All right.  We are at the top of the hour.  I'm
going to get our recording started welcome our presenters for today's webinar. 
Mallory Pillard comes from Trinidad, Colorado.  She's the director at
the Carnegie Public Library and Sara Zettervall is the founder of Whole Person and
I'm glad to have you both hoar for today's webinar.  We are going to have Sara kick
us off.  Welcome, Sara.
>> Hi, everyone.  Glad to be here today.  I'm just going to start off by providing
some context.  , a broader view of people experiencing homelessness for Mallory to
then talk about some specific examples.  We will come back around at the end I don't
know if you could hear a cat meowing, but as soon as I started talking my cat decided
to get noisy.  If you hear that, I apologize.  I'm at home with a creature.  So, how
do you define homelessness?  You are welcome to type in to the box if you feel like
how you define homelessness, or homeless, but I really want to start by thinking
about -- put that in your mind, what's your starting place for considering this
conversation?  A lot of you will have have seen this movie "the Public" is
coming out.  It is a film about homeless folks taking a stand at their library.  It
represents -- an exciting story to tell about our public libraries but it represents
the first clicheed view you may think of when you think of people experiencing
homelessness and the library.  A lot of single men who are coming in to the library
during the day.  And washing up in the bathroom.  It's true that there is quite a lot
of that visible homelessness in libraries in urban places particularly, which is
where we have a lot of libraries now hiring social workers or social service
providers.  That's what I have been studying and tracking with Whole Person
librarianship.  But also thinking about the kinds of things we can learn from social
workers and social service providers that help us, as library staff, without having
to change us in to social workers.  We don't have to become social workers.  But we
really want to think, too, about the fact that that sort of clicheed view of the
unwashed single man, homeless person in the library is just one piece of a larger
picture.  So I chose to use Minnesota as an example.  I'm from here and familiar with
the resources used to get this information but the states collect this kind of
information.  This comes from how it is done every three years.  You can see 30% of
the people accounted as experiencing homelessness in Minnesota are not in our major
metro area.  This is a count that comes from people who were in shelters or who were
using services in a place where they could be reached to be a part of this count. 
Something that is really important to remember about people experiencing homelessness
in all places is that they are not necessarily going to be in a shelter.  A lot of
people experiencing homelessness are not going to necessarily define themselves as
experiencing homelessness.  But again, I see some of that coming up in the chat, too.
That is really great.  To give you an overview, some great information from the
National Housing Coalition not possible anywhere in the United States to work a
40-hour workweek at minimum wage and afford a one-bedroom rental at fair market rent.
So this map shows how many hours you would have to work at minimum wage to be able to
afford that fair market rent in any state in the United States.  So a lot of the
times the people that we might define as experiencing homelessness are these folks
who are having trouble finding a stable place to live but because maybe they are
moving from one place to the other, they are not going to say they are homeless. 
Yes, couch surfing.  So some examples of these different types of people experiencing
homelessness that come to our libraries, youth are significant group within people
experiencing homelessness.  They are often couch surfing and definitely would not
necessarily refer to themselves as homeless.  They don't necessarily reach out to use
resources or have access to resources in the same way that other types of people
experiencing homelessness do.  So it is very important to be aware of the needs that
they might have.  Families and children, this will come in to play later.  Someone
Mallory talks about waiving fines but there is a lot of disruption that happens to
children's education and their ability to track their library use when they have to
move frequently from place to place.  Veterans are actually a pretty small percentage
of people experiencing homelessness but often have very complex physical and mental
health issues.  As we go through this and you think of the things you see in your
library as potentially being homeless, think of the fact that the resources you
develop and provide for the people that you know are there are also going to be
helpful to people who might be experiencing some of these things who you aren't aware
of but will really help with them.  So with that, I will pass this along.  Mallory.
