My name's Jennifer Peterson, and I'm joined by Kendra who is logged in as WJ support.
We are going to get our recording started here and I'm going to introduce today's presenters.
Today, we have Katie Scherrer, who comes to us with a wealth of experience related to the topic and with her work at Connected Communities.
She is also co-author of Once Upon a Cuento:  Bilingual Storytime in English and Spanish.
And she's brought with her a colleague from the Tualatin Public Library in Oregon and Lauren Simon also brings a great wealth of experience on today's topic.
We're so happy to have both of you here today.
Thank you so much.
>> Thank you so much, Jennifer.
It's certainly exciting to be here.
And thank you, everyone, for taking the time to participate in today's webinar, as well.
>> Katie Scherrer:  My name is Katie Scherrer and I'm a consultant based out of Lexington, Kentucky, where I work on projects with libraries and educational organizations that help with inclusion of underserved communities.
I offer training to library staff around the staff, mostly online.
But sometimes in person, as well, on designing and implementing bilingual storytime programs.
If you would like to learn more, you're certainly welcome to visit my website.
I and my colleague, Lauren, are going to be discussing an important piece of the puzzle when it comes to serving Latinos and Spanish-speakers, especially when you're working with first-generation immigration.
I'm going to present an overview of what outreach is and I'll turn things over to Lauren, who will be sharing some of her own real-world examples for some of the great outreach she is doing in Oregon and the different things she's been learning along the way.
So, let's start by taking a quick look at some national demographics.
Some of you are probably aware that the Latino population is the largest minority group in the United States and also the youngest.
As of 2012, they make up 16.9% of the overall population with a median age of 27.
So when we actually look at the younger age group, we see that percentage of the overall population increase.
1/4 of all newborns are Latino.
And in 17 states, 20% of kindergartners are Latino.
Traditionally, there hasn't been a large Latino community.
It's not just on the coast.
Language is quite diverse.
38% of Latinos self-describe as Spanish-dominant.
36% as bilingual and 25% as English dominant and the self-described heritage of Latinos in the unite states is quite diverse.
The largest heritage of Latinos in the U.S. is Mexican and this is followed by Puerto Rican, Cuban, Salvadoran and Dominican.
So, the big take-aways from this glance, this very quick glance at national demographics is that the Latino community in the U.S.
is large, it's young and it's growing and it's very, very diverse.
So there tends to be sometimes -- it seems as though people often talk about Latinos or Hispanic as though they're one unified group and the AK chalty is they are diverse.
So, this really underscores why it's so important to get out and get to know your community that you're working with.
All right.
So, I want to share with you all a very, very common scenario that I see come up all the time in my work, as a consutant.
My co-author in our book, Once Upon a Cuento:  Bilingual Storytime in English and Spanish, decided to dedicate an entire chapter to this topic and it's also influenced to why we call today's presentation Before Bilingual Storytime.
For a multitude of reasons, a library notices that their area, their region, is experiencing a growth in the Latino and Spanish-speaking community.
But the Latino and Spanish-speaker community doesn't seem to be making its way to the library.
They want to attract Latino families to the library.
They say, let's do a Bilingual Storytime or a Spanish-language storytime.
So the intention there is good.
It's a recognition that part of the community is underserved and a desire to do something that will help make the library more relevant.
They get training and they find the best books and music and they're so excited and they launch their storytime but it doesn't succeed.
So, the question is, what went wrong?
And the key puzzle piece that's missing in this very common scenario is outreach.
Getting out of the library and meeting the community where they are to learn about their information needs and build relationships.
So, at this point, actually, we are going to open things up.
I'm going to turn it over to Jennifer.
We want you all to tell us how -- where your library fits when the contin -- the continuum of outreach services to Latinos and Spanish speakers >> Jennifer Peterson:  Just a little orientation to our annotation tools.
We like to give you access to those tools.
To find them and test them on this screen, you can go to the top left corner of your view and click on that marker.
And, that will open your panel view of the annotation tool.
Go half-way down that set of tools to the square and then you'll see there's a little option to select more under the square and find that checkmark and -- excellent.
Great to see folks testing here.
I'll give you a few more moments to test.
Excellent.
Yeah, you can just make a nice, little checkmark.
