And I'm so excited about this webinar, to bring you these wonderful folks who have done such great work around this project, this initiative.
I'll welcome Valerie Gross, who is the president and CEO at the Howard County Library System in Maryland.
She's joined by her colleague, Christie Lassen, who is the Director of Public Relations at Howard county and Sonya Durney who comes to us as the adult services director from the Portland Public Library in Maine.
Welcome, Valerie.
>> Valerie Gross:  Thank you so much, Jennifer.
We are talking about a key topic today that really goes back to any time.
It's a topic that seems to be in the news more than usual these days, but really, it is a timeless hot topic that is -- 
it's simply imperative to efficiently working together.
We have such power over each other and to be focusing on lowered stress levels and better health and greater happiness in addition to simply getting along and being able to move anything forward, it's an optimal time for libraries to get involved in this.
Any library can participate, any size, any size community.
You can start big.
You can start small.
There's no cost to join in.
And so what we hope that you glean from today's discussion and dialogue is to get inspired to do something maybe a little bit more, something maybe a little bit more differently and really focus on this topic of civility.
So, thank you, is really the first message that we have for you.
And we thank you because you're visionaries, you're participating in this.
And you also shaped this particular initiative and so first, a little bit about you, you're 485 colleagues around the world.
The only state missing is north Dakota.
We have five Canadian provinces, so, greetings, everyone in Canada.
So, we're a global community today.
We're also representing 371 public libraries, 65 academic libraries, seven school libraries, seven special and 13 state libraries.
So, while today we will have mostly examples from public libraries, you all can translate and see how this can work in your community because the public library's customer base is everyone.
If you're in an academic library, you know who your audience is and figure how to evolvevolve something so it fits your audience.
I'll begin with a brief overview and then pass it on to Christie who will talk about more specifics about Howard County Library System and the bigger picture of the chapters and affiliates.
Sonya will then talk about what is taking place in Portland, Maine.
I will then conclude and then we'll open up for some Q&A.
So, I'll begin with "Choose Civility," in a nutshell.
It's an invitation to choose civility in our personal lives and our work lives, at every opportunity.
When you are in a public restroom and somebody is cleaning, you remember to say thank you for keeping these bathrooms so sparkly clean.
It's the ability to be kind, to be nice.
It is recognizing social norms and being respectful of that.
It is the universal principles of respect.
And empathy.
And compassion.
And, consideration and inclusiveness, which is ever-more important in today's society.
It is a reminder to conch YNGS Sly choose.
In 2006, we came across this book by Dr. P.M. Forni who is at Johns Hopkins university.
We said, would you be available to talk to our staff members for professional development day?
He came and talked and we were incredibly blown away by how our staff members were so taken with his message.
This concept that we should be choosing civility at every opportunity in our work and in our personal lives.
So, from that, we then convened a meeting with more community leaders.
And they said, let's make this bigger.
Let's, together, as a community, decide to focus on civility.
So, we put together a vision, we choose to be a model of civility and a mission we value diversity, which is respect, compassion and inclusiveness.
And then we took a look at Dr. Foni's book as inspiration for this.
Dr. Foni inspired it.
 Somebody said, we don't want rules.
We distilled his 25 rules.
He never really said he didn't like that and so we took 15 of his rules, turned them into principles, accept and give praise, apologize earnestly, take responsibility.
So then we branded the concept with the color green, which is peaceful and serene and then the two civility logo grew and then things didn't seem to be moving forward so we realized, well, somebody needs to step up to the plate and take the lead.
So we said, okay, we'll do that, we're the library system.
This are two reasons, one is because all of our partners, at the time, we had maybe three or four, we saw that they were part of our customer base and everybody's part of our customer base, people of all ages, walks of life, means and backgrounds.
There's a second reason, that's because everything about the partnership, about the "Choose Civility" initiative, it falls squarely within our mission, self-directed education, everything related to books and econtent, research assistance and instruction, all the classes we teach for children, teens, adults on civility topics.
And then the third pillar, the partnership itself falls under instructive and enlightening experiences, bringing the community together.
After we took the lead, it became a more collaborative effort.
We are 125 alliance partners strong with key partners being the other educational initutions, including the community college.
You'll see, they implement internally civility concepts, like the friendly campus.