>> Thank you so much, Sara.  As Jennifer mentioned before, my name is Mallory Pillard
and I'm the director of the Carnegie Public Library in Trinidad, Colorado.  Thank you
for joining us today.  I'm grateful to share our experience with you all and continue
the conversation.  So Trinidad, Colorado, the library serves 8500 in the city with a
total of 14,500 or so in the county.  The library is one of the primary service
providers for people experiencing homelessness in the community.  In addition to all
the regular library things that you all are accustom to, we also offer a food shelf
and laundry vouchers, which I will talk more about later.  But we act as a day
shelter for many patrons.  We also have the only public restrooms in the downtown
currently.  The city of Trinidad is planning on installing more soon, which will be a
relief for us.  No pun intended there.  Sorry.  We made about 700 new library
accounts in 2016 and 2017.  I think this is because of the migration of people moving
to Colorado.  We're situated right I-25, which is a major highway.  So I think our
library is experiencing a trickle down affect of folks who are moving to Colorado in
general.  This has created a rental shortage pretty much everywhere.  In Trinidad,
the Housing authority averages a 22-month waiting list.  This is an overview of what
it looks like.  When I first moved to Trinidad four years ago and was getting to know
the community, I was sort of on the hunt for resources for those experiencing
homelessness.  There were a lot of people coming through the library doors that I
wasn't sure how to help.  I realized that the nearest homeless shelters are about two
hours away in either direction.  But what really surprised me during that first sort
of year was a lot of patrons and community members were extreesing this notion that
because we don't have any resources in town we must not have -- because we don't have
any resources in town we must not have homeless people.  And this of course wasn't
quite right.  So I felt compelled to continue the conversation and educating folks
that we do have some resources here and we do need to encourage folks to use those. 
I think that can place the library in a position to work to build capacity, not just
in their own organizations but at the service providing organizations around them. 
So in Trinidad, we have grassroots service providing organizations that help those
experiencing homelessness.  You can see on the screen there that the soup kitchen
served 1700 meals monthly but they only have the capacity to serve one meal each
weekday.  The community center provides free showers and there are other grassroots
organizations that provide immediate needs services, trying to help people with food,
gas, utilities, assistance and those sort of things.  We don't have the Salvation
Army or the United Way.  I think in some respects those folks who thought because we
didn't have resources we didn't have homeless people see those maybe as being the
only outlets for people who need help, and that's not the case.  So we do have some
services.  And the library works to build partnerships with those, as well.  I
encourage you all until the chat box to talk a little bit about what homelessness
looks like in your library.  If you want to share some stories there.  Homelessness
in my library is varied, as it is in all of ours.  Examples that I can think of are
patrons who are barefoot in my office because they can't afford adequate shoes for
when it snows.  Sometimes at my library it looks like drama maybe from homeless camps
leaking in to the library walls.  And we have had some fights and some police calls,
which is the reality of the situation.  Sometimes it looks like people sleeping in
the corners, in the comfy corners of the library.  You know, unstable housing in my
community looks like people getting stranded here trying to drive to their families. 
I mentioned we are situated on a main highway.  And, you know, a couple of uplifting
stories.  We had a patron who was using the library every day for about a year, and
we became concerned when we didn't see him for a little bit.  He finally came back
excited to tell us that he had found a house.  We were really glad we missed him for
a while.  So we were concerned but the trauma of homelessness perhaps looks like this
patron now needing some social support in his house.  But that's another webinar for
another time.
>> Mallory, I want to jump in.  Posting some of the examples, this is great to see. 
I know they are varied.  I want to definitely acknowledge -- I know a lot of people
are aware of perhaps issues that those folks coming to the library may be
experiencing, in addition to being homeless, would be related to addiction issues or
mental health issues.  We understand that that's definitely a part of their reality
in many cases, but I just wanted to make sure folks know that we aren't going to kind
of cover beyond, outside in to those areas.  I know those could be a whole other
webinar or webinar series.  I just wanted to acknowledge that, as well.
>> Yeah, thank you for jumping in there.  So I want to talk a little bit about --
really we will get to the practical things, I guess, that I have done here at the
Trinidad Carnegie Public Library.  But set up barrier and solution slides here.  At
the Carnegie Public Library, we give out library cards to just about everyone.  So
that we have some information on file for them.  And the reason for this, in my
opinion, is that people who may need our services the most might not have what is
required to get a library card.  If you don't have an address, it becomes difficult
to get an I.D
if libraries are constantly asking for an I.D. it is a barrier.  So we created a
policy that says if we have some information on file for them we will do our best to
get you a library card.  This is a good moment, I guess, for me to stop here, too,
and mention that policy changes can be difficult in your library, depending on what
your governing structure is or what position you hold at your library.  I think this
notion that the people who need the library the most are sometimes the people who
can't access it is really what is at the heart of this.  Another thing
we did at my library is we eliminated fines.  We wanted to fines on everything. 
