Again, today's session will be recorded and the archives will be made available on Webjunction. All of our sessions are -- all of our live sessions will provide a certificate for, and if any of your colleagues are not able to attend us here, you can send them to the recording and they can access a certificate by watching the archives, along with many of our other resources, library-specific courses and webinars and we thank all of those who make that free and available to all of you. If you are not yet subscribed to Crossroads, be sure to do so. It is a great way to stay up to date on all of the great work going on in our Webjunction community, upcoming events, and projects. I will post that link there to chat so that you can subscribe today. My name is Jennifer Peterson. I'm joined by Kathleen, logged in as WJ Support today and can assist you with any technical questions that you might have. All right. We're going to get the recording started. I'm really excited to introduce to you today three colleagues that are local here in Seattle. We are based in Seattle as well. I'm pleased to welcome Hayden Bass, CiKeithia Pugh, and Rekha Kuver, who are here to talk about their outstanding work engaging their communities. I also want to give a nod to Kathleen. She attended a session that Hayden and CiKeithia presented earlier this year at a symposium focused on early literacy and racial equity. We're really glad to have learned about their great work and very pleased to have them here today. Welcome to all of you. >> Hi everyone. We're excited to be here. This is Hayden, outreach program manager at Seattle Public Library. Basically my job is to support and coordinate our outreach efforts system-wide, particularly to audiences that may face barriers in accessing library programs and services. >> And I'm CiKeithia Pugh, early learning program manager here at the library. In my role, I'm responsible for coordinating our early-learning programs and services. It is important to note that probably 80% of my work involves connecting with community partners outside of our library building. >> And I'm Rekha Kuver, I'm the youth and family learning services manager. I provide vision and direction for all youth serving staff in all of our locations across Seattle. >> Okay. So, this is Hayden again. Today we're going to just basically going to start by going over a few key terms. Not to get too bogged down in semantics but just to establish a shared vocabulary. We know that words like outreach and community engagement are used differently, you know, in different locations and different context. So we want to for the purposes of this presentation kind of make sure that we're all on the same page with that. That may be a conversation that you want to have with your own organization to settle on some terms. We're also going to talk a little about why we think community engagement is so important. All of us do work that is based heavily and creating and building community partnerships. And we really see that as the work that is crucial for libraries to be doing right now and the work that will keep libraries relevant in the future. We will talk a little about why we think that is. And we are going to go through what we see as best practices to community engagement. With the understanding that community engagement is all about context. You know, we really don't have a step-by-step plan exactly for community engagement, because it will be different in your community than it is in our community. We will try to share some examples of what works for us as well as examples of what might work differently in libraries that are not large, urban, public libraries like our library is. Okay. Just a few terms. I promise I won't get too bogged down. When we talk about marketing, we are thinking about the promotion of library programs and services. So, it is a one-way message from the library to the community, and it may be, you know, a flyer, or an ad on a bus, a radio spot, but it is a piece of promotion that just involves us talking to the community. Outreach we think of as anything we do to provide library programs and services outside of our buildings in a way that works best for the community. When we are thinking about outreach, we're trying to think of how can we make our programs and services the most accessible and how can we do that with the community to make sure that we are not just bringing things to them, but we're also listening so that it is a -- outreach becomes a two-way interaction, two-way relationship. I think a lot of times when we think about outreach, we think about things like tabling at events, and that is one example of outreach. But I am interested, and my job as the outreach program manager and thinking about what else can outreach be. It can be an outside story time. It can be a digital literacy class that happens in a public housing facility. So, just thinking about what can outreach be beyond just tabling. And just to add, this is Rekha speaking. Marketing and outreach line can get blurry, of course. I think tabling is a really good example of how these two things can work together, and a lot of times when we table, part of what we're doing is marketing our services, letting people know what we provide and what we can do for our communities, and I think that one of the things that we have tried to do with our tabling opportunities is to build in how we can make tabling as much of a two-way interaction as possible. So as much as we're sort of marketing what we're doing, what are some mechanisms that we can be really intentional about in terms of listening to what people are saying to us as we're tabling or ways that we can gather information as we're having those conversations. And, so, then we -- we are going to talk mostly about community partnerships. And what we mean by that is -- this is Hayden again -- is creating programs and services collaboratively with community partners to further mutual goals. This is when we work with someone else to produce outcomes that we all have agreed on together. Rather than a single conversation, it is going to be an ongoing relationship. And community engagement we see as being all of these things. All of these things together. All of these different ways that we engage with our communities, make up the community engagement picture. And this -- I want to emphasize that all of these things are important. Marketing is crucial as we all know. Necessary to get our services program market and build knowledge about them in the community. Outreach is really important, too. But I think what we wanted to show with this slide is that in terms of actual engagement, community partnerships are really the richest form. And I think that we all know this in our own lives, right? The difference and impact on your life between when you see a commercial and when you work on a project collaboratively with someone, it is a really big difference in terms of how memorable that is going to be and how much it is going to mean to you going forward. How much impact it is going to have on your life. That is why our talk is going to focus less on marketing and more on community partnership work. So, I will be honest with you, all of these terms are some terms that I made up because making up terms is fun sometimes. But also because I think it is helpful when we're thinking about partnerships to think a little about scale. I think oftentimes when we thing of library partnerships, we think of the large-scale partners that we have, and which are crucial. At a city level or town level, the library has a partnership hopefully with the local public schools. You know, we here in Seattle had a huge partnership last summer with the local zoo, which was mainly worked on by a small team of people but involved staff systemwide, every children's librarian and youth librarian and the city was involved in that work. It was a massive, massive program. What we are going to talk more about today, small-scale partnerships, single librarian, or a location with one or two staff, at another organization, or community group. And the work that builds out of that. We recognize that these things can be fluid and sometimes a couple -- one librarian makes a great connection with an organization, and that builds into a big system-wide or, you know, library-wide partnership. And sometimes the reverse is true, too, right? We have this big-scale macro partnership between the library and the school. How it works on the ground, is that it is individual use services librarians who are working with teachers and school librarians to build those connections at the -- on the micro level school by school. So, this is CiKeithia speaking -- >> I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. We were going to take a moment to pause for questions. Does anybody -- before we dive past the terms, does anybody have any thoughts or questions about the terms or -- are you using those differently? >> That's a great question. That is an invite to all of you to post into chat any time you have questions or comments. Hayden, I don't see anything come through yet as this point, but I'm glad you reminded them to do so. >> Hayden: That's great. We can go ahead and move forward. >> This is CiKeithia again, if there are questions, I encourage participants to use that chat box. We definitely want to hear from you. I was just going to say for -- when we think about why partnerships, I always like to say why not? It is really an opportunity to leverage our resources with other folks in the community that are doing good work. We know that libraries do wonderful jobs of reaching communities, but we are only limited so far in terms of who we have access to. Who is aware of what we offer. And more importantly who invites us to the table to be part of conversations to help inform on an ongoing basis OU we can consistently improve our work. I look at