I know, people have figured out how to make the big checkmarks, but let's keep the small one.
Now we'll ask you to pause your annotation tools so you don't confuse the next slide.
Katie, I'll let you decide when to advance.
>> Katie Scherrer:  Okay, great.
So here's our continuum.
On the far left, that would be if you -- if your library really doesn't have any dedicated services or outreach to Latino or Spanish speakers and the far right would be if you have a really active program that translating into thriving youth.
It looks like most folks are falling somewhere in the middle.
It looks like most folks are done, at this point.
So I'm going to go ahead and move ahead so we can keep talking.
So, let's talk about some of the reasons why outreach to Latinos and Spanish speakers, again, when you're working with immigrant communities is so critical.
One reason outreach is necessary is to build awareness.
So, I interviewed a library staff person at the Boone county public library in a rural area of Kentucky.
She's doing some great, great outreach work at her library and she -- I want to share with you a quote from her.
She describes the reception of the libraries among Latinos is, quote, in Mexico and Guatemala, there are no communities services.
It isn't something they saw growing up.
End quote.
It does kind of shed some light on why that work to build awareness might be necessary.
So, in 2015, a study that was published by the pew research center Hispanic trends project, it was a study on Latinos and public library use, more and more Hispanic were less likely to have used the public library and 1/3 of immigrant Hispanics thought it would be -- they would use it.
There might be a perception barrier.
It may be unclear what the library offers.
Who it's for, how to access it.
It may be that the library isn't on people's radar.
It's not something they're necessarily thinking of as, oh, that's a place I should go visit.
So, another reason for outreach is to meet people where they are.
If people have concerns about going to the library or if it's not on their radar, as a relevant place to visit, then the library must be willing to go to people where they are to initiate that first contact.
Additionally, there could be specific access barriers that are keeping people from making it to the library.
Again, it's important to know your individual community.
There could be barriers around transportation.
There could be barriers around hours that the library's open.
So if you notice that there are access barriers, going where people are, where they are able to go, helps you to bring the library to them and overcome those barriers.
Learning about what people actually want and need from the library is a really important reason for outreach.
Just because library staff has an idea of what they think might be relevant and useful for the community, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's accurate.
You can look back to our storytime example.
There might be something else that addressing a more pressing need in people's lives that would be more useful.
But the only way we can find that information out is to go out and meet people and get to know about their lives and find out what it is that they actually want and need.
And then finally, perhaps the most important reason for setting up a strategic outreach process is to build public trust.
There are many reasons why Latinos and Spanish speakers might be weary.
Giving them a face and establishing a place for them to feel safe and help advocate on the library's behalf, people begin to have a reason to feel comfortable with the library and to feel welcome visiting it.
So, that's the why.
Let's talk about the" how.
".
I will go over what I consider to be key steps.
One is research.
Find out what you can about the demographics of your community.
So, there are national data sources that can help you drill down to the local level, such as American fact finder from the census bureau.
That can be helpful.
It can be helpful to look at national data overall.
Don't forget about local data sources.
This can be more rich because it's sometimes more relevant.
Things like state data centers, local schools and universities, economic development groups and city and regional government are good places to tap into your local data.
Data, of course, it doesn't provide a full picture, right?
It lacks the nuance of the human experience, of course.
But there are some key things that data is really useful for.
One of those is funding.
So, if you're writing grants or, you know, looking for funding in some way to support your project, hard data is going to be important for you.
Data can be helpful, depending on your organization, for making your case up the chain of command to engage in this kind of work.
Don't be surprised if you find yourself in an advocacy  advocacy position.
It's not unusual for front line staff to notice the need for this kind of work maybe before administrators or managers.
So you may find yourself needing to advocate up the chain to get your organization to recognize the need for this and support it and so data can be really helpful for you when you're making your case.
Relationship building, this is so key.
I really feel like I can't overstate how important relationship building is.
One thing to keep in mind is that if you are noticing a growing Latino and Spanish speaking community and you're struggling on how to best serve them, you're not the only ones.
Schools are noticing this, housing is noticing this.
So, connect with those organizations.
Especially if you notice that there's anyone who's doing a really great job.
Have a sit-down.
Have a conversation with the people who work in these organizations and ask them questions.