Which was kind of a big change to make.  It worked out well for us.  Folks before
were deterred from using the library because they were afraid they weren't going to
be able to buy a gallon of milk because they owed $3 on a DVD.  That was
disheartening to hear those stories come back.  Since we eliminated fines at the
library, we have had a good reception for that.  It's not the right move for all
libraries.  I know other libraries in Colorado who tried to implement this and it
didn't work, but at least on children's materials, you know, I don't want anybody to
have to choose between like hunger in their stomach versus the hunger of the mind. 
We want kids to learn and use the library for fun, for early literacy support and all
of that.  So if parents are concerned about feeding their child lunch using the
library, here we don't want them to have to make that choice.  So on to the next
slide about more tips here.  So what you can do with patrons and with staff to don't
address these challenges is to create a common language.  At the Carnegie Public
Library, we say patrons experiencing homelessness and we try to avoid saying homeless
people.  Remembering that homelessness is a temporary condition and circumstance and
recognizing that at our patrons.  We say that unless we know names.  I think it is
much easier in a smaller library so get to know your patrons names.  We know their
names so we can refer to them.  If there is an incident, perhaps, we don't want to
say, you know, that homeless patron with the brown jacket.  And do that constantly. 
So on the staff end, that's one of the reasons why, but also it humanizes the person,
right?  Instead of saying that homeless person, you know them by name.  You know what
they read or like to do at the library and it makes them more of a person opposed to
a situation.  And with patrons, I think doing the same thing is important at the
library.  For a while we had this notion that the front entrance of the library was
for families and kids and the back entrance was for the homeless people.  I did my
best to really squash that by explaining to those patrons why it might be hurtful to
use those words with the people experiencing homelessness in their community.
my other suggestion is to get in front of city council.  Write for your local paper
and continue to talk about it, talk about it, talk about it, using that shared
language that you have created.  So here in Trinidad, the Carnegie Library is a city
department.  We're a municipal library.  I'm in the fortunate position to sort of
have the ear of city administration.  So if you are in that situation in your
library, I encourage you to talk to city council and city administration and really
just talk to anybody else.  Again, using that shared language.  It helps to build
partnerships and encourage perspectives so people don't think the front entrance is
for families and the back entrance is for homeless people.  I think that is a
frustrating thing for me to hear any way.
So I want to talk about the picture on the slide here.  It is hard to see but the
picture on the right of the skeleton in the chair was a
Halloween decoration.  It says fleshless, please help.  I realize this was a joke for
Halloween, but when I walked by it, I thought it was in poor taste.  It is very easy
to make fun of panhandlers when you live up on a hill in a really nice house with a
manicured lawn.  I think panhandling and the transient population, which is what our
community remembers here refer to them as, is may be even a webinar for a different
time also.  But walking past those Halloween decorations really impacted on me the
necessity in our community to don't have these conversations, to create that common
language.  You know, have a little understanding for those experiencing homelessness.
>> Yeah.  This is Sara.  I just wanted to jump in here.  Just say I think we didn't
ask at any point what role people have in their library systems.  So I don't know how
many attendees are in administrative positions or working on front lines, but I think
one of the important things to recognize in the suggestions that Mallory has made in
this slide is that these are things that you can work on at any level.  You may not
be the library director with a great relationship with your city council.  You might
be somebody on the front lines, and I know different directors run their systems or
their libraries in different ways and may or may not want to have control over
messaging.  But you can talk to your colleagues.  You can choose to use this kind of
language yourself in the library, even if it is not something that you can make
consistent right away.  So any of these changes are really going to show a respect
for the patrons that you are serving, and that can make a really important impact
pretty quickly.