partnerships as an opportunity to develop trustful, meaningful relationships with partners that enable us to do what we were doing even better. And it enables us to do some targeting work with audiences that we nay -- may not have a connection with. To learn from those experiences and to use each of those opportunities to be thinking about, well, what else? Are there other partners that we can invite as a part of this work? >> Yeah, I think one of the things when I'm talking to librarians and encouraing them to begin basing more of their work within community partnerships, one of the pitches that I make I think marketing is actually something that we struggle with in the library world. We are blessed here at Seattle Public Library, lucky that we actually have a marketing department. When we think about, for example, the investment that would be necessary to, for example, do a marketing campaign to a group of -- a community of youth experiencing homelessness and get them to a program through a traditional marketing campaign, that is really difficult. I think a lot of audiences that we are trying to reach are hard to reach through traditional marketing. The slide that you are looking at here, I love using this picture. It looks like a stock photo because they're having so much fun, but it is a real photo. This was our youth drop-in that we have hosted at the downtown library in Seattle. We began this in partnership with a local youth shelter. We started working with them through outreach. I was a team services librarian at the time. Began doing outreach to the shelter during drop-in and talking to folks there, both the staff and the youth about library services. We did things like we went to a job fair there and talked about library resources that would be helpful for job searches and educational resources. And, so, as that relationship grew, and we became more aware of what was working really well at the community partner and where they might need some support, we realized that a weekly youth drop-in might be something that would be really beneficial for all sides. For us, we were -- basically we were facing an issue of not serving very many teens in our teen center in downtown, and the youth that were there, were often not interacting with us very much. They -- some of them might have been experiencing homelessness, might have been uncertain whether or not they were welcome in a library. But by us being in their space, with the drop-ins at our partner space, they began to see us as allies. And, so, eventually what developed was we realized there was an afternoon during the week, every week, when there were no drop-in services available in the neighborhood. We began cohosting this weekly drop-in with staff from the shelter. So, the man on the left with the gray hat on, and the guy sort of in the middle upper who is laughing so hard. Those are both staff from this shelter, and, so, it was a really great way to bring together youth who were experiencing homelessness and other youth, youth who were housed. They were able to have a positive, shared social experience and had access to a number of resources. Through us they could access library resources, maybe get help with getting a library card, help with other job, employment, education resources, and through our partners at the shelter, they were able to get connected with case management, housing services, and other -- meet their other needs that they might have been experiencing. >> This is CiKeithia. I have to say, internally speaking, one thing that I appreciated about the youth drop in was the opportunity to increase my knowledge about other youth-serving organizations. I think often when we have sort of a particular focus area, we may be acquainted with typical service providers that we work with. The opportunity to learn from colleagues and having, you know, an introduction to another organization was great. It is about increasing our knowledge about not just what we do within the scope of our work, but across that continuum. >> And it looks like this is Rekha. It looks like through chat someone was asking who initiates a micro partnership, whether it is a staff or whether it needs to be from leadership? I mean, I think that is going to vary, depending on your particular context. In our case, I would say that we do have sort of a system-wide goal for doing community engagement at this point. But I think that it is possible to do community engagement and micro partnerships in the day-to-day regardless. In terms of, you know, as you're doing your regular programming, as you're making community connections, you know, we all sort of are in our communities and are identifying folks that may be stakeholders in those communities. So, any program planning that you're doing, you know, it could be as simple as reaching out to some of those organizations that are working with folks that you would like to see at your programs and just having a conversation with them. So, when we say micro partnerships, it sounds very systemized and very formal. But a lot of this work happens in a -- can happen in a very informal, conversational kind of way and it is all about the relationship and the dialogue that you are having with community organizations and people in the community. >> Exactly. And I will just -- I'm sorry, Jennifer, were you going to say something? >> Jennifer: I think this is an interesting point because I recognize that some of our colleagues are from smaller or rural libraries, where in some ways this is easier, because really everyone on staff is interfacing with the community and partners in many ways. So, it is interesting to see both from you all in chat, and maybe some of the larger libraries, it is more of a challenge to identify who is making those connections and starting those conversations. I'm really glad to hear that it can be very fluid and that it really varies depending on the project and the population as well. >> Yeah, this is Rekha. I think one of the things for a larger system that we're certainly still figuring out here is when you have a lot of staff and a lot of people that are out into the community, which is great, how do we internally make sure that we're kind of doing our due diligence. I can go out and make a community contact and start a relationship with someone. Next branch over might contact that same person and start to have a duplicate conversation. So, for folks that are in that kind of a system where there maybe some duplication of efforts that could happen, one thing to think through is, okay, how are we going to communicate with each other internally? What processes do we have to make sure that we're not all piling on to the same poor partner that would like to work with us, but is hearing from two, three, four, five people and having to sort of start that relationship over and over again. We can talk later if people are more interested in sort of some strategies that we are trying around that, but that is something to keep in mind for folks that are in bigger organizations. >> Okay. This is Hayden. This is an image that many of you may have seen before. And our library has used in our first round of race and social justice training, which all of our staff have now received. So, essentially here -- this is -- this image is to demonstrate the difference between a quality -- with the quality on the left, which I think has always been the model for libraries. Everybody gets an equal amount of resources. So, everything is equal except that the outcome is not equal. We can see that the guy on the right, he got the same box as the guy on the left, but it didn't allow him to see the baseball game. Whereas on the right, the image on the right, which is equity, the distribution of resources is actually not equal. And I think that sometimes this can be a bit of a struggle for us in libraries who are really used to working under an equality model. But what that -- I think what this image does really well is show us in order to have an equal outcome, we sometimes have to be strategic with our resources and expend more resources in certain areas so that everyone has the same access to opportunity. It's really about addressing those systemic disparities that sometimes prevent some of our patrons from accessing our programs and services. Other thoughts on that? >> Does anyone have any questions about the equality versus equity model? >> I would encourage you all, this is CiKeithia again, if there are some questions, for those of us doing library work, sometimes making the distinction between equality and equity are -- some of us are in much different places on the continuum in terms of understanding what that means with our work. I would encourage you really at this point, if you have a particular question around this or maybe around strategies, let's talk. >> It looks like someone says would it be possible to get a copy of the curriculum for the race and social justice training? That is a city of Seattle training that we went through, and they do have a web site with all of their tools and all of their curriculum on it. I don't have it on the tip of my tongue right now, but we can certainly follow up and get you that. >> Part of the office of civil rights. We can share that certainly. >> I actually know it. >> Oh. >> CiKeithia again. Www.Seattle.gov, and try a forward slash rfji -- you will be able to see city department work plans, timeline of the initiative, community report. Comprehensive web site but it is through the city of Seattle. >> Do you have actual examples of the equality equity decisions that have had to be made at your library? Is it a money thing or training or a matter of time? >> That's a great question. Well, so much things. When you start to get into the lens of equity it sort of touches all of our work. I can come up with an example. One example might be so we can go back to the youth drop in example