You know, what can you tell me about the Spanish-speaking community?
The Latino community, that goes beyond the numbers?
How are you serving this community?
What are you learned along the way?
What's working?
What's not working?
What service gap are you struggling with that?
That is important to identify.
WebJunction, about a decade ago, made available what I consider to be one of the absolute best tools for starting this work in relationship building and it's called the community leader interview guide.
This was developed by [Indiscernible], who is the consutant that they worked on that project with.
This guide is quick, but also thorough and it helps you understand how to identify community leaders, how to reach out to them, what kinds of questions to ask them in an interview.
What to do with the information you get.
It's a free tool.
It's freely available from WebJunction.
Establishing a presence outside of the library is probably the eastiest thing that people think of or the most obvious, I should say, thing that people think of when they think about outreach.
It's going where people are.
So, the families you're wanting to serve may already be a regular presence at a local community center, a church, a park, a local business office or really potentially any location.
It's a little bit of a scavenger hunt because every community is different in this way and it's just really going to depends on your community.
When you get out there and you find out where people are and where they feel safe and what are the organizations they're visiting, see if you can visit.
See if you can come by and talk about the library or give away some free books or do a free program so that you can start to give the library a human face.
Remember, this is about building awareness and building relationships and you're the human face of the library.
You're inviting people to come and visit.
Don't let a lack of Spanish skills keep you from doing this.
It may be that you don't have any staff that speaks Spanish but this other organization do have staff who speak Spanish and if you can connect with them, get them to understand the value of the library and what it is you're offering, they would be really happy to help you and provide translation and help you overcome that barrier.
But you won't know until you get out there and try and see what kind of partnership you can get.
One is marketing.
I want to clarify here, the entire outreach process is marketing.
The whole thing.
You're researching a targeting research group and responding to that information you find out.
However, when most people think of marketing in the context of the library, we're thinking about advertising or how to promote a specific program and typically this isn't one of -- 
this isn't necessarily a library strong suit.
Typically libraries tend to post fliers and put things on the website.
That can be helpful for people who already know how to find it.
It doesn't necessarily help you connect to people who aren't already library users.
Yes, it's going to be important to translate your fliers into Spanish.
But I want to encourage you to think bigger than this and especially thinking about local Latino and Spanish-speaking media.
Even in small towns, there's at least a bilingual paper or a Spanish language paper or a radio station or tv station that tend to focus on local issues and things going on in the community.
So, reach out.
Is there a way that you can maybe go on to a TV show and talk about [Indiscernible] or write an article about the library for a local paper.
Just be creative and think about how to get the word out about your programs and services to families who aren't yet library users.
Don't make assumptions that they're going to come to you to seek out this information.
Internal evaluation means keeping track of quantitative data and individual stories throughout your outreach process.
Because you can use that to demonstrate the impact that your work is having.
Remember, you may have to be making your case up the chain a little bit sometimes.
So you can use that information to help make your case.
And you can also re-evaluate your strategies if you find that your initiative isn't working.
However, I want to encourage you to remember to be patient.
This work takes time.
It really does.
And you may not immediately see a large return on your investment.
So, it's important to keep consistent and keep going rather than abandoning ship too soon.
Finally, follow-up.
Keep the people who are helping you along your way in the loop.
Very, very frequently, as far as what you're learning and what you're doing in response to that.
It's really all about building a network here and you want to maintain those relationships.
Think of outreach of being [Indiscernible] rather than linear, which means it's never done.
Never over.
As time goes on, you'll continually be researching data, connecting with community leaders, making efforts to be visible in the community and spreading the word about your programs and services.
Make sure you are keeping people aware of what you're doing and that you're keeping especially your supervisors and administrators in the loop, as well, so that your work is something that's understood and celebrated by the entire organization and it's not just the work of one person.
So to sum up this section, I've got five quick strategies for you before I turn things over to Lauren.
If you're at the beginning of an outreach process, my quick five tips are explore your neighborhood, get out of the library, see what's going on and meet people where they are.
Make connections with other agencies.
You're not the only ones who are doing this work.
Talk with other people and find out how you can leverage your resourceess together.
Conduct community leader interviews.
Again, those are so, so helpful.
Especially for building those initial relationships.