There is the community-wide initiative.
The school system, the board of ed, they have a anti-bullying policy that is part of their own "Choose Civility" but they are part of the bigger vision.
They bring the youth empowerment summit to one of our branches and so every middle school has an ambassador for "Choose Civility."
and my last example here is the banners.
The banners are at all of the sports fields and gyms at the school system.
The rotary clubs wanted to be involved and we are splashed here, too, because we are the lead organization, viewed as the catalyst and the epicenter for civility.
So, Christie, on to you for some more specifics.
>> Christie Lassen:  As lead coordination we do publicity.
We have a "Choose Civility" website and Facebook page, we have banners downtown and October, when we celebrate "Choose Civility" week.
We have it in the academic competition.
This team won first place in that category a few years ago and no one else has come up with a better name.
The most visible marketing pieces are the 70,000 magnets displayed vehicles.
The most popular are the green car magnets at the bottom.
Window decalls at the top are perfect for car and office windows.
We knew we were on to something when we couldn't keep the magnets in stock.
Choose a lane, for the love of god, just choose one, is my favorite.
We have a series of 15 faces of civility posters that feature a mix of community leaders and people representing the diversity of our community.
These posters are displayed in our library branchs and available for download.
We created templates for partners to use.
Schools might select students or teachers or businesses might highlight employees.
"Choose Civility" marketing committee highlighted eight of the 15 principles.
Children complete eight activities and fill out a certificate in the back.
The booklet introduces the civility cool cat, shown here on the cover.
Our website, choosecivility.org, has a number of resources available for other libraries or jurisdictions looking to implement a similar campaign.
It lists upcoming events and ongoing activities.
Has four book lists for children, teens, adults and workplaces.
Lists our partners and includes a store to order magnets and window decalls.
The centerpiece of "Choose Civility" week has been a symposium.
In 2010, we focused on the role of civility in democracy.
In 2011, building a responsible and bully-free community.
They incorporated the youth empowerment into the symposium.
They participated in an afternoon session and members attended the evening session that featured a panel of students from the morning.
In 2012, the theme was, would it kill you to be more civil?
Based on the book, would it kill you to stop doing that?
Andy green from the Baltimore sun was there.
In 2013, we focused on multigenerational perspects on civility, as they relate to technology.
The evening's panel including a high school student, technology reporter and millennial filmmaker, David, who spent part of the time with teens.
The 2014 theme, civility in sports, was the first that lead to a new component.
It created existing codes of conduct.
The soccer association of Columbia was the first to adopt the civility statement and they came up with additional ideas to encourage parents and coaches to choose civility during games.
In 2015, we focused on social media responsibility.
And such topics as digital footprints, building digital brands.
To follow-up, we held a number of intimate conversations about timely topics.
Following a major blizzard, we talked about how to use social media to connect with others.
We held a happy hour about our social media feeds.
>> You're saying power up?
>> Christie Lassen:  Power up, that's correct.
Your Mike is crackling, like movement around your Mike is -- 
it's coming through.
So just be careful, whatever you're touching around your Mike.
>> Christie Lassen:  Okay.
Thank you.
Power ups were led by our staff and by others in the community with whom we had relationships.
Local bloggers or members of our friends group, who had expertise in the topic, et cetera.
This year, our theme is kindness creates community.
We designed this new car magnet with the #choose2Bkind and a pass it on campaign where we ask people to read, register and pass on the book.
And a Random Acts of Civility:  
A Year of Kindness calendar.
We also coordinate a number of classes and events for all ages.
Such as this class for children, "Choose Civility," the elephant and piggy way.
Last fall, instead of a symposium, we organized a Coding for Community Hackathon with the local tech counsel and other partners.
This is an idea we learned about from Sonya's seem in Portland.
Teams came to the library on a Saturday morning and competed in four divisions to create online solutions to challenges submitted by our partners.
Teams were paired with mentors from the tech community.
The tech counsel recruited mentors and judges, community partners submitted challenges and the school system and community college helped recruit students.
Individual students were formed into teams upon arrival.
The majority of teams were from middle schools and a surprising number had limited coding experience.
One of the veterans said, the positive atmosphere and open communication at this hackathon is something I've never seen before.