that Hayden was talking about. You know, we -- we will work together in that department at that time, and when we started talking about what some of the community partnerships that we were wanting to pursue, we really looked at it through an equity lens. We could have designed programming and partnerships that really would have catered to larger numbers of people. For example, you know, we used to do an SAT prep class that was open to the public. And it would fill up really quickly. We got lots and lots of participants, but oftentimes from families who had a lot of resources and had the wherewithal to sign up for those classes and the slots would just fill up in a day, and, so, we took the time and the energy around that, and, you know, we could decide how do we reach the audiences that we really want to reach? And do some partnership work around that and get out in the community and ask folks that are working with those audiences how we can do a better job in reaching the folks that we really want to reach rather than, you know, over-serving a population that are going to sort of have resources in other ways. >> That's a great example. This is CiKeithia again. I'm thinking about in my own work, I had to oversee a book bank program, raising a reader. Eight years ago when that program initially started, I would say definitely it was with the equality model in mind. We simply opened our doors and said we're willing to partner with all sorts of early learning providers in preschools, but it became very evident over the years that those who were sort of savvy at knowing how to navigate the system to find out that this was an opportunity were those that were most often reaching out to us in order to receive that service. As a landscape, sort of drastically changes and we know that providers are situated differently in the landscape, it begs the question, how can I be more intentional in my work to strategically reach out to say, for instance, our family child care providers who may not access our brick and mortar buildings as well as the formal preschool programs because of a variety of barriers such as transportation, low staffing, things of that nature. Moving forward probably for the last 2 1/2 to three years, targeted work, grass roots level, local provider meetings to get more connected with, you know, providers that are serving young children that I may not even be aware that they're in a particular area to also offer that service. It is really about targeted approaches that reach those with the greatest numbers of barriers to accessing resources that I know in the long term would benefit just as much. We are still reaching all children, but being very targeted. >> Yeah, and I hope that the rest of our presentation will sort of elaborate on this and we will share more examples. We are trying to build services around an equity model in general. I think that once you are really having careful conversations with the community and you are listening to all of those voices, it becomes easier to set priorities for your library or for your branch or for your department and to sort of let some things go that might not actually be priorities that the community holds. >> I'm looking at the chat and there is a question here about reaching more folks who are in small church and community-based programs, homeless families who are in the libraries during the daytime hours. I really think it is about helping support each other as staff members to build capacity, to being comfortable to making those connections, not to be seen sort of as being intrusive on a patron's right to enjoy the space without being bombarded with all of the things I would love to tell you about what we do. But I think building staff confidence to have natural conversations with people in an effort to learn more. In terms of what that looks like outside of the building, you know, headstart is where my roots are with early childhood education. We did it by pounding the pavement. You build relationships by being out. You learn by being out. You leverage those relationships with existing partners that you have as a way to get introduced to more people. It is simply about being out and being engaged. >> Also about the equity piece is that I think for many of us who have not worked in an equity model before, or who are still learning, we're all still learning in terms of this, and I think our questions about how do we really do this work well, I would really encourage folks to rely -- this is another place that you can rely on the community partners who have long histories of doing this type of work with specific types of audiences. You know, ask them, you know, what can we be doing? What -- educate them about what we're doing in the library, and then listen to them in terms of how they think that we can sort of move towards a more equity focus. Really part of the partnership thing is not just to create programs and services, but to really use that as a development opportunity for ourselves and to, you know, engage with folks that are -- that we're partnering with so that we can learn from them. >> Okay. So, this is Rekha. We can keep those questions going and I know that Jennifer and -- will try to sort of circle back to some of the ones that are happening on chat as we move forward. >> Yeah, I think some of them are going to be addressed by the rest of our presentation. We're taking notes and I know Jennifer is and we will try to be sure that we get to all of them. >> Great. This slide is about collecting data, and I'm not going to spend too much time on sort of the data gathering process, because I know I'm speaking to a library audience and this is something that we are good at and comfortable with in terms of finding resources on demographics in our area, what the trends are. These are some specific examples of places to find good data. And the point here really is just to make sure that you are including a step in your process where you are checking in with data. And that data is going into your planning process. I think there is a lot that we know by our day-to-day experiences and there is a lot that we gain from those experiences and actually I'm of the mind that those experiences are often the most valuable and rich when we're actually talking to people. But data is really great in terms of checking our own assumptions and making sure that what we're seeing, you know, there is always things that we're not seeing. We can't be everywhere and we can't know everything. Collecting data is a really good step. And it is also a good place to start if you don't know where to start. Checking in with some of these things, and making sure to include local resources in that data. That means your schools, other community organizations. Your city or, you know, local government has more localized data. So, we're just going to have a few slides that are going to talk about sort of how communities are changing. We're not going to go into a whole demographic tangent here, but going back to the equity model, one of the things that you're going to want to look for as you are looking into data are sort of what we call equity indicators. Specific indicators that you can look into that are beyond sort of the census data that we all know how to look into. And some of the equity indicators that we have found to be really rich and helpful, are things like unemployment rates in your area, rates of homelessness or sort of what housing trends are happening in your area. Health outcomes are also a really great way to sort of see what's happening in terms of equity. Education outcomes, again going back to school and other types of educational data. Poverty rates. Family size. Race and ethnicity and languages spoken at home. So, those are some indicators that have, you know, data out there that is available, and it can be really easy to get overwhelmed by all of the data that is out there. So, choosing a few of these and trying to create a picture of what's going on in your community as localized as possible, and comparing that to national trends is a good thing to do. So, this slide just shows how communities across the United States are changing by about 2040, U.S. will be more than 50% people of color. And again, this is another example of educational disparities, and in the city of Seattle, we have focused our equity work in terms of race, and the reason that we do that is that is not the only thing that we consider, but it is a huge thing that we consider, because as we start to look across the equity indicators, it is very clear that people of color are the most affected by disparities that occur in our community, and that is a common thing across the country. So, that is one reason why we have done race and social justice as a focal point for the equity work that we're doing. And then here is another chart foreign populations have increased in the last several decades, and depending on where you are, you can compare that to the local versus the national. >> This is CiKeithia here. I want to add, I also think, you know, data, yes, absolutely can be overwhelming. But I would like you all to think about perhaps with the particular project idea or partnership in mind, how you can maybe work internally with several people across departments to sort of analyze what that work is because while you may be focused in a particular indicator, to have access to data that reports across several areas may help inform work across your library system. So, it is really, again, an important piece of the work that be help spark more internal discussions as you began to think about your library programs and services. >> So, this is a slide about homelessness. One of the things that I -- we have done this presentation to several different audiences, and one of the things that we want to emphasize is that a lot of times it seems as though homelessness is framed in the media and sort