>> Yeah, thank you for bringing that up, Sara.  I think -- I first heard the phrase
patrons experiencing homelessness from John Sears who is the director of the Pikes
Peak Library district here in Colorado.  And I sort of adopted it.  You are right,
Sara, if there is one thing to impact a change it is to adjust your own language.  It
is harder to do than it sounds, but if you hold yourself to that, I think that you
inspire others to do that, as well.  Because they will hear you saying that and it
fosters some discussion, as well.
Sara, I think you wanted to talk about conversations, as well.  These slides deal
with humanizing each other.  I mentioned that a little bit before as far as getting
to know people's names and talking about some of the challenges.  At my library, we
have success with this with a movie night.  We are open a little later when it is a
little cooler and we see a lot of patrons experiencing homelessness come to those
programs, but it also draws a diverse crowd.  That's what we have done here.  Sara,
if you want to talk about the coffee and conversation piece of this?
>> Yeah, sure.  This is really become -- coffee and conversation has really become
the first go-to thing that people find really easy and effective as a starting point
for beginning conversation between patrons and staff, but also continuing to work on
that.  Humanizing each other, seeing each other as peers.  You will see there is a
link here that I think just popped up in the chat, as well, to a
Webjunction webinar.  If you want to dig in to it, you can.  It is creating a space
where staff and patrons can come together, do activities, talk to each other and it
is something we implemented in Hennepin County and it has been going on for years
now.  During the time that the atrium is open, but the library is not open.  So
people are waiting in the atrium area in our central library and the staff plan
different activities to do with them and they drink coffee together and people almost
right away on the staff side said, wow, this made a real impact on the patron's
ability to relate to me in other situations.  They will make eye contact with me now
when I walk through the library.  It gives everyone a chance to have a positive
interaction.  Whereas otherwise they might only interact at a point of crisis.  So
this is something that our local Saint Paul public Library has done and it is
different for all places but I want to highly recommend it.  If it is something you
are able to try in your library, there is minimal investment for a maximum impact.
>> Good.  Thank you, Sara.
Okay.  So just a couple other ideas sort of about the humanizing component of this. 
So you might create a task force with staff and patrons or volunteers.  Maybe that
task force could host a service fair to kind of showcase maybe some of the other
resources in town and also provide opportunities for staff to lead the library.  Some
of the outreach component is important.  I'm curious, in the chat, if folks have had
success with pop up libraries, or if you know about that?  I think that is something
we will try here, not just specifically for those experiencing homelessness but also
for those other demographics that you like to reach, as well.  I'm curious about how
that has worked in your library if you have tried it.
>> So moving on to the three Ss.  I noticed in the chat some people are talking
about the odor that sometimes homeless people can bring in to your library.  At the
top there is a little snippet from our policy.  Basically that behavior that disrupts
or hinders the civil library is prohibited.  That can be kind of broad, but for us
that looks like snoring can certainly be disruptive.  So I have -- I have been waking
people up pretty regularly for snoring.  We recently had one gentleman who fell
asleep almost with his face on the keyboard at one of our computer terminals.  And I
went up to him and woke him up gently.  I wouldn't suggest that anyone touch anyone
else, make a little noise.  He seemed really embarrassed when he woke up.  He said,
I'm sorry, it's just really hard.  So when you are sleeping by a fire or wandering
the streets all night getting enough sleep can be pretty stressful.  My opinion of
this is if somebody is asleep in one of the comfy corners of the library and they are
not bothering anybody by doing that, I'm not going to interrupt them in their nap. 
So a little compassion goes a long way in that regard, as well.  It is important also
in sort of the safety component.  I'm noticing this pop up in the chat, too.  To be
aware there might be a bigger concern if somebody is not sleeping but they look like
they are sleeping.  Make sure to keep an antenna pointed in that direction, as well. 
As far as hygiene goes, I think this is prevalent everywhere.  But I encourage
everybody to give your staff a script for what to say in those difficult
conversations.  It can be an embarrassing conversation of the.  Having that script
and having that tool for your staff goes a long way.  So we offer laundry vouchers
here.  The intention being if the staff -- if my staff has a script for mostly what
to say, and they also can provide an alternative for that person, we don't have to
sort of kick that person out of the library for disrupting others.  We can say,
here's a solution for you.  Please come back after you have gotten yourself cleaned
up a little bit.  We also direct them to the community center where they have showers
if they need.  But again this conversation can be kind of tough.  Then the third S
there is stuff.  So we deal with a lot of folks who have every belonging that they
have ever owned carried in a backpack.  So we offer them lockers to make sure they
are not leaving their backpacks in an area where people could trip and so forth.  So
we encourage them to use lockers.  And we need some bigger ones here soon.  But I
don't know if you want to share in the chat if you have lockers or if you are
considering something like that for people's items.  I'd be curious to see -- I don't
know that our locker system right now -- it needs some improvement.  We need to clean
up our policy about that.