Work with local Latino and Spanish-speaking communities and work with your supervisors and administration so that this work can be sustainable over time.
And isn't just the work of one person.
With that, I will go ahead and turn things over to Lauren, who is going to share with us real-world examples of what she is doing on the ground in Oregon.
>> Jennifer Peterson:  I'm going to jump in really quick, Katie.
There are really good questions.
One that I think would be helpful to address before we continue.
I know we're not talking about Bilingual Storytime necessarily today.
Is there a reason to offer Bilingual Storytimes instead of Spanish language storytimes?
>> Katie Scherrer:  Yeah, this is a great question.
T I I could talk about this for a long time.
It comes up a lot where people want to know which one's better.
Neither one is better.
All right.
These are both great -- they're both great.
They do slightly different things and they both support bilingualism.
I'm not going to get too in-depth.
I'll give you an advantage of both and you can make of that what you will.
Spanish-only storytime, it is immersive.
So you can absolutely -- you can use more sophisticated books than you can in Bilingual Storytime because you're not reading them in both languages.
And you -- it's really great way to model early literacy practices for Spanish-speaking families.
So that's a real advantage.
Bilingual Storytime, however, has the advantage of celebrating bilingualism.
In many areas of the country -- 
I live in Kentucky, our communities are pretty segregated.
There aren't a lot of places where people can go and celebrate bilingualism in public spaces, especially doing something for free.
So the cool thing about Bilingual Storytime is it brings together people from different parts of the community who maybe aren't shopping at the same grocery stores or going to the same schools or interacting with each other on a regular basis.
They're all there together, at the public library, enjoying this program and connecting with each other as human beings.
So it reaches a wider audience, typically.
So, they're both great.
I do not advocate over the other.
It depends on the intention and the resources available in your specific community.
>> Jennifer Peterson:  
Excellent.
Those are great options, both ways.
Somebody commented about what do you do if only a few of the library staff actually speak Spanish.
You emphasized that you don't need those language skills to have the community leader conversations.
Do you want to touch on that more?
>> Katie Scherrer:  Having a few Spanish-speaking staff would be a dream.
They envy you if you have a few.
Just keep that in mind.
It is tough.
It is tough.
I'm not going to deny that.
Like, if you have Spanish language skills, a lot of this is going to be so much easier.
However, there are a lot of community leaders who are bilingual that you can have great conversations with and who you can -- you can learn information from and who maybe you can partner with.
There may be people at other organizations who would be willing to work with you.
Lauren has a creative thing she's doing now where she has an extra bilingual person working with her.
I've seen universities of students who are in various [Indiscernible] Spanish language class or Hispanic studies or a course, that need to get volunteer work and so they might pair up with the library on a short-term basis.
There are ways you can maybe partner with different people in your organization to get that language support.
But -- absolutely, libraries, if they have this need in their community, they've got to make efforts to diversify their staff to have the bi-cultural and bilingual presence they need to have for everyone in the community to see themselves reflected so that has to become an institutional priority.
In the short term, you can go out there and you can meet people and make connections and find out what kind of work-arounds you can come up within the moment.
>> Jennifer Peterson:  That's excellent.
Thank you so much.
Keep the questions going, we'll circle back at the end.
>> Lauren Simon:  Hi, folks.
My name is Lauren Simon and I'm the Community Librarian at the Tualatin Public Library.
I'm fired up after hearing Katie talk about all these issues.
I'm excited to tell you about things I am doing.
So, Tualatin is located in Washington county.
We're in the Portland/metro area in Oregon.
I work with Spanish-speaking adults and children.
I do collection development for kids, teens and adults.
I do programing and I work on the reference desk so I get to have a lot of opportunity to engage with the community and do a lot of different things, which is great.
Right now, we're working on changing my job.
I'm working on a mobile maker space about half-time.
I can speak Spanish and work with the community.
We'll see what I'll be doing in a few weeks, but I'll still be doing a lot of outreach.
I've been at the Tualatin Public Library for two years, I graduating from the university of Washington.
I'm the vice-chair at the library association and the incoming chair.
So I've been here for two years.
My predecessor had a great connection with the community so I really stepped into a position that was well-supported and I've been able to build on that.
I love Tualatin.
It's a great place to work and I'm looking forward to sharing with you a little bit of what we do here.