of in how conversations happen around homelessness as being an urban issue, and so for those of you that are not in an urban environment, we just wanted to focus on this for a second and encourage you to look into poverty rates and homelessness rates in your areas. It is a population that can be invisible in any context, but especially in places where we don't think of seeing homeless people can be especially an invisible population. We just wanted to emphasize that a little bit. That is some of the feedback that we have got and learned more about as we talked to different audiences across the state around this. >> For example, our home state of Washington, one third of -- about one-third of our population of people experiencing homelessness does live in rural areas. Which is a huge chunk. That's thousands of people. >> Before we move on to the next slide, we just want to pause again for some questions around data, around equity indicators or any sharing that you wanted to do around that before we move on. >> I have noticed in the chat window, this is CiKeithia speaking. Jennifer, thank you so much. Tons of links going out right now giving people some ideas around the diversity of inclusion conversation, links to sort of help complete a demographic picture. So, thank you. Thank you very much. >> One thing that I will add, and Hayden you can speak to this better than I can, but one of the things that Hayden has been working on in our system is looking at some, for each area of our city and each neighborhood of our city, looking at different indicators and sort of coming up with a neighborhood profile. Do you want to talk a little about that? >> Sure, yeah, so we -- we're doing something -- we're doing a project where we're supporting staff in each neighborhood of our city to learn more about their communities. The first step in that process is that we're pulling together for them sort of a demographic and economic profile of their neighborhoods. And part of what we want to do with that is give everybody in our -- we do have a big urban library system and we want to kind of get everybody on the same page in terms of a core set of data. What are the things that is important for all of us to know about our communities? I'm pulling that together with a librarian here who is focusing a lot of his work on gathering that kind of information. We're creating some PowerPoint presentations bringing out to librarians and trying to tell them a story about what are the trends? What's happening with housing prices? What are the disparities in their communities? So that everybody as they begin to think about who they want to go out and have conversations with in their community and learn more about, they have sort of a baseline of common information about what are the systemic disparities and who are the communities that are in their neighborhoods? >> You guys covered a lot of ground there, and I think your approach is an excellent one. I'm glad to hear that's going on. Also a plug for others in your community that are doing that sort of research. I would say it is a great opportunity to start the conversation with other community stakeholders, whether it be, you know, the government officials or other nonprofits in your community that are reaching the same -- trying to reach the same communities. I also -- I saw Nat's question about how do we ask the community what they need from the library rather than just assuming we know what they need? I know you are going to touch on some of that. But I wanted to give a plug for some work that we help to support, webinar and other information around community-led libraries. It is a project that started in Canada that has some great tools for how do you have that conversation with your community? And some of the questions around -- I saw the question about the librarian serving the orthodox Jewish community and how to be sensitive, not being open on Sunday is a challenge for them instead of Saturday. So, those are some ideas in terms of having that conversation and like I said, I know you all are covering that as well. >> Yes, that's right. Thank you for sharing that Jennifer. That is a really good resource and that is actually one of the resources I looked at when I was working to build this process in our system. Thank you for that by the way. Thanks Webjunction. >> I think actually in both Hayden's description -- this is CiKeithia again -- of the community discovery process that she is leading for our system and then Jennifer's follow-up comments about the community-led libraries work, you have essentially spoken to pretty much everything I would have touched on this slide about who in our community are we not connected with? I just would reiterate that data is a great first step. But it doesn't end there. It is about engaging again with other partners doing this work, other stakeholders, other experiences that you have with just individuals in the community that helps complete that picture. And, so, just to give you maybe some other ideas about organizations that you may want to be intentional in reaching out to as an effort to build your outreach efforts, be thinking about your faith-based organizations. I know sometimes they may be traditionally overlooked in terms of who we would consider a stakeholder on our work. Of course your schools and your student support organizations. Your shelters, food banks, other career support, job ready -- readiness center. And other local community or grass roots organizations. >> Right, and I think -- I think we sort of touched on this before, but, you know, and in my example of working with the youth in our neighborhood who are experiencing homelessness, some of them actually were in the building. It wasn't that they were not accessing the library, but they were not accessing it in a rich way. They were coming in for shelter. I think there was some question in their minds about whether they were welcome. We were not really offering them anything very much. And so by reaching out to partners, we were able to really boost their engagement level with the library. And I will say briefly what this picture is. When we did our community listening process last fall, one of our city neighborhoods, part of what came out of that was a connection to this great organization, the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps. Event that they planned together -- library in the neighborhood, planned with this organization around the opening of a trail that was going to provide a safer way for youth and families and just residents in general to get through the neighborhood. And the library had sort of been on the outside of that process. By connecting with this great youth organization, they were able to really highlight the great work that the organization is doing with youth and feature those community voices and be a part of the celebration that was really important to the community. >> So, now, let's talk about strengths. This is CiKeithia. I think this is a great -- I'm actually reflecting on the comment earlier from someone from a smaller library system. I'm thinking the opportunity to work in such close quarters with your colleagues is definitely a great way to start an internal conversation, inventory identifying strengths. You all should be thinking about what experience do either yourself or other staff members have? Existing relationships or connections to community. What other resources might we be able to bring to the table to enhance a partnership? Really it is just about, again, as I said, a self-inventory. And then, of course, with strengths, identifying our gaps. And gaps, you know, I don't like to think of them as a deficit. It is really an opportunity to say how can I improve what I'm doing? I may not even have been aware that this was a gap. But it is through sort of that internal conversation and really mapping things out and putting things on the table where you actually get to see clearer about things that, you know, you're lacking in your team or you're lacking in your work. So, I would just say that as a way to help guide that gap conversation, be thinking about what additional resources will we need in order to be successful? And more importantly, these potentially could be opportunities or resources that our partners have that they can actually contribute to this work. >> So, we were actually going to pause here for just a second. If anyone has thoughts they would like to share on these questions around what are you hoping that your partners might be able to bring to a relationship that would help you reach those audiences that you would like to reach and are not currently reaching? What -- what do you think -- what would be the resources, perhaps, that that partner could share with you? We will just give it a second to see if anybody wants to share on that. And if not, we can just keep going. >> If you want to think about that for a few minutes and share things that come to mind -- wait, what is the question? This question about what are your internal gaps or weaknesses? If you are thinking about, okay, I have a particular community that I recognize that I would like to be better connected with, I would like to provide programs and services to, you know, maybe it is Latino families in your community. And that's not happening right now and you think, okay, maybe working with a community partner is a way to do that. What are some of the things that you hope that that partner height be able to -- might be able to bring to that partnership, programs and services relevant, successful and have a high positive impact on that community you are hoping to reach. >> I would also add it is an opportunity internally to have discussions. We very well may be working with colleagues on a day-to-day basis that have deep-rooted connections. They may be from the community in which we are wanting to do some targeted work with. The