>> Mallory, I want to jump in here with something for a second.  About the stuff, I'm
just pushing back one slide to the one where it says "provide opportunities for staff
to leave the library and visit service organizations."
>> Sure.
>> I think one of the things that I've seen with library staff being able to visit
shelters, in particular, is that that piece about why folks are carrying around so
much stuff with them can become really clear once you see the size of the lockers
that they are dealing with, which are often very small, if they even have a shelter
to go to in the first place.  Sometimes they are just carrying around everything they
own.  If they have a place to store some things during the day, a lot of times it is
small and they can't ac sos between 9:00 in though morning and 7:00 at night or
something like that.  It really often does help people to have that visual to be able
to say, okay, now this makes sense to me.  This person isn't just choosing to carry
stuff around because they want to have it with them.  There's a real necessity to
it.
>> Yep.
 thank you for that, Sara.
So I wanted to share our script for that conversation about odor.  This is what we do
our best to say in those situations.  So if you have a script or if you have a way
that you have dealt specifically with odor or some of the other two Ss that we
described there, please share that in the chat.  Let's talk a little bit about those
hard conversations to have there.  I think, for me, kind of a personal realization I
will share here, is before we had the laundry voucher partnership.  So we have little
coupons basically and they are good for three loads of laundry.  I went to the
laundromat -- it's within walking distance to the library and asked if they would be
willing to partner with us and see what they would look like.  And they were.  They
donated those loads of laundry to us.  Because in a lot of ways they also are dealing
with folks who are experiencing homelessness.  We partnered with them.  I think that
handing over that solution at the end or a possible solution makes the conversation
go more easily for everybody.  The first time I had the conversation at my library
was -- we did not have the laundry vouchers in place.  It was hard for me to say,
hey, you are being disruptive based on something you don't have a lot of control
over.  You may not realize it but the odor seems to be coming from your clothing.  At
that time I didn't know what else to do.  I gave him some trash bags so he could put
his outer jacket in there.  And I realized at that moment I was fortunate to grow up
and have a support system of folks around me who taught me how to wash my face and
hands every day.  And sometimes it is important for us to consider that some folks
experiencing homelessness don't or didn't have that support system.  If you don't
have a home or a kitchen floor to sweep you may not know how to sweep your kitchen
floor.  Some of the basic skills might be lost.  So I think that's important to
consider.  I think that's part of the compassionate approach that is important to me
here at my library.
I'm noticing, too, on the chat this notion -- we have been talking a lot about --
Sara asked us to define homelessness in the beginning and I failed to mention, for
me, homelessness looks also like teens couch surfing, people living in dilapidated
buildings, people living out of their cars in parking lots.  I think it is important
to remember that, as well, as far as unstable housing goes.
>> Yeah.  Just as an extension of saying people experiencing homelessness, we will
often say people experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity, which is quite a
mouthful but it is one way of incorporating all of those ideas of these kinds of
situations that people are finding themselves in.
>> Yes.
Okay.  So some tips for response and safety.  At the beginning of my slides, I
mentioned some of the resources that we have in town, but it's frustrating certainly
to be the place where people go to be connected to resources and not to see those
resources in town.  So I tried to create a resource list.  Even if it seems like
there aren't that many resources for the homeless in your town, just the exercise of
making that list will identify more for you.  That is something we didn't really
have.  It seemed like each organization in the community was making their own little
flyers and pamphlets to advertise for themselves, but we didn't have a booklet that
said, this is the resource guide.  So I worked on that a little bit and have
identified more potential resources in town, which, you know, now that I know about
those I can direct people there.  Keep a list of phone numbers.  Write an Emergency
Action Plan.  Know when to call the police.  Know when to call 911.  All of that is
important.  Or, you know, if you are in a library where that's not your role,
encourage those around you to do that and think of those things.  Also know what your
patron code of conduct is and enforce it.  Make sure your patrons know what your
patron code of conduct is.  And those are things that have also helped us to sort of,
you know, maintain a balance of expectations at the library.