Okay.
It's not letting me -- just to give you a little snapshot.
We are a smaller city, we have about 27,000 people.
We have about 18% Hispanic or Latino population here in Tualatin.
Most of those residents are of Mexican descents or are Mexican immigrants.
14.2% of Tualatin residents speak Spanish.
We have three public schools and one charter school and one head start program.
And I highlight these things because they're really important for looking at what is happening in your community.
So it's a great, really rich diverse community.
I have a Bilingual Storytime on Saturday mornings at 11 a.m.
It's an all-ages family storytime and we do a craft at the end.
It is still a small storytime.
I've had about 7 adults and 10 children coming to the storytime.
The photo on the bottom is more what it tends to look like.
The top one is when we had a kindergarten class coming in.
I love doing storytime and I still feel like I'm figuring out how to reach all the families I want to.
I feel like I'm doing good work and I still have a ways to go.
I want to share some things that are working well for me.
So, some things that I've learned is that you need to go to the same events and the same groups over and over again.
Showing up once or twice a year can help share some information, but again, it's all about that connection with one person at the library.
So, it's really great to go, have people get to know you, get to know your face and become familiar with you at the library.
This ties into the second point that it's all about building those relationships.
Being here for two years, I feel like I'm still finally getting traction.
It's taken awhile and it works very well because once people know that there's someone here that speaks Spanish and I've provided them with good service, they'll and back and also refer other people to the library.
So word-of-mouth is the best way you can get people into the library, which is that part of outreach.
So, if you're out in the community, you're talking to people, you're delivering services or programs outside the walls of the library, you're going out there and putting yourself out there and talking to people, people respond to that and they really like invitations.
A personal invitation in a conversation is a great way to invite people into the library or let them know what's going on here but they might not necessarily read fliers.
If you invite them and give them a flier, that's a great way.
Outreach is a wonderful, fun, messy process that's super important in an ongoing effort.
I might expect outcome a from doing such and such an at outreach event.
Sometimes it doesn't work out that way.
It doesn't mean I should stop what I'm doing.
I thought I was going to a back-to-school night, but I was going to their ice cream social, so I was competing against the playground and ice cream for kid's attention, which wasn't the best place to get them excited about the library.
But I did get to talk to the head of the pta and some families and I got to share information about some programs.
So I might not go to that event again but I will go to the back-to-school nights and all the other events I can get into.
So, don't give up.
Keep going.
If you're getting starting, having specific ideas is great.
I would call your local schools and see if you can connect with a specific staff member.
Some times having a direct contact can be a great thing.
If you see if there is a family liaison or a multi-cultural coordinator or an ELL instructors or a school counselor, those can be great points for you to physically go in and meet them and they can invite you into their meetings, which is a great way to connect with families.
Talking to local Latino or Hispanic businesses.
Chatting with the owners.
The [Indiscernible]:  Seeing if you can put up fliers.
Churches  are also a great place.
See if they have an ESL class you can visit.
Another rich resource has been the free summer lunch sites.
Going out to the events.
It's a great place to get started with them.
Also, as Katie was mentioning, setting up the time to talk to people who are leaders in the community, who are from the community, is so important.
I'm one person with one perspective but I want to hear from people and know what they have to say and I try to incorporate what they're telling me into what I'm doing.
If you make the time to get to know them and go out there, they'll be happy to get to know you.
Set up time and get to know people and get yourself out there.
So, I'm not going to go over all of these.
These are specific places to promote Bilingual Storytime.
So, head start classrooms, summer lunch sites.
Anywhere you can get the word out.
A wic clining.
Even if you're dropping of fliers or connecting with staff members there.
As I mentioned, we are still growing.
There's always a lot of work to be done and there's always things to improve on.
So, some thing that I'm working on right now is just trying to grow attendance at my storytime.
To try to make it bigger, to invite more people.
But also part of this might be, I just need to go out into the community and offer storytime at other locations.
I have to look at it as a valuable service that some people might come to the library but it might be best to go out to the community.
I'm looking at potentially doing that in the fall or coming year.
Setting up a Latino Advisory Committee.
I'm looking at setting up a group of people who can meet a couple times a year to talk about what's going on in the community, ideas.