external piece, yes, in terms of identifying who could potentially help fill those gaps but also think about the rich resource that each of you have in the library systems with the people that you work with everyday. >> This is Rekha. And in terms of gaps, I think the other think that is sort of -- we have to think about the long game here. I think this is an opportunity to talk to each other internally about what barriers systemically that we have, either as a profession or as an institution or in your team, what barriers do you have that prevent us from fully engaging in this work? That might be a staffing issue. That might be a resource issue. That might be a philosophical issue. So, those are some really huge conversations that -- ones that we have to start engaging in. When we think of gaps, resources and knowledge and skills, but also, you know, identifying the barriers that we have as a profession and trying to figure out ways that we can overcome those. >> Yeah, it looks like lots of folks are chiming in with thoughts on what partners might be able to bring. Sometimes it's just more bodies, which is great. Sometimes those bodies might have skills that we don't necessarily have in a library. Skills in working with certain communities. Knowledge of the communities that we don't have. The ability to bring an audience that we would like to reach. Sometimes about combining budgets. It looks like there are a lot of ideas here. Jennifer, did you see anything else you wanted to call out? >> Jennifer: Yeah, I was struck by the comment about trust that sometimes your partners have that trust with that community, and I will be sure and pull up -- when we did our project on Spanish language outreach, helping libraries reach Spanish-speaking communities, part of the curriculum, designer developed an outreach guide, interview guide that provided a way to connect with those gatekeepers in those communities. I think the trust issue is really important. I also just want to make a plug for when we talk about maybe not having the financial capacity to do this, this is an area that is really a part of many organizations that are working in your communities and at a national level that have funding. So, consider focusing your grant-seeking efforts in these areas as well to make that happen. >> Okay. So, now we're going to sort of talk about actual -- this is sort of the action plan section of what we are going to be sharing. Again, it is not going to be a checklist and it is not going to be something that is really concrete. It is more conceptual. Because it is going to be really localized to the work that you are doing in your community. So, after you kind of have done your data gathering and gotten a little bit of a picture of your community, another step in the right direction is to identify the existing connections that you already have. So, just do a brainstorm of connections and contacts that you and your coworkers already have. And, you know, make that as broad as possible. That can be folks that you have already done some partnership work with. That can be the, you know, the teachers that you see at the desk when you're in the library. That can be the folks that you know on a personal level, and just do a -- sort of a brain dump and identify those connections and contacts that you have and define that as broadly as you can. And then secondly another conversation is, you know, who is missing from that list? Who else would you like to connect with? And it is just as simple as that. Connections and what connections do you want to increase? And then the next thing to do is to make a plan. It sounds very simple, but I think that one of the things that is -- because this work is so fluid, it is really easy to kind of get lost in okay, I know my connections. I see them, you know, in the library or I see them out in the community, but now what am I supposed to do with that? So, internally if you can just sort of make a plan about -- and I think a good first step is usually to reach out to your community contacts and to just start having intentional conversations with them. And we really like to have our intentional conversations, especially at the beginning of a partnership or a potential partnership really be about that -- about them. And to just go and take a tour of a local organization or, you know, set up a coffee date with someone, and then, you know, make your plan in terms of going forward from there. >> You know, this is CiKeithia. I wanted to just add one thing. The picture that you all are looking at right now is a digital literacy class offered in Somalia at the Seattle housing authority. The woman in the red vest, leaning over the students at the computer, I think this is an important one when we sort of talked about, you know, a partnership beginning at the micro level that could very well extend into other areas of our work, the woman there pictured in the red is actually a partner that has done some of our early-learning work as a partner. We then reached out to do -- ESL, evolved into digital literacy classes. I only wanted to mention that to make the point that what begins with one particular focus area or end goal in mind could have potential to reach and touch services throughout your library system. >> And in this slide, we will talk about ways you can identify potential partners to do projects with. And, so, the top diagram -- on the top one, that's just showing that one way to assess whether a partner would be a good partner for a project is to really assess what your resources are and what the partner resources are and you want to have as little overlap there as possible. So, for example, if you have -- if you have a computer lab in your library, for example, and your partner comes to you and they also have a computer lab and they are wanting to do a program based off of the fact of let's partner around doing, you know, bringing people in to use these computers, if you both are bringing the same thing to the table, you may want to explore different thinks. What are the things that we don't have in common? What are the things we can trade? A partnership needs to be two way. What are your resources and what are their resources and what is the actual trade that's happening there? And then the bottom then diagram is more about mission. Another way to sort of vet whether a partnership is a good one to do in terms of creating a project is to think about what the library's mission is and think about what the partner mission is and see where those things overlap. There might be an organization that serves people experiencing homelessness and their mission is about providing a whole host of services to those folks. You know, what -- what places can the library touch in that and what places do we want to stay away from? What places are there that we really don't want to get into the business of? And to really have honest conversations with your partner about where do our project goals intersect with each other. >> Thank you, Rekha for that. This is CiKeithia again. I have been keeping an eye on the chat window and I wanted to go back because I noticed it was a common theme in terms of what some of you were identifying as barriers. So, this idea that we're serving diverse communities, but actually staff are not reflective or don't have the language capacity, I think that that is a common one, regardless if you are a small or large institution that you are really facing and some of that demographic data we showed earlier really points to that. I think this is a critical point for libraries to start to have these conversations. To me, engagement also means community empowerment. And so perhaps these are opportunities for us to actually hire community members that we like to work with, that we want to build relationships with to help take on some of that work. >> This is Hayden. I completely agree with that, and, at the same time, I think that we can't let the middle class white folks, such as myself, off of the hook. I think we can't say we are going to hire certain people to connect to communities and everybody else is just going to kind of be at the desk or do whatever. I think that it is important that the whole -- that the whole library is really on the look for making sure that this work happens and making sure that this work happens well. It is -- it is a real problem as some of you are pointing out that the -- that librarians for most places do not reflect the community that they serve, or, at least don't reflect them as well as we wish that they did and part of that has to do with who is going to library school and we could get into that whole thing. Another way to think about it, for example, CiKeithia and I -- I happen to have a library degree. CiKeithia doesn't happen to have a library degree, but we're in the same position and this position doesn't require a library degree. We came to it by different avenues. Just putting that out there, how do we want to -- what avenues are we going to create so that we are able to have more diverse staff? >> Absolutely. Well said, Hayden. >> So, kind of jumping back into that point when you are beginning to talk to partners, planning initial conversations with partners. I encourage the Buddy system for several reasons. We are talking more about just initial meetings with folks from other organizations. There are several reasons why I think it is great to bring a Buddy. One is so that some of us can feel intimidated by going into a situation like that alone with someone that we haven't met before and having someone else there can take the social edge off a little bit. If the conversation lags, if you have someone that there can pick up the slack a little bit, it turns it from what can feel more like an interview into more of a social situation. I also appreciate having someone else with me when I'm having these conversations to check my own