Finally, I wrote "stick to priorities."  Give your staff autonomy and support them
through the difficult interactions.  I tell my staff, my team here, that it is
important to err on the side of yes.  So if somebody here makes a mistake but they
did it for the sake of helping somebody or providing a service, nobody will get in
trouble for that, right?  So I encourage the team around me to feel comfortable in
sort of making the decisions in the moment, opposed to relaying them through the
chain of command, as long as they are erring on the side of service.
>> I want to jump in to the conversation that was going on a little bit in chat. 
Somebody had asked, how do you approach someone who you think might be experiencing
homelessness?  There was a good comment as far as just saying, starting out
generally, can I help you with anything?  I think -- I mean that is a really hard
question to answer.  You don't want to put your nose in to somebody's business where
you don't really know what's going on.  I think starting with many of the things that
Mallory has been talking about in terms of making the library feel and sound like a
safer place for people experiencing homelessness will naturally make people feel more
comfortable in talk about those things.  That's what some of the coffee and
conversations might be for, using the right terminology, making sure to acknowledge
with empathy when somebody is, you know, for example using the script that Mallory
provided for talking to somebody who might need to use a shower.  It's not about
making it like, hey, you seem to be having an issue, can I help you with it?  But
more creating the space that says, you are welcome here,
awith everybody else.  It is great to have a resource list.  So people don't have to
talk to somebody else they want to.  What I seen with resource displays, you may not
notice people taking them but you will see that the things that you put out as
resources disappear over time.  So that's just another really good way.  People are
ashamed to talk about these things sometimes.  It is a good way to make sure that
people can still get access to the information that you have been working on.
>> Definitely.  I think to jump on top of that, I have noticed some people in the
chat saying, well, we ask what we can do to help them.  I had an interaction recently
with somebody experiencing homelessness who sort of had her own assumptions of what I
was able to help her
so she thought that -- her response to what can I help you with today is oh, I need
help finding some music.  My question, though, to her was really broader than that. 
It is kind of part of the reference interview is getting to the heart of what
people need.  Sometimes it is something that the library can help with or sometimes
direct to another service organization or sometimes the library can't help at all.  I
noticed somebody in the chat said somebody was asking for money at the reference
desk.  That has happened here, as well.  Compassion of our heart
only goes so far until you feel burdened.  So Sara will talk about what you do when
you feel the resources don't meet the need.  I will wrap up with a couple more
thoughts before we can kind of get in to questions and answers.  So I have quite a
bit of support from city administration.  The library is generally perceived well in
our community.  I have the support of the city council for the most part.  The
friends and foundation organizations, but I didn't always have the support of the
administration.  When I first arrived in Trinidad four years ago, I started to talk
about these issues and my boss at the time actually told me to never bring it up
again and that city council dwant to hear about it.  I felt pretty silenced and chose
to ignore those feel and continued to talk about it and leadership changed.  I
approached city council and I have been working with a team on a research to improve
housing.  I would encourage people to talk about it, access webinars like this and
continue the conversation with your community.  If you don't have support from
certain organizations, find organizations that will support you.  Make those
connections and partnerships.  I think with sort of heavy-hitting topic like
homelessness in our communities there will always be opposition.  There will be
people who believe that maybe homelessness is a moral decision of some sort.  If only
they could pick themselves up by their boot straps sort of thing.  But we all know it
is a much more complex issue than that.  I encourage everyone to make connections
with your community and do what you can and continue to talk about it.  So I'm going
to hand it over to Sara to talk a little bit more about the self care portion of all
of this for our teams.  So go ahead, Sara.
>> Thanks.  I'm going to roll back here for a second to a slide that I skipped over
earlier.  This is an example of a continuum of care.  It makes some good sense now
after we heard Mallory talk about how her library assumptions within her community to
really see how that fits in to this kind of example of somebody starting off in a
library.  That if you know where to turn to provide services, you can direct them to
those appropriate services, which will then connect them with what they need ideally
and perhaps they become integrated in to the community in a different way and come
back to the library in an improved housing situation and have a different role there.