We followed up with surveys and will use the feedback for next year's event.
Last month, we held the human library.
We recruited people.
Our county executive announced that he was going to be a book.
Books completed an application, then were interviewed by a committee.
They participated in a training for sharing their experience with people who may or may not be sympathetic.
Readers signed up to borrow the books.
Readers got to talk with someone they may have not encountered or understood.
Many people asked for us to hold it monthly, but we're thinking more of an annual event.
They launched a "Choose Civility" poster event.
The winner's poster was distributed to every school and can library branch.
We are including video galleries and an exhibit.
Our newest event is the longest table.
We're partnering with tourism, the economic authority, the downtown Columbia arts and culture center.
It seeks to bring people together from across the county for facilitated conversations.
We want to place people with friends they've not yet met to build community.
We plan to create tablerunners with questions relevant to our community.
Trained facilitators and Howard County Library System grads will host to keep the conversation going.
This year's longest table is also being held in conjunction with Columbia's 50th birthday.
He envisioned a town where executives and janitors would be next door neighbors.
He purposely said Columbia would be a welcoming place for people of all backgrounds.
The longest table celebrates that vision and encourages peeps to have conversations about what it means to be a community and how we move forward in the next 50 years.
Our community is seeking donations from businesses and restaurants, as well as sponsorships.
The community college is hosting the event on one of their parking lot and will let us move inside, in case it rains.
Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for high school and college students.
Guests can purchase a ticket for someone who can't afford one.
It is set for June 22.
Another fun component is HiTails ambassadors, students read to animals.
HiTails aims to make shelter animals more social and, thus, adoptable, while building reading skills.
In training for students and parents, we highlight the relevant principles of civility, be a considerate guests, pay attention to staff.
Acknowledge others in the space.
Take responsibility for your behavior and belongings and listen.
When we approached the local animal control, the director was skeptical.
She gave us one hour a week.
She saw how well-behaved the animals are and we hope we can expand the reading times.
Quick story, the first week my daughter read to a dog, daisy, while the family interested in adopting, watched.
She learned daisy had been adopted and was excited.
She read to a cat, who was quite vocal and stressed.
Five minutes later, the cat has calmed down considerably.
It really does make a difference to those animals.
This year's theme of "Choose Civility" -- of building community is broad enough to include events that give people a framework.
In February, we held a class about fake news where our instructors discussed the ways printed and online information they be deceptive and taught tips to determine if the information is trustworthy.
We heard from peoplet that they were finding it challenging to have conversations with people with whom they disagreed.
We are hosting a monthly series of community dialogue circles at our library branches.
The goal is to help discuss divisive issues in a respectful manner and to work on conflict resolution strategies.
Participants determine the topics for each circle.
Our long-term goal is to train our own facilitators to facilitate these kinds of conversations, which can happen in an existing knitting class, that would be a good time to have this conversation.
Or a book discussion group.
Next month, one of our already-trained facilitators is leading a discussion about how to support Transgender and gender nonconforming youth, the challenges they face and giving them additional resources.
Earlier this month, we hosted form White House secretaries who discussed their book, treating people well and the importance of having a place of mutual respect.
This is an example of the type of event we branded as a "Choose Civility" event.
Beyond what we offer customers, how have we internalized?
We have moved the values in to our strategic plan and our evaluations for staff.
Our strategic plan includes authentic values, respect, inclusiveness.
Strategic vocabulary.
Everyone a leader.
Winning teamwork.
Community partnerships.
The power of us and fiercely loyal customers.
Staff are evaluated on how they meet the external three pillars and the external seven pillars.
One of the questions we're often asked is how do we know this campaign is making a difference?
We measure its success through the number of partners, promotional items distributed, attention from social media, attendance at classes and events, survey results and the number of libraries and jurisdictions expressing interest, informing "Choose Civility" chapters and affiliates.
In the last five months, we fielded numerous phone calls and emails about how to get involved.
We have heard from Virginia, New Jersey and North Carolina.
As well as individuals from Ohio, Oregon and San Diego.
We have four chapters.
The first one was Washington county, Maryland and is let by the library system and school system.
Freeborn county, Minnesota is led by albert lea.
"Choose Civility" Portland is lead by the Portland Public Library and Sonya will talk about what they're doing.