They can also help the advocacy for the library.
Having a Spanish email.
Offering a few storytimes after school.
There's usually an organization that will provide a crudentional for a child care provider and they may be willing to give you a list of daycare provided  providers.
I'm going to talk about some outreach activities I have done and have been successful.
So -- just a few stories, as well.
So, in June, I went to a party in the park.
It is in a highly-densely populated Latino/Hispanic neighborhood.
They are looking at improving their services to Latino and Hispanic community members.
We did a STEAM activity with the kids.
There were free tacos, there was a bouncy house.
There was a thunderstorm.
There was a mother there with her young son and I was able to talk to her.
She had never been to a library.
She didn't know exactly what it was.
So, I just talked to her and gave her my card and she showed up at my storytime the next week and she'd never been into the library here.
She didn't know it was free, she didn't know we had all these services.
Didn't know we had free books, didn't know we had storytime.
She gave to the storytime.
I gave her a mini tour, helped her check out books and invited her to come back next week.
That's a great way to see that those personal invitations, those connections matter and it's really important to get there.
Example number two was head start family night at the library.
And I had been going to the local head start to do storytimes and was approached by the family coordinator to see if we could host a library night.
We had about 45 adults, 25 kids.
We had a make you own pinata craft and five to 16 volunteers to help run the activities and we had a lot of coloring sheets because some kids were done in five minutes and some kids took an hour and a half.
Head start brought food for people.
Food is always key.
We did a brief presentation about what resources the library had, including our citizenship classes, ESL classes, computer tutors, [Indiscernible] 
locations for free and our system-wide librarian, [Indiscernible], gave a class for the parents.
I did a brief 15-minute Bilingual Storytime.
So, this was a huge event.
And it was really successful and I expected all 25 of these kids to show up at my Bilingual Storytime the next week and not everybody came.
There was definitely a bump.
I had, like, 12 adults and 16 kids.
In February, it was a bigger month.
So, that was great.
But it was also just a reminder for me that sometimes things don't work in exactly the fashion I think they're going to.
But looking at this photo, I can see a lot of these families come into the library, they use the library.
I've seen them at different events and I feel like that, to me, says that they're either coming in or I'm going out to them.
There's a connection there and last week, I ran into the mother at a bus stop and she's like, oh, yeah, you have the storytimes.
When can I come?
Oh, I'll come and I'll bring my niece and nephew.
People remember you and will also make an effort to come whenever it works out in their busy lives.
Success is measured in different ways.
Example 3, free summer lunch sites.
During the summer, there's a free summer lunch program for kids and in year's past, we have visited different locations around the city to sign kids up for summer reading, give away prizes.
So, we come once at the beginning and once at the end of the summer to give out prizes and do maybe a small activity with children.
I went to Atfalati Park, which is located on sort of a little bit further away from the library near Bridgeport elementary and near the park where I did the party in the park outreach event.
There's a large population of Latino and Hispanic members.
I went five times over the course of the time, once every other week.
I did an activity and signed up kids for summer reading.
I decided to do it every week, I was going to be there on Wednesday from 11:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m.
I was able to recruit a bilingual intern, a recent graduate from Portland state university.
They were wanting to encourage students to intern in libraries.
I wrote up a description and sent it out and got one very qualified applicant and he makes time to come down and volunteer, even though he's working full-time.
I have a former teen volunteer who's back from college or her summer break and both of these volunteers grew up in Tualatin.
They used to play soccer at the park.
They went to the elementary school for awhile so these are young adults from the community who are there helping the library, which I'm super excited about.
Even if you don't have bilingual staff or a ton of volunteers, check with your local university, with your local [Indiscernible] club at high school.
See who else you can partner with to have volunteers and be a representative of the community.
That's a lot of fun and we're doing STEAM activities.
We made fizzy sidewalk chalk last week and we're making goo this next week.
It's a rich collaboration at a location where there's free food and there's a lot of kids.
I think the first two weeks, we had 50 kids come do the activities and get signed up for summer reading and this last week, we had about 30 kids.
It's huge.
It's great.
Another example of an activity we have done is visit a local ESL class at a local church.
I usually work Tuesday through Saturday and the ESL class is on Monday.
But I have been able to go quarterly to visit the class and talk about the library.