This is just an overview.  I think after having seen some of the comments and folks
talking about feeling like they don't have resources in their community, that that
might be how you deal with that might be an interesting thing for us to talk about a
little more in the Q and A.  That was partly to show -- so we have been talking about
the needs of patrons and the way that their lives influence them and how they are
influenced by their social situations, and ending up in a situation of experiencing
homelessness or housing insecurity.  Libraries have a place in those systems for
helping folks.  But then it is also important to remember that library staff are
influenced by all of this, too.  Some of you have already been commenting on that.  I
think it's something that -- unless we remind ourselves of it, it's hard sometimes to
have that perspective of we're immeshed in all of this.  It is not that we can stand
back and be like I'm going to provide this service and not have it affect me
personally.  When you are working on being empathetic it becomes a personal thing.
So a couple of things with how to work with that.  One is to think intentionally
about boundaries.  So the example that I like to use for this is if somebody comes to
you and says I've never baked cookies myself before.  I want to learn how to do it. 
You can show them some websites they can learn from, maybe You Tube videos, get them
a cookbook.  They go home.  They try to make the cookies, but how the cookies turn
out based on the information and support you provided is not your responsibility.  So
it is a lot harder to apply that to a person going through a really challenging life
situation, but it's one way to save yourself.  This is something that you might need
to talk about with your colleagues just to make sure that you have support.  To be
able to practice and it does take some practice to draw that line and say, you know,
I have to say, I'm going to help with empathy to the point where I know that my
responsibility ends.  Another thing I think is really important for coping with some
of the challenges that come with this work is reflective practice.  This is something
that we take from social work, but it is also other helping professions use and it is
really making sure that you have some intentional time to talk to -- ideally talk to
somebody else about a situation.  It can be for dealing with a challenging situation
or it can be reviewing something that went really well.  It really comes down to
saying what happened?  What does it mean and then what's next?  So, you really break
down the experience in to what you thought and felt, and then you try to learn from
it and think clearly about, okay, how am I going to handle a similar situation next
time?  There are a few different ways to do this.  I think there are a lot of
resources out there for self care in terms of things like meditation.  What makes
reflective practice different or you may hear the term reflective supervision, it is
really meant to get that feeling and experience outside of your body and outside of
your mind so that you can examine and release it.  So that's why we emphasize talking
to somebody else, but you can also do something like work through a tool like the one
we are providing in the resources on your own, or write in a journal.  Something
where you can get that outside of yourself in order to examine it.  The tool that is
provided in the resources, this is just a general overview of the much more detailed
set of questions and ways to break that down.  Look at that for yourself, if you
can find somebody to try it
it can be helpful to say what happened here?  What can I do differently in the
future?  And it could be a good starting point for having conversations with your
colleagues about how they may want to handle things, as well.  So here we are at Q
and A.  I'd love to hear what you have for questions.
>> Thank you so much Mallory and Sara.  This is obviously a huge, huge topic.  I so
appreciate the facets that you were able to dive in to deeper.  There are a lot of
great conversations that have gone on in chat.  So thank you to all of you who have
posted there.  You know, I just want to address a couple of things to be sure that
you know that Webjunction is committed to carrying on this and in ways that it
relates to topics on our plate right now.  We held a town hall related to the opioid
crisis and continue to collect resources and examples related to how libraries are
tackling that.  I did see a number of folks began to talk about social workers in the
library.  I know that many many small and rural communities that perhaps isn't always
available, but knowing that some of your health departments might be, you know,
nearby or in the next town over, I really encourage folks to see this as an
opportunity to reach out and connect more with others in your community that are also
working with these community members.  I think taking some of those steps to have
that conversation, as I suggested in the learner guide, even has some of those
questions that might be good to bring to those community partner agencies, as well. 
I know that -- I can't remember, Mallory, if you mentioned today, but I know we
talked about your intentions of bringing the mental health first aid program to your
library.  That was really great to hear.  I heard that from other folks, as well.  