We invite more libraries to join this national movement.
What's the difference between a chapter and an affiliate?
Chapters are external, community-wide initiatives.
Affiliates are internal, organizational initiatives, such as in the city of Alexandria, Virginia.
Why become a chapter or affiliate?
First of all, by joining "Choose Civility," it establishes your organization as a community leader that's part of a national network and it gives you national recognition, a communications network and access to expertises and a toolkit.
You receive an invitation to join an online discussion group, where chapter representatives can ask questions.
You receive a detailed toolkit with logo files, style guides, sample forms and letters, poster templates.
Because we've laid the foundation, there's no charge.
However, we've protected the brand with a created common license, we ask for attribution on your website.
One other question is, do we have to structure our initiative the same as Howard county?
No.
How you structure your chapter or affiliate is entirely up to you.
We can tell you what works best for us but you need to set yours up the way it work  s for you.
Whether you start with book lists or big community events, you decide what you want your community to do.
So to help you get started, we've created a "Choose Civility" affiliate or chapter document that can be downloaded from the website.
We are happy to talk to you in person, by phone, by email.
Basically, talk to us.
We want your chapter or affiliate to be successful.
And speaking of successful, now I'm going to hand this over to Sonya, in Portland, where she's doing amazing things.
>> Sonya Durney:  Hello.
Good afternoon, everyone.
So, Valerie and Christie have given a great overview of how "Choose Civility" works for them and now I can share a little bit about how it has worked for us in.
>> Jennifer Peterson:  Sonya, your audio has become significantly quieter than when we tested, so I don't know if you can just rearrange your Mike just to make sure it's a little bit better?
>> Sonya Durney:  How is this?
Is this better?
>> Jennifer Peterson:  That's much better.
>> Sonya Durney:  Hello, everyone.
Greetings from Maine.
I'm going to talk about what it's like to be a "Choose Civility" chapter.
We became a chapter back in 2013.
So, what promped us to become a "Choose Civility" chapter?
There were a few things happening right around that time.
The first was that a number of staff members watched a webinar about the Howard County Library System "Choose Civility" program and it resonated with us.
At the same time, a local foundation, the learner foundation, had funds available for organizations working towards increased community civic engagement and the last thing was, was that we were at the tail end of an election cycle so I think that's enough said to know that civility was in the public conversation -- 
civility and public conversations was really on our minds.
we decided to go ahead and to try to find some funding to move forward and become a "Choose Civility" chapter.
One of the questions that kept coming up was, why?
Why at the library?
Why does the library want to promote civic engagement.
I think I'm speaking to the choir here because there are mostly librarians on here.
Librarians are well-respected.
We were able to find the data to back us up, which was helpful because we all know what's happening in libraries every day, but having the data to share was helpful.
So, we did wind up getting grant funding from the learner foundation.
We got a $48,000 grant for a two-year term and we were able to hire a part-time coordinator.
We were able to have Christie come up from Howard county and consult us and fill us in on what worked there and what didn't.
We were able to train members of our staff to facilitate community conversations.
Which is really great because I don't think that was anything we felt very comfortable doing before that, which is funny looking back now because that's so much of what we do when we're hosting book groups.
It's the same skills, we just hadn't framed them this way.
We held eight public forums and four sessions with the Maine humanities counsel.
So these public forums were open to anyone, and different topics that were affecting our community.
So, I'm going to walk you through what some of our programs have looked like and share some of the things that have worked for us.
A few of our first few programs were world cafés.
One of our themes was welcoming communities.
So we had a full house of people, 60 or 70 people, which is a great size for our library, talking about what it means to be a welcoming community and we set people up in world café style.
If you're not familiar with world cafés, I want to put in a plug for the libraries transform.
They have covered world cafés in-depth so those are avail  available in the ala website.
They come together in tables and you have a table leader and a group of people can sit down and talk about a topic and there's set-up questions and you take notes and you switch tables and then everyone reports out to each other on what they found.
So these are a really great way to bring the community together.
You would want to be careful with the topics you're covering in that not necessarily everyone at the table is going to be an expert.
You might be better to have a panel of experts on it, rather than this sort of set-up.