understanding. Sometimes I come away and I'm pretty sure what they were saying is this. Is what WA -- what -- is that what you heard too? In our library system, I assume many library systems are the same, our schedules can be weird. It can be confusing to a partner when they call you on a Monday, and you know you're not there for a couple of days because you worked the weekend or you're part-time or whatever. And the community contact has two people contact information within the library that can be really helpful for them. So, I have a couple of caveats for the Buddy system. I know in small libraries, can be a struggle to get more than -- even one person can be a struggle to get out into the community. And two might be a deal breaker. In situations like that, I think we would just say that if it is possible to have someone, a coworker to just bounce ideas off of and debrief with after you have these meetings with the community, then that could be really valuable too. And we would also say that if you happen to have the luxury of being able to send a huge contingent of library staff, try to resist that temptation, because it can be overwhelming for a partner organization to have, you know, seven, eight library staff come to an initial meeting to chat with someone. It is hard to get to know seven people at a time. I would say one to two people is what you want to think about as the partnerships are getting started. That doesn't mean that more people can't be brought into it as it builds and gets going. But keeping it manageable in the initial stages. >> Absolutely. This is CiKeithia again. Think buddy, not basketball team. >> You need a bumper sticker for that. I think this model, this slide is kind of at the heart of what we are talking about. Traditionally in libraries, we -- I think we all have -- always been interested in community. Always served the community. And that is what is a great strength of libraries. But I think what we have often started with as services -- when we are talking to community, whether inside of our buildings or outside of our buildings, we offer folks a menu and we say, okay, the library can do A, B, C, or D. Which one do you pick? By the way, I would like for you -- that is kind of my favorite thing to do. Instead of starting with what we want to do or what we think would be cool or fun, not that those things are not valid, but that we are starting with a people first model. Initially making these -- having the conversations with other community groups, organizations, individuals, that we're really framing that initial conversation as simply a getting to know you. And in that first meeting, rather than trying to be super result oriented, at the end of the 45 minute meeting, a plan for an ongoing program or partnership. Create time and space to ask some general questions. What is working well for you in your organization? Like Rekha said, can I have a tour? What are the pinch points for you. What are you hearing from the community that you are working with that are the big needs, concerns, interests right now? And then be present while they ask questions about the library. I think we all know that libraries are not -- we're kind of amazing and there is a lot of stuff that we can offer, but the community doesn't always know that. If we ask someone in the community what do you want from the library? They are probably going to say something like books. That is what people know about us. It can take some time and space to get to that point where they realize there is a wealth of possibilities that I didn't know about. If we create space it will allow them to ask questions of us as well, then hopefully, you know, maybe we can take that back to our coworkers and the library -- and they can go back to their folks. We can think about it some more and come to a place where we are creating a partnership that works for both of us and is maximizing the resources and possibilities that are there. >> This is Rekha. I was just going to give a couple of examples. I think one of the things that we hear often from our partners on the youth side of things when we start to talk to them, the first thing they say to us do we have a story time? And, you know, it's not -- and that may very well end up being the thing that we do with them. But it is very clear to me a lot of times with these conversations that that's what they think of when they think of us and we don't have the relationship built up yet where, you know, and it is hard to resist the temptation to go into the menu model and say we can do story time for you. But let me list 10 other things we can do for you. And, again, we're back to the place where we're asking them to choose from a predetermined, prethought-OUTprethought-out list. Sure, we will bring you the story time. Sometimes you just don't know where to start. Sometimes you do start in the box. But, you know, to sort of push each other as partners, to sort of have the deeper conversations about what their needs are. Another anecdote that I will share, that Hayden and I worked on, we worked on a partnership with a youth organization that was providing college and career readiness for folks. And we had our, you know, road show about resume building and SAT prep data bases and instruction that we usually will give in those kinds of contexts, and as we went further into the partnership, what we realized, and what the organization told us is, you know what, a lot of these students are getting their first jobs while they're in high school, right after high school, and a lot of those jobs are requiring them to do typing, and they don't know how to type. And that was a thing that we got to eventually, and, so, you know, sort of the pre-packaged thing that we were giving them was helpful. But the thing that they really WANLTed from us was something that we had not done before and we sort of had to come up with, what are we going to do to meet that need? That is just another example of -- sometimes you start out with a pre-packaged thing and that can be fine. But to really leave yourself open to be creative and to listen to what the needs really are. >> This is CiKeithia again. These are some of my fantastic partners. It was like 900 degrees that day. But this picture here is actually from a kindergarten registration event that we did over the summer. Two partners, the woman on the end, executive director for a local community coalition. The woman in the middle actually worked for our school district in the early-learning department. We really had sort of come to know one another through our involvement in other community meetings. We see each other at various events and things, and, so, really that is where the relationship started to develop. And as a part of that work, it was about listening to learn more about what each of us was involved in, talking about what we frequently encountered in our own work and institutions in terms of barriers. What are some of the things that we had always dreamed about doing? As a result of really I think building the mutually respectful relationships which help support having honest and candid discussions about really what was not working well or what we felt we could have been doing better, we had identified a small project to start with as, again, as I mentioned last summer, and the work was involved -- or the need, I should say, was a sort of alarming rate of children in a particular community in the south of Seattle that essentially registered for school once school had started. We all thought because we had been involved in various school readiness initiatives and community meetings, that we each sort of have access to different communities and all sort of focused in that particular neighborhood, who great would it be to leverage the resources to do one event, targeted work reaching familiar -- families, a great start to the beginning of the kindergarten year, registering in August and not waiting until September. I should mention that the district office is closed during that critical period. In terms of what I offered, it was story time. Highlighting the world language collection, partnering with one of our world language story tellers, two of them, to provide story times in other languages that we knew were reflective of the community. Our school partner, of course, brought all of the enrollment paperwork. Kids activities brought on by the community coalition partner. It really was a good opportunity. Probably had it not been for the fact that through our conversations and running into each other in various places in the community that we had an opportunity to establish trust, which, again, as I said, supported creating this avenue of dialogue to even have an idea that ultimately, you know, was a common goal. We all saw a common goal with really wanting to do our part in ensuring that children were registered and ready for kindergarten. >> This slide, this is a photo of Hayden and myself and a colleague of ours, Carol, and two staff members from a local youth homeless shelter. And this is a project that we did in partnership with them where they had in -- you can see the shelves behind them. They had a small in-house library that the youth that were staying at the shelter could utilize, and it was old and tired and raggedy. And, so, we partnered together with them to refurbish this little in-house library with them and so this is our little work party where we were getting that together. So, this slide is about forming a project, and I'll start this by saying that we really want to emphasize that relationships with your community are ends in and of themselves. Every time that you start a relationship with a community organization or a group in your community, that is not necessarily saying that you're going to form a specific project with them. Some of them you are going to do projects or programs with or planning with, and some of them are