There is a lot going on in chat.  If people have questions that haven't been
addressed, I know there were a couple of folks who really emphasized the fact that
they don't have services locally nearby and I know that sparked some conversations
about churches and lack of transport, how people are getting.  I don't know, Mallory,
if you have -- if you have heard how people are addressing lack of transport, if they
need services that aren't in your community.  Has that ever been addressed?
>> Yeah.  That's hard.  Before we had some of the grassroots organizations that we
have, the city of Trinidad made a line item in their budget for bus tickets.  Way
back when they used to drive people to the top of the path.  We are about 15 minutes
away from the northern New Mexico border.  So they would drop people at the New
Mexico border -- this is horrible.  I can't believe I'm sharing this.  Drop people at
the New Mexico border and say good luck finding something south of here.  So that was
what we did.  It's hard.  I would encourage people in your community, I guess, to --
who are interested in these issues to rally together and to see if they can provide
some sort of services.  You know, transportation is really hard.  I have personally
purchased train tickets for people before.  Because sometimes people in Trinidad will
get stuck here.  I don't encourage everybody to do that either.  That is a burden
personally, but it is a hard one to answer.
>> Yeah, it is tricky.
>> There definitely was interest in the locker idea.  I know -- I don't know if you
have policies and procedures.  You told me that you were sort of experimenting with
it at this point.  So if other people on the call have had experiences with lockers,
feel free to chime in.  There was a question about, you know, what do you do about
bed bugs in your lockers.  I don't know if you have had to tackle any of that yet,
but do you have any ideas in terms of policy approaches to lockers?
>> I am still kind of in the middle of that to be honest.  I was hoping some
participants would give me some ideas.  As far as bed bugs and stuff goes, we haven't
experienced that yet.  I noticed in the chat a little bit before, too, about things
like bombs and my assistant director is like what if we hear meowing or there is a
kitten or something in there.  We have keys to all of the locks and we have bolt
cutters.  So that's one thing.  I'm not really worried about a bomb or anything like
that in my community.  I understand that that might be a valid concern for others,
but, you know, for the most part, the people in my community who are experiencing
homelessness, the library is too valuable for them to kind of abuse stuff like that. 
The locker is too valuable to them to abuse it.  Because they know it will get taken
away otherwise and there's no other place to go.  So some of our homeless patrons are
better patrons because they realize how valuable the library is to them.  They don't
have any other place to go.  So, yeah, I may be emptying out the lockers before
closing or something like that.  I have not encountered the bed bug issue yet.  We
will see how that goes.
>> Excellent.
>> I just -- the other piece around the social worker conversation is there's --
there are a number of libraries in the U.S. in different communities that have been
working with social workers.  I know they are becoming quite organized in connecting
with each other.  So I just want to let folks know, oh, and Sara -- Sara actually is
collaborating with a social worker and they are doing a pre-conference if anyone is
available to go to --
>> Sorry to jump in.  There is a pre-conference at PLA.  That's not our 0
pre-conference.  I want to make sure it is clear for everybody, too.  It is one give
by social workers who work in libraries about the practicalities of hiring and
bringing a social worker in to your library.  Mary, my social work collaborator is
and I have working to apply concepts from social work to the empathetic and social
justice work that you do in your library.
>> Excellent.
>> I've seen other people putting great resources in the chat.  So many fantastic
resources out there.
>> Absolutely.  And we will be sure to pull out links and add them to the event page
so you can follow up on some of those.  You know, I just -- my heart goes out to all
of you.  I know this is really hard work.  I'm so glad that, Sara, you brought some
tools for taking care of ourselves, as well.  It's not something, obviously, that is
going to be solved really quickly, by I think that coming to this webinar certainly
shows your commitment to understanding more what we can do within the context of our
work as well as partner with others.  So, I am so grateful for all of you coming
today.  And thank you so much to Sara and Mallory for bringing your experience and
expertise to today's session.  We will definitely follow up once the recording is
posted.  I will also be sending you all a short survey.  As you leave, we'd love to
hear your feedback, both for our presenters today and it helps us guide our ongoing
programming.  So thank you, again.  And everyone have a great rest of the week.  And
we look forward to connecting with you on another webinar.  Thank you.