But this really worked great for talking about welcoming communities and a time that you felt welcome in your community or a time you haven't felt well some and how you handled that so we had a very powerful conversation that day.
Another great forum we had early on was Dan Shea, who is the director of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs and Civic Engagement up here in Maine.
And he written a book called "Can We Talk?  The Rise of Rude, Nasty, Stubborn Politics."
For this book, he all surveyed 1,000 people randomly and 95% of marecons believe civility is a key element for a healthy democracy.
He had many other findsings.
32% of people say politicians should take a manners class.
A majority, 6 out of 10 women, are turned off when politics become rude and nasty.
1 in 5 say it prompts them to become more active in politics.
It wasn't really turning people toward civic engagement so we felt like we had a lot of work to do.
>> Jennifer Peterson:  Sonya, I'm sorry, I'm going to interrupt you again quickly so we get the optimal -- so now you've got a lot of puffing -- 
if you put the Mike toward your nose, almost pointing just above your nose, that's the best spot for you.
[LAUGHTER]
>> Sonya Durney:  The microphone has a mind of its own.
Is that better?
>> Jennifer Peterson:  Well, it's the combination of making sure that we can hear, you know, the volume is high enough.
But it's almost like the breathing takes over your -- the audio.
>> Sonya Durney:  This was a lecture from our state economist and Maine is a predominantly white state.
This was great to have a room full of people and we looked at the stats and the demographics of main and we had smaller conversations after about who was in the room and where people came from and we got to learn a lot about each other.
We turned out to have many wonderful partnerships.
Our partnerships aren't quite as clearly defined as they are in Howard county.
We'll sort of think of a topic that we want to host a program on and find a great community partner who fits the bill.
We were lucky to work with The League of Women Voters and they often come to us with ideas.
These were programs they had come to us with proposals for so we were able to hold some great workshops on how to communicate effectively with politics.
We worked with the The League of Women Voters and were able to get everyone in the room with library patrons.
Those were really great workshops.
Another great program that we had was this program on tell me the truth.
So, this was a book, it's called waking up white.
And the author claims -- calls herself a well-intentioned white person who is color-blind.
So her and the executive director of community change, who blogs under the name of black girl in Maine, got together and unpacked the book and we have a great conversation about color blind and what racism looked like.
It was a very well-attended forum and it was a great experience, I think, for most of the people involved.
Most of our forums, we find we're responding to headlines, too.
We're trying to plan them six months out, well ahead of time so we have plenty of time to set up our promotion.
Sometimes, we find ourselves reading things in the newspaper and looking at each other and saying, we need to do something about this, let's pull some people together.
So this happened last summer.
There was a huge influx of overdoses of mostly heroin and other opiates.
You'll see here, there were 14 overdoses within 24 hours so we thought this was significant and scary.
We pulled together local health experts and had a great forum on heroin and we had a few people in recovery and a few experts and we filled our auditorium and it was great to hear from people who it's affected their families or themselves and we had a really wonderful, honest talk and we learned a lot about it and it was heart-warming to have people come up and thank us for having this forum.
It was a really moving evening.
And again, once more, we responded to headlines when we had a conversation here at the library called being Muslim in America.
We had a local author come in and he read from his book, which is homesick mosque and it is about the lives of Muslims and post-9/11 America.
He did a reading and people were able to ask questions, just really honest questions about what it means to be a Muslim.
How it feels to be a Muslim in Maine and that was just another really wonderful conversation that five years ago, I wouldn't have pictured happening here in the library and now it feels like a piece of what we're doing.
Our teen librarian has worked with us to help provide programming.
When we have a larger forum, we will ask one of the speakers to stay after and go up to our teen lounge and continue the conversations with the teenagers.
She -- we have found that a lot of teenagers won't come downstairs to the adult area and come to the auditorium so we'll find one of the speakers to speak with the teens and send them up there so it's a more intimate, one-on-one conversation.
With the heroin forum, we had one of the panelists who was in recovery and he was a younger guy and they had a really wonderful conversation and he was very open about his drug problem and how he's overcome it and the challenges he's faced and that was a powerful example of how this programming can work in your library.
I feel the teens were able to ask a lot of questions that they might not have been comfortable asking in front of a larger group of adults, so it works really well for the teens.