There's three levels, beginning, intermediate and advanced.
I pop in, introduce myself, talk about the library and give out my cards so people can call or come visit, as they need.
Also went to two different child [Indiscernible] that they had there.
Having childcare for events, if you can do it, is a great way to get families in as well.
I did a storytime for children up to 5 years old.
For the 5 to 12 years old, we did crafts and they got a free book.
So, that was also a rich collaboration.
And this next fall, I've got funding to pay for a teacher one night a week at the church and they will be providing free childcare so it'll be a neutral class, a neutral space and our teacher will be provided there.
Members of the community will be able to go to class on Monday night and Wednesday night and have childcare provided there so that was a really rich collaboration that grew out of our outreach visits.
I will have to report back and let you know how that goes.
Another example of what I have been doing is Bridgeport Elementary School, it's a title i school here in Tualatin.
They have an immersion program and a huge number of Latino/Hispanic population.
I've been invited to the events at the beginning of the school year and to come periodically.
We also were able to invite them to come to the library, the parents from the Spanish-speaking group, to come to the library and participate in a focus group for our strategic planning process.
That collaboration meant they got to have a voice in the direction of the library and we have great support from our managers and administration to making sure we're providing best services to this community.
So that was a great place.
I learned a lot.
If you can run a focus group or invite people in with food to talk about what the library might be able to offer, they can probably give you some great feedback.
And then, after I had their focus group, I was like, hey, could I come to your end of the year school event?
So, I was able to go visit the next week for their last parent meeting of the year.
Signed up most of the parents for summer reading and also the kids.
I told them about the activities that would be happening in the park near the elementary school during the summer and invite families to Spanish language summer events.
So, it was a great collaboration.
It's a wonderful school and I'm very fortunate to be able to work in a community where I have so many rich community partnerships and a community that really uses its library and I'm supported to go out into the community and make these connections.
Again, I'm still figuring things out.
I love outreach.
It's great.
I encourage you to get out there.
If you have questions, give me a shout.
There are hundreds of other people that can give you great information as well so I will turn it back over to Katie here and then she'll be able to talk a little bit about all of our resources.
>> Katie Scherrer:  Great, thank you so much, Lauren.
We had a few resources we wanted to share with you all.
I'm going to go through them really quickly.
I have to, of course, mention REFORMA.
REFORMA is the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish SpeakingSpeaking.
It's a wonderful organization to be involved with.
I've been a REFORMA member for about a decade.
It's quite inexpensive within ala to be a member.
When you become a member, you have access to so many people who are doing great work in all kinds of libraries, not just public libraries, but academic libraries and special libraries and doing their best to make sure the services are inclusive of Latinos and Spanish speakers.
You don't have to be Latino or a Spanish speaker to be involved.
I really encourage that you get involved.
Some areas of the country have really thriving local chapters so if you happen to be in, I think, the Denver area has a really great one and certainly in California, Florida, even Oregon now has a pretty active chapter.
So you may be able to get involved with local colleagues.
You're so lucky, if that's your situation.
If you don't have as many local colleagues, you can be involved at the national level and have forums.
For me, REFORMA has been so valuable because I'm not Latina.
I do speak Spanish, that's been a huge asset to me in doing outreach work to Latino and Spanish-speaking communities.
There's a lot I didn't know and having people I could connect with and talk with and bounce ideas off of.
It's really important to seek out iverse voices to fill in gaps.
REFORMA, they're great.
Get involved.
 Colorín Colorado! Some of you may be familiar with reading rocket.
This is their bilingual sister site.
Everything is available in English and Spanish.
There are so many great things.
You could really spend a lot of time exploring it, articles, activities.
One particular thing that I want to recommend that's relevant is a guide for engaging ELL families, 20 strategies.
They are written for schools, but so many of them can be adapted for libraries, as well.
it's a great walk-through and guide on how to make your organization more inclusive of families who speak other languages other than English at home.
There are great books out there, too.
I mentioned Once Upon a Cuento: 
Bilingual Storytime in English and Spanish.
If you're interested in Bilingual Storytime or Spanish language storytime, there's a lot in there.
Collections, suggestions, music selections, et cetera.
If you're looking for something more specific to outreach, these are great titles,  Bienvenidos! 
