of Labor
and Workforce Development, Long Branch Public Library and the Free Library of Philadelphia.
We invited several libraries to participate in the program, and we developed an advisory
committee with representatives from San Francisco Public Library, Denver Public Library, DC
Public Library and Monmouth University.
On June 30, 2019, we received a $628,774 national leadership grant.
This map shows the participating libraries in New Jersey.
The number of parolees and the unemployment rate in communities were two factors that
we considered for pilot library sites.
The participating public libraries are in Paterson, Newark, Trenton, Long Branch, of
course, Cumberland County, and Atlantic City.
A branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia will participate starting in September this
year.
The funding for this two-year project includes support of a full-time project manager and
two part-time social workers, who conduct private one-on-one sessions with individual
returning citizens at the libraries in order to directly connect them to appropriate local
social service agencies for their most pressing needs.
Funds also support high school equivalency preps for individuals needing help in that
area and subsidies to support the taking of those exams.
The New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development supports referred individuals
with job readiness and occupational skills training.
Community resource fairs and job fairs will also be hosted at the libraries.
MS.
CADIGAN: Here is our Fresh Start team: Jondhi Harrell, myself, and a social worker, Sarah
Swiderski and Nicole Warren.
Jondhi, I have to tell you, is one in a million.
He has an interesting background.
He served 25 years in a federal prison for armed robbery.
He has been home for ten years.
When he got home, he found out that nobody was offering holistic reentry services.
He began an organization in Philadelphia called the Center for Returning Citizens.
He was a consultant to us and the project early on and we are thrilled to have him as
our project manager.
Our participating libraries set up private spaces for what we felt would be in-person,
one-on-one interactions between social worker and client.
Shown here is library director from Atlantic City, Bob Rynkiewicz, and Outreach Librarian
Melissa McGeary.
They were ready to roll and then of course COVID hit.
I heard this theme throughout everybody’s presentation of what a difference it made.
We had to quickly transition to a virtual way of offering services.
This we did kind of old fashioned and new.
We printed out flyers that the library directors put on their doors and we understand people
are coming up and taking photos of these flyers with their cell phones.
The one on the left shows contact information for the team.
The one on the right shows which agencies are currently open and offering services.
Our Intake Form also transitioned to a virtual method.
This Intake Form is only accessed by social workers so it is private.
And we are launching a texting service.
We can broadcast messages up to 1400 people at the same time, but all recipients are anonymous.
We can also target texts to specific groups by location or interest.
And people have the option to text do you need a job.
They can text J-O-B-S to the Fresh Start phone number.
We are confident that the future of this program will be the best combination of virtual and
in-person services.
We know that this program will provide a blueprint for other libraries to help returning citizens
and we owe a deep debt of gratitude to IMLS for funding this and for inviting us to participate
today.
Thank you.
MS.
BOLLS: Thanks very much everybody.
I appreciate these six projects being discussed here today.
If anybody has a question for any of our presenters, you can put it in the box.
While we are waiting on any of those, does anyone – and you can raise your hand in
your webcam if you want to answer or provide any feedback on the application process or
applying to a discretionary award.
MS.
SOUCIE: I am actually going to sort of answer the question kind of in a way you did not
ask.
It is always good of course to have everything planned out, think of all the eventualities.
Nobody could have thought of COVID.
I am impressed with how quickly my colleagues were able to shift their thoughts and how
great IMLS has been at allowing that shift.
One of the other things that we did not really plan for though is our project director recently
left our agency.
We did not really have a plan for if that happened what we were going to do so sort
of having a secondary project director lined up just in case who is familiar with the project
and can pick up the ball and run with it if needed would be a tip that I did not know
I would need to give.
It just goes to the think through all of the eventualities that might happen.
COVID aside.
Nobody could have thought through that.
But think of the different scenarios that might happen and have a plan.
Just kind of that prepare ahead of time for things you might not think that you need to
be prepared for.
I do not know if that made any sense.
That was my two cents.
MS.
BOLLS: That does and that is a great lesson learned.
Does any of the other presenters have any lessons learned they would like to share throughout
going through their project?
MS.
NELSON: This is Jen.
I think the one thing that I would share is the issue of timing.
As we looked at working with our internal funds, having one set of timelines around
using those and then a different set around using the IMLS National Leadership Grant really
trying to pair those up in a way that made sense so we were not over spending in one
area and under spending in another.