going to be just ongoing relationships where you can sort of check in with them or do some information sharing with them. But some of the folks that you are going to be talking to, you will be forming a project list hopefully, and -- project with hopefully. And before committing to a project with a partner, just make sure that you are doing your, you know, background with them first. You're doing that relationship building with them first. And doing some internal checks within your organization to make sure that the project is one that you're willing and able to follow through with. A major thing to think about when you are forming a project with a partner is, and we touched on this a little bit already, is to make sure that a partnership -- the definition of a partnership is that it is a two-way situation. And, so, I think depending on -- I think that we have all been in partnerships where we -- the library is really providing everything in the partnership, and is not the partnership is not reciprocal. In my experience, a lot of times what we're trying to get out of the partnership from the library's perspective is audience. The think that the partner organization, or aspect of the partnership from the organization that they're bringing to the able is helping us reach an audience that we are having trouble reaching on our own. That is not always going to be the case but assessing what are we bringing to the table and what are they bringing to the table is always a good question to ask. A second question that is good to ask, does the project deliver something important to both -- this is a check in terms of is the partnership a true partnership and a two-way partnership? And, third, does the project have an end point? This is a really important one. The relationship is going to be ongoing, hopefully, and, you know, ongoing for years to come. But I think sometimes I know that we have, in our system, we get into relationships and partnerships with folks that we don't have end point for the project that we're doing. The expectation becomes that we will do this project with a partner forever and ever and to infinity. Even when the needs may change or we might need resources to build some new relationships, we felt, you know, we're kind of locked in because we haven't put the fence posts in for a check-in. We encourage when you are doing partnership work and a project with someone to have a beginning point and an end point and the end point also gives you a really great opportunity to do that very important evaluation work. What project outcome did we set? Did we meet the outcomes? And then you can always renew and do the project over again and build upon that or it gives you a good out in terms of, you know, this isn't working and we really need to move on from that. And then in terms of setting a beginning point and an end point, I would encourage you to think about those in terms as flexible as possible. I have done projects with partners where really it was a project for like once a week for a month. Sometimes it's for a year. Sometimes, you know, it doesn't have to be long. Just whatever makes sense for that project and make sure that you're clear with your partner that, you know, when the end point is going to be and what the step is going to be for that check-in. >> Yeah, this is Hayden. I will say quickly, I saw someone ask if most libraries have a memorandum of understanding. We do have that. Full disclosure, I'm not sure we use it as often as we could, but that is a good idea. I -- I don't think it would be a problem for us to share the form that we use. Getting it written down can help to clarify things for everyone and avoid misunderstandings. >> Oh, it is CiKeithia. Outcomes evaluation -- I won't spend a lot of time on this. We could literally do a whole other webinar on evaluation. And I recognize that this is a new area of exploration, libraries across the country begin to think more than just output, measuring success as a result of how many people are in a meeting room for a particular program. I would encourage you, especially -- I'm a real big advocate for building a community of practice. We have begun to do great work here. I'm sure there are other examples across the country to reach out intentionally to colleagues to learn more about what sorts of evaluation work that people are doing. I think if I just sort of had to walk away or hope you would walk away, rather, with a couple of key points about outcomes, outcomes are often easily confused with goals. So, in short, cliff notes version on this slide, think of your goals as your -- the big, broad thing that it is that you want to do. Think of your outcomes as your road map. What specific measurable steps will you take in order to achieve that goal? This work should not be done in isolation. You shouldn't be sitting in your institution once you identified a partner and potential project. You should be doing this work with your partner to make sure that, A, we're on the same page in terms of what that road map looks like and do we have the same goals in mind when we think about a particular project? I think it is important to note with evaluation work, it is not a one size fits all. The same way your strategies or approaches to working with community will vary. So does the tool. I think the tool should be sort of designed after the project is formed, after you are clear about what your goals and outcomes are. It could be, if it was a series, you would have an opportunity, right, to have a captive audience where you could do a pre-survey, baseline, what people are coming in with general knowledge, attitudes, behavior around a particular subject and be able to measure that at the end with a follow-up or a post survey. It could be focus groups. I really like that model, particularly when we're serving diverse communities where English is not the predominant language. The idea of sitting down and filling out a piece of paper can be intimidating for people. Casual focus groups an effort to learn more about what people learned or what they had hoped to learn. Did we meet those goals? And more importantly ideas for future projects, again, not a one size fits all, but I think the evaluation piece is critical. We can make lots of assumptions about how successful a particular program and project is but you are missing the beauty of hearing from the people that you have actually touched about what that experience is like. Also pretty much everything that I touch is funded by some -- by our library foundation or also a grant. This is also we know the critical information that our funders want to see with the project and so we need to -- we need to get better at helping tell the story. >> Yeah, exactly. I think some -- I'm sure some of you are doing this a lot already. If you are at a beginning point, I would say that -- when I am talking to staff about doing outcomes, evaluation, the main thing I'm trying to get home what do you hope will be different because of this thing you are doing? And then find a way to measure that thing. This is a from a survey -- the survey on the slide from a -- the graph from a survey I did after a social justice research class that I did with a partner that serves teen girls. I gave them a simple form. And maybe it is just one thing. Maybe I just ask them, do you think your project will be better because of this and have them raise their hands. I think if you are concerned starting small and identifying just one or two outcomes, one or two things that you hope will be better as a result of what you did is totally fine. We were going to actually pause for a moment after the outcome -- I know outcomes are such a huge -- such a huge thing that we're all grappling with and I'm wondering if there are any questions about that before we jump into our last few slides here. >> You did a great job of touching on that. There was a question around the work that you did to maybe link some of the needs assessments with your outcome-based evaluation. Did you kind of connect those? >> So, I think -- you guys go ahead. This is Hayden again. I think what the question is about how do we connect -- okay. We have gone out to the community, done this listening and heard about these needs and now we want to create a PROJ -- project that will address the needs. We hear there is a need for or this interest in having more accessible early literacy programs in this community. And, so, what are the outcomes -- what is going to be better? We are going to provide this program to people who might not have access to it. And they're going to say that they -- they think that their kids advance in the early literacy skills as a result -- >> This is CiKeithia. For example, things we look at in some of the projects. I'm looking at everything from knowledge or familiarity with what we offer. Hopefully at some point I'm able to sort of casually insert bits and pieces of information. We used to have a print piece here we tall top 10 things you probably didn't know. Great conversation starters. We also would look at skill acquisition or knowledge about specific skills that help support early literacy. Again, developing a tool that sort of measure -- changes in attitude, behavior, knowledge of skills, that sort of thing. >> Exactly. It is crucial that you are not pulling those out of the blue. Based on what you heard from the community and what you are hearing from your partner and part of the -- some of the -- and they are helping you decide what the outcomes are. If you are working in partnership with another organization, they want to -- you want to have them decide on the outcomes with you to make sure that you're both getting the results that you hope to see from the project. >> This is a great question in here that I am noticing here in the chat. It says there are a certain amount of patience and time you need to consider whether a project or