This past fall, we did a lecture series at lunchtime in partnership with the Portland Press Herald.
We had questions about legalizing marijuana, gun background checks and the minimum wage so we covered those topics and we also talked about immigration, as a whole, all the things that were coming up in the presidential elections.
So for this series, we worked with our local newspaper so we had reporters come in and they acted as the facilitators and we had different panels, basically representing each side of each issue.
So, those worked out really well, also, and we were able to fill our auditorium.
It was scary going into those, frankly.
I was worried about the background check one, we had the pro folks who were for the background checks and the anti.
We followed the comments in the newspaper articles and social media so I was concerned about how the conversation was going to go down that day.
Thankfully, it actually went really well.
We start each of our forums with laying some ground rules.
We read some of Dr. Foni's points and ask people to be civil, listen, be respectful.
At one point the conversation escalated a little bit and the panelists reminded them, this is a "Choose Civility" panel so let's try to keep this civil.
So, they were able to keep things civil and that was just another really successful program that we were happy with.
We also were able to get rick Steve's here to the library.
He was a big supporter of legalizing marijuana.
We tried to remain neutral to show both sides of the facts and be bipartisan but we love rick Steves.
Here's a picture of some of our staff with him.
So, with this election series, we wound up doing a little bit of an evaluation and we did it online, but we also printed them out and put them in the seats and of the people that we surveyed, we were pretty happy with the results.
89% of people said they were more aware of the November ballot issues.
89.88% were more confident in their voting decision.
What people mentioned liking most was the opportunity to ask questions, the civil discourse, the moderators, hearing both sides from panelists and the expertises of the panelists themselves.
We also asked what we could do to help patrons further and we received many responses, saying, just do more of this.
So, I'll also share that not every program has been a complete winner.
This picture here looks like it is a good crowd of people.
Actually, this was a fair we had set up that only one person showed up for.
We had reached out to local nonprofit organizations to host a table.
So our hopes were to have people who were looking for volunteering positions to come up and get matched with an organizations.
We had wonderful organizations show up and they were ready to talk to volunteers and only one volunteer showed up.
We were able to turn the conversation around and turned it into a small forum of local nonprofit leaders and talked about the challenges of finding volunteers.
It wasn't a great start to the afternoon, but it did wind up being a great conversation.
We were able to match up the person wanting to volunteer with a volunteering gig.
I always tell everyone now, if you're hosting a public forum --
I usually walk around with a microphone during the question and answer period.
We had set a microphone up at the middle of the room and had people come up and asked their questions and we found it's hard to get people to step away from the microphone and we had -- not an incident, but a session where someone was on the microphone way longer than was comfortable and there was no civil or polite way to get him off of that.
My colleagues will joke with me that I will wrestle people with microphones because I keep it with me.
So many times, we find the people showing up are the people who are already civil.
When we hold a forum on welcoming community, it's lovely, welcoming people from our community.
We have wonderful conversations.
So, that's been one of our biggest challenges, is getting in diverse opinions, different backgrounds, people with different mindsets.
I do feel like with the election series, we were able to get in both sides of a lot of issues and have some great conversations.
So that's pretty much an overview of a lot of the programs we've done here in Portland.
If I -- if you'd ask me how we thought it was going to go, this has been such a change in path as we go along.
It's been exciting.
And it's so exciting to know when we see something happening in the news that we want to learn more about or hear more people's opinion about, we have something in place here where we can gather people.
We have 300 subscribers to our newsletter.
We often get between 70 to 150 people in for a talk and that's just a great number for us.
Moving forward, we definitely plan to continue having more programs.
I've just changed positions here at the library so I'm sort of trying to figure that out right now, which is probably one of the downfalls of being from a smaller library, also.
We don't have a whole team of people planning this, but we do have some ideas floating around.
So, do stay tuned to what we're doing here in Portland and if anyone is becoming a "Choose Civility" chapter, I highly recommend reaching out to Christie and checking it out.
It's a great program for the library.
Thank you, all, for your time.
>> Valerie Gross:  So, this is Valerie, again.
Thank you, Christie and Sonya.
I love the "Choose Civility" Snack Chat.
It sounds like so much fun.
For some of you,you might be thinking this sounds like a lot of work.