It really had to do some thoughtful work around the project planning to make sure that we
did not run out of money or end up with a surplus.
MS.
BOLLS: That is a great point.
When people submit to this application process, they do have to point out a budget in advance.
We all know that more often than not that budget is going to change as the project happens.
We do have a question coming in.
Did any of you apply for your project unsuccessfully before it was granted?
If so, do you think that led to your success on a subsequent try?
Great question, Leah.
MS.
NELSON: This is Jen.
I can answer that for us.
Libraries Without Borders had applied for an NLG grant the previous year and not awarded
it.
And I think the process of not getting awarded allowed them and us to really rethink how
we could make this a different program and really contribute to that larger national
understanding, national learning that we wanted to have.
It was really helpful.
The reviewer comments are always helpful particularly when you do not get selected.
They are helpful for really understanding where you miss the boat in terms of either
the planning or the writing.
MS.
BOLLS: That is a really great point.
The way that the review process goes is that for both NLG and LB21 is it is sort of a two-tiered
process.
Initially, applicants will submit a two-page summary and they are reviewed in a peer-reviewed
system.
Then the highly ranked ones will be invited to submit a full proposal.
And if you do not get asked to submit a full proposal, you still get your comments back
from the reviewers.
And then in the second round, if you are unsuccessful with your full proposal, you also get comments
back.
You get some really great feedback throughout the process from those peer reviewers and
it is a blind review.
In addition to that, you also have counseling from an IMLS program officer.
We have several program officers who have subject matter expertise within the Office
of Discretionary Programs, who work with us pretty frequently.
PARTICIPANT: I was just going to say that we did receive on the first time that we submitted,
but the reviewers’ comments on the two-page proposal made our full proposal so much stronger
because they were really honest and very helpful at areas that we really needed to make sure
that we honed in on as we were writing our full proposal.
MS.
BOLLS: That is a great comment.
Thank you.
MS.
FESEMYER: This is Cindy in Wisconsin.
I can add that the comments that come even after the reading of the final version still
helped us further hone in on what our project was going to be.
Though we knew we had the grant, it was really great to still get that sort of evaluative
review afterwards.
MS.
CADIGAN: This is Peggy.
I wanted to go back to the lessons learned.
I just wanted to talk about the value of flexibility on the part of IMLS.
It really has been remarkable.
We did not think too much about marketing.
And of course, we thought a little bit about should we have a flyer or a day planner to
hand out, but of course, as librarians, it is like does anybody need another folder or
handout or a day planner.
But when our program manager Jondhi Harrell came onboard, he said listen.
These people and mostly it is men that we are serving who had been in jail – they
would feel so valued if you gave them a folder with a day planner and a pen because you are
telling them you believe in them.
You believe they are going to have something to write down.
They are going to have something to keep track of.
They are going to have a calendar and they are going to have things to fill in on that
calendar.
I just wanted to say whatever your project is, allow for flexibility because we think
Jondhi’s suggestions have greatly enhanced our project moving forward.
MS.
BOLLS: Great comment.
Thank you.
MS.
FESEMYER: This is Cindy from Wisconsin.
I just want to reiterate a little bit of what Peggy is saying.
I will say a lesson learned is to involve boots on the ground library staff from the
beginning as you are developing your proposal because at least in our case, it is in the
library where this project is being deployed.
We had some non-library folks writing our initial application.
The advisors from those library staff who serve on our advisory committee are infinitely
invaluable when we have those monthly calls.
One nice pivot that we were able to make because of the COVID virus is that what was written
into the grant as reimbursing mileage for people to attend in-person trainings now gets
to pivot and cover marketing expenses because we found out from the people who work in the
libraries that what they need is nice, polished display materials and posters and hand bills
for their circulation desks to share their expertise and knowledge on unemployment and
job-seeking skills.
MS.
BOLLS: Great.
Thank you.
I am not seeing any more questions in the question box, but I do want to thank our speakers
today.
It is pretty clear from these projects, that you guys put in a lot of hard work and planning
and talk about pivoting and being flexible with what is happening during this time of
COVID.
You guys have done a really quick turnaround in keeping these projects active through what
is going on.
Thank you very much.
We are ending a little early.
I guess we will turn back on the chat box and we will go on break.
We will come back at 3:05.