partnership is worth it. Maybe we touched on this in previous slides. This is a two-part question. You should be intentionally creating time to do the check-ins with your partners to make sure that we are sort of embarking on this journey together. Is it turning out who how we imagined? Are there things that maybe we didn't anticipate that have come up and maybe we need to go back and rethink? You know, the time thing is funny. It is going to look different depending on the project. I think one of the key best practices that you need to remember is flexibility to be able to go back and change some things and noting that it is -- it may not happen overnight. It may not be until the end of the project that you realize that it didn't work necessarily or you didn't -- maybe you didn't achieve certain goals that you have identified. That patience and that flexibility. I think when we -- you have the pressure of having to move on to other projects. When we focus too much on the time piece, we lose the beauty and moment to be open and learn. >> Excellent. >> I know you're touching on a little more of that. I will let you keep going and we will circle back with any outstanding questions at the end. >> Our slides just disappeared. What are you looking at, Jennifer? Our slides are gone. Can you see the slide show still? >> Yes, I can still see the slides. Do you want me to take the ball and move us forward? We are on a slide that says share power. >> That's great, that's fine. >> Looking at the wonder twins. >> Know. -- a lot of the work that we have been talking about today is work that involves the library working with small grass roots organizations that may be led by people of color and, you know, they may not have a lot of the resources. We feel strapped for time and resources and staff power and all of those things are true. Every library has at least a few assets that some community partners may not, like buildings -- at least some paid staff. Some grass roots organizations do not have any paid staff. May have just one. Being careful that we are not using those organizations as unpaid consultants but that we're sharing power with them, sharing our budgets with them, where it is possible and makes sense and making it easier for them to work and share with us, equal access to planning and resources. Okay. Where are we now? >> Flexibility. >> Flexibility. I'm kind of glad I can't see this one. [laughter] >> I will make this one quick. We really touched on it a lot. CiKeithia talked about it just a minute ago. Sometimes partners may want things that we can't deliver. So, you know, you don't want to make promises that we can't keep and making sure that flexibility is always a part of what we do so that we can advance from that. >> We're on the next slide. >> Okay. And then so this one is one that I encourage you to think about in the context of your own library system. One of the things that we have really kind of come to on this team, and this is not even a thing that I think our entire -- our staff at the Seattle Public Library have different ideas about this concept. So we're not all in agreement. But the three of us are in agreement about this. You know, we really just -- we believe that community engagement and the library engaging in community that the goal of that work is not necessarily to have the end result be those folks that we are working with enter the doors of our buildings. A lot of times you will hear that rhetoric. We went out into the community, but it wasn't successful because we never saw those people in our buildings. You know, we really want to challenge that idea and think about how the goal can be connecting people with the services that they need wherever they are. And if that connection is being made, it doesn't -- the geography of where that connection happens is beside the point. So, you know, we just want to challenge you to think about that idea of, you know, if your outcome has to do with how much you're seeing people enter your doors, and, you know, if that is -- if that is what success is, you know, to just challenge that a little bit. You know, we really have come around on that point and have had a lot of discussions around that point and we really think of our buildings as awesome. They're assets. There are things that we can use. They're a resource. There is a lot of great stuff that can happen in our buildings that maybe can't happen out in the community and we're working on that but they're not outcomes in and of themselves. >> Jennifer: Excellent. Now we're on to time. >> This is CiKeithia again. I won't spend much time on this slide either being that we inserted comments throughout the presentation that reference this information. But, again, just making sure that you are allowing for time to build that trust, that communication, being responsive, allowing yourself the flexibility. Noticing in the chat window there was another question relating to how you necessarily inform a partner when something is not -- the project is not going as you had anticipated or maybe it needs to stop -- again, I would just reiterate to you all that the process of establishing trust and building the relationship helps support being able to have open and honest conversations with our partners, and I think if you reach a point in a particular project where it is simply not working or maybe now is not the time, you need to be comfortable and respectful in saying that. >> And a little bit more on barriers. >> Yeah, so I think we -- we can kind of just go ahead through to the end. We were going to have this as a moment for you guys to talk with us about some of the internal barriers that you are facing in your libraries and organizes around doing this work some of the external barriers that you might face in doing in the community. But let's go ahead to 30. Here we go. And at the same time, maybe be thinking about what are some of the solutions to those problems. What are some of the ways around those barriers? What can you change to make this community engagement work possible right now and 10 years from now? And then slide 31, this is -- I just pulled this together as an action plan. I think that the learning guide that is there is probably a better resource for you. We can go ahead and go -- I don't know if you want to end on the last slide where we -- yeah. Thank you so much. We really appreciate your being with us today and chatting with us about this today and I have really been enjoying reading the chat. It sounds like there are a million amazing partnerships and outreach programs going on all over the country and that's great to see and read about and now we would love to hear from you, if there are other barriers that you are facing, if you have other thoughts for us and for the other folks who are listening in on what are some of the solutions to the problems and ways around those barriers, we would love to hear it. >> Yes, please chime in if you have encountered and overcome barriers especially, but if you have current barriers. I just wanted to thank everyone who contributed. We posted a question to the group around the kinds of outreach opportunities they have been doing beyond tabling and your examples, but there were some excellent examples shared. I just want to recognize someone mentioned that the summer library program is going out to the summer feeding sites. I think this is a wonderful outreach example for sure. There were a number of other examples that were posted there, and be sure to return to the chat. We will be posting chat as a part of the archives so that you can follow-up on that. And the slides are also available on that archived page. Let's see. There was one question about measuring outcomes. Do you all do some of that measuring per project, you know, outcome effort or distinct audience and how would you do that or how do you do that? >> So, I think -- the question is about how do we -- when is the right time to measure, right, I think? I think, again, it depends on the project. If it is something like a digital literacy -- you can do a pre and post survey or ask people at the end. If it is more ongoing, what is the right interval? Do I need to do a focus group check-in every six months, once a year? How often does it make sense -- how often might things change that I need to make sure and check? I guess it depends. Easy to think about when we think about a one-off program or event. It can be harder if it is something like outreach or just sort of ongoing services. >> Allow yourself that flexibility to make that decision based on that particular project. I think, and again, you all have the last page, you should be able to see it with all of our email addresses. I'm happy to share tools. I know all of us, or other ideas as a way to continue the conversation and support your learning and thoughts in that particular area. >> Excellent. Thank you so much to all three of you. And if there were questions that we didn't get to, I will follow up with you and get your input. I know there was a great question about how do you get buy-in if you are kind of on your own and doing this? I know that is a challenge for folks out there. We will get some ideas from you and post that information to the archives page. The recording will be posted later today. I will send you all an email once that is posted. And as you leave, we will send you to a short survey. That feedback is shared with our presenters and it is excellent information for us as we continue to make decisions about our ongoing programming. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you so much to our presenters and thank you for all of the great work that you're doing meeting your communities' needs and touching all of the great communities that we serve. And also thank you to everyone online who is doing great work in your communities as well. All right. Everyone have an excellent day. >> Thank you.