A lot of this, you are already doing.
You already have book lists so make a book lists for "Choose Civility" books for children, teens and adults and go to the "Choose Civility" website and steal the one that's there and modify it accordingly.
You have books on civility, so market those and present it that way.
You already teach classes for students of all ages.
So, you can, instead of a three, two, one preschool class, call it your manners and the piggy and the elephant way and so you call it something else.
It's a class on civility.
No extra work for your staff.
And then, you already hold author events.
You already have conversations going.
Some of you probably even have the community conversations.
It becomes bigger and stronger.
So you're doing a lot of this already.
The front line staff is not affected so much.
The PR staff, the marketing staff, the people who put this all together, that's what takes a little bit of work.
It puts the library center stage as a catalyst and epicenter for a topic that is so, so crucial to the success of the fabric of the community.
if you're an academic library, the success of the institution or if you're a state library, the success of the library systems, as a whole throughout the state.
You can see how this all works and you get great ideas.
Other partners market for you so it's brilliant from all kinds of angles.
The last thing is that "Choose Civility" is successful for three reasons.
One is people want to choose civility.
They appreciate the reminder because we're all human and we fail and so we appreciate being reminded to do that.
And then the third reason is to celebrate how civil we already are.
You celebrate civility and that brings people together more and it further-elevates civility and people are more civil, happier and healthier.
I hope you consider joining in.
We have some publications here.
There's an article in 2001 that articulates what this is all about, bring it current from what you heard today.
If you're interested in libraries equal education, this is a strategy that will get your "Choose Civility" initiative and everything for your library most funding.
If it's an educational institutions and staff are educators with other educational institutions, academic libraries, it is equal footing with every other department central to the education for and entire institutions.
For special, the success of the business.
And so, there is a book, transforming our image, building our brand, the education image.
You might want to check it out.
We are happy to take any questions you might have, at this point.
>> Jennifer Peterson:  
Excellent.
Fantastic, it's so exciting to hear about.
A little overwhelming so I hope people realize you've got a great support here, but it also can be done in small steps.
I loved Valerie's suggestions of some of the ways you can start and a reminder, too, that the learner guide, they provided some suggestions on how to take the smaller steps or really reframing a lot of what we're doing with that "Choose Civility" branding.
So know that those resources are available.
There were a couple really great questions.
One, knity gritty one around your calendars.
How far in advance do you create your "Choose Civility" calendars?
>> Christie Lassen:  Usually about a week before the start of the  month.
>> Jennifer Peterson:  
Excellent.
That calendar, I think, is such a great -- that's a really easy, easy way to start the conversation and to see some civil actions taking place.
So, that's a great resource.
When Sonya, you were talking about challenges of not -- maybe not drawing a representative group of participants to have a conversation across different viewpoints, I'd like to hear a little bit more -- maybe from Valerie and Christie -- on how -- how you were able to do that, to attract -- you know, not just the panel, not just the people speaking, but how do you really draw in those representative groups to participate?
>> That is a challenge sometimes, that's where our partners can come in.
So, for example, with the longest table, one thing we've talked about is how do we make sure we don't get the usual suspects to buy the tickets?
We are purposely reaching out to various other groups that we want to make sure are represented.
So, that's one way that we do it.
When we focused on civility in sports, we intentionally reached out to some of the sports organizations and we did see a difference there, you know, in different groups of people.
>> Jennifer Peterson:  Yes, exactly, the topic could lend itself to more cross-community representation, for sure.
I feel like the -- I don't know -- maybe, Sonya, you could talk a little bit about the -- 
the one thing I imagine people may be challenged with, well, how do you -- you know, how do you get buy-in, you know, either internally with your organization -- I can see, once it's integrated, it flows into all the work that libraries are doing, but to get started, the challenge of making the time and getting the buy-in, either internally or potential partners in your community.
But, how great to have the examples, here, obviously, all of the great coverage, to be able to take that in your conversation to say, hey, here's something that we can do, but I think again, sometimes seeing all the success and the scope of your work -- so, can you just talk a little bit about how you -- some of the libraries you have worked with, have brought the -- kind of pitched it to their organization or their community?