 Welcome! It is very, very quick and practical.
 Hola, amigos! Is much more thorough.
It really walks you through the entire process and has a lot of great info for focus groups.
And, Serving Latino Communities is a must-read for people doing this work.
It's an overview for all different kinds of services for Latinos and Spanish speakers.
Lauren had a couple she was going to share with us, as well.
>> Lauren Simon:  So, I wanted to mention jumpstart your outreach plan.
This last April at the Oregon library association conference, we did a half-day workshop about getting started on your own outreach plan.
So, I would definitely recommend going to our website there.
We've put everything we had in the workshop up so you can see all our slides and get specific examples and it's a great resource for getting started on building your own outreach plan and that was done in a collaboration with other colleagues.
I wanted to talk about the serving diverse community where they are.
I thought it was a great way to look at the step beyond viewing outreach asgist marketing and partnering with another community organization.
And, I was just super inspired after listening to the members of that library employees talk during that webinar so I would recommend giving that a listen, as well.
I will let it go back to you, Katie, so you can talk about the rest of the resources.
>> Katie Scherrer:  So, that's really -- we're ready for questions.
Lauren and I both are.
This is our contact information where you can reach us.
Somebody asked me earlier if I'm the author of [Indiscernible], yes, I am.
That address for that is up there.
There's other ways you can get in touch with us, as well.
So, please don't hesitate to reach out to either of us if you have questions.
Jennifer, I think we are ready to go ahead and take some questions.
>> Jennifer Peterson:  
Excellent.
I want to thank you both.
 Obviously, we are barely scratching the surface of Bilingual Storytime so thank you.
I encourage you to check out Katie's book.
It's something we have talked about doing, so stay tuned.
We will be diving deeper into Bilingual Storytimes and we'll talk about the questions you have.
Lauren, there was a specific question.
I thought it was a good one to get your answer, too.
You mentioned the Spanish language email list you use as a way to market.
How are you getting folks to sign up for that list?
Is it an opt-in list?
Does it come through library card registration?
>> Lauren Simon:  I currently have a list that I bolded all the parents in the focus group to sign up on.
I'm in the process of setting up that email list.
I think it will be opt-in.
I will have sign-ups at big events I have.
I think I saw a chat about having it on Spanish language library card registration.
I'll build out outreach and big events.
>> Jennifer Peterson:  Then, Katie, could you touch on -- 
there were a couple folks that talked about how do you assess the effectiveness of your program?
How do you know that, aside from the visibility of people coming back -- I know that's not a quick question at all.
Can you talk just a second about that?
>> Katie Scherrer:  Yeah.
So, assessing the effectiveness of your outreach program, I'm going to pair it.
It was alberto here in the chat.
People come to the library or maybe they're not coming to the library, but they're coming to your outreach event.
They stay increased and they bring their [Indiscernible].
There's word-of-mouth that's happening and they're bringing people with them.
I would also say that you find that there's increased two-way communication when you are really actually building meaningful relationships within the community.
If you have a great relationship, let's say, with a school, and there's a leader there who's really [Indiscernible] in with someone going on in the community or needs, they're contacting you and they're letting you know what's going on.
So that you can brainstorm together ways you can respond together because they see that the library is an effective partner in serving this community.
You can also do standard output measure-types of things.
You know, libraries are at different places with that.
I mean, it's -- it's interesting because libraries across the country are so diverse and some people are really into outcomes assessments and some people do surveys and some stick with the numbers required by their state library.
You can look for those increases in Spanish language materials or numbers at specific programs.
Just be weary that they may not be giving you the full picture.
A lack of increase in circulation might not mean that your outreach isn't working, it might mean you don't have the right materials.
So, just be kind of critical in the outputs that you're looking for.
And I know that that is not going to be a very satisfying answer when I'm talking about increased relationships.
That really is what you're looking for, especially at the beginning.
>> Jennifer Peterson:  Right.
And you did an excellent job talking about that beginning process.
I want to thank you, both, for your presentation today and all the work you're doing and we look forward to perhaps connecting with you for another webinar.
Thank you, all, for joining us today.
And, yes, I will send you an email once the recording is made available and will follow-up with you all shortly.
Great, thank you so much.
>> Great.
Thank you.