>> Valerie Gross:  First, the understanding of what the whole initiative is and the staff needs to understand that again, it's a way of packaging a lot of what you're already doing while capitalizing on being proactive with a topic that is so central to everybody's desires to be that.
So, you capitalize on that.
So the staff needs to understand what that is.
As you start small with little things, they realize that it makes a lot of sense to brand this particular class, a "Choose Civility" class, it takes it bigger than the library.
If you choose to be the leader of the organization, that you are that.
It's a question of constant communication and then publicizing it that way, speaking about it that way, inviting and when people come, they know that it is a "Choose Civility" event and they link it with the library.
>> Sonya Durney:  We had good luck here in Maine with having local stakeholders come to learn about "Choose Civility."
So we invited the leaders of many local non-profits to come in and we shared the work we're doing and tried to define some problems in the community that we saw could use bigger forums.
>> Jennifer Peterson:  That's a great idea.
A great reminder.
As you said, the topic or the issue sometimes can -- can bring folks together in terms of -- 
especially in terms of those other partners in the community.
There was a question I saw that Christie answered about whether or not there were any civility-related mobile device apps that any of the libraries or organizations have created and Howard county hasn't.
I don't know if you've seen that come from any libraries or organizations?
>> Valerie Gross:  That's a good idea.
>> Christie Lassen:  I'm always looking to see what others are doing and there is a whole other set of organizations that are doing similar work, they're not library-work, but with the listening project and village 
square.
>> Jennifer, I saw a question that said, how to we get our customers to come and participate in a book discussion class when all they do is work on the computers?
Here in Howard county, we have screen savers that say "Choose Civility."
They know they need to be respectful of other people's views.
The suggestion there is to put a big sign in the lobby that says, what, join us for pizza or cookies and bring them in, in other ways and perhaps engage them in some kind of a conversation that way.
There are ways to lure them in.
It has to be a topic that a particular age group or demographic is interested in.
>> Jennifer Peterson:  Yeah, that's really great.
I would also -- one of the projects we did, the Spanish language outreach, part of the curriculum involved a community leader interview in order to connect with leaders in that community and sometimes just that process of getting to know a little bit more about the community or having representation of that community in the invite or in the programming.
Sometimes, that works well.
And I'll add that link to the community leader interview guide so you can see that approach, as well.
Here's another question and then we'll wrap up.
Did any of your communities have other struggling programs or successful, similar programs before you started your "Choose Civility" programming?
>> We didn't know of anything as big and strong and central as "Choose Civility."
I think that there were maybe small start-ups to focus on just how to communicate well.
The beauty of "Choose Civility," it is a big idea that is articulated in two words.
It's an invitation, an invitation for everyone and it's all-inclusive and I think that's one of the reasons why it works so well and has been so long-lasting because everyone wants to participate in it, contribute to it, be part of the bigger idea and implementing things internally in their own personal lives, work lives and their own entities.
>> Jennifer Peterson:  
Excellent.
>> I would add, too, that we have a culture of partnerships here in POU county so a lot of organizations are used to working together and like working together.
I question I see is about where people are already stretched.
I think it's going back to something Valerie said, finding out what people are interested in and maybe from an organizational perspective, what are some of their challenges that maybe this could address?
For example, we're working on a "Choose Civility" workplace component, which is a brand-new part of this.
The reaction we've gotten from the business community is, that's nice.
"Choose Civility" actually has an impact on your bottom line, it affects retention, productivity, recruitment.
So, we're working on that right now and making that something that, you know, organizations and businesses are challenged with already, so let's find a way to help them meet a goal that they all are ready have.
>> Jennifer Peterson:  Yeah, definitely, start the conversation, for sure.
Excellent.
Well, we are passed the top of the hour, just one more reminder that that learner guide is there for you to use and customize as you take your next steps and thank you to Christie, Sonya and Valerie for all the great work you're doing, for sharing this amazing model.
For making it free to anyone to use.
It's going to be an exciting time to see more of your libraries -- more libraries joining you in this wonderful initiative and hopefully makes our communities all the more civil.
I'll just also mention, as you all leave, I'll send you to a short survey and your responses help both our presenters and help us guide in our ongoing programming and I can will send you all an email once the recording is available.
Again, thank you to all three of you and thank you to our captioner for today.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> Thanks, everyone.